# China Science & Technology Forum



## cirr

May 2013, page 20

With its strong economy, the country wants to play a bigger role on the world science stage. 

Sixteen&#65288;since expanded to eighteen&#65289;science and technology projects will receive big infrastructure investments in China, the countrys State Council announced on 23 February. The competitively selected upgrades and new facilities focus on such topics as energy, nuclear waste, materials science, ocean surveys, and astroparticle physics (see the table on page 22).

The projects are part of Chinas mid- to long-term perspectives for the development of major national infrastructures in science and technology stretching out to 2030. Through the end of the current five-year planning period in 2015, the total investment is expected to be about CNY19 billion (about $3 billion), more than three times the amount in the previous five-year plan. Individual facilities will get up to CNY2 billion. The construction money comes from the National Development and Reform Commission. Ongoing research is covered by other sources, says Lu Yu, a senior scientist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Physics, so the new large projects do not threaten funding for laboratory-scale science.

Zhen Cao, the chief scientist for a new cosmic-ray observatory that made the cut, says that with the economy strong, people are thinking this is the time for China to take responsibility for the development of basic science and technology. The US and Europe, he notes, are both home to many large scientific experiments. China is making major contributions to science too, he says. That is why China thinks we should have this concrete plan to build and grow as many big facilities as possible.

Among the 16 selected projects, some are ready to go forward pending various permits, but others will be put up for bid. Thats the case, for example, for a user facility to study materials under extreme conditions. Proposals for such projects are due soon, and decisions are likely before the end of the year, says Yu.

Pure science

The Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO), the cosmic-ray observatory that Cao heads, is to be built at 4300 meters in Shangrila, Yunnan Province, in the southwest corner of China. Combining five detector types at high altitude is what makes LHAASO unique, says Cao. For cosmic-ray particles with energies above 1015 eV, the existing data are chaotic, he says. We have to build many types of detectors to collect information about the air showers. The aim, he says, is to identify the violent processes that produce the particles. We want to find the sources of cosmic rays. (See also Physics Today, April 2013, page 14.)

One of the LHAASO detectors will be a large pool of water, lined with 3600 phototubes to observe the Cherenkov radiation produced by impinging particles from the air showers caused by cosmic rays. We will measure the timing and how many particles there are, Cao says. An array of 6000 scintillators over a circle about 1.2 kilometers in diameter will measure the energy and intensity of incident cosmic rays. The third detector will be an array of bags of pure water with phototubes buried about 3 meters underground to watch for muons. Because the detectors are underground, says Cao, electrons and photons are excluded. In practice, he explains, you are looking for the [gamma-ray] showers without muons. Finally, the LHAASO will have 24 UV telescopes to look for fluorescent light and Cherenkov radiation produced in air showers and 400 burst detectorsscintillators on the surface that are shielded by lead so that they record only the most energetic particles.

Cao hopes construction can begin in two years. We need to get permission to use the land, and then we face an environmental review, he says. Once ground is broken, it will take about four years to build the facility, which is expected to cost about CNY1 billion. Although a mainly Chinese project, scientists from France and Russia are working on aspects of the detectors.

The China Antarctic Observatory also got the nod. Two large telescopes will be added to a site on Dome A in Antarctica where China already has a small presence. (For more on Antarctic telescopes, see the Quick Study on page 60.) One is a 2.5-meter optical-IR telescope to study dark matter and dark energy and to search for exoplanets; it will be perched on a 14.5-meter-high tower to lift it above the turbulence layer. The other is a 5-meter submillimeter telescope to study star and galaxy formation (see Physics Today, January 2011, page 22).

Aside from those two astrophysics projects, most of the megafacilities are a mix of basic and applied science or tend more to applications.

Pushing extremes

Hong Ding, chief scientist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, is working to bring the extreme conditions project to the Beijing suburb of Huairou; word has it that another team may submit a competing proposal. Ding envisions the Synergetic Extreme Condition User Facility (SECUF) boasting some 20 different instruments that can operate at low temperatures (below 1 mK), high pressures (approaching 300 gigabar), high magnetic fields (32 tesla), and ultrashort laser pulses (200 attoseconds). We want to push to extremes to achieve world records, to do world-leading research, says Ding. He and his colleagues will submit their proposal for SECUF in the coming weeks.

Ding notes that China is not strong in building instrumentation. We mostly buy commercial products. But because off-the-shelf products are not available for the proposed extreme conditions, Ding says, we hope to help China develop and commercialize instrumentation. That is one of our goals. The suite of instruments would include systems for large-volume high-pressure materials synthesis, time-resolved transmission electron microscopy, high-field scanning tunneling microscopy, refrigeration by nuclear demagnetization, and a laser-wakefield-driven x-ray source.

Zuyu Zhao, who heads the ultralow temperature department at the Massachusetts-based Janis Research, sees increasing interest in low-temperature physics and cryogenic technologies among scientists in China. A seminar he gave in 2007 at Tsinghua University in Beijing drew few attendees, he says, and even fewer really understood what I was talking about. Just four years later, in 2011, Zhao gave another seminar on ultralow-temperature physics in Beijing. That time, he says, half the audience was in the corridor. The situation has changed completely. Ding agrees: The driving force behind SECUF, he says, is a growing demand by scientists.

Ding and others longer-term dream for Huairou is to collocate an array of facilities there. The Beijing Advanced Science and Innovation Center, or BASIC, would bring together SECUF, the future Beijing synchrotron light source, the Earth simulation computing facility, and perhaps other infrastructures. Huairou is also near the new site of the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which would give BASIC researchers access to students and students access to the centers facilities. issues and events&#12290;

Science and technology infrastructure gets the nod in Chinas 12th five-year plan: Mid- to long-term projects ranked by priority&#65306;

1. Ocean-floor scientific survey network
2. High-energy synchrotron test facility
3. Accelerator-driven subcritical reactor research facility
4. Synergetic Extreme Condition User Facility
5. High-flux heavy ion accelerator
6. High-efficiency, low-carbon gas turbine testing facility
7. Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory
8. Future network experimental facility
9. Outer-space environment simulating facility
10. Translational medicine research facility
11. China Antarctic Observatory
12. Precision gravity measurement research facility
13. Large-scale low-speed wind tunnel
14. Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility Phase-II Beamline Project
15. Model animal phenotype and heredity research facility
16. Earth system digital simulator

Cookies Required 





.

Reactions: Like Like:
17


----------



## rcrmj

really glad to see the first one, the resources out there are immense

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## Kolaps

Like Taiwan....

I feel mainland China research projects are following the trend in the West (to help Westerners), rather than for helping the local people to improve their living standard.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## khanboy007

cirr said:


> 1. Ocean-floor scientific survey network
> 2. High-energy synchrotron test facility
> 3. Accelerator-driven subcritical reactor research facility
> 4. Synergetic Extreme Condition User Facility
> 5. High-flux heavy ion accelerator
> 6. High-efficiency, low-carbon gas turbine testing facility
> 7. Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory
> 8. Future network experimental facility
> 9. Outer-space environment simulating facility
> 10. Translational medicine research facility
> 11. China Antarctic Observatory
> 12. Precision gravity measurement research facility
> 13. Large-scale low-speed wind tunnel
> 14. Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility Phase-II Beamline Project
> 15. Model animal phenotype and heredity research facility
> 16. Earth system digital simulator
> 
> Cookies Required
> 
> .



wow thats really cool, but im just curious to know whether you guys have a wind testing facility for buildings, like to check how much drag in a building design its like a wind tunnel test for buildings.im fascinated by wind tunnels of all sorts thats y im asking  . it mostly requires wind engineers so do u guys have that i'd love to know... thanks in advance and best of luck for China's flourishing future

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## Echo_419

Great Going China 
Hope to see china a Developed Scientfic Power by the End of this decade 

& to my Fellow Indians Don't bring Poverty everywhere

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Type 052D

Wonderful news, but we still need more investment in our Gas Turbine technology for Naval Construction and more funds and research equipment allocated for PRC's indigenous Jet engine.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## David James

*Only about US $3 billion?? *

Why china is spending so low on science and technology for next five years ????????? 

*India is spending US$ 24 billion*  on Science and Technology

*India is spending 8 times bigger amount* US$ 24 billion against china's US$ 3 billion 

India prepares to boost science : Nature News & Comment

India commits to boosting science - Five year spending plan backs massive investment in research and scientific facilities.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Cyberian

All the best China. Hope to see the Chinese brothers and sisters continue to prosper into the 22nd century.

Reactions: Like Like:
8


----------



## shuttler

Kolaps said:


> Like Taiwan....
> 
> I feel mainland China research projects are following the trend in the West (to help Westerners), rather than for helping the local people to improve their living standard.



Those are home grown projects and we are trying every year to lift our 150 million folks who are living in abject poverty out of their difficult conditions

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## kbd-raaf

David James said:


> *Only about US $3 billion?? *
> 
> Why china is spending so low on science and technology for next five years ?????????
> 
> *India is spending US$ 24 billion*  on Science and Technology
> 
> *India is spending 8 times bigger amount* US$ 24 billion against china's US$ 3 billion
> 
> India prepares to boost science : Nature News & Comment
> 
> India commits to boosting science - Five year spending plan backs massive investment in research and scientific facilities.



The OP's article is speaking about investment only in the sectors that were in the article.

India is spening 25B in total over 5 years on *all scientific fields*.

EDIT: Re-read the topic and seems what I wrote above is incorrect. Something seems off here. A country the size of China only spending $3B?

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## David James

kbd-raaf said:


> The OP's article is speaking about investment only in the sectors that were in the article.
> 
> India is spening 25B in total over 5 years on *all scientific fields*.
> 
> EDIT: Re-read the topic and seems what I wrote above is incorrect. Something seems off here. A country the size of China only spending $3B?



Mate, ur wrong and my post was correct the OP's article is about the whole 5 year plan same as India.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## kbd-raaf

David James said:


> Mate, ur wrong and my post was correct the OP's article is about the whole 5 year plan same as India.



Yup, I edited my original post to acknowledge my mistake.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Matrixx

http://www.defence.pk/forums/centra...e-then-china-science-technol.html#post4230049


----------



## Psyops

I wouldn't be surprised to see India spending more on R&D than us. Our officials are more interested in buying real estate in the US and buying American bonds.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## ChineseTiger1986

Psyops said:


> I wouldn't be surprised to see India spending more on R&D than us. Our officials are more interested in buying real estate in the US and buying American bonds.



China spends 16 billion USD alone in the jet engine.

China nears approval of $16 billion domestic jet-engine plan: Xinhua | Reuters



Kolaps said:


> Like Taiwan....
> 
> I feel mainland China research projects are following the trend in the West (to help Westerners), rather than for helping the local people to improve their living standard.



Are you taking about Taiwan?

You guys spend money to purchase the radar for USA's hostile action against Mainland China.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## shuttler

Psyops said:


> I wouldn't be surprised to see India spending more on R&D than us. Our officials are more interested in buying real estate in the US and buying American bonds.









China set to surpass U.S. in R&D spending in 10 years - Computerworld

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## shuttler

Over the years we have spent huge money on the following and the trend will only continue and the investments are not counted towards the above USD 3 Bil

*1. supercomputers and our home made cpu
2. jet engines - commercial and military
3. Neutrino Experiment
4. Material science like these:
world's lightest material
Chinese Physicists Build &#8220;Ghost&#8221; Cloaking Device
Chinese breakthrough engine materials extrusion technology 
5. China megawatts advent of Optic fiber lasers 
6. new sensor chips
7. Bio-fuel for airplanes
8. Brain Cells Made from Urine
9. Scientists plan to make artificial sun in 2018
10, Heavy lift rockets
11. space station
12. Luna projects
13. Quantum Teleportation
14. Semiconductor Quantum Chip
15. Compass navigation system

*
and plenty more ...

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## shuttler

*



2. High-energy synchrotron test facility

Ding and others&#8217; longer-term dream for Huairou is to collocate an array of facilities there. The Beijing Advanced Science and Innovation Center, or BASIC, would bring together SECUF, the future Beijing synchrotron light source, the Earth simulation computing facility, and perhaps other infrastructures. Huairou is also near the new site of the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which would give BASIC researchers access to students and students access to the center&#8217;s facilities. issues and events&#12290;

Click to expand...

*






Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

Type 052D said:


> Wonderful news, but we still need more investment in our Gas Turbine technology for Naval Construction and more funds and research equipment allocated for PRC's indigenous Jet engine.



That comes under the 17th project&#12290;

The total of 16 has been raised to 18.

English translations of matters concerning China's efforts and achievements in science and technology are far and few between&#12290;


----------



## Kolaps

shuttler said:


> Those are home grown projects and we are trying every year to lift our 150 million folks who are living in abject poverty out of their difficult conditions



Actually that is a good news.

Many of the problems in China, actually can be solved with technology. It's a matter of mentality to choose to solve a problem with technology over the others. By innovation!



ChineseTiger1986 said:


> Are you taking about Taiwan?
> 
> You guys spend money to purchase the radar for USA's hostile action against Mainland China.



There's no other choice, until mainland China stop worshiping foreign communism and return to our root.

We always proud and glad to see China have a strong military power, just like in our past. But not in the hand of communist to attack fellow Chinese. China in Taiwan need to defend himself from the communist.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

David James said:


> *Only about US $3 billion?? *
> 
> Why china is spending so low on science and technology for next five years ?????????
> 
> *India is spending US$ 24 billion*  on Science and Technology
> 
> *India is spending 8 times bigger amount* US$ 24 billion against china's US$ 3 billion
> 
> India prepares to boost science : Nature News & Comment
> 
> India commits to boosting science - Five year spending plan backs massive investment in research and scientific facilities.



These are only infrastructure investments in the 16 projects listed&#12290;

India's TOTAL spending on science and technology does not even come close to China's&#12290;

My recollection tells me that China spent over 200 billion dollars in S&T in 2012 alone&#12290;


----------



## Kolaps

shuttler said:


> Over the years we have spent huge money on the following and the trend will only continue and the investments are not counted towards the above USD 3 Bil
> 
> *1. supercomputers and our home made cpu
> *


*

You make a home made cpu, but there's no operating system and software running on it. Isn't wasting a lot of money?

You also don't commercialized and make use widely in private sector.*


----------



## shuttler

Kolaps said:


> You make a home made cpu, but there's no operating system and software running on it. Isn't wasting a lot of money?
> 
> You also don't commercialized and make use widely in private sector.



untrue

we have our own OS and other software made in China such as this one:

Neusoft / Neusoft - Official

and more info here:

China Software Industry Association


----------



## shuttler

This is one of the examples of how some of the world's most rigorous and audacious projects are being carried out in one of our most prestigious universities in China - &#19978;&#28023;&#20132;&#36890;&#22823;&#23398; Shanghai Jiaotong University :

Institute of Nuclear and Particle Physics, Astronomy and Cosmology


----------



## Psyops

Kolaps said:


> Actually that is a good news.
> 
> Many of the problems in China, actually can be solved with technology. It's a matter of mentality to choose to solve a problem with technology over the others. By innovation!
> 
> 
> 
> There's no other choice, until mainland China stop worshiping foreign communism and return to our root.
> 
> We always proud and glad to see China have a strong military power, just like in our past. But not in the hand of communist to attack fellow Chinese. China in Taiwan need to defend himself from the communist.



We don't want to worship foreign democracy like you do.


----------



## muse

Kolaps said:


> Like Taiwan....
> 
> I feel mainland China research projects are following the trend in the West (to help Westerners), rather than for helping the local people to improve their living standard.



Please elaborate - what projects, in your opinion should the funds be spent on -- how are local living standards different from those of other peoples - I think it's important for our readers to become more aware of the point you have raised.


----------



## ChineseTiger1986

Kolaps said:


> There's no other choice, until mainland China stop worshiping foreign communism and return to our root.
> 
> We always proud and glad to see China have a strong military power, just like in our past. But not in the hand of communist to attack fellow Chinese. China in Taiwan need to defend himself from the communist.



CPC will eventually liberate Taiwan from the control of the Freemason, all KMT and DPP dogs will be perished into the history, just watch.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## S10

Kolaps said:


> There's no other choice, until mainland China stop worshiping foreign communism and return to our root.
> 
> We always proud and glad to see China have a strong military power, just like in our past. But not in the hand of communist to attack fellow Chinese. China in Taiwan need to defend himself from the communist.


The KMT sucks up to Americans and Japanese like a slave, and actively works against the interest of Chinese civilization. Until you stop being a pawn in American hands, nobody will listen to the lies you tell. You gave up Mongolia and tried to blame it on the Communists. Your founder Sun Cannon attempted to trade Chinese interest in Manchuria for Japanese help. You lost vast majority of engagements to Japanese, and didn't even have the guts to declare war when they invaded in 1937. You waited until Americans declared war in 1941. Only you brag about how "heroics" your losses are. Other people measure their success on how many enemies they killed, not how many your own men got killed.

Return to our roots? You mean let four families control most of the wealth and power, having less than 20% literacy rate, foreigners acting with impunity on our soil and 40 years of average lifespan during the good o' days you were in power? Did I mention your brave army looted in China for weeks when you retreated to Taiwan?

Take your party of cowards/traitors and jump off the sea.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## shuttler

*In mathematics our mathematicians are capable of doing this:
*
Unraveling toughest puzzle outstanding


*2006-06-04 21:22:21*






Chinese mathematicians, Zhu Xiping and Cao Huaidong






Foreign member of the Chinese Acadamy of Sciences, Professor Shing-Tung Yau (2nd R) from Harvard University introduce the Poincare Conjecture to journalists in Beijing, capital of China, June 3, 2006. (Xinhua Photo)

BEIJING, June 4 (Xinhua) -- A leading Chinese mathematician Yang Le said here Sunday that the successful unraveling of one of the world's toughest puzzles is an outstanding job.

*Two Chinese mathematicians, Zhu Xiping and Cao Huaidong, have put the final pieces together in the solution to the puzzle that has perplexed scientists around the globe for more than a century.*

 *The two scientists have published a paper in the latest U.S.-based Asian Journal of Mathematics , providing complete proof of the Poincare Conjecture** promulgated by French mathematician Henri Poincare in 1904.*

* A Columbia professor Richard Hamilton and a Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman have laid foundation on the latest endeavors made by the two Chinese. Prof. Hamilton completed the majority of the program and the geometrization conjecture.
*
Yang, member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in an interview with Xinhua, "All the American, Russian and Chinese mathematicians have made indispensable contribution to the complete proof."

Prof. Zhu at Guangzhou-based Zhongshan University and Prof. Cao at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania co-authored the 300-page paper, "*The Hamilton-Perelman Thoery of Ricci Flow-The Poincare and Geometization Conjecture*," which was* published in the June issue of the journal.*

*"The total length of Perelman's work on the conjecture by the end of 2002 was about 70 pages," said Yang, citing that Perelman raised guidelines for proving the conjecture but not specifically pointed out how to unravel the puzzle.

"Guidelines are totally different to complete proof of theories," Yang said.*

Xinhua correspondents contacted Prof. Cao for many times and finally got a telephone interview. Prof. Cao said, "Under the guidance of Prof. (Shing-Tung) Yau -- a Harvard mathematics professor, Xiping and I worked for the conjecture in more than two years."

"The latest find will be good for our future work," Prof. Cao said.

Harvard mathematics professor Shing-Tung Yau, winner of the Fields Prize, said the excellent job done by Zhu and Cao was the final strike on a global collaborative work for a complete proof.

Prof. Yau, co-editor-in-chief of the Asian Journal of Mathematics, said, "All the 31 members of our editorial board are meticulously critical, and we must have consensus on any articles which will appear in our publication."

Zhu and Cao were invited last September by the Harvard Mathematics Department to conduct academic exchange at Harvard. In the following half year, they spent three hours every week to explain their work to five Harvard mathematicians.

Yau rated the conjecture as one of the major mathematical puzzles of the 20th Century.

"The conjecture is that if in a closed three-dimensional space, any closed curves can shrink to a point continuously, this space can be deformed to a sphere," he said.

By the end of the 1970s, U.S. mathematician William P. Thurston had produced partial proof of Poincare's Conjecture on geometric structure, and was awarded the Fields Prize for the achievement.

"The findings would help scientists to further understand three-manifolds geometrization and heavily influence the development of physics and engineering," said Yau, who will himself explain the methodology of proving the Poincare Conjecture to the 2006 International Conference on String Theory, which is expected in late June in Beijing. Enditem 

Editor: Mo Hong'e


*and later when the Fields Medal awards 2006 were reported in the media just a couple of months later, this happenedl*:

Highest Honor in Mathematics Is Refused

August 22, 2006






*



Grigory Perelman, a reclusive Russian mathematician who solved a key piece in a century-old puzzle known as the Poincaré conjecture, was one of four mathematicians awarded the Fields Medal today. But Dr. Perelman refused to accept the medal, as he has other honors, and he did not attend the ceremonies at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid.

Click to expand...

*
*Is Perleman that reclusive or something else was in his mind?

Does the Fields Medal judging committee owe our Mathematicians anything?*


----------



## muse

The demand for Energy, is going to be a problem and a strategic vulnerability for China - So, I hope for the sake of China and really for the world, that China will invest in creating a FUEL or ENERGY SOURCE, that will allow abundant and cheap energy for the world,

Failure to do this leaves China and much of the world open to blackmail and predatory behavior of those who will use energy as a weapon

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

muse said:


> The demand for Energy, is going to be a problem and a strategic vulnerability for China - So, I hope for the sake of China and really for the world, that China will invest in creating a FUEL or ENERGY SOURCE, that will allow abundant and cheap energy for the world,
> 
> Failure to do this leaves China and much of the world open to blackmail and predatory behavior of those who will use energy as a weapon



Yes it is a huge problem

So this is one area (also mentioned above) we are working on - "artificial sun" project. Read on the text further down and the leaks cover more than energy research.

China to build world's first "artificial sun" experimental device

From an article disclosing materials from Wikileak:

Wikileaked Cables from Beijing Reveal China's Pursuit of Fusion Power, Teleportation
By Clay DillowPosted 12.06.2010

It&#8217;s no secret that China is beating up on America and the West in everything from infrastructure to technology investment, but news of exactly what the People&#8217;s Republic is up to is often scarce. So while the diplomatic establishment continues to reel from the stink of its own dirty laundry in last week&#8217;s Wikileaks document dump, cables coming from the American Embassy in Beijing are also shedding light on the strides Chinese scientists are making in far-out fields like nuclear fission, biometrics, and even quantum teleportation.

One confidential diplomatic cable sent from the Beijing Embassy to Washington in February suggests China is doing big things at the small scale. For one, China is aggressively expanding its nuclear energy resources, with plans to open at least 70 nuclear plants in the next decade. More interestingly, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) is pouring research funding into its Institute of Plasma Physics (IPP) to conduct ongoing research into nuclear fusion.

*Apparently China has been hard at work on its Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor, which is designed to sustain a controlled fusion reaction that can go on indefinitely at high temperatures. In 2009, researchers apparently sustained a 18-million-degree reaction for 400 seconds, and a 180-million-degree reaction for 60 seconds. Their goal for 2010 was to sustain a 180-million-degree reaction for more than 400 seconds, though it&#8217;s unclear if they achieved that. Moreover, IPP is apparently conducting research on hybrid fission-fusion reactors, though details are slim.
*

Perhaps most interesting: China doubled the IPP budget in 2009 over 2008, and the diplomatic chatter suggests 2010&#8217;s budget saw a significant boost as well. Amid choppy economic waters, such funding bumps indicate a real commitment on China&#8217;s part to figure out the fusion energy puzzle.

China&#8217;s sci-tech ambitions don&#8217;t stop there. While the evidence is anecdotal, the embassy seems to think *the Chinese are pulling ahead in fields like quantum communications and even teleportation. To quote one diplomat&#8217;s description of a trip to the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Hefei: &#8220;A cursory walk through their labs seemed to indicate they had already succeeded in single-particle quantum teleportation and are now trying to conduct dual-particle quantum teleportation.&#8221;*

Then there&#8217;s the Big Brother tech that we&#8217;ve come to expect from China. The same cable says *the CAS&#8217;s Institute of Intelligent Machines (IIM) in Hefei has created a biometric system that identifies individuals through their pace and gait. &#8220;The device measure weight and two-dimensional sheer forces applied by a person&#8217;s foot during walking to create a uniquely identifiable biometrics profile,&#8221; the cable says, and can be installed covertly in a floor to surreptitiously collect biometric data.*



























The University of Science and Technology of China

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Yzd Khalifa

Best of luck our awesome friend PRC.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## Rafi

It is no surprise, our Chinese comrades have made many, many of the great scientific breakthroughs throughout history, gunpowder , paper the sky is the limit.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## shuttler

*Chinese innovations to benefit the world: Gates
*
Updated: 2013-04-07 15:44 ( Xinhua)

Chinadaily

BOAO, Hainan - As economists frown upon a lack of innovation plaguing China's economy, Bill Gates has highlighted the innovations China is adept at that can benefit the world: in epidemic control and grain production.

In a speech delivered on Saturday evening at the Boao Forum for Asia held in South China's Hainan province, Gates said the country's scientific breakthroughs can help Africa and less developed countries battle epidemics, hunger and poverty.





Microsoft founder Bill Gates attends a session at the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) annual conference in Boao town, Hainan province April 6, 2013. [Photo/Agenceis]

"The breakthrough science and technology that's happening here in China can help the poorest people in the world lead healthier, more productive lives," said Gates, who is the co-chair and trustee of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Gates said China has successfully lifted 600 million people out of poverty over the past three decades, a victory that could not have been achieved without innovation in human health and agricultural productivity.

Gates said his foundation, which has been active in the country in battling HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis and reducing tobacco use, is working with the Chinese government and institutes on epidemic control and agricultural research.

"We see this potential, for example, in vaccines, where China is quickly becoming a leader," he said.

The foundation is collaberating with a Chinese institute and developer of a low-cost vaccine for Japanese encephalitis to ensure supplies of polio vaccines and the development of less expensive doses, he said.

In addition to becoming a major supplier of vaccines, Gates said China can "play a broader leadership role by sharing its own experience" to eradicate epidemics like polio in other countries.

*China has eliminated the paralysing disease and reported no indigenous cases since 1994, thanks to a domestically-developed vaccine and a nationwide vaccination campaign, which began in 1965.
*
*Apart from medication, Gates believes the country's innovation in increasing crop yields can also help reduce hunger in Africa, where agricultural productivity remains "dismally low."
*
*China has increased its grain productivity by 2.6 percent per year in the past two decades, and its breakthroughs in developing high-yield rice varieties will benefit other poor countries, Gates suggested.*

*The foundation is working with the Chinese Academy of Agriculture Sciences and a bio-technology institute to develop Green Super Rice, which has proved capable of raising production of small farmers by 20 percent in pilot projects, he said.*

*Gates also called on Chinese entrepreneurs to use "the same skills and rigor you brought to investing in the market to investing in solutions for the poor."*

Also at the forum, Vice-Minister of Science and Technology Zhang Laiwu said the ministry will deepen cooperation with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in agricultural research and developing vaccines for major infectious diseases.

The ministry signed a strategic cooperation memorandum with the foundation in 2011 to promote agricultural development, relieve poverty and promote health causes worldwide via technology.

"*At present, we have cooperated in seven fields and launched two pilot projects, including major crop breeding, rural informatization, TB-drugs and polio vaccines, and Green Super Rice," Zhang said.*


----------



## shuttler

*Tractor Beam Breakthrough &#8211; U.F.O Technology No Longer Hypothetical?
*

By Chris Cook
01 March, 2011 Featured News
Tractor Beam Breakthrough &#8211; U.F.O Technology No Longer Hypothetical? | Product Reviews Net


You may be familiar with Tractor beams as they are extremely popular amongst Science-Fiction movies, however they may not be fiction forever as it seems Chinese researchers have discovered how they work exactly.

The researchers from Fudan University in Shanghai figured out on a nanoscopic level that turning a laser beam inside out generates a backward pull force for the forward travelling protons. As this discovery has only been made at such a small scale level, the prospect of being able to dock spaceships into space bases is still very much future technology it seems.

The way in which all of this works is basically using momentum. Near the beginning of the 20th century Peter Lebedev and Arthur Compton found that photons have a small amount of momentum that engages anything it hits. We already know that photons can push things like solar sails and electrons.

In order to reverse this process, the beam&#8217;s forward momentum cannot be too great so must be small enough and the photons must scatter at just the right angle by exciting &#8216;multipoles within the particle&#8217; it&#8217;s hoping to move.

As Technology Review report, all this is very good in theory but Jun Chen and his fellow scientist must now demonstrate that it works. What do you think of this breakthrough? Will we ever see larger objects being pulled in a Tractor beam? Let us know what you think.


----------



## shuttler

*China plans research centres to aid developing world*
Li Jiao
18 April 2013 | EN

China plans research centres to aid developing world - SciDev.Net





The Chinese Academy of Sciences is developing research institutions to promote science - Flickr/Gates Foundation



> *SPEED READ*
> 
> The Chinese Academy of Sciences is planning joint research centres in China with TWAS
> 
> It also plans to open its own offices throughout the developing world
> 
> Bill Gates has said that China's science could help the poorest people lead better lives



[BEIJING] The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) is planning a major new drive to extend science cooperation with developing countries, including setting up research centres outside China, as well as new offices of the World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) within China.

Senior officers at CAS have told SciDev.Net that the details of the initiatives are still under discussion, though some centres have already been launched, such as the 'China-Chile Joint Research Center for Astronomy' in February. 

The move follows last year's election of the first Chinese president of TWAS, Bai Chunli, who is also the president of the China's science academy. 

"International cooperation is very important for CAS, and as a new president of TWAS, we have more opportunity to cooperate with other developing countries," Bai Chunli tells SciDev.Net.

The planned new TWAS centres within China, which are still under discussion, will aim to promote the cooperation and exchange of science, and the training of scientists.

CAS is also planning to launch a programme to train hundreds of new PhD students, as well as senior scholars from developing countries at the Chinese research institutions. Last month, as part of the programme, the academy called for applications for a new CAS-TWAS President's Fellowship Programme, which will offer 140 scholars a year from developing countries a chance to do PhDs in China.

CAS's first overseas research centre is planned to be in Kenya and will be jointly established with the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, but the details and budget for the initiative are still in discussion. 

Mohamed Hag Ali Hassan, treasurer of TWAS and co-chair of the IAP (the global network of science academies), tells SciDev.Net that the CAS research centre in Africa is a "fascinating initiative" that will bring substantial benefits to both scientific and development communities in Africa. 

He says that the centre should prioritise training a new generation of talented African researchers in Chinese laboratories by linking postgraduate education to key interdisciplinary research areas. 

It should also establish a network of collaborating institutions in Africa with expertise in these research areas to promote scientific exchanges and the centre's visibility in Africa, says Hassan.

"The centre should encourage and support research projects that aim at generating and applying frontier scientific knowledge to solve specific, real-life problems facing Africa," he says.

S. Samar Hasnain, professor of molecular biophysics at the University of Liverpool, United Kingdom, and a member of TWAS, says: "The opening of the first CAS office in Africa, often a neglected continent, with the aim of increasing science and higher education cooperation, is visionary".

Hans van Ginkel, professor of geography at Utrecht University, the Netherlands and a TWAS member, says this "is a great step forward" towards strengthening scientific capacities in developing countries.

"Both the [CAS] centres in developing countries and the TWAS centres in China for academics from developing countries could serve this purpose well," he says.

But van Ginkel warns that it will be important for the initiatives to strengthen substantially the scientific capacity in the developing countries.

China is increasingly becoming recognised for its innovations and their applications in developing countries.

For example, in a speech this month at the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2013, China, Bill Gates, co-chair and trustee of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said the country's scientific breakthroughs can help Africa and less developed countries battle epidemics, hunger and poverty, Xinhua news agency reported (7 April).

"The breakthrough science and technology that's happening here in China can help the poorest people in the world lead healthier, more productive lives," Gates said.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## shuttler

*Genetically modified rice created to produce human blood*

telegraph-science-newsl
By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent
9:15AM GMT 06 Nov 2011











Grains of rice have been genetically modified by scientists so they produce a key component of human blood in an attempt to provide an alternative to donations.

The protein, extracted from rice plants containing human genes, could be used in hospitals to treat burns victims and help patients who have suffered severe blood loss.

The scientists behind the research claim it will provide a plentiful and safe alternative to products from human blood donations, which are in short supply due to falling numbers of donors, and get around the need to screen for diseases such as HIV and hepatitis.

Currently in the UK around 1.6 million pints of blood are needed every year but just four per cent of the eligible population donate.

Donated blood is separated into three components - red blood cells, platlets, which are used to aid blood clotting, and plasma, which is mainly made up of a protein called Human Serum Albumin and is given to patients suffering heavy blood loss.

By growing the genetically modified rice in fields, the researchers claim Human Serum Albumin could be mass produced for use in hospitals, reducing the need to purify it from blood donations.

Human Serum Albumin is the most abundant protein in human blood and performs important functions including carrying hormones and minerals around the body, mopping up harmful toxins from the blood stream and helping to regulate blood pressure.

Dr Daichang Yang, the scientist who led the research at Wuhan University in central China, said: "Human Serum Albumin is an important protein. The demand for it is estimated at more than 500 tons per year worldwide.

"Currently commercial production of HSA is primarily based on collected human plasma, which is limited in supply, but of high clinical demand.
"There is also an increasing public health concern with plasma derived HSA with its potential risk for transmission of blood-derived infectious pathogens such as hepatitis and HIV.

"The use of a rice seed bioreactor could provide an economical and safe approach for the production of non-animal derived compounds."

Dr Yang and his colleagues have developed a technique for inserting human genes into Asian rice using bacteria, turning the plants into biological "factories" that can produce proteins that are identical to those found in humans.

Their latest research, published in the scientific journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that they had successfully inserted DNA for Human Serum Albumin and the resulting protein was chemically and physically identical to that found in blood.

Over successive generations they were able to increase the amount of Human Serum Albumin produced in the rice grains until it accounted for 10 per cent of the soluble protein produced in the rice seeds.

It comes just months after Chinese scientists announced they had genetically modified a herd of around 300 diary cows to produce milk with the same qualities as human breast milk, which sparked widespread concerns among animal welfare campaigners.

The latest work to introduce human genes into rice is likely to inflame opposition to GM technology further amid fears over the safety of genetically modified crops and alarm at combining human genes with those from other species.

Dr Yang said, however, that the protein produced by the genetically modified rice was identical to Human Serum Albumin found naturally in blood. Tests on rats also showed it did not produce any adverse reactions.

They also treated rats suffering from cirrhosis with the protein and showed it was effective at relieving the symptoms, much like the naturally occurring protein found in human blood.

Dr Yang is also hoping to use genetically modified rice plants to produce other proteins found in human blood, including haemoglobin, which gives blood its distinctive red colour and is carries oxygen around the body, and key proteins from the immune system such as immunoglobulin.

A patent application filed by Dr Yang and his colleagues revealed they hope to adapt the technique to produce a wide range of human proteins that can be used in medical treatments.

The team are also working on a strain of genetically modified rice that produces proteins that are similar to insulin for use in treating diabetes.

Gavin Murphy, a consultant in cardiac surgery at Bristol Royal Infirmary and a senior lecturer at the University of Bristol who studies the impact of blood transfusions on patients, described said the research had the potential to revolutionise the supply of blood products for use in hospital.

He said: "This is ground breaking stuff, but so far they have only validated it in rats. The real test will be to show it is safe in humans, can be purified and sterilised effectively.

"With this approach they will be able to grow these plants in fields and produce blood proteins on a huge scale that would really solve all of the supply issues we currently face."


----------



## J-30

I think R&D investment is a very good investment, we are taking some very good decisions


----------



## cirr

We have always had the human resources&#65292;and now that we are beginning to have the financial resources after a detour in our long history of scientific and technological innovation&#65292;we will again work hard and smart to invent&#65292;invent and invent&#12290;

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

Published in the latest issue of Nature Photonics&#65292;the following is another fine example of recent Chinese achievements in quantum technology&#65306;

http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/v7/n5/full/nphoton.2013.89.html

It is also reported in Chinese from a slightly different perspective on 02.05.2013&#65306;

????? ??³?-

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

We are making good progress in this realm:

10 Ways Quantum Physics Will Change the World


----------



## shuttler

We have on-going projects such as "Teleportation", "Neutrino" etc which are "Nobel Prize" class.

This is another one of them which was reported sometime ago by *@cirr* on PDF:

http://www.defence.pk/forums/chinese-defence/240314-experimental-observation-quantum-anomalous-hall-effect-magnetic.html*_Topological Insulator*





shuttler said:


> We are making good progress in this realm:
> 
> 10 Ways Quantum Physics Will Change the World



The 10 ways are:

10	Turbulence control	
9	Spintronics	
8	Parallel universes	
7	Quantum dots	
6	Prayer	
5	Englement	
4	Quantum computing	
3	Quantum crytography	
2	Teleportation	
1	The God Particle

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Echo_419

shuttler said:


> *Genetically modified rice created to produce human blood*
> 
> telegraph-science-newsl
> By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent
> 9:15AM GMT 06 Nov 2011
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Grains of rice have been genetically modified by scientists so they produce a key component of human blood in an attempt to provide an alternative to donations.
> 
> The protein, extracted from rice plants containing human genes, could be used in hospitals to treat burns victims and help patients who have suffered severe blood loss.
> 
> The scientists behind the research claim it will provide a plentiful and safe alternative to products from human blood donations, which are in short supply due to falling numbers of donors, and get around the need to screen for diseases such as HIV and hepatitis.
> 
> Currently in the UK around 1.6 million pints of blood are needed every year but just four per cent of the eligible population donate.
> 
> Donated blood is separated into three components - red blood cells, platlets, which are used to aid blood clotting, and plasma, which is mainly made up of a protein called Human Serum Albumin and is given to patients suffering heavy blood loss.
> 
> By growing the genetically modified rice in fields, the researchers claim Human Serum Albumin could be mass produced for use in hospitals, reducing the need to purify it from blood donations.
> 
> Human Serum Albumin is the most abundant protein in human blood and performs important functions including carrying hormones and minerals around the body, mopping up harmful toxins from the blood stream and helping to regulate blood pressure.
> 
> Dr Daichang Yang, the scientist who led the research at Wuhan University in central China, said: "Human Serum Albumin is an important protein. The demand for it is estimated at more than 500 tons per year worldwide.
> 
> "Currently commercial production of HSA is primarily based on collected human plasma, which is limited in supply, but of high clinical demand.
> "There is also an increasing public health concern with plasma derived HSA with its potential risk for transmission of blood-derived infectious pathogens such as hepatitis and HIV.
> 
> "The use of a rice seed bioreactor could provide an economical and safe approach for the production of non-animal derived compounds."
> 
> Dr Yang and his colleagues have developed a technique for inserting human genes into Asian rice using bacteria, turning the plants into biological "factories" that can produce proteins that are identical to those found in humans.
> 
> Their latest research, published in the scientific journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that they had successfully inserted DNA for Human Serum Albumin and the resulting protein was chemically and physically identical to that found in blood.
> 
> Over successive generations they were able to increase the amount of Human Serum Albumin produced in the rice grains until it accounted for 10 per cent of the soluble protein produced in the rice seeds.
> 
> It comes just months after Chinese scientists announced they had genetically modified a herd of around 300 diary cows to produce milk with the same qualities as human breast milk, which sparked widespread concerns among animal welfare campaigners.
> 
> The latest work to introduce human genes into rice is likely to inflame opposition to GM technology further amid fears over the safety of genetically modified crops and alarm at combining human genes with those from other species.
> 
> Dr Yang said, however, that the protein produced by the genetically modified rice was identical to Human Serum Albumin found naturally in blood. Tests on rats also showed it did not produce any adverse reactions.
> 
> They also treated rats suffering from cirrhosis with the protein and showed it was effective at relieving the symptoms, much like the naturally occurring protein found in human blood.
> 
> Dr Yang is also hoping to use genetically modified rice plants to produce other proteins found in human blood, including haemoglobin, which gives blood its distinctive red colour and is carries oxygen around the body, and key proteins from the immune system such as immunoglobulin.
> 
> A patent application filed by Dr Yang and his colleagues revealed they hope to adapt the technique to produce a wide range of human proteins that can be used in medical treatments.
> 
> The team are also working on a strain of genetically modified rice that produces proteins that are similar to insulin for use in treating diabetes.
> 
> Gavin Murphy, a consultant in cardiac surgery at Bristol Royal Infirmary and a senior lecturer at the University of Bristol who studies the impact of blood transfusions on patients, described said the research had the potential to revolutionise the supply of blood products for use in hospital.
> 
> He said: "This is ground breaking stuff, but so far they have only validated it in rats. The real test will be to show it is safe in humans, can be purified and sterilised effectively.
> 
> "With this approach they will be able to grow these plants in fields and produce blood proteins on a huge scale that would really solve all of the supply issues we currently face."



This is really good thing one of my relative died bcauz we were not able to get his type of blood in time

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*Chinese scientists find evidence for speed of gravity*
English.news.cn 2012-12-27 20:38:15 

China Focus: Chinese scientists find evidence for speed of gravity - Xinhua | English.news.cn





Illustration Credit

BEIJING, Dec. 27 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists revealed Wednesday that they have found evidence supporting the hypothesis that gravity travels at the speed of light based on data gleaned from observing Earth tides.

Scientists have been trying to measure the speed of gravity for years through experiments and observations, but few have found valid methods.

By conducting six observations of total and annular solar eclipses, as well as Earth tides, a team headed by Tang Keyun, a researcher with the Institute of Geology and Geophysics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), found that the Newtonian Earth tide formula includes a factor related to the propagation of gravity.

"Earth tide" refers to a small change in the Earth's surface caused by the gravity of the moon and sun.

Based on the data, the team, with the participation of the China Earthquake Administration and the University of the CAS, found that gravitational force released from the sun and gravitational force recorded at ground stations on Earth did not travel at the same speed, with the time difference exactly the same as the time it takes for light to travel from the sun to observation stations on Earth.

The scientists admitted that the observation stations are located near oceans, indicating that the influence of ocean tides might have been strong enough to interfere with the results.

Consequently, the team conducted separate observations of Earth tides from two stations in Tibet and Xinjiang, two inland regions that are far away from all four oceans, as well as took measures to filter out other potential disturbances.

By applying the new data to the propagation equation of gravity, the team found that the speed of gravity is about 0.93 to 1.05 times the speed of light with a relative error of about 5 percent, providing the first set of strong evidence showing that gravity travels at the speed of light.

Their findings have been published online in English by German science and technology publishing group Springer.

Printed articles in both Chinese and English will be carried in a January 2013 edition of the Chinese Science Bulletin, according to the CAS Institute of Geology and Geophysics.



Echo_419 said:


> This is really good thing one of my relative died bcauz we were not able to get his type of blood in time



Rest in peace!

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*Cancer cells could be weighed in future*
Updated: 2013-04-19 
15:57 ( Xinhua)

Chinadaily

BEIJING - Chinese scientists have come up with a new method of weighing microscopic particles such as single atoms or protons, as well as cancer DNA, which could lead to early diagnoses of the disease.

A research team led by Zhu Kadi, a professor with the Shanghai Jiaotong University, proposed the optical mass sensing technique to measure the masses of tiny objects, a method which could be several times more sensitive than previous techniques.

An article about the research was published earlier this month in Physics Reports, an authoritative international journal.

"The technique is still theoretical. We are looking for partners to carry out experiments," said Zhu.

Traditional measurement method can only weigh a bunch of atoms, and then estimate the mass of a single atom.

"We propose a system consisting of a nanoscale vibrating bar containing an embedded quantum *** and a metal nanoparticle sphere. When a tiny object, such as an atom or a strand of DNA, is placed onto the bar, the extra mass of the tiny object will change the bar's vibration frequency, which could be measured with lasers," Zhu said.

"There is no new physical theory being applied. But nobody has thought about the measurement in this way," according to the professor.

In recent years, many researchers have been exploring nanotechnologies to create more sensitive measuring instruments, but they have all relied on electrical circuitry to communicate with the sample.

"Those techniques cannot be used to measure uncharged particles. For example, the DNA molecules will be destroyed if they are charged," Zhu said.

Besides, he explained, electric wires can soak up energy by heating up, and they don't work well at the highest frequencies, where measurements often have the best sensitivity to small changes.

"Using lasers, rather than wires, is the key of the new technique," said Zhu.

There are many possible applications of the technology, while its use in the early detection of cancer cells could be the most exciting to ordinary people.

"The mass of cancer DNA molecules should be different from that of normal ones. So the technology could be used to find these cells," Zhu predicted.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*Printing Electronics Just Got Easier*
A new technique developed by researchers in China allows easier printing of electronic components onto paper.

source






A radio-frequency-identification (RFID) antenna printed on paper.
Photograph courtesy Jing Liu

Brian Handwerk
for National Geographic News
Published May 9, 2013

*Do-it-yourself electronics manufacturing may soon be possible with your desktop printer, say the designers of a new system that directly prints electronic circuits onto ordinary paper*.





Metal traces are printed on coated paper. Photograph courtesy Jing Liu

Jing Liu, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, said his team's advancepublished May 9 in the journal Scientific Reportscould be a leap forward in the booming business of printed electronics.

"This brand-new technique offers a vital opportunity to realize rapid fabrication of inexpensive, disposable, conveniently portable circuits and functional components," he said, adding that the process could help "pave the way toward personal printed electronics."

Someday people could use this, and similar technologies, to create their own customized electronic devices including electronic greeting cards, video game controls, touch-sensitive mobile phone cases, or solar cell arrays.

Scientists already print electronic circuits on flexible materials like plastics that can be shaped into functional productsantennas are a common example.

But many of the existing electronic inks used to create such circuits have to be printed at very high temperaturesaround 750°F (400°C)or they won't conduct enough electricity to work.

This means they can't be easily printed on paper. But paper is highly desirable for printed electronics because it's cheap, renewable, recyclable, and light, and it can be easily rolled or folded.

*A New Formula*

So Jing and colleagues developed a new metal-based ink that could work at room temperatures.

Their initial formula caused the ink to ball up into droplets, which made it difficult to apply and adhere to the paper.

So the team modified the ink by injecting the liquid metal alloy with oxygen, making it more suitable for printing on the kind of paper used for book covers, labels, and advertising stock.

A newly developed brushlike a porous pinheadwas also developed to deliver the slow-flowing ink that would clog more conventional printers.

While most electronic inks solidify after printing, the one employed by the researchers remains liquid and is encapsulated by a second coating of silicone rubberthis creates a channel to hold the ink.

*Bendy*

"The fabricated circuits cannot be broken off easily even under frequent bending, showing an attractive and distinguished mechanical flexibility which is a critical advantage in fabricating flexible electronics," the authors write.

Because the electronic inks are encased in rubber they can also be stacked in layers without altering their electrical functionality. This would allow users to build electromechanical functions into the body of 3-D printed objects.

"Most of the currently available 3-D printers are only capable of making mechanical objects without electronics features inside," Jing said, such as custom items like mobile phone cases or jewelry.

Jing's team successfully printed circuits and functional components on paper including conductive wires, inductance coils, and flexible antennasthe building blocks of personalized electronic devices.

*Cheap, Green, But Not Easy*

Printing electronics on paper, rather than plastics, has proven problematic, but it promises a greener alternative to traditional production.

One of the developing field's big advantages is a smaller environmental footprint, as the process eliminates much of the raw materials, energy, and water now used to make more-conventional electronics.

The machine Jing and his team developed is still expensive for everyday use, but the group is striving to make it affordable for the average desktop.

Their machine could soon join a crowded field; more than 3,000 organizations are already at work on printed electronics.

IDTechEx, a market research consulting group based in Cambridge, England, projects that the paper electronics marketestimated at some $16 billion in 2013will grow to nearly $77 billion by 2023.

Here are some areas where that fivefold growth could occur.

*Displays and Advertising*

Though you might not recognize it when you see it, OLED (organic electroluminescence display) technology is popping up in the form of illuminated displays, such as car speedometers, and as flexible, tough, eye-catching ads.

OLED uses printed layers of carbon-based particles that convert electricity directly into light.

These advances in printed electronics are making traditional paper come alive. Circuits can now be printed on posters and other traditional displays, making them interactive to the touchfor example, by playing clips of songs when someone presses on a printed advertisement for an upcoming concert.

*Batteries*

Rigid, bulky lithium batteries have long set limits on the design of small electronics. But printed electronics technology allows the production of customizable, thin-film green batteries.

These flexible alternatives may have a bright future in wearable electronic clothing and medical implantsor they might make possible a mobile phone that's as thin as a credit card.

Several companies are now designing such batteries using printing methods much like those employed to make silk-screen T-shirtsbut they lay down layers of electrochemical inks made of zinc, metal oxide, and electrolytes, rather than fluorescent dyes.

*Energy Eaters*

A Georgia Tech team led by Mano Tentzerisis used inkjet-printing technology to combine sensors, antennas, and a silver nanoparticle ink emulsion into a device that gathers energy out of thin air.

The device pulls low levels of energy from the electromagnetic waves emitted by things like radios and radar. This line of research could someday lead to self-powering electronic devices.

*RFID Tags*

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags store information and transfer it wirelessly via electromagnetic fields.

Printed electronics are beginning to allow production of low-cost versions of these tags for use in mass transit tickets and office building key cards.

Increasingly smart tags can help verify the authenticity of a product against counterfeiters, or track the journey of seafood from boat to fishmongerdetecting whether the food stays cold the entire way.

They can even link potential buyers to a product's backstory. A bottle of wine, for example, might virtually introduce enthusiasts to the region, vineyards, and even the growers that created the beverage by linking stored data on the label to the buyer's mobile device.

*Solar Cells*

Printed electronics open up the possibility of paper-like, transparent, portable solar cellsfoldable, stashable, and able to be rolled out when needed.

Several teams of scientists have already succeeded in printing photovoltaic cells on printer paper.

And while these applications don't promise great amounts of power anytime soon, these off-the-grid power producers could eventually bring electricity to remote areas, providing power for much of the world's rural poor at a fraction of the cost of traditional solar arrays.

*Televisions*

LG Electronics put the world's first curved OLED television on the South Korean market this month.

Printed with organic light-emitting diodes, the television is just 0.17 inches (4.3 millimeters) thick.

The new model retails for more than U.S. $13,000, but competition may soon bring sticker prices down. DuPont, for example, has previously announced the ability to print its own 50-inch (1.3-meter) set in just two minutes.

*Smart Fabrics*

Some electrically conductive inks can be printed on cloth to make "smart fabrics," enabling production of athletic wear that could track a runner's heart rate or medical bandages that could monitor a patient's vital signs.

Several of the world's military and security agencies are also exploring such technologies for their ability to serve as sensors that could alert their wearers to chemical or other hazardous exposures.


----------



## Type 052D

I want to work at a Research Centre here in the UK and we always have Chinese colleagues either coming to the lab or going back to China after visiting. they always say that Chinese universities are now loaded with money. And we also have Chinese recruiters coming to the school to recruit potential professors willing to go to China. They offer excellent start-up packages that are typically significantly higher than those offered by American universities. Note that I'm not talking about salary, but start-up funding, which is typically ~US$700-800K vs. US$550-650K we would get in the US. Of course, the problem with doing research in China is not about money, but politics, which discourages a lot of people from going.


----------



## shuttler

Type 052D said:


> I want to work at a Research Centre here in the UK and we always have Chinese colleagues either coming to the lab or going back to China after visiting. they always say that Chinese universities are now loaded with money. And we also have Chinese recruiters coming to the school to recruit potential professors willing to go to China. They offer excellent start-up packages that are typically significantly higher than those offered by American universities. Note that I'm not talking about salary, but start-up funding, which is typically ~US$700-800K vs. US$550-650K we would get in the US. Of course, the problem with doing research in China is not about money, but politics, which discourages a lot of people from going.



It doesnt mind. Some people go back and stay. Some dont! They'll find the environment of best fit. Money is not always the determinant.

Rules used for rejecting researches which orientate towards personal interests or which are pursuing against the country/s interests or grand schemes should be upheld

Resources are limited and politics play their parts in every country


----------



## shuttler

*Scientist who has made an accomplishment back home *





Intrigued by endostatin's lack of toxicity, Chinese scientist Yongzhang Luo, PhD, found a way to refold the protein, making it cheaper to manufacture. Medgenn Ltd. has built enough production capacity to provide Endostar to all Chinese lung-cancer patients.

*A star rises in the East *

Among those who took note of endostatin's discovery was a young protein chemist named Yongzhang Luo, PhD. Born in China, he was doing a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University when endostatin broke onto the scene, and was impressed with endostatin's ability to regress tumors without toxicity or drug resistance. "That's like a dream," says Luo. He even bought EntreMed stock, but eventually lost most of his investment when the early endostatin bubble burst.

Intrigued by reports that other scientists had difficulty folding endostatin properly, Luo decided to work on the problem himself. "Since my postdoctoral training was on protein folding, I thought, 'Maybe we can solve the problem,'" he says.

In 1999, he returned to China, taking some U.S.-trained compatriots with him. His team solved the folding problem, adding nine amino acids to the endostatin molecule. This made it possible to manufacture a soluble endostatin using bacteria, not yeast, and at less expense. The reformulation was also more stable, more potent and lasted longer in the body, requiring just one injection daily rather than two.

With one-fifth of the world's new cancer cases, China is keenly interested in nontoxic therapies. Luo's corporate backer, Medgenn Ltd., has received millions of dollars in interest-free loans and grants from the Chinese government, and President Hu Jintao has visited the factory personally.

Clinical trials of the modified endostatin began in 2001 in patients with non-small-cell lung cancer, the leading form of lung cancer. Lung cancer rates are surging in China, with about 600,000 Chinese now dying of it annually. Evoking its benign toxicity profile, the drug was given the trade name Endostar, rendered in Chinese as "Endu," meaning "Graciousness."

*A stamp of approval *

Back in Boston, Folkman knew nothing of Endostar or even Luo's efforts. But in early 2005, he saw an abstract of a Phase III study to be presented at the annual American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting. The study involved 493 patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer, an impressively large sample, and found that Endostar, given together with chemotherapy, increased the average time to cancer progression from 3.6 to 6.3 months. Follow-up data, not part of the abstract, indicated a one-year survival rate of about 60 percent with Endostar, double that with chemotherapy alone.

The Chinese study wasn't slated for an oral presentation at the meeting and received little notice. But Folkman contacted Luo and learned that dozens of papers on endostatin had been published in Chinese journals. With the help of Chinese-speaking postdoctoral fellows in his lab, he had them all translated.

On September 12, 2005, the Chinese government approved Endostar for patients with non-small-cell lung cancer. Medgenn now hopes to extend clinical trials to other cancers, and is discussing marketing prospects with several U.S. pharmaceutical firms. Children's, which still holds patents, is likely to be involved in the negotiations.

Taking a closer look at the family tree

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*Cross-species liver transplant succeeds*
By Ma Lie and Lu Hongyan (China Daily)
10:01, May 10, 2013 

People's daily

Chinese doctors have successfully transplanted part of liver from a genetically altered pig to a monkey, a hospital announced on Wednesday in Xi'an, Shaanxi province. 

The 10-hour operation was performed on Tuesday by a team of doctors at Xijing Hospital of the Fourth Military Medical University. The recipient was a Tibetan macaque, a species found only in China. 

Dou Kefeng, the team leader and a professor at the hospital, said the operation, the result of a four-year research project, was the first of its kind successfully performed in Asia. 

The pig was genetically altered to suppress rejection of the liver by removing its antigen gene. The monkey selected had biochemical, immunological and anatomical characteristics very close to human physiology, Dou said. 

Its vital signs were stable after the transplant surgery. 

On June 27, 2012, South Korean media reported that South Korean scientists had transplanted a heart and kidney from a cloned pig to two monkeys, which survived for 24 and 25 days after the operation. Similar experiments have been conducted in several countries, including the United States, Germany, Australia and Japan. 

Dou said that the organs from genetically altered pigs are preferred alternatives to human organs and the success of this surgery laid a theoretical and experimental basis for the clinical application of such transplants, which could provide a solution to the shortage of human organs for transplants. 

The hospital, which began performing liver transplants in 1997, is a leader in the field in China and has performed more than 300 successful organ transplants, Dou said. 



*Monkey Given Pig's Liver In China
*

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*Innovative idea from an old report*

*Chinese Scientists Plan to Pull an Asteroid into Orbit Around Earth*
Posted 08.31.2011 

link





Pictured: Humans Tempting God to Smite Them Hexi Baoyin, Yang Chen, Junfeng Li via arXiv

Last week Chinese scientists wanted to divert an asteroid away from Earth. This week, they want to pull one into orbit around the Earth. Whats possible objections could anyone have to this idea?

The notion stems from a phenomenon the researchers from Tsinghua University in Beijing noticed from time to time with Jupiter. Every now and then our solar systems biggest planet pulls in an object from space, which orbits the planet for a time before jetting off into interplanetary space again.

We could do something similar with a number of near earth objects (NEOs) that will pass near Earth in the coming years and decades. None of these objects will pass close enough to be naturally captured by Earths gravity, but a few will come so close that a small nudge in the right direction would put them in orbit--likely a temporary orbit--around Earth.

The idea isnt simply to flirt with cataclysmic danger, but to bring a small object (they suggest a 10-meter object called 2008EA9 that will pass nearby in 2049) into a loop around the Earth so we can study it closely for a few years. If we can get the art of capturing asteroids orbitally down to a science, we could use it to temporarily make asteroids into Earth-bound satellites (orbiting at about twice the distance of the moon), mine them for minerals, and then send them on their ways.
Read the paper at arXiv.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*A bright idea from an old report
*
*A Chinese Solar Sailing Scheme to Divert the Asteroid Apophis from its Collision Course with Earth*
08.19.2011 

link





Diverting Near Earth Asteroids With Solar Sailing Spaceships As you can see here, this will be a piece of cake. Shengping Gong, Junfeng Li, Xiangyuan Zeng via arXiv


For all the apocalypse talk that gets tossed around by psuedo-scientists and religious blowhards, rarely do we hear mention of Apophis, the 50 million-ton asteroid that actually might come close enough to Earth to warrant an end-of-the-world scare sometime in 2029. In that year it will pass so close to us that we&#8217;ll be able figure the trajectory for its return trip in 2036. If it passes through an area of space near our home planet known as the &#8220;keyhole,&#8221; it spells doom--on its return pass in 2036 it likely would strike us. Luckily, the Chinese are already on top of this one.

Apophis&#8217; keyhole is pretty small, just 2,000 feet wide. In space terms, that&#8217;s practically nothing. That means that the chances of Apophis passing through the keyhole at all aren&#8217;t great. But it also means that it would only take a very small nudge sometime prior to 2029 to ensure that it misses the keyhole altogether. And that&#8217;s where a handful of Chinese researchers at Tsinghua University in Beijing come in.

In a paper they describe how Apophis could be deflected using a small spacecraft powered by a solar sail into a retrograde orbit on a collision course with the asteroid. That retrograde orbit--that&#8217;s an orbit opposite that of Apophis--would give it a hell of an impact speed, something like 55 miles per second. That kind of impact, executed far enough in advance, should push Apophis out of its current orbit enough to keep it clear of that keyhole, no Bruce Willis necessary.

But it sounds easier on paper than it really is. NASA&#8217;s solar sailing technology is nascent. Japan&#8217;s is better but still in its infancy. And as Tech Review's KFC points out, we&#8217;re talking about slinging this spacecraft way out into space where it would cruise for years before reaching Apophis--akin to the old &#8220;hitting a speeding bullet with a speeding bullet&#8221; analogy. Should the solar winds shift unexpectedly, we might miss. And if we miss Apophis, there&#8217;s nothing to guarantee that Apophis will miss us.
Luckily we have some time to figure this one out. Read the paper at arXiv.


----------



## Snomannen

I'm excepting China would become one of the most powerful countries in the world, as long as the "bubble" will never be broken and riots caused by corruption will be handled wisely.


----------



## shuttler

*University of Peking Alumni, &#24352;&#30410;&#21776; Zhang Yitang makes this mathematical breakthrough*

*First proof that infinitely many prime numbers come in pairs
Mathematician claims breakthrough towards solving centuries-old problem.
*

&#31185;&#23398;&#32593;&#8212;&#20013;&#22269;&#31185;&#23398;&#25253;- &#21326;&#20154;&#25968;&#23398;&#23478;&#24352;&#30410;&#21776;&#39318;&#27425;&#35777;&#26126;&#23384;&#22312;&#26080;&#31351;&#22810;&#32032;&#25968;&#23545;

First proof that infinitely many prime numbers come in pairs : Nature News & Comment
Maggie McKee 14 May 2013
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS




Mathematician Yitang Zhang has outlined a proof of a 'weak' version of the twin prime conjecture.
MAGGIE MCKEE

It&#8217;s a result only a mathematician could love. Researchers hoping to get &#8216;2&#8217; as the answer for a long-sought proof involving pairs of prime numbers are celebrating the fact that a mathematician has wrestled the value down from infinity to 70 million.

&#8220;That&#8217;s only [a factor of] 35 million away&#8221; from the target, quips Dan Goldston, an analytic number theorist at San Jose State University in California who was not involved in the work. &#8220;Every step down is a step towards the ultimate answer.&#8221;

That goal is the proof to a conjecture concerning prime numbers. Those are the whole numbers that are divisible only by one and themselves. Primes abound among smaller numbers, but they become less and less frequent as one goes towards larger numbers. In fact, the gap between each prime and the next becomes larger and larger &#8212; on average. But exceptions exist: the &#8216;twin primes&#8217;, which are pairs of prime numbers that differ in value by 2. Examples of known twin primes are 3 and 5, or 17 and 19, or 2,003,663,613 × 2195,000 &#8722; 1 and 2,003,663,613 × 2195,000 + 1.

The twin prime conjecture says that there is an infinite number of such twin pairs. Some attribute the conjecture to the Greek mathematician Euclid of Alexandria, which would make it one of the oldest open problems in mathematics.

The problem has eluded all attempts to find a solution so far. A major milestone was reached in 2005 when Goldston and two colleagues showed that there is an infinite number of prime pairs that differ by no more than 16 (ref. 1). But there was a catch. &#8220;They were assuming a conjecture that no one knows how to prove,&#8221; says Dorian Goldfeld, a number theorist at Columbia University in New York.

The new result, from Yitang Zhang of the University of New Hampshire in Durham, finds that there are infinitely many pairs of primes that are less than 70 million units apart without relying on unproven conjectures. Although 70 million seems like a very large number, the existence of any finite bound, no matter how large, means that that the gaps between consecutive numbers don&#8217;t keep growing forever. The jump from 2 to 70 million is nothing compared with the jump from 70 million to infinity. &#8220;If this is right, I&#8217;m absolutely astounded,&#8221; says Goldfeld.

Zhang presented his research on 13 May to an audience of a few dozen at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the fact that the work seems to use standard mathematical techniques led some to question whether Zhang could really have succeeded where others failed.

But a referee report from the Annals of Mathematics, to which Zhang submitted his paper, suggests he has. &#8220;The main results are of the first rank,&#8221; states the report, a copy of which Zhang provided to Nature. &#8220;The author has succeeded to prove a landmark theorem in the distribution of prime numbers. &#8230; We are very happy to strongly recommend acceptance of the paper for publication in the Annals.&#8221;

Goldston, who was sent a copy of the paper, says that he and the other researchers who have seen it &#8220;are feeling pretty good&#8221; about it. &#8220;Nothing is obviously wrong,&#8221; he says.

For his part, Zhang, who has been working on the paper since a key insight came to him during a visit to a friend&#8217;s house last July, says he expects that the paper&#8217;s mathematical machinery will allow for the value of 70 million to be pushed downwards. &#8220;We may reduce it,&#8221; he says.

Goldston does not think the value can be reduced all the way to 2 to prove the twin prime conjecture. But he says the very fact that there is a number at all is a huge breakthrough. &#8220;I was doubtful I would ever live to see this result,&#8221; he says.

Zhang will resubmit the paper, with a few minor tweaks, this week.

Nature doi:10.1038/nature.2013.12989


*Also in this report:*

*Proof that an infinite number of primes are paired*


----------



## shuttler

*Physicists claim microwave-imaging 'breakthrough'*
Nov 28, 2012 

physicsworld





Short pulses sharpen up thermoacoustic images

Physicists in China say they have made a breakthrough in thermoacoustic imaging that could enable it to be used in hospitals within five years. The technique, which involves firing microwaves at tissue, had previously been considered too dangerous to use on humans, but the researchers have now employed what they say is a safer, nanosecond microwave source.

Thermoacoustic imaging was invented in the early 1980s. The idea is to expose tissue to a microwave pulse, which travels into the tissue until it is absorbed. Exactly how the pulse is absorbed depends on the type of tissue present. When the pulse is absorbed, it does not heat the tissue significantly because it is very short. The energy instead generates a moving deformation, which is an acoustic wave. The profile of this acoustic wave is detected using an array of transducers, and these data are used to create an image of the tissue through which the microwave pulse has passed.

The technique is considered attractive for certain patients, such as those at risk of breast cancer, because it has a higher contrast and is more penetrative than, for example, photoacoustic imaging. However, it has suffered from comparatively poor resolution, and the microwave doses employed hitherto have been considered unsafe for humans. For these reasons the technique has not yet been taken up by medicine.

*Shorter, safer pulses boost resolution*

Da Xing and colleagues at the South China Normal University in Guangzhou believe that thermoacoustic imaging could be a safe, high-resolution technique with the use of nanosecond microwave pulses. Theory suggests that the shorter the microwave pulse, the shorter the wavelength of the generated acoustic wave, and the higher the resolution. In addition, a shorter pulse reduces the exposure of tissue to harmful microwaves. The researchers' breakthrough is to have developed such a nanosecond microwave source and apply it to thermoacoustics.

&#8220;It's great to see new applications of microwave technology finding their way to the biomedical-research community &#8221;
Russell Witte, University of Arizona

"One obstacle in this area has been the difficulty getting access to cutting-edge pulsed-microwave technology, which has either been very expensive or highly classified in the US for many years," says biomedical engineer Russell Witte at the University of Arizona at Tucson, US, who was not involved with the work. "So, it's great to see new applications of microwave technology finding their way to the biomedical-research community."

Xing and colleagues' microwave source is based around a Tesla coil &#8211; a type of electrical transformer that can generate a high-voltage discharge. The researchers collect this discharge at a coiled antenna, which generates a microwave pulse of just a few nanoseconds' duration. The subsequent microwave dosage, the researchers claim, is some 100 times lower than the safety standards set by the American National Standards Institute.

*Tested on gelatin*

The Chinese group tested the microwave source on samples consisting of copper wires, and rings made of gelatin. They found that they could image the samples at a resolution of 100 &#956;m, which is five times better than previous thermoacoustic imaging devices. "Our device opens up exciting opportunities for non-invasive, high-resolution clinical thermoacoustic imaging," says Xing.
Group member Cunguang Lou adds that, with suitable transducers for detection, the source could allow thermoacoustic imaging to be performed in real time, which has not been done before. "We can predict that thermoacoustic imaging will be used to image actual patients within five years," he says.

"The scarcity of short-pulsed microwave sources has been a major bottleneck in the development of microwave-induced thermoacoustic tomography, which has the potential to image human bodies without using harmful X-rays or other ionizing radiation," says biomedical engineer Lihong Wang at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri. He adds: "The development of this new microwave source will propel the growth of microwave-induced thermoacoustic tomography, especially toward microscopic imaging."

The research is published in Physical Review Letters.

Researchers and affiliations:

Cunguang Lou, Sihua Yang, Zhong Ji, Qun Chen, and Da Xing 

MOE Key Laboratory of Laser Life Science and Institute of Laser Life Science, College of Biophotonics, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631, China


----------



## shuttler

*More research papers published by Chinese*
Updated: 2013-05-30 03:51(Xinhua)

Chinadaily

LONDON - Research papers published by China-based authors in Nature branded journals in 2012 increased by 35 percent on the 2011 figure, the Nature Publishing Index 2012 (NPI) China showed on Wednesday. 

The report, published as a supplement to Nature, showed that authors from institutions in China contributed 8.5 percent, or 303 papers, of all research papers published in Nature branded journals in 2012, up from 7.0 percent in 2011 and 5.3 percent in 2010. In 2000, just six articles published in Nature branded journals had co-authors from institutions in China. 

The top two institutions remain stable from 2011 to 2012: the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) leads, followed by the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). Tsinghua University, Peking University, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) complete the top five. 

The NPI also provides indicators that China, traditionally strong in physical sciences, is making gains in high quality life sciences research. 

The Nature Publishing Index 2012 China supplement also presents a ranking by city. Beijing continues to dominate, followed by Shanghai, Hefei, Hong Kong and Wuhan.


----------



## Yzd Khalifa

China is a nation that we should all admire and respect. Over the last three decades, the PRC has done a great job, which is merely unrestricted to building its military machine, but also working on development in the medical sector, and technological advancement. We should all learn from the PRC, its success story is more than a fairy tail to many nations on earth including my country. 

You may continue to flourish and prosper.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*China&#8217;s Science Foundation Sets Aside US$3.9 Billion For R&D In 2013*

Academia

June 3, 2013

*China&#8217;s National Natural Science Foundation has set aside US$3.9 billion in funds for scientific R&D this year.*

AsianScientist (Jun. 6, 2013) &#8211; China&#8217;s National Natural Science Foundation has set aside US$3.9 billion (*23.8 billion yuan*) in funds for scientific research and development (R&D) this year, it announced Tuesday.

About 71 percent of the funds will be covered by the central government, as reported by the state-run Xinhua news agency. 

More than 70 percent of the funds will be channeled into projects in intensive disciplines that promote innovation-driven economic development, said Yang Wei, president of the foundation. *The foundation has received over 158,000 applications for funding so far in 2013*. 

The foundation will also promote talent development and seek expanded cooperation with international collaborators, said Yang. He added that it will complete amended regulations to punish misconduct and promote research integrity, and create a database for cases of research ethics violations.

In 2012, out of a total of 177,000 applications, the foundation awarded 38,411 a portion of funds totalling 23.7 billion yuan.


China&#8217;s Science Foundation Sets Aside US$3.9 Billion For R&D In 2013 | Asian Scientist Magazine | Science, Technology and Medicine News Updates From Asia


----------



## East Asia United

David James said:


> *Only about US $3 billion?? *
> 
> Why china is spending so low on science and technology for next five years ?????????
> 
> *India is spending US$ 24 billion*  on Science and Technology
> 
> *India is spending 8 times bigger amount* US$ 24 billion against china's US$ 3 billion
> 
> 
> [India commits to boosting science - Five year spending plan backs massive investment in research and scientific facilities.[/url]



Typical Indian 

China: $296.8 billion

Korea: $55.8 billion

India: $36.1 billion

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## East Asia United

cirr said:


> These are only infrastructure investments in the 16 projects listed&#12290;
> 
> India's TOTAL spending on science and technology does not even come close to China's&#12290;
> 
> My recollection tells me that China spent over 200 billion dollars in S&T in 2012 alone&#12290;



No, China spent $300 billion on S&T in 2012, compared to the US which spend about $440 billion.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*New vaccine protects Chinese children against hand, foot and mouth disease*
29 May 2013

http://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com

*The world's first hand, foot and mouth vaccine has protected children against the disease in China,* according to a new study.

*Scientists have reported in the Lancet that in a Phase III trial involving 10,000 children, the vaccine was 90% effective against enterovirus 71 (EV71), one of the viruses which causes the disease.
*
Groups of researchers in Jiangsu and Beijing tested the vaccine in healthy children aged six to 35 months over 28 days.
Writing in the Lancet, the scientists said; "EV71 vaccine provides high efficacy, satisfactory safety and sustained immunogenicity."

The vaccine was not shown to be effective against other viruses that cause hand, foot and mouth disease.

The disease causes mouth ulcers and blisters on the hands and feet. But in some cases, the brain can become infected.
In 2009, 1.2 million people in China became infected with the disease and 353 patients died.

According to the World Health Organisation, EV71 has been associated with neurological disease and mortality in large outbreaks in the Asia Pacific region over the last decade.

Autopsies conducted in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan have been useful in improving understanding of the pathogenesis of severe disease and the underlying pathological insult leading to death, the WHO said in a report published in 2011.

In 2012, HFMD infected 35,000 people and killed 17 in China's Hunan province.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*Super rice project could be finished in 3 years
*
Updated: 2013-04-27 10:53 ( chinadaily.com.cn) 

New super rice strains with an expected yield of 15 tons per hectare could be developed in three years, Chinese agricultural scientist Yuan Longping said on Friday.

A scientific research project, undertaken by Yuan, to develop the new super rice strains was launched in South China's Hainan province earlier this month.







Minister of Agriculture Han Changfu (right) and agricultural scientist Yuan Longping, known as the "father of hybrid rice", check a crop in Sanya, Hainan province, on April 9, 2013. They announced the launch of a project to breed new super rice strains with expected yields of 15 tons per hectare, well above the world average of 4 tons. [Guo Liliang / For China Daily]



The project had been expected to realize its target within five to eight years, but now the target could be achieved in three years, said Yuan, known as the "father of hybrid rice" for developing the first hybrid rice varieties in the 1970s.

China now grows 17 million hectares of hybrid rice, with a yield of 7.5 tons per hectare. China is now able to produce 13.5 tons of hybrid rice per hectare, but the technology has yet to be further applied.

The project will help China maintain its largely self-sufficient supply of rice, a staple food for more than 60 percent of its population, over the next few decades, experts said.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## faithfulguy

shuttler said:


> *Innovative idea from an old report*
> 
> *Chinese Scientists Plan to Pull an Asteroid into Orbit Around Earth*
> Posted 08.31.2011
> 
> link
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Pictured: Humans Tempting God to Smite Them Hexi Baoyin, Yang Chen, Junfeng Li via arXiv
> 
> Last week Chinese scientists wanted to divert an asteroid away from Earth. This week, they want to pull one into orbit around the Earth. Whats possible objections could anyone have to this idea?
> 
> The notion stems from a phenomenon the researchers from Tsinghua University in Beijing noticed from time to time with Jupiter. Every now and then our solar systems biggest planet pulls in an object from space, which orbits the planet for a time before jetting off into interplanetary space again.
> 
> We could do something similar with a number of near earth objects (NEOs) that will pass near Earth in the coming years and decades. None of these objects will pass close enough to be naturally captured by Earths gravity, but a few will come so close that a small nudge in the right direction would put them in orbit--likely a temporary orbit--around Earth.
> 
> The idea isnt simply to flirt with cataclysmic danger, but to bring a small object (they suggest a 10-meter object called 2008EA9 that will pass nearby in 2049) into a loop around the Earth so we can study it closely for a few years. If we can get the art of capturing asteroids orbitally down to a science, we could use it to temporarily make asteroids into Earth-bound satellites (orbiting at about twice the distance of the moon), mine them for minerals, and then send them on their ways.
> Read the paper at arXiv.



This would be a stupid idea. If it crashes into the earth, the earth is done.


----------



## soaringeagle

Actually, this project can help develop the technology to save us from a event similar to what happened 65 million years ago.



faithfulguy said:


> This would be a stupid idea. If it crashes into the earth, the earth is done.


----------



## shuttler

faithfulguy said:


> This would be a stupid idea. If it crashes into the earth, the earth is done.



The idea can only appear stupid to less intelligent persons, but not for smart scientists like the above Chinese and those who would like to go one step further:

Nasa's audacious plan to catch an asteroid in a giant draw-string bag and drag it back to Earth | Mail Online


----------



## cirr

*Scheduled to blast off in Mid June, the Shenzhou 10 Spacecraft was transferred to its launch pad yesterday&#65288;03.06.2013&#65289;*

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*Merck Serono collaborates with China's BeiGene on second-generation BRAF Inhibitor*
31 May 2013 

thepharmaletter.com









Merck Serono, a division of Germanys Merck KGaA (MRK: DE), today (May 31) announced that it has signed a global licensing, co-development and commercialization agreement with BeiGene Co, a biotech R&D company in Beijing, China, for BeiGene-283.

* The compound is a second-generation BRAF inhibitor for the treatment of cancer that is currently in preclinical development and is expected to enter clinical development next year. It was discovered and developed in the Peoples Republic of China by BeiGene*. 

BRAF inhibitors target a protein (BRAF) that is a downstream component of the MAPK (mitogen-activated protein kinase) signaling pathway, which is thought to promote cancer cell growth and is dysregulated in a number of human cancers


----------



## cirr

China's 1st electric-power twin-east UAV completes its maiden flight&#65306;






PLA Daily reports&#12290;


----------



## cirr

New CRH3A rolling off the production line:





















The new advanced EMUs are purpose-designed to operate at optimum speeds of 160kmph, 200kmph or 250kmph according to needs and track conditions.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*Cushion added for life in orbit
*

Updated: 2013-06-14 01:47 
By ZHAO YINAN in Tianjin and XU JUNQIAN in Shanghai ( China Daily)

Cushion added for life in orbit |Sci-Tech |chinadaily.com.cn





Cui Guoqi, a professor at Tianjin University, demonstrates tailor-made cushioned seats for Chinese astronauts. Wang Qing / For China Daily 



Those concerned about astronauts' living conditions need not worry, as scientists from Tianjin and Shanghai have devoted years to designing high-tech equipment to make life in space easier. 

Cui Guoqi, a professor at Tianjin University, is the director of one of China's first research centers in rapid prototyping, more commonly known as 3-D printing. Cui's team has spent 15 years developing tailor-made cushioned seats for Chinese astronauts.

The seat, made of 70-millimeter-thick composite materials, looks like a bathtub in shape.

The seats are used during launch and landing to protect the astronauts, especially their backbones, from being hurt by the jolt during acceleration, he said. 

We collect physical data from astronaut candidates, like the measurements of their spacesuits, but the seats require much more data than the suits. And with more precise data, the seat will be better fitting and able to defuse more impact. 

Cui said the number of data that is collected has increased from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands as they've improved the precision of the seats. 

Every seat should be tested by the astronaut in person and undergo adjustments to make it more precise. My colleagues and I are more familiar with their physical data than their family members, he said. 

Cui said Liu Yang, China's first female astronaut, told him the seat was "safe and well-suited" after she finished her space mission in June 2012. 

Donghua University in Shanghai, formerly China Textile University, also helped astronauts on Shenzhou X by inventing a special diaper that is not only super-absorbent but able to dissolve ammonia and other chemicals from human waste.

Like the MAGs, or maximum absorption garments termed by NASA, the Chinese diapers have been specially named "waste collecting devices".

Led by Professor Yuan Qinhua, 72, the team has been customizing the waste device for 10 years since the launch of Shenzhou V, China's first manned spaceship lifted off in October 2003. 

According to Yuan, the devices used by Shenzhou X's mixed-gender crew are not only gender specific, but also tailor-made to each astronaut's body. 

And thanks to the special materials used, the device can quickly absorb human waste, deodorize, and keep astronauts dry and safe from infection.


----------



## shuttler

China's Tianhe 2 is the world's fastest supercomputer, June 16, 2013







*China's Tianhe-2 Caps Top 10 Supercomputers*

http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/hardware/tianhe2-caps-top-10-supercomputers






Every year, in June and in November, the Top500 list shows which supercomputers can crank out the most calculations per second. This go-around, the number one system showed that all the rumors leading up to the reveal were true. The Tianhe-2, a massive system that clocked 33.86 petaflops, or 33.86 thousand trillion floating point operations per second, represents China's return to the No. 1 spota distinction it has not held since November 2010, when its Tianhe-1 was considered the world's finest computing system. 

The Top500 list is typically topped by a U.S. Department of Energy machine. But Tianhe-2 trounces that department's entrants, including the old top dog on the list, a supercomputer called Titan which is housed at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Titan executed 17.59 petaflopsa little over half of the Tianhe-2's supercomputing muscle.

Built at China's National University of Defense Technology, Tianhe-2 (also known as the Milky Way-2) consists of 16 000 nodes. Inside each node, two Intel Xeon IvyBridge processors and three Xeon Phi processors run the show, adding up to a total of 3.12 million computing cores. The machine is scheduled to be fully operational by the end of this year.

Tianhe-2's surprise arrival symbolizes China's unflinching commitment to the supercomputing arms race; the machine was not expected to be deployed until 2015. Moreover, *it uses technologies that have almost all been invented in China*, according to Top500 editor Jack Dongarra.

"*Most of the features of the system were developed in China, and they are only using Intel for the main compute part. The interconnect, operating system, front-end processors and software are mainly Chinese," he said in a statement. Dongarra saw the Tianhe-2 system in May, which led to a flurry of leaks about its tremendous power and capabilities earlier this month.
*
But the United States is holding fast to its overall dominance of the Top500 list: 253 of the 500 systems are still American-made. China comes in second place, claiming 65 systems on the list, followed by Japan, the U.K., France, and Germany.

With Tianhe-2 now at the top, Sequoiaan IBM BlueGene/Q system at the DOE's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and formerly the world's No. 2 supercomputerdropped to third place. Sequoia, with its 1.57 million cores, first came online in 2011 and scored 17.17 petaflops on the Linpack benchmark. Three more IBM BlueGene/Q systems made the top 10 list, coming in fifth, seventh, and eighth places.

Fujitsu's "K computer" installed at the RIKEN Advanced Insititute for Computational Science (AICS) in Kobe, Japan, sits at No. 4. The rest of the top 10 include: the upgraded Stampede at the Texas Advanced Computing Center of the University of Texas, Austin; JUQUEEN at the Forschungszentrum Juelich in Germany (the most powerful system in Europe); SuperMUC, an IBM iDataplex system installed at Leibniz Rechenzentrum in Germany; and Tianhe-1A at the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin, China, holding steady at No. 10. 

Photo: Jack Dongarra


----------



## shuttler

*China boosts top quality science publications by 35% in 2012*

[2013-05-31]

News from the University of Science and Technology of China

Authors based in China contributed 8.5% of all research papers published in Nature branded journals in 2012, up 35% on 2011 figures. This is according to the Nature Publishing Index 2012 (NPI) China, published today as a supplement to Nature. Authors from institutions in China contributed 303 papers published in Nature branded journals in 2012, up from 7.0% (225) in 2011 and 5.3% (152) in 2010. In 2000, just six articles published in Nature branded journals had co-authors from institutions in China.

The data released in the NPI adds to evidence that China is rapidly boosting its quality research output, and becoming a global leader in scientific publishing and scientific research. A global analysis will be released in June 2013, and China is expected to have made gains in 2012 against nations that traditionally lead in scientific outputs.

The supplement offers insights into how national investments, institutions and cities have contributed to China's rapid scientific expansion.

*The top two institutions remain stable from 2011 to 2012: the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) leads, followed by the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). Tsinghua University, Peking University, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) complete the top five. In sixth place, BGI was a strong performer in 2012, up from tenth in 2011. An analysis in the NPI indicates that SJTU and Zhejiang University (seventh in 2012, up from 11th in 2011) are rapidly growing their high quality research output. The NPI also provides indicators that China, traditionally strong in physical sciences, is making gains in high quality life sciences research.
*
*The Nature Publishing Index 2012 China supplement also presents a ranking by city. Beijing continues to dominate, followed strongly by Shanghai. Hefei, Hong Kong and Wuhan round out the top five cities.*

The NPI measures the output of research articles from nations and institutes in terms of publications in the 18 Nature-branded primary research journals in 2012. 

The Nature Publishing Index 2012 China supplement is available online atnature.asia/publishing-index-/china and is published as a supplement to Naturetoday. The ranking is a snapshot based on papers published in 2012, with 2008&#8211;2011 data also included to show trends. The index, updated weekly, is available at Sitemap | Nature Publishing Group.


----------



## shuttler

*&#34527;&#40857;&#21495;&#20170;&#36827;&#34892;&#35797;&#39564;&#24615;&#39318;&#28508; &#28508;&#27425;7&#23567;&#26102;&#28145;&#24230;&#36807;&#21315;&#31859;*
&#21457;&#24067;: 2013-6-17 10:25 | &#32534;&#36753;: cuiziyang | &#26469;&#28304;: &#32508;&#21512;&#32593;&#32476;







www.takefoto.cn

2013&#24180;6&#26376;17&#26085; &#20170;&#22825; &#34527;&#40857;&#21495;&#39318;&#20010;&#35797;&#39564;&#24615;&#24212;&#29992;&#33322;&#27425;&#23558;&#36827;&#34892;&#39318;&#28508;&#65292;&#36825;&#20010;&#28508;&#27425;&#30340;&#20027;&#35201;&#30446;&#26159;&#36827;&#34892;&#38271;&#22522;&#32447;&#23450;&#20301;&#31995;&#32479;&#35797;&#39564;&#65292;&#25972;&#20010;&#28508;&#27425;&#22823;&#32422;&#38656;&#35201;7&#23567;&#26102;&#65292;&#19979;&#28508;&#28145;&#24230;&#39044;&#26399;&#36229;&#36807;1000&#31859;&#12290;

&#25454;&#34527;&#40857;&#21495;&#39318;&#20010;&#35797;&#39564;&#24615;&#24212;&#29992;&#33322;&#27425;&#29616;&#22330;&#25351;&#25381;&#37096;&#21103;&#24635;&#25351;&#25381;&#32993;&#38663;&#20171;&#32461;&#65292;17&#26085;6&#26102;&#24037;&#20316;&#20154;&#21592;&#23601;&#23558;&#24320;&#22987;&#20934;&#22791;&#65292;9&#26102;&#21508;&#23601;&#21508;&#20301;&#20934;&#22791;&#19979;&#28508;&#12290;&#25972;&#20010;&#28508;&#27425;&#22823;&#32422;&#38656;&#35201;7&#23567;&#26102;&#65292;&#19979;&#28508;&#21644;&#19978;&#28014;&#21508;1&#23567;&#26102;&#65292;&#27700;&#19979;&#20316;&#19994;4&#23567;&#26102;&#65292;&#24067;&#25918;&#21644;&#22238;&#25910;&#32422;1&#23567;&#26102;&#65292;16&#26102;&#24038;&#21491;&#22238;&#25910;&#28508;&#27700;&#22120;&#65292;&#19979;&#28508;&#28145;&#24230;&#23558;&#36229;&#36807;1000&#31859;&#12290;

&#36825;&#20010;&#28508;&#27425;&#30340;&#20027;&#35201;&#30446;&#30340;&#26377;&#19977;&#20010;&#65306;&#19968;&#26159;&#39564;&#35777;&#28508;&#27700;&#22120;&#30340;&#29366;&#24577;&#65292;&#20108;&#26159;&#36827;&#34892;&#28508;&#27700;&#22120;&#38271;&#22522;&#32447;&#23450;&#20301;&#31995;&#32479;&#35797;&#39564;&#65292;&#19977;&#26159;&#38203;&#28860;&#28508;&#33322;&#21592;&#22312;&#28023;&#23665;&#22320;&#24418;&#30340;&#39550;&#39542;&#25216;&#33021;&#12290;&#32993;&#38663;&#35828;&#12290;

*"Jiaolong", this latent potential for pilot first times seven hours over one thousand meters depth*
Published: 2013-6-17 10:25 | Editor: cuiziyang | Source: Integrated Network

June 17, 2013 Today, the "Jiaolong" was the first pilot applications will be the first submarine voyage, the main objective is to dive times for long baseline positioning system test, the entire dive times takes about seven hours, dive depth is expected to more than 1000 m.

According to the "Jiaolong", the first pilot applications voyage Field Command deputy commander Hu Zhen introduction, at 6:00 on the 17th of staff will begin preparing your marks ready to dive 9:00. Entire dive times about 7 hours, dive and float each 1 hour, 4 hours underwater operations, deployment and recovery of about 1 hour and 16 o'clock recovery submersible, dive depth of more than 1000 meters.

"The main purpose of this dive times there are three: First, verify the status of diving, the second is for submersible long baseline positioning system test, three is to exercise submerged seamounts terrain driving skills." Hu Zhen said.

google translation




*Jiaolong's record setting dive 7062 meters deep into the sea on June 27 last year!*


----------



## shuttler

*Fotos taken @ 7000~7062 meters deep sea by Jiaolong last June
*


----------



## shuttler

*Xijing Hospital transplants pig's liver to monkey*
Updated: 2013-06-06 21:06By Ma Lie in Xi'an (chinadaily.com.cn) 

Chinadaily.com.cn


Xijing Hospital in Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi province, said on Thursday that it made a successful liver transplant from a pig to a monkey.

Dou Kefeng, a professor at the hospital and the leading doctor for the surgery, said that the Tibetan macaque that received the liver from a transgenic pig is alive after the operation, which was on May 28, and is in stable condition.

This is a new medical record as the previous animal involved in a similar surgery in the United States was only alive for nine days.

On May 7, doctors at the Chinese hospital made the first transplant between a Tibetan macaque and a transgenic pig, but the monkey died two days after the operation.

Xijing Hospital started the clinical research project four years ago due to a shortage of domestic and international liver donors for transplants.

During the operation on May 28, doctors first removed the spleen from the monkey and then put part of the pig's liver in the monkey's abdominal area.

&#8220;Three hours after the transplantation, the monkey could spontaneously breath and its vital signs were stable,&#8221; Dou said.

Dou said that the organs from genetically altered pigs are preferred alternatives to human organs and that the success of this surgery laid a theoretical and experimental basis for the clinical application of such transplants, which could provide a solution to the shortage of human organs for transplants.

The hospital, which began performing liver transplants in 1997, is a leader in the field in China and has performed more than 300 successful organ transplants, Dou said.

Experts said that the success of this experimental operation means that Chinese doctors achieved a breakthrough in the field of major organ transplant surgeries.

However, there's still a long way to go before similar experiences can be applied to human transplants, they added.


----------



## ephone

I think China indeed spent a lot more than $3 billion



David James said:


> *Only about US $3 billion?? *
> 
> Why china is spending so low on science and technology for next five years ?????????
> 
> *India is spending US$ 24 billion*  on Science and Technology
> 
> *India is spending 8 times bigger amount* US$ 24 billion against china's US$ 3 billion
> 
> India prepares to boost science : Nature News & Comment
> 
> India commits to boosting science - Five year spending plan backs massive investment in research and scientific facilities.


----------



## shuttler

*Chinese 'container hospitals' ready to deploy in Africa*
Li Jiao
13 June 2013 | EN


Africa's first 'container hospital', developed by Chinese scientists, could be ready for use by the end of the month (June), following two years of development.

It will be located in either Cameroon or Namibia, depending on government approval.

Its developers say that the hospital's ten component containers can be slotted together in different configurations, like toy blocks, depending on individual countries' needs.

Each hospital consists of ten containers with rooms for general clinics, waiting patients, treatments, a pharmacy and back-up power supply. The hospitals developers say they can be used for decades if properly maintained, and are intended for long-term service. It is hoped that several African countries will eventually benefit.

In 2010, Liu Yandong, the new Chinese vice premier, signed a memorandum to develop a portable hospital suitable for Africa. The concept was subsequently developed at The Low Cost Health Programme Centre (LCHPC) at the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (SIAT), part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

China&#8217;s Ministry of Science and Technology has led and funded the project, so far to the tune of 14 million renminbi (US$2.2 million). However, according to Zhou Shumin, director of LCHPC, the funding is not enough, and so the ministry has pledged to invest further.

Zhou says that container hospitals function in the same way as general hospitals &#8212; the only key difference is the size.

They are intended for use near sizeable settlements &#8212; at least a suburban village &#8212; and need a flat, open site more than 2,000 square metres in size as well as necessary infrastructure, including a power supply and tap water.

China has also developed 'container clinics', smaller versions with one to three containers.

According to Zhou, the container hospital needs at least four doctors to run, while the clinic needs one.

Ten African doctors were trained to use the hospitals and clinics last year as part of a trial. They will also be trained in the actual hospitals before use. Medical student Wu Haili, from Gabon, says: "The fact that the hospital is easy to assemble, its low cost and its mobility all make it very suitable for under-developed areas in Africa".

"In Africa, some areas are short of basic health equipment, particularly in areas far away from big cities. The container hospital will provide them with the opportunity to see a doctor more quickly."

China plans to give hospitals and clinics to six African countries this year. At the end of July, it plans to send two container hospitals to Cameroon and Namibia, followed by clinics to Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania and Egypt by the end of this year.

Chinese 'container hospitals' ready to deploy in Africa - SciDev.Net


----------



## cirr

Now that the National Supercomputing Centre in Guangzhou has got its Tianhe-2&#65292;I wonder when the National Supercomputing Centre in Chongqing will lay its hands on the Dawning-600&#65288;&#65311;&#65289;&#65306;

????-

The project is originally planned for completion in 2015 but could be brought forward the way Tianhe-2 has&#12290;

The machine will be *THRICE* as fast as the Tianhe-2 and estimated investment is 2.5 billion yuan&#12290;


----------



## cirr

*Huawei launches world's slimmest smartphone*

June 19, 2013







Photographs: Courtesy, Huawei


China's Huawei unveiled its flagship smartphone, the *Ascend P6*, at its first standalone launch event on Tuesday, underlining its ambitions to compete with Apple and Samsung in the top tier of mobile technology.

The company says the device, at 6.18 mm thick, is the world's slimmest. It has a 5 megapixel front-facing camera, designed for taking "selfies", or pictures of the owner to be shared on social media networks.

The company picked the launch date - 6/18 (June 18) - to tie in with the smartphone's dimensions.

The launch, at an arts venue in North London, takes a cue from Apple and Samsung, both of which have made new product announcements at high profile events for a number of years.

Previously Huawei unveiled its handsets at industry trade shows like Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Huawei, which also makes telecom networking gear, is looking to drive sales of its consumer devices, a sector in which it has only had its own brand for about three years.

The company was the fourth-largest maker of smartphones in the first quarter of 2013, trailing LG Electronics and the two dominant brands Apple and Samsung, according to analyst firm Gartner. The top two sold more than 100 million units between them, while LG sold 10 million and Huawei 9 million, most of which were in its native China.

The Ascend P6 uses Huawei's customised version of Google's Android operating system.

Industry analyst Ben Wood at CCS Insight said that at the right price the Ascend P6 would attract buyers who had not considered Huawei before.

"Huawei P6 is darn thin," he tweeted. But he added that the device was not, at this stage, compatible with the high speed, next generation 4G networks, which are being rolled out across the world.

Carolina Milanesi at Gartner said she would have liked to see a more original design instead of something that tries to position the brand as an alternative to Apple by going with a similar rounded metal design.

Overall it shows that Huawei is working towards their goal of becoming a top brand by 2015, she said.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

This discovery was reported somewhere on PDF. Just post the same news in this thread for the ease of searching and managing the records


*Chinese scientists observe IT-advancing phenomenon*
Updated: 2013-04-11 01:41(Xinhua) 

Chinadaily.com.cn

BEIJING - Chinese scientists have made the very first experimental observation of a phenomenon known as the quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) effect, a discovery that will help accelerate the IT revolution and in developing low-power-consumption electronics.

Yang Zhenning, winner of a Nobel Prize in Physics, said at a press conference on Wednesday that the research was ground-breaking in the field, rating it as worthy of a Nobel Prize.

QAH effect is one of the most important physical effects that had remained unobserved worldwide, according to academic Xue Qikun, who has led a team working on the subject since 2008.

The discovery, if it is harnessed in the future, will help reduce unnecessary energy consumption stemming from irregular electron collisions, according to Xue.

"The technology may even bring about a supercomputer in the shape of an iPad," predicted Xue.

The QAH effect was predicted to occur in magnetic topological insulators by American scientist Edwin Hall more than 130 years ago. It is a kind of quantum Hall effect realized at zero magnetic field.

The quantum Hall effect describes how a voltage appears at both semiconductor edges when the electrons on a current-carrying semiconductor experience a force while being kept in a magnetic field, Xue explained.

The academic said that although leapfrog development has been made in semiconductor technology, the unsettled problem of thermal dissipation caused by irregular movements of electrons has created a bottleneck for the IT industry's further development.

The research, launched by a team of scientists from Tsinghua University and the Institution of Physics under the Chinese Academy of Science, was conducted on more than 1,000 samples at zero magnetic fields.

However, there remains a long way ahead for the observation to be taken into practical application due to limited research resources at present, Xue added.


----------



## shuttler

*Two collider research teams find evidence of new particle Zc(3900)*
Jun 18, 2013

Two collider research teams find evidence of new particle Zc(3900)

(Phys.org) &#8212;Two research teams working independently at two different particle accelerators have found evidence of what appears to be a four-quark particle that has come to be called Zc(3900). Both teams are made up of a large number of researchers affiliated with institutions from around the world and both have published their findings in separate papers in the journal Physical Review Letters.

The discovery of what appears to be a new particle has come about at the two sites (the Belle and BESIII experiments in Japan and China, respectively) as a result of research into Y(4260), a particle discovered in 2005. Physicists have been intrigued by Y(4260) as it appears to be made of a charmed quark, an anti-charmed quark and an extra gluon (in addition to the gluons holding the quarks together). In studying the decay of Y(4260)&#8212;which is found in the debris after smashing electrons and positrons together in their respective accelerators&#8212;both research teams noticed a spike of energy of about 3.9 gigaelectronvolts, which, as it turns out, is approximately four times the weight of a proton. That suggested evidence of a particle with four quarks, something that has never been seen before.

After much more study, both teams concluded that what their data was showing them was something both new and real. Initial indications are that Zc(3900) is indeed a previously unknown type of matter&#8212;a particle with four quarks. Combined, the research teams have found 460 examples of the Zc(3900) particle giving serious credence to their actual existence. Thus far, the particle appears to have an electric charge and at least one charm and one anti-charm quark. Both teams suspect that it also has an up and anti-down quark as well, giving it its full complement of four quarks.

Both research teams point out that there might be other explanations for their findings&#8212;Zc(3900) could simply be a pair of two-quark particles bound together, for example. Another possibility is that it's a pair of two-quark particles that are loosely bound, which would mean they are simply interacting for a very short time span.

More research will be conducted by both teams, and of course other physicists around the globe. Studying how Zc(3900) decays should help determine if what the two teams have found is something truly new, or if it is just already known particles behaving in a novel way.

The publication &#65288;Received 24 March 2013; published 17 June 2013&#65289;in Physics Review Letters of the Chinese led Team of Scientists

Check out the *affiliations* of the Scientists if you are interested


----------



## shuttler

A casual coverage on just one respected publication in Nature's Scientific Reports shows the tremendous energy in our scientific research

link



19 June 2013
Enhancement of Vibronic and Ground-State Vibrational Coherences in 2D Spectra of Photosynthetic Complexes OPEN
Aurélia Chenu, Niklas Christensson, Harald F. Kauffmann & Tomá&#353; Man&#269;al
Scientific Reports 3, doi:10.1038/srep02029

*19 June 2013
Magnetoelectric coupling in the paramagnetic state of a metal-organic framework OPEN
W. Wang, L. -Q. Yan, J. -Z. Cong, Y. -L. Zhao, F. Wang, + et al.
Scientific Reports 3, doi:10.1038/srep02024*

19 June 2013
Unraveling dynamics of human physical activity patterns in chronic pain conditions OPEN
Anisoara Paraschiv-Ionescu, Eric Buchser & Kamiar Aminian
Scientific Reports 3, doi:10.1038/srep02019

19 June 2013
Anatomical regulation of ice nucleation and cavitation helps trees to survive freezing and drought stress OPEN
A. Lintunen, T. Hölttä & M. Kulmala
Scientific Reports 3, doi:10.1038/srep02031

19 June 2013
Robustness to noise in synchronization of complex networks OPEN
Arturo Buscarino, Lucia Valentina Gambuzza, Maurizio Porfiri, Luigi Fortuna & Mattia Frasca
Scientific Reports 3, doi:10.1038/srep02026

*19 June 2013
A tale of two contribution mechanisms for nonlinear public goods OPEN
Yanling Zhang, Feng Fu, Te Wu, Guangming Xie & Long Wang
Scientific Reports 3, doi:10.1038/srep02021*

19 June 2013
Acoustic detection of DNA conformation in genetic assays combined with PCR OPEN
G. Papadakis, A. Tsortos, A. Kordas, I. Tiniakou, E. Morou, + et al.
Scientific Reports 3, doi:10.1038/srep02033

19 June 2013
Cognitive interference can be mitigated by consonant music and facilitated by dissonant music OPEN
Nobuo Masataka & Leonid Perlovsky
Scientific Reports 3, doi:10.1038/srep02028

*19 June 2013
General and Facile Surface Functionalization of Hydrophobic Nanocrystals with Poly(amino acid) for Cell Luminescence Imaging OPEN
Sheng Huang, Min Bai & Leyu Wang
Scientific Reports 3, doi:10.1038/srep02023*

*19 June 2013
Preserving the Edge Magnetism of Zigzag Graphene Nanoribbons by Ethylene Termination: Insight by Clar's Rule OPEN
Yafei Li, Zhen Zhou, Carlos R. Cabrera & Zhongfang Chen
Scientific Reports 3, doi:10.1038/srep02030
*
*19 June 2013
An inorganic CO2 diffusion and dissolution process explains negative CO2 fluxes in saline/alkaline soils OPEN
Jie Ma, Zhong-Yuan Wang, Bryan A. Stevenson, Xin-Jun Zheng & Yan Li
Scientific Reports 3, doi:10.1038/srep02025
*
19 June 2013
Proton Radiography Peers into Metal Solidification OPEN
Amy Clarke, Seth Imhoff, Paul Gibbs, Jason Cooley, Christopher Morris, + et al.
Scientific Reports 3, doi:10.1038/srep02020

19 June 2013
A Quantitative Meta-Analysis of Functional Imaging Studies of Social Rejection OPEN
Stephanie Cacioppo, Chris Frum, Erik Asp, Robin M. Weiss, James W. Lewis & + et al.
Scientific Reports 3, doi:10.1038/srep02027

19 June 2013
The proteasome factor Bag101 binds to Rad22 and suppresses homologous recombination OPEN
Yuichiro Saito, Jun Takeda, Masahiro Okada, Junya Kobayashi, Akihiro Kato, + et al.
Scientific Reports 3, doi:10.1038/srep02022

18 June 2013
The membrane-topogenic vectorial behaviour of Nrf1 controls its post-translational modification and transactivation activity OPEN
*Yiguo Zhang *& John D. Hayes
Scientific Reports 3, doi:10.1038/srep02006

18 June 2013
The fatigue-motor performance paradox in multiple sclerosis OPEN
Matteo Pardini, Laura Bonzano, Luca Roccatagliata, Giovanni L. Mancardi & Marco Bove
Scientific Reports 3, doi:10.1038/srep02001

18 June 2013
Exact and efficient solution of the radiative transport equation for the semi-infinite medium OPEN
André Liemert & Alwin Kienle
Scientific Reports 3, doi:10.1038/srep02018

18 June 2013
Sea Surface Temperature of the mid-Piacenzian Ocean: A Data-Model Comparison OPEN
Harry J. Dowsett, Kevin M. Foley, Danielle K. Stoll, Mark A. Chandler, Linda E. Sohl, + et al.
Scientific Reports 3, doi:10.1038/srep02013

*18 June 2013
Accurate determination of the vapor-liquid-solid contact line tension and the viability of Young equation OPEN
Yawei Liu, Jianjun Wang & Xianren Zhang
Scientific Reports 3, doi:10.1038/srep02008*

18 June 2013
A daily-updated tree of (sequenced) life as a reference for genome research OPEN
*Hai Fang,* Matt E. Oates, Ralph B. Pethica, Jenny M. Greenwood, Adam J. Sardar, + et al.
Scientific Reports 3, doi:10.1038/srep02015

*18 June 2013
Evolution of Topological Surface States in Antimony Ultra-Thin Films OPEN
Guanggeng Yao, Ziyu Luo, Feng Pan, Wentao Xu, Yuan Ping Feng & + et al.
Scientific Reports 3, doi:10.1038/srep02010*

18 June 2013
A TRPA1 antagonist reverts oxaliplatin-induced neuropathic pain OPEN
Cristina Nativi, Roberta Gualdani, Elisa Dragoni, Lorenzo Di Cesare Mannelli, Silvia Sostegni, + et al.
Scientific Reports 3, doi:10.1038/srep02005

18 June 2013
Piezoelectric two-dimensional nanosheets/anionic layer heterojunction for efficient direct current power generation OPEN
Kwon-Ho Kim, Brijesh Kumar, Keun Young Lee, Hyun-Kyu Park, Ju-Hyuck Lee, + et al.
Scientific Reports 3, doi:10.1038/srep02017

*18 June 2013
The Effect of Unilateral Mean Luminance on Binocular Combination in normal and amblyopic vision OPEN
Jiawei Zhou, Wuli Jia, Chang-Bing Huang & Robert F. Hess
Scientific Reports 3, doi:10.1038/srep02012*

*18 June 2013
TiO2 modified FeS Nanostructures with Enhanced Electrochemical Performance for Lithium-Ion Batteries OPEN
Xianfu Wang, Qingyi Xiang, Bin Liu, Lijing Wang, Tao Luo, + et al.
Scientific Reports 3, doi:10.1038/srep02007*


----------



## shuttler

*Chinese Scientists Discover New Method to Increase Recoverable Oil from Wells
*
Mon, 17 June 2013 21:41 

http://oilprice.com

Chinese scientists have already succeeded in recovering a sensational 15% of the residual oil in their test reservoir when they formed a collaboration with the Centre for Integrated Petroleum Research (CIPR) in Bergen, Norway researchers to find out what had actually taken place down in the reservoir.

Oil in reservoirs is confined in tiny pores within rock, often sandstone. In the old days of easy oil the natural pressure in a reservoir was so high that the oil flowed upwards when drilling reached the rocks containing the oil.

When the pressure is used up and the petroleum companies abandon an oil well, more than half the reservoirs oil is usually left behind as too difficult to recover. Now, however, much of the residual oil can be recovered with the help of nanoparticles and a simple law of physics.






Density Gradient and Nanoparticles Used for Oil Recovery.


In the petroleum companies arsenal to maintain the pressure within a reservoir the companies have learned to displace the produced oil by injecting water. The water forces out the oil located in areas near the injection point. The actual injection point may be hundreds or even thousands of meters away from the production well.

But eventually water injection loses its effect. Once the oil from all the easily reached pores has been recovered, water begins emerging from the production well instead of oil, at which point the petroleum engineers have few choices other than to shut down the well.


----------



## shuttler

June 10, 2013

*China Reveals First Space-Based Quantum Communications Experiment
*

*The &#8220;Chinese Quantum Science Satellite&#8221; will launch in 2016 and aim to make China the first space-faring nation with quantum communication capability*

http://www.technologyreview.com


----------



## shuttler

*Scientists use electron 'ink' to write on graphene 'paper'*
Jun 24, 2013 

(Phys.org) &#8212;Nanoscale writing offers a reliable way to record information at extremely high densities, making it a promising tool for patterning nanostructures for a variety of electronic applications. In a recent study, scientists have demonstrated a simple yet effective way to write and draw on the nanoscale by using an electron beam to selectively break the carbon atoms in single-layer graphene.

*The researchers, Wei Zhang and Luise Theil Kuhn at the Technical University of Denmark in Roskilde, Denmark; and Qiang Zhang and Meng-Qiang Zhao at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, have published their study on using electron ink to write on graphene paper in a recent issue of Nanotechnology.
*
Read more at: Scientists use electron 'ink' to write on graphene 'paper'


----------



## shuttler

*Frontiers of Mathematics in China*

Get a free preview here:

Frontiers of Mathematics in China - Springer






*Description*

*Frontiers of Mathematics in China* reports on recent advances in the field of mathematics. It covers all the main branches of mathematics, both pure and applied, presenting core areas, such as geometry, algebra, and number theory, as well as applied areas, such as statistics, numerical analysis, and mathematical biology. 

In addition, the journal features papers in developing and promising fields as well as papers showing the interaction between different fields of mathematics, or the interaction between mathematics and science and engineering. 

The journal shall be an ideal platform for mathematical researchers, investigators and even strategists who want to know more about the rapid, strong and substantial mathematical achievements in China.

8 Volumes 36 Issues 435 Articles available from 2006 - 2013




Latest Articles

Research Article

*Boundedness of Calderón-Zygmund operators with finite non-doubling measures
Dachun Yang, Dongyong Yang (August 2013)*

Research Article

*Existence and uniqueness result for multidimensional BSDEs with generators of Osgood type
Shengjun Fan, Long Jiang, Matt Davison (August 2013)
*

*Convergence and stability of two-level penalty mixed finite element method for stationary Navier-Stokes equations* 
*Pengzhan Huang, Yinnian He, Xinlong Feng in Frontiers of Mathematics in China (2013)*

*Zero density of L-functions related to Maass forms*
*Hengcai Tang in Frontiers of Mathematics in China (2013)*

and plenty more on

Search Results - Springer


----------



## shuttler

*China develops own tech to enrich uranium*
Global Times 
2013-6-25 0:03:01 
By Zhang Xiaobo	





Foto courtesy: Guanming net

China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) has announced that it has finally been able to successfully produce enriched uranium for industrial purposes using domestically made technology. 

The first batch of the independently produced fuel, made in a facility in Lanzhou, Gansu Province, on Friday, can be used in nuclear power stations nationwide after further processing. The move, widely seen as a great step in the country's nuclear industry, helps industrialize the process of enriching uranium.

"After years of research, China has finally achieved this goal. China has become one of the few countries that own independent uranium enrichment technology and use it for industry. It is a milestone," said Lei Zengguang, chief engineer of CNNC on Monday. 

Uranium enrichment technology is critical to a country's nuclear industry, as raw natural uranium contains only 0.7 percent of uranium-235, with the remaining 99.3 percent being uranium-238. Most of China's nuclear power stations need enriched uranium, containing 2 to 5 percent of uranium-235, reported China Central Television (CCTV) Saturday.

"The Lanzhou plant uses self-designed gas centrifuge machines to separate uranium-235 and -238," Lei said, adding that gas centrifuges consume less power compared with other enrichment means, halving the general costs.

"Among all the means of uranium enrichment, gas centrifuges are the most mature. They have already been used in countries such as Russia and the UK," an unnamed nuclear professor with Tsinghua University told the Global Times Monday. "It's a key technology for any country to produce nuclear fuel. That symbolizes the nuclear industrialization level of a country," he said.

"These gas centrifuge machines will be responsible for supplying fuel to all 17 nuclear power stations under operation in China. It can even meet the entire demand by 2020, when the requirement will be five times more than it is now," Zhu Ji, manager of the Lanzhou uranium enrichment plant, was quoted by CNNC's website as saying.

"Independent uranium enrichment is essential for China's nuclear industry. It will definitely help China to complete its nuclear production chain with low costs," the professor told the Global Times Monday.

The Lanzhou plant welcomed its first ever visit by reporters on Friday.

"Citing confidentiality, I cannot provide you with more details on those gas centrifuges," an unnamed employee with CNNC told the Global Times on Monday, adding that the Lanzhou facility was founded in 1958 and had never been open to the public.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

http://www.defence.pk/forums/technology-science/261317-china-wins-first-prize-2013-ican-barcelona.html






*Project Title: Intelligent Hearing Protection System
Country (Region): China
University: National University of Defense Technology
Team Members: Fei Liu, Zhen Wang, Lijue Zhu
*

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

http://www.defence.pk/forums/world-affairs/261834-china-wins-robot-world-cup-soccer-2013-a.html#post4478391

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

shuttler said:


> http://www.defence.pk/forums/world-affairs/261834-china-wins-robot-world-cup-soccer-2013-a.html#post4478391



Beijing Information Science & Technology University&#65311;

BISTU&#12290;

Never heard of it before&#12290;


----------



## shuttler

cirr said:


> Beijing Information Science & Technology University&#65311;
> 
> BISTU&#12290;
> 
> Never heard of it before&#12290;



Isnt it awesome?

*BISTU's "Water" team is in fact a celebrity in the circuit

It has 2 World Champions titles before, in 2010 and 2011*

http://wiki.robocup.org/wiki/Middle_Size_League


*Goto* http://www.defence.pk/forums/world-affairs/261834-china-wins-robot-world-cup-soccer-2013-a.html *to watch some exciting vids
*



BISTU is not a top tier university but as our top notch universities move up, the next tiers advance too just like the development of our cities.

BISTU's campus development:

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## basharfark

go china

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Wholegrain

basharfark said:


> go china



Am I looking at a doppelgänger account of ephone? What ethnicity are you? What's your nationality? Political views?

@WebMaster @Oscar @Hu Songshan

Can you take a look at this guys posting history? Very suspicious - suddenly and spontaneously starts making one liners on different threads of completely different topics in a row. This guy sounds like ephone and if he isn't he still is being a troll.


----------



## shuttler

*Self-cleaning clothes*
A few hours of sunshine cleans specially treated cotton fabrics
By Stephen Ornes / January 10, 2012

Self-cleaning clothes | Science News for Kids




Scientists in China have developed cotton fabric that uses sunlight to rid clothes of stains and smells. Credit: istockphoto


Cleaning clothes usually requires soap and water to remove stains and smells, and a tumble in the dryer or an afternoon on the clothesline to dry. The time and energy needed to turn a heap of dirty laundry into a pile of clean clothes might make people wish for clothes that just clean themselves.

That wish is a step closer to coming true. Recent experiments show that cotton fabric coated with the right mixture of chemicals can dissolve stains and remove odors after only a few hours in the sun.

&#8220;The technology can be applied to all kinds of fabrics and their related products,&#8221; says materials scientist Mingce Long. He helped develop the treated cotton with his colleague Deyong Wu, both of China&#8217;s Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

The handy fabric gets its self-cleaning abilities from a chemical mixture that coats the cotton threads. The coating includes substances known as photocatalysts, which trigger chemical reactions in light. One of those photocatalysts, called titanium dioxide, helps sunscreen block the sun and is used as tattoo ink. Another, called silver iodide, is used for developing photographs.

Researchers have previously shown that titanium dioxide mixtures could remove stains in clothes &#8212; but with exposure to ultraviolet, not visible, light. (The waves of ultraviolet light are more energetic and shorter than those of visible light.) Other studies have demonstrated that silver iodide can speed up chemical reactions in sunlight.

&#8220;We knew that self-cleaning cotton fabrics with titanium dioxide coating had already been developed, but they cannot work, or they work weakly, under sunlight,&#8221; Long says. &#8220;If we want to use the fabrics in daily life, we must develop cotton that cleans itself under daylight.&#8221;

Long and Wu created just such a fabric, working for years to perfect the recipe for a liquid dip that left cotton coated with the titanium dioxide mixture. Then they added particles of silver iodide, which boosted the fabric&#8217;s self-cleaning ability in the sun. In laboratory tests, their creation was nearly seven times better at removing stains (and killing bacteria lurking in the clothing) than titanium dioxide alone.

The scientists can&#8217;t start selling their self-cleaning cotton just yet; scientists still need to make sure the coated cotton won&#8217;t harm those who wear it. Although titanium dioxide is used in some foods, recent experiments have shown that it can cause health problems if it gets in the lungs. So before the material can be worn, scientists need to find a way to make it safe.

Still, Long says that he hopes to wear self-cleaning clothes one day &#8212; and avoid having to do laundry. &#8220;Someday in the future, when I walk on the street,&#8221; he says, &#8220;I hope people are wearing self-cleaning clothes that originated from my technology.&#8221;

POWER WORDS (adapted from the New Oxford American Dictionary)

*photocatalyst* A substance that starts a chemical reaction when exposed to light.

*chemical reaction* A process that involves rearrangement of the molecules or structure of a substance, as opposed to a change in physical form.

*titanium dioxide* A white, unreactive, solid material that occurs naturally as a mineral and is used extensively as a white pigment.

*silver iodide* A yellow powder that darkens with exposure to light. It is used in photography and artificial rainmaking.


*Shanghai Jiaotong University, China*





Physics Department, SJTU




































SJTU - School of Medicine

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Fsjal

I must have self cleaning clothes, since I hate laundering them.

So please, shut up and take my money!

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*Self-powering cloth electronics*
1 July 2013 Emily Skinner 

Self-powering cloth electronics | Chemistry World




Scanning electron micrograph image of the tin dioxide cloth

*Chinese scientists have made compact, self-powering, bendable photodetectors from tin dioxide cloth.
*
Flexible electronics are an exciting area of research with foldable displays and wearable electronics being potential uses. Self-contained power generation complements flexibility by removing the need for bulky external power supplies to make smaller devices more feasible.

*Guozhen Shen from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and co-workers at the Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics*, *have made tin dioxide cloth by growing tin dioxide nanoparticles on a carbon cloth template to give hollow microtubes of tin dioxide in a woven pattern*. Tin dioxide is a wide band gap semi-conductor that has high quantum efficiency in the UV region, making it a good material for both battery electrodes and light sensing. Shen&#8217;s team integrated a tin dioxide cloth-based UV photodetector and a tin dioxide cloth-based lithium-ion battery into one device to form a flexible, self-powering photodetector that can be trimmed to match any shape. The detector&#8217;s performance is comparable to conventional devices and, importantly, no change in performance occurs when the cloth is folded.

Shen says that fabricating large areas of cloth that retain a consistent woven structure was initially challenging, however, by growing a dense layer of nanoparticles on the template a well-defined structure could be reliably formed. He is pleased that the resulting device &#8216;is a very simple system possessing advantages of adjustable size and portability.&#8217;

*Jia Huang of Tongji University, China*, an established researcher in the field of materials chemistry and electronics, is impressed by this low cost approach to fabricating flexible electronic devices which have &#8216;unique applications in foldable, stretchable and wearable electronic systems.&#8217; However, he warns that optimising the mechanical durability of the cloth will be important when developing these devices in the future.

Shen and colleagues plan to develop even smaller and neater devices from this prototype to suit a wide range of applications.

Reference: SnO2-Microtubes-Assembled Cloth for Fully-Flexible Self-Powered Photodetector Nanosystems - Nanoscale (RSC Publishing).


*Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics
*












* Huazhong University of Science and Technology
* *where WNLO is an integral part*








*Tongji University, Shanghai China*


----------



## KRAIT

Great move. Hope India do the same and invest heavily in building world class Universities and research centers.


----------



## shuttler

*World's first "spider silk" sheep was born in Inner Mongolia* 

news.xinhuanet.com/photo









Photo shots of Inner Mongolia Agricultural University, sheeps born with spider silk characteristic hair 

&#19990;&#30028;&#39318;&#20363;&#34584;&#34523;&#29301;&#19997;&#32454;&#27611;&#32650;&#21644;&#32466;&#23665;&#32650;6&#26376;&#20013;&#26092;&#22312;&#20869;&#33945;&#21476;&#20892;&#19994;&#22823;&#23398;&#35806;&#29983;&#12290;&#36825;&#20123;&#20986;&#29983;&#21322;&#20010;&#22810;&#26376;&#30340;&#32650;&#32660;&#20581;&#24247;&#29366;&#20917;&#33391;&#22909;&#65292;&#22806;&#24418;&#19982;&#26222;&#36890;&#32650;&#32660;&#27809;&#26377;&#20160;&#20040;&#24046;&#21035;&#12290;&#34584;&#34523;&#29301;&#19997;&#26159;&#30446;&#21069;&#21457;&#29616;&#30340;&#38887;&#24615;&#12289;&#24378;&#24230;&#21644;&#24377;&#21147;&#26368;&#20248;&#36136;&#30340;&#22825;&#28982;&#32420;&#32500;&#65292;&#20854;&#36229;&#39640;&#30340;&#24378;&#24230;&#21644;&#20986;&#33394;&#30340;&#24377;&#24615;&#26159;&#20854;&#20182;&#22825;&#28982;&#21644;&#20154;&#24037;&#26448;&#26009;&#26080;&#27861;&#27604;&#25311;&#30340;&#12290; &#26032;&#21326;&#31038;&#35760;&#32773; &#29579;&#26149;&#29141;&#25668;


Hohhot, July 5, 2013 (Xinhua News) -- World's first Spider Dragline Silk and cashmere sheep in mid-June was born in Inner Mongolia Agricultural University. These sheeps born half a month in good health, appearance is no different from ordinary sheep. Spider Dragline silk is found in the toughness, strength and elastic highest quality natural fibers, its high strength and excellent elasticity are other natural and artificial materials can not match. Xinhua News Agency reporters Wang Chun and Yan She




*Inner Mongolia Agricultural University*

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*Self Rescue Bracelet: Inflatable Life-Saving Bangles*

August 15, 2012





Self Rescue Bracelet is an expanding flotation device that a swimmer can activate if they run into difficulties in the water. Created by Chinese designers, it won this year's Red *** award.





Even the strongest swimmers can find themselves in an emergency situation and in need of rescue. Cramping of the leg is an example of how such an emergency might arise. Self Rescue Bracelet could prevent a tragedy from occurring.

.......................................

Designed by:
Wu Xuexing, Zhu Linghui, Zhu Peizheng

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

Simply love Hanzi&#65281;
















The world's only &#12290;&#12290;&#12290;

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Fsjal

What's Hanzi?


----------



## Aegis DDG

Fsjal said:


> What's Hanzi?



Han characters used in China, Vietnam and Japan/Chosen. It's called Kanji in Japan.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

June 10, 2013

*China accelerates technology development to build up its IC sector.*

Chinas IC industry gears up for further development after research yielded its first MOSFET with a 22nm gate length. Makers are waiting for improvements in production techniques, which will pave the way for mass manufacture and provide technical leverage for future endeavors. The last includes the plan to *venture into the 16nm and below processes*.

The Institute of Microelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences or IMECAS achieved the breakthrough, which includes an advanced high-k/metal gate module. The latter technology for the last is widely adopted in 22nm production to realize lower device power consumption and cost.

During the research period, IMECAS worked on addressing challenges in manufacturing and integration processes, which cover interface, gate, and source and drain engineering, to comply with standards in industrial applications. It applied for 1,369 patents, including 424 international ones.

The national government lent support to the pilot R&D on 22nm core technologies, which began in 2009. Spearheaded by IMECAS, the project involved the Peking University, Tsinghua University and Fudan University. The goal is to reduce reliance on imported chips and raise the countrys competitiveness in the business.

To date, the key players using the 22nm process are Intel in its 3D tri-gate transistors, and the IBM and AMD partnership in SRAM chips. Global Foundries, IMEC, Samsung, Toshiba and TSMC have released their respective technology versions.

Local manufacturers such as *Fuzhou Rockchip Electronics Co. Ltd* continue working on *28nm* products. They highlight chip features, which are 55 percent better in terms of performance than 45nm variants, and consume 60 percent less power.

Last year, the supplier introduced *Chinas first such chip*, which is the worlds second quad-core model next to the APQ8064 from Qualcomm. Fuzhou Rockchips RK3188 integrates a Cortex-A9 processor and targets mainly tablet PCs.

22nm breakthrough invigorates China's IC industry

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Safriz

TSMC in Taiwan are the world's largest chip manufacturer ..
China will have a tough competition.


----------



## cirr

Dreamreaper said:


> TSMC in Taiwan are the world's largest chip manufacturer ..
> China will have a tough competition.



Taiwan is an integral part of China.

We don't at all mind Taiwan's becoming a leading force in chip-related technologies.

As a matter of fact, there is an agreement between Taiwan and Mainland China which specifically aims to make Taiwan the world's most competitive in chip manufacturing by requesting Mainland Chinese firms to favour Taiwanese products wherever possible&#12290;

Anyhow, TSMC's centre of operation is increasingly shifted to Mainland China, where sales are expected to top $1.4 billion in 2013:

Digitimes Research: TSMC expanding in China

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

The world's best liquid-metal CPU cooler on the way&#65306;

*Optimization and Evaluation of a High-Performance Liquid Metal CPU Cooling Product *

2 Author(s) 
Deng, Y. ; Beijing Key Lab of Cryobiomedical Engineering
Liu, J.&#65307;Key Lab of Cryogenics, Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China 

Date of Publication: July 2013

This paper is dedicated to present theoretical optimization and experimental investigations on a practical liquid metal CPU cooling product. On the basis of a former working prototype developed in the lab, a series of critical parameters were identified and the optimization criterion was established. A schematic thermal resistance model revealed that the electromagnetic pump and fin radiator in the heat transport loop were the key components to determining the output of the system level cooling performance. Then all the critical parameters for the electromagnetic pump and fin radiator were investigated and optimized using related theoretical sub-models. With appropriate industrial design, a practical liquid metal CPU cooling product was fabricated and compared to six typical commercial cooling products. The results demonstrated that the liquid metal product could serve as one of the best CPU cooling devices in the market. Though it was inferior to the best heat pipe product with heating power of below 100 W, it, however, exhibited much better performance when the heating was increased to a level of 400 W or higher, thus ensuring a promising prospect for future high-profile CPUs.

IEEE Xplore - Optimization and Evaluation of a High-Performance Liquid Metal CPU Cooling Product

Details are in Chinese&#65306;

???????????? ?????????_????_???

According to the above report&#65292;the technology has found wide applications in military industry&#12290;

The world's first liquid-metal heat management technology

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## shuttler

> *22nm breakthrough invigorates China's IC industry
> *
> *China makes 22nm integrated circuit breakthrough*


Here on respective posts # 2143 by Sweetgrape & # 2147 by Ryan

and 

this by cirr http://www.defence.pk/forums/china-far-east/263230-22nm-breakthrough-invigorates-chinas-ic-industry.html

Thanks guys!


----------



## shuttler

*&#22269;&#20135;&#23436;&#20840;&#21487;&#38477;&#35299;&#24515;&#34880;&#31649;&#25903;&#26550;&#23558;&#36827;&#20837;&#20020;&#24202;&#35797;&#39564;*

http://wiki.antpedia.com

2013-07-10 11:12










&#22797;&#26086;&#22823;&#23398;&#38468;&#23646;&#20013;&#23665;&#21307;&#38498;
Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University

&#20013;&#31185;&#38498;&#38498;&#22763;&#12289;&#22797;&#26086;&#22823;&#23398;&#38468;&#23646;&#20013;&#23665;&#21307;&#38498;&#24515;&#20869;&#31185;&#20027;&#20219;&#33883;&#22343;&#27874;&#65292;&#26085;&#21069;&#22312;&#27861;&#22269;&#24052;&#40654;Euro-PCR&#20250;&#35758;&#8220;&#21019;&#26032;&#22411;&#25903;&#26550;&#21450;&#24179;&#21488;&#8221;&#20998;&#20250;&#22330;&#20316;&#20102;&#39064;&#20026;&#12298;&#26032;&#19968;&#20195;&#23436;&#20840;&#21487;&#38477;&#35299;&#25903;&#26550;&#24179;&#21488;&#65306;Xinsorb&#25903;&#26550;&#12299;&#30340;&#29305;&#36992;&#25253;&#21578;&#12290;&#25454;&#24713;&#65292;&#36825;&#26159;&#20013;&#22269;&#33258;&#20027;&#30740;&#21457;&#30340;&#23436;&#20840;&#21487;&#38477;&#35299;&#25903;&#26550;(Xinsorb)&#39318;&#27425;&#22312;&#22269;&#38469;&#20250;&#35758;&#19978;&#20844;&#24067;&#12290;&#30446;&#21069;&#65292;&#35813;&#25903;&#26550;&#24050;&#36890;&#36807;&#20262;&#29702;&#22996;&#21592;&#20250;&#30340;&#23457;&#25209;&#65292;&#21363;&#23558;&#22312;&#20013;&#23665;&#21307;&#38498;&#24320;&#23637;&#20020;&#24202;&#35797;&#39564;&#12290;

&#12288;&#12288;&#25454;&#20171;&#32461;&#65292;&#23436;&#20840;&#21487;&#38477;&#35299;&#25903;&#26550;&#34987;&#31216;&#20026;&#20896;&#33033;&#20171;&#20837;&#30340;&#8220;&#31532;&#22235;&#27425;&#38761;&#21629;&#8221;&#65292;&#39044;&#35745;&#23558;&#26377;&#21487;&#33021;&#20027;&#23548;&#26410;&#26469;&#21313;&#24180;&#30340;&#20896;&#33033;&#25903;&#26550;&#24066;&#22330;&#12290;&#30446;&#21069;&#65292;&#22269;&#38469;&#19978;&#21482;&#26377;&#26497;&#23569;&#25968;&#36328;&#22269;&#20844;&#21496;&#25484;&#25569;&#20102;&#35813;&#25903;&#26550;&#30340;&#24037;&#33402;&#25216;&#26415;&#12290;

&#12288;&#12288;&#32487;&#30740;&#21457;&#20986;&#19990;&#30028;&#39318;&#20010;&#21487;&#38477;&#35299;&#28034;&#23618;&#33647;&#29289;&#25903;&#26550;&#21518;&#65292;&#33883;&#22343;&#27874;&#22242;&#38431;&#32463;&#36807;3&#24180;&#30340;&#25915;&#20851;&#65292;&#19982;&#30456;&#20851;&#20225;&#19994;&#21512;&#20316;&#65292;&#25104;&#21151;&#30740;&#21046;&#20986;&#26032;&#19968;&#20195;&#22269;&#20135;&#21270;&#23436;&#20840;&#21487;&#38477;&#35299;&#25903;&#26550;&#8220;Xinsorb&#8221;&#12290;&#35813;&#25903;&#26550;&#30001;&#39640;&#20998;&#23376;&#32858;&#20083;&#37240;&#26500;&#24314;&#33647;&#29289;&#37322;&#25918;&#24179;&#21488;&#65292;&#26893;&#20837;&#20307;&#20869;2&#65374;3&#24180;&#20869;&#23436;&#20840;&#38477;&#35299;&#21560;&#25910;&#12290;&#26377;&#21035;&#20110;&#20256;&#32479;&#37329;&#23646;&#33647;&#29289;&#25903;&#26550;&#65292;&#20854;&#35774;&#35745;&#29702;&#24565;&#26159;&#65306;&#22312;&#25903;&#26550;&#26893;&#20837;&#21518;&#30340;&#19968;&#27573;&#26102;&#38388;&#20869;&#65292;&#20351;&#29421;&#31364;&#34880;&#31649;&#24471;&#21040;&#26426;&#26800;&#24615;&#25903;&#25745;&#65292;&#21516;&#26102;&#37322;&#25918;&#20986;&#33647;&#29289;&#65292;&#38450;&#27490;&#20877;&#29421;&#31364;&#65292;&#20043;&#21518;&#25903;&#26550;&#21363;&#32531;&#24930;&#38477;&#35299;&#65292;&#24182;&#23436;&#20840;&#34987;&#32452;&#32455;&#21560;&#25910;&#65292;&#34880;&#31649;&#32467;&#26500;&#20197;&#21450;&#33298;&#32553;&#21151;&#33021;&#23436;&#20840;&#24674;&#22797;&#33267;&#33258;&#28982;&#29366;&#24577;&#12290;

&#12288;&#12288;Xinsorb&#25903;&#26550;&#20020;&#24202;&#21069;&#21160;&#29289;&#30740;&#31350;&#25968;&#25454;&#34920;&#26126;&#65292;&#20854;&#25903;&#25745;&#21147;&#19982;&#37329;&#23646;&#33647;&#29289;&#25903;&#26550;(Firebird2)&#30456;&#20284;&#12290;&#20896;&#33033;&#36896;&#24433;&#23450;&#37327;&#20998;&#26512;&#21644;&#20809;&#23398;&#30456;&#24178;&#26029;&#23618;&#25104;&#20687;&#38543;&#35775;6&#20010;&#26376;&#35777;&#23454;&#65292;&#20854;&#25233;&#21046;&#20869;&#33180;&#22686;&#27542;&#33021;&#21147;&#19982; Firebird2&#30456;&#20284;&#65292;&#24182;&#19988;&#22312;&#20869;&#30382;&#21270;&#21450;&#28814;&#30151;&#21453;&#24212;&#26041;&#38754;&#19982;&#37329;&#23646;&#25903;&#26550;&#26080;&#26174;&#33879;&#24615;&#24046;&#24322;&#12290;&#21442;&#21152;Euro-PCR&#20250;&#35758;&#30340;&#22269;&#38469;&#19987;&#23478;&#20805;&#20998;&#32943;&#23450;&#20102;&#35813;&#25903;&#26550;&#30340;&#20020;&#24202;&#21069;&#30740;&#31350;&#32467;&#26524;&#65292;&#24182;&#23545;&#20013;&#22269;&#33258;&#20027;&#30740;&#21457;&#30340;&#23436;&#20840;&#21487;&#38477;&#35299;&#25903;&#26550;&#34920;&#31034;&#26497;&#22823;&#20851;&#27880;&#12290;

&#12288;&#12288;&#25454;&#20102;&#35299;&#65292;Euro-PCR&#20250;&#35758;&#26159;&#27431;&#27954;&#65292;&#20063;&#26159;&#20840;&#29699;&#24180;&#24230;&#26368;&#20855;&#24433;&#21709;&#21147;&#30340;&#24515;&#33039;&#20171;&#20837;&#22823;&#20250;&#65292;&#19968;&#30452;&#20513;&#23548;&#21019;&#26032;&#22411;&#24515;&#34880;&#31649;&#20171;&#20837;&#25216;&#26415;&#30340;&#20256;&#25773;&#21644;&#25512;&#24191;&#12290;&#23436;&#20840;&#21487;&#38477;&#35299;&#25903;&#26550;&#30340;&#20020;&#24202;&#21644;&#22522;&#30784;&#30740;&#31350;&#36827;&#23637;&#65292;&#26159;&#26412;&#24180;&#24230;&#20250;&#35758;&#30340;&#28909;&#28857;&#20043;&#19968;&#12290;

&#12288;&#12288;&#33883;&#22343;&#27874;&#22312;&#20250;&#19978;&#34920;&#31034;&#65292;&#22269;&#20135;&#21270;&#23436;&#20840;&#21487;&#38477;&#35299;&#25903;&#26550;&#30340;&#30740;&#21457;&#23558;&#21152;&#24555;&#25105;&#22269;&#24515;&#34880;&#31649;&#21307;&#30103;&#22120;&#26800;&#33258;&#20027;&#21019;&#26032;&#30340;&#27493;&#20240;&#12290;&#38543;&#21518;&#65292;&#30740;&#31350;&#22242;&#38431;&#23558;&#32487;&#32493;&#28145;&#20837;&#30740;&#31350;&#24182;&#20248;&#21270;&#35813;&#25903;&#26550;&#30340;&#35774;&#35745;&#21644;&#24615;&#33021;&#65292;&#21516;&#26102;&#23558;&#37325;&#28857;&#22260;&#32469;&#8220;&#24515;&#34880;&#31649;&#25903;&#26550;&#31995;&#32479;&#30740;&#31350;&#8221;&#12289;&#8220;&#32467;&#26500;&#24615;&#24515;&#33039;&#30149;&#20171;&#20837;&#25216;&#26415;&#21644;&#22120;&#26800;&#30740;&#31350;&#8221;&#12289;&#8220;&#32958;&#20132;&#24863;&#31070;&#32463;&#28040;&#34701;&#25216;&#26415;&#19982;&#22120;&#26800;&#30740;&#31350;&#8221;&#31561;3&#20010;&#26041;&#21521;&#24320;&#23637;&#36716;&#21270;&#21307;&#23398;&#30740;&#31350;&#65292;&#24418;&#25104;&#25317;&#26377;&#26680;&#24515;&#25216;&#26415;&#30340;&#39640;&#27700;&#24179;&#24515;&#34880;&#31649;&#21307;&#30103;&#22120;&#26800;&#20135;&#21697;&#30740;&#21457;&#33021;&#21147;&#65292;&#21147;&#20105;&#24102;&#21160;&#24182;&#25512;&#21160;&#25105;&#22269;&#33258;&#20027;&#30693;&#35782;&#20135;&#26435;&#30340;&#26032;&#22411;&#24515;&#34880;&#31649;&#20171;&#20837;&#22120;&#26800;&#30340;&#30740;&#21457;&#12290;




*China made biodegradable cardiovascular stents will enter clinical trials
*

Chinese Academy of Sciences, Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, director of Cardiology Junbo Ge, a few days ago in Paris, France Euro-PCR Conference "Innovative stents and Platform" at the venue made a presentation entitled "The new generation is completely biodegradable stent platforms: Xinsorb bracket," the special report .

It is the Chinese self-developed fully biodegradable stents (Xinsorb) for the first time at the international conference announced. Currently, the holder has passed the approval of the Ethics Committee, will conduct clinical trials in Zhongshan Hospital.

According to reports, is completely biodegradable stent coronary intervention called "fourth revolution" is expected over the next decade will likely dominant coronary stent market. Currently, only a handful of multinational companies internationally to grasp the stent technology.

Following developed the world's first biodegradable stent coating after Junbo Ge team after three years of research, with the relevant enterprises, successfully developed a new generation of localization is completely biodegradable stents "Xinsorb". The bracket is constructed of polylactic acid polymer drug delivery platform, implanted in the body 2 to 3 years is completely degraded and absorbed. 

Unlike conventional metal stents, the design philosophy is: after stent implantation in a period of time, the narrowed blood vessels to mechanical support, while the release of the drug to prevent restenosis after stent that is slowly degraded and completely organized absorption, vascular structures, and systolic and diastolic function fully restored to a natural state.

Xinsorb bracket preclinical animal research data showed that the supporting force and metal stents (Firebird2) similar. Quantitative analysis of coronary angiography and optical coherence tomography follow-up six months confirmed that its ability to suppress intimal proliferation and Firebird2 similar, and in endothelial and inflammatory reactions of metal stents with no significant difference. Participate in Euro-PCR meeting of international experts fully affirmed the stent preclinical findings, and China's homegrown completely biodegradable stents expressed great concern.

It is understood, Euro-PCR conferences in Europe and the world's most influential annual meeting interventional cardiology, cardiovascular intervention has championed innovative technology dissemination and promotion. Fully biodegradable stent clinical and basic research, is one of the hotspots this year's conference.

Junbo Ge said at the meeting, the localization is completely biodegradable stents will accelerate the development of cardiovascular medical devices, our pace of innovation. 

Subsequently, the research team will continue to develop and optimize the design and performance of the stent, and will focus on "Cardiovascular stent system research", "structural heart disease, interventional techniques and equipment research," "renal sympathetic nerve ablation technology and equipment research "and other three directions involved in translational medical research, the formation of a core technology of high levels of cardiovascular medical products research and development capabilities, and strive to promote and push our own intellectual property research and development of new cardiovascular interventional devices.

google translation


----------



## shuttler

*Peking University Alumnus discovers a new form of liquid*

Graduating Veterans Honored With Chancellor&#8217;s Challenge Coin | Arkansas Newswire | University of Arkansas

'Liquid-liquid' phase transition occurs at 87 degrees below zero

Wednesday, July 10, 2013






Feng Wang 
Associate Professor
University of Arkansas
Degrees:
B.S. in Chemistry, Honors Science Program Peking University
Ph.D. in Theoretical Chemistry University of Pittsburgh 


Researchers at the University of Arkansas have identified that water, when chilled to a very low temperature, transforms into a new form of liquid.

Through a simulation performed in &#8220;supercooled&#8221; water, a research team led by chemist Feng &#8220;Seymour&#8221; Wang, confirmed a &#8220;liquid-liquid&#8221; phase transition at 207 Kelvins, or 87 degrees below zero on the Fahrenheit scale.

*The properties of supercooled water are important for understanding basic processes during cryoprotection, which is the preservation of tissue or cells by liquid nitrogen so they can be thawed without damaged, said Wang, an associate professor in the department of chemistry and biochemistry in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences.*

&#8220;*On a miscrosecond time scale, the water did not actually form ice but it transformed into a new form of liquid,&#8221; Wang said. &#8220;The study provides strong supporting evidence of the liquid-liquid phase transition and predicted a temperature of minimum density if water can be cooled well below its normal freezing temperature. Our study shows water will expand at a very low temperature even without forming ice*.&#8221; 

*The findings were published online July 8 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Wang wrote the article, &#8220;Liquid&#8211;liquid transition in supercooled water suggested by microsecond simulations.&#8221; Research associates Yaping Li and Jicun Li assisted with the study.*

The liquid&#8211;liquid phase transition in supercooled water has been used to explain many anomalous behaviors of water. Direct experimental verification of such a phase transition had not been accomplished, and theoretical studies from different simulations contradicted each other, Wang said.

The University of Arkansas research team investigated the liquid&#8211;liquid phase transition using a simulation model called Water potential from Adaptive Force Matching for Ice and Liquid (WAIL). While normal water is a high-density liquid, the low-density liquid emerged at lower temperatures, according to the simulation.

The research was supported by a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Award and by a startup grant from the U of A. The University of Arkansas High Performance Computing Center provided the main computational resource for the study.


----------



## Snomannen

cirr said:


> Simply love Hanzi&#65281;
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The world's only &#12290;&#12290;&#12290;



The most beautiful language in the world.


----------



## shuttler

*Tibetan observatory to be best in Asia: IAU president 
*
English.news.cn 2013-07-12 16:32:57 

http://news.xinhuanet.com 


*LHASA, July 12 (Xinhua)* -- An observatory that is under construction in Tibet is expected to become the best astronomical observatory in Asia after its completion, International Astronomical Union (IAU) President Norio Kaifu said.

The observatory, based in Tibet's Ngari prefecture, is located in an ideal place for astronomical monitoring due to its high altitude, transparent atmosphere and mild weather, Norio Kaifu said during an inspection tour in Tibet from June 28 to July 1.

The Ngari observatory, perched at an altitude of 5,100 meters above sea level, can compete with Hawaii's Mauna Kea Observatories, the world's largest observatory for optical, infrared and submillimeter astronomy, he said.

The Ngari observatory, the first observatory built above 5,000 meters in the northern hemisphere, will also help to promote cooperation among Asian astronomers, he said.

The observatory will enable scientists from the Chinese mainland, Taiwan, Japan and the Republic of Korea to build large-scale telescopes and carry out joint research programs, said Yao Yongqiang, chief researcher with the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The observatory, built with a total investment of more than 30 million yuan (4.87 million U.S. dollars), is expected to be completed within ten years, Yao said.

A 0.5-meter telescope has been set up in the observatory to carry out research on planetary science, star formation and other astronomical projects, Yao said.

The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau has long been a popular location for stargazers. The 13th king of ancient Tibet's Yuyuhun Kingdom, who reigned from 481 to 490, built an observatory in the remote Haixi Mongolian and Tibetan autonomous prefecture in neighboring Qinghai Province.

As part of China's efforts to explore the universe, a 3-meter KOSMA telescope has been built in the town of Yangbajing in Damxung County, about 90 km from the Tibetan capital of Lhasa. 



*China, Germany Build Astronomical Observatory in Tibet*
April 19, 2013 Science & Technology

http://bestcurrentaffairs.com


*Chinese and German scientists* are establishing an astronomical observatory in a Tibet 4,300 meters above sea level.
The KOSMA telescope, jointly developed by Chinese and German scientists, will start its operations by the end of this year.

The telescope, a 3-meter sub-millimeter-wave instrument, is part of the Yangbajain Astronomical Observatory on the suburbs of Tibet&#8217;s capital Lhasa.






It is China&#8217;s first sub-millimeter-wave telescope that can perform regular astronomical observation and Tibet&#8217;s first professional telescope.

The new telescope is also the highest sub-millimeter-wave telescope in the Northern Hemisphere.
The initiative, launched in 2009, is dedicated to joint research between several Chinese institutes and Germany&#8217;s University of Cologne.

The KOSMA telescope is being moved from Gornergrat, in Switzerland, at an altitude of 3,200 meters to the current site at an altitude of 4,300 meters.

Superb atmospheric transparency had also made the site an ideal one.

The project will enable Chinese and German scientists to carry out interdisciplinary research.

Under the agreement, the telescope will be owned by China but the University of Cologne will be given 20 per cent of observation time after it goes operational.

The telescope will be used to study subjects including molecular clouds and star formations.

It will boost China&#8217;s research capacity in sub-millimeter astronomy and will hopefully provide a platform for astronomical experiments and training on the plateau and in the polar regions.

Sub-millimeter-wave astronomy refers to astronomical observations carried out in the region of the electromagnetic spectrum with wavelengths from approximately 0.3 to 1 millimeter.


*WHY TIBET ?*

Tibet is an ideal location because the water deficit in its air ensures superb atmospheric transparency and creates a comparatively stable environment for research in the areas of astrophysics, high-energy and atmospheric physics.


----------



## cirr

The world's largest derrick capable of hoisting 6400 tonnes of weight to 120m above ground&#65306;

????????????? ??6400??120?_????_???

It is also a transformer capable of different assemblies according to working environments&#12290;

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

cirr said:


> The world's largest derrick capable of hoisting 6400 tonnes of weight to 120m above ground&#65306;
> 
> ????????????? ??6400??120?_????_???
> 
> It is also a transformer capable of different assemblies according to working environments&#12290;


----------



## cirr

CIT500&#65306;






600km/h is now cakewalk&#12290;

Ready to set new record soon. Watch this space.


----------



## shuttler

*New super ceramic may make super mining savings*

New super ceramic may make super mining savings | University News : University News : The University of Western Australia

Thursday, 11 July 2013





Dr Yang Jingyzhou

A new super-strong ceramic developed by researchers at The University of Western Australia may enable power plant operators to save money on delays and costly repairs, and may prolong the life of expensive mining equipment. 

*Dr Jingzhou Yang (Research associate in UWA's School of Mechanical and Chemical Engineering), Winthrop Professor Xiaozhi Hu (UWA's Advanced Materials Team Leader)* and *Professor Zhaohui Huang (China University of Geosciences Beijing's High Performance Ceramics Team Leader)* have created a unique composite that resists wear under high temperatures.

Dr Yang and his colleagues developed the new Iron-Sialon ceramic matrix composite from very common and cheap ferro-silicon alloy and commercial-grade industrial alumina powders.

"Most thermal power plants use circulating fluid bed boilers which require high-temperature wear-resistant linings," Dr Yang said.

"In China, Australia and other countries, power supply relies mainly on coal firing. This requires high-temperature, wear-resistant linings and components. The alumina-based ceramic linings currently in use are fairly cheap but their resistance to wear, fracture and thermal shock isn't good enough.

"Because of this, power plants need to be stopped for long periods to repair worn equipment, which reduces the reliability of the power supply.

"We undertook research to develop a new, more wear-resistant ceramic matrix composite."

The development of the new composite involved sintering - or heating industrial alumina and ferro-silicon alloy powders at a temperature below their melting point - at up to 1700 degrees Celcius - in nitrogen for several hours. The alumina then transforms to the more wear-resistant ceramic, Sialon.

Dr Yang, a materials scientist, won second prize in the China Land and Resources Scientific and Technological Awards and has two invention patents pending in China for high-temperature materials.

His research is supported by the National Science Foundation of China, and UWA via a Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics development grant. 

The research was published as a news story in Science Network WA.


----------



## shuttler

*Chinese scientists discover new ways to fight dengue fever
*






Dengue fever virus
credit: healthgiants


Dengue virus (DENV), a mosquito-borne flavivirus, causes serious diseases and threatens public health in tropical and subtropical areas worldwide. RNA interference (RNAi) is a prevailing strategy for antiviral therapy. 

In this paper, 6 single artificial microRNAs (amiRNAs) targeting the highly conserved regions of the DENV-2 genome were identified and inhibited virus replication efficiently. 

Then, effective tandem amiRNAs targeting 2 different DENV-2 genome regions were constructed and expressed simultaneously from a single microRNA-like polycistron to avoid virus variation or mutation escape. 

Finally, the most high-performance tandem amiRNA was embedded in a lenti-viral vector and inhibited DENV-2 virus replication stably and dose-dependently. 

Overall, these results indicated that RNAi based on multiple amiRNAs targeting viral conserved regions was an effective approach for improvements of nucleic acid inhibitors of DENV and provided a new therapeutic strategy for DENV infection in humans.

The above discovery is published in *Nucleic Acid Therapeutics*






Online Ahead of Print: May 7, 2013

Trace for more details about the discovery through this link:

online.liebertpub

Yu Xie,-3,* Xiu-juan Zhang,-1 Hai Huang,-1 Li-na He,-1 Xue-jun Wang,-1 and Sheng-qi Wang-1
Pei-wen Xie,1,2,*
*These authors contributed equally to this work.

*1. Department of Biotechnology, Beijing Institute of Radiation Medicine, Beijing, China.
2. College of Pharmacy, Central South University, Changsha, China.
3. Department of Hepatobiliary, the Second Artillery General Hospital, Beijing, China.*


----------



## shuttler

*Happy Birthday Holy Cows&#65281;
*

*&#21271;&#20140;&#20004;&#22836;&#36716;&#22522;&#22240;&#20811;&#38534;&#29275;&#28385;&#21608;&#23681; &#21507;&#38738;&#33609;&#34507;&#31957;&#24198;&#29983; *
*Beijing two cloned transgenic cows eat grass year old birthday cake*

2013&#24180;07&#26376;11&#26085; 11:12:03 &#26469;&#28304;&#65306; &#21271;&#20140;&#38738;&#24180;&#25253; 

.xinhuanet








&#8220;&#33804;&#33804;&#8221;&#21644;&#8220;&#22942;&#22942;&#8221;&#21507;&#8220;&#38738;&#33609;&#34507;&#31957;&#8221;&#24198;&#31069;&#29983;&#26085;&#25668;&#24433;/&#35760;&#32773; &#32831;&#34174;
&#8221;Meng Meng&#8220; and "Niu Niu" eat "grass cake" birthday &#65288;Photography / Reporter Geng Lei&#65289;


&#19968;&#24180;&#21069;&#20986;&#29983;&#22312;&#21271;&#20140;&#20892;&#23398;&#38498;&#23454;&#39564;&#22522;&#22320;&#30340;&#20004;&#22836;&#36716;&#22522;&#22240;&#20811;&#38534;&#32905;&#29275;&#8220;&#33804;&#33804;&#8221;&#21644;&#8220;&#22942;&#22942;&#8221;&#26152;&#22825;&#36814;&#26469;&#20102;1&#21608;&#23681;&#29983;&#26085;&#12290;&#31995;&#19978;&#22823;&#32418;&#33457;&#30340;&#20004;&#22836;&#29275;&#20139;&#21463;&#20102;&#20892;&#23398;&#38498;&#24072;&#29983;&#20026;&#23427;&#20457;&#29305;&#21046;&#30340;&#8220;&#33500;&#34047;&#38738;&#33609;&#29983;&#26085;&#34507;&#31957;&#8221;&#12290;&#36825;&#26159;&#26412;&#24066;&#39318;&#23545;&#36890;&#36807;&#36716;&#22522;&#22240;&#20811;&#38534;&#25216;&#26415;&#23381;&#32946;&#30340;&#32905;&#29275;&#12290;&#19968;&#24180;&#26469;&#65292;&#23427;&#20457;&#19981;&#20165;&#20581;&#24247;&#25104;&#38271;&#65292;&#38271;&#25104;&#20102;&#19977;&#22235;&#30334;&#20844;&#26020;&#30340;&#22823;&#29275;&#65292;&#32780;&#19988;&#36890;&#36807;&#20102;&#31185;&#23398;&#32771;&#39564;&#8212;&#8212;&#32463;&#22269;&#38469;&#26435;&#23041;&#26426;&#26500;&#26816;&#27979;&#65292;&#20004;&#22836;&#29275;&#36716;&#20837;&#30340;&#22823;&#29702;&#30707;&#33457;&#32441;&#29366;&#32905;&#36136;&#22522;&#22240;&#27809;&#26377;&#21457;&#29983;&#22522;&#22240;&#31361;&#21464;&#25110;&#28418;&#31227;&#12290;

&#26152;&#22825;&#19978;&#21320;&#65292;&#35760;&#32773;&#22312;&#22823;&#20852;&#30340;&#29275;&#26842;&#37324;&#30475;&#21040;&#65292;&#8220;&#33804;&#33804;&#8221;&#21644;&#8220;&#22942;&#22942;&#8221;&#24050;&#32463;&#19981;&#26159;&#19968;&#24180;&#21069;&#36739;&#24369;&#30340;&#26679;&#23376;&#20102;&#8212;&#8212;&#8220;&#33804;&#33804;&#8221;&#21435;&#24180;7&#26376;19&#26085;&#20986;&#29983;&#26102;&#21482;&#26377;21&#20844;&#26020;&#65292;&#36824;&#22240;&#20026;&#20986;&#29983;&#21518;&#34987;&#20195;&#23381;&#27597;&#29275;&#24323;&#20859;&#65292;&#25152;&#20197;&#33829;&#20859;&#19981;&#33391;&#65292;&#34987;&#21271;&#20892;&#30340;&#23398;&#29983;&#8220;&#29275;&#29240;&#8221;&#20204;&#29992;&#36827;&#21475;&#22902;&#31881;&#20859;&#22823;&#65292;&#22914;&#20170;&#24050;&#32463;&#38271;&#21040;307&#20844;&#26020;&#65307;&#8220;&#22942;&#22942;&#8221;&#21435;&#24180;8&#26376;1&#26085;&#20986;&#29983;&#26102;50&#20844;&#26020;&#65292;&#22914;&#20170;&#24050;&#26159;403&#20844;&#26020;&#30340;&#8220;&#22823;&#22942;&#8221;&#12290;&#20004;&#22836;&#29275;&#28385;3&#20010;&#26376;&#21518;&#23601;&#29366;&#24577;&#31283;&#23450;&#65292;&#36523;&#20307;&#20581;&#24247;&#12290;&#22240;&#27492;&#65292;&#21069;&#19977;&#20010;&#26376;24&#23567;&#26102;&#22312;&#29275;&#26842;&#37324;&#30475;&#25252;&#23427;&#20204;&#30340;&#21271;&#20140;&#20892;&#23398;&#38498;(&#20197;&#19979;&#31616;&#31216;&#21271;&#20892&#30740;&#31350;&#29983;&#22242;&#38431;&#26089;&#24050;&#25764;&#20986;&#65292;&#21482;&#38656;&#27599;&#20010;&#26376;&#26469;&#20026;&#23427;&#20204;&#20307;&#26816;&#19968;&#27425;&#12290;

&#36716;&#22522;&#22240;&#29275;&#39033;&#30446;&#25191;&#34892;&#20154;&#12289;&#21271;&#20892;&#25945;&#25480;&#20522;&#21644;&#27665;&#21578;&#35785;&#35760;&#32773;&#65292;&#26222;&#36890;&#31206;&#24029;&#29275;&#25104;&#38271;&#36807;&#31243;&#20013;&#24179;&#22343;&#27599;&#22825;&#22686;&#37325;1&#33267;1.5&#20844;&#26020;&#65292;&#8220;&#33804;&#33804;&#8221;&#21644;&#8220;&#22942;&#22942;&#8221;&#22914;&#20170;&#27599;&#22825;&#22686;&#37325;1.8&#20844;&#26020;&#24038;&#21491;&#12290;&#23427;&#20204;&#19981;&#20165;&#29983;&#38271;&#21457;&#32946;&#33391;&#22909;&#65292;&#21508;&#39033;&#25351;&#26631;&#27491;&#24120;&#65292;&#32780;&#19988;&#32463;&#32654;&#22269;Invitrogeng&#20844;&#21496;&#12289;&#20013;&#31185;&#38498;&#21160;&#29289;&#30740;&#31350;&#25152;&#26816;&#27979;&#35777;&#26126;&#65292;&#36716;&#20837;&#20854;&#32986;&#32974;&#30340;A-FABP&#22522;&#22240;&#65292;&#21363;&#33021;&#22815;&#20351;&#20854;&#33026;&#32938;&#22343;&#21248;&#20998;&#24067;&#65292;&#21576;&#38634;&#33457;&#29366;&#30340;&#8220;&#33026;&#32938;&#24615;&#33026;&#32938;&#37240;&#32467;&#21512;&#34507;&#30333;&#22522;&#22240;&#8221;&#24050;&#32463;&#25104;&#21151;&#36716;&#20837;&#20854;&#22522;&#22240;&#32452;&#20013;&#65292;&#24182;&#31283;&#23450;&#25972;&#21512;&#12290;&#36890;&#36807;&#23545;&#34880;&#28082;&#21644;&#31914;&#20415;&#30340;&#23450;&#26399;&#26816;&#27979;&#34920;&#26126;&#65292;&#23427;&#20204;&#30340;&#32928;&#36947;&#24494;&#29983;&#29289;&#33740;&#32676;&#21450;&#23492;&#29983;&#34411;&#19982;&#27491;&#24120;&#29275;&#19968;&#33268;&#65292;&#27809;&#26377;&#31361;&#21464;&#25110;&#22522;&#22240;&#28418;&#31227;&#21457;&#29983;&#12290;&#27492;&#22806;&#65292;&#23427;&#20457;&#30340;&#20195;&#23381;&#27597;&#29275;&#12289;&#19982;&#23427;&#20457;&#20849;&#21516;&#39282;&#21890;&#30340;&#20004;&#22836;&#26222;&#36890;&#29322;&#29275;&#20063;&#37117;&#27809;&#26377;&#22806;&#28304;&#22522;&#22240;&#28418;&#31227;&#21457;&#29983;&#12290;

&#29616;&#22330;

&#38738;&#33609;&#34507;&#31957;&#24198;&#31069;&#19968;&#21608;&#23681;

&#22312;&#8220;&#33804;&#33804;&#8221;&#36824;&#26159;&#32986;&#32974;&#30340;&#26102;&#20505;&#65292;&#30740;&#31350;&#29983;&#21016;&#19968;&#39134;&#23601;&#24403;&#19978;&#23427;&#30340;&#8220;&#29275;&#29240;&#8221;&#20102;&#12290;&#26152;&#22825;&#65292;&#21016;&#19968;&#39134;&#19968;&#20986;&#29616;&#22312;&#29275;&#26842;&#65292;&#8220;&#33804;&#33804;&#8221;&#23601;&#36461;&#36807;&#26469;&#65292;&#24472;&#24458;&#22312;&#20182;&#36523;&#36793;&#33300;&#20182;&#30340;&#25163;&#12290;&#36731;&#25376;&#30528;&#23427;&#30340;&#33046;&#23376;&#65292;&#36825;&#20010;20&#22810;&#23681;&#30340;&#23567;&#20249;&#23376;&#19968;&#33080;&#8220;&#24904;&#29238;&#8221;&#30340;&#34920;&#24773;&#12290;

&#20026;&#20004;&#22836;&#21363;&#23558;&#25104;&#24180;&#30340;&#29275;&#25140;&#19978;&#29992;&#26469;&#26816;&#27979;&#29983;&#29702;&#25351;&#26631;&#30340;&#40644;&#33394;&#8220;&#32819;&#26631;&#8221;&#21518;&#65292;&#29983;&#26085;&#34507;&#31957;&#25644;&#26469;&#20102;&#12290;&#30452;&#24452;&#32422;1&#31859;&#12289;&#20998;2&#23618;&#30340;&#34507;&#31957;&#29992;&#33500;&#34047;&#12289;&#38738;&#33609;&#25645;&#25104;&#65292;&#37324;&#38754;&#25292;&#20102;&#29577;&#31859;&#38754;&#65292;&#19978;&#38754;&#36824;&#29992;&#33457;&#29983;&#12289;&#40657;&#35910;&#35013;&#39280;&#65292;&#24182;&#29992;&#32418;&#35910;&#25340;&#20986;&#8220;&#29983;&#26085;&#24555;&#20048;&#8221;&#12290;&#8220;&#33804;&#33804;&#8221;&#21644;&#8220;&#22942;&#22942;&#8221;&#19968;&#30475;&#23601;&#26469;&#20102;&#31934;&#31070;&#65292;&#20247;&#20154;&#36824;&#27809;&#21809;&#23436;&#29983;&#26085;&#27468;&#65292;&#23427;&#20204;&#23601;&#22475;&#22836;&#22823;&#21507;&#36215;&#26469;&#12290;&#36830;&#8220;&#22942;&#22942;&#8221;&#30340;&#22920;&#22920;&#22312;&#38548;&#22721;&#29275;&#22280;&#21726;&#21726;&#30452;&#21483;&#65292;&#21628;&#21796;&#23427;&#21435;&#21507;&#22902;&#65292;&#37117;&#19981;&#29702;&#30572;&#20102;&#12290;

&#38142;&#25509;

&#20108;&#20195;&#36716;&#22522;&#22240;&#20811;&#38534;&#32905;&#29275;&#24320;&#22987;&#8220;&#23381;&#32946;&#8221;

&#20004;&#22836;&#27597;&#29275;&#8220;&#33804;&#33804;&#8221;&#21644;&#8220;&#22942;&#22942;&#8221;&#24050;&#32463;&#24615;&#25104;&#29087;&#65292;&#24182;&#23558;&#22312;&#19968;&#20004;&#20010;&#26376;&#21518;&#36798;&#21040;&#25104;&#24180;&#12290;&#35760;&#32773;&#26152;&#22825;&#20174;&#21271;&#20140;&#20892;&#23398;&#38498;&#33719;&#24713;&#65292;&#31185;&#30740;&#22242;&#38431;&#24050;&#32463;&#24320;&#22987;&#8220;&#23381;&#32946;&#8221;&#19979;&#19968;&#20195;&#36716;&#22522;&#22240;&#20811;&#38534;&#32905;&#29275;&#65292;&#36825;&#27425;&#30340;&#30446;&#26631;&#26159;&#20844;&#29275;&#12290;&#32463;&#36807;&#20960;&#20195;&#26434;&#20132;&#12289;&#37197;&#31181;&#20197;&#21518;&#65292;&#25165;&#33021;&#30693;&#36947;&#36716;&#22522;&#22240;&#20811;&#38534;&#32905;&#29275;&#33021;&#21542;&#33258;&#20307;&#32321;&#27542;&#65292;&#24182;&#25226;&#22823;&#29702;&#30707;&#33457;&#32441;&#29366;&#32905;&#36136;&#22522;&#22240;&#36951;&#20256;&#19979;&#21435;&#12290;

&#21271;&#20892;&#30340;&#20522;&#21644;&#27665;&#25945;&#25480;&#21578;&#35785;&#35760;&#32773;&#65292;&#31185;&#30740;&#22242;&#38431;&#27491;&#22312;&#29992;&#21644;&#24403;&#24180;&#20811;&#38534;&#8220;&#33804;&#33804;&#8221;&#21644;&#8220;&#22942;&#22942;&#8221;&#19968;&#26679;&#30340;&#26041;&#27861;&#8212;&#8212;&#23558;A-FABP&#22522;&#22240;&#36716;&#20837;&#31206;&#24029;&#29275;&#30340;&#32974;&#20799;&#25104;&#32420;&#32500;&#32454;&#32990;&#20869;&#65292;&#20877;&#29992;&#20307;&#32454;&#32990;&#20811;&#38534;&#25216;&#26415;&#65292;&#25226;&#21547;A-FABP&#30340;&#32420;&#32500;&#32454;&#32990;&#27880;&#23556;&#21040;&#25104;&#29087;&#30340;&#21435;&#26680;&#21365;&#23376;&#20869;&#65292;&#20351;&#20854;&#20307;&#22806;&#21457;&#32946;&#25104;&#37325;&#26500;&#32986;&#32974;&#65292;&#26368;&#21518;&#25226;&#32986;&#32974;&#31227;&#26893;&#36827;&#21516;&#26399;&#21457;&#32946;&#30340;&#27597;&#29275;&#23376;&#23467;&#20869;&#8220;&#20195;&#23381;&#8221;&#12290;&#8220;&#24050;&#32463;&#26377;&#20004;&#22836;&#27597;&#29275;&#20102;&#65292;&#36825;&#27425;&#25105;&#20204;&#35201;&#30340;&#26159;&#20844;&#29275;&#65292;&#30446;&#26631;&#26159;&#22312;3&#24180;&#20869;&#20135;&#20986;20&#22836;&#12290;&#8221;

6&#20010;&#26376;&#21518;&#65292;&#8220;&#33804;&#33804;&#8221;&#21644;&#8220;&#22942;&#22942;&#8221;&#23558;&#19982;&#26222;&#36890;&#31206;&#24029;&#29275;&#26434;&#20132;&#65292;&#30475;&#19979;&#19968;&#20195;&#26159;&#21542;&#25658;&#24102;A-FABP&#22522;&#22240;&#65307;&#28982;&#21518;&#65292;&#36716;&#22522;&#22240;&#20811;&#38534;&#20986;&#30340;&#20844;&#29275;&#20063;&#23558;&#19982;&#26222;&#36890;&#31206;&#24029;&#29275;&#26434;&#20132;&#12290;&#26368;&#21518;&#65292;&#37117;&#25658;&#24102;A-FABP&#22522;&#22240;&#30340;&#36716;&#22522;&#22240;&#20811;&#38534;&#32905;&#29275;&#23558;&#20849;&#21516;&#32321;&#32946;&#19979;&#19968;&#20195;&#65292;&#30475;&#20854;&#21518;&#20195;&#26159;&#21542;&#25658;&#24102;A-FABP&#22522;&#22240;&#12290;&#31561;&#21040;&#33021;&#22815;&#23454;&#29616;&#35268;&#27169;&#21270;&#20859;&#27542;&#65292;&#36824;&#38656;&#35201;&#21313;&#20960;&#24180;&#26102;&#38388;&#12290;&#8220;&#32769;&#30334;&#22995;&#35201;&#24819;&#21507;&#25105;&#20204;&#22269;&#20135;&#30340;&#38634;&#33457;&#29275;&#32905;&#65292;&#24656;&#24597;&#36824;&#24471;&#22810;&#31561;&#31561;&#12290;&#8221;&#20522;&#21644;&#27665;&#25945;&#25480;&#35828;&#12290;

&#8220;&#29275;&#29240;&#8221;&#21016;&#19968;&#39134;&#26085;&#35760;&#25688;&#24405;


*Beijing two cloned transgenic cows eat grass year old birthday cake*
July 11, 2013 11:12:03 Source: Beijing Youth Daily 4

A year ago was born in Beijing Agricultural Experiment Base two transgenic cloned cattle "Meng Meng" and "Niu Niu" Yesterday ushered in a birthday. Fasten the flower two cows enjoy Agronomy students as Talia special "birthday cake alfalfa grass." This is the city's first cloned transgenic technology through breeding beef cattle. Over the past year, Talia is not only healthy growth, grew into three four hundred kilograms of cattle, but also through a scientific test - by the international authoritative organization, two cow-shaped fleshy marbling transferred gene mutation did not occur or drift.

Yesterday morning, the reporter saw in Daxing bullpen, "Meng Meng" and "Niu Niu" has been weaker than a year ago look like a - "Moe Moe" was born on July 19 last year, when only 21 kg, but also because of birth surrogate cows after abandonment, so malnourished, were Beinong students "cow dad" who was raised with imported milk powder, has now grown to 307 kg; "Niu Niu" was born on August 1 last year, when 50 kilograms, now is 403 kg of the "big girl." Two cows at least 3 months after the steady state, the body is healthy. Therefore, the first three months of 24 hours in the bullpen care of their Beijing Agricultural College (hereinafter referred to as Beinong) graduate student team had to withdraw, just come to their medical examination once a month.

Transgenic cattle project executors, Beinong Professor Ni and China, told reporters that ordinary process of growth per day Qinchuan weight gain 1 to 1.5 kilograms, "Meng Meng" and "Niu Niu" Today daily weight gain of 1.8 kg or so. Not only are they good growth, the indicators of normal, and by the United States Invitrogeng company, Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Zoology, testing proved that their embryos transferred to A-FABP genes that enable it to fat evenly distributed, was snow-like "fatty acids binding protein "has been successfully transferred to its genome and stable integration. Through regular testing of blood and feces that their intestinal microflora and parasites consistent with normal bovine, no mutations or genetic drift occurs. In addition, Talia surrogate cows, together with Talia ordinary calves fed two exogenous genes are also not drift occurs.

In the "Moe Moe" or embryo, when it became a graduate student Liu Yifei its "cow dad" was. Yesterday, Liu Yifei appeared in the bullpen, "Meng Meng" Just rub over, hovering around him lick his hand. Light scratching its neck, the 20-year-old boy look "fatherly" look.

Coming of age for the two cows used to detect physiological wear yellow "ear tag", the birthday cake moved up. Diameter of about one meter, 2 layer cake with alfalfa, grass barricaded inside a cornmeal mix, which also use peanuts, black beans decorated with red beans spell out "Happy Birthday." "Meng Memg" and "Niu Niu" one look to the spirit, not the crowd sang the birthday song, they buried suck up. Even the "Niu Niu" mother in the next rodeo moo whining, calling it to go to nurse, do not ignore it.

Two cows "Meng Meng" and "Niu Niu" sexually mature, and in a couple months after reaching adulthood. Reporters learned yesterday from Beijing Agricultural College, the research team has begun to "nurture" the next generation of transgenic cloned cattle, this goal is bull. After several generations of hybridization, breeding later in order to know whether autologous transgenic cloned cattle breeding and the genetic marbling shaped fleshy go.

Beinong Ni and China professor told reporters, the research team is using and then clone "Meng Meng" and "Niu Niu" the same way - the A-FABP gene into Qinchuan fetal fibroblast cells, and then cells cloning technology, the A-FABP fibers containing cells were injected into an enucleated egg maturation within the reconstructed embryos develop into them in vitro, the final year of the embryo into the uterus developmental cow "surrogate." "There have been two cows, and this time we want the bull, the goal is output 20 in three years."

Six months later, "Meng Meng" and "Niu Niu" ordinary Qinchuan will hybridize to see whether they carry the next generation of A-FABP gene; Then, transgenic cloned out of the Bulls will also work with ordinary Qinchuan hybridization. Finally, are carrying A-FABP gene cloned transgenic cattle breeding the next generation will work together to see whether they carry their offspring A-FABP gene. Wait until able to achieve large-scale farming, but also ten years time. "The people want to eat beef, we made a snowflake, I am afraid, and so much more." Said Professor Ni and China.

(Reporter "Cow Dad" Liu Yifei)

google translation



*&#20013;&#22269;&#20892;&#19994;&#22823;&#23398; China Agricultural University*































*&#28895;&#21488;&#26657;&#22253; Yantai Campus*


----------



## shuttler

*&#20013;&#21335;&#22823;&#23398; Central South University, Hunan
*






















*Medical Campus
*












*CSU new campus 
*


----------



## shuttler

*Chinese researchers use the Kinect to translate sign language to text*
By Grant Brunner on July 19, 2013

Chinese researchers use the Kinect to translate sign language to text | ExtremeTech






Voice commands are de rigueur these days with products like Siri and Google Glass, but what about people who can&#8217;t speak? Sign language is the easiest way for many deaf people to communicate, but it has been difficult for computers to readily understand this complex form of communication until recently. Now, researchers in China are using Microsoft&#8217;s Kinect for Windows SDK to actively translate sign language into written text.

Microsoft Research Asia and the Institute of Computing Technology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have teamed up to use Kinect for Windows to effectively track complex hand motions in 3D space. By combining the data from both the RGB camera and the depth-sensing infrared camera in the Kinect, these researchers were able to develop an impressive system to aid communication between the deaf and the hearing.






The way this system is designed to work is actually quite clever &#8212; novel even. By recording and then normalizing the movements of sign language, the system uses an algorithm to determine the &#8220;3D motion-trajectory alignment.&#8221; Once the computer crunches the visual data, it can then match it with known words; ranked by relevance. This effectively allows the Kinect to serve as a translation engine that can enable complex communication between the hearing and the deaf.

Most impressively, this works with inexpensive off-the-shelf technology instead of costly proprietary systems. Researchers all over the world are also using the low-cost Kinect for applications ranging from diagnosing depression to allowing for the development of precognitive robots. Considering how well these projects work with existing technology, just imagine the projects that will be possible when the next-gen Kinect starts shipping.

PrimeSense, the company that developed the technology used in the first-gen Kinect, is now rumored to be in Apple&#8217;s crosshairs. Apple&#8217;s interest in the Israeli company is well documented, and an outright purchase could bring some truly valuable technology directly to Apple&#8217;s products. With PrimeSense&#8217;s motion, depth, and voice-tracking tech in its pocket, Apple could easily jump to the front of the pack in terms of human-computer interfacing. With any luck, this news will drive Microsoft to work even harder with its Kinect research and development. The more competition we have in this emerging market, the better off we&#8217;ll all be.

Research paper: Sign Language Recognition and Translation with Kinect (PDF)

Now read: Xbox One dev claims Kinect costs &#8216;almost as much&#8217; as the console itself

[Image credit: Valerie Everett]


----------



## shuttler

*Researchers find simple way to create stem cells*

19 Jul 2013 

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2013-07/19/content_16796673.htm


WASHINGTON - Chinese researchers said Thursday they have developed an "easy and safe way" to create stem cells, a breakthrough that could greatly promote the development of so-called therapeutic cloning to generate tissues and organs for treatment of diseases.

The method, described in the US journal Science, involved a cocktail of small-molecule compounds to reprogram somatic cells to a pluripotent state with the ability to differentiate into any other type of cell in the body.

Previously, the genetic manipulation required to induce this pluripotent state, via nuclear transfer into oocytes or through the ectopic expression of defined factors, is complicated, a fact that has limited the cells' clinical applications so far.







&#37011;&#23439;&#39745; &#25945;&#25480; Prof Deng Hongkui &#65288;Photo: cls.edu.cn)


In this study, Professor Deng Hongkui of Peking University said his team validated "a whole new route" to pluripotent stem cells by inducing a pluripotent state in mouse somatic cells with a combination of seven small-molecule compounds.

"Small molecules have advantages because they can be cell permeable, non-immunogenic, more cost-effective, and can be more easily synthesized, preserved, and standardized," the researchers wrote in their paper.

"Moreover, their effects on inhibiting and activating the function of specific proteins are often reversible and can be finely tuned by varying the concentrations," they said.

In total, pluripotent stem cells can be generated from mouse somatic cells at a frequency up to 0.2 percent using the combination of small-molecule compounds, the researchers found.

To characterize their differentiation potential, they injected the chemically induced pluripotent stem cells (CiPSCs) into immunodeficient mice and found that the cells were able to differentiate into tissues of all three germ layer.

Unlike mice generated through traditional methods, the mice generated from CiPSCs were "100 percent viable and apparently healthy for up to 6 months," they said.

Using the CiPSCs technology, the researchers have successfully created several healthy laboratory mice from fibroblastic cells in the adult mouse lung, including one called QingQing, Deng wrote in an email.

"QingQing has been living for more than 100 days up to now. It develops well and it's lively and healthy. What's more, QingQing has already got its own 'babies' and they no longer need to worry about their health," Deng said.

The researchers believed that these findings "open up the possibility of generating functionally desirable cell types in regenerative medicine by cell fate reprogramming using specific chemicals or drugs, instead of genetic manipulation and difficult- to-manufacture biologics."

"To date, the complete chemical reprogramming approach remains to be further improved to reprogram human somatic cells and ultimately meet the needs of regenerative medicine," they wrote.


Additional reporting:

&#12298;&#31185;&#23398;&#12299;&#65288;Science&#65289; &#26434;&#24535;&#21457;&#34920;&#21271;&#20140;&#22823;&#23398;&#37011;&#23439;&#39745;&#22242;&#38431;&#30340;&#37325;&#22823;&#30740;&#31350;&#25104;&#26524;&#8212;&#8212;&#20351;&#29992;&#23567;&#20998;&#23376;&#21270;&#21512;&#29289;&#36870;&#36716;&#8220;&#21457;&#32946;&#26102;&#38047;&#8221;

Stem cells reprogrammed using chemicals alone : Nature News & Comment





Turning human cells into stem cells without changing their genes could lead to therapies that do not carry a risk of generating mutations. ANDREW BROOKES/CORBIS

Also:



> Scientists develop safe and easy way to make stem cells
> 
> *Researchers in China announced in a paper published in the journal Science on Thursday that they have developed an "easy and safe" way to make stem cells that could rekindle the great hope for growing tissue and organs from stem cells to treat a range of diseases.
> *
> 
> *How they did it* ...
> 
> *Stem cells helped growth of heart, brain, liver, skin and muscle tissue* ...
> 
> *Work to do before human benefit* ...


----------



## shuttler

*Superlubricity speeds up microtechnology *

2013-07-02 


A collaboration between researchers at Tsinghua University and Tel Aviv University shows how a phenomenon called superlubricity, long thought to be of purely academic interest, can enable microscopic devices to move at speeds of up to 90km/h, as fast as cars on a highway.

CNMM-Research News-Superlubricity speeds up microtechnology


Imagine there&#8217;s no friction. It&#8217;s not easy, even if you try. Friction gives shoes and tires the grip to move people and cars forward. Without it, roads would be more slippery than ice. But friction is also a great waster of energy. To reduce it, lubricants are used in everything from door hinges to car engines, at considerable expense. Despite lubrication, estimates are that over one third of the fuel energy used in passenger cars is burnt to overcome friction[1], providing no useful power at all.

Things only get worse as moving parts shrink from the size of cars to the size of microchips. On the microscopic scale, the ratio of the surface area of objects to their total volume increases dramatically. This means that friction, which is a surface phenomenon, overwhelms the tendency of moving objects to keep moving, which depends on their mass and hence their volume. And introducing lubricants in microscopic machines is tricky, precisely due to their small size.






&#37073;&#27849;&#27700; &#25945;&#25480; Professor Zheng Quanshui
Photo credit: Chinese society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics





Yang Jiarui,PhD student Tsinghua University

So an article published in Physical Review Letters last week, by Jiarui Yang et al. [110, 255504 (2013)], highlighted with a Synopsis by Physics website[2], represents a breakthrough in demonstrating the practical utility of a phenomenon called superlubricity &#8211; long considered a theoretical concept that could only be demonstrated under extreme conditions &#8211; in overcoming friction on the microscopic scale. 

The article builds on work by the group of Quanshui Zheng, director of the Centre for Nano and Micro Mechanics (CNMM) at Tsinghua University. The group previously demonstrated that microscopic structures made of crystalline graphite, when sheared, restore themselves to their original shape to minimize the total exposed surface[3]. 

This self-retraction phenomenon, as Prof. Zheng and his co-workers have shown, is due to a special structure occurring at the sheared interface, called a twist boundary. This structure means that the crystalline lattice of carbon atoms either side of the sheared interface is misaligned. So rather than neatly locking into place, as layers of carbon atoms do in a normal graphite crystal, the layers at this interface slide easily past each other with almost no friction at all: this is what superlubricity means.

In the latest work, which is a collaboration with an expert in the theory of friction, Michael Urbakh at Tel Aviv University, lead author Jiarui Yang built a device to detect the speed at which the self-retraction occurred, using a laser technique precise and fast enough to catch the fleeting motion in such small objects. Prof. Urbakh remarks &#8220;I have been studying superlubricity from a theoretical perspective for years, so suddenly seeing the effect in action like this under an ordinary microscope is a major step forward&#8221;.

The results show maximum speeds of 25m/s (90km/h) for a thin, square graphite wafer just three micrometers on a side, as it self-retracts after being sheared by a microprobe. Intriguingly, the highest speeds are reached by heating the graphite to over 100 °C. The reason put forward for this by the researchers, is that the increased jiggling of atoms due to temperature enables the sliding surfaces to overcome inevitable atomic-scaled defects that occur at the interface. 

Prior to this work, the velocity of objects exhibiting superlubricity was typically measured in micrometers per second &#8211; a snail&#8217;s pace. And this was under conditions of ultra-high vacuum, for a specially controlled interface on the scale of nanometers. Commenting on the breakthrough, Prof. Zheng notes that &#8220;observing high-speed superlubricity on the much larger scale of micrometers, and even under normal atmospheric conditions, immediately raises the possibility of practical applications&#8221;.

Possible uses include future miniaturized hard disk drives and microscopic high-frequency oscillators for telecommunications, in other words microscopic devices whose performance depends on high-speed motion.



For more information about superlubricity here:

Superlubricity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Previous work done by Prof Zheng:

Nanomachines could benefit from superlubricity
Nanomachines could benefit from superlubricity - physicsworld.com


----------



## shuttler

*Hepatic stem cells to cure terminal liver diseases: study *

English.news.cn 2013-07-19 

Xinhuanet


SHANGHAI, July 19 (Xinhua) -- Hepatic stem cells, produced by a patients' own cells, could possibly help cure end-stage liver diseases, a study led by Chinese scientists has shown.

The four-year study on mice, led by Prof. Hu Yiping of the Department of Cell Biology under the Shanghai-based Second Military Medical University, has been published in the latest online version of the U.S. "Cell Stem Cell" journal, 18 July 2013 issue.

The article, titled "Reprogramming Fibroblasts into Bipotential Hepatic Stem Cells by Defined Factors," marks a breakthrough in China's hepatic stem cells study, said a statement from Hu's team.

Various liver diseases, including those at the terminal stage, would be curable by using the patients' own cells to produce hepatic stem cells and repopulating them into the patients' body, if the clinical research makes key progress, according to He Zhiying, an associate professor of the team.

Although the number of original hepatic stem cells in human liver is small, they play an important role in maintaining the organ's structure and performance.

Funded by the Chinese government, the research team reprogrammed fibroblasts and established a laboratory-based system of producing hepatic stem cells.

The hepatic stem cells produced in this way can be augmented in the lab and then used to repair the injured liver, according to the statement.

It added that the research result lays new foundations for liver disease treatment, development of new drugs and tissue engineering research.

Prof. Hu started research on hepatic stem cells in the early 1990s and focused on the relation between the cells and liver diseases.

He gradually realized that new cell therapy based on hepatic stem cells could be an effective cure for end-stage liver illnesses



*CELL Stem Cell
*
18 July 2013

Reprogramming Fibroblasts into Bipotential Hepatic Stem Cells by Defined Factors

*Authors and Affiliations*

Bing Yu-1,2, Zhi-Ying He-1,2, Pu You-1,2, Qing-Wang Han-1,2, Dao Xiang-1,2, Fei Chen-1,2, Min-Jun Wang-1,2, Chang-Cheng Liu--1,2, Xi-Wen Lin-3, Uyunbilig Borjigin-4, Xiao-Yuan Zi-1,2, Jian-Xiu Li-1,2, Hai-Ying Zhu-1,2, Wen-Lin Li-1,2, Chun-Sheng Han-3, Kirk J. Wangensteen-4, Yufang Shi-6,7, Li-Jian Hui-8, Xin Wang-4,8,9, Yi-Ping Hu-1,2

1-Department of Cell Biology, Second Military Medical University, Shanghai 200433, China
2-Center for Stem Cell and Medicine, The Graduate School, Second Military Medical University, Shanghai 200433, China
3-State Key Laboratory of Reproductive Biology, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
4-The Key Laboratory of National Education Ministry for Mammalian Reproductive Biology and Biotechnology, Inner Mongolia University, Huhhot 010070, China
5-Department of Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
6-Key Laboratory of Stem Cell Biology, Institute of Health Sciences, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences/Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200025, China
7-Child Health Institute of New Jersey and Department of Pharmacology, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, 89 French Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA
8-Laboratory of Molecular Cell Biology, Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Shanghai Institute for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200031, China
9-Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA




*&#19978;&#28023;&#31532;&#20108;&#20891;&#21307;&#22823;&#23398; Second Military Medical University, Shanghai
*


----------



## shuttler

*&#20013;&#31185;&#38498; &#19978;&#28023;&#29983;&#29289;&#30740;&#31350;&#25152; Shanghai Institute for Biological Science, China Academy Of Science
*





&#20013;&#22269;&#31185;&#23398;&#38498;&#19978;&#28023;&#29983;&#29289;&#21270;&#23398;&#19982;&#32454;&#32990;&#29983;&#29289;&#23398;&#30740;&#31350;&#25152;
Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology


----------



## shuttler

shuttler said:


> *Chinese researchers use the Kinect to translate sign language to text*
> By Grant Brunner on July 19, 2013
> 
> Chinese researchers use the Kinect to translate sign language to text | ExtremeTech
> 
> Microsoft Research Asia and the *Institute of Computing Technology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences* have teamed up to use Kinect for Windows to effectively track complex hand motions in 3D space. By combining the data from both the RGB camera and the depth-sensing infrared camera in the Kinect, these researchers were able to develop an impressive system to aid communication between the deaf and the hearing.



*&#20013;&#22269;&#31185;&#23398;&#38498; &#35745;&#31639;&#25216;&#26415;&#30740;&#31350;&#25152; Institute of Computing Technology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences*


----------



## shuttler

*Scientists discover a solution for making environmental friendly lead cells
*

*A green lead hydrometallurgical process based on a hydrogen-lead oxide fuel cell*
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/130719/ncomms3178/full/ncomms3178.html

22-Jul-13






*Extract*

The automobile industry consumed 9 million metric tons of*lead*in 2012 for lead-acid batteries. Recycling*lead*from spent lead-acid batteries is not only related to the sustainable development of the lead industry, but also to the reduction of*lead*pollution in the environment. The existing lead pyrometallurgical processes have two main issues, toxic*lead*emission into the environment and high energy consumption; the developing hydrometallurgical processes have the disadvantages of high electricity consumption, use of toxic chemicals and severe corrosion of metallic components. Here we demonstrate a new green hydrometallurgical process to recover*lead*based on a hydrogen-lead oxide fuel cell. High-purity*lead, along with electricity, is produced with only*water*as the by-product. It has a >99.5%*lead*yield, which is higher than that of the existing pyrometallurgical processes (95&#8211;97%). This greatly reduces*lead*pollution to the environment.


*Authors and Affiliations*
State Key Laboratory of Chemical Resource Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China
Junqing Pan

Electrochemical Energy Laboratory, Materials Science and Engineering Program, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712, USA
Junqing Pan, Wei Li, James Knight & Arumugam Manthiram

National Fundamental Research Laboratory of New Hazardous Chemicals Assessment and Accident Analysis, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China
Yanzhi Sun


*&#21271;&#20140;&#21270;&#24037;&#22823;&#23398; Beijing University of Chemical Technology
*

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*China buys Thielert diesel engine company out of bankruptcy*

*Purchase made by AVIC which owns Continental*

July 23, 2013 By Alton K. Marsh

The company Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) has bought Thielert Aircraft Engines out of bankruptcy in Germany, adding it to a stable of manufacturers that includes Continental Motors and Cirrus Aircraft.

Continental now has a full family of diesel engines. Continental&#8217;s 230-horsepower diesel engine certified in December 2012 is now part of a complete family of diesel engines that Continental President Rhett Ross said will all be marketed under the Centurion name. Gasoline engines will continue to be marketed with the O/IO/TSIO moniker, he added.

"All engines, gasoline or diesel will be marketed under the Continental Brand and can be ordered directly from our 1-800 number or website," Ross said in an email. "We will be working over the next few weeks to better integrate sales and support functions so that we can operate on a global basis."

Thielert (to be known in the future as Technify Motors) manufactures 135- and 155-hp diesel engines. Before bankruptcy, Thielert mounted a 350-hp diesel prototype engine on several Cessna 206 aircraft. Development was stalled during the Thielert bankruptcy. Thielert has a distribution and warranty company called Centurion that was created as part of German bankruptcy regulations. Both will be under the Technify Motors banner.

Ross says in a special AOPA Pilot report on diesel technology in the August issue that his company has staked its future on diesel engines. That also means the company has staked its future on foreign sales, since it is expected that worldwide sales of diesel engines will far outpace those in the United States. That&#8217;s another point made in the special Pilot report, "Will we all be flying diesels?&#8220;

Observers had expected the purchase by AVIC would be completed in March, but one industry observer said Germany wanted to move cautiously on deals with China.

Continental&#8217;s 230-hp engine is based on first-generation SMA technology. The type certificate says that engine is limited to 12,500 feet, but that altitude is expected to quickly increase. SMA shared its diesel secrets, but Continental made its own parts for the engine. Customers for the engine may be announced at EAA AirVenture 2013.

In 2008 there were 24 bidders for Thielert, but the economic crisis caused a delay in the sale.

China buys Thielert diesel engine company out of bankruptcy - Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association


----------



## shuttler

*Hope for a green China and the world	*

*China scientists discovered a new chemical helping plants fight drought*

 AgroNews 





Photo credit: sina.com	

China scientists discovered a new chemical that mimicks ABA, a key phytohormone that helps plants cope with drought and other environmental stresses.	

The phytohormone abscisic acid (ABA) plays a critical role in plants to combat abiotic stresses, such as drought, salinity and extreme temperatures. Data from the World Bank shows that drought stress accounts for more than half of global crop losses and the situation is getting worse with climate changes presumably caused by global warming. ABA can be used in agriculture to help different crops survive severe drought. However, the use of ABA in agricultural applications has been hampered by its chemical instability and expensive cost of industrial production of ABA.	

A collaborative research led by Dr. Jian-Kang Zhu of the Shanghai Center for Plant Stress Biology, CAS, has discovered a chemical alternative, ABA Mimics 1 (AM1), that can mimic ABA function in enhancing drought resistance in plants. The findings were published in the latest issue of Cell Research (2013, Jul 10.1038/cr.2013.95). 

AM1 is a sulfonamide-based structural analog of ABA and pyrabactin; it was shown to be effective in boosting drought resistance in plants with similar characteristics to that induced by ABA. AM1 can mimic the function of ABA through binding to multiple members of the PYR/PYL family of ABA receptors, thereby inhibiting the activity of protein phosphatase 2Cs (PP2Cs) and activating the downstream ABA signaling pathway. 

The structural analyses of AM1 in complex with PYL2-HAB1 revealed an AM1-ligand mediated gate-latch-lock interacting network, a structural feature that is conserved in the ABA-bound receptor/PP2C complex. 

In vivo assays further demonstrated that AM1 is capable of activating the expression of ABA-responsive genes, preventing transpirational water loss from leaves and dramatically enhancing drought resistance in plants.

Furthermore, AM1 is easily synthesized and more resistant to photolysis than ABA, indicating that AM1 has a great potential to become an ABA replacement in agricultural applications for stabilizing crop yield and conserve previous water resource under environmental stresses.






Photo credit: Xinjiang Bazhou Government	



More of the above in detail here:

Cell Research - Abstract of article: An ABA-mimicking ligand that reduces water loss and promotes drought resistance in plants 

Minjie Cao, 1,*, Xue Liu1,2,*, Yan Zhang,3, Xiaoqian Xue,3,4, X Edward Zhou,5, Karsten Melcher,5, Pan Gao,1, Fuxing Wang,1, Liang Zeng,1, Yang Zhao,6, Yang Zhao,7, Pan Deng,8, Dafang Zhong,8, Jian-Kang Zhu,1,6, H Eric Xu,2,5 and Yong Xu,3	

1-Shanghai Center for Plant Stress Biology and Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology, Shanghai Institutes of Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 300 Fenglin Road, Shanghai 200032, China	
2-VARI-SIMM Center, Center for Structure and Function of Drug Targets, Key Laboratory of Receptor Research, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 201203, China	
3-Institute of Chemical Biology, Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No.190 Kaiyuan Avenue, Guangzhou Science Park, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510530, China	
4-Shenyang Pharmaceutical University, No.103 Wenhua Road, Shenhe District, Shenyang, Liaoning 110016, China	
5-Laboratory of Structural Sciences, Center for Structural Biology and Drug Discovery, Van Andel Research Institute, 333 Bostwick Ave., N.E., Grand Rapids, MI 49503, USA	
6-Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47906, USA	
7-Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology, Shanghai Institutes of Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 300 Fenglin Road, Shanghai 200032, China	
8-Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 201203, China	
Correspondence: Jian-Kang Zhu, E-mail: zhu132@purdue.edu; H Eric Xu, E-mail: Eric.Xu@vai.org; Yong Xu, E-mail: xu_yong@gibh.ac.cn 

*These two authors contributed equally to this work.	

Received 26 April 2013; Revised 18 June 2013; Accepted 3 July 2013	
Advance online publication 9 July 2013	



*&#20013;&#22269;&#31185;&#23398;&#38498; &#19978;&#28023;&#33647;&#29289;&#30740;&#31350;&#25152; Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences *








*&#20013;&#22269;&#31185;&#23398;&#38498; &#24191;&#24030;&#29983;&#29289;&#21307;&#33647;&#19982;&#20581;&#24247;&#30740;&#31350;&#38498; &#21270;&#23398;&#29983;&#29289;&#23398;&#30740;&#31350;&#25152;	
Institute of Chemical Biology, Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences	*












*&#19978;&#28023;&#26893;&#29289;&#36870;&#22659;&#29983;&#29289;&#23398;&#30740;&#31350;&#20013;&#24515; 
Shanghai Center for Plant Stress Biology, China Academy of Sciences	

&#20013;&#22269;&#31185;&#23398;&#38498; &#19978;&#28023;&#29983;&#21629;&#31185;&#23398;&#30740;&#31350;&#38498; &#26893;&#29289;&#29983;&#29702;&#29983;&#24577;&#30740;&#31350;&#25152;	
Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology, Shanghai Institutes of Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences *

















*&#27784;&#38451;&#33647;&#31185;&#22823;&#23398; Shenyang Pharmaceutical University* 






New campus plan


----------



## hari sud

*Chinese spending billions of dollars on science & technology amounts to nothing. Here is an example.*
*Legacy Of Failure Is Hard To Shake* 

July 24, 2013: Russia and China continue to have problems getting their latest SLBM (Sea Launched Ballistic Missile) designs to work reliably. The Russian Bulava and Chinese JL-2 have both been announced as ready for use yet neither has actually entered service. This is a common pattern with Russian and Chinese military technology and is especially true with SLBMs. 


Strategic Weapons: Legacy Of Failure Is Hard To Shake

There seems to be an unending series of problems with the new Russian and Chinese SLBMs. The latest Russian SLBM, the Bulava (also known as R-30 3M30 and SS-NX-30), was almost cancelled because test flights kept failing. The Bulava finally successfully completed its test program on December 23rd, 2011. That made 11 successful Bulava test firings out of 18 attempts. The last two missiles make five in a row that were successfully fired. As a result of this, the Bulava has been accepted into service, with a development test firing success rate of 61 percent. But there are still problems to be worked out and more test firings are coming. In early 2012 Russia announced that its SSBNs (nuclear powered ballistic missile boats) would resume long range "combat patrols" within a year. On schedule, the Russian Navy finally accepted its first new Borei class SSBN (Yury Dolgoruky) for service last December 30th. Thus, it appears that the newly commissioned Yury Dolgoruky will be the first Russian SSBN in many years to make a long range cruise, as soon as it has a working SLBM to arm it. The Russians will probably not announce this until it&#8217;s all over, lest something go wrong at sea. So far there has been no announcement one way or the other. 

Then there is the Chinese JL (Julang) 2 SLBM, which was supposed to enter service five years ago and still hasn&#8217;t. This missile has had a lot of problems, as have the SSBNs that carried them. The 42 ton JL-2 has a range of 7,000 kilometers and would enable China to aim missiles at any target in the United States from a 094 class SSBN cruising off Hawaii or Alaska. Each 094 boat can carry twelve of these missiles, which are naval versions of the existing land based 42 ton DF-31 ICBM. No Chinese SSBN has ever gone on a combat cruise because these boats have been very unreliable in addition to having no dependable SLBMs to carry. The Type 94 class sub was seen recently undergoing what appears to be sea trials but it is unclear if that was a success. America, Russia, Britain, and France have all sent SSBNs out on patrols and still do. The U.S. has had SSBNs going out with nuclear armed, and ready to fire, missiles for over half a century. What is going on with China? There appears to be an unending supply of technical and political (fear of failure) problems. Russia and China are having similar problems with many other new ballistic and cruise missile designs that have been reported as out of development but not yet in service because additional problems showed up. 

It doesn&#8217;t always have to be that way, but you don&#8217;t often hear about complex weapons that consistently perform flawlessly. They do exist. For example, test firings of production models of the U.S. Navy Trident II SLBM have never failed. Trident II is the standard SLBM for U.S. SSBNs. There have been 143 of these missile launches, which involve an SSBN (ballistic missile carrying nuclear sub) firing one of their Trident IIs, with the nuclear warhead replaced by one of similar weight but containing sensors and communications equipment. 

The test results for the Trident while in development were equally impressive, with 87 percent successful (in 23 development tests) for the Trident I and 98 percent (49 tests) of the Trident II. The Trident I served from 1979-2005, while the Trident II entered service in 1990.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

Where is India&#65311;Where does India stand in relation to China&#65311;Dark age&#65311;

*Huawei to Bring 5G Technology in 2020?*

By Vittorio Hernandez | July 23, 2013 9:48 AM EST

Video&#65306;Huawei to Bring 5G Technology in 2020? (VIDEOS) - International Business Times

The frequently belittled Chinese tech company Huawei may just surprise techies and take centre stage in 2020 when it makes available 5G technology. The hint of being on the forefront of technological advancement from the Chinese tech giant comes even if 4G has barely landed.

Tony Wen, Huawei head of 5g technology development, said fibre broadband connection speeds from the next-gen mobile network with possible download speeds of 100Mbps is within sight in the next 7 years.

Mr Wen said Huawei has 200 people working on the 5G project and it allocated a specified amount for the research and development of 5G technology.

South Korean tech giant Samsung has about the same timetable of a commercial roll-out of a 5G technology by 2020.

But before 5G arrives, Huawei is conducting a trial run to test the speed of its 4G technology on the high-speed MagLev train in Shanghai. The Chinese tech firm deployed an LTR network on the train which travels from the centre of the Shanghai district to the international airport. The train achieved a speed of up to 431 km per hour throughout the length of its 31-kilometre track.

Huawei is providing equipment to 85 networks that have begun moving toward high-speed long term evolution or 4G networks.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## jhungary

cirr said:


> Where is India&#65311;Where does India stand in relation to China&#65311;Dark age&#65311;
> 
> *Huawei to Bring 5G Technology in 2020?*
> 
> By Vittorio Hernandez | July 23, 2013 9:48 AM EST
> 
> Video&#65306;Huawei to Bring 5G Technology in 2020? (VIDEOS) - International Business Times
> 
> The frequently belittled Chinese tech company Huawei may just surprise techies and take centre stage in 2020 when it makes available 5G technology. The hint of being on the forefront of technological advancement from the Chinese tech giant comes even if 4G has barely landed.
> 
> Tony Wen, Huawei head of 5g technology development, said fibre broadband connection speeds from the next-gen mobile network with possible download speeds of 100Mbps is within sight in the next 7 years.
> 
> Mr Wen said Huawei has 200 people working on the 5G project and it allocated a specified amount for the research and development of 5G technology.
> 
> South Korean tech giant Samsung has about the same timetable of a commercial roll-out of a 5G technology by 2020.
> 
> But before 5G arrives, Huawei is conducting a trial run to test the speed of its 4G technology on the high-speed MagLev train in Shanghai. The Chinese tech firm deployed an LTR network on the train which travels from the centre of the Shanghai district to the international airport. The train achieved a speed of up to 431 km per hour throughout the length of its 31-kilometre track.
> 
> Huawei is providing equipment to 85 networks that have begun moving toward high-speed long term evolution or 4G networks.



actually your article is misdirect. *Samsung already made 5G*, and they are now testing it. Reported Speed as 1.056Gbps to a distant up to 2 kilometre. (it's 1000Mbps not 100Mbps for 5G speed.......)

5G Is Already Ridiculously Fast - SourceFed - SourceFed


----------



## shuttler

Unbelievable!

This thread all for Chinese science and innovations has attracted some jealous incapable indians et al and the unscrupulous to troll!


----------



## shuttler

*Low-Water Lunch: A Chinese Breakthrough on Irrigation?
*
JULY 8, 2013

http://www.theworld.org/

*Growing more food with less water will be one of the biggest challenges in the coming era of surging populations and increasing climate disruption. In China, scientists say they&#8217;ve developed a new irrigation method that&#8217;s twice as efficient as today&#8217;s best technology, part of an increasingly urgent effort by researchers around the world to meet the water challenge.*

No lunch is complete without water &#8211; the water you drink, the water that helped grow the wheat in your sandwich bread, and the water that helped grow the vegetables or meat between the slices.

China&#8217;s got a problem here. It has a chronic and growing water shortage, and on the arid northern plain, where many thirsty crops are grown &#8211; the water table is plummeting, down hundreds of feet within living memory. Most of China&#8217;s water use goes to agriculture, and much of that water is used inefficiently.

Surface irrigation is king in China &#8211; and on a farm on the outskirts of Beijing, a mushroom farmer is letting water gush from a hose &#8211; at high noon &#8211; onto a long raised mound of soil





*Normal surface irrigation on a controlled patch of experimental farm. (Photo: Mary Kay Magistad)*

The inefficient use of water is common in China, but this is no common farm. A stone&#8217;s throw away is another long, raised mound of soil, with no water source in sight. Yet, the mushrooms underneath the canvas covering are firm and healthy, and the soil is slightly moist.

The first field is the &#8216;control&#8217; &#8211; which shows what happens when you do normal surface irrigation. The second field is trying out a new underground irrigation system, where the plants roots draw only the water they need. Gu Yunxia, the agronomist managing this project, is impressed with what the new system makes possible.

&#8220;It cuts down on pests, and fungus and weeds,&#8221; she says. &#8220;We save a huge amount of water, and the vegetables also have great flavor.&#8221;

This system was dubbed &#8216;trace irrigation,&#8217; by its inventor, Beijing native and businessman Zhu Jun.

&#8220;I found if I put the chopsticks in water, and took them out, there was a little water going up between the chopsticks,&#8221; he says. &#8220;And if I held the chopsticks higher, the water goes higher. And I realized, that&#8217;s actually the capillary force that I learned in the textbooks in primary school. And maybe that is a good way for irrigation.&#8221;

Capillary force, for those who might be rusty on what they learned in school, is when molecules are so attracted to each other that they can pull liquid against the force of gravity &#8211; kind of the way a kerosene lamp works. In this case, it&#8217;s the roots of a plant pulling water, and when they have enough, they stop pulling.

This system uses PV pipes, buried a foot or even deeper in soil. The pipes get narrower, and narrower, until they&#8217;re like thin straws, with something that looks like a tiny showerhead at the end, with little white threads coming out of it. These pipes are buried in the soil &#8211; and the plant sucks the moisture it needs from these threads.





*Trace Irrigation inventor Zhu Jun holds one of his applications for a patent on the technology. Zhu has so far been granted patents in China, New Zealand and Japan, and has applications pending in the United States and elsewhere. (Photo: Mary Kay Magistad)*

Zhu says, he has worked on this system for about a decade. Before that, he&#8217;d worked on a technology called &#8220;dry water&#8221; &#8211; encasing water droplets in silicon. A couple of pounds of the stuff is enough to grow a tree in a desert for 100 days &#8211; one of many solutions that the world&#8217;s scientists have been busy developing, to cope with a growing global water shortage.

Another is underground drip irrigation &#8211; similar to Zhu&#8217;s system, but with a recurring problem. He says, in such systems, there&#8217;s a small and irregular flow of water, so pipes can easily get clogged. And that&#8217;s been a limit on the otherwise revolutionary technology of drip irrigation that Israel first introduced decades ago.

&#8220;I found that if the capillary pipe gets too small, no matter how you purify the water, the particles in the water will still block the pipe,&#8221; he says. &#8220;That was a bottleneck for me, for awhile.&#8221;

Eventually, he experimented with a double-membrane to filter particles, and found a combination that wouldn&#8217;t clog, even with very low water pressure. That&#8217;s one of the innovations for which he&#8217;s seeking patents.

Zhu says his system saves 70 or more of the water used in surface irrigation in China, and 30 to 50 percent compared to drip irrigation. Those are big claims, says Bob von Bernuth, the education director of the US Irrigation Association.

&#8220;Well, I guess anytime someone claims to save 50 percent of water, especially over drip irrigation, one becomes immediately skeptical,&#8221; von Bernuth says. &#8220;I can tell you that it&#8217;s possible, but unlikely&#8230;.it suggests they weren&#8217;t doing a very good job of saving water to begin with.&#8221;

In China, that&#8217;s true. Many farmers don&#8217;t consider the true cost of the water they&#8217;re using, because they just divert rivers or drill wells to get it, so they often don&#8217;t use water efficiently.

And in China, there&#8217;s been significant interest in Zhu&#8217;s new system. He has already received two patents his China and one in New Zealand and Japan for trace irrigation, and he has applications pending in dozens of other countries, including the United States. Von Bernuth reviewed Zhu&#8217;s US patent application, and said it doesn&#8217;t seem that different from underground drip technology already in use. But Zhu Jun says it is, and local Chinese governments are keenly interested.

Beijing&#8217;s municipal Science & Technology Commission, and its Municipal Agriculture Commission started doing their own trace irrigation trials six years ago, liked the results, and invested. The city of Wuhan has offered him land to build a factory, and the government of Xinjiang &#8211; one of China&#8217;s driest regions &#8211; is now growing test crops. If all goes well, they plan to use the system on a larger scale next year. Saving half the water, without a fussy system that needs electrical power and lots of human supervision, would be a godsend for growing crops in the desert.





Agronomist Kim Ji-Seok points to soil with trace irrigation that is moist, but not wet. (Photo: Mary Kay Magistad)

Meanwhile, Kim Ji-Seok, a Korean agronomist, was so intrigued by this new technology that he left his job with agribusiness giant Syngenta to join Zhu company Puquan &#8211; which means &#8216;spreading spring.&#8217; He takes me for a tour around the experimental farm on the edge of Beijing &#8211; past walnut groves, peach trees, corn, cotton and peanut fields.

&#8220;The government is quite excited about the result last year,&#8221; he says. Excited enough to greenlight bigger scale trials &#8211; growing grapes, watermelon, jujubes, and licorice.

And Kim&#8217;s excited too. It&#8217;s not so often an agronomist gets to work on what just might prove to be a game-changing technology that could help solve one of China&#8217;s &#8211; and the world&#8217;s &#8212; biggest problems &#8211; lack of adequate water &#8212; and maybe one or two other problems, to boot.

We walk into a greenhouse, with rain pattering overhead. One section of the greenhouse&#8211; which uses drip irrigation &#8211; feels humid. The other section, using trace irrigation, doesn&#8217;t. Kim says, that&#8217;s because there&#8217;s less water in the soil to evaporate up.

&#8220;In this way, the diseases decrease,&#8221; he says. &#8220;So we use less pesticides, less fungicides than drip line.&#8221;

And half as much fertilizer, too. If the &#8216;trace irrigation&#8217; system is used on a large scale throughout China, that would be good news for China&#8217;s lakes and rivers and groundwater, now choked with agricultural runoff.

Kim also shows off how uniformly attractive the vegetables on the trace irrigation side of the greenhouse are, compared to those using drip irrigation.

&#8220;If you use a drip line, the first one (along the line) is very big and tasty,&#8221; he says. But then they get smaller, and at the end, you get a tiny one. If it&#8217;s not uniform, you cannot sell them.&#8221;

It&#8217;s time to break for lunch, and Kim suggests we start with crudités &#8211; a little trace irrigation-grown celery. I crunch into mine and declare it delicious. Kim grins broadly. And if this is a taste of things to come in China, growing better produce with less fertilizer, pesticide and much less water, there&#8217;s certainly something to smile about.

_&#8220;What&#8217;s for Lunch&#8221; is the latest chapter in &#8220;Food for 9 Billion,&#8221; a two-year project spearheaded by Homelands Productions and the Center for Investigative Reporting, and broadcast partners PBS NewsHour and American Public Media&#8217;s Marketplace._


----------



## 474474

jhungary said:


> actually your article is misdirect. *Samsung already made 5G*, and they are now testing it. Reported Speed as 1.056Gbps to a distant up to 2 kilometre. (it's 1000Mbps not 100Mbps for 5G speed.......)
> 
> 5G Is Already Ridiculously Fast - SourceFed - SourceFed



2KM means it's nearly unusable, maybe it's only for LAN/WAN not internet


----------



## jhungary

shuttler said:


> Unbelievable!
> 
> This thread all for Chinese science and innovations has attracted some jealous incapable indians et al and the unscrupulous to troll!



Well, I am just pointing out the Article does not have the *UPDATED* information, Samsung *MADE* 5G May this year and the Tested Speed for 5G is 1.056 Gbps over 2KM, rebuttal welcome 



474474 said:


> 2KM means it's nearly unusable, maybe it's only for LAN/WAN not internet



Well, as they say they are still testing the 5G capability, the range could be extended and/or speed may be dialled back for a longer lambda frequency, who knows.

But one thing for sure, 100MBps is 4G speed, not 5G speed. 

In theory, 4G speed can reach 672 Mbps on paper, the fastest actual 4G network is LTE-Advance standard, claim was 1Gbps peak download and 500Mbps peak upload but actually they can do 300 Mbps downstream and 50Mbps upstream

LTE Advanced - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2 km will be more than the usual LAN/WAN usage, a standard land size (front) in Australia is 10 meter per house, 2 Km would have cover 200 household (without road) and the Australian standard is already the largest. There are no point connecting LAN/WAN with 2 Km range. 

Also, cell tower often have less than 2Km range in metro city anyway so it is for mobile internet (Standard Metro Tower range in Sydney is 1.5 km), not LAN or WAN or even Wifi

For example, the current 802.11n Wifi frequency have an indoor range of 70 meter. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11n-2009#Comparison


----------



## cirr

jhungary said:


> actually your article is misdirect. *Samsung already made 5G*, and they are now testing it. Reported Speed as 1.056Gbps to a distant up to 2 kilometre. (it's 1000Mbps not 100Mbps for 5G speed.......)
> 
> 5G Is Already Ridiculously Fast - SourceFed - SourceFed



We are talking about network infrastructure and the large-scale commercial roll of same&#12290;

Samsung is not even an infrastructure player&#65292;Its speciality will be in handsets making use of 5G network&#12290;

As a matter of fact&#65292;Huawei had completed an in-house demonstration at *5Gbps* throughput&#65306;

Light Reading - Huawei Sets Out Its 5G Stall


----------



## jhungary

cirr said:


> We are talking about network infrastructure and the large-scale commercial roll of same&#12290;
> 
> Samsung is not even an infrastructure player&#65292;Its speciality will be in handsets making use of 5G network&#12290;
> 
> As a matter of fact&#65292;*Huawei had completed an in-house demonstration at 5Gbps throughput*&#65306;
> 
> Light Reading - Huawei Sets Out Its 5G Stall



Do you know what's "throughput" mean in your article?



> "Tong said Huawei was advanced in prototyping a device and had completed a demo at 50Gbit/s *throughput*"



according to this

Throughput - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



> In communication networks, such as Ethernet or packet radio, throughput or network throughput is the average rate of successful message delivery over a communication channel. This data may be delivered over a physical or logical link, or pass through a certain network node.



That mean the article you refer to only point out that Huawei are testing the theoretical "LIMITS" of 5G network. By no mean they are putting them in a WCDMA network and try them (Which Samsung did already) otherwise you will have the same figure gave out like Samsung do (a term of Speed over a distance) 

Samsung have an Exact prototype of 5G device and they are testing it at the moment, not over a Throughput....

and what you say Samsung is not an Infrastructure player is really laughable.....Have you heard this kind of news before??

Black & Veatch : Sprint Network Vision | Infrastructure Upgrade
Samsung Network Infrastructure to Complement Sprint Network Vision with LTE Small Cell Deployment Program Award | Business Wire
About Samsung - Samsung

Just you never heard of Samsung do infrastructure does not mean they are not a Infrastructure player...

Don't want to say much more but just please compare your reference article to this artice from the same site and you will know what the heck am I talking about

http://www.lightreading.com/blog/re...nstitutes/samsung-inching-toward-5g/240154774

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

jhungary said:


> Do you know what's "throughput" mean in your article?
> 
> 
> according to this
> 
> Throughput - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
> 
> 
> 
> That mean the article you refer to only point out that Huawei are testing the theoretical "LIMITS" of 5G network. By no mean they are putting them in a WCDMA network and try them (Which Samsung did already) otherwise you will have the same figure gave out like Samsung do (a term of Speed over a distance)
> 
> Samsung have an Exact prototype of 5G device and they are testing it at the moment, not over a Throughput....
> 
> and what you say Samsung is not an Infrastructure player is really laughable.....Have you heard this kind of news before??
> 
> Black & Veatch : Sprint Network Vision | Infrastructure Upgrade
> Samsung Network Infrastructure to Complement Sprint Network Vision with LTE Small Cell Deployment Program Award | Business Wire
> About Samsung - Samsung
> 
> Just you never heard of Samsung do infrastructure does not mean they are not a Infrastructure player...
> 
> Don't want to say much more but just please compare your reference article to this artice from the same site and you will know what the heck am I talking about
> 
> Light Reading - Samsung: Inching Toward 5G?



I will just ask you one question&#65306;

Waht's Samsung&#8216;s infrastructure revenue in Q1 2013&#65311;

Just by Samsung&#65292;not some silly joint venture in America where Huawei is what you know&#12290;


----------



## jhungary

cirr said:


> I will just ask you one question&#65306;
> 
> Waht's Samsung&#8216;s infrastructure revenue in Q1 2013&#65311;
> 
> Just by Samsung&#65292;not some silly joint venture in America where Huawei is what you know&#12290;



Samsung Engineering - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Again, just because you never heard of it, does not mean they don't exist.

Samsung Engineering have a Revenue 8.4 billion USD in 2011, if you want Q1 2013, you probably need to check the corporate info for it. they list their field of business are Hydrocarbon and Industrial and Infrastructure.

Samsung also have a construction branch, which builds domestic infrastructure (shopping mall, apartment building and so on) They are responsible for domestic Infrastructure.

I am not saying Samsung have anything "Compare" to Huawei in term of Telecommunication Infrastructure, but they *DO* infrastructure, this is what I was saying

But when you compare Samsung and Huawei, there are nothing to compare as one is a pure Telco (Huawei) while Samsung are a multi-polar company, while Samsung Group last year revenue reaches 241 Billions USD, Huawei is only reaching 35 Billions USD revenue.


----------



## cirr

No freaking Indian maker in the top-10 list&#65311;

How is that even possbile? India no longer shining?

*Chinese smartphones strengthen foothold in Q2 top 10*

*Summary: Shipments of China-branded smartphones Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo and Coolpad, increased 44 percent compared to last year, with most sales coming from emerging markets.*

By Ellyne Phneah | July 23, 2013

Chinese-branded smartphones, led by Huawei, have made headway in the global smartphone shipments due to their strong brand image and channel support, despite Samsung and Apple's dominance.

According to TrendForce data released Tuesday, smartphone shipments for Q2 2013 hit 221 million units, an increase of 6.6 percent from the previous quarter, and a 31.4 percent increase from the same period a year ago. 

It was also found the shipment of Chinese-branded smartphones--Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo and Coolpad--had increased 44 percent compared to the same quarter last year 2012, and also made it to the top ten in terms of global smartphone shipments.

Among Chinese vendors, Huawei had retaken the market lead from Lenovo, shipping a total of 14 million smartphone units, with 30 percent of those devices directed at emerging markets including India, Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe. 

Both Lenovo and Coolpad were also able to ship more than 10 million smartphone units, more than what some global manufacturers were able to accomplish, due to their strong brand image and local channel support.






Global smartphone shipments in Q1 2013 and Q2 2013 (Source: TrendForce)

"Having made it to the global top ten, the potential of China's top four smartphone brandsHuawei, ZTE, Lenovo, Coolpad--should not be taken lightly," Trendforce observed.



Samsung maintains leadership due to mid-tier smartphone success

Samsung's phone shipments continued to dominate and hit about 71 million units in the second quarter this year, a record high for the company. This is largely due to its shipment and sales performance in the mid-end sector.

Samsung's channel and brand marketing campaign efforts have so far paid off especially well in rapidly emerging markets such as China, where the South Korean electronics giant is a widely recognized global smartphone brand, TrendForce noted. 

Its latest Galaxy S4 however, ended up falling short of expectations, but the research firm said South Korean giant had shipped 23 million Galaxy S4 handsets.

"Even if Samsung is unable to meet expectations with its newest flagship device, the growing sales of its mid-entry level handsets could still help it maintain a dominant position within the global smartphone stage," TrendForce said.

In comparison, Apple managed to ship only 22 million iPhone 5 units this quarter. Even though its entire iPhone line, ended at 27 million units, it was a 30 percent decrease quarter-on-quarter, while the company's worldwide market share fell to 12.1 percent.

If the release of new Apple smartphones are delayed in the next quarter, Apple's second quarter sales performances are in danger of worsening, TrendForce said.

Chinese smartphones strengthen foothold in Q2 top 10 | ZDNet


----------



## cirr

jhungary said:


> Samsung Engineering - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
> 
> Again, just because you never heard of it, does not mean they don't exist.
> 
> Samsung Engineering have a Revenue 8.4 billion USD in 2011, if you want Q1 2013, you probably need to check the corporate info for it. they list their field of business are Hydrocarbon and Industrial and Infrastructure.
> 
> I am not saying Samsung have anything "Compare" to Huawei, but they *DO* infrastructure, this is what I was saying



What has Sansumg Engineering got to do with network infrastructure sales?

Was it not Samsung Engineering & Construction before? I bought a Samsung apartment in Seoul built by Samsung E & C Co. back in 1999. Has it gone bankrupt and since become Samsung Engineering Co.&#65311;

Give me the sales figure for Q1 2013.


----------



## jhungary

cirr said:


> What has Sansumg Engineering got to do with network infrastructure sales?
> 
> Was it not Samsung Engineering & Construction before? I bought a Samsung apartment in Seoul built by Samsung E & C Co. back in 1999. Has it gone bankrupt and since become Samsung Engineering Co.&#65311;
> 
> Give me the sales figure for Q1 2013.



Dude, 1999? Samsung Construction and Engineering have been renamed Samsung C&T group in 2007

Samsung C&T Corporation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Get with time will ya??

And as for What have Samsung Engineering have to do with Network Infrastructure...First of all, you need to define what count as Network Infrastructure, basically a pile of copper wire underground that carry the packet to a router they were all network infrastructure, Samsung Engineer lay underground copper wire for Telco service in Abu Dubai and Saudi Arabia, and Samsung Communication design router for network gateway and finally Samsung make those Galaxy Phone to use the service and hence completing the infrastructure. Need I say more??

And strangely enough Samsung Engineering does not release Q1 2013 figure yet, their 2012 revenue is standing at 8.9 billions USD.


----------



## 474474

jhungary said:


> Well, I am just pointing out the Article does not have the *UPDATED* information, Samsung *MADE* 5G May this year and the Tested Speed for 5G is 1.056 Gbps over 2KM, rebuttal welcome
> 
> 
> Well, as they say they are still testing the 5G capability, the range could be extended and/or speed may be dialled back for a longer lambda frequency, who knows.
> 
> But one thing for sure, 100MBps is 4G speed, not 5G speed.
> 
> In theory, 4G speed can reach 672 Mbps on paper, the fastest actual 4G network is LTE-Advance standard, claim was 1Gbps peak download and 500Mbps peak upload but actually they can do 300 Mbps downstream and 50Mbps upstream
> 
> LTE Advanced - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
> 
> 2 km will be more than the usual LAN/WAN usage, a standard land size (front) in Australia is 10 meter per house, 2 Km would have cover 200 household (without road) and the Australian standard is already the largest. There are no point connecting LAN/WAN with 2 Km range.
> 
> Also, cell tower often have less than 2Km range in metro city anyway so it is for mobile internet (Standard Metro Tower range in Sydney is 1.5 km), not LAN or WAN or even Wifi
> 
> For example, the current 802.11n Wifi frequency have an indoor range of 70 meter.
> 
> IEEE 802.11n-2009 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



I mean a WAN for a big company premise, they usually use Ethernet cables so Wifi is not a comparison, it could save money in cabling and be more efficient


----------



## jhungary

474474 said:


> I mean a WAN for a big company premise, they usually use Ethernet cables so Wifi is not a comparison, it could save money in cabling and be more efficient



You do know WAN is already Gigabit right? so it is unreasonable for Samsung to:

1.) Announce that they have create a Gigabit LAN/WAN configuration, which have been done *LONG AGO*....
2.) Unless the big company you supposed using the Wifi network is more than 2 Kilometre in dimension, said product could not be marketable. Think about this,* how many company you know have the office for more than 2 Square Kilometer?* That require said Gigabit LTE Network? How profitable your product is going to be if you can only target those company?? It will be a marketing nightmare. Because your product can only sell to handful of company, almost like exclusive.......

Hence I said it is not reasonable for Samsung to apply said product into Wifi or WAN/LAN but mobile boardband.


----------



## 474474

jhungary said:


> You do know WAN is already Gigabit right? so it is unreasonable for Samsung to:
> 
> 1.) Announce that they have create a Gigabit LAN/WAN configuration, which have been done *LONG AGO*....
> 2.) Unless the big company you supposed using the Wifi network is more than 2 Kilometre in dimension, said product could not be marketable. Think about this,* how many company you know have the office for more than 2 Square Kilometer?* That require said Gigabit LTE Network? How profitable your product is going to be if you can only target those company?? It will be a marketing nightmare. Because your product can only sell to handful of company, almost like exclusive.......
> 
> Hence I said it is not reasonable for Samsung to apply said product into Wifi or WAN/LAN but mobile boardband.



Yes, but we have a huge complicated class about wired ethernet, it's really complcated so this could simplify things


----------



## jhungary

474474 said:


> Yes, but we have a huge complicated class about wired ethernet, it's really complcated so this could simplify things



So you are saying Samsung is making a 2KM gigabit wireless Mobile internet for big company that have a 2 Sq Km office only, but those are not 5G. Well......good one


----------



## 474474

jhungary said:


> So you are saying Samsung is making a 2KM gigabit wireless Mobile internet for big company that have a 2 Sq Km office only, but those are not 5G. Well......good one



I'm not saying anythign about their intentions, I'm suggesting where it could help


----------



## jhungary

474474 said:


> I'm not saying anythign about their intentions, I'm suggesting where it could help



You do know Samsung is doing it on a Cell tower, so you are suggesting big company erect their own cell tower inside their properties is cheaper than laying ultra fast cable?

because if you are suggesting that those company used existing Cell tower network for that device, that will make that device 5G....You do understand this right??


----------



## 474474

jhungary said:


> You do know Samsung is doing it on a Cell tower, so you are suggesting big company erect their own cell tower inside their properties is cheaper than laying ultra fast cable?
> 
> because if you are suggesting that those company used existing Cell tower network for that device, that will make that device 5G....You do understand this right??



Now I do, I just didn't know you'd need a cell tower.


----------



## jhungary

474474 said:


> Now I do, I just didn't know you'd need a cell tower.



From the beginning to the end it is suggest that Samsung is testing with Microwave device (with Cell tower) how else do you suppose they did the transfer up to 2 KM?

Hence you need a microwave tower...........

It's not land line, nor Wifi, they are talking about Mobile Boardband


----------



## Armstrong

So @jhungary , you're a bouncer, a barman, an entrepreneur, a cavalry soldier, a womanizer, a citizen of the world with more nationalities than the hair on McCain's scalp & now you're a Telecom Engineer or a Specialist as well !  

I'm thinking of using my connections & having you sent to Pakistan so that you can work as my Right-Hand Man as I take over 'My Country & build it in my Image' !  

And yes the perks that come with that include - A Personal Harem full of the most exotic belly dancers that the world has ever produced !  

But No Alcohol or Pork & if you're caught with either - You might go through a painful process for you but delightful & entertaining for the rest of us that sees you becoming the eunuch guarding the same Harem you used to Party in before !


----------



## 474474

jhungary said:


> From the beginning to the end it is suggest that Samsung is testing with Microwave device (with Cell tower) how else do you suppose they did the transfer up to 2 KM?
> 
> Hence you need a microwave tower...........
> 
> It's not land line, nor Wifi, they are talking about Mobile Boardband



Now don't rub it in, I get it.


----------



## shuttler

*New tests improve in vitro fertilization*

Updated: 2013-07-24 21:35 By Chen Hong and Li Yifei ( chinadaily.com.cn) 

chinadaily.com.cn







Credit: gcnet.cn






Credit: nescent


*&#20013;&#20449;&#28248;&#38597;&#29983;&#27542;&#19982;&#36951;&#20256;&#19987;&#31185;&#21307;&#38498;
Reproductiv and Genetic Hospital CITIC-Xiangya*





Credit: CITIC-Xiangya


Scientists in Shenzhen said they have applied a new genome sequencing method to detect genetic defects among in vitro fertilized embryos, which can lead to a higher chance of having healthy babies for couples who suffer infertility.

The first baby screened with the new method - who was born in Hunan province on Aug 24, 2012, weighing 2.4 kg - is now at normal development, BGI Shenzhen announced at a news conference on Monday.





Credit: MIT Tech Review


Scientists removed seven to 12 cells from morphologically normal human embryos five days after fertilization in vitro for preimplantation sequencing. Then they used the latest DNA technologies to detect abnormalities, which will determine the genetically intact embryos.

&#8220;The preimplantation sequencing may have a crucial role in improving the efficiency and safety of human assisted reproduction,&#8221; said Du Yutao, vice-president of BGI Health Group.

Gabor Vajta, a professor from the University of Copenhagen, said the discovery can bring the success rate of pregnancies from 50-55 percent to around 60-70 percent.

Nearly 5 million babies have been born using in vitro fertilization since the birth of world's first test-tube baby in 1978.

In recent years, new-generation sequencing has been widely used in stem cell transplant and metastatic tumor cells, mainly associated with the improvements of human health, according to BGI.

&#8220;The new-generation sequencing method shows significant accuracy enhancement over other existing screening techniques in identifying abnormalities in embryos, which allows doctors to only implant a healthy lab-fertilized egg in the womb,&#8221; said Lu Guangxiu, president of Reproductive and Genetic Hospital of Citic-Xiangya, which cooperated with BGI.

According to BGI, Citic-Xiangya transferred sequenced embryos for 33 couples and has achieved 22 pregnancies since 2010. The success rate stood at 66.7 percent. So far, 17 healthy babies have been born.







Credit&#65306;ayrcob.org

*About BGI*

BGI was founded in Beijing on Sept 9th, 1999 with the mission of supporting the development of science and technology, building strong research teams, and promoting the development of scientific partnership in genomics field.

With a goal toward excellence, high efficiency, and accuracy, BGI has successfully completed a large number of projects. These include sequencing 1% of the human genome for the International Human Genome Project, contributing 10% to the International Human HapMap Project, the first Asian diploid genome, 1000 genomes project, human Gut Metagenome, , being a key player in the Sino-British Chicken Genome Project, and completely sequencing the rice genome, the silkworm genome, the potato genome, carrying out research to combat SARS and, most recently decoding the genome of Germany deadly E.coli,.

In 2007, BGI&#8217;s headquarters was relocated to Shenzhen as the first citizen-managed, non-profit research institution in China. With the integrative structure of research innovation, platform development and industrial application, BGI aims to develop research collaboration and provide scientific support to scientists all over the world, contribute to the advancement of innovative biology research, molecular breeding, healthcare and related fields. BGI is dedicated to facilitate the applications in Healthcare, Agriculture, and Environment, to serve the people for a better life.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*New screens can pinpoint gene mutation*

Updated: 2013-07-23 23:18 By Liu Zhihua ( China Daily) 

chinadaily.com.cn


The Beijing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has developed a new technique to scan for mutations in the gene p53 to detect malignant genetic changes in human body.

Early detection of gene mutations can allow doctors to direct people to take precautions to stop malignant tumor growth, or to receive cancer treatment early to increase their chances of survival.

The institution announced it will cooperate with Sinopharm International to promote the technology nationwide.

P53 is one of the genes that suppress tumor formation, but when p53 itself mutates, the chance of a tumor formation will increase 50 to 90 percent.

Since the gene was discovered in the 1980s, scientists have been developing technologies to identify mutations in the gene and cancers related to those mutations.

In recent years, scanning of p53 has been used in some top hospitals in China to supervise the tumor growth in patients who undergo chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

However, this is the first time that the scanning of p53 is to be used on healthy people, according to Zhang Jie, the head researcher of the p53 scanning program with the institution.

The scanning services for cancer patients are usually very detailed and are very expensive, costing at least 10,000 yuan ($1,630) each time, Zhang said at a gene scanning technologies forum held by Health Times.

"Our technology is improved, and much simpler. It costs only about 1,000 yuan, and can be applied among common people as a body check choice."

If there is a mutation at a certain position of p53, there is a 50 to 90 percent chance there is, or will soon be, related tumors and a closer checkup will be required, Zhang says.

With only three drops of blood, the test can identify nearly all the important p53 mutations as an indication of the likelihood of related cancers, including liver cancer and breast cancer, Zhang adds.

However, some experts, including Du Bing, deputy director with Beijing Health Management Association, emphasize that the scanning can only exclude the possibility of some cancers, not of all cancers.

Du says the formation of a cancer is very complicated and prolonged.

Even if the test suggests there is no mutation at a certain time, there is no guarantee there will be no genetic mutation in future, or that those tested will definitely not have cancer, Du adds.


*&#21271;&#20140;&#24066;&#30142;&#30149;&#39044;&#38450;&#25511;&#21046;&#20013;&#24515;
The Beijing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
*

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## jhungary

Armstrong said:


> So @jhungary , you're a bouncer, a barman, an entrepreneur, a cavalry soldier, a womanizer, a citizen of the world with more nationalities than the hair on McCain's scalp & now you're a Telecom Engineer or a Specialist as well !
> 
> I'm thinking of using my connections & having you sent to Pakistan so that you can work as my Right-Hand Man as I take over 'My Country & build it in my Image' !
> 
> And yes the perks that come with that include - A Personal Harem full of the most exotic belly dancers that the world has ever produced !
> 
> But No Alcohol or Pork & if you're caught with either - You might go through a painful process for you but delightful & entertaining for the rest of us that sees you becoming the eunuch guarding the same Harem you used to Party in before !



lol.........I was a security guard in a mall, I never worked as a bouncer and I am allergic to high concentration alcohol so I will never be a bartender, I do own my business some time along the line but it have been largely forgotten and neglected , I was a cavalrymen but not very good at it, and I could say I used to enjoy female company more than now that I am married 

I cannot say in clear conscience that I am anything Telco or infrastructure. I have an interest in Computer Science, if I was not asked to change my major to suit my ROTC duty, I would have gone for computer Science rather than international politic.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*A smart drug delivery material is found*

Chinese scientists &#38472;&#25991;&#38054; Chen Wenqin, graduate student & &#26460;&#24314;&#24544;&#25945;&#25480; Professor Du Jianzhong both working at School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tongji University have unvealed a new concept in fighting cancer and other vicious diseases.

Here is a brief description of their discovery:



> *Recently, smart polymer vesicles have attracted increasing interest due to their endless potential applications such as tunable delivery vehicles for the treatment of degenerative diseases.
> 
> However, the evolution of stimuli-responsive vesicles from bench to bedside still seems far away for the limitations of current stimuli forms such as temperature, light, redox, etc.
> 
> Since ultrasound combined with chemotherapy has been widely used in tumor treatment and the pH in tumor tissues is relatively low, we designed herein a novel polymer vesicle that respond to both physical (ultrasound) and chemical (pH) stimuli based on a PEO-b-P(DEA-stat-TMA) block copolymer, where PEO is short for poly(ethylene oxide), DEA for 2-(diethylamino)ethyl methacrylate and TMA for (2-tetrahydrofuranyloxy)ethyl methacrylate.
> 
> These dually responsive vesicles show noncytotoxicity below 250 &#956;g/mL and can encapsulate anticancer drugs, exhibiting retarded release profile and controllable release rate when subjected to ultrasound radiation or varying pH in tris buffer at 37°C.*
> 
> .......
> 
> *Introduction:*
> 
> *Smart polymer vesicles that respond to stimuli have been suggested to be promising delivery vehicles for controlled encapsulation and release1, 2. To effectively achieve this, it is important that the polymer vesicles respond to external stimuli which could be classified as either chemical stimuli or physical stimuli1.
> 
> Chemical stimuli such as changes in pH3, oxidation/reduction4 may change polymer structure, accompanying unwanted deformation or leakage of polymer vesicles. In contrast, physical stimuli are much convenient and clinically safe since no by-products with uncertain biohazard generated throughout the response procedure5.
> 
> Typical physical stimuli include variation of temperature6, light7, electrical field8, etc. However, there are still some disadvantages for the physical stimuli mentioned above when polymer vesicles are used for drug delivery1. For example, there are no temperature or electrical field responsive polymer vesicles used for the drug delivery in clinic due to the lack of appropriate polymers; UV-responsive polymers are not ideal for the biomedical applications due to the risk of UV light to the skin.*
> 
> More of their finding can be found here:
> 
> Ultrasound and pH Dually Responsive Polymer Vesicles for Anticancer Drug Delivery : Scientific Reports : Nature Publishing Group





*&#21516;&#27982;&#22823;&#23398;&#26448;&#26009;&#31185;&#23398;&#19982;&#24037;&#31243;&#23398;&#38498;
School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai*






&#26460;&#24314;&#24544;&#25945;&#25480; Professor Du Jianzhong

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*Scientists Use Asparagus To Fight Desertification In North China
*

BERNAMA - Scientists Use Asparagus To Fight Desertification In North China






also reporting and foto credit: bbc: China: Asparagus 'could hold back the desert'


TAIYUAN, July 25 (Bernama) -- Scientists have used asparagus in a successful experiment to curb desertification in north China, Xinhua news agency reported.

The popular vegetable in Chinese cuisine has been found to be suitable for use as a windbreak in a desert-control project in Youyu County in north China's Shanxi Province, researchers said.

"Asparagus can grow between 1.3 and 1.5 metres and reduce wind speed by 20 to 30 percent," said Mao Liping, a vegetable expert at the Shanxi Provincial Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

The project began in 2010 when scientists started looking for plants that could be used to contain sand in north and west China, which have long been plagued by desertification.

Asparagus was chosen for its strong resistance to drought and cold and its ability to grow in barren soil. Youyu County was chosen as the site of the project due to its harsh natural conditions.

"Youyu has worse conditions than deserts in Inner Mongolia and northeast China's Heilongjiang Province. If the crop can survive here, it can survive in those places as well," Mao said.

Mao said the farm where the crop is grown yields 20 tonnes of asparagus annually.

Researchers hope the crop can be used to increase incomes for farmers in impoverished desert areas.

-- BERNAMA



*The above is a late reporting
*

The method has been discovered by &#38472;&#20809;&#23431; &#21338;&#22763; Dr Chen Guangyu in Jiangxi Province years ago&#65306;


*&#33446;&#31499;&#27835;&#27801;&#25216;&#26415;&#21521;&#8220;&#32418;&#33394;&#27801;&#28448;&#8221;&#23459;&#25112;*

http://www.biosino.org/news/200011/00111614.htm

&#26032;&#21326;&#32593;&#21335;&#26124;11&#26376;16&#26085; &#65288;2000) &#30005;&#65288;&#35760;&#32773;&#26446;&#20852;&#25991;&#65289;&#22312;&#27801;&#21270;&#20005;&#37325;&#30340;&#21335;&#26124;&#36195;&#27743;&#21476;&#27827;&#36947;&#31181;&#26893;&#33446;&#31499;&#65292;&#26082;&#38450;&#39118;&#22266;&#27801;&#65292;&#21448;&#20135;&#29983;&#20102;&#21487;&#35266;&#30340;&#32463;&#27982;&#25928;&#30410;&#65292;&#27743;&#35199;&#30465;&#29983;&#29289;&#24037;&#31243;&#21338;&#22763;&#38472;&#20809;&#23431;&#30340;&#36825;&#19968;&#25104;&#26524;&#26368;&#36817;&#32435;&#20837;&#27431;&#20849;&#20307;&#19982;&#20013;&#22269;&#30340;&#21512;&#20316;&#39033;&#30446;&#12290;&#19987;&#23478;&#25351;&#20986;&#65292;&#33446;&#31499;&#27835;&#27801;&#25216;&#26415;&#20026;&#25105;&#22269;&#27835;&#29702;&#8220;&#32418;&#33394;&#27801;&#28448;&#8221;&#23637;&#29616;&#20102;&#26032;&#30340;&#21069;&#26223;&#12290; 

&#36195;&#27743;&#21476;&#27827;&#36947;&#20004;&#23736;&#27801;&#19992;&#36830;&#32501;&#65292;&#34987;	&#31216;&#20026;&#8220;&#32418;&#33394;&#27801;&#28448;&#8221;&#12290;&#21335;&#26124;&#24066;&#22495;&#36195;&#27743;&#21476;&#27827;&#36947;&#27801;&#28448;&#21270;&#22320;&#26377;&#21313;&#20313;&#19975;&#20137;&#65292;&#21344;&#27743;&#35199;&#30465;&#27801;&#21270;&#22320;&#30340;16%&#65292;&#26159;&#22269;&#23478;&#27801;&#21270;&#22320;&#27835;&#29702;&#30340;&#37325;&#28857;&#22320;&#21306;&#20043;&#19968;&#12290;&#36817;&#24180;&#65292;&#36825;&#22359;&#8220;&#32418;&#33394;&#27801;&#28448;&#8221;&#27491;&#21521;&#21335;&#26124;&#24066;&#36924;&#36817;&#65292;&#23588;&#20854;&#26159;&#22312;&#20908;&#26149;&#20004;&#23395;&#12290;	
&#36807;&#21435;&#27835;&#27801;&#20027;&#35201;&#37319;&#21462;&#31181;&#26893;&#28287;&#22320;&#26494;&#12289;&#21050;&#27088;&#31561;&#26893;&#26641;&#36896;&#26519;&#30340;&#26041;&#27861;&#65292;&#25237;&#20837;&#20102;&#22823;&#37327;&#30340;&#20154;&#21147;&#29289;&#21147;&#65292;&#20294;&#25104;&#27963;&#29575;&#19981;&#39640;&#65292;&#32463;&#27982;&#25928;&#30410;&#24046;&#65292;&#20197;&#33268;&#8220;&#24180;&#24180;&#31181;&#26641;&#24180;&#24180;&#27515;&#65292;&#26149;&#22825;&#36807;&#21518;&#25104;&#26543;&#26525;&#8221;&#12290; 

&#33446;&#31499;&#32784;&#26097;&#65292;&#26681;&#39035;&#28145;&#25166;&#65292;&#36866;&#23452;&#20110;&#27801;&#22320;&#26685;&#22521;&#12290;&#32780;&#19988;&#33446;&#31499;&#26377;&#38450;&#30284;&#25239;&#30284;&#20316;&#29992;&#65292;&#22269;&#38469;&#24066;&#22330;&#20215;&#26684;&#39640;&#65292;&#38656;&#27714;&#37327;&#20063;&#22312;&#19981;&#26029;&#22686;&#21152;&#65292;&#28508;&#22312;&#32463;&#27982;&#20215;&#20540;&#26126;&#26174;&#12290;&#22914;&#26524;&#31181;&#26893;&#33446;&#31499;&#33719;&#24471;&#25104;&#21151;&#65292;&#20197;&#27492;&#26469;&#24320;&#21457;&#27835;&#29702;&#27743;&#35199;50&#19975;&#20137;&#33618;&#27801;&#28393;&#65292;&#36890;&#36807;&#31034;&#33539;&#23558;&#25216;&#26415;&#20256;&#25480;&#32473;&#20892;&#27665;&#65292;&#19982;&#21171;&#21147;&#32467;&#21512;&#65292;&#23558;&#20250;&#24418;&#25104;&#19968;&#20010;&#22823;&#20135;&#19994;&#12290;1997&#24180;&#65292;&#27743;&#35199;&#30465;&#20892;&#31185;&#38498;&#29983;&#29289;&#24037;&#31243;&#20013;&#24515;&#30340;&#38472;&#20809;&#23431;&#21338;&#22763;&#29575;&#20808;&#22312;&#36825;&#37324;&#30740;&#31350;&#24212;&#29992;&#36825;&#19968;&#27835;&#27801;&#26032;&#25216;&#26415;&#12290; 

&#22312;&#21335;&#26124;&#21439;&#23500;&#23665;&#20065;&#30340;&#36195;&#27743;&#21476;&#27827;&#36947;&#65292;&#38472;&#21338;&#22763;&#25351;&#23548;&#35797;&#31181;&#30340;150&#20137;&#33446;&#31499;&#65292;&#22914;&#20170;&#36879;&#20986;&#19968;&#29255;&#26032;&#32511;&#65292;&#20137;&#20135;&#21487;&#36798;1000&#20844;&#26020;&#65292;&#25353;&#27599;&#20844;&#26020;10&#20803;&#35745;&#65292;&#24180;&#32463;&#27982;&#25910;&#20837;&#22312;&#19975;&#20803;&#20197;&#19978;&#12290;&#21516;&#26102;&#38468;&#36817;&#30340;&#29983;&#24577;&#26465;&#20214;&#20063;&#24471;&#21040;&#20102;&#26126;&#26174;&#25913;&#21892;&#12290;&#22312;&#21608;&#22260;&#20892;&#27665;&#20013;&#20135;&#29983;&#20102;&#33391;&#22909;&#30340;&#31034;&#33539;&#25928;&#24212;&#12290; 
&#38472;&#21338;&#22763;&#19979;&#19968;&#27493;&#20934;&#22791;&#23558;&#35268;&#27169;&#25193;&#22823;&#21040;2000&#20137;&#20197;&#19978;&#65292;&#20182;&#30340;&#31034;&#33539;&#22522;&#22320;&#65292;&#24471;&#21040;&#27431;&#20849;&#20307;&#27835;&#27801;&#19987;&#23478;&#23567;&#32452;&#39318;&#32943;&#12290;&#27431;&#20849;&#20307;&#27835;&#27801;&#32452;&#32455;&#24403;&#21363;&#20915;&#23450;&#25237;&#36164;100&#19975;&#20803;&#65292;&#20026;&#22522;&#22320;&#22686;&#28155;&#35774;&#22791;&#12290;&#65288;&#23436;&#65289;

&#25688;&#33258;[&#26032;&#21326;&#32593;]	






&#27743;&#35199;&#30465;&#29983;&#29289;&#24037;&#31243;&#21338;&#22763;&#38472;&#20809;&#23431;	
Dr Chen Guangyu
His Bio here: 
http://baike.baidu.com/view/307726.htm 


google translation of the above Chinese report:

*Asparagus sand technology to "Red Desert" declaration of war
*
http://www.biosino.org/news/200011/00111614.htm

Xinhua Nanchang, November 16 (2000) in Nanchang, 

Jiangxi Jiang severe desertification ancient river planting asparagus, both wind and sand, but also generate considerable economic benefits, Jiangxi Biological Engineering Dr. Chen Guangyu of this achievement recently Naru Ou ECOWAS cooperation projects with China. Experts pointed out that sand control technology for China Asparagus governance "Red Desert" show a new prospect.

Gan Jiang ancient riverside rolling sand dunes, known as the "Red Desert." Nanchang Gan River paleochannel domain has more than ten acres of land desertification, accounting for 16% of sandy land in Jiangxi Province, is a national desertification land one of the key areas of governance. In recent years, this "Red Desert" forward Nanchang approximation, especially in winter and spring.

Mainly taken over sand wetlands planted pine, acacia and other afforestation methods, put a lot of manpower and resources, but the survival rate is not high, poor economic performance, so that 'every year in mid-dead trees in spring after a litter. "

Asparagus drought, roots deep rolling, suitable for sand cultivation. And Asparagus has anti-cancer effect, the international market price is high, demand is also increasing, the potential economic value significantly. If successful cultivation of asparagus, in order to develop 50 acres of barren beach Jiangxi governance, through demonstration of technology to impart to farmers, combined with labor, will form a large industry.

In 1997, the Jiangxi Provincial Academy of Agricultural Biotechnology Center Dr. Chen Guangyu first in the sand here, new technology research and application.

In Nanchang County, Fu Shan Gan Jiang ancient river, Dr. Chen to try to grow 150 acres of asparagus guidance, now revealing a new green, up to 1000 kg per mu, 10 yuan per kilogram, the annual income in the million or more. Meanwhile the nearby ecological conditions have also been significantly improved. In the surrounding farmers produced a good demonstration effect.

Dr. Chen to scale to the next step to prepare more than 2,000 acres, and his demonstration bases, get sand EC expert group approval. EC sand organization immediately decided to invest $ 10 million in additional equipment for the base. (End)
From [Xinhua]


----------



## cirr

Huawei and other Chinese telecom companies need not to enter the American market&#12290;There is enough business in the emerging and developing economies where the Chinese concerns can beat the sh1t out of their American competitors&#12290;

In the same time&#65292;American telecom firms such as CISCO should be excluded from the Chinese market for competitive and security reasons&#12290;In the end&#65292;the size of the Chinese market will be several times that of the US&#12290;

*Ethiopia signs $1.6 bln mobile network deal with China's Huawei*

Aaron Maasho July 26, 2013

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Ethiopia on Thursday signed a $700 million agreement with China's Huawei Technologies Co Ltd to expand mobile phone infrastructure and introduce high-speed 4G broadband network in the capital Addis Ababa and 3G service throughout the country.

Huawei, the world's second largest telecom equipment maker, has been involved in developing phone and internet services in the Horn of Africa country for several years.

Africa's rapidly expanding telecoms industry has come to symbolize its economic growth, with subscribers across the continent totalling almost 650 million last year, up from just 25 million in 2001, according to the World Bank.

Andualem Admassie, acting chief executive officer of state-run Ethio Telecom, and Jony Duon, his counterpart at the Chinese firm, signed the agreement that will double subscribers to 56 million.

"Although our target is 40 million, now including 3G it will 56 million by 2015. That would be the capacity," said Debretsion Gebremichael, Ethiopia's deputy prime minister and minister of communications and technology.

The agreement is half of a *$1.6 billion project split between Huawei and ZTE*, China's second-largest telecoms equipment maker. Both firms will finance the amount. Ethiopia will sign the other half of the agreement next week, Debretsion said.

Ethio Telecom is the only mobile operator in the country of more than 80 million people, one of the last remaining countries on the continent to maintain a state monopoly in telecoms.

Although lacking much of a telecoms industry, the government last year gave approval for private companies to provide value-added services - all services other than standard voice calls.

Ethiopia's ministry of communications and information technology says it has received applications from 218 firms to provide such services. South Africa's MTN Group, Africa's largest mobile phone company, has already been granted a licence.

The government has ruled out liberalising its telecom sector saying the six billion birr it generates each year is being spent on railway projects. Ethiopia plans to build 5,000 km of railway lines by 2020.

Ethiopia signs $700 mln mobile network deal with China's Huawei


----------



## shuttler

*Tooth generated from stem cells: Chinese scientists 
*
English.news.cn 2013-07-30 14:34:49 

Xinhua | English.news.cn 





Credit:bp.blogspot.com


BEIJING, July 30 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have successfully grown tooth-like structures from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells), the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) said.

The structures were found to possess physical properties, such as elasticity and hardness, that are similar those found in regular human teeth, according to a statement issued by CAS on Tuesday.

The research efforts were led by Pei Duanqing, a researcher at the CAS's Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health.

A related paper has been published online in the journal Cell Regeneration.

*The scientists differentiated iPS cells derived from human urine and then recombined them with dental mesenchymes isolated from mouse embryos, according to the statement.
*
The recombinant was later transplanted to mouse bodies and tooth-like structures were recovered within three weeks, it said.

The tooth-like structures have the same features as human teeth, including dental enamel, dentin, dental pulp and cementum, the statement said.

"There are currently some problems with the research, such as the use of mice cells, a low success rate and low enamel hardness, but these will be solved through further improvements," Pei said.

Pei said the research results demonstrated that the urine iPS technique can be used to regenerate patient-specific dental tissues or even teeth and may be further developed for drug screening or clinical regenerative therapies.

Like embryonic stem cells, iPS stem cells can develop into any cell in the human body.

Shinya Yamanaka, a professor at Kyoto University, was one of the winners of the 2012 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for developing an iPS cell harvesting technique that allows stem cells to be obtained from adult tissue instead of from embryos, thus avoiding the ethical and legal barriers that embryonic stem cells face


*&#20013;&#22269;&#31185;&#23398;&#38498;&#24191;&#24030;&#29983;&#29289;&#21307;&#33647;&#19982;&#20581;&#24247;&#30740;&#31350;&#38498;
Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health
*


----------



## cirr

*Potty Mouth: Chinese Researchers Make Teeth From Urine*

July 30, 2013






A team of researchers from China&#8217;s Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health have demonstrated human teeth can be generated by stem cells from a very interesting source: Urine. The Chinese team says they can also generate other solid organs and tissues from human waste.

It&#8217;s been observed before that stem cells are found in urine. Furthermore, when these stem cells are collected, scientists can coerce them to become induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) which are capable of generating other types of cells. These cells can then be genetically molded and coaxed into other organs and tissues, including heart muscle cells and neurons.

Duanqing Pei and the rest of the team from Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health now say they&#8217;ve developed a way to coerce these iPSCs into teeth-like structures. Though these collections have the essential components of human teeth, the final product isn&#8217;t quite as hard as the teeth humans are naturally born with. Their study is published this week in the open-access journal Cell Regeneration.

Just as it&#8217;s been observed in normal tooth development, the new system created by the Chinese team makes use of the interaction between the epithelial cells and mesenchymal cells. The former cells are responsible for producing the enamel which coats the teeth while the latter builds out the internal components inside the tooth. These include the cementum, dentin and pulp.

Pei and crew first gathered the stem cells from urine and mixed them with chemicals to encourage the epithelial cells to lay flat from the iPSCs. They then took these flat cells and mixed them with embryonic mesenchymal cells from mice. The final product was then transplanted into the mice.

Though the stem cells from urine were mixed with embryonic mouse cells and implanted into the rodents, structures began to grow which, according to the team, closely resembled human teeth. They claim they have a very similar makeup, but have only one-third the hardness of a typical human tooth.

Their method is also a bit inconsistent at the moment and is capable of reproducing human teeth only 30 percent of the time. The new method is still a breakthrough say the researchers, and they&#8217;re already working on ways to improve their system.

For instance, they claim they might better grow human teeth if they use human mesenchymal stem cells as opposed to mouse cells. The controversial nature of stem cell research, however, could make it difficult for the team to move forward in this regard. Additionally, Pei and team say they could continue modifying the tissue culture to grow a stronger tooth. In this instance, the bud of a tooth could be grown in the lab before being transplanted into a human jaw to finish its development.

Though this new system is a breakthrough in the field of regenerative cell growth, some say there are better places to be looking for the crucial iPSCs than urine.

&#8220;It is probably one of the worst sources, there are very few cells in the first place and the efficiency of turning them into stem cells is very low,&#8221; explains professor Chris Mason, a stem cell scientist with the University College London in an interview with BBC News.

&#8220;The big challenge here is the teeth have got a pulp with nerve and blood vessels which have to make sure they integrate to get permanent teeth.&#8221;

Urine Stem Cells Used To Grow Teeth In The Lab - Science News - redOrbit


----------



## cirr

Only 130 dollars&#65311;WTF&#65281;

It is gonna be my 3rd smartphone&#12290;

*Xiaomi unveils Red Rice smartphone in China: $130 for 720p and a quad-core CPU Mobile*

By Steve Dent posted Jul 31st, 2013 at 11:59 AM






*Xiaomi's talk about doubling smartphone sales over last year sounded a tad ambitious, but it turns out it had a secret weapon. The company just announced the Red Rice smartphone, a pretty decently spec'd model priced at a mere 799 yuan ($130). For that pittance, Chinese buyers will get quite a bit: a quad-core MediaTek CPU, 4.7-inch 720p screen (312 ppi) with Gorilla Glass 2, 1GB RAM, 4GB storage, China Mobile's TD-SCDMA 3G, dual-sim / dual standby capability, an 8-megapixel rear camera and Xiaomi's MIUI-flavored Android. Though it's lacking the WCDMA-3G used by other Chinese networks, China Mobile's 70 percent market share should give Xiaomi more than enough users to hit its targets, especially at that price.*

Xiaomi unveils Red Rice smartphone in China: $130 for 720p and a quad-core CPU


----------



## cirr

After Rice&#65288;Mi&#65289;1&#12289;Mi2&#12289;Mi2S and Red Rice&#65292;MI3 is around the corner&#65306;











In just 2 years&#65292;Xiaomi has risen from nothing to a 10 billion dollar company&#65288;per the latest round of fund raising&#65289;&#12290;

Way to go&#65281;


----------



## shuttler

*&#20840;&#39640;&#31243;&#22823;&#27668;&#25506;&#27979;&#28608;&#20809;&#38647;&#36798; &#20026;&#33322;&#31354;&#33322;&#22825;&#27963;&#21160;&#25552;&#20379;&#20445;&#38556;*
&#26469;&#28304;&#65306;&#26032;&#21326;&#32593; &#21457;&#24067;&#26102;&#38388;&#65306;2013-08-02 10:47:01
*Laser radar scanning high altitude atmosphere to provide protection for aerospace activities *
Source: Xinhua Published :2013 -08-02 10:47:01

news.sctv.com
















&#20013;&#31185;&#38498;&#27494;&#27721;&#29289;&#29702;&#19982;&#25968;&#23398;&#30740;&#31350;&#25152;&#28608;&#20809;&#38647;&#36798;&#22242;&#38431;&#36890;&#36807;&#36816;&#29992;&#33258;&#20027;&#30340;&#19987;&#21033;&#25216;&#26415;&#65292;&#21457;&#26126;&#26032;&#22411;&#20840;&#39640;&#31243;&#12289;&#20840;&#22825;&#26102;&#22823;&#27668;&#25506;&#27979;&#28608;&#20809;&#38647;&#36798;&#65292;&#23454;&#29616;&#20174;&#36817;&#22320;&#38754;&#21040;&#32422;110&#20844;&#37324;&#30340;&#20840;&#39640;&#31243;&#25506;&#27979;&#65292;&#24182;&#23454;&#29616;&#20102;&#23545;&#37096;&#20998;&#20302;&#20013;&#23618;&#21644;&#20840;&#37096;&#39640;&#23618;&#30340;&#20840;&#22825;&#26102;&#65288;&#26172;&#22812;&#36830;&#32493;&#65289;&#25506;&#27979;&#12290;&#35813;&#28608;&#20809;&#38647;&#36798;&#24050;&#25104;&#21151;&#24212;&#29992;&#20110;&#22269;&#23478;&#37325;&#22823;&#31185;&#23398;&#24037;&#31243;&#65292;&#20854;&#25552;&#20379;&#30340;&#31354;&#38388;&#29615;&#22659;&#25506;&#27979;&#25968;&#25454;&#20026;&#39134;&#33337;&#21457;&#23556;&#12289;&#21355;&#26143;&#36890;&#20449;&#23433;&#20840;&#31561;&#33322;&#31354;&#33322;&#22825;&#27963;&#21160;&#25552;&#20379;&#20102;&#31354;&#38388;&#29615;&#22659;&#20445;&#38556;&#12290;2011&#24180;&#65292;&#35813;&#25216;&#26415;&#33719;&#24471;&#22269;&#23478;&#25216;&#26415;&#21457;&#26126;&#20108;&#31561;&#22870;&#12290;

Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics, Chinese Academy radar team through the use of independent patented technology, invented new full-height, all-time atmospheric radar, from near the ground to about 110 km of the entire elevation detection, and the realization of some low-middle and all of the all-time high (continuous day and night) probe. The lidar has been successfully applied in the national key scientific projects, it provides the space environment for the spacecraft launch probe data, satellite communications security aerospace activities provide space environment protection. In 2011, the technology won the State Technology Invention.

web translation


*&#20013;&#31185;&#38498;&#27494;&#27721;&#29289;&#29702;&#19982;&#25968;&#23398;&#30740;&#31350;&#25152;
Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics &#65288;WIPM), CAS*

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*&#25506;&#31192;&#25105;&#22269;&#37325;&#22823;&#31185;&#30740;&#35013;&#22791; &#28608;&#27874;&#39118;&#27934;&#65306;&#39640;&#36229;&#22768;&#36895;&#39134;&#34892;&#22120;&#25671;&#31726; *


&#21457;&#24067;&#26102;&#38388;&#65306;2013&#24180;08&#26376;03&#26085; 08:28 &#26469;&#28304;&#65306;&#22830;&#35270;&#32593;

*China's major scientific equipment&#65306; shock tunnel - the cradle of hypersonic flying vehicles*
Published: 2013 -08-03 08:28 Source: CCTV network &#65288;web translation)

Narration in Chinese only

 video &#65306; news.cntv.cn






Credit: cndsi










credit: people.com.cn





Credit: China.cn


----------



## cirr

Hurray to Team Tsinghua&#65306;

[YouKu]XNTkxNzA0MDE2[/YouKu]

Mission completed in 8 mins, a mission that none of the teams from all over the world were able to complete in the past 4 years.


----------



## shuttler

cirr said:


> Hurray to Team Tsinghua&#65306;
> 
> Mission completed in 8 mins, a mission that none of the teams from all over the world were able to complete in the past 4 years.



Well done Tsinghua!

Now we move on to the international session which runs from August 5~8

2013 - 6th_Mission_Schedule @ P.14

Let's see how far we can go!



> Last year we had this result:
> 
> Ref to post no 6 of http://www.defence.pk/forums/china-far-east/246971-universities-china-taiwan-top-supercomputer-contest.html
> 
> 
> 
> *The ranking for the top five teams operating with the highest autonomous intelligence levels is as follows:*
> 
> *1. University of Michigan
> 
> 2. Georgia Institute of Technology
> *
> *3. Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics
> 4. Tsinghua University
> 5. Beihang University *
> 
> List of participants 2012


----------



## Tractor

Money can not buy intelligence,too simple.


----------



## shuttler

Tractor said:


> Money can not buy intelligence,too simple.



too naive

americans are buying our talents


----------



## Tractor

shuttler said:


> too naive
> 
> americans are buying our talents


Too funny
What talents,assistants whole working life in labs?


----------



## cirr

shuttler said:


> too naive
> 
> americans are buying our talents



Stealing&#65292;not buying&#65292;for these talents are paid far less than their true worth or value&#12290;


----------



## shuttler

Tractor said:


> Too funny
> What talents,assistants whole working life in labs?



too sad 
it looks like all your acquaintances are a lot of lab assistant level of people in your life, may be including yourself!


----------



## cirr

It is probable that&#65292;by the end of this year&#65292;foreign smartphone brands will have less than 20% of the Chinese market by numbers&#12290;

*Xiaomi muscles past Apple to take sixth place in China&#8217;s smartphone market as Samsung stays on top*

By Kaylene Hong

TNW Asia - Asia's Technology Blog about Internet Life, Business and Culture. Part of The Next Web Network.

Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi has been on a roll despite launching its first device only as recently as 2011 &#8212; it has officially overtaken Apple in the Chinese market.

The latest figures were conveyed to TNW by Canalys, an independent analyst firm, which noted that Xiaomi shipped a total of 4.4 million smartphones in China during the second quarter of 2013, inching above Apple which shipped 4.3 million units and knocking it to the seventh position. Last quarter, Apple managed to occupy the fifth spot in China&#8217;s smartphone market.

Samsung still took the lead in China in Q2 2013 with 15.5 million smartphones shipped to make up for a market share of 17.6 percent.







Despite only selling its phones in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, Xiaomi has been garnering success by inspiring the loyalty of many consumers. Its competitively priced phones are sold in batches that, when released in phases, regularly sell out fast, often within half an hour.

*The latest figures come as Xiaomi recently unveiled its $130 Hongmi phone, the lowest-priced in its range, which has received an overwhelming response so far. According to a Donews report, pre-orders for the phone on social networking site Qzone exceeded a jaw-dropping 5 million units within three days. The phone will go on sale from August 12 onward.*

The up-and-coming company has been compared to Apple on a regular basis, with some even criticizing it for being an Apple clone. However, it seems that consumers are happy to flock to the lower-priced Xiaomi smartphones instead of high-end iPhones, proven by its success so far. This could make it even harder for Apple to recapture some of its lost market share in China &#8212; despite rumors of a lower-priced iPhone, it could be too little, too late.


----------



## Tractor

shuttler said:


> too sad
> it looks like all your acquaintances are a lot of lab assistant level of people in your life, may be including yourself!


Don't bother to talk about me and I am not saying about you.
I know one come from Princetown University who graduated from Qinghua and now working like I said for his boss and he and others told me what so called talented Chinese do.Lab assistant a good occupation any way.
OK,here is a talent who speak fluent mandarin and still working in labs,but not as an assistant:

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

Tractor said:


> Don't bother to talk about me and I am not saying about you.
> I know one come from Princetown University who graduated from Qinghua and now working like I said for his boss and he and others told me what so called talented Chinese do.Lab assistant a good occupation any way.
> OK,here is a talent who speak fluent mandarin and still working in labs,but not as an assistant:



Good for your previous sarcasm!










the scientist when young! And much more of my respect when he delivered his award receiving speech in Putonghua!

He is still making great contribution in high energy physics and lately in his new findings on dark matters with his team!


----------



## shuttler

cirr said:


> Stealing&#65292;not buying&#65292;for these talents are paid far less than their true worth or value&#12290;



Not just usa to where we lose our scientists. Hereunder is another example of the great discovery our people who can revolutionalse a commonly used storage device:

*Chinese researchers discover new method to store 1,024,000 GB in a single DVD*
06/24/2013 BY ADMIN

link







*Most * of us have probably moved on to using Blu-rays now, but the old DVD might have just received a big shot in the arm. And I mean big.

A bunch of Chinese researchers have discovered a new method that could theoretically allow a single DVD to store 1,000 terabytes (1,024,000 GB) of data. That&#8217;s a whole petabyte of storage in a medium that when it was first introduced was only capable of 4.7GB.

The DVD format was limited by the size of the laser, which Blu-ray eventually surpassed by using even smaller lasers &#8212; but that too hit a limit. According to Gizmodo&#8216;s conveniently simplified rundown of the process, the researchers have developed a new method that uses two lasers that can cancel each other out, effectively creating smaller pits on the disk and increasing the amount of capacity.

But before you toss out the Blu-rays, note that it might be some time before this technology will reach the consumer level. While the data can be created, they still need to figure out a way to actually read it. Also, burning a 1,000TB disc sounds like it could take awhile.

*More in detail here in Nauture Communications*:

*Three-dimensional deep sub-diffraction optical beam lithography with 9&#8201;nm feature size*
*Zongsong Gan, Yaoyu Cao, Richard A. Evans & Min Gu
*
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/130619/ncomms3061/full/ncomms3061.html


----------



## shuttler

*This kind of plants may provide solutions to messy and harmful oil spills*





Credit: jiaoma.com

*Structured cone arrays for continuous and effective collection of micron-sized oil droplets from water*
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/130806/ncomms3276/full/ncomms3276.html

*Here an abstract:*

Environmental protection agencies and the petroleum industry require effective methods to separate micron-sized oil droplets from water. However, for most existing separation methods, phase separation occurs in the oil&#8211;water mixture. 

The remaining micron-scale oil droplets, which are not affected by phase separation, are difficult to handle with conventional methods on a large scale because of either a lack of separation ability or drawbacks in throughput capacity. Here we develop an oleophilic array of conical needle structures for the collection of micron-sized oil droplets, inspired by the collection of similar sized water droplets on conical cactus spines. 

Underwater, these structures mimic cacti and can capture micron-sized oil droplets and continuously transport them towards the base of the conical needles. Materials with this structure show obvious advantages in micron-sized oil collection with high continuity and high throughput.

*Affiliations*
*Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences (BNLMS), Key Laboratory of Organic Solids, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China*
Kan Li, Jie Ju, Zhongxin Xue, Jie Ma & Lei Jiang
*Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China*
Lin Feng
*College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China*
Song Gao
*School of Chemistry and Environment, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China*
Lei Jiang



*Also reported in the mass media hereunder:*

*Cactus 'points' the way for oil spill clean-up
*
Updated: 2013-08-07 15:45 ( Xinhua)

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2013-08/07/content_16877933.htm

*BEIJING* -- Inspired by prickly cacti, Chinese scientists have developed a new technique for removing oil from water, which could have applications in oil spill clean-up work.

An article published in the online scientific journal Nature Communications describes the study by Jiang Lei and his co-workers at the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, whose creation of copper spike arrays have proved to be highly efficient in absorbing oil during experiments.

Jiang said the idea came from cacti needles, which can collect water by condensing moisture from the air and directing it to the root of the spines, an ability that keeps the plant hydrated in arid environments, like deserts.

Simulating cacti spines, researchers used substances with an affinity for oil, not water, to build conical spikes with a rough surface. These spikes have proven capable of catching micro-sized oil droplets in water.

Oil separation using such needle arrays has an efficiency rate of over 99 percent, and compared with conventional methods, our technique can be used continuously and is more environmentally friendly, Jiang told Xinhua.

Researchers expect that the technique could help clean water pollution caused by oil spills and be applied in industrial sectors, including those involved in oily industrial effluent disposal and tertiary oil recovery.




*&#20013;&#22269;&#31185;&#23398;&#38498; &#21270;&#23398;&#30740;&#31350;&#25152;
Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences &#65288;ICCAS&#65289;*


----------



## shuttler

Talking about braindrain, this *Fudan University* alumnus who is now working with a team of scientists at *the Center for Neural Circuit Genetics at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, Department of Biology and Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT* has made this important discovery in brain research:

*Neuroscientists plant false memories in the brain*
MIT study also pinpoints where the brain stores memory traces, both false and authentic.
Anne Trafton, MIT
July 25, 2013


The phenomenon of false memory has been well-documented: In many court cases, defendants have been found guilty based on testimony from witnesses and victims who were sure of their recollections, but DNA evidence later overturned the conviction.

In a step toward understanding how these faulty memories arise, MIT neuroscientists have shown that they can plant false memories in the brains of mice. They also found that many of the neurological traces of these memories are identical in nature to those of authentic memories.

&#8220;Whether it&#8217;s a false or genuine memory, the brain&#8217;s neural mechanism underlying the recall of the memory is the same,&#8221; says Susumu Tonegawa, the Picower Professor of Biology and Neuroscience and senior author of a paper describing the findings in the July 25 edition of Science. 





MIT neuroscientists identified the cells (highlighted in red) where memory traces are stored in the mouse hippocampus. 
IMAGE: STEVE RAMIREZ AND XU LIU

The study also provides further evidence that memories are stored in networks of neurons that form memory traces for each experience we have &#8212; a phenomenon that Tonegawa&#8217;s lab first demonstrated last year. 

Neuroscientists have long sought the location of these memory traces, also called engrams. In the pair of studies, Tonegawa and colleagues at MIT&#8217;s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory showed that they could identify the cells that make up part of an engram for a specific memory and reactivate it using a technology called optogenetics. 

*Lead authors of the paper are graduate student Steve Ramirez and research scientist** Xu Liu *. Other authors are technical assistant Pei-Ann Lin, research scientist Junghyup Suh, and postdocs Michele Pignatelli, Roger Redondo and Tomas Ryan. 






&#21016;&#26093; &#21338;&#22763; Dr LIU Xu, MIT
PhD Baylor College of Medicine
MS and BS: Fudan University



*Seeking the engram*

Episodic memories &#8212; memories of experiences &#8212; are made of associations of several elements, including objects, space and time. These associations are encoded by chemical and physical changes in neurons, as well as by modifications to the connections between the neurons.

Where these engrams reside in the brain has been a longstanding question in neuroscience. &#8220;Is the information spread out in various parts of the brain, or is there a particular area of the brain in which this type of memory is stored? This has been a very fundamental question,&#8221; Tonegawa says.

In the 1940s, Canadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield suggested that episodic memories are located in the brain&#8217;s temporal lobe. When Penfield electrically stimulated cells in the temporal lobes of patients who were about to undergo surgery to treat epileptic seizures, the patients reported that specific memories popped into mind. Later studies of the amnesiac patient known as &#8220;H.M.&#8221; confirmed that the temporal lobe, including the area known as the hippocampus, is critical for forming episodic memories. 

However, these studies did not prove that engrams are actually stored in the hippocampus, Tonegawa says. To make that case, scientists needed to show that activating specific groups of hippocampal cells is sufficient to produce and recall memories.

To achieve that, Tonegawa&#8217;s lab turned to optogenetics, a new technology that allows cells to be selectively turned on or off using light. 

For this pair of studies, the researchers engineered mouse hippocampal cells to express the gene for channelrhodopsin, a protein that activates neurons when stimulated by light. They also modified the gene so that channelrhodopsin would be produced whenever the c-fos gene, necessary for memory formation, was turned on. 

In last year&#8217;s study, the researchers conditioned these mice to fear a particular chamber by delivering a mild electric shock. As this memory was formed, the c-fos gene was turned on, along with the engineered channelrhodopsin gene. This way, cells encoding the memory trace were &#8220;labeled&#8221; with light-sensitive proteins.

The next day, when the mice were put in a different chamber they had never seen before, they behaved normally. However, when the researchers delivered a pulse of light to the hippocampus, stimulating the memory cells labeled with channelrhodopsin, the mice froze in fear as the previous day&#8217;s memory was reactivated. 

&#8220;Compared to most studies that treat the brain as a black box while trying to access it from the outside in, this is like we are trying to study the brain from the inside out,&#8221; Liu says. &#8220;The technology we developed for this study allows us to fine-dissect and even potentially tinker with the memory process by directly controlling the brain cells.&#8221; 

*Incepting false memories*

That is exactly what the researchers did in the new study &#8212; exploring whether they could use these reactivated engrams to plant false memories in the mice&#8217;s brains. 

First, the researchers placed the mice in a novel chamber, A, but did not deliver any shocks. As the mice explored this chamber, their memory cells were labeled with channelrhodopsin. The next day, the mice were placed in a second, very different chamber, B. After a while, the mice were given a mild foot shock. At the same instant, the researchers used light to activate the cells encoding the memory of chamber A. 

On the third day, the mice were placed back into chamber A, where they now froze in fear, even though they had never been shocked there. A false memory had been incepted: The mice feared the memory of chamber A because when the shock was given in chamber B, they were reliving the memory of being in chamber A. 

Moreover, that false memory appeared to compete with a genuine memory of chamber B, the researchers found. These mice also froze when placed in chamber B, but not as much as mice that had received a shock in chamber B without having the chamber A memory activated.

The researchers then showed that immediately after recall of the false memory, levels of neural activity were also elevated in the amygdala, a fear center in the brain that receives memory information from the hippocampus, just as they are when the mice recall a genuine memory. 

*These two papers represent a major step forward in memory research, says Howard Eichenbaum, a professor of psychology and director of Boston University&#8217;s Center for Memory and Brain.*

&#8220;They identified a neural network associated with experience in an environment, attached a fear association with it, then reactivated the network to show that it supports memory expression. That, to me, shows for the first time a true functional engram,&#8221; says Eichenbaum, who was not part of the research team.

The MIT team is now planning further studies of how memories can be distorted in the brain. 

&#8220;Now that we can reactivate and change the contents of memories in the brain, we can begin asking questions that were once the realm of philosophy,&#8221; Ramirez says. &#8220;Are there multiple conditions that lead to the formation of false memories? Can false memories for both pleasurable and aversive events be artificially created? What about false memories for more than just contexts &#8212; false memories for objects, food or other mice? These are the once seemingly sci-fi questions that can now be experimentally tackled in the lab.&#8221;

The research was funded by the RIKEN Brain Science Institute.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/neuroscientists-plant-false-memories-in-the-brain-0725.html


----------



## cirr

An article of great interest and practical use&#65306;

*A Semi-Floating Gate Transistor for Low-Voltage Ultrafast Memory and Sensing Operation*

Peng-Fei Wang1,*,&#8224;, Xi Lin1, Lei Liu2, Qing-Qing Sun1,*, Peng Zhou1, Xiao-Yong Liu1, Wei Liu2, Yi Gong2, David Wei Zhang1,*
+ Author Affiliations

1State Key Laboratory of ASIC and System, School of Microelectronics, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
2Oriental Semiconductor, Suzhou, China.
&#8629;&#8224;Corresponding author. E-mail: pfw@fudan.edu.cn
&#8629;* These authors contributed equally to this work.

ABSTRACTEDITOR'S SUMMARY

As the semiconductor devices of integrated circuits approach the physical limitations of scaling, alternative transistor and memory designs are needed to achieve improvements in speed, density, and power consumption. We report on a transistor that uses an embedded tunneling field-effect transistor for charging and discharging the semi-floating gate. This transistor operates at low voltages (&#8804;2.0 volts), with a large threshold voltage window of 3.1 volts, and can achieve ultra&#8211;high-speed writing operations (on time scales of ~1 nanosecond). A linear dependence of drain current on light intensity was observed when the transistor was exposed to light, so possible applications include image sensing with high density and performance.

A Semi-Floating Gate Transistor for Low-Voltage Ultrafast Memory and Sensing Operation


----------



## shuttler

http://www.defence.pk/forums/china-far-east/269904-china-s-first-3d-bio-printer.html#post4617514

*&#26477;&#24030;&#30005;&#23376;&#31185;&#25216;&#22823;&#23398;
Hangzhou University of Electronic Science and Technology (or Hangzhou Danzi University)
*















Buildings of the Mathematics Department 





Student Activities Center










Department of Robotics and Automation






Wenyi Campus
















Xiasha Campus


----------



## cirr

*China's Huawei takes aim at Cisco with SDN programmable switch*

*Huawei is embarking on a global campaign to promote the new product*

By Michael Kan

August 8, 2013 04:29 AM ET

IDG News Service - Huawei Technologies is bringing its own "software-defined networking" switch globally in a bid to raise its profile and expand in a market dominated by Cisco.

The Chinese company unveiled Thursday its S12700 Agile switch series, calling it a next generation product designed for managing campus networks. It joins the industry trend toward software-defined networking (SDN), an emerging technology that aims to deliver programmable interfaces to network hardware.

With SDN, a company can better customize its campus network through software and application development, rather than rely on making manual changes to the hardware, or buying new equipment to upgrade the network, Huawei executives said on Thursday. The rise of cloud computing and BYOD (bring-your-own-device) at offices demands that vendors come up with better and more secure solutions to manage networks, they added.

"The Agile switch and network products we launched today can truly resolve the problems customers have in network development," said William Xu, CEO of Huawei's enterprise business group in an interview. "It's a revolutionary product."

Huawei's Agile switch is designed with its own Ethernet network processor that can handle different software tasks. The company claims its product will offer better performance over rival switches built with application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chips, but at a still affordable low price.



The S12700 Agile switch series will come in two models and will arrive globally in October.

Huawei is best known for supplying telecommunication equipment to carriers, but in early 2011 the company officially entered the enterprise market. Since then the company has released new server and storage products, and seen its sales from its enterprise business grow to US$1.9 billion in 2012.

The company plans to hire an additional 1,000 employees globally to add to its 20,000 staff devoted to the enterprise business. By 2017, Huawei wants its enterprise revenue to reach over US$10 billion.

Huawei hopes its newest product, the Agile switch series, will further pave the way for its enterprise business and become a flagship product, Xu said. Starting on Thursday, the company is starting a global campaign to promote the switch in countries such as Japan and the U.S.

The Chinese company will have to contend with Cisco, a major U.S. provider of network switches. So far about half of Huawei's enterprise sales have come from its home market, with the remainder coming from foreign markets, including the U.S., where it has sold storage, switch and router products.

"We have just entered the U.S. enterprise business, and we are still in the process of learning," he said. But Xu expects the company's Agile switch will also garner customers in the U.S.

China&#39;s Huawei takes aim at Cisco with SDN programmable switch - Computerworld

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

5 August 2013

*Nanosphere-patterned sapphire improves deep UV LED performance*

Researchers in China have been developing nanopatterned-sapphire substrates (NPSS), achieved with nano-sphere lithography (NSL), as a basis for the production of superior aluminium gallium nitride (AlGaN) semiconductor material for deep ultraviolet (UV) light-emitting diodes (LEDs) [Peng Dong et al, Appl. Phys. Lett., vol102, p241113, 2013].

&#8220;We have demonstrated the first high-performance AlGaN-based deep UV-LEDs fabricated on NPSS that is prepared by NSL and wet etching,&#8221; says the team from Chinese Academy of Sciences&#8217; Institute of Semiconductors, Tsinghua University, and State Key Laboratory for Artificial Microstructure and Mesoscopic Physics at Peking University

Proposed applications of deep UV LEDs include disinfection, sensing, water purification, bio-medical, and communication. It is also hoped that efficient deep UV LEDs would provide more energy efficient compact solutions compared with the present fragile and hazardous mercury vapor lamps. Improved material quality is key to achieving these aims.

Sapphire patterning was achieved by photolithography through a mask consisting of polystyrene nanospheres that were then removed using deionized water (Figure 1). The pattern in the developed photoresist was transferred to an underlying hard mask layer of 200nm silicon dioxide using inductively coupled plasma etch. Finally, the sapphire was wet etched using a mix of sulfuric and phosphoric acid solutions. The silicon dioxide was removed using hydrofluoric acid.





_Figure 1. (a) Schematic of fabrication process flow to create nano-patterns on a sapphire substrate (NPSS). SEM images of the patterned photoresist (b) and wet-etched NPSS (c). Inset in Figure 1(c) shows line profile of patterns of NPSS by AFM measurement._

The pattern consisted of 230nm-deep concave triangular cones set in a hexagonal pattern of period 900nm. The unetched region between the cones was 400nm wide.

The growth of the UV LED epitaxial structure was through low-pressure metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (LP-MOCVD) with trimethyl-aluminium, trimethyl-gallium, and ammonia precursors, respectively, for the Al, Ga, and N species. The structure began with 25nm of low-temperature 550°C AlN, before the whole 4&#956;m AlN template was completed at 1200°C in nitrogen-rich conditions.

The AlN was found to coalesce after only 3&#956;m. This is much sooner than other epitaxial layer overgrowth (ELOG) techniques using micro-stripe patterning that only coalesce after 10&#956;m growth. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) over 5&#956;m x 5&#956;m fields gave a root-mean-square roughness of 0.15nm. The AFM analysis also indicated a step-flow growth mode. X-ray analysis gave estimates for screw and edge dislocation densities of 1.6x107/cm2 and 1.2x109/cm2, respectively.

This AlN template material was used in further growth of the UV LED structure (Figure 2). The same structure was grown on flat sapphire with a 1&#956;m AlN template layer. The n-AlGaN layer was found to have pure edge and mixed threading dislocation densities on NPSS and FSS substrates of ~1.6x109/cm2 and ~3.4x109/cm2, respectively. The reduced density layer on NPSS was attributed to the higher-quality AlN template. The superlattice regions were also designed to have dislocation filtering effects.





_Figure 2. Deep UV LED structure._

Temperature-dependent photoluminescence studies at 10K and 300K suggested an internal quantum efficiency of 45% for the NPSS LED structure, compared with 28% for the FSS AlN template epitaxy.

The epitaxial materials were formed into 380&#956;m x 380&#956;m devices. Mesas for the devices were etched using inductively coupled plasma. The n-contact metal stack consisted of titanium/aluminium/titanium/gold annealed at 850°C in nitrogen. The p-contact was nickel/gold annealed in air at 500°C.

The chips were flip-chip mounted on silicon sub-mounts with gold-bump bonding. The majority of light in deep UV LEDs is expected to emerge through the sapphire substrate, since the p-GaN layer is absorbing of the radiation due to it having the narrowest bandgap in the structure. The device testing was performed with the sub-mounted chips attached to metal-core circuit boards with silver paste to improve heat dissipation.

The main electroluminescence (EL) peak occurred at 282nm with a weak shoulder peak near 330nm (Figure 3). It is thought that recombination in the electron-blocking layer was responsible for the shoulder peak. Hence, &#8220;further optimization of the electron-blocking layer is needed to suppress electron overflow into the p-cladding layer,&#8221; the researchers write.





_Figure 3. (a) EL spectra and (b) LOP-I-EQE curves of deep UV LEDs grown on NPSS and FSS._

The light output power (LOP) at 20mA current (I) was 3.03mW with external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 3.45% for the NPSS-based device. This was almost double that of the FSS-based LED. The saturation LOP for the NPSS LED was 6.56mW at 60mA current. The FSS device saturated at 2.53mW with 50mA injection.

Since the internal quantum efficiency does not account for all the improvement in performance, the researchers believe that &#8220;the light scattering at the AlN/NPSS interface decreases the total internal reflection and the absorption in the p-GaN layer, and increases the photon&#8217;s escape opportunity from the sapphire backside.&#8221;

Nanosphere-patterned sapphire improves deep UV LED performance


----------



## cirr

*Physics first: Alpha particle preformation constant confirmed in China* 

August 1, 2013

Professor Ren Zhongzhou and his group from Department of Physics at Nanjing University published new research in the journal Science China on Aug. 1, 2013, that defines the alpha particle preformation constant successfully and accurately based on experimental observation for the first time.

An alpha particle is two protons and two neutrons bound together into a particle that is identical to a helium nucleus that is expelled in the radioactive decay of elements.

The alpha particle preformation constant describes energy constraints that are necessary for an alpha particle to be produced and expelled in radioactive decay and other reactions.

The alpha particle preformation constant had been theoretically defined for individual elements many times previously but this new research is the first empirical measurement of the alpha particle preformation constant.

The researchers developed an empirical formula that for the first time directly deduces the preformation factor of the alpha particle from the experimental data. The alpha preformation factor of 171 even-even nuclei was developed and proved to be accurate by measurement of heavy isotope decay.The term even-even nuclei refers to the stability of a given atomic nucleus based on the sum of the masses of protons and neutrons in the nucleus. Odd nuclei are less stable than even nuclei.

The researchers also determined that the alpha preformation probability is independent of the previous models that have been used to deduce the constant. Alpha preformation probability describes the energy mechanics necessary for the production of an alpha particle.

The practical indications of this development are a better use of alpha decay as a dating mechanism and the potential prediction of the stability of heavy atoms that are stable. Heavy atoms with atomic numbers greater than 103 that are stable have not been produced to date but are theoretically possible.

Physics first: Alpha particle preformation constant confirmed in China - Birmingham science news | Examiner.com


----------



## shuttler

*China launches screen you can fold up like paper
*

Chinadaily

Updated: 2013-08-12 21:41 ( chinadaily.com.cn) 

The first flexible AMOLED color screen in China, which can be folded up and carried around like a piece of paper, has been developed by a university in Guangzhou, according to China News Service.






*4.8&#33521;&#23544;&#24425;&#33394;&#26580;&#24615;AMOLED&#26174;&#31034;&#23631;
4.8 inches color flexible AMOLED display*





*&#35813;&#26174;&#31034;&#23631;&#20855;&#26377;&#36229;&#34180;&#12289;&#21487;&#24367;&#26354;&#30340;&#29305;&#28857;
The display has thin, flexible features*

*South China University of Technology* announced the news on Aug 9 and said the screen is 4.8 inches in diameter, 100 micrometers thick and no more than 1 gram in weight.

The screen can work as a TV display unit while simultaneously functioning as curtains, clothes or fashion accessories, the university said.

Several major international companies, like Samsung, LG and Sharp, are also actively developing the flexible AMOLED display technology, the report said.




*&#21326;&#21335;&#29702;&#24037;&#25104;&#21151;&#30740;&#21046;&#20986;&#22269;&#20869;&#31532;&#19968;&#22359;&#24425;&#33394;&#26580;&#24615;AMOLED&#26174;&#31034;&#23631;
*
&#25237;&#31295;&#26102;&#38388;&#65306;2013-08-06 15:34 &#21457;&#24067;&#26102;&#38388;&#65306;2013-08-08 11:24 &#26469;&#28304;&#65306;&#26448;&#26009;&#31185;&#23398;&#19982;&#24037;&#31243;&#23398;&#38498;

*South China successfully developed the first domestic color flexible AMOLED display
*
Received :2013 -08-06 15:34 Published :2013 -08-08 11:24 Source: Materials Science and Engineering

link


*&#21326;&#21335;&#29702;&#24037;&#22823;&#23398;
South China University of Technology*































Also reporting here earlier:
Thanks to *@theniubt * 

http://www.defence.pk/forums/china-far-east/270607-china-developed-ln-izo-based-4-8-flexible-amoled-panel.html


----------



## cirr

*How China plans to become a leader in robotics*

By Chen Fei August 16, 2013

_Chen Fei is a postdoctoral researcher at the Italian Institute of Technology._

Video&#65306;How China plans to become a leader in robotics &#8211; Quartz

With rapid economic development in the past 20 years, China urgently feels the need to move from a manufacturing-driven to an innovation-driven economy. As a result, the state is supporting many bold research initiatives to develop and attract highly skilled individuals who will be needed to lead this transition. Thanks to recent dramatic developments in hardware and software, economists anticipate that the Chinese robotics industry will meet its spring season this year.

China&#8217;s Five Year Plan establishes the core concept of development in all areas of society. In 2011, China started its 12th Five Year Plan, and for the first time ever, the service robot was identified as an important area for development. It is anticipated that many new Chinese robotics companies will emerge in the near future to meet the growth targets set out in the plan.

However, due to the economic crisis, the situation is changing subtly. I travelled around several main cities in China in early 2013 to learn from experts in the current automation industry, and it was apparent that because the new generation of Chinese workers ask for higher pay and lower workloads, it is very difficult for China&#8217;s massive manufacturing industry to recruit new workers. Not surprisingly, leading foreign industrial robot companies, such as Kuka, ABB and Fanuc are taking advantage of this problem to market their robots to the manufacturing sector.

Local companies are likewise developing Chinese industrial robots that may have relatively low performance, but which are nonetheless able to meet industrial requirements. One such example is the Million Robots Project from the Chinese electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn. While the industrial robot market is growing, however, service robots still remain the province of university labs and research institutes.

*Funding high-risk research in China*

In China, almost all high-risk, high-reward research is conducted by central government agencies: the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), the Ministry of Education (ME), the Ministry of Science and Technology (MST), and the Organization Department of CPC Central Committee (ODCCC).

NSFC aims to support young researchers by awarding modest grants from the Young Scientists Fund. This is the most popular funding mechanism for young researchers when they first begin conducting independent research as it is relatively easy to apply for and receive. The Ministry of Education manages several projects aimed to recruit top young and mid-career researchers both in and out of China to work as academic leaders and awards large grants to them.

The Ministry of Science and Technology manages several projects that are significant to researchers engaged in high risk, high reward research, including the National Basic Research Program of China and the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China. The ODCCC too funds high risk research initiatives through the Thousand Talent Project (TTP), a three-year term project with possible extension.

The goal of the TTP is to recruit thousands of foreign researchers with strong expertise in hardware and software to help develop innovation in China. There are already more than 100 foreign researchers working in China since 2008, the year TTP started.

*Where the money goes*

It can be difficult for people outside China to learn about the projects these granting programs support because&#8212;in part due to language barriers and visa restrictions&#8212;Chinese researchers tend to participate in domestic conferences rather than international ones.

While robotics researchers from around the world keenly watch videos of Boston Dynamic&#8217;s Bigdog walking freely on uneven and slippery mountain roads, or Honda&#8217;s Asimo dancing and hopping on one foot, the Chinese government is also busy establishing similar projects in a more low key fashion (see this PlasticPals YouTube playlist for a sample of what the whole must be).

*Chinese humanoid robots doing a sword dance*

Having visited Chinese laboratories and spoken face-to-face with researchers, I have seen many bold robotics initiatives that are currently underway. One particularly challenging area of development is the humanoid robot, and two of the best robotics laboratories for this are in China at the Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT) and Zhejiang University (ZHU), both of which have succeeded in producing the first humanoid robots that can perform Tai Chi and play ping pong (see here and here). These robots were not specifically designed for game play&#8212;they were in fact developed as part of China&#8217;s domestic service robots initiative &#8211; but Tai Chi and ping pong have helped researchers test their robots&#8217; image processing and dexterity.

China is also pursing its own version of BigDog. In 2011, the 863 program established another 3-year project with funding up to $700m that aims to build a Biomimetic Quadruped Robot like Boston Dynamic&#8217;s BigDog. Almost all the important robotics labs in Chinese universities are competing for this funding. The Harbin Institute of Technology , Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Sheenyang Institute of Automation Chinese Academy of Science, Shan Dong University, and other universities and institutes each released their version of BigDog one after another.

These homegrown initiatives may not yet have the performance capabilities of their better-known counterparts, but the Chinese are well on their way to catching up to the world leaders in robotics research.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

The world's first *single-pixel &#65288;quantum&#65289;3D camera*&#65306;





Engineering principle prototype by Shanghai Institue of Optics and Fine Mechanics&#12290;
















Detailed report in Chinese on 27.08.2013&#65306;?????????????3???? ??????????-????

No hidings for stealth aircrafts&#12290;

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

An earlier brief report in English&#65306;

January 29, 2013

*First 3-D Ghost Images From A Single Pixel*

Chinese physicists use ghost imaging technique to make 3D images with a single pixel

Ghost imaging is the extraordinary technique of bouncing a laser beam off an object and making high quality images from the reflected light using a single pixel. This single pixel records many data points which must be stitched together to create the image.

But there is no scanning involved (which would be equivalent to taking an ordinary picture very slowly).

Instead, the data from the single pixel is compared against the intensity of the original laser beam, which must be randomised by passing it through frosted glass. Then any correlations between the original and reflected beam reveal information about the object in the image.

It is these correlations that physicists use to assemble the picture, known as a ghost image.

That may sound rather fiddly and time consuming but it is actually hugely efficient. The amount of data required to create an image in this way is tiny compared to the amount that ordinary imaging requires. It is possible to record the equivalent of a 5 megapixel image using just 50,000 pixels.

Physicists have demonstrated this technique in various different ways since 1995 but it is only in the last few years that they&#8217;ve begun to understand it properly and started to exploit it.

Today, Wenlin Gong and pals at the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics in China reveal just how powerful the technique can be. They&#8217;ve designed and built a ghost imaging device that uses a single pixel to record three dimensional images.

The modification from previous ghost imaging systems is simple. They use short laser pulses of just 10 ns to briefly illuminate the object of interest and then turn on their single pixel for a short period of time so that it captures light reflected only from a specific distance.

This kind of gating produces image slices that can then be put together to create a three dimensional scene, a technique known as laser detection and ranging or LADAR.

To show off their idea, these guys use a green laser and a small telescope fitted with a single pixel to capture 3-D images of ordinary objects about a kilometre away. The image above, for example, shows a group of houses and trees about 900 metres away and has a spatial resolution of 25cm and a depth resolution of 60 cm.

That&#8217;s impressive. It doesn&#8217;t take much imagination to realise that this could be rather useful. As Wenlin Gong and pals put it modestly: &#8220;This technique has a great application prospect in remote sensing,&#8221; Quite!

First 3-D Ghost Images From A Single Pixel | MIT Technology Review

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*A group of Chinese researchers discover a new method to combat multi drug resistant pneumonia
*

*Discovery of a potent benzoxaborole-based anti-pneumococcal agent targeting leucyl-tRNA synthetase	* 

 Link: Scientific Reports : Nature  
Published 20 August 2013 





Superbug pneumonia under the microscope 
Photo credit: Activist post 





X-ray pic of a pneumonia infected lung 
Credit: drugs.com 


*Extract	* 

Pneumonia is a severe acute respiratory infectious disease that causes lung dysfunction, and it is considered the leading cause of morbidity and mortality among children worldwide. 

The WHO estimated that penumonia kills over 2 million children each year, accounting for 19 per cent of under-five deaths1. Streptococcus pneumoniae is the primary pathogen of bacterial pneumonia, which resides in the human nasopharynx and can be transmitted through respiratory secretions in all age groups. 

Currently, pneumonia is treated using several classes of antibiotics such as penicillins, macrolides and vancomycins. The effectiveness of widely available antibiotics is essential for reducing pneumonia mortality. 

However, pneumococci has developed severe resistance to a variety of drugs and the numbers of clinically isolated resistant strains are in steadily increasing in recent years. 

One major resistance of concern is the prevelance of penicillin-resistant S. pneumoniae which has been recognized as a community-acquired pathogen. More recently, the development of pneumococci resistance to over 3 kinds of antibiotics have been reported around the world. 

The global emergence of multidrug-resistant S. pneumoniae and the high cost of vancomycin have restricted the effectiveness of clinically available drugs1, presenting a greater threat to public health. Therefore, there is an urgent need for the development of new anti-pneumococcal agents that show no cross-resistance to current drugs.	

Here we report the compound ZCL039, a benzoxaborole-based derivative of AN2690, as a potent anti-pneumococcal agent that inhibits S. pneumoniae LeuRS (SpLeuRS) activity.	

We show using kinetic, biochemical analyses combined with the crystal structure of ZCL039-AMP in complex with the separated SpLeuRS editing domain, that ZCL039 binds to the LeuRS editing active site which requires the presence of tRNALeu, and employs an uncompetitive inhibition mechanism. Further docking models establish that ZCL039 clashes with the eukaryal/archaeal specific insertion I4ae helix within editing domains. These findings demonstrate the potential of benzoxaboroles as effective LeuRS inhibitors for pneumococcus infection therapy, and provide future structure-guided drug 


*Affiliations	

State Key Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Center for RNA research, Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200031, China	 * 

Qing-Hua Hu, Ru-Juan Liu, Zhi-Peng Fang, Min Tan, Meng Wang & En-Duo Wang 



*School of Pharmacy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China	* 

Jiong Zhang & Hu-Chen Zhou 


*Department of Microbiology, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Medical Biodefense, Second Military Medical University, Shanghai 200433, China*

Ying-Ying Ding & Wei Pan 





*&#20013;&#22269;&#31185;&#23398;&#38498;&#19978;&#28023;&#29983;&#21629;&#31185;&#23398;&#30740;&#31350;&#38498; 
State Key Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Center for RNA research, Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 
*
















*&#19978;&#28023;&#20132;&#36890;&#22823;&#23398; &#33647;&#23398;&#38498; 
School of Pharmacy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai	* 















&#19978;&#28023;&#20132;&#22823;&#26657;&#22253; Shanghai Jiaotong Univerty compus


----------



## shuttler

*&#19978;&#28023;&#31532;&#20108;&#20891;&#21307;&#38498;&#22823;&#23398;
Department of Microbiology, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Medical Biodefense, Second Military Medical University, Shanghai 
*




































All photo credits: dxycdn.com

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*Discovery of a new versatile material - supramolecular nanotube fibre *

*Self-assembling yarn shows its strength	*

27 August 2013 Mark Peplow 
 Chemistry World 





 




The nanotube yarn can be spun into a thread © Wiley-VCH 

*It is soft, strong and very, very long*. Chinese chemists have created metres of a yarn that self-assembles from nothing more than a mixture of simple monomers in water. 

Carbon nanotubes can already be spun into yarns to make extremely strong threads. Supramolecular nanotubes, formed by molecules spontaneously linking up through non-covalent bonds, could offer a simpler, low-cost alternative &#8211; if only they weren&#8217;t so fragile. &#8216;Soft supramolecular nanotubes have proved to be very difficult to spin,&#8217; says Minghua Liu at the Chinese Academy of Sciences&#8217; Institute of Chemistry in Beijing. 

Liu&#8217;s team has now built a much stronger supramolecular yarn from monomers of N,N-eicosanedioyl-di-L-histidine &#8211; essentially a long carbon chain with a histidine at each end. Mixed into slightly alkaline water, the molecules assemble themselves into flat sheets, which then roll up into nanotubes that are about 40nm wide and several hundred micrometres long. 

When the researchers dipped a needle into the mixture they were able to slowly draw out a continuous yarn of thousands of nanotubes bundled together. Using an electric motor and a spool, the scientists could pull out metre-long yarns &#8211; several of these can be twisted together to make a helical thread.	

*&#8216;The great thing here is that it is done simply, from a small molecule &#8211; up to now the best results were achieved with quite complex supramolecular &#8220;monomers&#8221;*,&#8217; says David Amabilino at the Materials Science Institute of Barcelona in Spain, who studies supramolecular self-assembly.* It&#8217;s &#8216;certainly a very significant breakthrough*&#8217;, he adds.	

*The yarn is a few micrometres wide, and once dried has a remarkable tensile strength of about 50MPa, comparable to polypropylene. The chemists suggest that the supramolecular nanotubes are held together by hydrogen bonding between the monomer&#8217;s amide groups, and hydrophobic interactions between its long alkyl chains.	*

&#8216;*This is the first type of supramolecular polymer fibre with such good mechanical properties and shows that small molecules and summing non-covalent interactions can lead to robust materials,&#8217; says Amabilino.	*

*Liu expects that the threads will be biocompatible and hopes to test them as a scaffold for growing cells. For example, it might serve as a template for repairing nerves, says Liu: &#8216;In the axons of nerve cells in the human body, microtubules assemble into long fibers to perform their functions, which have similar architecture to our nanotube yarns.&#8217; Once tissue growth is underway, the supramolecular network could be disassembled, perhaps by changing the pH.	

The tubes might also be used to carry or separate molecules. Liu&#8217;s team showed that a toluene solution of fluorescent molecule tetraphenylporphyrin could travel more than 1cm per hour along the tube. And as the nanotubes are chiral, &#8216;they may be useful for chiral recognition or separation&#8217;, he suggests. His team is now developing a range of similar yarns by tweaking the monomer building blocks and varying the self-assembly conditions.	*

*REFERENCES* 

Y Liu et al, Adv. Mater., 2013, DOI: 10.1002/adma.201302345	

*Also read:* 

*Self-Assembled Supramolecular Nanotube Yarn*

Liu - 2013 - Advanced Materials - Wiley Online Library 


*Yaqing Liu-1, Tianyu Wang-1,*, Yong Huan-2, Zhibo Li-3, Guowei He-2, Minghua Liu-1*,* 
Article first published online: 13 AUG 2013 

*Author Affiliations 
*
*1- Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Science (BNLMS), CAS Key Laboratory of Colloid, Interface, and Chemical Thermodynamics, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, PR China 

2- State Key Laboratory of Nonlinear Mechanics (LNM), Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, PR China 

3- State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry, Joint Laboratory of Polymer Science and Material, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, PR China *
DOI: 10.1002/adma.201302345	





*&#20013;&#22269;&#31185;&#23398;&#38498;&#21147;&#23398;&#30740;&#31350;&#25152; 
State Key Laboratory of Nonlinear Mechanics (LNM), Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences 
*














*&#20013;&#22269;&#31185;&#23398;&#38498;&#21270;&#23398;&#30740;&#31350;&#25152; 
Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences*

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*An update with links to specific threads*

http://www.defence.pk/forums/china-far-east/277640-important-discovery-combating-hiv-aids-found.html

http://www.defence.pk/forums/china-far-east/277229-chinese-researchers-make-invisibility-cloak-15-minutes.html

http://www.defence.pk/forums/china-far-east/277393-nature-2012-global-top-200-ranking-chinese-research-institutions.html

http://www.defence.pk/forums/china-far-east/277576-chinese-university-scientists-build-tiny-robot-battle-human-diseases.html


----------



## Cyberian

Wow. I am truly impressed. This thread is amazing.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*BYD Announces Future Supercar With 3.9s 0-100*

Sep 10, 2013

Posted By Ash 

China Car Times

At a recent technical focused meet and greet with the Chinese automotive media, BYD announced a series of new technology cars including multiple new forced induction engines, two new hybrid powertrains and a range topping supercar.

BYD is not know for its design flair or its sporting credentials, the fledgling company has been producing cars that are rather like certain Toyota models for a number of years but in recent months have begun to stamp their own design trends into their model range.

BYD&#8217;s past is well known, it rose to fame with the Corolla inspired F3 and then fell to the ashes due to the F3 being a fairly poorly made car at the time, BYD then went back to the drawing board and redeveloped its internal systems. It no longer tries to produce everything in house and now has a focus on good quality cars packed with high technology at a fair price, the BYD Su Rui launched last year signifies BYD&#8217;s new trend.

In the future BYD will be focusing on safety, convenience and enjoyment. On the safety side of things BYD is planning for its models to have Heads Up Display systems on the dashboard as well as 360 degree visual system to give drivers a greater awareness of their surroundings. For convenience all future cars will have keyless start, communications systems, cruise control, voice control, and of course BYD&#8217;s well known patented remote control system. For entertainment, BYD&#8217;s base system will use a 10.2 inch screen entertainment system that is boosted to 12.2 inch in higher models, independent rear air conditioning system, electronic sliding doors, and a 5.1 surround sound system.

Engines are not being looked over either, BYD&#8217;s self developed turbo direct injection which first debuted with their current flagship 1.5T is being expanded to 1.2T, 1.8T and 2.0T which will be paired to both dry and wet dual clutch gearboxes, again both self developed by BYD.

Although BYD are focusing on direct injection turbo systems they are not forgetting their hybrid/EV goals, the company has announced that by mixing its 2.0T engine with its hybrid system an average car will be able to do 0-100kph in just 4.9 seconds.

We have seen BYD&#8217;s next generation Qin Hybrid concept before, that particular system is fitted with a 1.5T and BYD&#8217;s electric motor and iron phosphate battery system, the result is a 0-100kph time of 5.9seconds and an expected 300bhp with fuel use of just 2L per 100km with the car hitting the market in the fourth quarter of this year. But the next in line is the most interesting. Following on with the Chinese dynasty name theme, BYD are set to introduce a &#8216;Tang&#8217; hybrid vehicle which will make the Qin look obsolete when it launches in 2014. The Tang will use BYD&#8217;s aforementioned 2.0T and hybrid system to propel it from 0-100 in 4.9 seconds, this system is likely to launch on the BYD S7 SUV first as it was showcased at the North American Auto Show previously.

*And to top it all, BYD are planning for a new pure electric vehicle called the E9. BYD are being extremely tight lipped about the E9 but they have revealed it will be an electric supercar that will hit 0-100kp/h in just 3.9 seconds putting it on par with the Tesla Roadster which achieved a similar 3.7 seconds.*

BYD Auto | BYD Announces Future Supercar With 3.9s 0-100 | China Car Times - China Auto News





The Qin Hybrid

So future BYD cars will be named after Chinese dynasties &#65311;

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*First BYD Qin seen on the Road in China*

PUBLISHED ON AUGUST 28, 2013 BY TYCHO DE FEIJTER






The very first BYD Qin hybrid we see on the road in China, seen in the great city of Shenzhen in Guangdong Province. The Qin has temporarily license plates behind the windows, indicating this is a test car. The Qin was expected to hit the China car market this month, but it seems launch has been delayed to a moment in time later this year.

*The Qin is powered by a hybrid drivetrain consisting of a 1.5 liter turbo four cylinder petrol engine and an electric motor. Combined output is an impressive 315hp and 440nm, making the Qin the most powerful mass-market hybrid passenger car on earth. Top speed is 185km/h and 0-100 takes 6.9 seconds. The 1.5 turbo poops out 165hp, the electric motor another 150. BYD claims a combined fuel consumption of 2 liters per 100 kilometer.*

Great mad thingies, great tech; gonna be a great BYD. Price will start around *180.000 yuan*.

First BYD Qin seen on the Road in China | CarNewsChina.com - China Auto News

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*Also read these&#65306;
*

http://www.defence.pk/forums/china-far-east/277953-china-successfully-develops-manufactures-1-strongest-fibres-f-12-a.html#post4773319

http://www.defence.pk/forums/china-...d-state-laser-source-frontier-equipments.html


http://www.defence.pk/forums/china-...nches-three-yaogan-weixing-17-satellites.html


http://www.defence.pk/forums/china-far-east/275430-chinas-mega-projects.html


http://www.defence.pk/forums/china-far-east/274278-world-s-first-single-pixel-quantum-3d-camera.html


http://www.defence.pk/forums/china-...emi-floating-gate-transistors-microelect.html


http://www.defence.pk/forums/china-far-east/272838-china-develops-own-tech-enrich-uranium.html


----------



## shuttler

*Scientists make land arable again
*
Updated: 2013-09-16 01:53 By Cheng Yingqi ( China Daily)

chinadaily.com.cn





The 562-kilometer road connecting Urumqi and Hotan, which once was plagued by problems caused by the sand, now has desert plants as protection. The spread of sand in Xinjiang stops, and a major road to Urumqi is saved


For 2,000 years, people have battled the relentless wind and sand of the unforgiving Taklimakan Desert.

Ancient civilizations along the Silk Road were swept aside, leaving traces of their existence only in the remains of temples and frescos.

Qira county in the southwest of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region is one of the most severely hit regions.

Without scientific methods to combat desertification, the march of the sands of time would have continued.

But scientists have found an oasis of triumph after three decades.

The Qira research station of the Chinese Academy of Sciences was established in 1983. With the help of the scientists from the station, a transitional zone was established, and gradually the sand was pushed back more than 5 kilometers.

Jappar Mashrap, 49, lives in Qira and has witnessed the change and benefited from the work of the scientists.

Mashraps endangered home was on the fringe of the desert and the family had to move in the late 1960s as the sand crept closer.

But thanks to the work of the scientists, the deserts march was stopped and Mashrap has a home again.

Now on Childrens Day, people often take their children to the amusement park, but things were quite different when I was a boy, Mashrap said.

"In those days, to celebrate festivals, my parents had to take me a long way to find grass where we could play.

The sand also threatened a major road running through on the north-south axis of the Taklimakan Desert.

The 562-kilometer road, completed in 1995, shortens the route between Urumqi and Hotan by 500 km. But it had been plagued by problems caused by the sand.

Xu Xinwen, director of the station, and his team devoted much of their efforts to securing the road.

Sometimes the sand on the road piles up a few meters high,"" Xu said. Various methods were tried, including fencing and barriers, but each had a drawback."
The most effective barrier for sand is greening, Xu said.





Since 2003, 20 million drought-enduring plants, including (clockwise from top left) Echinops sphaerocephalus, Poacyngrn hendersonii and Calligonum rubicundum, have been planted along the road. Photos by Hou Yiguo / for Chind Daily

However, in a desert that has annual precipitation of just 10 millimeters, "planting a tree and nurturing it to full growth is even more difficult than raising a child", Xu said.

Xu found seeds and plants that can survive in the bitter salt water under the sand, such as Chinese tamarisk, calligonum and Haloxylon ammodendron.

Since 2003, 20 million drought-enduring plants have been planted along the road, forming a 72-to 78- meter green belt.

The plants are irrigated by underground water pumped up 114 water wells. Compared to the cost of maintaining fences and barriers, irrigating the plants save some 30 million yuan ($4.9 million) every year.

The discoveries and applications of the desert plants is a lengthy process, according to Guan Kaiyun, director of the Turpan Eremophytes Botanic Garden.

Our researchers working in the stations find the plants and seeds, and we are in charge of plant introduction and acclimatization, which sometimes takes more than a decade to finish, Guan said.

In the parched Turpan Basin sits the worlds only botanic garden of Asian desert flora. When a new plant is found, the samples are usually taken back to the garden, where scientists find ways to help the plants adapt to the new environment.

Spending four decades introducing and preserving desert plants, the botanic garden now has 700 different species, 50 of them endangered. Estimates put the number of plant species in the desert at about 5,000.

The plants also provide scientists with research opportunities.

One example Guan gives is Ammopiptanthus nanus, an endangered evergreen shrub in Xinjiang on which scientists recently extracted a protein that can combat deep cold.

That protein explains the reason that Ammopiptanthus nanus survives the extreme low temperatures. And its worth further study because we might use it in genetically modified techniques in the future, Guan said.

Tian Changyan, deputy director of the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, has devoted 10 years to finding the perfect plants that could improve the saline-alkali soil.

Some plants can only grow in excessively saline soil. If we cultivate these plants on moderately saline soil, the plants will extract the salt out of the soil and improve its fertility, Tian said.

From 305 different salt-tolerant species, Tian identified six that were the most efficient. Experiments on a 67-hectare test field showed the plants were able to reduce the soil salt from 3 percent to less than 0.6 percent within three years.

Compared to the old method of washing the saline soil with water, the plants are much more effective and sustainable, Tian said.

Scientists at the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography have devised a major project which could change the landscape forever. By 2020, the institute will build a gene bank of arid regional plants covering 10,000 plant species. Also, a world-class botanical garden is planned for Ili Kazak autonomous prefecture.

The arid regional plants have excellent genetic features, so the genes are a significant strategic resource of the country, Guan said.

The genes have great potential for our future development of agriculture, medicine and the military.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*China to build 4,500-meter manned submersible 
*
English.news.cn 2013-09-17 15:15:05 

news.xinhuanet.com

ABOARD XIANGYANGHONG 09, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have launched a program to build a new manned submersible expected to dive as deep as 4,500 meters and capable of carrying out scientific research on a majority of the earth's seabeds.

The program was revealed by Hu Zhen with China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, who is in charge of the technology development of the submersible program under the Ministry of Science and Technology, in an interview on board the Xiangyanghong 09, carrier boat of the Jiaolong submersible. The Jiaolong has dived successfully to a depth of 7,062 meters, ranking China among the world's most advanced countries in the deep-sea submersible field.

Upon completing overall maintenance of the Jiaolong, Hu and his colleagues are scheduled to undertake study on developing a second deep-sea diving vehicle for the country's seabed research.

The country's first submersible, Jiaolong, has successfully carried out 73 deep-sea dives so far, Hu said, noting that its operations have become easier over time as the submersible has grown more reliable and stable.

The Jiaolong will soon be handed over to the China Ocean Mineral Resources Research and Development Association, and at that time study will focus on key technologies involved in the 4,500-meter submersible, the scientist told Xinhua.

According to Hu, the key parts of the new submersible, such as robotic arms and a high-pressure crew-compartment made of titanium alloy, will be developed independently by Chinese scientists.

The Jiaolong can reach as many as 99.8 percent of all seabeds on Earth, and the new submersible is expected to be able to patrol most seabeds, including those in the South China Sea, Hu said.

The second submersible will have a number of new features compared to the older Jiaolong. It will have five windows for observing the seabed from different angles, and its manned capsule will have three seats and a ladder.

The new submersible will be easier and more comfortable for the crew to operate. Additionally, the new craft will be flat-bottomed, making it easier for the vehicle to be moved on board its carrier.

The new research program was recently inaugurated by the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation will be responsible for development of the new submersible, Hu said.


----------



## cirr

shuttler said:


> *China to build 4,500-meter manned submersible
> *



Great for resource grabbing&#12290;

China must do its level best to increase the portion of GDP that's oceanomics based&#12290;


----------



## cirr

that dynamically reacts to the applications to which it is applied&#65306;

[YouKu]XNjExNzcwNDY0[/YouKu]

Tests show that&#65292;for typical applications&#65292;the new mimicry&#65288;the breakthrough design was inspired by the mimicry octopus in nature&#65289; computer is 100 times as capable and efficient as an ordinary computer&#12290;.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## cirr

*China has successfully developed the world's first dynamic variable structure mimicry computer*

Xinhua News Agency, Shanghai, September 21 - (Reporter Zhang Jiansong by the most wonderful nature of the 'Master of Disguise' - octopus mimicry inspired fusion of Chinese scientists bionics, cognitive science and modern information technology, put forward a new theory calculations mimicry and successfully developed the world's first dynamic variable structure mimicry computer.

21, Entitled 'new concept high performance computer architecture and systems research and development' project in Shanghai approved 863 projects Acceptance Group acceptance.

Experts believe that mimicry computer's successful development is not only our high-performance computer architecture, a breakthrough, so that our computer field from a follower innovation to lead innovation, from the integrated innovation to the original creative leap, but also China's active defense system of the major innovation, technical aspects can be effectively solved from the system of self-control strategies in the context of globalization era, the core electronic devices, high-end general chips, hardware and basic software products the kinds of long-term difficulties, has important strategic significance.

Computer mimicry by the Chinese Academy of Engineering Wu Xing Jiang led the research team, in the Science and Technology and Shanghai Municipal Government jointly supported by more than a dozen units outside the United Nations, more than 500 researchers polymerization, which lasted six years of research together.

Mimicry computer's design was inspired by mimicry octopus mimicry octopus is the nature of the most wonderful 'master of disguise', it can distort the body and tentacles, change colors, imitating at least fifteen species of animals the appearance and behavior until 1998, people in the Indonesia Sulawesi waters found it(Best News - Breaking News Updates | Latest News Headlines | Photos News).

Wu Jiang Xing academician said fusion bionics, cognitive science and modern information technology, Chinese scientists first proposed a calculation based on mimicry active cognitive reconfigurable architecture, according to this theory, developed a prototype computer mimicry.

Mimicry computer called 'Transformers.' Currently used by general computer 'structure constant, calculated by the software programming', and mimicry dynamically variable structure of a computer, 'by variable structure, hardware and software computing.' For different users application requirements, mimicry computer by changing its own structure to improve performance.

Tests show typical applications mimicry computer energy efficiency than ten times the computer can upgrade to a hundred times, high performance characteristics significantly.

With mimicry computer architecture dynamically variable thinking, our scientists also proposed a 'mimicry security,' the new concept, can greatly improve the security of computer systems, reduce the dangers of viruses and Trojans.

(Original title: China successfully developed the world's first dynamic variable structure mimicry computer

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## cirr

Also 3 hurrays to the successful flight of China's space plane &#8220;*Aotian-1*&#8221;&#12290;

è&#710;ªå¤©å&#710;&#8250;æ&#8211;°_è&#710;ªå¤©ä¸&#8364;é&#8482;¢ç*&#8221;å&#8216;ä¸*å¿&#402;ç&#353;&#8222;å¾®å&#353; æ&#8211;°æµªå¾®å&#353;-é&#353;æ&#8212;¶é&#353;å&#339;°å&#710;&#8224;äº«è&#710;ªå¤©å&#710;&#8250;æ&#8211;°_è&#710;ªå¤©ä¸&#8364;é&#8482;¢ç*&#8221;å&#8216;ä¸*å¿&#402;ç&#353;&#8222;æ&#8211;°é²&#339;äº&#8249;å&#8222;¿

















Pics for illustration only&#12290;

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## cirr

Also 3 hurrays to the world's first real &#8221;Light Sword&#8220;






çå®çååï¼ä¸*å½å¼ååºé¿è¾¾1ç±³ççµå¼§ç*ç¦»å*æ_åäºé¢é_å¤å°ç½

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## cirr

*Chinese Long March 4C launches third Fengyun-3 satellite*

September 22, 2013 by Rui C. Barbosa

China launched its third Fengyun-3 polar orbiting meteorological satellite on Monday via a Long March 4C. Launch took place at 0302UTC from the LC9 Launch Complex of the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, Shanxi Province.

Chinese Launch:

Operated by the CMA (China Meteorological Administration) and NSMC (National Satellite Meteorological Center), the FY-3 series represents the second generation of Chinese polar-orbiting meteorological satellites and are cooperative program between CMA and CNSA (China National Space Administration).

The FY-3 series provides global air temperature, humidity profiles, and meteorological parameters such as cloud and surface radiation required in producing weather forecasts, especially in making medium numerical forecasting.

Chinese Long March 4C launches third Fengyun-3 satellite | NASASpaceFlight.com

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## shuttler

*Researchers make flexible, transparent e-paper from silicon*

Researchers make flexible, transparent e-paper from silicon
Sep 20, 2013 by Lisa Zyga






The silicon nanowire paper was synthesized in a vertical high-frequency induction furnace. The direction of gas flow is marked by the yellow dashed lines. The red circles denote the locations where the silicon nanowires grow. (d) shows the synthesis of a SiNWsP@graphene electrode. Credit: Pang, et al. ©2013 American Chemical Society 


(Phys.org) In the growing area of flexible, transparent electronic devices, silicon has not played much of a role. Instead, materials such as indium tin oxide, carbon nanotubes, and others are often used to make bendable electronics.	

*Now in a new study, researchers have synthesized silicon nanowires and woven them into a paper that outperforms many other paper-like materials in terms of transparency and flexibility. Since today's integrated circuit technology is designed for silicon (in bulk form), silicon nanowires would be much more compatible with these existing technologies than other materials, an advantage that could potentially rejuvenate research into silicon-based flexible electronics.* 

*The researchers, Chunlei Pang, Hao Cui, Guowei Yang, and Chengxin Wang, at F2080 in Guangzhou, China, have published their study on the flexible, transparent, and self-standing silicon nanowires paper (FTS-SiNWsP) in a recent issue of Nano Letters.	*


*Video* 
The self-supporting cylindrical silicon nanowire paper demonstrates good flexibility and transparency. Credit: Pang, et al. ©2013 American Chemical Society	

As the researchers explain, bulk silicon is brittle at room temperature and only becomes ductile close to its melting temperature of about 1400 °C. In contrast, nanoscale silicon possesses a very large straining ability that enables flexibility at room temperature. However, weaving silicon nanowires into a paper-like material has been challenging because it requires achieving a unique interlocking alignment using controlled, catalyst-free growth methods.	

Here, the researchers developed a simple method to synthesize silicon nanowires and assemble them into the desired interlocking alignment using a vertical high-frequency induction furnace. SiO powder and Ar gas (serving as a carrier gas) get blown into the furnace where they are quickly heated to about 1600 °C and kept there for 1 hour. The heat causes the SiO powder to decompose into SiO2 vapor and Si particles, both of which are transported by the Ar gas to a low-temperature zone where they stratify under gravity action due to their different molecular weights.	

As more SiO2 and Si are transported to their locations, they nucleate and grow. While the SiO2 deposits form a powder sample, the Si particles form nanowires with diameters of about 10 nm that grow in the direction of the gas flow. As the Si nanowires grow, they spontaneously interlock with each other to form a free-standing membrane material. Scanning electron microscope images show a highly porous, woven structure, whose pores can potentially be filled with other functional materials for novel applications. Tests also showed that the FTS-SiNWsP material had very good optical transmittance and could bend repeatedly without cracking.	

To demonstrate how these woven silicon nanowires can be used to create high-performance battery electrodes, the researchers grew graphene on the outside of the silicon nanowires in a core-shell design. The graphene also filled the gaps of the woven silicon nanowire material, completely encasing the material. After fabricating coin-cell Li-ion batteries using a FTS-SiNWsP@graphene film as the anode and Li as the cathode, the researchers showed that these batteries have very good performance, performing close to their theoretical capacity and maintaining a capacity of more than 1000 mAh/g after 100 cycles.	

The FTS-SiNWsP material has the potential for many applications in addition to battery electrodes, such as flexible solar cells, wearable computers, paper displays, and supercapacitors. In the future, the researchers plan to build on this synthesis method to develop silicon nanowire paper materials to meet these emerging technological demands.	

Next, we plan to carry out the application research of the silicon paper material in solar cells, Wang said.	


*&#20013;&#23665;&#22823;&#23398; Sun Yat-sen (Zhongshan) University	*










East Campus Map	





School of Medicine Photo Credit: mightdriftaway.files.wordpress.com/	





First Afffliliated Hospital	





Zhuhai Campus	





Guanghua School of Stomatology, North Campus	





Central Lawn, South Campus

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*&#20013;&#22269;&#26032;&#33322;&#27597;&#19978;&#30005;&#30913;&#24377;&#23556;&#65306;&#19990;&#30028;&#26368;&#22823;&#21151;&#29575;&#36229;&#30005;&#23481;&#20132;&#20184;
*
junshi.xilu.com
2013-09-15

*&#25163;&#26426;&#20805;&#30005;&#20165;&#38656;2&#31186;&#38047;&#12289;&#20648;&#33021;&#24335;&#36731;&#36712;&#21015;&#36710;&#20805;&#30005;&#20165;&#38656;20&#39296;&#31186;&#38047;&#23601;&#33021;&#28385;&#36275;&#27491;&#24120;&#36816;&#29992;&#65292;&#36825;&#23601;&#26159;&#36229;&#32423;&#30005;&#23481;&#30340;&#31070;&#22855;&#21151;&#33021;*&#12290;&#22914;&#20170;&#65292;&#20013;&#22269;&#24050;&#29282;&#29282;&#21344;&#25454;&#36825;&#19968;&#19990;&#30028;&#21069;&#27839;&#25216;&#26415;&#30340;&#39640;&#22320;&#12290;

9&#26376;12&#26085;&#65292;&#35760;&#32773;&#20174;&#20013;&#22269;&#21335;&#36710;&#26666;&#26426;&#20844;&#21496;&#20102;&#35299;&#21040;&#65292;&#20844;&#21496;&#26071;&#19979;&#23425;&#27874;&#21335;&#36710;&#26032;&#33021;&#28304;&#31185;&#25216;&#26377;&#38480;&#20844;&#21496;&#33258;&#20027;&#30740;&#21046;&#30340;&#19990;&#30028;&#26368;&#22823;&#21151;&#29575;&#36229;&#32423;&#30005;&#23481;&#21333;&#20307;(7500F)&#25104;&#21151;&#23454;&#29616;&#20102;&#25209;&#37327;&#29983;&#20135;&#65292;&#39318;&#25209;5000&#21482;7500F&#36229;&#32423;&#30005;&#23481;&#20135;&#21697;&#24050;&#20132;&#20184;&#29992;&#25143;&#12290;






&#19990;&#30028;&#26368;&#22823;&#21151;&#29575;&#36229;&#30005;&#23481;&#21333;&#20307;&#20132;&#20184;
Delivery of the world's largest supercapacitor


&#12288;&#12288;&#20309;&#20026;&#36229;&#32423;&#30005;&#23481;&#65311;&#20013;&#22269;&#24037;&#31243;&#38498;&#38498;&#22763;&#12289;&#20013;&#22269;&#21335;&#36710;&#26666;&#26426;&#20844;&#21496;&#19987;&#23478;&#22996;&#21592;&#20250;&#20027;&#20219;&#21016;&#21451;&#26757;&#21578;&#35785;&#35760;&#32773;&#65292;&#36890;&#20439;&#22320;&#35762;&#23601;&#26159;&#31532;&#19977;&#20195;&#20648;&#33021;&#35013;&#32622;&#65292;&#31532;&#19968;&#20195;&#20026;&#26426;&#26800;&#24335;&#20648;&#33021;&#65292;&#22914;&#39134;&#36718;&#12289;&#21457;&#26465;&#31561;;&#31532;&#20108;&#20195;&#20026;&#21270;&#23398;&#24335;&#20648;&#33021;&#65292;&#22914;&#38085;&#37240;&#33988;&#30005;&#27744;&#12289;&#38221;&#27682;&#30005;&#27744;&#12289;&#38146;&#30005;&#27744;&#31561;;&#32780;&#31532;&#19977;&#20195;&#23601;&#26159;&#20197;&#36229;&#32423;&#30005;&#23481;&#20026;&#20195;&#34920;&#30340;&#29289;&#29702;&#24335;&#20648;&#33021;&#35013;&#32622;&#12290;

&#12288;&#12288;&#8220;&#20805;&#30005;&#27425;&#25968;10000&#27425;&#20197;&#20869;&#12289;&#20805;&#30005;&#26102;&#38388;&#38271;&#36798;&#25968;&#23567;&#26102;&#12289;&#23384;&#22312;&#29190;&#28856;&#19982;&#27745;&#26579;&#29615;&#22659;&#30340;&#39118;&#38505;&#8221;VS&#8220;100&#19975;&#27425;&#12289;&#25968;&#21313;&#31186;&#12289;&#26080;&#27745;&#26579;&#20197;&#21450;&#29190;&#28856;&#39118;&#38505;&#8221;&#12290;

&#12288;&#12288;&#20013;&#22269;&#21335;&#36710;&#26666;&#26426;&#20844;&#21496;&#25216;&#26415;&#20013;&#24515;&#21103;&#24635;&#30417;&#12289;&#23425;&#27874;&#36229;&#32423;&#30005;&#23481;&#30740;&#31350;&#25152;&#25152;&#38271;&#38446;&#27583;&#27874;&#29992;&#19968;&#32452;&#23545;&#27604;&#24418;&#35937;&#22320;&#23637;&#31034;&#20102;&#36229;&#32423;&#30005;&#23481;&#36739;&#20043;&#20256;&#32479;&#21270;&#23398;&#33021;&#30005;&#27744;&#30340;&#20248;&#21183;&#12290;

&#12288;&#12288;&#36825;&#31181;&#20135;&#21697;&#20854;&#24212;&#29992;&#33539;&#22260;&#26377;&#21738;&#20123;&#65311;&#25454;&#38446;&#27583;&#27874;&#36879;&#38706;&#65292;&#20854;&#21487;&#24191;&#27867;&#36816;&#29992;&#20110;&#28040;&#36153;&#30005;&#23376;&#12289;&#36712;&#36947;&#20132;&#36890;&#12289;&#22478;&#24066;&#20844;&#20132;&#31995;&#32479;&#12289;&#22269;&#38450;&#19982;&#33322;&#22825;&#12289;&#36215;&#37325;&#26426;&#26800;&#21183;&#33021;&#22238;&#25910;&#12289;&#21457;&#30005;&#19982;&#26234;&#33021;&#30005;&#32593;&#31561;&#39046;&#22495;&#12290;

&#12288;&#12288;&#38446;&#27583;&#27874;&#20030;&#20363;&#35828;&#65292;&#27604;&#22914;&#30446;&#21069;&#28207;&#21475;&#30340;&#36215;&#37325;&#21514;&#26426;&#65292;&#20854;&#19968;&#27425;&#21514;&#36215;&#19978;&#30334;&#21544;&#30340;&#36135;&#26588;&#35201;&#28040;&#32791;&#22823;&#37327;&#30340;&#30005;&#33021;&#65292;&#32780;&#20854;&#22312;&#33853;&#19979;&#26102;&#30340;&#33021;&#37327;&#22522;&#26412;&#34987;&#30005;&#38459;&#35013;&#32622;&#31561;&#28040;&#32791;&#25481;&#65292;&#22914;&#26524;&#37319;&#29992;&#36229;&#32423;&#30005;&#23481;&#36827;&#34892;&#21183;&#33021;&#36716;&#25442;&#30005;&#33021;&#30340;&#22238;&#25910;&#65292;&#32422;&#21487;&#23454;&#29616;&#39640;&#36798;80%&#30340;&#30005;&#33021;&#22238;&#25910;&#20877;&#21033;&#29992;&#65292;&#20854;&#32511;&#33394;&#12289;&#33410;&#33021;&#12289;&#29615;&#20445;&#30340;&#25104;&#25928;&#30456;&#24403;&#31361;&#20986;&#12290;

&#12288;&#12288;&#27491;&#26159;&#37492;&#20110;&#36229;&#32423;&#30005;&#23481;&#21331;&#36234;&#30340;&#32511;&#33394;&#12289;&#33410;&#33021;&#12289;&#29615;&#20445;&#20248;&#21183;&#65292;&#36817;&#24180;&#26469;&#65292;&#38889;&#22269;&#12289;&#32654;&#22269;&#12289;&#26085;&#26412;&#31561;&#22269;&#23601;&#36229;&#32423;&#30005;&#23481;&#24050;&#24320;&#23637;&#20102;&#22823;&#37327;&#30740;&#31350;&#24037;&#20316;&#65292;&#30446;&#21069;&#20840;&#29699;&#24050;&#26377;&#21313;&#20960;&#23478;&#36229;&#32423;&#30005;&#23481;&#22120;&#29983;&#20135;&#21830;&#65292;&#21487;&#20197;&#25552;&#20379;&#22810;&#31181;&#31867;&#30340;&#36229;&#32423;&#30005;&#23481;&#20135;&#21697;&#12290;

&#12288;&#12288;&#25105;&#22269;&#20174;&#19978;&#19990;&#32426;90&#24180;&#20195;&#24320;&#22987;&#30740;&#21046;&#36229;&#32423;&#30005;&#23481;&#65292;&#36817;&#24180;&#26469;&#20197;&#20013;&#22269;&#21335;&#36710;&#20026;&#20195;&#34920;&#30340;&#20225;&#19994;&#22312;&#36229;&#32423;&#30005;&#23481;&#30340;&#32467;&#26500;&#35774;&#35745;&#12289;&#26448;&#26009;&#21046;&#22791;&#12289;&#22120;&#20214;&#21152;&#24037;&#12289;&#31995;&#32479;&#38598;&#25104;&#31561;&#39046;&#22495;&#21462;&#24471;&#20102;&#31995;&#21015;&#21457;&#26126;&#21644;&#21019;&#26032;&#65292;&#24182;&#25317;&#26377;&#33258;&#20027;&#30693;&#35782;&#20135;&#26435;&#65292;&#31361;&#30772;&#20102;&#33509;&#24178;&#21046;&#32422;&#36229;&#32423;&#30005;&#23481;&#25216;&#26415;&#21457;&#23637;&#30340;&#20851;&#38190;&#29942;&#39048;&#65292;&#25171;&#30772;&#20102;&#22269;&#22806;&#25216;&#26415;&#23553;&#38145;&#65292;&#20351;&#25105;&#22269;&#25104;&#20026;&#19990;&#30028;&#19978;&#23569;&#25968;&#20855;&#26377;&#22823;&#21151;&#29575;&#36229;&#32423;&#30005;&#23481;&#30740;&#21457;&#33021;&#21147;&#30340;&#22269;&#23478;&#12290;

&#12288;&#12288;&#38446;&#27583;&#27874;&#21578;&#35785;&#35760;&#32773;&#65292;&#27491;&#26159;&#24471;&#30410;&#20110;&#25105;&#22269;&#22312;&#36229;&#32423;&#30005;&#23481;&#30740;&#21046;&#39046;&#22495;&#30340;&#31361;&#30772;&#65292;&#20026;&#25105;&#22269;&#19979;&#28216;&#30456;&#20851;&#39046;&#22495;&#20135;&#21697;&#30340;&#21019;&#26032;&#21450;&#36816;&#29992;&#25552;&#20379;&#20102;&#8220;&#33455;&#8221;&#30340;&#20445;&#38556;&#65292;&#27604;&#22914;&#20013;&#22269;&#21335;&#36710;&#26666;&#26426;&#20844;&#21496;&#21435;&#24180;&#19979;&#32447;&#30340;&#19990;&#30028;&#39318;&#21488;&#20648;&#33021;&#24335;&#36731;&#36712;&#21015;&#36710;&#65292;&#20854;&#23601;&#35013;&#26377;&#19978;&#21315;&#20010;3000F&#30340;&#36229;&#32423;&#30005;&#23481;&#21333;&#20307;&#65292;&#20854;&#19968;&#27425;&#20805;&#30005;20&#39296;&#31186;&#21518;&#65292;&#21487;&#36816;&#34892;3&#20844;&#37324;&#20197;&#19978;&#65292;&#24182;&#33021;&#22312;&#36816;&#34892;&#20013;&#23558;&#21046;&#21160;&#33021;&#36716;&#21270;&#25104;&#30005;&#33021;&#24490;&#29615;&#21033;&#29992;&#65292;&#23454;&#29616;&#22478;&#21306;&#20869;&#30340;&#32511;&#33394;&#12289;&#26234;&#33021;&#20986;&#34892;&#12290;

&#12288;&#12288;&#30446;&#21069;&#65292;&#22269;&#20869;&#22810;&#20010;&#22478;&#24066;&#27491;&#19982;&#20013;&#22269;&#21335;&#36710;&#26666;&#26426;&#20844;&#21496;&#24320;&#23637;&#27807;&#36890;&#19982;&#20132;&#27969;&#65292;&#24320;&#21457;&#36816;&#29992;&#20197;&#36229;&#32423;&#30005;&#23481;&#20026;&#20027;&#21160;&#21147;&#28304;&#30340;100%&#20302;&#22320;&#26495;&#26377;&#36712;&#30005;&#36710;&#12289;&#22478;&#24066;&#20844;&#20132;&#36710;&#36742;&#31561;&#32511;&#33394;&#26234;&#33021;&#20135;&#21697;&#12290;

&#12288;&#12288;&#37492;&#20110;&#36229;&#32423;&#30005;&#23481;&#30340;&#24212;&#29992;&#20215;&#20540;&#65292;&#30001;&#20013;&#22269;&#21335;&#36710;&#26666;&#26426;&#20844;&#21496;&#29301;&#22836;&#65292;&#20013;&#22269;&#31185;&#23398;&#38498;&#38738;&#23707;&#29983;&#29289;&#33021;&#28304;&#19982;&#36807;&#31243;&#30740;&#31350;&#25152;&#12289;&#20013;&#22269;&#24037;&#31243;&#29289;&#29702;&#30740;&#31350;&#38498;&#21270;&#24037;&#26448;&#26009;&#30740;&#31350;&#25152;&#12289;&#21335;&#20140;&#29702;&#24037;&#22823;&#23398;&#31561;&#21333;&#20301;&#20849;&#21516;&#21442;&#19982;&#30340;&#8220;&#39640;&#27604;&#33021;&#12289;&#20302;&#25104;&#26412;&#30340;&#26032;&#22411;&#36229;&#32423;&#30005;&#23481;&#22120;&#20851;&#38190;&#25216;&#26415;&#30740;&#31350;&#8221;&#65292;&#20316;&#20026;&#39640;&#24615;&#33021;&#21270;&#23398;&#20648;&#33021;&#30005;&#27744;&#21450;&#31034;&#33539;&#30005;&#31449;&#20851;&#38190;&#25216;&#26415;&#30740;&#31350;&#20027;&#39064;&#39033;&#30446;&#30340;&#23376;&#35838;&#39064;&#65292;&#21442;&#19982;&#22269;&#23478;&#8220;863&#8221;&#35745;&#21010;&#12290;



*China's new aircraft carrier electromagnetic catapult: the world's largest super-capacitor power delivery
*
Phone charging only 2 seconds, stored energy Skytrain charged in just 20 seconds to meet the normal use of the rest, this is the super capacitor amazing features. 

Today, China has firmly occupied the heights of the world's cutting-edge technology. September 12, reporters from the China CSR Zhuzhou company learned that the company's New Energy Technology Co., Ltd. Ningbo CSR independently developed the world's largest power super capacitor monomer (7500F) successfully achieved mass production, the first batch of 5000 7500F ultracapacitor products have been delivered to the user.

What is a super capacitor ? Chinese Academy of Engineering, China South Locomotive Zhuzhou Experts Committee Mei Liu told reporters , simply is the third generation of the energy storage device , first took the mechanical energy storage, such as flywheels , spring , etc. ; second generation chemical energy storage , such as lead-acid batteries , nickel metal hydride batteries, lithium batteries ; while the third generation is represented by a super capacitor energy storage device physics .

"Charge 10,000 times less than the charging time up to several hours , there is a risk of explosion and pollution of the environment " VS "100 million times, tens of seconds , pollution and the risk of explosion ."

China CSR Zhuzhou Technical Center Deputy Director , Institute of Ruandian Bo Ningbo super capacitor with a set of contrast vividly demonstrated the super capacitor energy than conventional chemical batteries advantage.

Its scope of application of this product what ? According Ruandian Bo said, it can be widely used in consumer electronics, rail transportation, urban transit systems , defense and aerospace, lifting potential recycling, power generation and smart grid and other fields.

Ruandian Bo , for example, such as the current port lifting crane, lifting hundreds of tons of its first container to consume a lot of power , and its energy in the fall when the basic dissipated by the resistor device, etc. , if the super- capacitor potential energy conversion energy recovery, can achieve up to approximately 80% of the electrical energy recycling , and its green , energy saving, environmental protection performance has been outstanding.

It is remarkable in view of the green super capacitor , energy saving, environmental advantages , in recent years , South Korea, the United States, Japan and other countries on the super capacitor has been a lot of research work carried out , currently there are more than a dozen super capacitor manufacturer, can offer many types of ultracapacitor products.

China from the 1990s started to develop super-capacitor , in recent years, with China South Locomotive companies represented in the super-capacitor structure design, material preparation , device fabrication , system integration and other fields to obtain a series of inventions and innovations , and has independent intellectual property rights, broke several constraints ultracapacitor technology development of the key bottlenecks , breaking the blockade of foreign technology , making China the world's few high power supercapacitor R & D capability in the country.

Ruandian Bo told reporters , it has benefited from the development of the field in the super capacitor breakthrough for the relevant areas of the downstream product innovation and application of the "core" of protection , such as China CSR Zhuzhou off the assembly line last year the world's first storage energy type Skytrain , it is equipped with its thousands 3000F ultracapacitor monomer , a single charge of its 20 remaining seconds , you can run three kilometers or more, and will be able to run the braking energy into electrical energy recycling, to achieve urban the green , intelligent travel.

Currently, many cities are working with Chinese companies to carry out CSR Zhuzhou communication and exchange , development and application of the super capacitor -based power source 100% low-floor trams , city buses and other green smart products.

Given the value of super capacitor applications by Chinese companies led by CSR Zhuzhou , Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology , Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics Institute of Chemical Materials , Nanjing University of Science and other units to participate in the " high specific energy , low cost the new super capacitor key technologies " , a high-performance chemical energy storage batteries and key technology research topics demonstration power plant project sub-topics , participate in the national " 863 "program.



net assisted translation

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*Chinese researchers find low cost method to produce ethylene from ethanol*
Meghan Sapp | August 5, 2013

http://www.biofuelsdigest.com

In China, researchers from Tianjin University Research and Development Center for Petrochemical Technology found that one particular device has the potential to make a highly pure ethylene product from ethanol with high efficiency and low cost. The device, called a fluidized bed reactor, works by suspending the chemicals needed to make ethylene inside the walls of a chamber. Newly produced ethylene exits through a pipe, while the rest of the material remains to continue production



More here:

*Progress in using ethanol to make ethylene
*
By American Chemical Society | August 02, 2013

http://www.ethanolproducer.com







Ethanol from corn and other plants could become the sustainable, raw material for a huge variety of products, from plastic packaging to detergents to synthetic rubber, that are currently petroleum-based. This was the conclusion of an article published in the ACS journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research. 

Yingzhe Yu and colleagues point out that a chemical called ethylene, now produced from petroleum, is one of the most important raw materials for everyday products. Ethylene is used to make hundreds of products, including polyethylene, the world&#8217;s most widely used plastic. Scientists have been seeking sustainable alternatives to petroleum for making ethylene, and Yu&#8217;s team reviewed progress in the field.

They found that one particular device has the potential to make a highly pure ethylene product from ethanol with high efficiency and low cost. The device, called a fluidized bed reactor, works by suspending the chemicals needed to make ethylene inside the walls of a chamber. Newly produced ethylene exits through a pipe, while the rest of the material remains to continue production. Yu&#8217;s team discusses progress toward commercial use of such devices, noting that there would be &#8220;great significance&#8221; for promoting economic development.



*Dehydration of Ethanol to Ethylene
*

Dehydration of Ethanol to Ethylene - Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research (ACS Publications)

Minhua Zhang and Yingzhe Yu *

*Key Laboratory for Green Chemical Technology of the Ministry of Education, Tianjin University Research and Development Center for Petrochemical Technology, Tianjin 300072, People&#8217;s Republic of China
*
Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., 2013, 52 (28), pp 9505&#8211;9514
DOI: 10.1021/ie401157c

*Abstract*

This article is an up-to-date review of the literature available on the subject of ethanol to ethylene. The process of ethanol to ethylene has broad development prospects. Compared with the process of petroleum to ethylene, ethanol dehydration to ethylene is economically feasible. Researchers have been redirecting their interest to the ethylene production process, catalysts, and reaction mechanisms. 

A fluidized bed reactor, together with a wear-resistant, efficient, and stable catalyst will be the focus of future research that includes a deep understanding of the large-scale activated alumina catalyst and the molecular sieve catalyst used, and will promote the development of the ethanol dehydration to ethylene process and provide strong support for the market competiveness of the process.


*&#22825;&#27941;&#22823;&#23398; Tianjin University*

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

By Katherine Wei, The China Post

September 23, 2013, 12:03 am TWN

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- The *Chinatrust Charity Foundation* (&#20013;&#22283;&#20449;&#35351;&#24904;&#21892;&#22522;&#37329;&#26371 yesterday announced its collaboration with the *China National Committee for the Wellbeing of the Youth* (CNCWY, &#20013;&#22283;&#38364;&#24515;&#19979;&#19968;&#20195;&#22996;&#21729;&#26371 and mainland *China's Ministry of Civil Affairs' Foundation for the Next Generation* (&#20013;&#22283;&#31038;&#26371;&#31119;&#21033;&#22522;&#37329;&#26371;&#38364;&#24515;&#19979;&#19968;&#20195;&#22522;&#37329 in establishing education demonstration zones in mainland China.

*Known for its annual &#8220;Light Up a Light&#8221; fundraisers and programs with an aim to fight poverty in disadvantaged Taiwanese families, Chinatrust will be expanding its charity programs to the other side of the Taiwan Strait, looking to improve the educational resources for children living in China's less-developed regions.*

*The three organizations aim to establish 30 demonstration zones in China over the next six years*, not only to improve the environment of local schools in impoverished areas, but also to raise the standards of teachers employed at the targeted institutions.

Ku Hsiu-lien (&#39015;&#31168;&#34030, head of the CNCWY, presented Chinatrust Chairman Jeffrey Koo Jr. with a &#8220;Special Contribution Award,&#8221;acknowledging his past efforts in assisting disadvantaged children and families.

The two Chinese organizations held a charity fundraiser last Wednesday, with Chinatrust Vice Chairman Thomas KS Chen (&#38515;&#22283;&#19990, Kuomintang Vice Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (&#27743;&#19993;&#22372, soccer star Luis Figo and former Real Madrid team members attending.

Hmong (&#33495;&#26063 children from Fenghuang County, Hunan Province performed traditional tribal dances at the fundraiser to express their gratitude to the CNCWY and the Foundation for the Next Generation.

Chen bid for Chinese artist Chen Guang-wen's (&#38515;&#24291;&#25991 painting on Koo's behalf in the hope of encouraging the guests to begin bidding in order to help Chinese students in need.

&#8220;I hope the Real Madrid team members will be able to travel to China in the future and give free soccer lessons for the disadvantaged students,&#8221; said Chen.

Chinatrust to build education zones in China - The China Post

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## xunzi

We must remember to help the poor.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## DoTell

Look the 50c army have employed The Wall Street Journal, and the damn Chinese slaves are violating machine rights too Just where the heck did they steal this from? 

Robots May Revolutionize China's Electronics Manufacturing - WSJ.com

A new worker's revolution is rising in China and it doesn't involve humans.

With soaring wages and an aging population, electronics factory managers say the day is approaching when robotic workers will replace people on the Chinese factory floor.

A new wave of industrial robots is in development, ranging from high-end humanoid machines with vision, touch and even learning capabilities, to low-cost robots vying to undercut China's minimum wage. 

Over the next five years these technologies will transform China's factories, executives say, and also fill a growing labor shortage as the country's youth become increasingly unwilling to perform manual labor. How the transformation plays out will also go a long way in deciding how much of the electronics supply chain remains in China.

It's not just traditional robot makers like Zurich-based ABB GroupABBN.VX +0.46% and Germany's Kuka AG KU2.XE +1.82% pushing forward. Electronics suppliers in Asia such as Delta Electronics Inc. 2308.TW +0.69% and Foxconn Technology Group2354.TW +0.65% are also seeking to build a better robot, along with smaller players like Denmark's Universal Robots A/S.

But some industry executives caution that China's automation shift will likely take years and there are plenty of challenges, including the high price of advanced robots, continuing technical limitations and even the lack of flexibility that comes with bringing robots into the factory.

"If your orders decrease, you can lay off workers," said Tim Li, senior vice president of Taiwanese PC contract manufacturer Quanta Computer Inc. "You can't lay off robots."

One of the newest companies in this field, Taiwanese firm Delta, has long made power adapters for brands like Apple Inc., AAPL -0.31% but last year it began a more ambitious project: to build robots cheap enough to replace human workers in China's electronics factories.

"It's clear that automation is the future trend in China, but the big question is how to bring down the costs for robots," said Delta Chairman Yancey Hai in an interview. "We believe we can do that because we manufacture two-thirds of the components ourselves."

Delta is testing a one-armed, four-jointed robot that can move objects, join components and complete similar tasks. By 2016, Delta hopes to sell a version for as little as $10,000, which would be less than half the cost of current mainstream robots. 

That price is also cheaper than the salary of a Chinese worker, and the robot can work around the clock.

Delta believes it can achieve the low price through cost advantages at its Taiwan facility, in-house component production and a shorter target life span for its robot.

Outside Taiwan, there are also more futuristic robots in the works designed to be easily reprogrammable and smart enough to work alongside humans without risk of injury. For instance, ABB's concept humanoid robot has two 7-jointed arms that perform precise tasks and halt when touched by a person.

These robots are more expensive than factory workers, but the cost gap is shrinking, with China's wages rising by a double-digit percentage annually. 

The advancements in robotics has led to hopes that electronics firms will bring some manufacturing back to the U.S. But industry followers say electronics assembly is likely to stay in China even as automation becomes easier because the larger component supply chain is in the country.

To be sure, robots have long been technically capable of the tasks required for final assembly: placing components on circuit boards, affixing circuit boards into casings, screwing together the casings and cleaning off the devices. 

But human hands are still considerably cheaper for such jobs in China. People are also better at switching tasks than a robot, which requires reprogramming.

There are also logistical obstacles to automation. 

Because of the short sales cycle of electronic devices, products are only in production for around 9 to 18 months, with production settings requiring change afterward, said ABB China Senior Vice President Chun-yuan Gu.

"There's a fast ramp up and a fast ramp down, and that is the key challenge," he said.

Even Foxconn, the industry's loudest proponent of automation, continues to rely on city-sized factories where more than 1.1 million workers do the bulk of the assembly of iPhones and other devices by hand. Foxconn originally planned to install 1 million robotic arms in its factories by 2014, but executives said it would take much longer to reach that target. 

Automation would help companies like Foxconn that are continually beset by criticism over worker conditions. Indeed, Pegatron Corp., 4938.TW +1.50% another Apple supplier that makes iPhones, was recently accused by New York-based nonprofit organization China Labor Watch for alleged labor rights violations. 

The Taiwanese company is focusing its automation efforts on the most dangerous and laborious tasks, said Chief Financial Officer Charles Lin. 

Pegatron has invested around $100 million in the past year to automate production of electronic device casings, which involves harsh chemicals.

Quanta, the world's largest PC contract manufacturer, expects to make a massive automation shift in "the next two years or so" as labor costs rise, said Chief Financial Officer Elton Yang.

For robot makers like Kuka, that spells opportunity.

"Twenty percent of our business is in China and we see that rising," said Kuka Chief Executive Till Reuter. He said Kuka is investing in a new Chinese factory that can churn out at least 5,000 more robots a year from 1,500 to 2,000 currently.

Universal Robots and ABB also said they're boosting their China investment, and with good cause: China's industrial robot shipments will rise to 35,000 units in 2015 from 26,000 in 2012, the largest increase of any country, according to estimates from the International Federation of Robotics. While robots are used in many different types of factories in China, analysts and robotics companies point out growing demand to automate the electronics supply chain is giving demand a decided boost.

Kuka's Mr. Reuter says it's easy to see how robots can give factories a helping hand. "We have industrial robotswhich we work 24 hours a day, seven days a week for seven to 10 years," he said.

Write to Paul Mozur at paul.mozur@dowjones.com and Eva Dou at eva.dou@dowjones.com

Corrections & Amplifications
A Danish company seeking to build a better robot is called Universal Robots A/S. A previous version of this article incorrectly gave the name as Universal Robotics A/S. 

A version of this article appeared September 24, 2013, on page B5 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Robots to Revolutionize China.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Lightningbolt

It's all 'Chini CCP propaganda' you see 

How dare the 'Chinis'. Without cheap labour 'Chini' economy would collapse and CCP would collapse and free all 'Chinis'

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Kolaps

The third industrial revolution is near...

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## DoTell

Kolaps said:


> The third industrial revolution is near...



Good point. Although some might argue this is the 4th or 5th with (semiconductor)electronics and information technology "revolutions" in between. Regardless, hopefully this time China is ready.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Kolaps

In the near future, developed countries don't need cheap labors from developing countries. They have army of robots that can build anything, compete with personal customization in each product they made. You can choose, design and add personal touch in front of computer with internet access, robot will manufacture it for you and arrive in front of your house in just couple of hours later. The price is even cheaper than made by cheap labors in developing countries.

Developing country market will be massively flooded by developed countries products, that even cheaper, higher quality, better design and more functionality than locally made.


----------



## cirr

*Foiling Quantum Hackers*

Published September 23, 2013

_*Researchers have implemented a new quantum encryption method that, in principle, may provide the ultimate security against hackers in real-world cryptography applications.*_

Physics - Foiling Quantum Hackers

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## shuttler

*&#23567;&#20249;&#39069;&#22836;&#19978;&#8220;&#31181;&#8221;&#40763;&#23376; &#29983;&#38271;9&#20010;&#26376;&#25104;&#27963;*
*A young man "grows" a nose on on his forehead after nine months* 

&#25991;&#31456;&#26469;&#28304;: &#19996;&#21335;&#32593; &#20110; 2013-09-25
Source: Southeast Network on 2013-09-25
http://www.wenxuecity.com/news






&#32463;&#36807;&#36817;9&#20010;&#26376;&#30340;&#29983;&#38271;&#65292;&#40763;&#23376;&#8220;&#31181;&#26893;&#8221;&#25104;&#21151;
After nearly nine months of growth, the nose, the "planting" successful





&#21462;&#21010;&#32447;&#22788;&#36827;&#34892;&#31227;&#26893;
Line sketched on the edges of the graft will be transplanted

&#31181;&#33457;&#31181;&#33609;&#24456;&#24120;&#35265;&#65292;&#20294;&#8220;&#31181;&#8221;&#40763;&#23376;&#20320;&#35265;&#36807;&#21527;&#65292;&#32780;&#19988;&#36824;&#26159;&#22312;&#20154;&#30340;&#39069;&#22836;&#19978;&#8220;&#31181;&#8221;&#65311;

&#31119;&#24314;&#21307;&#31185;&#22823;&#23398;&#38468;&#23646;&#21327;&#21644;&#21307;&#38498;&#30340;&#21307;&#29983;&#23601;&#33457;&#20102;&#36817;9&#20010;&#26376;&#26102;&#38388;&#65292;&#20026;&#22312;&#36710;&#31096;&#20013;&#27585;&#20102;&#40763;&#23376;&#30340;&#27849;&#24030;&#23567;&#20249;&#23567;&#36830;&#65288;&#21270;&#21517;&#65289;&#31181;&#8220;&#27963;&#8221;&#20102;&#19968;&#20010;&#40763;&#23376;&#12290;

&#36825;&#20010;&#39069;&#22836;&#19978;&#8220;&#31181;&#8221;&#20986;&#30340;&#40763;&#23376;&#65292;&#40763;&#23380;&#12289;&#40763;&#26609;&#12289;&#40763;&#31896;&#33180;&#19968;&#24212;&#20465;&#20840;&#65292;&#36824;&#26377;&#23436;&#22909;&#30340;&#34880;&#20379;&#12290;

&#25454;&#21327;&#21644;&#21307;&#38498;&#25972;&#24418;&#22806;&#31185;&#20027;&#20219;&#37101;&#24535;&#36745;&#20027;&#20219;&#21307;&#24072;&#20171;&#32461;&#65292;&#36825;&#20010;&#28459;&#38271;&#12289;&#22797;&#26434;&#30340;&#40763;&#23376;&#25972;&#24418;&#25163;&#26415;&#21483;&#8220;&#40763;&#39044;&#26500;&#26415;&#8221;&#65292;&#23567;&#36830;&#20570;&#30340;&#36825;&#31181;&#25163;&#26415;&#22312;&#20840;&#22269;&#40763;&#25972;&#24418;&#20013;&#23578;&#26080;&#20808;&#20363;&#12290;

*&#36710;&#31096;&#22842;&#36208;&#20102;&#24069;&#23567;&#20249;&#30340;&#40763;&#23376; &#40763;&#20013;&#38548;&#36719;&#39592;&#22240;&#24863;&#26579;&#34987;&#28342;&#35299;*

22&#23681;&#30340;&#27849;&#24030;&#23567;&#20249;&#23567;&#36830;&#65292;&#27987;&#30473;&#22823;&#30524;&#65292;&#38271;&#30456;&#36824;&#25402;&#24069;&#27668;&#12290;&#20294;&#21435;&#24180;8&#26376;&#65292;&#20182;&#21644;&#29238;&#20146;&#21457;&#29983;&#20102;&#19968;&#22330;&#36710;&#31096;&#12290;

&#36710;&#31096;&#20013;&#65292;&#23567;&#36830;&#30340;&#40763;&#23376;&#21463;&#20102;&#20005;&#37325;&#22806;&#20260;&#65292;&#24038;&#20391;&#40763;&#32764;&#27809;&#20102;&#65292;&#40763;&#26609;&#20063;&#34987;&#27585;&#20102;&#19968;&#37096;&#20998;&#12290;&#32463;&#36807;&#21450;&#26102;&#27835;&#30103;&#65292;&#23567;&#36830;&#30340;&#36523;&#20307;&#24182;&#27809;&#26377;&#20160;&#20040;&#22823;&#30861;&#65292;&#20294;&#30001;&#20110;&#23478;&#24237;&#32463;&#27982;&#31561;&#21407;&#22240;&#65292;&#20182;&#24182;&#27809;&#26377;&#31435;&#21363;&#36827;&#34892;&#40763;&#25972;&#24418;&#25163;&#26415;&#12290;

&#19981;&#36807;&#65292;&#21518;&#26469;&#30340;&#24863;&#26579;&#21152;&#37325;&#20102;&#40763;&#23376;&#30340;&#32570;&#25439;&#31243;&#24230;&#65292;&#23567;&#36830;&#30340;&#40763;&#20013;&#38548;&#36719;&#39592;&#24930;&#24930;&#34987;&#28342;&#35299;&#20102;&#65292;&#23548;&#33268;&#20005;&#37325;&#40763;&#20013;&#38548;&#32570;&#25439;&#12290;

&#36710;&#31096;&#21644;&#24863;&#26579;&#23548;&#33268;&#23567;&#36830;&#30340;&#40763;&#23376;&#26126;&#26174;&#30072;&#24418;&#65292;&#19981;&#20165;&#22806;&#35266;&#21463;&#21040;&#24433;&#21709;&#65292;&#30001;&#20110;&#29421;&#31364;&#12289;&#27531;&#23384;&#40763;&#26609;&#21491;&#31227;&#31561;&#22810;&#31181;&#38382;&#39064;&#24341;&#36215;&#30340;&#36890;&#27668;&#36807;&#25935;&#12289;&#27668;&#21912;&#31561;&#27611;&#30149;&#20063;&#38543;&#20043;&#32780;&#26469;&#12290;

&#36710;&#31096;&#21518;&#65292;&#20026;&#20102;&#25513;&#39280;&#40763;&#23376;&#30340;&#32570;&#38519;&#65292;&#23567;&#36830;&#23601;&#25140;&#36215;&#20102;&#21475;&#32617;&#65292;&#25972;&#20010;&#20154;&#20063;&#21464;&#24471;&#33258;&#21329;&#21644;&#28040;&#27785;&#36215;&#26469;&#12290;

&#20170;&#24180;&#24180;&#21021;&#65292;&#32771;&#34385;&#20877;&#19977;&#65292;&#23567;&#36830;&#22312;&#36305;&#20102;&#22810;&#23478;&#21307;&#38498;&#21518;&#65292;&#26368;&#32456;&#25214;&#19978;&#21327;&#21644;&#21307;&#38498;&#25972;&#24418;&#22806;&#31185;&#35810;&#38382;&#27835;&#30103;&#26041;&#27861;&#12290;

*&#21307;&#29983;&#22312;&#24739;&#32773;&#39069;&#22836;&#19978;&#8220;&#31181;&#8221;&#40763;&#23376; &#21462;&#32907;&#39592;&#36719;&#39592;&#20877;&#36896;&#40763;&#26609;*

&#32463;&#36807;&#20180;&#32454;&#26816;&#26597;&#65292;&#20840;&#22269;&#40763;&#25972;&#24418;&#20122;&#19987;&#31185;&#24120;&#22996;&#12289;&#21327;&#21644;&#21307;&#38498;&#25972;&#24418;&#22806;&#31185;&#20027;&#20219;&#37101;&#24535;&#36745;&#20027;&#20219;&#21307;&#24072;&#21457;&#29616;&#65292;&#23567;&#36830;&#30340;&#40763;&#23376;&#32570;&#25439;&#65292;&#26080;&#27861;&#37319;&#29992;&#20256;&#32479;&#30340;&#40763;&#20877;&#36896;&#26415;&#36827;&#34892;&#20462;&#34917;&#12290;

&#21516;&#26102;&#65292;&#37101;&#20027;&#20219;&#30340;&#27835;&#30103;&#22242;&#38431;&#26597;&#38405;&#20102;&#22823;&#37327;&#30340;&#25991;&#29486;&#36164;&#26009;&#65292;&#37117;&#27809;&#26377;&#25214;&#21040;&#36866;&#21512;&#23567;&#36830;&#36825;&#31181;&#24773;&#20917;&#30340;&#40763;&#23376;&#20877;&#36896;&#26415;&#27861;&#12290;&#30001;&#20110;&#27809;&#26377;&#20808;&#20363;&#21487;&#20197;&#21442;&#32771;&#65292;&#22312;50&#22810;&#24180;&#25972;&#24418;&#32463;&#39564;&#30340;&#31215;&#28096;&#19979;&#65292;&#37101;&#20027;&#20219;&#30340;&#22242;&#38431;&#24819;&#20570;&#19968;&#20010;&#22823;&#32966;&#30340;&#25361;&#25112;&#12290;

&#32463;&#36807;&#24910;&#37325;&#35780;&#20272;&#21518;&#65292;&#37101;&#20027;&#20219;&#32473;&#23567;&#36830;&#21046;&#23450;&#20102;&#40763;&#25972;&#24418;&#25163;&#26415;&#65292;&#25171;&#31639;&#22312;&#23567;&#36830;&#30340;&#39069;&#37096;&#8220;&#31181;&#26893;&#8221;&#19968;&#20010;&#39044;&#26500;&#40763;&#65292;&#31561;&#36798;&#21040;&#8220;&#31227;&#26893;&#8221;&#25163;&#26415;&#25351;&#24449;&#21518;&#20877;&#36827;&#34892;&#39044;&#26500;&#40763;&#30340;&#36716;&#31227;&#20462;&#34917;&#12290;&#35813;&#25163;&#26415;&#20998;&#19971;&#26399;&#36827;&#34892;&#65292;&#21382;&#26102;&#19968;&#24180;&#24038;&#21491;&#12290;

&#23567;&#36830;&#21516;&#24847;&#20840;&#21147;&#37197;&#21512;&#27835;&#30103;&#65292;&#37101;&#20027;&#20219;&#20415;&#24320;&#22987;&#20102;&#28459;&#38271;&#30340;&#8220;&#31181;&#8221;&#40763;&#20043;&#26053;&#12290;

&#31532;&#19968;&#26399;&#25163;&#26415;&#25193;&#24352;&#39069;&#37096;&#30382;&#32932;&#65292;&#25226;&#30382;&#32932;&#25193;&#24352;&#22120;&#26893;&#20837;&#39069;&#37096;&#30340;&#30382;&#32932;&#20869;&#65292;&#24182;&#23450;&#26399;&#27880;&#27700;&#20351;&#20854;&#36880;&#28176;&#33192;&#32960;&#65292;&#20197;&#20419;&#36827;&#39069;&#37096;&#30382;&#32932;&#25193;&#24352;&#65292;&#20026;&#40763;&#37096;&#20877;&#36896;&#25552;&#20379;&#30382;&#32932;&#12290;

&#40763;&#37096;&#26032;&#30382;&#32932;&#38271;&#22909;&#23601;&#32791;&#20102;3&#20010;&#22810;&#26376;&#12290;&#20256;&#32479;&#25163;&#26415;&#19968;&#33324;&#26159;&#22312;&#31532;&#19968;&#26399;&#25163;&#26415;&#21518;&#65292;&#23601;&#23558;&#39069;&#37096;&#26032;&#22686;&#38271;&#30340;&#30382;&#32932;&#20197;&#30382;&#29923;&#30340;&#24418;&#24335;&#36716;&#31227;&#35206;&#30422;&#21040;&#40763;&#37096;&#65292;&#36827;&#34892;&#40763;&#37096;&#20877;&#36896;&#26415;&#12290;&#22914;&#26524;&#23567;&#36830;&#37319;&#29992;&#36825;&#31181;&#20256;&#32479;&#26415;&#27861;&#65292;&#30001;&#20110;&#40763;&#20013;&#38548;&#20005;&#37325;&#21463;&#25439;&#65292;&#20197;&#21518;&#40763;&#23376;&#26497;&#26131;&#22604;&#38519;&#21464;&#24418;&#12290;

&#20110;&#26159;&#65292;&#31532;&#20108;&#27493;&#37101;&#20027;&#20219;&#36827;&#34892;&#20102;&#36719;&#39592;&#25903;&#26550;&#39044;&#26500;&#65292;&#21462;&#23567;&#36830;&#30340;&#32907;&#39592;&#36719;&#39592;&#65292;&#36827;&#34892;&#20102;&#40763;&#26609;&#65288;&#21253;&#25324;&#40763;&#20013;&#38548;&#12289;&#40763;&#23567;&#26609;&#65289;&#20877;&#36896;&#65292;&#24403;&#22825;&#32791;&#26102;4&#20010;&#22810;&#23567;&#26102;&#65292;&#32456;&#20110;&#23436;&#25104;&#36825;&#20010;&#40763;&#25903;&#26550;&#39044;&#26500;&#25163;&#26415;&#12290;

&#22914;&#20309;&#20859;&#27963;&#36825;&#20010;&#36719;&#39592;&#65292;&#35753;&#40763;&#20013;&#38548;&#25317;&#26377;&#23436;&#22909;&#30340;&#34880;&#20379;&#65292;&#36825;&#26159;&#20915;&#23450;&#25163;&#26415;&#25104;&#36133;&#30340;&#38590;&#28857;&#12290;&#32780;&#32473;&#40763;&#20013;&#38548;&#25552;&#20379;&#34880;&#28082;&#24490;&#29615;&#30340;&#31896;&#33180;&#20165;&#20026;&#34180;&#34180;&#30340;1&#27627;&#31859;&#12290;&#21487;&#20197;&#24819;&#35937;&#25163;&#26415;&#20043;&#31934;&#32454;&#12290;

&#22823;&#32422;&#21448;&#36807;&#20102;3&#20010;&#26376;&#65292;&#20154;&#24037;&#21046;&#36896;&#30340;&#31896;&#33180;&#32456;&#20110;&#21457;&#25381;&#20316;&#29992;&#8220;&#20859;&#27963;&#8221;&#20102;&#40763;&#20013;&#38548;&#12290;&#25509;&#19979;&#26469;&#65292;&#23601;&#26159;&#20004;&#20391;&#40763;&#23380;&#30340;&#25104;&#24418;&#25163;&#26415;&#65292;&#20808;&#36827;&#34892;&#21491;&#20391;&#40763;&#23380;&#25104;&#24418;&#65292;&#28982;&#21518;&#26159;&#24038;&#20391;&#40763;&#23380;&#25104;&#24418;&#12290;

&#27599;&#19968;&#20010;&#29615;&#33410;&#27493;&#27493;&#32039;&#25187;&#65292;&#20219;&#20309;&#19968;&#20010;&#29615;&#33410;&#30340;&#22833;&#36133;&#65292;&#37117;&#23558;&#24433;&#21709;&#26368;&#21518;&#30340;&#25928;&#26524;&#65292;&#22240;&#27492;&#24517;&#39035;&#20005;&#23494;&#35266;&#23519;&#34880;&#20379;&#24773;&#20917;&#65292;&#20854;&#20013;&#22823;&#37327;&#24212;&#29992;&#20102;&#30382;&#29923;&#12289;&#21253;&#33180;&#29923;&#31561;&#25216;&#26415;&#12290;
&#22312;&#32463;&#21382;&#20102;&#36817;9&#20010;&#26376;&#26102;&#38388;&#21518;&#65292;&#23567;&#36830;&#39069;&#22836;&#19978;&#30340;&#40763;&#23376;&#32456;&#20110;&#8220;&#31181;&#26893;&#8221;&#25104;&#21151;&#20102;&#12290;

*&#8220;&#31181;&#8221;&#30340;&#40763;&#23376;&#25104;&#27963;&#20102; &#27979;&#23436;&#21160;&#33033;&#36208;&#21521;&#23601;&#33021;&#31227;&#26893;*

&#37101;&#20027;&#20219;&#35828;&#65292;&#23567;&#36830;&#30340;&#40763;&#23376;&#32463;&#36807;&#29983;&#38271;&#65292;&#30446;&#21069;&#24050;&#36798;&#21040;&#20102;&#21487;&#20197;&#8220;&#31227;&#26893;&#8221;&#30340;&#25163;&#26415;&#25351;&#24449;&#12290;

&#25509;&#19979;&#26469;&#35201;&#36827;&#34892;&#39044;&#26500;&#40763;&#36716;&#31227;&#25163;&#26415;&#65292;&#38590;&#24230;&#24182;&#19981;&#22823;&#12290;&#19981;&#36807;&#65292;&#22312;&#36716;&#31227;&#25163;&#26415;&#21069;&#65292;&#36824;&#38656;&#35201;&#27979;&#23450;&#23567;&#36830;&#39069;&#37096;&#32473;&#40763;&#23376;&#25552;&#20379;&#34880;&#20379;&#30340;&#21160;&#33033;&#8212;&#28369;&#36710;&#21160;&#33033;&#36208;&#21521;&#65292;&#28982;&#21518;&#30830;&#23450;&#20855;&#20307;&#30340;&#39044;&#26500;&#40763;&#36716;&#31227;&#26041;&#26696;&#12290;

&#26368;&#21518;&#30340;&#40763;&#23376;&#36716;&#31227;&#24182;&#19981;&#26159;&#25972;&#20010;&#36827;&#34892;&#31227;&#26893;&#65292;&#32780;&#26159;&#23616;&#37096;&#36827;&#34892;&#31227;&#26893;&#65292;&#21462;&#26032;&#38271;&#40763;&#23376;&#30340;&#19979;&#21322;&#37096;&#65288;&#22914;&#22270;&#65289;&#65292;&#23558;&#36825;&#37096;&#20998;&#40763;&#23376;&#32763;&#36716;&#35206;&#30422;&#22312;&#32570;&#25439;&#30340;&#40763;&#37096;&#12290;&#32763;&#36716;&#40763;&#23376;&#19981;&#21487;&#36807;&#20998;&#20998;&#31163;&#65292;&#36824;&#35201;&#19982;&#39069;&#37096;&#30382;&#32932;&#30456;&#36830;&#20197;&#33719;&#21462;&#34880;&#28082;&#20379;&#24212;&#65292;&#21542;&#21017;&#20250;&#24433;&#21709;&#36716;&#31227;&#40763;&#23376;&#30340;&#25104;&#27963;&#65292;&#22240;&#27492;&#36873;&#25321;&#22312;&#39069;&#37096;&#31181;&#40763;&#23376;&#30340;&#21407;&#22240;&#20063;&#22312;&#20110;&#27492;&#12290;

&#39044;&#26500;&#40763;&#36716;&#31227;&#25163;&#26415;&#22312;&#36817;&#26399;&#24456;&#24555;&#23601;&#33021;&#36827;&#34892;&#65292;&#39044;&#35745;&#25163;&#26415;&#26102;&#38271;&#20026;2.5-3&#20010;&#23567;&#26102;&#12290;

&#36825;&#20010;&#25163;&#26415;&#32467;&#26463;&#21518;&#65292;&#36824;&#35201;&#36827;&#34892;&#8220;&#26029;&#33922;&#25163;&#26415;&#8221;&#65292;&#39038;&#21517;&#24605;&#20041;&#65292;&#21363;&#36890;&#36807;&#40763;&#23376;&#21608;&#22260;&#34880;&#20379;&#21487;&#20197;&#8220;&#20859;&#27963;&#8221;&#36716;&#31227;&#30340;&#40763;&#23376;&#21518;&#65292;&#23601;&#21487;&#20197;&#26029;&#25481;&#31227;&#26893;&#40763;&#23376;&#19982;&#39069;&#37096;&#20043;&#38388;&#30340;&#34880;&#20379;&#36830;&#25509;&#65292;&#22810;&#20313;&#30382;&#32932;&#20173;&#38138;&#22238;&#21407;&#26469;&#39069;&#37096;&#32541;&#21512;&#12290;

&#26368;&#21518;&#19968;&#27493;&#65292;&#23601;&#26159;&#36827;&#34892;&#8220;&#24494;&#38613;&#8221;&#65292;&#35753;&#40763;&#23376;&#26356;&#21152;&#33258;&#28982;&#12290;&#33267;&#27492;&#65292;&#19968;&#20010;&#23436;&#32654;&#30340;&#40763;&#37096;&#20877;&#36896;&#25163;&#26415;&#23601;&#23436;&#25104;&#20102;&#12290;

&#23567;&#36830;&#35828;&#65292;&#26368;&#36817;&#20182;&#30340;&#24515;&#24773;&#24050;&#32463;&#36234;&#26469;&#36234;&#24613;&#36843;&#20102;&#12290;&#27491;&#24120;&#30340;&#40763;&#23376;&#32570;&#25439;&#20102;&#65292;&#39069;&#22836;&#21448;&#38271;&#20102;&#19968;&#20010;&#8220;&#40763;&#23376;&#8221;&#65292;&#36825;&#35753;&#20182;&#27599;&#27425;&#20986;&#38376;&#37117;&#35201;&#20840;&#21103;&#27494;&#35013;&#65292;&#21475;&#32617;&#12289;&#26834;&#29699;&#24125;&#36825;&#26679;&#30340;&#35013;&#22791;&#19968;&#26679;&#37117;&#19981;&#33021;&#23569;&#12290;&#8220;&#24076;&#26395;&#25163;&#26415;&#24555;&#28857;&#32467;&#26463;&#65292;&#25105;&#33021;&#24555;&#28857;&#29993;&#25481;&#21475;&#32617;&#65292;&#24674;&#22797;&#33258;&#30001;&#21628;&#21560;&#12290;&#8221;

&#37101;&#20027;&#20219;&#35828;&#65292;&#40763;&#23376;&#20877;&#36896;&#30340;&#25972;&#24418;&#29702;&#24565;&#20854;&#23454;&#30001;&#26469;&#24050;&#20037;&#65292;&#26089;&#22312;1998&#24180;&#65292;&#20174;&#20107;&#32452;&#32455;&#24037;&#31243;&#21307;&#23398;&#30740;&#31350;&#30340;&#19987;&#23478;&#23601;&#25506;&#32034;&#8220;&#32769;&#40736;&#32972;&#19978;&#38271;&#20154;&#32819;&#26421;&#8221;&#12290;&#32780;&#40763;&#39044;&#26500;&#26415;&#26159;&#22312;&#20256;&#32479;&#29702;&#24565;&#26041;&#27861;&#19978;&#30340;&#20877;&#21019;&#26032;&#65292;&#36825;&#26679;&#30340;&#40763;&#25972;&#24418;&#25163;&#26415;&#22312;&#22269;&#20869;&#23578;&#23646;&#39318;&#20363;&#12290;&#32463;&#36807;&#27492;&#27425;&#30340;&#25720;&#32034;&#65292;&#19979;&#20010;&#30149;&#20154;&#36827;&#34892;&#40763;&#39044;&#26500;&#26415;&#30452;&#25509;&#20998;&#19977;&#27493;&#23601;&#33021;&#23436;&#25104;&#20102;&#12290;

&#31119;&#24030;&#26032;&#38395;&#32593;&#35759;&#12288;&#38543;&#30528;&#31185;&#25216;&#30340;&#36827;&#27493;&#65292;&#22521;&#32946;&#20154;&#36896;&#22120;&#23448;&#24050;&#19981;&#20877;&#26159;&#19968;&#20010;&#26790;&#24819;&#12290;&#36817;&#26085;&#65292;&#31119;&#24314;&#21307;&#31185;&#22823;&#23398;&#38468;&#23646;&#21327;&#21644;&#21307;&#38498;&#20026;&#22240;&#36710;&#31096;&#40763;&#23376;&#21463;&#20260;&#33104;&#28866;&#30340;&#24739;&#32773;&#22312;&#39069;&#22836;&#19978;&#22521;&#32946;&#20986;&#19968;&#20010;&#20154;&#36896;&#40763;&#23376;&#65292;&#22914;&#26524;&#19968;&#20999;&#39034;&#21033;&#36827;&#34892;&#65292;&#19979;&#19968;&#27493;&#65292;&#36825;&#20010;&#20154;&#36896;&#40763;&#23376;&#23558;&#20174;&#39069;&#22836;&#19978;&#21462;&#19979;&#65292;&#32780;&#21518;&#31227;&#26893;&#21040;&#24739;&#32773;&#38754;&#37096;&#12290;&#25454;&#24713;&#65292;&#22312;&#39069;&#22836;&#19978;&#36827;&#34892;&#40763;&#39044;&#26500;&#25163;&#26415;&#22312;&#22269;&#20869;&#23578;&#23646;&#39318;&#20363;&#12290;

&#21435;&#24180;8&#26376;&#65292;&#27849;&#24030;&#23567;&#20249;&#23567;&#36830;(&#21270;&#21517&#36973;&#36935;&#36710;&#31096;&#40763;&#23376;&#21463;&#20260;&#65292;&#36215;&#20808;&#20197;&#20026;&#21482;&#26159;&#23567;&#20260;&#65292;&#24182;&#27809;&#26377;&#25918;&#22312;&#24515;&#19978;&#65292;&#26368;&#32456;&#23548;&#33268;&#40763;&#23376;&#24930;&#24930;&#33104;&#28866;&#12290;&#20170;&#24180;&#21021;&#65292;&#22312;&#23478;&#20154;&#30340;&#21149;&#35828;&#19979;&#65292;&#23567;&#36830;&#20915;&#23450;&#26469;&#21040;&#31119;&#24314;&#21307;&#31185;&#22823;&#23398;&#38468;&#23646;&#21327;&#21644;&#21307;&#38498;&#20570;&#25972;&#24418;&#25163;&#26415;&#12290;

24&#26085;&#65292;&#35760;&#32773;&#22312;&#31119;&#24314;&#21307;&#31185;&#22823;&#23398;&#38468;&#23646;&#21327;&#21644;&#21307;&#38498;&#35265;&#21040;&#20102;&#23567;&#36830;&#30340;&#20027;&#27835;&#21307;&#29983;&#37101;&#24535;&#36745;&#12290;&#25454;&#37101;&#21307;&#29983;&#20171;&#32461;&#65292;&#23567;&#36830;&#22240;&#40763;&#20013;&#38548;&#32570;&#25439;&#65292;&#21307;&#38498;&#26080;&#27861;&#24212;&#29992;&#20256;&#32479;&#30340;&#26041;&#27861;&#36827;&#34892;&#40763;&#20877;&#36896;&#25163;&#26415;&#65292;&#32463;&#35752;&#35770;&#65292;&#20915;&#23450;&#36827;&#34892;&#40763;&#39044;&#26500;&#25163;&#26415;&#12290;

&#37101;&#21307;&#29983;&#34920;&#31034;&#65292;&#40763;&#39044;&#26500;&#25163;&#26415;&#23601;&#20687;&#26159;&#22312;&#24739;&#32773;&#30340;&#39069;&#22836;&#19978;&#8220;&#31181;&#8221;&#20986;&#19968;&#20010;&#26032;&#30340;&#40763;&#23376;&#26469;&#65292;&#8220;&#31561;&#21040;&#36825;&#20010;&#40763;&#23376;&#38271;&#22909;&#20197;&#21518;&#65292;&#20877;&#36890;&#36807;&#31227;&#26893;&#25163;&#26415;&#23558;&#22521;&#32946;&#20986;&#26469;&#30340;&#40763;&#23376;&#20195;&#26367;&#21407;&#26469;&#21463;&#25439;&#30340;&#40763;&#23376;&#12290;&#8221;

&#32463;&#36807;&#20960;&#20010;&#26376;&#30340;&#27835;&#30103;&#65292;&#30446;&#21069;&#25163;&#26415;&#24050;&#23436;&#25104;4&#20010;&#20027;&#35201;&#27493;&#39588;&#65292;&#21253;&#25324;&#39069;&#37096;&#30382;&#32932;&#25193;&#24352;&#12289;&#36719;&#39592;&#25903;&#26550;&#39044;&#26500;&#21644;&#24038;&#21491;&#20004;&#20391;&#40763;&#23380;&#25104;&#22411;&#12290;&#8220;&#36825;&#20010;&#25163;&#26415;&#24050;&#32463;&#25104;&#21151;&#23436;&#25104;&#20102;80%&#65292;&#21097;&#19979;&#30340;&#39044;&#26500;&#36716;&#31227;&#12289;&#26029;&#33922;&#12289;&#24494;&#38613;&#65292;&#19977;&#20010;&#27493;&#39588;&#26159;&#25105;&#20204;&#32463;&#24120;&#20570;&#30340;&#25163;&#26415;&#65292;&#27809;&#26377;&#38590;&#24230;&#12290;&#8221;&#37101;&#21307;&#29983;&#35828;&#12290;

&#35760;&#32773;&#20102;&#35299;&#21040;&#65292;&#22312;&#39069;&#22836;&#36827;&#34892;&#40763;&#39044;&#26500;&#25163;&#26415;&#22312;&#22269;&#20869;&#23578;&#23646;&#39318;&#20363;&#12290;&#21478;&#25454;&#22806;&#23186;&#25253;&#36947;&#65292;&#20170;&#24180;&#21021;&#65292;&#33521;&#22269;&#20262;&#25958;&#22823;&#23398;&#23398;&#38498;&#30340;&#31185;&#23398;&#23478;&#26366;&#22312;&#19968;&#21517;&#22240;&#30382;&#32932;&#30284;&#22833;&#21435;&#40763;&#23376;&#30340;&#30007;&#24615;&#24739;&#32773;&#25163;&#33218;&#19978;&#22521;&#32946;&#20986;&#19968;&#20010;&#20154;&#36896;&#40763;&#23376;&#24182;&#31227;&#26893;&#21040;&#20854;&#38754;&#37096;&#12290;



Flowers and grass are common, but the " kind " nose you seen it , but also in people 's forehead "species" ?

Union Hospital of Fujian Medical doctors spent nearly nine months time, as in a car accident ruined nose Quanzhou guy even a small ( a pseudonym ) kind of "live" a nose.

The forehead "kind of" out of the nose , nostrils, nasal column , nasal readily available, there intact blood supply .

According to Union Hospital, director of plastic surgery Kwok chief physician , this lengthy , complex nose plastic surgery called " prefabricated nose surgery " , small even in the country to do this surgery Rhinoplasty is no precedent .

*Accident took handsome nose septal cartilage is dissolved due to infection
*
22 -year-old guy Quanzhou small even , thick eyebrows , looks quite handsome. But last August , he and his father had a car accident .

Car accident , even a small nose suffered serious injuries, the left nose is gone, also destroyed part of the nasal column . After timely treatment , even a small body and no serious problem , but because of family economic and other reasons, he did not immediately rhinoplasty .

However, the subsequent infection of the nose increased deficit , even a small septal cartilage slowly being dissolved , resulting in severe septal defect .

Accidents and infections lead to even a small nose obvious deformity, only the appearance of affected due to narrow right column remnants of nasal ventilation and other problems caused by allergies , asthma and other illnesses also follow.

After the accident , in order to cover the nose defects even on the DAI Qi small masks , the people have become self-esteem and depression together .

Earlier this year, think twice, even a small number of hospitals in the run , the final look on Plastic Surgery , Union Hospital, asking treatment.

*Doctors on the forehead of the patient , " graft " to take rib cartilage nose reconstruction columella
*
After careful examination , the Standing Committee of the National nose surgery subspecialties , Union Hospital, director of plastic surgery Kwok chief physician found that even a small defect on the nose , you can not use the traditional nasal reconstruction surgery to repair .

Meanwhile, Director Guo 's treatment team access to a large number of documents , did not find even this situation for small nose reconstruction method . Since there is no precedent can refer to the accumulation of 50 years of experience in plastic surgery , the Director Guo 's team wanted a bold challenge.

After careful evaluation, Director Guo give small even developed rhinoplasty , intended connection in a small forehead " planting " a prefabricated nose, etc. to achieve "transplanted" indications for surgery performed after the transfer of prefabricated nose repair. The surgery in seven phases, which lasted about a year .

Small even agreed to fully cooperate with treatment, Director Guo began a lengthy "species" nose trip.

The first phase of expansion of the forehead skin surgery , the tissue expander implanted inside the skin of the forehead , and regular water it gradually expanded to facilitate the forehead skin expansion for nasal reconstruction provides the skin.

Nasal new skin grows well on the consumption of more than three months. Traditional surgery is generally in the first period after surgery , it will be a new growth forehead flap of skin in the form of transfers to cover the nose for nasal reconstruction . Even if the small traditional technique using this method , since the nasal septum severely damaged after the collapse easily deformed nose .

Thus , the second step Director Guo were prefabricated cartilage , even take a small rib cartilage for nasal column ( including the nasal septum , nasal columella ) recycling , the day took more than four hours , and finally completed the nasal stents prefabricated surgery.

How to feed the cartilage , so that the nasal septum has a good blood supply, which is to determine the success of surgery difficult . The blood circulation to the nasal mucosa provides only a thin 1 mm . Imagine surgery fine .

Then, after about three months, the artificial mucosa finally play " feed " the nasal septum . Next, the forming operation is both nostrils , the first for forming the right nostril , the left nostril and shape.

Every aspect of every step closely , any link failure will affect the final results, it is necessary to closely observe the blood supply , including a large number of applications flap envelope flap techniques.

After nearly nine months , a small nose and finally even his forehead , " planting " a success.

*"Species" survival of the nose to be able to test finished arterial graft
*
Director Guo said that the small nose even after growth has now reached that can be "transplanted" indications for surgery .

Next step is to carry out the transfer of prefabricated nasal surgery , the difficulty is not great. However, the transfer before surgery , you also need to determine even a small nose and forehead provide arterial blood supply - arteries to tackle , and then determine the specific transfer programs prefabricated nose .

The final transfer of the nose is not the whole transplant , but the partial transplant , take the lower half of the new long nose ( Figure ) , this part of the nose, nasal flip cover the defect . Flip nose not too isolated , but also connected with the forehead skin to get the blood supply , otherwise it will affect the survival of the transfer nose , so choose the kind of nose, forehead reason also here.

Transfer of prefabricated nasal surgery can be carried out quickly in the near future , it is expected surgery duration of 2.5 to 3 hours.

After this surgery , but also for " pedicle operation" , by definition, that is, through the blood supply around the nose can " feed " the transfer of the nose , you can cut off the nose and the forehead between the transplanted blood supply connection , the excess skin is still Shop back to the original frontal suture.

The final step is a " miniature ", so that the nose more natural. Thus, a perfect nose reconstruction surgery is complete.

Small even said that recently his mood has become increasingly urgent. Defect in the normal nose , forehead and long a "nose" , which makes him out to be armed each , masks, baseball caps such equipment like Less . "I hope the surgery end quickly , I was able to quickly get rid of the mask to restore free breathing ."

Director Guo said , nose plastic recycling concept is actually a long time , back in 1998 , engaged in medical research tissue engineering experts to explore the "mouse ears back, big man ." The prefabricated nasal surgery in the traditional concept of methodological re-innovation, such as rhinoplasty first in the country . After this exploration, the next patient prefabricated nasal surgery can be done in three steps directly .

Fuzhou News Network With advances in technology , foster artificial organs is no longer a dream. Recently, Union Hospital of Fujian Medical University, nose injured in a car accident on his forehead were rotting breed an artificial nose, and if all goes well for the next step, this artificial nose is removed from the forehead , and then transplanted to the patient's face . It is reported that the nose on the forehead prefabricated surgery first in the country .

Last August, Quanzhou little guy even ( a pseudonym ) had an accident and injured his nose , at first thought it was only minor injuries and did not mind, eventually leading to the nose slowly decaying . Earlier this year, persuaded his family , small even decided to come to Union Hospital of Fujian Medical University to do plastic surgery.

On the 24th , the reporter in Union Hospital of Fujian Medical University, saw the little doctor Kwok connected . According to Guo doctors, even a small septal defect because the hospital can not apply traditional methods nasal reconstruction surgery , after discussion , decided to conduct prefabricated nasal surgery.

Dr. Guo said prefabricated nose surgery is like the patient's forehead "kind of" a new nose , the " wait until well after the long nose , and then out through the transplant surgery will foster the nose instead of the original damaged nose. "

After several months of treatment, the current operation has completed four major steps, including the forehead skin expansion , prefabricated cartilage left and right sides of the nose shape. "This operation has been successfully completed 80 % of the remaining prefabricated transfer pedicle , miniature , three steps that we often do the surgery , there is no difficulty ." Dr. Guo said.

Reporters learned that, in the forehead for prefabricated nose surgery first in the country . According to foreign media reports earlier this year, scientists at University College London, worked in a losing cause skin cancer in men with arm nose breed an artificial nose and migrate to their face.


net assisted translation


Fujian University - Union Hospital


----------



## shuttler

*The '50-50' Chip: Memory Device of the Future? Material Built from Aluminum and Antimony Shows Promise for Next-Generation Data-Storage Devices*

The '50-50' chip: Memory device of the future? Material built from aluminum and antimony shows promise for next-generation data-storage devices

Sep. 13, 2013  A new, environmentally-friendly electronic alloy consisting of 50 aluminum atoms bound to 50 atoms of antimony may be promising for building next-generation "phase-change" memory devices, which may be the data-storage technology of the future, according to a new paper published in the journal Applied Physics Letters, which is produced by AIP Publishing.





Phase-change memory arrays. (Credit: AIP)

*Abstract&#65306;
*

Phase-change memory is being actively pursued as an alternative to the ubiquitous flash memory for data storage applications, because flash memory is limited in its storage density and phase-change memory can operate much faster.

Phase-change memory relies on materials that change from a disordered, amorphous structure to a crystalline structure when an electrical pulse is applied. The material has high electrical resistance in its amorphous state and low resistance in its crystalline state -- corresponding to the 1 and 0 states of binary data.

Flash memory has problems when devices get smaller than 20 nanometers. But a phase-change memory device can be less than 10 nanometers -- allowing more memory to be squeezed into tinier spaces. "That's the most important feature of this kind of memory," said Xilin Zhou of the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Data can also be written into phase-change memories very quickly and the devices would be relatively inexpensive, he added.

So far, the most popular material for phase-change memory devices contains germanium, antimony, and tellurium. But compounds with three elements are more difficult to work with, Zhou said.

It's difficult to control the phase-change memory manufacturing process of ternary alloys such as the traditionally used germanium-antimony-tellurium material. Etching and polishing of the material with chalcogens can change the material's composition, due to the motion of the tellurium atoms, explained Zhou.

Zhou and his colleagues turned to a material with just two elements: aluminum and antimony. They studied the material's phase-changing properties, finding that it's more thermally stable than the Ge-Sb-Te compound. The researchers discovered that Al50Sb50, in particular, has three distinct levels of resistance -- and thus the ability to store three bits of data in a single memory cell, instead of just two. This suggests that this material can be used for multilevel data storage.

A two-step resistance drop during the crystallization of the material can be used for multilevel data storage (MLS) and, interestingly, three distinct resistance levels are achieved in the phase-change memory cells, Zhou says. "So the aluminum-antimony material looks promising for use in high-density nonvolatile memory applications because of its good thermal stability and MLS capacity."

The researchers are now investigating the endurance or reversible electrical switching of the phase-change memory cell with MLS capacity.

*Also read&#65306;*

Phase transition characteristics of Al-Sb phase change materials for phase change memory application | Browse - Applied Physics Letters

*Phase transition characteristics of Al-Sb phase change materials for phase change memory application
*

*Authors and affiliations:*

Xilin Zhou-1,2, Liangcai Wu-1, Zhitang Song-1, Feng Rao-1, Kun Ren-1,2, Cheng Peng-1, Sannian Song-1, Bo Liu-1, Ling Xu-3, and Songlin Feng-1

*1- Shanghai Key Laboratory of Nanofabrication Technology for Memory, Shanghai Institute of Micro-system and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050, People's Republic of China 

2- University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100080, People's Republic of China 

3- National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, People's Republic of China 
*


*&#20013;&#22269;&#31185;&#23398;&#38498;&#19978;&#28023;&#24494;&#31995;&#32479;&#19982;&#20449;&#24687;&#25216;&#26415;&#30740;&#31350;&#25152;&#32435;&#31859;&#25216;&#26415;&#23454;&#39564;&#23460;
Shanghai Key Laboratory of Nanofabrication Technology for Memory, Shanghai Institute of Micro-system and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences*





&#22025;&#23450;&#22253;&#21306; Jiading Campus















&#38271;&#23425;&#22253;&#21306; Changning Campus 

Credit: iweeeb.com

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## shuttler

*&#20013;&#22269;&#31185;&#23398;&#38498;&#22823;&#23398;
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences*










Changchun Campus










Shanghai Campus





Center for Earth Observation and Digital Earth (CEODE), CAS, Beijing





Ningbo Campus





Guangzhou Campus

*&#21335;&#20140;&#22823;&#23398; Nanjing University*






Credit: china.org.cn





Credit: dxsheng.com





Credit: sina.cn

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Azizam



Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## shuttler

*China to launch satellite in search of dark matter *

xinhuanet.com
English.news.cn 2013-09-25 14:09:13 





Credit: startakradio.net

*BEIJING, Sept. 25 (Xinhua)* -- China's top scientific research institute is in the process of developing five space research satellites, including one for the detection of dark matter particles.

We expect to launch at least three to four of them before 2015, said Bai Chunli, president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) at the first meeting of the academy's newly founded advisory committee in Beijing Tuesday.

The other four satellites include one for the conduct of quantum science experiments, an X ray telescope, a retrievable scientific study satellite and a solar activity study satellite, Bai said. 



*Does dark matter exist in our sun&#8217;s neighborhood?*
By Deborah Byrd in 
SPACE on Sep 05, 2012

Link

*Astronomers have grown convinced* over decades that dark matter exists on the large scale of our universe. But what about our neighborhood of space?

In the 1930s, astronomers began to suspect that clusters of galaxies in our universe must be filled with a mysterious dark matter that kept the galaxy clusters from flying apart. This dark matter can&#8217;t be seen, even with telescopes. It doesn&#8217;t emit light. It doesn&#8217;t absorb light. But since the 1930s, astronomers have come to use the idea of dark matter to account for a large part of the total mass of the universe.

But what about our local area of space &#8211; the immediate vicinity in the neighborhood of our sun? Do astronomers know of dark matter that exists nearby?






Credit: es-static.us
Astronomers use the idea of dark matter to account for a substantial portion of the mass of our universe. An even greater amount of mass, they believe, is taken up with dark energy. Meanwhile, the visible stars and galaxies we see around us in space may be only a small part of the whole universe. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

When we speak of dark matter, we&#8217;re often speaking on a grand scale &#8211; the scale of our galaxy at least &#8211; and often the scale of the whole universe. But experts have been less sure how much dark matter there is in the neighborhood of our own Earth and sun. However, in 2012, European and Chinese astronomers said they found large amounts of dark matter near our sun.

These astronomers developed a new way of measuring mass. They tested their technique first on a state-of-the-art simulation of our galaxy. The results suggested that, in the past, scientists have been underestimating the amount of dark matter in space. So the team adjusted their technique &#8211; and then applied it to real data &#8211; in this case, the known positions and velocities of thousands of orange dwarf stars near our sun.

Their work showed that dark matter almost definitely does exist &#8211; invisibly &#8211; in our sun&#8217;s vicinity.





Credit: es-static.us
Strong gravitational lensing as observed by the Hubble Space Telescope in Abell 1689 indicates the presence of dark matter. This is just one piece of evidence &#8211; among many collected over decades &#8211; that dark matter exists on the large scale of our universe. Image via Wikipedia.

Bottom line: Astronomers have grown convinced over decades that dark matter exists on the large scale of our galaxy and universe. In 2012, astronomers in Europe and China found evidence for dark matter in the space near our sun.






Credit: astro.unl.edu/

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Lightningbolt

Fascinating stuff on the dark matter. Keep em coming shuttler.

This thread needs to be sticky.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*A missing link to our past - 419 million years ago?*

*&#21476;&#33034;&#26894;&#25152;&#31561;4&#20159;&#22810;&#24180;&#21069;&#21476;&#32769;&#40060;&#31867;&#21270;&#30707;&#30340;&#30740;&#31350;&#25581;&#24320;&#26377;&#39052;&#33034;&#26894;&#21160;&#29289;&#30340;&#28436;&#21270;&#21490; * 
2013-9-26 
www.ivpp.cas.cn_Chinese Text 

*&#20174;&#22823;&#30333;&#40104;&#21040;&#20154;&#31867;*&#65292;&#38271;&#30528;&#19978;&#19979;&#22068;&#24052;&#30340;&#33034;&#26894;&#21160;&#29289;&#34987;&#31216;&#20026;&#26377;&#39052;&#31867;&#65292;&#21344;&#29616;&#29983;&#33034;&#26894;&#21160;&#29289;&#29289;&#31181;&#25968;&#30340;99.7%&#12290;&#26377;&#39052;&#31867;&#21253;&#25324;&#22235;&#22823;&#31867;&#32676;&#65306;&#30462;&#30382;&#40060;&#32434;&#12289;&#26840;&#40060;&#32434;&#12289;&#30828;&#39592;&#40060;&#32434;&#21644;&#36719;&#39592;&#40060;&#32434;&#65292;&#20854;&#20013;&#21069;&#20004;&#20010;&#32434;&#19994;&#24050;&#20840;&#37096;&#28781;&#32477;&#12290;&#25630;&#28165;&#26970;&#36825;&#20123;&#22823;&#25903;&#31995;&#20043;&#38388;&#30340;&#20146;&#32536;&#20851;&#31995;&#65292;&#29305;&#21035;&#26159;&#24324;&#28165;&#20316;&#20026;&#38470;&#29983;&#33034;&#26894;&#21160;&#29289;&#20035;&#33267;&#20154;&#31867;&#30452;&#31995;&#31062;&#20808;&#30340;&#30828;&#39592;&#40060;&#31867;&#30340;&#36215;&#28304;&#65292;&#30828;&#39592;&#40060;&#32434;&#21644;&#36719;&#39592;&#40060;&#32434;&#20849;&#21516;&#31062;&#20808;&#30340;&#29305;&#24449;&#32452;&#21512;&#65292;&#26159;&#37325;&#24314;&#26377;&#39052;&#31867;&#28436;&#21270;&#20043;&#26641;&#30340;&#20851;&#38190;&#12290;9&#26376;25&#26085;&#33521;&#22269;&#12298;&#33258;&#28982;&#12299;&#26434;&#24535;&#22312;&#32447;&#25253;&#36947;&#20102;&#20013;&#22269;&#31185;&#23398;&#38498;&#21476;&#33034;&#26894;&#21160;&#29289;&#19982;&#21476;&#20154;&#31867;&#30740;&#31350;&#25152;&#26417;&#25935;&#30740;&#31350;&#21592;&#39046;&#23548;&#30340;&#22269;&#38469;&#21476;&#29983;&#29289;&#23398;&#23478;&#22242;&#38431;&#22312;&#26089;&#26399;&#33034;&#26894;&#21160;&#29289;&#28436;&#21270;&#26041;&#38754;&#21462;&#24471;&#30340;&#26368;&#26032;&#36827;&#23637;&#12290;&#26417;&#25935;&#31561;&#20154;&#22312;&#20013;&#22269;&#20113;&#21335;&#30465;&#21476;&#32769;&#30340;&#24535;&#30041;&#32426;&#22320;&#23618;&#20013;&#21457;&#29616;&#20102;&#19968;&#26465;&#20445;&#23384;&#23436;&#22909;&#30340;&#21476;&#40060;&#65292;&#24182;&#23558;&#20854;&#21629;&#21517;&#20026;&#8220;&#21021;&#22987;&#20840;&#39052;&#40060;&#65288;Entelognathus primordialis&#65289;&#8221;&#12290;

&#36825;&#26465;&#40060;&#34429;&#28982;&#22312;&#20854;&#20182;&#26041;&#38754;&#37117;&#20445;&#25345;&#30528;&#30462;&#30382;&#40060;&#32434;&#65288;&#26368;&#21407;&#22987;&#30340;&#26377;&#39052;&#33034;&#26894;&#21160;&#29289;&#65289;&#30340;&#36523;&#20307;&#24418;&#24577;&#65292;&#20294;&#21364;&#24050;&#32463;&#28436;&#21270;&#20986;&#30828;&#39592;&#40060;&#32434;&#65288;&#20134;&#31216;&#30828;&#39592;&#33034;&#26894;&#21160;&#29289;&#65292;&#21253;&#25324;&#38470;&#29983;&#33034;&#26894;&#21160;&#29289;&#21644;&#20173;&#29983;&#27963;&#22312;&#27700;&#20013;&#30340;&#30828;&#39592;&#40060;&#31867;&#65289;&#30340;&#20856;&#22411;&#39052;&#37096;&#32467;&#26500;&#25110;&#38754;&#37096;&#29305;&#24449;&#65292;&#26159;&#21476;&#29983;&#29289;&#23398;&#23478;&#26790;&#23504;&#20197;&#27714;&#30340;&#65292;&#20171;&#20110;&#36825;&#20004;&#22823;&#31867;&#32676;&#20043;&#38388;&#30340;&#8220;&#32570;&#22833;&#29615;&#33410;&#8221;&#65292;&#23427;&#22312;&#21476;&#29983;&#29289;&#23398;&#19978;&#30340;&#37325;&#35201;&#24847;&#20041;&#65292;&#31867;&#20284;&#20110;&#22987;&#31062;&#40479;&#12289;&#28216;&#36208;&#40120;&#21644;&#21335;&#26041;&#21476;&#29503;&#31561;&#32819;&#29087;&#33021;&#35814;&#30340;&#8220;&#36807;&#28193;&#21270;&#30707;&#8221;&#12290; 

&#36807;&#21435;&#65292;&#31185;&#23398;&#23478;&#23545;&#26089;&#26399;&#26377;&#39052;&#31867;&#30340;&#20102;&#35299;&#20027;&#35201;&#38598;&#20013;&#22312;&#27877;&#30406;&#32426;&#65292;&#22240;&#20026;&#26377;&#39052;&#31867;&#30340;&#21270;&#30707;&#35760;&#24405;&#30452;&#21040;&#36825;&#20010;&#26102;&#20195;&#25165;&#21464;&#24471;&#20016;&#23500;&#36215;&#26469;&#65292;&#27877;&#30406;&#32426;&#20063;&#22240;&#27492;&#34987;&#31216;&#20026;&#8220;&#40060;&#31867;&#26102;&#20195;&#8221;&#12290;&#28982;&#32780;&#65292;&#20174;&#27877;&#30406;&#32426;&#19968;&#24320;&#22987;&#65292;&#26377;&#39052;&#31867;&#22235;&#22823;&#31867;&#32676;&#19981;&#20165;&#24050;&#32463;&#20840;&#37096;&#28436;&#21270;&#20986;&#26469;&#65292;&#32780;&#19988;&#24444;&#27492;&#24418;&#24577;&#24050;&#32463;&#26497;&#20026;&#19981;&#21516;&#12290;&#20165;&#20165;&#20973;&#20511;&#27877;&#30406;&#32426;&#30340;&#21270;&#30707;&#35777;&#25454;&#65292;&#27809;&#26377;&#20171;&#20110;&#21508;&#20027;&#35201;&#31867;&#32676;&#20043;&#38388;&#30340;&#36807;&#28193;&#21270;&#30707;&#65292;&#26159;&#26080;&#27861;&#30830;&#20999;&#22320;&#20102;&#35299;&#23427;&#20204;&#26159;&#22914;&#20309;&#28436;&#21270;&#32780;&#26469;&#30340;&#12290;&#28982;&#32780;&#65292;&#22312;&#26356;&#21476;&#32769;&#30340;&#24535;&#30041;&#32426;&#26377;&#39052;&#31867;&#30041;&#19979;&#30340;&#21270;&#30707;&#23569;&#24471;&#21487;&#24604;&#65292;&#38271;&#26399;&#20197;&#26469;&#65292;&#31185;&#23398;&#23478;&#21482;&#33021;&#20381;&#38752;&#26174;&#24494;&#38236;&#19979;&#25165;&#33021;&#30475;&#21040;&#30340;&#40158;&#29255;&#65292;&#32454;&#23567;&#30340;&#29273;&#40831;&#25110;&#19968;&#28857;&#28857;&#39592;&#22836;&#30862;&#29255;&#65292;&#8220;&#30450;&#20154;&#25720;&#35937;&#8221;&#24335;&#22320;&#29468;&#27979;&#24535;&#30041;&#32426;&#26377;&#39052;&#31867;&#30340;&#27169;&#26679;&#12290;&#26377;&#39052;&#33034;&#26894;&#21160;&#29289;&#30340;&#26089;&#26399;&#21382;&#21490;&#31548;&#32617;&#22312;&#36855;&#38654;&#20043;&#20013;&#12290; 

&#26032;&#21457;&#29616;&#30340;&#20840;&#39052;&#40060;&#29983;&#27963;&#22312;&#36317;&#20170;4.2&#20159;&#24180;&#21069;&#20872;&#29926;&#32435;&#22823;&#38470;&#21271;&#32536;&#30340;&#36817;&#23736;&#27700;&#22495;&#20013;&#65292;&#20307;&#38271;&#32422;30&#21400;&#31859;&#65292;&#36523;&#20307;&#25153;&#24179;&#65292;&#38752;&#30528;&#22312;&#27700;&#24213;&#31528;&#25305;&#22320;&#28216;&#26469;&#28216;&#21435;&#65292;&#25628;&#23547;&#26580;&#36719;&#30340;&#39135;&#29289;&#65292;&#22914;&#34299;&#31867;&#12289;&#27700;&#27597;&#21644;&#29983;&#29289;&#30862;&#23633;&#31561;&#31561;&#20026;&#29983;&#12290;&#23427;&#29983;&#27963;&#30340;&#29615;&#22659;&#20013;&#24050;&#32463;&#23384;&#22312;&#30456;&#24403;&#22823;&#30340;&#25504;&#39135;&#32773;&#65292;&#20840;&#39052;&#40060;&#24517;&#39035;&#23567;&#24515;&#32764;&#32764;&#22320;&#36991;&#24320;&#23427;&#20204;&#12290;&#31895;&#31895;&#30475;&#21435;&#65292;&#24456;&#23481;&#26131;&#35748;&#20026;&#20840;&#39052;&#40060;&#26159;&#30462;&#30382;&#40060;&#31867;&#65292;&#29305;&#21035;&#26159;&#21518;&#26469;&#22312;&#27877;&#30406;&#32426;&#21313;&#20998;&#32321;&#30427;&#30340;&#33410;&#30002;&#40060;&#31867;&#30340;&#19968;&#20221;&#23376;&#12290;&#23427;&#20204;&#30340;&#21069;&#21322;&#36523;&#21516;&#26679;&#37117;&#21253;&#35065;&#22312;&#22823;&#22359;&#39592;&#29255;&#25340;&#25104;&#30340;&#38112;&#30002;&#20013;&#65292;&#36825;&#22871;&#25252;&#36523;&#38112;&#30002;&#30001;&#31665;&#24418;&#30340;&#36527;&#30002;&#21644;&#21253;&#35206;&#22836;&#37096;&#30340;&#22836;&#30002;&#32452;&#25104;&#65292;&#20004;&#32773;&#20043;&#38388;&#30001;&#19968;&#39048;&#20851;&#33410;&#30456;&#36830;&#65292;&#20197;&#20415;&#22836;&#21487;&#20197;&#21521;&#19978;&#25260;&#36215;&#12290;&#23601;&#36830;&#39592;&#29255;&#30340;&#24418;&#29366;&#21644;&#25490;&#21015;&#26041;&#24335;&#65292;&#20840;&#39052;&#40060;&#21644;&#20856;&#22411;&#30340;&#33410;&#30002;&#40060;&#31867;&#20043;&#38388;&#20063;&#21482;&#26377;&#32454;&#24494;&#30340;&#24046;&#21035;&#12290;&#28982;&#32780;&#65292;&#22914;&#26524;&#25226;&#20840;&#39052;&#40060;&#32763;&#36807;&#26469;&#65292;&#20180;&#32454;&#35266;&#23519;&#19968;&#19979;&#23427;&#30340;&#39052;&#37096;&#65292;&#23601;&#20250;&#31435;&#21363;&#35748;&#35782;&#21040;&#23427;&#19981;&#21516;&#20110;&#20219;&#20309;&#33410;&#30002;&#40060;&#65292;&#20063;&#19981;&#21516;&#20110;&#20197;&#24448;&#21457;&#29616;&#30340;&#20219;&#20309;&#30462;&#30382;&#40060;&#31867;&#65292;&#22240;&#20026;&#23427;&#20855;&#26377;&#30828;&#39592;&#40060;&#31867;&#25165;&#26377;&#30340;&#20856;&#22411;&#39052;&#37096;&#32467;&#26500;&#25110;&#38754;&#37096;&#29305;&#24449;&#65292;&#21363;&#26377;&#30528;&#19968;&#24352;&#30828;&#39592;&#40060;&#31867;&#25165;&#26377;&#30340;&#22068;&#24052;&#65281; 

&#33034;&#26894;&#21160;&#29289;&#30340;&#39592;&#39612;&#21487;&#20998;&#20026;&#20869;&#22806;&#20004;&#22823;&#39592;&#39612;&#31995;&#32479;&#12290;&#26368;&#21407;&#22987;&#30340;&#39052;&#30001;&#26080;&#39052;&#33034;&#26894;&#21160;&#29289;&#30340;&#40131;&#24339;&#28436;&#21270;&#32780;&#26469;&#12290;&#21407;&#22987;&#30340;&#19978;&#39052;&#39592;&#31216;&#20026;&#33133;&#26041;&#36719;&#39592;&#65292;&#19979;&#39052;&#39592;&#31216;&#20026;&#40614;&#27663;&#36719;&#39592;&#65292;&#23427;&#20204;&#37117;&#23646;&#20110;&#20869;&#39592;&#39612;&#31995;&#32479;&#65292;&#20854;&#31616;&#21333;&#30340;&#26500;&#36896;&#19981;&#33021;&#23436;&#20840;&#32988;&#20219;&#21676;&#21512;&#12289;&#21098;&#20999;&#21644;&#30740;&#30952;&#31561;&#31561;&#21151;&#33021;&#12290;&#22240;&#27492;&#65292;&#38543;&#30528;&#26377;&#39052;&#33034;&#26894;&#21160;&#29289;&#30340;&#28436;&#21270;&#65292;&#23646;&#20110;&#22806;&#39592;&#39612;&#31995;&#32479;&#30340;&#39592;&#22836;&#19981;&#26029;&#34987;&#25972;&#21512;&#20837;&#39052;&#37096;&#32467;&#26500;&#65292;&#20351;&#24471;&#39052;&#26356;&#22362;&#22266;&#65292;&#26356;&#28789;&#27963;&#65292;&#36866;&#24212;&#22810;&#31181;&#22810;&#26679;&#30340;&#38656;&#35201;&#12290;&#22806;&#39592;&#39612;&#20171;&#20837;&#39052;&#37096;&#32467;&#26500;&#30340;&#27169;&#24335;&#65292;&#26159;&#26377;&#39052;&#31867;&#22235;&#22823;&#31867;&#32676;&#38388;&#30340;&#26681;&#26412;&#21306;&#21035;&#20043;&#19968;&#12290; 

&#21407;&#22987;&#30828;&#39592;&#40060;&#31867;&#22797;&#26434;&#30340;&#22806;&#39592;&#39612;&#39052;&#37096;&#19982;&#20854;&#20182;&#19977;&#22823;&#31867;&#26377;&#39052;&#33034;&#26894;&#21160;&#29289;&#37117;&#24456;&#19981;&#19968;&#26679;&#65292;&#36825;&#35753;&#35797;&#22270;&#36861;&#28335;&#30828;&#39592;&#40060;&#31867;&#36215;&#28304;&#30340;&#21476;&#29983;&#29289;&#23398;&#23478;&#24456;&#26159;&#25376;&#22836;&#12290;&#22240;&#20026;&#30462;&#30382;&#40060;&#30340;&#19978;&#39052;&#29255;&#21644;&#19979;&#39052;&#29255;&#37117;&#20301;&#20110;&#21475;&#32536;&#20869;&#20391;&#65292;&#21482;&#30456;&#24403;&#20110;&#30828;&#39592;&#40060;&#31867;&#20869;&#20391;&#37027;&#20123;&#19981;&#22826;&#37325;&#35201;&#30340;&#39592;&#29255;&#65288;&#29313;&#39592;&#12289;&#20896;&#29366;&#39592;&#31561;&#65289;&#65292;&#32780;&#26500;&#25104;&#30828;&#39592;&#40060;&#39052;&#26368;&#20027;&#35201;&#30340;&#25104;&#20998;&#8212;&#8212;&#21069;&#19978;&#39052;&#39592;&#12289;&#19978;&#39052;&#39592;&#12289;&#40831;&#39592;&#31561;&#21475;&#32536;&#39592;&#29255;&#65292;&#20223;&#20315;&#26159;&#20973;&#31354;&#20986;&#29616;&#19968;&#33324;&#65292;&#22312;&#30462;&#30382;&#40060;&#20013;&#25214;&#19981;&#21040;&#20219;&#20309;&#23545;&#24212;&#12290;&#37492;&#20110;&#27492;&#65292;&#31185;&#23398;&#23478;&#20204;&#38271;&#26399;&#20197;&#26469;&#35748;&#20026;&#21069;&#19978;&#39052;&#39592;&#12289;&#19978;&#39052;&#39592;&#21644;&#40831;&#39592;&#36825;&#20123;&#39052;&#37096;&#39592;&#39612;&#26159;&#22312;&#30828;&#39592;&#40060;&#32434;&#36825;&#19968;&#28436;&#21270;&#25903;&#31995;&#20013;&#26032;&#29983;&#30340;&#12290;&#28982;&#32780;&#65292;&#20840;&#39052;&#40060;&#30340;&#21457;&#29616;&#25913;&#21464;&#20102;&#36825;&#19968;&#20999;&#65292;&#36807;&#21435;&#35748;&#20026;&#30828;&#39592;&#40060;&#32434;&#29420;&#26377;&#30340;&#39052;&#37096;&#29305;&#24449;&#65292;&#22312;&#30462;&#30382;&#40060;&#32434;&#30340;&#26576;&#20123;&#31867;&#32676;&#20013;&#26089;&#24050;&#28436;&#21270;&#20986;&#26469;&#20102;&#12290; 

&#25454;&#26417;&#25935;&#30740;&#31350;&#21592;&#20171;&#32461;&#65292;&#8220;&#22522;&#20110;&#29616;&#26377;&#35777;&#25454;&#65292;&#29305;&#21035;&#26159;&#20840;&#39052;&#40060;&#25152;&#25552;&#20379;&#30340;&#20840;&#26032;&#20449;&#24687;&#65292;&#25105;&#20204;&#20351;&#29992;&#34987;&#31216;&#20026;&#20998;&#25903;&#31995;&#32479;&#20998;&#26512;&#30340;&#26041;&#27861;&#65292;&#23545;&#22823;&#37327;&#26089;&#26399;&#26377;&#39052;&#33034;&#26894;&#21160;&#29289;&#36827;&#34892;&#20102;&#32508;&#21512;&#30740;&#31350;&#65292;&#25552;&#20986;&#20102;&#26368;&#26032;&#30340;&#26377;&#39052;&#31867;&#28436;&#21270;&#35889;&#31995;&#12290;&#22312;&#36825;&#19968;&#35889;&#31995;&#20013;&#65292;&#30462;&#30382;&#40060;&#31867;&#34987;&#30830;&#35777;&#19981;&#20877;&#26159;&#19968;&#20010;&#21333;&#31995;&#25110;&#33258;&#28982;&#31867;&#32676;&#65292;&#32780;&#21482;&#26159;&#19968;&#31995;&#21015;&#36739;&#21407;&#22987;&#26377;&#39052;&#33034;&#26894;&#21160;&#29289;&#30340;&#38598;&#21512;&#65292;&#32780;&#38500;&#30462;&#30382;&#40060;&#31867;&#22806;&#30340;&#25152;&#26377;&#26377;&#39052;&#33034;&#26894;&#21160;&#29289;&#65292;&#21364;&#24456;&#26377;&#21487;&#33021;&#25317;&#26377;&#20849;&#21516;&#30340;&#31062;&#20808;&#65292;&#20174;&#32780;&#26500;&#25104;&#19968;&#20010;&#21333;&#31995;&#31867;&#32676;&#12290;&#20840;&#39052;&#40060;&#36319;&#30828;&#39592;&#40060;&#32434;&#19982;&#36719;&#39592;&#40060;&#32434;&#30340;&#20849;&#21516;&#31062;&#20808;&#24456;&#26377;&#21487;&#33021;&#38271;&#24471;&#24046;&#19981;&#22810;&#8221;&#12290; 

&#20840;&#39052;&#40060;&#30340;&#21457;&#29616;&#23454;&#38469;&#19978;&#21578;&#35785;&#25105;&#20204;&#65292;&#26377;&#39052;&#33034;&#26894;&#21160;&#29289;&#30340;&#20849;&#21516;&#31062;&#20808;&#21521;&#20004;&#20010;&#26041;&#21521;&#21457;&#23637;&#65306;&#19968;&#25903;&#20445;&#30041;&#24182;&#25913;&#36827;&#20102;&#30462;&#30382;&#40060;&#31867;&#30340;&#22823;&#22411;&#22806;&#39592;&#39612;&#39592;&#29255;&#65292;&#36825;&#23601;&#26159;&#30828;&#39592;&#40060;&#31867;&#65307;&#21478;&#19968;&#25903;&#21017;&#20002;&#22833;&#20102;&#22823;&#22411;&#22806;&#39592;&#39612;&#65292;&#20195;&#20043;&#20197;&#32454;&#23567;&#30340;&#40158;&#29255;&#21644;&#23567;&#22359;&#39592;&#29255;&#65292;&#20854;&#20013;&#36739;&#21407;&#22987;&#30340;&#31867;&#32676;&#26500;&#25104;&#26840;&#40060;&#65292;&#32780;&#36719;&#39592;&#40060;&#31867;&#26159;&#30001;&#26840;&#40060;&#20013;&#30340;&#19968;&#25903;&#28436;&#21270;&#32780;&#26469;&#12290; 

&#27492;&#39033;&#30740;&#31350;&#33719;&#24471;&#20102;&#22269;&#23478;&#33258;&#28982;&#31185;&#23398;&#22522;&#37329;&#22996;&#21592;&#20250;&#12289;&#22269;&#23478;&#37325;&#28857;&#22522;&#30784;&#30740;&#31350;&#21457;&#23637;&#35268;&#21010;&#39033;&#30446;&#21644;&#20013;&#22269;&#31185;&#23398;&#38498;&#30340;&#22823;&#21147;&#25903;&#25345;&#12290; 




*Exceptionally-preserved Fossil Fish From China Reveals the Evolution of Early Jawed Vertebrates* 
Update time&#65306; 09/26/2013

Exceptionally-preserved Fossil Fish From China Reveals the Evolution of Early Jawed Vertebrates----Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences

*The evolution of jaws is one of the key episodes* in the evolution of vertebrates, but the gap between jawed and jawless vertebrates is so large that it is hard to work out the individual evolutionary steps in the transition. An international team led by Dr. ZHU Min, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP), Chinese Academy of Sciences, reported an exceptionally well-preserved 419-million-year-old fish from Qujing, Yunnan in China that is the most primitive vertebrate to have a modern type of jaw.

This fish is a placoderm, one of a member of an extinct group of gnathostomes (jawed vertebrates), named Entelognathus primordialis, but its jaw is much more like that of a modern bony fish. The finding published online September 25 in Nature provides compelling evidence for the evolutionary link between placoderms and osteichthyans, and adjusts our understanding of early gnathostome evolution. 

The holotype of Entelognathus primordialis represents a three-dimensionally preserved fish with articulated head shield and trunk armour, approximately 11 cm long, suggesting a total body length of over 20 cm. It was unearthed from the Late Silurian (Late Ludlow, 419 million years ago) Kuanti Formation at the Xiaoxiang Reservoir near Qujing City of Yunnan Province in China. 

Entelognathus is a placoderm, an extinct grade of primitive armoured fishes. All other placoderms discovered up to this point have had simple jaws and cheeks, with the outer surfaces composed of only a few large bones. Entelognathus on the other hand has a more complex arrangement of smaller bones, including a premaxilla and maxilla lining the upper jaw and a dentary on the lower jaw plus cheek bones comprising a jugal and lacrimal. 

This is the same arrangement found in modern bone-bearing vertebrates including most fishes and all tetrapods, the limbed vertebrates including humans. 

Besides osteichthyans, the other living gnathostomes are the chondrichthyans, a group including sharks and rays. These have almost no bone in their bodies and have skeletons made of cartilage. Until very recently it was widely accepted that this condition represented the primitive state among the living jawed vertebrates. 

In other words, the most recent common ancestor of all gnathostomes would have looked something like a shark, devoid of armor and with a largely cartilaginous skull and skeleton. While both osteichthyans and placoderms have skulls made of large plates, it was widely assumed that the two groups were not related. Thus the immediate ancestors of osteichthyans would have acquired their bony skulls from scratch. It was even suggested that the jaws of placoderms evolved independently of other gnathostomes. 

This astounding discovery may offer a new perspective on the early evolution of these creatures. Osteichthyans did not independently acquire their bony skeletons, they simply inherited them from placoderm ancestors. At the same time, the lineage that led to chondrichthyans progressively lost their bony skeletons. Modern jawed vertebrates, such as sharks and bony fishes, emerge from a collection of jawed, armoured fishes known as placoderms. 

The holotype specimen of Entelognathus was found in 2010, however a majority of the specimen was buried in the matrix in the field. Before its preparation in the laboratory, we had not paid special attention to this specimen, said Dr. ZHU Min of the IVPP, lead author and project designer, "The careful lab work in 2011 unveiled its superb preservation for a compelling evidence of an osteichthyan-like marginal jaw bones in a placoderm. If the jaws of Entelognathus were not articulated with the skull and trunk armour (as many specimens from the same horizon), we probably assign them to an osteichthyan fish". 

This work was mainly supported by the Major State Basic Research Projects of MST of China, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China. 









&#22270;1&#21021;&#22987;&#20840;&#39052;&#40060;&#65288;Entelognathus primordialis&#65289;&#21270;&#30707;&#65292;a&#21069;&#20391;&#35270;&#65292;b&#20391;&#35270;&#65292;c&#21069;&#33145;&#35270;&#65292;d&#32972;&#35270;&#65292;c &#22797;&#21407;&#22270;&#12290;&#65288;&#26417;&#25935;&#20379;&#22270;&#65289; 
Fig.1 Holotype of Entelognathus primordialis gen. et sp. nov., a 419-million-year-old jawed fish with head and trunk armour from the Kuanti Formation of Qujing, Yunnan, China, in anterolateral (a), lateral (b), anteroventral (c) and dorsal (d) views. Scale bars, 1 cm. e, Life restoration. (Image by ZHU Min)






&#22270;2&#21021;&#22987;&#20840;&#39052;&#40060;&#65288;Entelognathus primordialis&#65289;&#29983;&#24577;&#22797;&#21407;&#22270;&#65288;Brian Choo &#20379;&#22270;&#65289; 
Fig.2 Life restoration of Entelognathus primordialis. (Image by Brian Choo) 







&#22270;3 &#26377;&#39052;&#33034;&#26894;&#21160;&#29289;&#28436;&#21270;&#35889;&#31995;&#22270;&#65288;ZHU min, Brian Choo &#20379;&#22270;&#65289; 
Fig.3 The progression of jawed vertebrate skull (Image by ZHU Min, Brian Choo)  



*Also read:* 

*Entelognathus: Paleontologists Find 419-Million-Year-Old Jawed Fish	* 
Sep 26, 2013 by Sergio Prostak 

Entelognathus: Paleontologists Find 419-Million-Year-Old Jawed Fish | Paleontology | Sci-News.com 

A team of paleontologists from China, the United States and Sweden has found a well-preserved fossil of ancient fish that lived in what is now China about 419 million years ago during the Late Silurian period 


The fossil has been collected from the Kuanti Formation near Qujing City, Yunnan Province. 

The fish, named Entelognathus primordialis, was a 20-cm-long placoderm &#8211; an extinct class of armor-plated fishes, the first known animals to evolve true jaws. 

Like other placoderms, Entelognathus had armored plates, but it also had more advanced jaw bones &#8211; features previously seen only in Osteichthyes (bony fishes). 

&#8220;The holotype specimen of Entelognathus was found in 2010, however a majority of the specimen was buried in the matrix in the field,&#8221; explained Dr Min Zhu from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, who is a lead author of the paper reporting the discovery in the journal Nature. 






Top: a three-dimensionally preserved specimen of Entelognathus primordialis with head and trunk armor in lateral view. Scale bar &#8211; 1&#8201;cm. Bottom: life restoration of Entelognathus primordialis. Image credit: Min Zhu et al.

&#8220;Before its preparation in the laboratory, we had not paid special attention to this specimen.&#8221; 

Dr Zhu added that the careful lab work in 2011 unveiled its superb preservation for a compelling evidence of an osteichthyan-like marginal jaw bones in a placoderm. 

&#8220;If the jaws of Entelognathus were not articulated with the skull and trunk armor as many specimens from the same horizon, we probably assign them to an osteichthyan fish.&#8221;

According to the paleontologists, the discovery of Entelognathus provides evidence for the evolutionary link between placoderms and bony fishes, and adjusts the understanding of early evolution of gnathostomes (jawed vertebrates).

______

Bibliographic information: Min Zhu et al. A Silurian placoderm with osteichthyan-like marginal jaw bones. Nature, published online September 25, 2013; doi: 10.1038/nature12617






*A Silurian placoderm with osteichthyan-like marginal jaw bones*
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12617.html#affil-auth
Published online 25 September 2013



*Authors and Affiliations*

*Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100044, China*
Min Zhu, Xiaobo Yu, Brian Choo, Jing Lu, Tuo Qiao, Wenjin Zhao, Liantao Jia & You&#8217;an Zhu

Department of Biological Sciences, Kean University, Union, New Jersey 07083, USA
Xiaobo Yu

Subdepartment of Evolution and Development, Department of Organismal Biology, Evolutionary Biology Centre, Uppsala University, Uppsala 752 36, Sweden
Per Erik Ahlberg, Qingming Qu & Henning Blom

*Abstract*

The gnathostome (jawed vertebrate) crown group comprises two extant clades with contrasting character complements. Notably, Chondrichthyes (cartilaginous fish) lack the large dermal bones that characterize Osteichthyes (bony fish and tetrapods). 

The polarities of these differences, and the morphology of the last common ancestor of crown gnathostomes, are the subject of continuing debate. Here we describe a three-dimensionally preserved 419-million-year-old placoderm fish from the Silurian of China that represents the first stem gnathostome with dermal marginal jaw bones (premaxilla, maxilla and dentary), features previously restricted to Osteichthyes. 

A phylogenetic analysis places the new form near the top of the gnathostome stem group but does not fully resolve its relationships to other placoderms. The analysis also assigns all acanthodians to the chondrichthyan stem group. These results suggest that the last common ancestor of Chondrichthyes and Osteichthyes had a macromeric dermal skeleton, and provide a new framework for studying crown gnathostome divergence.


*See the 3-D visual images here*
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12617.html#videos


*&#20013;&#22269;&#31185;&#23398;&#38498;&#33034;&#26894;&#21160;&#29289;&#36827;&#21270;&#31995;&#32479;&#23398;&#37325;&#28857;&#23454;&#39564;&#23460;
Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100044, China
*
*&#20013;&#22269;&#31185;&#23398;&#38498;&#21476;&#33034;&#26894;&#21160;&#29289;&#19982;&#21476;&#20154;&#31867;&#30740;&#31350;&#25152;
Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences*























*&#20013;&#22269;&#21476;&#21160;&#29289;&#39302;	The Paleozoological Museum of China (PMC)*





Paleozoological Museum of China

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

Students from Changsha in China have used 3D printing to help them build a racing car&#65306;

ITN News » Students use 3D printing to build racing car

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## armchairPrivate

Leaps and bounce. Leaps and bounce. I tell you.

I dare say China has arrived at a critical point (like critical mass in a nuke bomb) in advances. There is no going back.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Lightningbolt

Just need 15 more years and we would have closed the technological gap with the US.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Echo_419

Kolaps said:


> In the near future, developed countries don't need cheap labors from developing countries. They have army of robots that can build anything, compete with personal customization in each product they made. You can choose, design and add personal touch in front of computer with internet access, robot will manufacture it for you and arrive in front of your house in just couple of hours later. The price is even cheaper than made by cheap labors in developing countries.
> 
> Developing country market will be massively flooded by developed countries products, that even cheaper, higher quality, better design and more functionality than locally made.



What will humans do then 
I prefer to keep a human in the loop & by soon how much soon you are talking about 
I think atleast 4-5 decades when robots will build every thing

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Kolaps

Echo_419 said:


> What will humans do then
> I prefer to keep a human in the loop & by soon how much soon you are talking about
> I think atleast 4-5 decades when robots will build every thing



Human will adapt into the new situation in the future.

Robot will change the world, probably sooner than most people expected. As developed countries are having an economy crisis from the cheap Made in China goods. The only solution for them to keep compete with China is to embrace third industrial revolution. Taiwan is preparing for that too, as Chinese labors are getting expensive.

After China, there will be no outsourcing manufacture to third world country trend in massive way anymore.


----------



## shuttler

*&#20840;&#29699;&#39318;&#20010;&#8220;&#20154;&#24037;&#35282;&#33180;&#8221;&#20135;&#21697;&#24050;&#25104;&#21151;&#23436;&#25104;
The world's first "artificial cornea" products have been successfully completed*

2013-9-30

http://www.bioon.com











Credit: instrument.com.cn

&#20840;&#29699;&#39318;&#20010;&#8220;&#20154;&#24037;&#35282;&#33180;&#8221;&#20135;&#21697;&#24050;&#30001;&#28145;&#22323;&#33406;&#23612;&#23572;&#35282;&#33180;&#24037;&#31243;&#20844;&#21496;&#25104;&#21151;&#23436;&#25104;&#12290;&#22810;&#20013;&#24515;&#20020;&#24202;&#35797;&#39564;&#24773;&#20917;&#26174;&#31034;&#65292;&#8220;&#20154;&#24037;&#35282;&#33180;&#8221;&#30340;&#24840;&#21518;&#25928;&#26524;&#24050;&#32463;&#25509;&#36817;&#20154;&#20307;&#35282;&#33180;&#12290;

9&#26376;29&#26085;&#65292;&#30001;&#25105;&#22269;&#33879;&#21517;&#30524;&#31185;&#19987;&#23478;&#21271;&#20140;&#21516;&#20161;&#21307;&#38498;&#37049;&#30041;&#27827;&#25945;&#25480;&#20027;&#25345;&#30340;&#8220;&#20154;&#24037;&#35282;&#33180;&#8221;&#30340;&#20020;&#24202;&#35797;&#39564;&#24635;&#32467;&#20250;&#35758;&#22312;&#28145;&#22323;&#21484;&#24320;&#12290;&#35813;&#8220;&#20154;&#24037;&#35282;&#33180;&#8221;&#30340;&#20020;&#24202;&#35797;&#39564;&#30001;&#22269;&#20869;&#33879;&#21517;&#30340;&#30524;&#31185;&#20020;&#24202;&#21307;&#38498;&#25285;&#20219;&#20020;&#24202;&#35797;&#39564;&#24037;&#20316;&#65292;&#20197;&#21271;&#20140;&#21516;&#20161;&#21307;&#38498;&#29301;&#22836;&#65292;&#30001;&#22235;&#24029;&#22823;&#23398;&#21326;&#35199;&#21307;&#38498;&#12289;&#27827;&#21335;&#30524;&#31185;&#20013;&#24515;&#12289;&#27494;&#27721;&#21327;&#21644;&#21307;&#38498;&#31561;&#21307;&#38498;&#21442;&#19982;&#12290;&#22810;&#20013;&#24515;&#20020;&#24202;&#35797;&#39564;&#25968;&#25454;&#26174;&#31034;&#65292;&#24635;&#26377;&#25928;&#29575;&#36229;&#36807;&#20102;90%&#65307;&#32463;&#36807;&#20020;&#24202;&#35797;&#39564;&#35266;&#23519;&#65292;&#8220;&#20154;&#24037;&#35282;&#33180;&#8221;&#30340;&#24840;&#21518;&#25928;&#26524;&#24050;&#32463;&#25509;&#36817;&#20154;&#20307;&#35282;&#33180;&#12290;

&#25454;&#24713;&#65292;&#35813;&#39033;&#37325;&#22823;&#30340;&#31185;&#30740;&#25104;&#26524;&#65292;&#22312;&#22269;&#23478;&#8220;863&#35745;&#21010;&#8221;&#25903;&#25345;&#19979;&#65292;&#24050;&#30001;&#20013;&#22269;&#29983;&#29289;&#21307;&#23398;&#20877;&#29983;&#31185;&#25216;&#26377;&#38480;&#20844;&#21496;(08158.HK)&#19979;&#23646;&#23376;&#20844;&#21496;&#28145;&#22323;&#33406;&#23612;&#23572;&#35282;&#33180;&#24037;&#31243;&#26377;&#38480;&#20844;&#21496;&#65292;&#19982;&#31532;&#22235;&#20891;&#21307;&#22823;&#23398;&#32452;&#32455;&#24037;&#31243;&#30740;&#21457;&#20013;&#24515;&#37329;&#23721;&#25945;&#25480;&#30340;&#22242;&#38431;&#32852;&#21512;&#24320;&#21457;&#25104;&#21151;&#65292;&#24182;&#25237;&#36164;&#24314;&#25104;&#20102;&#20135;&#19994;&#21270;&#30340;&#35268;&#27169;&#29983;&#20135;&#22522;&#22320;&#12290;&#35813;&#20135;&#21697;&#26159;&#32452;&#32455;&#24037;&#31243;&#30340;&#21069;&#27839;&#20135;&#21697;&#65292;&#21487;&#20197;&#26367;&#20195;&#20154;&#25424;&#29486;&#35282;&#33180;&#65292;&#36825;&#26159;&#30446;&#21069;&#19990;&#30028;&#19978;&#31532;&#19968;&#20010;&#20063;&#26159;&#21807;&#19968;&#19968;&#20010;&#23436;&#25104;&#20020;&#24202;&#35797;&#39564;&#30340;&#39640;&#31185;&#25216;&#20154;&#24037;&#35282;&#33180;&#20135;&#21697;&#65292;&#35813;&#20135;&#21697;&#23436;&#20840;&#30001;&#25105;&#22269;&#31185;&#23398;&#23478;&#33258;&#20027;&#30740;&#21457;&#24182;&#25317;&#26377;&#23436;&#25972;&#30340;&#33258;&#20027;&#30693;&#35782;&#20135;&#26435;&#12290;

&#35282;&#33180;&#26159;&#30524;&#29699;&#21069;&#37096;&#30340;&#19968;&#23618;&#39640;&#24230;&#36879;&#26126;&#30340;&#32452;&#32455;&#65292;&#23601;&#20687;&#29031;&#30456;&#26426;&#30340;&#38236;&#22836;&#19968;&#26679;&#23545;&#25104;&#20687;&#36215;&#20102;&#20851;&#38190;&#20316;&#29992;&#65292;&#19968;&#26086;&#28151;&#27978;&#25110;&#21463;&#25439;&#23558;&#30452;&#25509;&#23548;&#33268;&#24739;&#32773;&#22833;&#26126;&#12290;&#30446;&#21069;&#65292;&#24739;&#32773;&#37325;&#35265;&#20809;&#26126;&#30340;&#21807;&#19968;&#21150;&#27861;&#26159;&#31227;&#26893;&#25424;&#29486;&#33719;&#24471;&#30340;&#24322;&#20307;&#20154;&#35282;&#33180;&#65292;&#20294;&#26159;&#65292;&#30446;&#21069;&#20840;&#22269;&#20154;&#25424;&#29486;&#35282;&#33180;&#27599;&#24180;&#20165;3000&#20363;&#65292;&#32780;&#20840;&#22269;&#38656;&#35201;&#31227;&#26893;&#30340;&#35282;&#33180;&#30149;&#24739;&#32773;&#36229;&#36807;&#20102;500&#19975;&#65292;&#27599;&#24180;&#36824;&#26032;&#22686;10&#22810;&#19975;&#24739;&#32773;&#65292;&#30001;&#27492;&#21487;&#35265;&#30001;&#20110;&#25424;&#29486;&#35282;&#33180;&#30340;&#20005;&#37325;&#32570;&#20047;&#65292;&#21448;&#27809;&#26377;&#26367;&#20195;&#20135;&#21697;&#65292;&#33268;&#20351;&#35282;&#33180;&#30149;&#20154;&#30340;&#21307;&#27835;&#38382;&#39064;&#38271;&#26399;&#26080;&#27861;&#35299;&#20915;&#12290;

&#25454;&#24713;&#65292;&#24403;&#22825;&#21442;&#21152;&#8220;&#20154;&#24037;&#35282;&#33180;&#8221;&#20020;&#24202;&#24635;&#32467;&#22823;&#20250;&#30340;&#19987;&#23478;&#21644;&#30524;&#31185;&#21307;&#24072;&#39640;&#24230;&#35748;&#23450;&#20102;&#8220;&#20154;&#24037;&#35282;&#33180;&#8221;&#30340;&#20020;&#24202;&#25928;&#26524;&#12290;&#19994;&#20869;&#20154;&#22763;&#25351;&#20986;&#65292;&#35813;&#20135;&#21697;&#23558;&#26497;&#22823;&#22320;&#35299;&#20915;&#35282;&#33180;&#20379;&#20307;&#19981;&#36275;&#30340;&#38382;&#39064;&#65292;&#26377;&#26395;&#25104;&#20026;&#19968;&#20010;&#36896;&#31119;&#20154;&#31867;&#30340;&#38761;&#21629;&#24615;&#30524;&#31185;&#20135;&#21697;&#12290;&#65288;&#29983;&#29289;&#35895;Bioon.com&#65289;


The world's first "artificial cornea " products from Shenzhen Anil Cornea Engineering Company successfully completed. Multi-center clinical trial indications "artificial cornea ," the effect is already close to the body after healing cornea .

September 29 , by the famous ophthalmologist Beijing Tongren Hospital, Professor Zou Liuhe auspices of " artificial cornea " clinical trials wrap-up meeting was held in Shenzhen . The "artificial cornea ," the clinical trial was conducted by a renowned clinical ophthalmology hospital as a clinical trial work to Beijing Tongren Hospital , led by the West China Hospital , Sichuan University , Henan Eye Center , Wuhan Union Hospital and other hospitals to participate. Multi-center clinical trial data show that the total efficiency of more than 90% ; been observed in clinical trials , "artificial cornea ," the effect is already close to the body after healing cornea .

It is reported that the major scientific research in the national " 863 Program" , supported by China Bio-Med Regeneration Technology Limited (08158.HK) subsidiary Shenzhen Anil Cornea Engineering Company Limited, with the Fourth Military Medical University Organization Engineering R & D Center Professor Jin Yan joint development team success, and investment into industrial -scale production base. The product is the forefront of tissue engineering products , can replace human donor cornea , which is the world 's first and only one to complete clinical trials of high-tech artificial cornea product that completely independently developed by the Chinese scientists have complete independent intellectual property rights .

The cornea is the eye 's front layer of highly transparent organization , like a camera lens as the imaging plays a key role , if cloudy or damaged will directly lead to blindness . Currently, patients see again the only way to get the allogeneic transplant donated human cornea, however , the current national human donor corneas only 3,000 cases per year , while the national need corneal transplants in patients with more than 5 million , has added more than 10 million per year patients can be seen as a serious lack of donor cornea , and no alternative products , resulting in the patient's treatment of the cornea can not solve the problem long term .

It is learned that day to participate in "artificial cornea ," concluded the General Assembly of clinical specialists and ophthalmologists highly identified "artificial cornea " clinical results. Insiders pointed out that the product will greatly solve the problem of insufficient donor cornea , is expected to become a revolutionary ophthalmic products for the benefit of mankind . ( Bio Valley Bioon.com)

Net assisted translation


----------



## shuttler

*Trapping light by mimicking gravitational lensing	* 


http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphoton.2013.247.html#affil-auth 


*Figure 1:*Analogue of light deflection in a gravitational field and microstructured optical waveguide.* 





a, Depiction of light deflection by the gravitational field of a massive stellar object. b, Schematic view of the microstructured optical waveguide formed around a microsphere and used to emulate the deflection of light by a gravitational force&#8230;	 

*Figure 2: Structural and optical measurements of the sample.* 




a, Interference pattern around the microsphere illuminated by white (top) and blue (bottom) light. b, Surface profile of the PMMA layer measured with AFM. c, The effective refractive index of the microstructured waveguide is extracted,&#8230; 
 

One of the most fascinating predictions of the theory of general relativity is the effect of gravitational lensing, the bending of light in close proximity to massive stellar objects. 

Recently, artificial optical materials have been proposed to study the various aspects of curved spacetimes, including light trapping and Hawking radiation. However, the development of experimental &#8216;toy&#8217; models that simulate gravitational lensing in curved spacetimes remains a challenge, especially for visible light. 

Here, by utilizing a microstructured optical waveguide around a microsphere, we propose to mimic curved spacetimes caused by gravity, with high precision. We experimentally demonstrate both far-field gravitational lensing effects and the critical phenomenon in close proximity to the photon sphere of astrophysical objects under hydrostatic equilibrium. The proposed microstructured waveguide can be used as an omnidirectional absorber, with potential light harvesting and microcavity applications. 

*Affiliations	* 
*National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures & Department of Physics, National Center of Microstructures and Quantum Manipulation, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China	* 
C. Sheng, H. Liu, Y. Wang & S. N. Zhu 

College of Engineering and Science, Louisiana Tech University, Ruston, Louisiana 71270, USA 
D. A. Genov 



*See the video and more information Here*: *Artificial Black Hole Made--in-China*




*Nanjing University &#21335;&#20140;&#22823;&#23398;	*





Credit: xl7788	
































Credit: wikimedia or stated in the link


----------



## cirr

*China to build largest aero-engine outsourcing base*

By PTI | 7 Oct, 2013, 08.23PM IST

BEIJING: China plans to build its largest outsourcing base for aero-engine with an investment of $100 million, which will supply aero parts for Boeing and Airbus. 

The newly-approved bonded area in the southwest Guizhou province will realise imports and exports of $200 million in 2015, the headquarters for the comprehensive bonded zone in Guiyang said today. 

Construction of 40,000-square-metre workshops has started for a joint venture of AVIC International Holding Corporation and AVIC Liyang Aero-Engine Corporation, it said. 

With an investment of $100 million, the project will provide aero parts for Boeing and Airbus, the statement said. 

Some production lines of AVIC Liyang Aero-Engine Corporation's aviation engine industry base in a high-tech zone in Guiyang have started operation. 

*Liyang Aero-Engine will invest 4 billion yuan in the base*, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. 

China's cabinet approved last month the establishment of the comprehensive bonded zone in Guiyang with an area of over three square km. 

The zone will be put into operation in September next year. It will enjoy the same tax and foreign exchange policies as the Yangshan Free Trade Port Area, China's first bonded port established in Shanghai in 2005.

China to build largest aero-engine outsourcing base - The Economic Times

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*China's high magnetic field facilities deemed world-class: experts*

Xinhua | 2013-10-9 9:10:47 

By Agencies	

China's pulsed high magnetic field experimental facilities have reached advanced levels and made world-class achievements, according to foreign experts.

A team of more than 30 experts from six countries, including the United States and Germany, gave the appraisal after inspecting and watching displays at the National High Magnetic Field Center in Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei Province.

High magnetic fields are one of the most important extreme conditions for modern scientific experiments, according to Li Liang, director of the center at Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

Over the past century, scientific research under strong magnetic fields has been active globally and made great original achievements in physics, chemistry, and in promoting the development of relevant high-tech industries, said Li.

The center, which began construction in 2008, will open to outside users after completion, he added.

*In August, the center achieved a magnetic field intensity of 90.6 tesla, breaking the country's previous record. The breakthrough made China the third country after the US and Germany to realize a magnetic field intensity of more than 90 tesla.*

China's high magnetic field facilities deemed world-class: experts - BUSINESS - Globaltimes.cn

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## shuttler

*The World Health Organization (WHO) has added a new vaccine made in China to its list of pre-qualified medicines.
*
9 Oct 2013

WHO approves new vaccine for Japanese Encephalitis 





Credit: WHO





Credit: amalpest.com.au





Credit: pigtrop.cirad.fr





Credit:
Encephalitis Toll in City Increases 200% in 3 Years Japanese Encephalitis Cases Alarming, Experts Blame Notification System






credit: traveldoctor.info





Credit: made in China.com






Credit: wibp.com.cn


The new vaccine will be used to protect children against Japanese Encephalitis which is a mosquito borne viral infection that causes inflammation of the brain.

Japanese Encephalitis is major public health problem and is endemic with seasonal outbreaks in parts of China, the Russian Federation and Southern Asia.

There is no specific treatment for the disease, but it can be prevented through the use of approved vaccines and supportive care in a medical facility to reduce the risk of death or disability.

This is the first Chinese produced vaccine to be pre-qualified by WHO.

Children at risk will need only one dose.

WHO Director- General Dr. Margaret Chan says the approval of the new vaccine is a welcome development both in the fight to protect children in developing countries from Japanese Encephalitis and in the future availability of vaccines, as China is now producing vaccines up to WHO standards.

Dr. Chan expressed hope that more vaccines made in China will become WHO pre-qualified.

_Patrick Maigua, United Nations Radio, Geneva._


More info about the disease here:

Indigenous Communities Environmental Health Resources

Encephalitis Toll in City Increases 200% in 3 Years Japanese Encephalitis Cases Alarming, Experts Blame Notification System

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

Truly great work&#12290;&#12290;&#12290;

*The world&#8217;s first quantum memory that stores the shape and structure of single photons has been built in a Chinese lab*

Received 09 July 2013 Accepted 30 August 2013 Published 02 October 2013&#65306;

Single-photon-level quantum image memory based on cold atomic ensembles : Nature Communications : Nature Publishing Group

Hello&#65292;quantum computer&#65307;hello&#65292;quantum internet&#65281;

First Quantum Memory That Records The Shape of a Single Photon Unveiled in China | MIT Technology Review

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## kbd-raaf

cirr said:


> Truly great work&#12290;&#12290;&#12290;
> 
> *The world&#8217;s first quantum memory that stores the shape and structure of single photons has been built in a Chinese lab*
> 
> Received 09 July 2013 Accepted 30 August 2013 Published 02 October 2013&#65306;
> 
> Single-photon-level quantum image memory based on cold atomic ensembles : Nature Communications : Nature Publishing Group
> 
> Hello&#65292;quantum computer&#65307;hello&#65292;quantum internet&#65281;
> 
> First Quantum Memory That Records The Shape of a Single Photon Unveiled in China | MIT Technology Review



Yay. Can't wait till this technology is commercialised.


----------



## cirr




----------



## cirr

WiFi and LED lamp&#12290;

What's the coonection&#65311;

Well&#65292;the later may replace the former and allow internet access by LED LIGHT&#12290;


----------



## cirr

Good tidings from Fudan University in Shanghai yesterday&#65281;

A new international cutting edge communication technology that makes use of visible light to transmit network signals was successfully demonstrated in the lab&#12290;Researchers from Fudan University connected a network signal to an 1W LED lamp bead and guess what&#65311;

Four computers instantly came online in the lamplight&#65292;achieving the highest transmission rate of up to 3.25G and an average access rate of up to 150M&#65292; 

What a feat&#65281;It fully merits the title &#8220;the world's fastest internet access by light&#8220;

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

10 LiFi&#65288;VLC&#65289;prototypes to debut during IAS 2013&#65288;5-9.11.2013&#65289;in Shanghai&#12290;


----------



## cirr

[YouKu]XNjIyNTA1Mzc2[/YouKu]

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## shuttler

*&#21271;&#20140;&#22823;&#23398;&#31532;&#19968;&#21307;&#38498;&#23436;&#25104;&#25105;&#22269;&#39318;&#20363;&#32463;&#30382;&#24515;&#23460;&#37325;&#24314;&#26415;
Peking University First Hospital, completed China's first percutaneous surgical ventricular reconstruction*
2013&#24180;10&#26376;15&#26085;11:59 
15-Oct-13

sina.com.cn






&#38477;&#33853;&#20254;-&#24038;&#23460;&#38548;&#31163;&#35013;&#32622; Parachute - LV isolation device






&#38669;&#21191;&#25945;&#25480;&#20026;&#24739;&#32773;&#26045;&#34892;&#32463;&#30382;&#24038;&#23460;&#38548;&#31163;&#26415;
Professor Yong Huo ventricular isolation underwent percutaneous surgery






&#27946;&#28059;&#25945;&#25480;&#20026;&#24739;&#32773;&#26045;&#34892;&#32463;&#30382;&#24038;&#23460;&#38548;&#31163;&#26415;
Professor Tao underwent percutaneous left ventricular isolation technique





&#24739;&#32773;&#34892;&#24515;&#23460;&#37325;&#24314;&#26415;&#21069;&#24038;&#23460;&#36896;&#24433;
Patients with preoperative left ventricular angiography ventricular reconstruction





&#26415;&#21518;&#24038;&#23460;&#36896;&#24433;
Postoperative left ventricular angiography

&#21271;&#20140;&#22823;&#23398;&#31532;&#19968;&#21307;&#38498;&#24515;&#34880;&#31649;&#20869;&#31185;(&#20197;&#19979;&#31616;&#31216;&#8220;&#21271;&#22823;&#21307;&#38498;&#24515;&#20869;&#31185;&#8221&#22312;&#31185;&#20027;&#20219;&#38669;&#21191;&#25945;&#25480;&#30340;&#24102;&#39046;&#19979;&#65292;&#20110;2013&#24180;10&#26376;9&#26085;&#22312;&#22269;&#20869;&#29575;&#20808;&#36890;&#36807;&#24494;&#21019;&#20171;&#20837;&#30340;&#26041;&#27861;&#23545;&#20004;&#21517;&#38472;&#26087;&#21069;&#22721;&#24515;&#32908;&#26775;&#27515;&#21512;&#24182;&#23460;&#22721;&#30244;&#24739;&#32773;&#26045;&#34892;&#20102;&#32463;&#30382;&#24515;&#23460;&#37325;&#24314;&#26415;&#65292;&#23454;&#29616;&#20102;&#22269;&#20869;&#22312;&#35813;&#39033;&#25216;&#26415;&#38646;&#30340;&#31361;&#30772;&#12290;

&#12288;&#12288;&#8220;&#32463;&#30382;&#24515;&#23460;&#37325;&#24314;&#26415;&#8221;&#26159;&#38024;&#23545;&#24613;&#24615;&#24515;&#32908;&#26775;&#27515;&#24739;&#32773;&#26131;&#21457;&#30340;&#24515;&#21147;&#34928;&#31469;&#30340;&#38472;&#26087;&#21069;&#22721;&#24515;&#32908;&#26775;&#27515;&#20276;&#24515;&#21147;&#34928;&#31469;&#24739;&#32773;&#30340;&#26032;&#30340;&#27835;&#30103;&#26041;&#27861;&#12290;&#36825;&#31867;&#24739;&#32773;&#24120;&#22240;&#26412;&#36523;&#30149;&#24773;&#21361;&#37325;&#32780;&#26080;&#27861;&#25215;&#21463;&#22806;&#31185;&#25163;&#26415;&#27835;&#30103;&#12290;&#8220;&#32463;&#30382;&#24515;&#23460;&#37325;&#24314;&#26415;&#8221;&#22522;&#20110;&#22269;&#22806;&#26368;&#26032;&#30740;&#21457;&#30340;&#19968;&#31181;&#26032;&#30340;&#22120;&#26800;&#65292;&#35813;&#22120;&#26800;&#26159;&#19968;&#20010;&#24038;(&#24515&#23460;&#38548;&#31163;&#35013;&#32622;&#65292;&#24418;&#20284;&#8220;&#38477;&#33853;&#20254;&#8221;&#65292;&#37319;&#29992;&#24494;&#21019;&#20171;&#20837;&#30340;&#26041;&#27861;&#65292;&#32463;&#32929;&#21160;&#33033;&#32622;&#20837;&#21040;&#24038;&#23460;&#24515;&#23574;&#37096;&#65292;&#23558;&#24322;&#24120;&#25910;&#32553;&#30340;&#23460;&#22721;&#38548;&#31163;&#24320;&#65292;&#20174;&#32780;&#20943;&#23569;&#24038;&#23460;&#23481;&#31215;&#65292;&#25913;&#21892;&#24515;&#21147;&#34928;&#31469;&#24739;&#32773;&#20020;&#24202;&#30151;&#29366;&#21450;&#24515;&#21151;&#33021;&#12290;&#35813;&#39033;&#25216;&#26415;&#26368;&#26089;&#25253;&#36947;&#20110;2007&#24180;&#65292;&#36817;&#24180;&#26469;&#22312;&#22269;&#22806;&#36880;&#28176;&#24320;&#23637;&#65292;&#31215;&#32047;&#20102;&#19978;&#30334;&#20363;&#30340;&#32463;&#39564;&#65292;&#24182;&#33719;&#24471;&#27431;&#27954;CE&#35748;&#35777;&#12290;

&#12288;&#12288;&#25130;&#33267;&#30446;&#21069;&#65292;&#21271;&#22823;&#21307;&#38498;&#24515;&#20869;&#31185;&#24050;&#32463;&#25104;&#21151;&#23436;&#25104;&#20004;&#20301;&#24739;&#32773;&#30340;&#27835;&#30103;&#12290;

&#12288;&#12288;&#31532;&#19968;&#20301;60&#23681;&#30340;&#30007;&#24615;&#24739;&#32773;&#65292;4&#24180;&#21069;&#22240;&#20026;&#24613;&#24615;&#21069;&#22721;&#24515;&#32908;&#26775;&#27515;&#65292;&#34429;&#28982;&#20063;&#25509;&#21463;&#20102;&#24613;&#35786;&#25903;&#26550;&#27835;&#30103;&#65292;&#20294;&#26159;&#20173;&#28982;&#36951;&#30041;&#20102;&#23460;&#22721;&#30244;&#12290;4&#24180;&#26469;&#35268;&#24459;&#26381;&#29992;&#33647;&#29289;&#27835;&#30103;&#65292;&#20294;&#20173;&#28982;&#19981;&#26102;&#21457;&#29983;&#24515;&#21147;&#34928;&#31469;&#65292;&#22810;&#23478;&#21307;&#38498;&#22240;&#35748;&#20026;&#23460;&#22721;&#30244;&#25163;&#26415;&#27835;&#30103;&#39118;&#38505;&#39640;&#32780;&#27490;&#27493;&#12290;

&#12288;&#12288;&#31532;&#20108;&#20301;65&#23681;&#30340;&#30007;&#24615;&#24739;&#32773;&#65292;&#20170;&#24180;3&#26376;&#21457;&#29983;&#24613;&#24615;&#21069;&#22721;&#24515;&#32908;&#26775;&#27515;&#65292;&#21516;&#26679;&#20063;&#26159;&#25509;&#21463;&#20102;&#24613;&#35786;&#25903;&#26550;&#27835;&#30103;&#65292;&#20294;&#26159;&#20381;&#28982;&#36951;&#30041;&#20102;&#23460;&#22721;&#30244;&#65292;&#20165;&#20170;&#24180;&#23601;&#22240;&#20026;&#24515;&#21147;&#34928;&#31469;&#20303;&#38498;&#20004;&#27425;&#12290;&#32780;&#30001;&#20110;&#30149;&#24773;&#37325;&#12289;&#25163;&#26415;&#39118;&#38505;&#22823;&#65292;&#21672;&#35810;&#36807;&#22810;&#23478;&#21307;&#38498;&#21518;&#26410;&#37319;&#21462;&#22806;&#31185;&#25163;&#26415;&#27835;&#30103;&#12290;

&#12288;&#12288;&#21271;&#22823;&#21307;&#38498;&#24515;&#20869;&#31185;&#32463;&#36807;&#21608;&#23494;&#30340;&#26415;&#21069;&#20934;&#22791;&#65292;&#30001;&#38669;&#21191;&#25945;&#25480;&#12289;&#27946;&#28059;&#25945;&#25480;&#20998;&#21035;&#20026;&#20004;&#21517;&#24739;&#32773;&#25104;&#21151;&#22320;&#23558;&#8220;&#38477;&#33853;&#20254;&#8221;-&#24038;&#23460;&#38548;&#31163;&#35013;&#32622;&#25918;&#32622;&#21040;&#24739;&#32773;&#24515;&#23460;&#20013;&#65292;&#20943;&#23569;&#24739;&#32773;&#24515;&#33039;&#30340;&#23481;&#31215;&#65292;&#26377;&#25928;&#25913;&#21892;&#24515;&#21147;&#34928;&#31469;&#30340;&#20020;&#24202;&#30151;&#29366;&#12290;&#30446;&#21069;&#20004;&#21517;&#24739;&#32773;&#24674;&#22797;&#33391;&#22909;&#12290;

&#12288;&#12288;&#36817;&#24180;&#26469;&#24515;&#33039;&#30149;&#30340;&#27835;&#30103;&#26377;&#20102;&#38271;&#36275;&#30340;&#21457;&#23637;&#65292;&#20294;&#26159;&#20316;&#20026;&#25152;&#26377;&#24515;&#33039;&#30149;&#26368;&#32456;&#32467;&#23616;&#20043;&#19968;&#30340;&#24515;&#21147;&#34928;&#31469;&#21364;&#22987;&#32456;&#23041;&#32961;&#30528;&#20154;&#31867;&#20581;&#24247;&#65292;5&#24180;&#29983;&#23384;&#29575;&#29978;&#33267;&#27604;&#26576;&#20123;&#24694;&#24615;&#32959;&#30244;&#36824;&#24046;&#12290;&#23548;&#33268;&#24515;&#21147;&#34928;&#31469;&#30340;&#21407;&#22240;&#20247;&#22810;&#65292;&#26368;&#24120;&#35265;&#30340;&#30149;&#22240;&#20043;&#19968;&#20026;&#24613;&#24615;&#24515;&#32908;&#26775;&#27515;&#12290;&#25454;&#25253;&#36947;&#65292;&#27599;&#24180;&#20840;&#29699;&#26377;1700&#19975;&#20154;&#27515;&#20110;&#24515;&#34880;&#31649;&#30142;&#30149;&#65292;&#20854;&#20013;&#19968;&#21322;&#20197;&#19978;&#27515;&#20110;&#24613;&#24615;&#24515;&#32908;&#26775;&#27515;&#65292;&#21363;&#20351;&#24739;&#32773;&#23384;&#27963;&#21518;&#20063;&#23481;&#26131;&#21457;&#23637;&#20026;&#24930;&#24615;&#24515;&#21147;&#34928;&#31469;&#12290;&#25454;&#20272;&#35745;&#65292;&#20013;&#22269;&#24613;&#24615;&#24515;&#32908;&#26775;&#27515;&#30340;&#21457;&#30149;&#29575;&#32422;&#20026;45/10&#19975;&#65374;55/10&#19975;&#65292;&#30446;&#21069;&#36824;&#21576;&#19978;&#21319;&#36235;&#21183;&#12290;&#24613;&#24615;&#24515;&#32908;&#26775;&#27515;&#21518;&#30001;&#20110;&#24515;&#32908;&#25439;&#20260;&#20197;&#21450;&#38543;&#21518;&#30340;&#30242;&#30165;&#21270;&#65292;&#23548;&#33268;&#24515;&#33039;&#25193;&#22823;&#20197;&#21450;&#24515;&#21147;&#34928;&#31469;&#30340;&#21457;&#29983;&#65292;&#23588;&#20854;&#26159;&#21069;&#22721;&#24515;&#32908;&#26775;&#27515;&#21512;&#24182;&#23460;&#22721;&#30244;&#30340;&#24739;&#32773;&#26356;&#23481;&#26131;&#21457;&#29983;&#24515;&#21147;&#34928;&#31469;&#65292;&#19981;&#20165;&#24433;&#21709;&#24739;&#32773;&#30340;&#29983;&#27963;&#36136;&#37327;&#65292;&#36824;&#36896;&#25104;&#24040;&#22823;&#30340;&#23478;&#24237;&#21644;&#31038;&#20250;&#30340;&#32463;&#27982;&#36127;&#25285;&#12290;&#23545;&#20110;&#35813;&#31867;&#24739;&#32773;&#38500;&#20102;&#33647;&#29289;&#27835;&#30103;&#20043;&#22806;&#65292;&#20063;&#21487;&#20197;&#37319;&#29992;&#22806;&#31185;&#25163;&#26415;&#27835;&#30103;&#65292;&#20294;&#26159;&#30001;&#20110;&#38656;&#35201;&#25163;&#26415;&#30340;&#24739;&#32773;&#26412;&#36523;&#30149;&#24773;&#21361;&#37325;&#65292;&#32780;&#22806;&#31185;&#25163;&#26415;&#21019;&#20260;&#36739;&#22823;&#65292;&#23545;&#22806;&#31185;&#25163;&#26415;&#32773;&#30340;&#35201;&#27714;&#20063;&#27604;&#36739;&#39640;&#65292;&#20020;&#24202;&#20351;&#29992;&#21463;&#38480;&#12290;

&#12288;&#12288;&#19968;&#39033;&#26032;&#25216;&#26415;&#30340;&#26045;&#34892;&#65292;&#26082;&#35201;&#26377;&#25954;&#20026;&#22825;&#19979;&#20808;&#30340;&#21191;&#27668;&#65292;&#20063;&#38656;&#35201;&#22810;&#26041;&#38754;&#30340;&#25903;&#25345;&#12290;&#25105;&#22269;&#39318;&#20363;&#32463;&#30382;&#24515;&#23460;&#37325;&#24314;&#26415;&#22312;&#25105;&#38498;&#24471;&#20197;&#25104;&#21151;&#36827;&#34892;&#65292;&#26159;&#22312;&#21016;&#29577;&#26449;&#38498;&#38271;&#12289;&#19969;&#27905;&#21103;&#38498;&#38271;&#12289;&#28504;&#20041;&#29983;&#21103;&#38498;&#38271;&#12289;&#21307;&#21153;&#22788;&#29579;&#24179;&#22788;&#38271;&#12289;&#34945;&#24314;&#23792;&#21644;&#24352;&#28218;&#21103;&#22788;&#38271;&#12289;&#31185;&#30740;&#22788;&#35874;&#22241;&#21103;&#22788;&#38271;&#30340;&#30452;&#25509;&#25903;&#25345;&#19979;&#21462;&#24471;&#30340;&#12290;&#22312;&#21069;&#26399;&#20934;&#22791;&#36807;&#31243;&#20013;&#65292;&#19981;&#20165;&#24515;&#20869;&#31185;&#19978;&#19979;&#39640;&#24230;&#37325;&#35270;&#65292;&#32780;&#19988;&#24471;&#21040;&#20102;&#21307;&#21153;&#22788;&#12289;&#31185;&#30740;&#22788;&#12289;&#35774;&#22791;&#22788;&#31561;&#32844;&#33021;&#22788;&#23460;&#30340;&#31215;&#26497;&#25903;&#25345;&#21644;&#21307;&#23398;&#24433;&#20687;&#31185;&#37041;&#24314;&#26143;&#21103;&#20027;&#20219;&#21307;&#24072;&#12289;&#29579;&#40548;&#20027;&#27835;&#21307;&#24072;&#12289;&#36229;&#22768;&#35786;&#26029;&#20013;&#24515;&#38472;&#36335;&#22686;&#21103;&#20027;&#20219;&#21307;&#24072;&#30340;&#36890;&#21147;&#21327;&#20316;&#12290;&#32780;&#22312;&#25163;&#26415;&#36827;&#34892;&#20013;&#65292;&#31163;&#19981;&#24320;&#20171;&#20837;&#34880;&#31649;&#22806;&#31185;&#26472;&#25935;&#21103;&#20027;&#20219;&#21307;&#24072;&#12289;&#24515;&#33039;&#22806;&#31185;&#29579;&#36827;&#21103;&#20027;&#20219;&#21307;&#24072;&#21644;&#40635;&#37257;&#31185;&#32993;&#26195;&#21103;&#20027;&#20219;&#30340;&#26377;&#21147;&#37197;&#21512;&#12290;&#22240;&#27492;&#65292;&#35813;&#39033;&#25216;&#26415;&#30340;&#23454;&#26045;&#65292;&#19981;&#20165;&#20307;&#29616;&#20102;&#21271;&#22823;&#21307;&#38498;&#24515;&#20869;&#31185;&#34429;&#28982;&#20316;&#20026;&#22269;&#20869;&#26368;&#26089;&#24320;&#23637;&#20171;&#20837;&#27835;&#30103;&#30340;&#24515;&#33039;&#20013;&#24515;&#20043;&#19968;&#65292;&#20294;&#19981;&#28385;&#36275;&#20110;&#36807;&#21435;&#22312;&#20896;&#24515;&#30149;&#21450;&#30005;&#29983;&#29702;&#20171;&#20837;&#27835;&#30103;&#26041;&#38754;&#21462;&#24471;&#30340;&#25104;&#32489;&#65292;&#38160;&#24847;&#36827;&#21462;&#65292;&#19981;&#26029;&#21019;&#26032;&#30340;&#31934;&#31070;&#12290;&#21516;&#26102;&#20063;&#20307;&#29616;&#20102;&#25105;&#38498;&#20316;&#20026;&#32508;&#21512;&#21307;&#38498;&#30340;&#20248;&#21183;&#65292;&#21508;&#20010;&#31185;&#23460;&#31934;&#35802;&#22242;&#32467;&#65292;&#20114;&#30456;&#20419;&#36827;&#65292;&#24418;&#25104;&#21512;&#21147;&#65292;&#25165;&#33021;&#20849;&#21516;&#21457;&#23637;&#12290;&#32780;&#21307;&#38498;&#32844;&#33021;&#22788;&#23460;&#22312;&#25972;&#20010;&#36807;&#31243;&#20013;&#25552;&#20379;&#20102;&#26377;&#21147;&#25903;&#25345;&#12290;&#25105;&#38498;&#8220;&#27700;&#20934;&#21407;&#28857;&#8221;&#30340;&#31934;&#31070;&#19981;&#20165;&#20307;&#29616;&#22312;&#21307;&#30103;&#25216;&#26415;&#26041;&#38754;&#65292;&#21516;&#26679;&#20307;&#29616;&#20110;&#22242;&#38431;&#21512;&#20316;&#31934;&#31070;&#26041;&#38754;&#12290;&#27491;&#26159;&#26377;&#20102;&#22810;&#20010;&#31185;&#23460;&#30340;&#20445;&#39550;&#25252;&#33322;&#65292;&#25105;&#20204;&#25165;&#25954;&#25918;&#24515;&#21069;&#34892;&#65281;

&#12288;&#12288;&#21016;&#29577;&#26449;&#38498;&#38271;&#22312;&#26032;&#38395;&#21457;&#24067;&#20250;&#19978;&#35848;&#21040;&#65292;&#21307;&#21153;&#24037;&#20316;&#32773;&#35201;&#20316;&#26377;&#8220;&#24515;&#8221;&#20154;&#65292;&#21307;&#38498;&#35201;&#20316;&#26377;&#8220;&#24515;&#8221;&#21307;&#38498;&#65292;&#20581;&#24247;&#23459;&#25945;&#35201;&#8220;&#27973;&#20986;&#8221;&#65292;&#25915;&#22362;&#20811;&#38590;&#21017;&#35201;&#8220;&#28145;&#20837;&#8221;&#65307;&#35201;&#26377;&#8220;&#24515;&#8221;&#20110;&#21307;&#38498;&#25991;&#21270;&#24314;&#35774;&#65292;&#26377;&#8220;&#24515;&#8221;&#20110;&#21307;&#38498;&#23398;&#31185;&#21457;&#23637;&#12290;&#8220;&#38596;&#20851;&#28459;&#36947;&#30495;&#22914;&#38081;&#65292;&#32780;&#20170;&#36808;&#27493;&#20174;&#22836;&#36234;&#8221;&#12290;&#36817;&#24180;&#26469;&#65292;&#24515;&#34880;&#31649;&#20171;&#20837;&#27835;&#30103;&#39046;&#22495;&#31361;&#39134;&#29467;&#36827;&#65292;&#24515;&#20869;&#31185;&#23558;&#22312;&#38669;&#21191;&#20027;&#20219;&#30340;&#39046;&#23548;&#19979;&#19981;&#26029;&#24341;&#36215;&#22269;&#22806;&#26032;&#30340;&#27835;&#30103;&#25216;&#26415;&#21253;&#25324;&#32463;&#30382;&#24515;&#23460;&#37325;&#24314;&#26415;&#12289;&#32463;&#30382;&#20108;&#23574;&#29923;&#20462;&#22797;&#26415;&#12289;&#32463;&#30382;&#20027;&#21160;&#33033;&#29923;&#32622;&#25442;&#26415;&#20197;&#21450;&#29992;&#20110;&#27835;&#30103;&#39037;&#22266;&#24615;&#39640;&#34880;&#21387;&#30340;&#32463;&#30382;&#32958;&#20132;&#24863;&#31070;&#32463;&#28040;&#34701;&#26415;&#31561;&#65292;&#20026;&#22269;&#20869;&#24515;&#34880;&#31649;&#30142;&#30149;&#24739;&#32773;&#24102;&#26469;&#26356;&#22810;&#26032;&#30340;&#27835;&#30103;&#26041;&#24335;&#12290;



Department of Cardiology, Peking University First Hospital ( hereinafter referred to as "North Hospital Cardiology " ) in the department director , led by Professor Yong Huo , on October 9, 2013 at the country through the first minimally invasive anterior approach to two obsolete myocardial infarction, ventricular aneurysm underwent percutaneous surgical ventricular reconstruction to achieve a domestic in the technology breakthrough.

" Percutaneous ventricular reconstruction surgery," is for patients with acute myocardial infarction heart failure -prone old anterior myocardial infarction in patients with heart failure of new treatments . Such patients often due to their critical condition and can not afford surgery. " Percutaneous ventricular reconstruction surgery," based on the latest research and development abroad , a new instrument , the instrument is a left ( heart ) chamber isolation device , the shape of " parachute ", using minimally invasive methods , through the femoral artery into the left ventricle apex, the wall will isolate abnormal contraction , thereby reducing left ventricular volumes and improve clinical symptoms of heart failure and cardiac function . The technology was first reported in 2007 , carried out in recent years in foreign countries gradually accumulated experience on the 100 cases and obtained the European CE certification.

Up to now, Beijing University Hospital, Department of Cardiology, has successfully completed two patients.

First a 60 -year-old male patient , four years ago because of acute anterior myocardial infarction , although it accepted the emergency stent , but still left the aneurysm . 4 years, regular use of medication, but still sporadic heart failure, due to a number of hospitals that treat high-risk surgical aneurysm and stop .

The second 65 -year-old male patient , took place in March this year, acute anterior myocardial infarction , it is also acceptable to the emergency stent , but still left the aneurysm , only twice this year because of hospitalization for heart failure . And because severe illness, surgical risk , advisory did not take too many hospital after surgery.

Department of Cardiology, Peking University First Hospital After careful preoperative preparation by Professor Yong Huo , Professor Tao were two patients successfully, " parachute " - placed in the left ventricle in patients with ventricular isolation device , reducing the volume of the patient's heart , improve heart failure clinical symptoms. At present two patients with good recovery.

Treatment of heart disease in recent years has made great progress , but as one of the final outcome of all heart failure has always threat to human health, five -year survival rate is even worse than even certain cancers . Lead to heart failure many reasons , the most common cause of acute myocardial infarction. 

According to reports, there are 17 million people worldwide each year die of cardiovascular disease , more than half of them died of acute myocardial infarction, even in patients prone to develop survival after chronic heart failure. It is estimated that China acute myocardial infarction incidence rate is about 45/ 100000 - 55/ 100000 , there is an upward trend . After acute myocardial infarction due to myocardial injury and subsequent scarring , leading to enlargement of the heart and heart failure , myocardial infarction , especially in patients with ventricular aneurysm more prone to failure, not only affect the patient's quality of life, but also caused huge family and the social and economic burden. For these patients in addition to medical therapy , surgical treatment can also be used , but because patients need surgery itself is in critical condition, while the surgical trauma, surgical procedures on those requirements are relatively high, the clinical use is limited.

The implementation of a new technology , we must have the courage to take the lead , but also need the support . China's first percutaneous ventricular reconstruction surgery in our hospital to be successful , is the village president Liu , Jie Ding , vice president , vice president of Pan Yisheng , Wang Ping, Director of Medical Service , and Zhang Miao Yuan Jianfeng , Deputy Director , Research Department Deputy Director Xie nan achieved under the direct support . In the preparation process, not only up and down Cardiology attention , and got medical service , research office, equipment and other functional offices at the active support and Radiology Qiu Xing, vice chief physician, physician Wang He , ultrasound diagnostic centers Chen Lu by the Deputy chief physician collaboration . 

In surgery , the inseparable interventional vascular surgery YANG Min , deputy chief physician, Wang Jin , deputy director of cardiac surgery and anesthesiology physician Hu , deputy director of the powerful tie . Therefore, the implementation of this technology , not only reflects the Beijing University Hospital Cardiology though as the earliest intervention carried out in the heart of one of the centers , but is not satisfied in the past in the interventional treatment of coronary heart disease and electrophysiology achievements , forge ahead innovative spirit . But also reflects the hospital 's strengths as a general hospital , the various sections of solidarity and promote each other , form a concerted effort to develop together. 

The hospital functions of the offices in the process provide a strong support . Our hospital " leveling origin " of the spirit not only in medical technology , the same spirit of cooperation embodied in the team aspect . It is precisely because many sections of the escort, we dare to be assured before the trip !

Liu village president spoke at a news conference , medical workers should be the " heart" of people , the hospital should be the " heart" hospitals, health education should " light out " , will have to tackle tough "in-depth " ; to the " heart" in the hospital culture , the " heart" in the hospital discipline development . "Man Road as the iron, the more strides ." 

In recent years, the field of cardiovascular intervention by leaps and bounds , Yong Huo Cardiology Director will continue to give rise to foreign countries under the leadership of new treatment techniques include percutaneous ventricular reconstruction surgery , percutaneous mitral valve repair surgery , percutaneous aortic valve replacement and for the treatment of resistant hypertension percutaneous renal sympathetic nerve ablation , etc. for domestic patients with cardiovascular disease lead to more new treatment modalities .




*&#21271;&#20140;&#22823;&#23398; &#31532;&#19968;&#21307;&#38498; First Hospital Beijing University*






Credit: cbtgc.com




Net assisted translation

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

Wanshan self-propelled modular transporter&#65306;











Complete modularity allows the addition of as many trailer axles as the load requires&#65292;with peak load well in excess of 10000 tons&#12290;

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## shuttler

*Power from the sea? Triboelectric nanogenerator extracts energy from ocean waves	*
14-Oct-13	

Power from the sea? Triboelectric nanogenerator extracts energy from ocean waves





Credit: sci.ce.cn	







(Phys.org) &#8212;As sources of renewable energy, sun and wind have one major disadvantage: it isn't always sunny or windy. Waves in the ocean, on the other hand, are never still. (Chinese and) American researchers are now aiming to use waves to produce energy by making use of contact electrification between a patterned plastic nanoarray and water. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, they have introduced an inexpensive and simple prototype of a triboelectric nanogenerator that could be used to produce energy and as a chemical or temperature sensor.	
The triboelectric effect is the build up of an electric charge between two materials through contact and separation &#8211; it is commonly experienced when removal of a shirt, especially in dry air, results in crackling. Zhong Lin Wang&#65292; a team at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta (and scientist at Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems, Chinese Academy of Sciences) have previously developed a triboelectric generator based on two solids that produces enough power to charge a mobile telephone battery. 

However, high humidity interferes with its operation. How could this technology work with waves in water? The triboelectric effect is not limited to solids; it can also occur with liquids. The only requirement is that specific electronic energy levels of two substances are close enough together. Water just needs the right partner &#8211; maybe a suitable plastic.	

As a prototype, the researchers made an insulated plastic tank, whose lid and bottom contain copper foil electrodes. Their system is successful because the inside of the lid is coated with a layer of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) patterned with tiny nanoscale pyramids. The tank is filled with deionized water. 

When the lid is lowered so that the PDMS nanopyramids come into contact with the water, groups of atoms in the PDMS become ionized and negatively charged. A corresponding positively charged layer forms on the surface of the water. The electric charges are maintained when the PDMS layer is lifted out of the water. 

This produces a potential difference between the PDMS and the water. Hydrophobic PDMS was chosen in order to minimize the amount of water clinging to the surface; the pyramid shapes allow the water to drop off readily. 

Periodic raising and lowering of the lid while the electrodes are connected to a rectifier and capacitor produces a direct current that can be used to light an array of 60 LEDs. In tests with salt water, the generator produced a lower output, but it could in principle operate with seawater.	

The current produced decreases significantly as temperature increases, which could allow this device to be used as a temperature sensor. It also decreases when ethanol is added to the water, which suggests potential use of the system as a chemical sensor. By attaching probe molecules with specific binding partners, it may be possible to design sensors for biomolecules.

Explore further: Bioengineers find method to strongly adhere hydrogels to hydrophobic silicone substrates	

*More information here:*
*
Zhong Lin Wang et al. Water-Solid Surface Contact Electrification and its Use for Harvesting Liquid Wave Energy,*Angewandte Chemie International Edition,*dx.doi.org/10.1002/anie.201307249	


Electrical wave mechanics: A newly designed triboelectric nanogenerator is based on the contact electrification between a patterned polydimethylsiloxane pyramid array and water. Cost-effective and simple, the prototype triboelectric nanogenerator shows the potential to harvest energy from liquid waves and serve as chemical and temperature sensors.	

*Authors and affiliations*

Dr. Zong-Hong Lin-1, Dr. Gang Cheng-1, Long Lin-1, Dr. Sangmin Lee-1, Prof. Zhong Lin Wang- 1,2 ,*	
Article first published online: 7 OCT 2013	
1 - School of Material Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332-0245 (USA)	
*2 - Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing (China)	*

*&#20013;&#22269;&#31185;&#23398;&#38498;&#21271;&#20140;&#32435;&#31859;&#33021;&#28304;&#19982;&#31995;&#32479;&#30740;&#31350;&#25152; 
Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems, Chinese Academy of Sciences *

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## UNFINISHED-BUSINESS

Thumbs up for the Li-Fi technology


----------



## rcrmj

pretty cool stuffs have displaced here``
depending on the pace we have now, I don't think it will take us like 50 years to be top innovator as I initially believed.

don't know whether you guys have been following the news lately, the central government starts to crack down corruptions in science communities now, as financial and civil sectors are where it mostly occurred!

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## shuttler

rcrmj said:


> pretty cool stuffs have displaced here``
> depending on the pace we have now, I don't think it will take us like 50 years to be top innovator as I initially believed.
> 
> don't know whether you guys have been following the news lately, the central government starts to crack down corruptions in science communities now, as financial and civil sectors are where it mostly occurred!



It works with the aim to improve quality of work and persons at work.

I welcome it as a matter of fact. We are shifting on another gear, higher up!

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## shuttler

*&#20013;&#22269;&#19975;&#31859;&#22320;&#22771;&#38075;&#25506;&#35774;&#22791;&#22320;&#22771;&#19968;&#21495;&#21551;&#31243;&#36212;&#22823;&#24198;&#25171;&#20117;*
*China ten thousand meters crustal drilling equipment "Earth Crust One" set off for drilling oil wells in Daqing*
guancha


10&#26376;15&#26085;&#65292;&#22269;&#20869;&#39318;&#21488;&#19975;&#31859;&#22823;&#38470;&#31185;&#23398;&#38075;&#25506;&#38075;&#26426;&#22320;&#22771;&#19968;&#21495;&#20174;&#22235;&#24029;&#24191;&#27721;&#24066;&#21551;&#36816;&#21069;&#24448;&#22823;&#24198;&#27833;&#30000;&#25152;&#22312;&#30340;&#26494;&#36797;&#30406;&#22320;&#65292;&#23558;&#25191;&#34892;&#26494;&#36797;&#30406;&#22320;&#30333;&#22441;&#32426;&#22823;&#38470;&#31185;&#23398;&#38075;&#25506;&#12289;&#28145;&#37096;&#22823;&#38470;&#31185;&#23398;&#38075;&#25506;&#35013;&#22791;&#30740;&#21046;&#31561;&#22810;&#39033;&#31185;&#23398;&#30740;&#31350;&#20219;&#21153;&#12290;&#22320;&#22771;&#19968;&#21495;&#26631;&#24535;&#30528;&#25105;&#22269;&#25104;&#20026;&#32487;&#21069;&#33487;&#32852;&#21644;&#24503;&#22269;&#20043;&#21518;&#19990;&#30028;&#19978;&#31532;&#19977;&#20010;&#25317;&#26377;&#23454;&#26045;&#19975;&#31859;&#22823;&#38470;&#38075;&#25506;&#35745;&#21010;&#19987;&#29992;&#35013;&#22791;&#21644;&#30456;&#20851;&#25216;&#26415;&#30340;&#22269;&#23478;&#12290;






&#22269;&#20869;&#39318;&#21488;&#19975;&#31859;&#22823;&#38470;&#31185;&#23398;&#38075;&#25506;&#38075;&#26426;&#22320;&#22771;&#19968;&#21495;
China's first ten thousand meters Mainland China Scientific Drilling Rig " Earth Crust One"

*&#23558;&#21047;&#26032;&#25105;&#22269;&#38075;&#25506;&#28145;&#24230;&#32426;&#24405;*

&#22320;&#22771;&#19968;&#21495;&#19975;&#31859;&#22823;&#38470;&#31185;&#23398;&#38075;&#26426;&#30340;&#30740;&#21046;&#26159;&#22269;&#23478;&#28145;&#37096;&#25506;&#27979;&#25216;&#26415;&#19982;&#23454;&#39564;&#30740;&#31350;&#19987;&#39033;&#24403;&#20013;&#65292;&#21513;&#26519;&#22823;&#23398;&#25152;&#25215;&#25285;&#30340;&#28145;&#37096;&#22823;&#38470;&#31185;&#23398;&#38075;&#25506;&#35013;&#22791;&#30740;&#21046;&#19982;&#23454;&#39564;&#23376;&#35838;&#39064;&#30340;&#37325;&#35201;&#32452;&#25104;&#37096;&#20998;&#12290;&#35813;&#19975;&#31859;&#38075;&#25506;&#19987;&#29992;&#38075;&#26426;&#35774;&#35745;&#35013;&#26426;&#39640;60&#31859;&#65292;&#21344;&#22320;10000&#22810;&#24179;&#26041;&#31859;&#65292;&#20854;&#38075;&#36827;&#33021;&#21147;&#36798;&#21040;1&#19975;&#31859;&#65292;&#39033;&#30446;&#21551;&#21160;&#20197;&#26469;&#22269;&#23478;&#32047;&#35745;&#19987;&#39033;&#25320;&#27454;1.0287&#20159;&#20803;&#12290;
&#38024;&#23545;&#31185;&#23398;&#38075;&#25506;&#30340;&#29305;&#27530;&#24615;&#65292;&#21513;&#26519;&#22823;&#23398;&#21644;&#23439;&#21326;&#38598;&#22242;&#32452;&#25104;&#32852;&#21512;&#31185;&#30740;&#22242;&#38431;&#65292;&#33258;&#20027;&#30740;&#21457;&#12289;&#25913;&#36827;&#20102;&#39640;&#36716;&#36895;&#20840;&#28082;&#21387;&#39030;&#39537;&#31995;&#32479;&#12289;&#39640;&#31934;&#24230;&#33258;&#21160;&#36865;&#38075;&#31995;&#32479;&#21644;&#36215;&#19979;&#38075;&#33258;&#21160;&#25490;&#31649;&#31995;&#32479;&#31561;&#19968;&#31995;&#21015;&#20851;&#38190;&#25216;&#26415;&#65292;&#24182;&#37319;&#29992;&#22269;&#20869;&#39046;&#20808;&#30340;&#25968;&#25511;&#21464;&#39057;&#30005;&#21160;&#38075;&#26426;&#25216;&#26415;(DBS)&#65292;&#38075;&#26426;&#31185;&#23398;&#38075;&#25506;&#33021;&#21147;&#36798;&#21040;&#19990;&#30028;&#20808;&#36827;&#27700;&#24179;&#12290;





&#28009;&#28009;&#33633;&#33633;&#30340;&#22320;&#22771;&#19968;&#21495;&#36816;&#36755;&#36710;&#38431;
Magnificent Earth crust One" transportation fleet 

&#20026;&#39034;&#21033;&#23436;&#25104;&#27492;&#27425;&#36828;&#31243;&#36816;&#36755;&#65292;&#24037;&#20316;&#20154;&#21592;&#23558;&#19975;&#31859;&#31185;&#23398;&#38075;&#26426;&#35774;&#22791;&#25286;&#35299;&#21253;&#35013;&#20026;126&#20214;&#65292;&#24635;&#20307;&#31215;6000&#20313;&#31435;&#26041;&#31859;&#65292;&#24635;&#37325;&#37327;&#36798;1500&#22810;&#21544;&#12290;&#20854;&#20013;&#65292;&#38271;&#24230;&#36229;&#36807;10&#31859;&#30340;&#32467;&#26500;&#20214;33&#20214;&#65292;&#21333;&#20214;&#26368;&#22823;&#38271;&#24230;13&#31859;&#65307;&#21333;&#20214;&#26368;&#22823;&#37325;&#37327;&#32422;40&#21544;&#65307;&#21508;&#37096;&#20214;&#20998;&#35013;&#20110;50&#36742;&#20845;&#36724;&#37325;&#22411;&#25302;&#25346;&#36816;&#36755;&#36710;&#19978;&#65292;&#27599;&#36742;&#36710;&#38271;21.5&#31859;&#65307;&#20840;&#37096;&#38075;&#26426;&#35774;&#22791;&#30340;&#20986;&#21378;&#26816;&#39564;&#12289;&#38450;&#33104;&#22788;&#29702;&#12289;&#21253;&#35013;&#35013;&#36710;&#31561;&#24037;&#24207;&#21382;&#26102;&#36817;&#19968;&#20010;&#26376;&#12290;&#36816;&#36755;&#36710;&#38431;&#23558;&#36884;&#32463;&#22235;&#24029;&#12289;&#38485;&#35199;&#12289;&#27827;&#21335;&#12289;&#27827;&#21271;&#12289;&#21271;&#20140;&#12289;&#22825;&#27941;&#12289;&#36797;&#23425;&#12289;&#21513;&#26519;&#12289;&#40657;&#40857;&#27743;&#31561;9&#20010;&#30465;&#12289;&#30452;&#36758;&#24066;&#65292;130&#22810;&#20010;&#21439;&#24066;&#65292;&#21333;&#31243;&#24635;&#36816;&#36755;&#37324;&#31243;3500&#22810;&#20844;&#37324;&#65292;&#36884;&#20013;&#23558;&#32763;&#36234;&#31206;&#23725;&#31561;&#39640;&#23665;&#21361;&#38505;&#36335;&#27573;&#65292;&#39044;&#35745;&#25972;&#20010;&#36710;&#38431;&#23558;&#20110;10&#26376;21&#26085;&#21040;&#36798;&#22823;&#24198;&#20117;&#22330;&#12290;

&#25454;&#20171;&#32461;&#65292;&#25972;&#20010;&#36816;&#36865;&#36807;&#31243;&#38754;&#20020;&#30528;&#36816;&#36755;&#37096;&#20214;&#24222;&#22823;&#12289;&#36710;&#36742;&#20247;&#22810;&#12289;&#36335;&#36884;&#36965;&#36828;&#12289;&#36335;&#20917;&#22797;&#26434;&#65292;&#29615;&#22659;&#22825;&#27668;&#22810;&#21464;&#31561;&#35832;&#22810;&#22256;&#38590;&#25361;&#25112;&#12290;&#20026;&#30830;&#20445;&#38075;&#26426;&#35774;&#22791;&#23433;&#20840;&#12289;&#39034;&#21033;&#21040;&#36798;&#30446;&#30340;&#22320;&#65292;&#22269;&#23478;&#22269;&#22303;&#36164;&#28304;&#37096;&#21327;&#35843;&#20132;&#36890;&#36816;&#36755;&#37096;&#33853;&#23454;&#27839;&#36884;&#20132;&#36890;&#36816;&#31649;&#37096;&#38376;&#23545;&#36710;&#38431;&#36890;&#34892;&#32473;&#20104;&#20445;&#38556;&#21644;&#37197;&#21512;&#65307;&#22269;&#23478;&#28145;&#37096;&#25506;&#27979;&#19987;&#39033;&#21150;&#20844;&#23460;&#20250;&#21516;&#21513;&#26519;&#22823;&#23398;&#12289;&#23439;&#21326;&#38598;&#22242;&#22810;&#27425;&#23545;&#38075;&#26426;&#36816;&#36755;&#36335;&#32447;&#36827;&#34892;&#23454;&#22320;&#36367;&#26597;&#65292;&#24182;&#30830;&#23450;&#20102;&#26368;&#32456;&#30340;&#36816;&#36755;&#26041;&#26696;&#12290;





&#21513;&#26519;&#22823;&#23398;&#22320;&#35843;&#38498;&#32452;&#32455;&#25215;&#25285;&#30740;&#21457;&#30340;&#25105;&#22269;&#39318;&#21488;&#19975;&#31859;&#22823;&#38470;&#31185;&#23398;&#38075;&#25506;&#19987;&#29992;&#38075;&#26426;&#27492;&#21069;&#24050;&#22312;&#22235;&#24029;&#36827;&#34892;&#36807;&#38075;&#25506;&#23454;&#39564;
Geological Survey Institute of Jilin University undertake research and development of our organization 's first ten thousand meters dedicated Continental Scientific Drilling rig had been drilling experiments conducted in Sichuan



&#21513;&#26519;&#22823;&#23398;&#24314;&#35774;&#24037;&#31243;&#23398;&#38498;&#21103;&#38498;&#38271;&#36213;&#22823;&#20891;&#20171;&#32461;&#65292;&#22320;&#22771;&#19968;&#21495;&#36816;&#36798;&#40657;&#40857;&#27743;&#22823;&#24198;&#23433;&#36798;&#26494;&#31185;2&#20117;&#20117;&#22330;&#21518;&#65292;&#23558;&#31435;&#39532;&#25237;&#20837;&#32452;&#35013;&#12289;&#27979;&#35797;&#65292;&#26368;&#36831;&#20110;&#24180;&#24213;&#21069;&#24320;&#22987;&#38075;&#25506;&#12290;

&#26494;&#36797;&#30406;&#22320;&#22269;&#38469;&#22823;&#38470;&#31185;&#23398;&#38075;&#25506;&#24037;&#31243;&#35774;&#35745;&#20117;&#28145;6600&#31859;&#65292;&#23558;&#23454;&#29616;&#22269;&#20869;&#22823;&#38470;&#31185;&#23398;&#38075;&#25506;&#30340;&#37325;&#22823;&#31361;&#30772;&#12290;&#25130;&#33267;&#30446;&#21069;&#65292;&#19990;&#30028;&#19978;&#36229;&#36807;8000&#31859;&#30340;&#36229;&#28145;&#23380;&#31185;&#23398;&#38075;&#25506;&#21482;&#26377;&#21069;&#33487;&#32852;&#30340;&#31185;&#25289;&#36229;&#28145;&#23380;&#21644;&#24503;&#22269;&#30340;KTB&#23380;&#65292;&#25105;&#22269;&#21407;&#26368;&#28145;&#31185;&#23398;&#38075;&#25506;&#23380;&#20026;&#27743;&#33487;CCSD-1&#23380;&#65292;&#38075;&#25506;&#28145;&#24230;&#20026;5158&#31859;&#12290;





&#22320;&#22771;&#19968;&#21495;&#38075;&#26426;
" Earth Crust One" Rig


*&#31185;&#30740;&#25506;&#19975;&#31859; &#20840;&#29699;&#20165;&#19968;&#39033;&#25104;&#21151;&#26696;&#20363;*

&#20960;&#24180;&#21069;&#65292;&#25105;&#22269;&#24050;&#25317;&#26377;&#35774;&#35745;&#28145;&#24230;&#36798;1.2&#19975;&#31859;&#12289;&#29992;&#20110;&#30707;&#27833;&#24320;&#37319;&#30340;&#38075;&#26426;&#12290;&#20026;&#21861;&#31185;&#30740;&#29992;&#30340;&#19975;&#31859;&#38075;&#26426;&#20250;&#22999;&#22999;&#26469;&#36831;&#65311;
&#31185;&#30740;&#29992;&#30340;&#38075;&#26426;&#65292;&#27604;&#29983;&#20135;&#29992;&#30340;&#35201;&#27714;&#39640;&#24456;&#22810;&#12290;&#36213;&#22823;&#20891;&#20171;&#32461;&#65292;&#30707;&#27833;&#24320;&#37319;&#22810;&#22312;&#27785;&#31215;&#23721;&#36827;&#34892;&#65292;&#36136;&#22320;&#36739;&#36719;&#65307;&#31185;&#30740;&#21364;&#38656;&#38075;&#25506;&#21464;&#36136;&#23721;&#21644;&#28779;&#23665;&#23721;&#65292;&#36136;&#22320;&#22362;&#30828;&#65292;&#19988;&#22240;&#20026;&#35201;&#21462;&#23721;&#33455;&#65292;&#19981;&#33021;&#37326;&#34542;&#26045;&#24037;&#65292;&#36825;&#23545;&#20110;&#38075;&#26426;&#36716;&#36895;&#12289;&#38075;&#36827;&#24037;&#33402;&#37117;&#25552;&#20986;&#24456;&#39640;&#35201;&#27714;&#12290;

&#27492;&#21069;&#65292;&#20840;&#29699;&#20165;&#26377;&#21069;&#33487;&#32852;&#38075;&#20986;&#36807;&#28145;&#24230;&#36229;&#36807;1&#19975;&#31859;&#30340;&#31185;&#23398;&#38075;&#25506;&#23380;&#65292;&#24503;&#22269;&#30340;KTB&#23380;&#20110;1994&#24180;&#38075;&#25506;&#33267;9101&#31859;&#12290;&#25105;&#22269;&#30446;&#21069;&#26368;&#28145;&#30340;&#31185;&#23398;&#38075;&#25506;&#23380;&#20301;&#20110;&#27743;&#33487;&#65292;&#20165;5158&#31859;&#12290;&#32654;&#22269;&#20919;&#25112;&#26102;&#26399;&#20063;&#26366;&#23454;&#26045;&#36807;&#33707;&#38669;&#35745;&#21010;&#35797;&#22270;&#38075;&#31359;&#22320;&#22771;&#65292;&#20294;&#21518;&#26469;&#21322;&#36884;&#32780;&#24223;&#12290;





&#21069;&#33487;&#32852;&#30340;&#31185;&#25289;&#36229;&#28145;&#38075;&#23380;&#36798;&#21040;&#22320;&#19979;12289&#31859;&#65292;&#33267;&#20170;&#20445;&#25345;&#30528;&#31185;&#30740;&#38075;&#25506;&#35760;&#24405;
The former Soviet Union reached the Kola super-deep drilling 12,289 meters underground , has maintained a scientific drilling records

&#20445;&#35777;&#31185;&#30740;&#35201;&#27714;&#65292;&#36824;&#35201;&#20914;&#21050;&#19975;&#31859;&#28145;&#24230;&#65292;&#26657;&#20225;&#37117;&#24819;&#23613;&#21150;&#27861;&#65306;&#38057;&#36733;&#33021;&#21147;&#30452;&#25509;&#24433;&#21709;&#38075;&#25506;&#28145;&#24230;&#12290;&#23439;&#21326;&#38598;&#22242;&#27492;&#21069;&#26368;&#28145;&#30340;9000&#31859;&#38075;&#26426;&#65292;&#24046;&#30528;25&#21544;&#38057;&#36733;&#33021;&#21147;&#65292;&#20026;&#27492;&#25915;&#20851;&#21382;&#26102;&#21322;&#24180;&#12290;

&#26356;&#22256;&#38590;&#30340;&#65292;&#26159;&#32473;&#38075;&#26426;&#38477;&#28201;&#12290;&#22312;&#22823;&#24198;&#27833;&#30000;&#25152;&#22312;&#30340;&#26494;&#36797;&#30406;&#22320;&#65292;&#22320;&#19979;&#27599;&#38477;&#20302;100&#31859;&#65292;&#28201;&#24230;&#21319;&#39640;3.9&#24230;&#12290;&#22312;6000&#31859;&#28145;&#24230;&#19978;&#65292;&#21363;&#21487;&#36229;&#36807;300&#24230;&#12290;&#22914;&#26524;&#19981;&#38477;&#28201;&#65292;&#24037;&#20316;&#20013;&#30340;&#38075;&#22836;&#21482;&#35201;2&#20998;&#38047;&#23601;&#34701;&#21270;&#20102;&#12290;&#36213;&#22823;&#20891;&#35828;&#65292;&#22320;&#22771;&#19968;&#21495;&#27492;&#27425;&#36816;&#29992;&#26032;&#25216;&#26415;&#30340;&#22635;&#20805;&#27877;&#27974;&#65292;&#24110;&#21161;&#38075;&#22836;&#20919;&#21364;&#65292;&#22312;6000&#31859;&#28145;&#24230;&#19978;&#21487;&#23558;&#28201;&#24230;&#38477;&#20302;&#19968;&#21322;&#12290;

&#22320;&#22771;&#19968;&#21495;&#23558;&#20808;&#22312;&#26494;&#31185;2&#21495;&#20117;&#22330;&#32451;&#25163;&#65292;&#39318;&#27425;&#38075;&#25506;&#28145;&#24230;6400&#31859;&#65292;&#28982;&#21518;&#23581;&#35797;8000&#31859;&#24038;&#21491;&#28145;&#24230;&#12290;&#36213;&#22823;&#20891;&#30452;&#35328;&#65292;&#21463;&#38477;&#28201;&#33021;&#21147;&#31561;&#38480;&#21046;&#65292;&#38075;&#26426;&#26242;&#36824;&#19981;&#33021;&#20914;&#20987;&#19975;&#31859;&#28145;&#24230;&#65292;&#20294;&#38075;&#25506;&#19975;&#31859;&#26159;&#24517;&#28982;&#30446;&#26631;&#12290;&#20182;&#34920;&#31034;&#65292;&#24050;&#25171;&#31639;&#21046;&#36896;&#35774;&#35745;&#28145;&#24230;1.5&#19975;&#31859;&#30340;&#38075;&#26426;&#12290;

*&#25506;&#23547;&#26102;&#38388;&#38567;&#36947; &#23547;&#25214;&#27833;&#27668;&#36164;&#28304;*

&#20013;&#22269;&#22320;&#36136;&#31185;&#23398;&#38498;&#28145;&#37096;&#25506;&#27979;&#30740;&#31350;&#20013;&#24515;&#20027;&#20219;&#38472;&#23459;&#21326;&#35748;&#20026;&#65292;&#20043;&#25152;&#20197;&#30740;&#21457;&#19975;&#31859;&#38075;&#26426;&#65292;&#30446;&#30340;&#33267;&#23569;&#26377;&#20004;&#20010;&#65306;&#24110;&#21161;&#31185;&#23398;&#23478;&#39044;&#27979;&#20840;&#29699;&#27668;&#20505;&#21464;&#21270;&#65292;&#36827;&#19968;&#27493;&#25299;&#23637;&#24403;&#22320;&#27833;&#27668;&#21208;&#25506;&#39046;&#22495;&#12290;

&#22312;&#22320;&#36136;&#26500;&#36896;&#22797;&#26434;&#22320;&#21306;&#65292;&#22534;&#31215;&#30528;&#19981;&#21516;&#24180;&#20195;&#30340;&#22320;&#23618;&#65292;&#23601;&#22914;&#21516;&#26102;&#38388;&#38567;&#36947;&#65292;&#35760;&#24405;&#30528;&#24403;&#26102;&#27668;&#20505;&#21464;&#21270;&#30340;&#20449;&#24687;&#12290;&#22320;&#22771;&#19968;&#21495;&#39318;&#27425;&#32451;&#25163;&#30340;&#28145;&#24230;&#65292;&#27491;&#22909;&#35206;&#30422;&#20174;6500&#19975;&#24180;&#21040;1.5&#20159;&#24180;&#21069;&#30340;&#30333;&#22441;&#32426;&#22320;&#23618;&#12290;&#30333;&#22441;&#32426;&#26159;&#22320;&#29699;&#19981;&#26029;&#21319;&#28201;&#30340;&#26102;&#26399;&#65292;&#21644;&#29616;&#22312;&#24456;&#20687;&#12290;&#38472;&#23459;&#21326;&#35748;&#20026;&#65292;&#33719;&#30693;&#30333;&#22441;&#32426;&#30340;&#27668;&#20505;&#21464;&#21270;&#35268;&#24459;&#65292;&#26377;&#21161;&#20110;&#39044;&#27979;&#22914;&#20170;&#30340;&#20840;&#29699;&#27668;&#20505;&#21464;&#21270;&#12290;

&#21478;&#19968;&#26041;&#38754;&#65292;&#36873;&#25321;&#22312;&#22823;&#24198;&#27833;&#30000;&#24320;&#24037;&#65292;&#26159;&#20026;&#20102;&#23547;&#25214;&#36825;&#29255;&#25105;&#22269;&#26368;&#22823;&#27833;&#30000;&#30340;&#36164;&#28304;&#28508;&#21147;&#12290;&#38472;&#23459;&#21326;&#34920;&#31034;&#65292;&#27492;&#21069;&#27833;&#27668;&#21208;&#25506;&#65292;&#19968;&#26159;&#28145;&#24230;&#36798;&#19981;&#21040;&#65292;&#20108;&#26159;&#27809;&#26377;&#20840;&#31243;&#25552;&#21462;&#23721;&#33455;&#12290;&#27492;&#27425;&#37319;&#29992;&#20808;&#36827;&#30340;&#21208;&#25506;&#25163;&#27573;&#65292;&#23436;&#20840;&#21487;&#33021;&#25214;&#21040;&#27833;&#27668;&#36164;&#28304;&#30340;&#28431;&#32593;&#20043;&#40060;&#12290;



October 15 , China's first ten thousand meters Continental Scientific Drilling Rig " Earth Crust One" from Guanghan City , Sichuan shipped to Daqing Oilfield is located in the Songliao Basin , will perform " Songliao Basin Cretaceous Mainland China Scientific Drilling ", " Deep Mainland China Scientific drilling equipment development "and a number of scientific research tasks. " Crust One" indicates that China has become the former Soviet Union and Germany have implemented the world's first three ten thousand meters Continental Drilling Program special equipment and related technologies in the country.

*Setting the record of drilling depth*

" Earth Crust One" ten thousand meters Mainland China Scientific Drilling Rig is a country " deep exploration techniques and experimental research projects" which , Jilin University, assumed " deep continental scientific drilling equipment research and experiment ," an important part of sub-topics . The m drill rigs designed capacity dedicated 60 meters high , covering over 10,000 square meters , and its drilling capacity of 10,000 meters , the project since the start of the cumulative state earmarks 1.0287 billion.

For the particularity of scientific drilling , Jilin University, and a coalition of Honghua Group research team, independent research and development , improved high- speed hydraulic top drive system, high precision automatic drilling systems and automatic exhaust pipe from the drilling system and a series of key technologies, and the use of leading technology digitally-controlled VFD rig (DBS), scientific drilling rig capacity to reach the world advanced level.

For the successful completion of this long-range transport, staff will be ten thousand meters scientific drilling equipment dismantling packaging 126 , with a total volume of 6,000 cubic meters , with a total weight of 1,500 tons. Among them, the length of more than 10 meters structure 33 , a single maximum length 13 m ; single piece maximum weight of about 40 tons ; various parts were put in 50 six-axle heavy duty trailer truck , the vehicle length of 21.5 m ; All drilling equipment factory inspection, anti-corrosion treatment , packaging, loading and other processes which lasted nearly a month . 

Truck team through Sichuan, Shaanxi, Henan, Hebei, Beijing , Tianjin, Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang and other nine provinces, municipalities and more than 130 cities and counties , the total one-way transportation mileage over 3500 kilometers , crossing the Qinling mountains en route to dangerous sections , the entire fleet is expected to be October 21 to reach Daqing wellsite .

According to reports, the entire delivery process is facing huge transportation difficulties namely , a large fleet of vehicles , long distances , challenging terrains and environmental challenges of changing weather and many other difficulties . To ensure the safety of drilling equipment , successfully reach the destination , the state Department of Transportation to implement the MLR coordinate along the transportation management department of convoys to give them protection and cooperation ; national office in conjunction with the special deep exploration of Jilin University , Honghua Group on several occasions rig transport route field survey and determine the final transportation programs.

Construction Engineering, Jilin University, vice president Zhao Dajun , the " crust One" arrived Daqing, Heilongjiang Anda Sonko 2 Well Field , will be immediately put into assembly, testing , drilling to commence no later than the end of the year .

Songliao Basin International Continental Scientific Drilling Project design depth of 6,600 meters , will achieve national Continental Scientific Drilling a major breakthrough. Up to now, the world over 8000 meters of ultra- deep scientific drilling Kola only the former Soviet Union and Germany, KTB super- deep hole , the deepest scientific drilling of the former Jiangsu CCSD-1 hole , drilled to a depth of 5158 m .

*Only a global scientific exploration ten thousand meters Success Stories*

A few years ago , China already has a design depth of 12,000 meters , used in oil exploration rig . Why use ten thousand meters drilling research opportunities "long overdue " ?

"Research with the rig, than the requirements of production is much higher ." Zhao Dajun introduction , oil exploration conducted mostly in sedimentary rocks , soft texture ; research has to be drilled metamorphic and volcanic rock , hard, and because coring , not "barbaric construction", which for drilling speed , drilling technology have put high demands .

Previously, the world's only former Soviet Union more than 10,000 meters drilled too deep scientific drilling hole , Germany KTB holes drilled in 1994 to 9101 meters . China is currently the deepest scientific drilling in Jiangsu , is only 5158 meters . During the Cold War the United States has implemented before " Moho plan " trying to drill through the crust , but then halfway.

Ensure scientific requirements, but also the depth of ten thousand meters sprint , schools and enterprises have to find ways : hook load capacity of a direct impact on drilling depth. Honghua Group had the deepest 9,000 m drilling rigs, poor hook load capacity of 25 tons , this research took six months .

More difficult , is to rig cool. Daqing Oilfield is located in the Songliao Basin , decreasing by 100 meters underground , the temperature rises 3.9 degrees . At 6000 m depth , you can more than 300 degrees . " If you do not cool the drill work as long as 2 minutes to melt ." Zhao Dajun said, " Earth Crust One," The use of new technologies fill mud , helping drill cooling , in 6000 m depth the temperature can be reduced by half.

" Earth Crust One" will be the first in Sonko Well No. 2 field " practice hand ", the first drilling depth of 6,400 meters , and then try a depth of around 8,000 meters . Zhao Dajun bluntly , by the cooling capacity and other restrictions, the impact of ten thousand meters drilling depth can not be temporary , " but drilling ten thousand meters is inevitable goal ." He said , had been intended to manufacture the depth of 15,000 meters of drilling rig design .

*Explore the " Time Tunnel " Finding oil and gas resources*

Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences Research Center deep exploration Chen XH believe that the reason developed ten thousand meters rig, with at least two purposes : to help scientists predict global climate change, to further expand the local oil and gas exploration.
Complex areas in geological formations , strata piled in different years , just as the "time tunnel " , a record that the climate change information. " Crust One" first "practice hand" depth , just covering from 6500 years to 150 million years ago, Cretaceous strata . " Cretaceous period of the Earth continues to heat up , and now like ." Chen XH that informed Cretaceous climatic variation , help to predict today's global climate change.

On the other hand , choose to start in Daqing Oilfield , is to find this piece of China's largest oil resource potential . Chen XH said, after oil and gas exploration , first, a depth of less than two is no full extraction of cores . The use of advanced exploration methods , entirely possible to find oil and gas resources slip through the net .

net assisted translation

*&#21513;&#26519;&#22823;&#23398; Jilin University*















&#26446;&#22235;&#20809; LI Siguang
A prioneering scientist in geology 
Credit&#65306; sohu











Credit: qx211.com

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Viking 63

Great going China !!!

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## shuttler

*Researchers develop method for creating much stronger nickel*
Oct 18, 2013 by Bob Yirka

phy.org






Thermal stability of the NL structure. Credit: Science 18 October 2013: Vol. 342 no. 6156 pp. 337-340 DOI: 10.1126/science.1242578

Read more at: Researchers develop method for creating much stronger nickel


(Phys.org) &#8212;A team of researchers at the *Chinese Academy of Sciences and Nanjing University of Science and Technology* has found a way to create an ultra fine grain (UFG) nickel with a nanolaminated structure. As the team describes in their paper published in the journal Science, the result is a new process that allows for the creation of a form of nickel that is both harder and stronger than the metal is in its native form.

Ever since human beings first began using various metals they have been trying to modify them to conform to our wishes. Such efforts have resulted in an amazing array of metals ranging from the small amounts used in electronics to the mammoth steel girders that keep our skyscrapers upright. 

Research continues as scientists look for ever more advanced ways to treat metals to allow for ever more exotic applications. In this new effort, the team in China has developed a way to create a UFG from ordinary nickel. Such metals offer more resistance to corrosion and wear and have higher fracture strength.

UFG's advantages over other metals come about by causing a reduction in grain size&#8212;generally by a factor of ten or more. The smaller grain size means smaller grain boundaries which impede dislocation movement&#8212;it's dislocation that results in fractures or localized deformations.

To create a nickel UFG, the researchers subjected a rod made of 99.88 percent pure nickel to grinding on its surface&#8212;a process that tears away portions of the metal allowing for it to be shaped. In this case, the researchers noted that as nickel grains were being pulled by the mechanical grinder, the metal that remained was subjected to intense shearing causing what's known as plastic deformation. 

Upon closer inspection of the ground surface, the researchers discovered that two-dimensional nanometer-thick laminated structures had been created by the process. Further testing indicated that grain size had been dramatically reduced meaning that a nickel UFG had been created.

It's not yet clear if the simple process can be used to manufacture a nickel UFG on a scale large enough to be used in real world applications. What is clear, however, is that the process is very likely applicable to other metals, which means a whole new area of metal science might just be in the making.

* Explore further*: World's first process to reuse rare Earth metals extracted from nickel-metal hydride batteries for hybrid vehicles

*More information*: *Strain-Induced Ultrahard and Ultrastable Nanolaminated Structure in Nickel, Science 18 October 2013: Vol. 342 no. 6156 pp. 337-340 DOI: 10.1126/science.1242578*

Strain-Induced Ultrahard and Ultrastable Nanolaminated Structure in Nickel

X. C. Liu-1,*, H. W. Zhang-1,*, K. Lu1,-2,&#8224;

*- Author Affiliations*

*1- Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China.

2- Herbert Gleiter Institute of Nanoscience, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China*



*ABSTRACT *

Heavy plastic deformation may refine grains of metals and make them very strong. But the strain-induced refinement saturates at large strains, forming three-dimensional ultrafine-grained (3D UFG) structures with random orientations. Further refinement of this microstructure is limited because of the enhanced mobility of grain boundaries. Very-high-rate shear deformation with high strain gradients was applied in the top surface layer of bulk nickel, where a 2D nanometer-scale laminated structure was induced. The strongly textured nanolaminated structure (average lamellar thickness of 20 nanometers) with low-angle boundaries among the lamellae is ultrahard and ultrastable: It exhibits a hardness of 6.4 gigapascal&#8212;which is higher than any reported hardness of the UFG nickel&#8212;and a coarsening temperature of 40 kelvin above that in UFG nickel.

*Additional reporting on PDF by @cirr here:
*

http://www.defence.pk/forums/china-far-east/284198-chinese-researchers-develop-way-make-ultrahard-ultrastable-metals.html


*&#27784;&#38451;&#26448;&#26009;&#31185;&#23398;&#22269;&#23478;(&#32852;&#21512&#23454;&#39564;&#23460;
Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences
*

















*&#21335;&#20140;&#29702;&#24037;&#22823;&#23398; Nanjing University of Science and Technology*

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*&#25105;&#22269;&#33258;&#20027;&#30740;&#21457;&#30340;&#37325;&#31163;&#23376;&#32959;&#30244;&#27835;&#30103;&#35774;&#22791;&#26377;&#26395;2014&#24180;&#25237;&#20837;&#20351;&#29992;
Our self-developed heavy ion cancer therapy equipment is expected to put into use in 2014
*
2013&#24180;10&#26376;21&#26085;21:06 &#26469;&#28304;&#65306;&#26032;&#21326;&#32593; 
At 21:06 on October 21, 2013 Source: Xinhua Net

hexun.com


10&#26376;21&#26085;&#65292;&#22312;&#20013;&#31185;&#38498;&#36817;&#20195;&#29289;&#29702;&#30740;&#31350;&#25152;&#65292;&#20004;&#21517;&#31185;&#30740;&#20154;&#21592;&#22312;&#30417;&#25511;&#23460;&#30417;&#35270;&#37325;&#31163;&#23376;&#27835;&#30103;&#32456;&#31471;&#36752;&#23556;&#21058;&#37327;&#31561;&#21442;&#25968;&#12290;&#37325;&#31163;&#23376;&#32959;&#30244;&#27835;&#30103;&#20855;&#26377;&#23450;&#20301;&#31934;&#30830;&#12289;&#32959;&#30244;&#26432;&#20260;&#21147;&#22823;&#12289;&#27491;&#24120;&#32452;&#32455;&#24433;&#21709;&#23567;&#12289;&#30103;&#31243;&#30701;&#31561;&#29305;&#28857;&#65292;&#34987;&#35465;&#20026;&#24403;&#20195;&#26368;&#20339;&#25918;&#30103;&#26041;&#24335;&#12290;

&#20013;&#31185;&#38498;&#36817;&#20195;&#29289;&#29702;&#30740;&#31350;&#25152;&#32463;&#36807;&#21313;&#22810;&#24180;&#30340;&#37325;&#31163;&#23376;&#32959;&#30244;&#27835;&#30103;&#22522;&#30784;&#30740;&#31350;&#21644;&#25216;&#26415;&#25915;&#20851;&#65292;&#30740;&#21046;&#20102;&#27973;&#23618;&#21644;&#28145;&#23618;&#20004;&#20010;&#27835;&#30103;&#32456;&#31471;&#65292;&#20174;2006&#24180;&#36215;&#19982;&#24403;&#22320;&#21307;&#30103;&#26426;&#26500;&#21512;&#20316;&#65292;&#24050;&#32463;&#36827;&#34892;200&#22810;&#20363;&#32959;&#30244;&#24739;&#32773;&#37325;&#31163;&#23376;&#27835;&#30103;&#20020;&#24202;&#35797;&#39564;&#65292;&#25104;&#21151;&#27835;&#30103;&#19968;&#20123;&#39640;&#21457;&#12289;

&#38590;&#27835;&#30340;&#24694;&#24615;&#32959;&#30244;&#12290;&#30446;&#21069;&#65292;&#37325;&#31163;&#23376;&#27835;&#30103;&#25216;&#26415;&#20020;&#24202;&#35797;&#39564;&#24050;&#32463;&#21462;&#24471;&#37325;&#22823;&#36827;&#23637;&#65292;&#26377;&#20004;&#21488;&#19987;&#29992;&#37325;&#31163;&#23376;&#32959;&#30244;&#27835;&#30103;&#35774;&#22791;&#27491;&#22312;&#24314;&#36896;&#65292;&#30003;&#35831;&#30456;&#20851;&#36164;&#36136;&#21518;&#26377;&#26395;&#20110;2014&#24180;&#27491;&#24335;&#25237;&#20837;&#20351;&#29992;&#65292;&#23558;&#25104;&#20026;&#25105;&#22269;&#39318;&#21488;&#33258;&#20027;&#30740;&#21457;&#30340;&#37325;&#31163;&#23376;&#32959;&#30244;&#27835;&#30103;&#35774;&#22791;&#12290;&#26032;&#21326;&#31038;&#35760;&#32773; &#37329;&#31435;&#26106;&#25668;









&#23186;&#20307;&#35760;&#32773;&#21442;&#35266;&#37325;&#31163;&#23376;&#28145;&#23618;&#27835;&#30103;&#32456;&#31471; &#39318;&#24109;&#35760;&#32773;&#39532;&#20891;&#25668;
Media reporters visited the deep heavy ion therapy , chief reporter Majun She terminal
Credit: gs.xinhuanet.com







10&#26376;21&#26085;&#65292;&#22312;&#20013;&#31185;&#38498;&#36817;&#20195;&#29289;&#29702;&#30740;&#31350;&#25152;&#65292;&#19968;&#21517;&#21307;&#25252;&#20154;&#21592;&#27491;&#22312;&#37325;&#31163;&#23376;&#27835;&#30103;&#32456;&#31471;&#30340;&#27835;&#30103;&#23460;&#29992;&#28608;&#20809;&#20026;&#19968;&#21517;&#24739;&#32773;&#36827;&#34892;&#23450;&#20301;&#12290;&#26032;&#21326;&#31038;&#35760;&#32773; &#37329;&#31435;&#26106;&#25668;
October 21 , at the Institute of Modern Physics, a medical treatment terminal being heavy ion laser as a treatment room patient positioning . Xinhua News Agency reporters Jin Li and Wang She







10&#26376;21&#26085;&#65292;&#22312;&#20013;&#31185;&#38498;&#36817;&#20195;&#29289;&#29702;&#30740;&#31350;&#25152;&#65292;&#20004;&#21517;&#21307;&#25252;&#20154;&#21592;&#27491;&#22312;&#37325;&#31163;&#23376;&#27835;&#30103;&#32456;&#31471;&#30340;&#27835;&#30103;&#23460;&#29992;&#28608;&#20809;&#20026;&#19968;&#21517;&#24739;&#32773;&#36827;&#34892;&#23450;&#20301;&#12290;&#26032;&#21326;&#31038;&#35760;&#32773; &#37329;&#31435;&#26106;&#25668;
October 21 , at the Institute of Modern Physics, two medical staff being heavy ion therapy treatment room terminal as a patient with a laser positioning . Xinhua News Agency reporters Jin Li and Wang She







10&#26376;21&#26085;&#65292;&#22312;&#20013;&#31185;&#38498;&#36817;&#20195;&#29289;&#29702;&#30740;&#31350;&#25152;&#65292;&#19968;&#21517;&#24739;&#32773;&#22312;&#37325;&#31163;&#23376;&#27835;&#30103;&#32456;&#31471;&#30340;&#27835;&#30103;&#23460;&#36827;&#34892;&#28608;&#20809;&#23450;&#20301;&#12290;&#26032;&#21326;&#31038;&#35760;&#32773; &#37329;&#31435;&#26106;&#25668; 
October 21 , at the Institute of Modern Physics, a terminal patient in heavy ion therapy treatment room laser positioning . Xinhua News Agency reporters Jin Li and Wang She



October 21, 2013 , at the Institute of Modern Physics, two researchers in the control room to monitor heavy ion therapy terminal radiation dose and other parameters. Heavy ion cancer therapy has a positioning accuracy , lethality large tumor and normal tissue of small, short course and other characteristics , known as the best radiotherapy contemporary way .

*Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Modern Physics* after ten years of heavy ion cancer therapy basic research and technology research , development of shallow and deep two treatments terminal , from 2006 onwards with local medical institutions, has been more than 200 cases of heavy ion cancer patients therapy clinical trials , successful treatment of some high-fat ,

Refractory malignancies. At present, the heavy ion therapy clinical trials have made &#8203;&#8203;significant progress , there are two dedicated heavy ion cancer therapy equipment under construction , is expected to apply for the relevant post- qualification officially put into use in 2014 , will become China's first self-developed heavy ion cancer therapy equipment . Xinhua News Agency reporters Jin Li and Wang She

net translation


*&#20013;&#22269;&#31185;&#23398;&#38498;&#36817;&#20195;&#29289;&#29702;&#30740;&#31350;&#25152;
Institute of Modern Physics, Chinese Academy Sciences*

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

Boys&#8216; play&#65306;

*3D printed plane flies*

Global Times | 2013-10-21 22:58:01 

By Global Times	

Students from the School of Aerospace Engineering and Applied Mechanics at Tongji University Saturday flew a miniature airplane created by a 3D printer, local media reported Monday.

The 26-centimeter-long airplane was the first of its kind in China, according to a report in the Oriental Morning Post. 

Made of polylactic acid, the plane weighed 18 grams during its flight. 

The plane has a wing span of 28 centimeters. It was equipped with a 3-gram lithium battery and a 6-millimeter brush motor. Students controlled the airplane with an infrared remote control. 

3D printed plane flies - CHINA - SHANGHAI - Globaltimes.cn

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Wholegrain

Deleted


----------



## shuttler

*A team of Chinese and overseas Scientists joint efforts to combat leprosy
Scientists discover gene responsible for fatal drug allergy

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/scientists-discover-gene/859466.html






SINGAPORE*: Researchers, led by a scientist with the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS), have discovered a gene that could cause a potentially fatal severe adverse drug reaction to* dapsone, a drug used in the treatment of various infectious and inflammatory diseases and for leprosy.*

A statement from the Agency for Science, Technology and Research in Singapore (A*STAR) said the discovery will lead to the development of diagnostic tests that identify high-risk individuals of the allergy, and help improve the safety of dapsone therapy.

The statement noted that up to 3.6 per cent of individuals treated with dapsone develop a severe adverse drug reaction known as dapsone hypersensitivity syndrome (DHS), and 11-13 per cent die as a result.
It said this is alarming as no test is currently available to predict the risk of DHS in patients.

Professor Liu Jianjun, a scientist with GIS, is leader of the research team.

He and his colleagues performed a genome-wide association study on 76 DHS patients and 1,304 controls.
They discovered that the presence of a particular molecule, HLA-B*13:01, increased the risk of DHS.
Individuals carrying a single copy of the HLA-B*13:01 molecule run 34 times the risk of being hit by DHS compared to those who do not.

The scientists further found that the risk is magnified 100 times for those who carry two copies of the allele, or form of a gene.

Prof Liu said: "This is an excellent testimony that human genetic studies are a powerful tool to discover novel biomarkers and biological insight into disease development as well as adverse drug reactions (ADR)."
Genetic studies of ADR can help to improve the safety of drug treatment, he added.

*The finding was reported in the 23 October 2013 advanced online issue of the scientific journal, New England Journal of Medicine.*

*Other scientists and medical doctors involved in the work include co-lead author of the paper -- Professor Furen Zhang from Shandong Academy of Medical Science, China. 
*
*Link to the New England Journal of Medicine here:*
*http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1213096*
*HLA-B*13:01 and the Dapsone Hypersensitivity Syndrome*
N Engl J Med 2013; 369:1620-1628
October 24, 2013DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1213096

*Supported by grants from：

China
the National Natural Science Foundation of China *(81071288, 81072391, 81101187, 81271746, and 31200933), the 973 Program (2011CB512105),
*the National Clinical Key Project of Dermatology and Venereology*, 
*the Taishan Scholar Project*, 
*the Medical Leading Scholar of Shandong Province Project*,
*the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province* (ZR2011HQ003 and ZR2012HQ031),

*Singapore*
the Agency for Science, Technology, and Research of Singapore.
Ms. Irwanto was supported by the Singapore International Graduate Award.

*Other：*
Dr. de Bakker is the recipient of the Vidi award from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO project 016.126.354).

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*Scientists unveil energy-generating window*
24-Oct-13

http://phys.org/news/2013-10-scientists-unveil-energy-generating-window.html








A hybrid smart window device that can achieve energy savings and generation was designed based on a sandwiched composite film that was composed of dispersed VO2 particles and a polymer matrix. This device can temperature-dependently regulate solar heat and generate electricity using a solar cell positioned around the glass panel and powered by VO2 particle-scattered light, simultaneously remaining visible transparency. Credit: J. Zhou, Z. Chen and Y.F. Gao






Credit: teknik.uu.se

*Scientists in China* said Thursday they had designed a "smart" window that can both save and generate energy, and may ultimately reduce heating and cooling costs for buildings.

While allowing us to feel close to the outside world, windows cause heat to escape from buildings in winter and let the Sun's unwanted rays enter in summer.

This has sparked a quest for "smart" windows that can adapt to weather conditions outside.

Today's smart windows are limited to regulating light and heat from the sun, allowing a lot of potential energy to escape, study co-author Yanfeng Gao of the Chinese Academy of Sciences told AFP.

The main innovation of this work is that it developed a concept smart window device for simultaneous generation and saving of energy.

Engineers have long battled to incorporate energy-generating solar cells into window panes without affecting their transparency.

Gao's team discovered that a material called vanadium oxide (VO2) can be used as a transparent coating to regulate infrared radiation from the Sun.

VO2 changes its properties based on temperature. Below a certain level it is insulating and lets through infrared light, while at another temperature it becomes reflective.

A window in which VO2 was used could regulate the amount of Sun energy entering a building, but also scatter light to solar cells the team had placed around their glass panels, where it was used to generate energy with which to light a lamp, for example.

This smart window combines energy-saving and generation in one device, and offers potential to intelligently regulate and utilise solar radiation in an efficient manner, the study authors wrote in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.

Explore further: Transistor made from vanadium dioxide could function as smart window for blocking infrared light

More information:* dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep03029*
Journal reference: *Scientific Reports *

*VO2 thermochromic smart window for energy savings and generation*

http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/131024/srep03029/full/srep03029.html#affil-auth

*Authors and Affiliations
*
*School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shanghai University, Shangda Rd. 99, Baoshan, Shanghai 200444, China*
Jiadong Zhou, Yanfeng Gao & Hongjie Luo

*Shanghai Institute of Ceramics (SIC), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Dingxi 1295, Changning, Shanghai, 200050, China*
Jiadong Zhou, Yanfeng Gao, Hongjie Luo, Chuanxiang Cao, Zhang Chen, Lei Dai & Xinling Liu

*School of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450001, China*
Zongtao Zhang

*河南 郑州大学 Zhengzhou University，Henan Province*

*



*

*



*

 











*上海大学 Shanghai University



















*

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*Chinese researchers develop H7N9 flu vaccine*
English.news.cn 2013-10-26 21:00:46

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2013-10/26/c_132833240.htm






H7N9 virus - illustration 
Credit: asianscientist.com

*HANGZHOU, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) *-- Chinese researchers announced Saturday they had successfully developed the vaccine for the H7N9 bird flu virus, after the flu strain had left more than 130 people infected, with 45 fatalities reported.

*Shu Yuelong, director of the Chinese National Influenza Center, said this is the first influenza vaccine ever developed by Chinese scientists.*

*The vaccine has provided important technical support to battle the new flu strain, making contribution to the H7N9 flu virus epidemic control all over the world, said Shu, also director of the WHO Collaborating Center for Reference and Research on Influenza.*

*The vaccine was jointly developed by the First Affiliated Hospital under the School of Medicine of the Zhejiang University, Hong Kong University, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute for Food and Drug Control, and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.*
Li Lanjuan, leading researcher from the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said the team started research after they successfully isolated H7N9 bird flu virus from the throat swab sample of an infected patient on April 3.

The team applied plasmid reverse genetics and genetic reassortment, which was widely adopted by the world, to develop the vaccine seeds, which were later proved to be safe with the embryonated chicken eggs, she said.

Currently, the vaccine has passed the test on ferrets, which was conducted by the Institute of Laboratory Animal Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. Drug authorities have also verified the vaccine in accordance with relevant requirements of Chinese Pharmacopoeia.

At the news conference on the research findings held Saturday in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, medicine producers, such as Tianyuan Bio-Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., showed interest in the vaccine's production, although the virus has not been spread widely enough for mass inoculation.

China reported the world's first human case for H7N9 bird flu infection in March. As of Friday, a total of 136 people were confirmed to have been infected with the virus, according to the National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC). Of the infected, 45 died, representing a fatality rate of 33.1 percent. No cases have been reported so far in other countries.

Liu Dengfeng, deputy chief of the science and education department of the NHFPC, said, as the weather temperature went down, the epidemic would return, considering new cases had been reported lately.

On Oct. 15, and 23, two new H7N9 bird flu infection cases were reported in Zhejiang Province, the latest since the previous ones reported two months ago.

"The successful development of H7N9 bird flu vaccine has brought new weapon for us to win the long-term battle," Liu said.

*浙江大学附属第一医院*
*First Affiliated Hospital, School of Medicine of Zhejiang University




*

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*Chinese researchers develop H7N9 flu vaccine*
_
10-26-2013 20:10 BJT_


HANGZHOU, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers announced Saturday they had successfully developed the vaccine for the H7N9 bird flu virus, after the flu strain had left more than 130 people infected, with 45 fatalities reported.

Shu Yuelong, director of the Chinese National Influenza Center, said this is the first influenza vaccine ever developed by Chinese scientists.

The vaccine has provided important technical support to battle the new flu strain, making contribution to the H7N9 flu virus epidemic control all over the world, said Shu, also director of the WHO Collaborating Center for Reference and Research on Influenza.

The vaccine was jointly developed by the First Affiliated Hospital under the School of Medicine of the Zhejiang University, Hong Kong University, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute for Food and Drug Control, and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.

China reported the world's first human case for H7N9 bird flu infection in March. As of Friday, a total of 136 people were confirmed to have been infected with the virus, according to the National Health and Family Planning Commission. Of the infected, 45 died, representing a fatality rate of 33.1 percent.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*中航通飞：蛟龙600飞机进入详细设计阶段 *
*China Aviation Industry General Aircraft Co. Ltd. (CAIGA): Jiaolong 600 aircraft enters the detailed design stage*
2013年10月24日 06:58:24 来源：光明日报
October 24, 2013 06:58:24 Source: Guangming Daily 

 日前在西安举行的2013中国国际通用航空大会上，中航工业通飞以大型灭火、水上救援水陆两栖飞机（简称 *蛟龙600飞机），领航150飞机大尺寸模型*及*西锐 SR20飞机*等七款通用飞机，展现了中航工业通飞在通用飞机研制生产及全产业链发展方面取得的新成就。

　　据了解，中航工业通飞通过自主研发和国际并购，统筹国内外相关资源，建立开放式集成创新产品研发体系，加大通用飞机的研发力度。在西安绿地笔克会展中心，中航工业通飞自主研发的*小鹰500飞机、海鸥300飞机、领航150飞机、蛟龙600*飞机等7款机型的模型一展出就受到众多观众的瞩目。

　　据介绍，*蛟龙600飞**机*是专为建设国家航空应急救援体系而研制的，也是当前世界上最大的一款在研水陆两栖飞机。去年珠海航展期间，该机型1：1尺寸的机头物理样机首次亮相就受到了广泛关注。目前，该机型已进入了详细设计阶段。

　　*领航150飞机*是中航工业通飞成立后自主研发的第一款全复合材料的高端公务机，这款被称为世界同级别单引擎涡桨飞机中飞得最快的飞机正在加快研制步伐，并已获得8架启动用户订单，预计今年年末将实现首飞。

　　
*蛟龙600 D-600*






*领航150 Primus 150*
*



*

*小鹰500 LE-500*






*海鸥300 HO300





西锐 SR20 Cirrus SR-20




*



*Held* recently in Xi'an, China International General Aviation Convention 2013, *CAIGA* has shown its products through a large fire-fighting, search and rescue amphibious aircraft ( referred to as the (Jialong)* D- 600* aircraft ) , *Primus 150* and* Cirrus SR20 * etc.all together seven general function aircraft. The Company demonstrated its achievements in the aircraft industry through the development and production of general usage aircraft.

*CAIGA* keeps its development and expansion through independent research, international mergers and acquisitions, co-ordinating domestic and international resources , the establishment of an open system of integrated innovation, intensive product research and development in general aviation aircraft . In Xi'an Greenland Pico Exhibition Center, *CAIGA *showcased its independently developed aircraft: *LE 500*, *HO 300*, *Primus 150* , *D-600* and seven other models to many potential visitors.

According to the report, *D-600* aircraft is designed for building national aviation emergency rescue system, and it is currently the world's largest amphibious aircraft in development . During last year's Zhuhai Air Show , the models' 1:1 size nose physical prototype debut received widespread attention. Currently, the model has entered the detailed design stage.

*CAIGA's Primus 150* is the first self-developed high-end all-composite material business turbo-prop airplane. It is regarded as advanced in technology as the world's best single-engine turboprop aircraft in similar class. *Primus 150* is the fastest in speed among the world's aircraft of similar class. *CAIGA * has received eight orders for the airplane so far and it is expected to have its first flight at the end of this year .

net assisted translation

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## 帅的一匹

David James said:


> *Only about US $3 billion?? *
> 
> Why china is spending so low on science and technology for next five years ?????????
> 
> *India is spending US$ 24 billion*  on Science and Technology
> 
> *India is spending 8 times bigger amount* US$ 24 billion against china's US$ 3 billion
> 
> India prepares to boost science : Nature News & Comment
> 
> India commits to boosting science - Five year spending plan backs massive investment in research and scientific facilities.


No matter how much you spend, you will fail at the end. Look at those failiure project DRDO runs.......

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*Illustrations of China's Space Station*









































Credit: 环球网

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## armchairPrivate

*The artificial sun in central China*

*

The artificial sun in central China





0 **Comment(s)**



**​*
*Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak, also known as "artificial sun", has been designed by the Institute of Plasma Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Hefei, central China. Just like the real sun, the "artificial sun" can generate electricity and help to solve the present global energy crisis.





















*

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## shuttler

*浙江大学研制出六边形柱状“隐身衣”*

*Zhejiang University developed a hexagonal columnar "invisibility cloak" *

2013年11月01日15:16 新华网 *新浪科技*
*At 15:16 on November 1, 2013 Xinhua and Sina Technology*






制造出能实现完美隐形的“隐身衣”，是科学家、工程师及科技爱好者梦寐以求的事。10月31日，浙江大学陈红胜教授研究团队工作人员演示一件“隐身”装置的效果。当一支铅笔被放入该装置中时，铅笔的中间部位“不见了”，但该部位的背景图案仍然可见。新华社记者韩传号摄
Manufactured to achieve perfect invisibility "cloak", is the scientists, engineers and technology enthusiasts dream of things. October 31, Zhejiang University, Professor Chen Hongsheng research team staff demonstrate a "stealth" device effect. When a pencil is placed in the apparatus, the middle of the pencil, "gone", but the parts of the background patterns remain visible. Xinhua News Agency reporters Han Chuan and Hao She





10月31日，浙江大学陈红胜教授研究团队工作人员、博士郑斌整理一件“隐身”装置。这一研究团队正在从事电磁波“隐身衣”机理及实验研究。他们相信，虽然目前的技术还存在一定的局限性，电磁波隐身将是隐身技术真正走入生活领域的一个重大契机。新华社记者韩传号摄

October 31, Zhejiang University, Professor Chen Hongsheng research team staff, Dr. Zheng Bin organize a "stealth" device. The research team is working on electromagnetic "invisibility cloak" Mechanism and Experimental Research. They believe that, although there are still some technical limitations, electromagnetic stealth stealth technology will be the field of real life into a major opportunity. Xinhua News Agency reporters Han Chuan and Hao She







工作人员演示“隐身”装置。一束光在该装置内“转弯”，但穿过装置后仍按原来的方向传播。电磁波（包括光波）照射到物体时，会在物体上发生散射；散射的电磁波被接收后，就表明那里存在物体。如能让电磁波“转弯”，绕着物体走，这样物体就能 “隐身”。该研究正是基于这一理念。

Staff demo "stealth" device. A beam of light within the device, "turn", but through the device based upon the original direction after the transmission. Electromagnetic waves (including light) irradiated to the object, the object will be scattered; scattering wave is received, it indicates that there exists an object. Such as to make waves, "turn", walk around the object, so that the object can be "invisible." The study is based on this philosophy.

net assisted translation
*浙江大学*
Zhejiang University





Credit：guokr.com

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*“地沟油”科研攻关出新成果

The results of a new scientific research on treatment of "Waste oil （Gutter Oil）"*
2013年10月21日 来源：科技日报
Oct 21, 2013 Source: Scitech

http://scitech.people.com.cn/n/2013/1021/c1007-23269305.html




> *Other conversion and research successes:*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Credit and link to further information:
> 
> http://www.testrust.com/research/detail--283.html
> *江苏卡特新能源，明年让6万吨“地沟油”变废为宝*
> *Turning 60 thousand tons of "waste (gutter) oil into treasure next year*
> http://www.testrust.com 来源： 时间：2011-11-15
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Credit and link to further information:
> 
> *1吨“地沟油”产出980公斤生物柴油*
> *1 liter "waste oil （gutter oil)" gives output 980 kg of biodiesel*
> http://scitech.people.com.cn/GB/15527246.html
> 2011年08月29日07:31 来源：《科技日报》
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Credit and link to further information:
> 
> *新一代生物柴油技术中试成功*
> *A new generation of bio-diesel technology in the trial successfully*
> 来源：中国化工报 发布者：亦云 日期：2013-03-19
> Source: China Chemical Industry News Posted by: Yiyun Date :2013 -03-19
> http://www.biotech.org.cn/information/105801





　　*近两年，“地沟油”事件频频曝光，如何解决这一让百姓闹心、政府头疼的社会难题，成为社会各界普遍关注的热点。今年7月，常州大学与江苏卡特新能源有限公司、江苏常大有机化学研究所有限公司共同出资1000万元组建了“江苏常大地沟油工业技术研究院”。*

*　　作为业内有影响的“地沟油”处理专家，通过与高校院所的深度研发与合作，江苏卡特新能源有限公司目前已在全国建立了12个收购点，每年可控“地沟油”并转化生产近30万吨。*
*　　坚持不懈执着“地沟油”研究*

*　　从上世纪90年代起，常州大学就开始研究生物柴油，先后承担中石化项目“生物柴油的研制”、江苏省高技术研究项目“固体碱法制备生物柴油关键技术研究”等10余项相关省部级项目。如今，常州大学把社会热点问题作为科研攻关的目标，充分发挥自己在石化领域的特色优势，以地沟油为原料，研究开发生物柴油等系列新产品。*

*　　在研究过程中，常州大学首创固体碱法合成生物柴油工艺路线。新工艺后处理工序简单，可减少废弃物排放，产品重要质量指标达到德国生物柴油质量标准（DIV V 51.606），得到了我国著名石油化工专家、中科院院士闵恩泽的肯定。课题组据此研究撰写的论文《固体碱法制备生物柴油及其性能研究》，获“第六届中国科协期刊优秀学术论文”一等奖。该论文发表4年内累计被引108次，这在《化工学报》近20年来的所有文章中排名第二。*

*　　近年来，生物柴油研究热潮渐渐散去，很多研究人员转入其他领域。但常州大学依然坚持不懈，不与粮油争原料，以“地沟油”为初始原料，不断完善生产工艺，生物柴油的技术适用性超过多家国外厂商。*

*　　除了研发生物柴油合成新技术外，常州大学还花大力气研究后续相关产品。这些产品包括：生物增塑剂、生物润滑剂、生物材料（聚酰胺树脂）、生物化学品（甘油及环氧氯丙烷）。形成以“地沟油”为起点，生物柴油、生物甘油为主干，多种生物化学品和生物基材料为终端产品的生物质炼制与化工技术。在江苏常州、河北邢台、广东珠海等地转让建成并投产多套万吨级生物柴油、生物增塑剂和环氧氯丙烷工业生产装置。*

*　　此外，还建立了江苏省生物质炼制重点实验室，获得授权专利20余项，获得省部级科技奖励9项，在“Bioresource technology”等国际一区期刊上发表学术论文近10篇。*
*　　协同创新服务地方经济发展*

*　　常州大学石油化工学院党委书记王车礼告诉记者，目前，我国工业增塑剂产品结构不合理，邻苯二甲酸酯类增塑剂的生产和消耗量约占90%（其中DOP占总消耗量的70%左右），非邻苯二甲酸酯类增塑剂不到总产量的10%，生物可降解和以生物质为原料的增塑剂产品极少，无法满足PVC塑料加工对增塑剂无毒、可生物降解和增塑能力高的要求。尤其是DOP可以经口、呼吸道、静脉输液、皮肤吸收等多种途径进入人体，对人体多个系统具有毒性作用，被认为是一种环境内分泌干扰系统。近年来，随着国际原油价格持续上涨，也带动了包括增塑剂在内的许多石化产品价格的提高。因此，用廉价原料生产增塑剂具有重要意义。*

*　　常州大学以此为研究目标，成功研发出无毒、可生物降解增塑剂。本课题采用废弃油脂为初始原料制备C22三酸三酯增塑剂，原料价格低廉；采用高效负载型固体催化剂和分子蒸馏技术，生产过程绿色环保；产品C22三酸三酯增塑剂具有类似于偏苯三酸酯的结构，耐热性好、无毒、可生物降解，因此有很好的产业化前景。*

*　　常州大学还发明了一种由甘油及四氯化硅制备环氧氯丙烷和白炭黑的方法。该发明以油脂加工副产的生物质甘油和多晶硅产业副产四氯化硅为原料，实现在无水和HCl外源的情况下制备白炭黑和环氧氯丙烷，达到节能减排、清洁生产、降低产品成本的目的。该发明用非质子溶剂做反应介质，可促进耦合反应过程的传热、传质，提高反应选择性，并防止生成的硅凝胶在设备及管道内粘附而造成堵塞，使反应能长期、稳定运行。*

　　
Changzhou University collaborative socio-economic development of innovative services

Past two years, "waste oil (gutter oil) " incident frequent exposure , how to solve this so that people suck, government headache social problems, become the focus of attention the community generally . In July, Carter Changzhou University and Jiangsu New Energy Co. , Ltd. , Jiangsu Institute of Organic Chemistry very large invested 10 million yuan jointly organized the " very large waste oil in Jiangsu Industrial Technology Research Institute ."

Past two years, "waste oil " incident frequent exposure , how to solve this so that people suck, government headache social problems, become the focus of attention the community generally . In July this year , Changzhou University and Jiangsu Carter New Energy Co. , Ltd. , Jiangsu Institute of Organic Chemistry very large invested 10 million yuan jointly organized the " very large waste oil in Jiangsu Industrial Technology Research Institute ."

As the industry's influential "waste oil" processing specialists , with the depth of research institutes, universities and cooperation Carter Jiangsu New Energy Co., Ltd. has established a nationwide 12 acquisition point , the annual controllable "waste oil" and transformed production nearly 30 million tons.

Unremitting perseverance "waste oil" research
From the 1990s onwards, Changzhou University began to study bio-diesel , has assumed the petrochemical project " biodiesel development", Jiangsu Province high-tech research project " solid base biodiesel key technologies" such as more than 10 relevant provincial department level project .

Today, Changzhou University to hot social issues as scientific research objectives, give full play to its own characteristics and advantages in the field of petrochemicals to waste oil as raw materials, research and development of bio-diesel and other new products.

During the study , Changzhou University 's first solid base synthetic biodiesel process route. Post-treatment process is simple new technology can reduce waste emissions , product quality indicators have reached an important German biodiesel quality standards (DIV V 51.606), has been famous petrochemical experts , Chinese Academy of Sciences Min Enze affirmed. Task Force which research papers written by " solid base and properties of biodiesel ", won the "Sixth China CAST Excellent Academic " award . The paper was published four years cumulative cited 108 times , which in the " Chemical Engineering " nearly 20 years ranked second in all articles .

In recent years , biodiesel research boom gradually dispersed , many researchers into other areas. But Changzhou University persevered , not compete with grain raw materials, "waste oil " as the starting material , and constantly improve the production process , technical suitability of biodiesel over a number of foreign manufacturers .

In addition to research and development of biodiesel synthesis of new technology, Changzhou University also make great efforts to study follow-up related products. These products include: biological plasticizers, bio- lubricants , bio- materials ( polyamide resin ) , biochemicals ( glycerol and epichlorohydrin ) . 

Formed to " waste oil" as a starting point , biodiesel , bio- glycerol backbone , a variety of biochemicals and bio-based materials for the end product of biomass refining and chemical technology . In Changzhou, Jiangsu , Hebei, Xingtai , Guangdong Zhuhai transfer completed and put into several sets of tons of bio-diesel , bio- plasticizers and epichlorohydrin industrial production equipment .

In addition, the establishment of Jiangsu Province Key Laboratory of biomass refining , authorized more than 20 patents , won the provincial science and technology awards 9 , in "Bioresource technology" and other international journals published an area nearly 10 .

Local Economic Development Collaborative Innovation

Changzhou University Institute of Petrochemical car ceremony party secretary Wang told reporters that at present, China's industrial plasticizer product structure is irrational , phthalate plasticizers in the production and consumption accounts for about 90% ( including DOP total consumption about 70% ) , non- phthalate plasticizers less than 10% of total production , biodegradable and biomass as feedstock plasticizer products are seldom , unable to meet the plasticizer of PVC plastic processing non-toxic , biodegradable and high plasticizing capacity requirements. DOP can be especially oral , respiratory , intravenous infusion, and other means of skin absorption into the human body , the human body has a plurality of system toxicity , is considered an endocrine disrupting system . 

In recent years , as the international crude oil prices continued to rise , but also led include plasticizers , including many petrochemical product prices increase. Therefore, with cheap raw materials to produce plasticizer is important.

Changzhou University as a research goal , successfully developed a non-toxic, biodegradable plasticizer. The subject of the use of waste oil as a starting material was prepared C22 acid tris ester plasticizers , low price of raw materials ; Efficient Solid Catalysts and molecular distillation technology , the production process green ; Product C22 acid tris ester plasticizers have similar trimellitates structure , good heat resistance , non-toxic , biodegradable , so there is a good prospect of industrialization .

Changzhou University invented a silicon tetrachloride from glycerol and preparation methods of epichlorohydrin and silica . The invention is directed to oil processing biomass byproduct glycerol and polysilicon industry byproduct silicon tetrachloride as raw materials, water and HCl to achieve in the case of exogenous prepared silicas and epichlorohydrin , to achieve energy saving and emission reduction , clean to reduce product cost. 

The invention is made using an aprotic solvent reaction medium , the coupling reaction can promote heat transfer , mass transfer, to improve the reaction selectivity , and to prevent the formation of silicone gel in the device and the adhesion of clogging the pipeline , the reaction can be long , stable operation.

net assisted translation

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## shuttler

*China to build new Antarctica station*
Xinhua | 2013-11-1 15:09:13
By Agencies

http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/821916.shtml#.UnWbcNLrXi4

China is planning a new research station in Antarctica, the State Oceanic Administration (SOA) said Friday.

The Taishan Station, the fourth of its kind in Antarctica, will be set up between the existing Zhongshan and Kunlun Stations to provide logistical support, according to Qu Tanzhou, director of Arctic and Antarctic Administration at SOA.

A scientific expedition team will leave Shanghai on Nov.7 to carry out multiple investigations, including setting up the Taishan station. A summer station that can be used from December to March, the station will be used to study geology, glaciers, geomagnetism and the atmosphere in Antarctica.






*Great Wall - Kunlun - (proposed) Taishan - Zhongshan Stations*

*



*
*雪龙 Xuelong Ice breaking vessel*

*



*
*China Research Team in Antarctica*
Above photo credit: ChinaToday.com

*Great Wall Station*
*









*

*Zhongshan Station*






中山站的路标。南极还是一片未开发的土地，路标只指向国内各大城市，中山站距离北京1.26万公里，由于中山站还没有机场，目前到达这里唯一的交通工具是船。乘极地科考船“雪龙”号从上海出发，到达这里往往需要一个月左右的时间。记者 阮煜琳 摄
Zhongshan station signs. Antarctica is still an undeveloped land, road signs pointing to major cities only, Zhongshan Station 12600 kilometers away from Beijing, the Zhongshan Station has no airport, and is currently the only means of transport to reach here is the ship. Take the polar expedition ship "Snow Dragon" from Shanghai, arrived here often requires a month or so. Reporter Ruan Yulin photo







Canteen





通讯卫星接收器。记者 阮煜琳 摄
Communication satellite receivers. Reporter Ruan Yulin photo





中山站气象台，常年进行中山站的气象观测和预报。记者 阮煜琳 摄
Zhongshan Station observatory carries out all year meteorological observations and forecasts. Reporter Ruan Yulin photo





这是中山站旧的办公和生活主楼，现在已经被新的综合楼所替代，2011年1月新的综合楼开始使用，办公条件大为改善。新的综合楼可以上网、打国内长途电话，有餐厅，篮球、羽毛球、兵乓球、台球活动场地，还有图书馆、会议室、网吧等。记者 阮煜琳 摄
This is the Zhongshan Station in the old main building, office and living, has now been replaced by a new complex, in January 2011 to start using the new integrated building, working conditions greatly improved. The new complex can access internet, domestic or long distance calls, a restaurant, basketball, badminton, table tennis, billiards venues, as well as a library, conference rooms, cafes and so on. Reporter Ruan Yulin photo

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## armchairPrivate

*CHINESE BLUE WHALE QUAD ROTOR VERTICAL TAKEOFF AND LANDING AIRCRAFT*





Blue whale Quad Rotor Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) Aircraft Concept at China Helicopter Exposition (CHE 2013) in Tianjin. Blue whale Quad Rotor Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) Aircraft will have capability to carry 20 ton payload with maximum speed of 538 km/h. It will have range of 3106 km and maximum ceilling of 8615 m *CHINESE VWA-01 VERTICAL TAKE-OFF AND LANDING UAV*





Images of the new Chinese VWA-01 vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) at the aircraft industry Chengdu Aircraft Design Exhibition. VWA-01 vertical take-off and landing UAV has maximum speed of 220 km/h and an endurance of over two hours.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## armchairPrivate

*Revealed: How Chinese scientists made a kitten and goldfish disappear using a light-bending 'INVISIBILITY CLOAK'*
*

a novel way

'Invisibility cloak' made of glass works by bending light around an object at its centre to make it invisible to a viewer standing in a certain place

The scientists hope that one day the technology could have security, entertainment, and surveillance applications

*
Scientists have revealed the optical trickery behind an 'invisibility cloak' that has been shown to make a kitten and goldfish mysteriously disappear.

In a video demonstrating the team of Chinese and Singaporean researchers' work, a kitten and goldfish are hidden from view using the 'cloak' - which is not like the flowing material version worn by Harry Potter but carefully arranged thin panels of glass.

The cloak works by bending light around an object in the centre of a specially-designed glass construction to make it invisible to a viewer.

Scroll down for video






Scientists have revealed the optical trickery behind an invisibility 'cloak' that has been shown to make a kitten (pictured) and goldfish mysteriously 'disappear'



The video of the disappearing animals had baffled some viewers, but now the scientists behind the 'magic' have revealed the shape of the device and how it works.

The video begins by showing a kitten seemingly disappearing behind a cloak or tubular screen and then a goldfish swimming until it disappears inside a similar cloak so that only its wriggling tail remains visible to the viewer.


More...

And now on stage... it's the robots! Futuristic band Z-Machines featuring guitarist with 78 fingers and drummer with 21 sticks rock Tokyo technology festival
Could the Tasmanian tiger still be roaming the island's forests? British scientists join new hunt for 'extinct' creature


Researchers from the Zhejiang University, China and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have found a way to use light refraction to render objects invisible using their cloak, which is actually a cleverly-designed hexagonal array of panels of glass.






A diagram to explain how the illusion was created. The scientists used light refraction to render the kitten invisible - which sits in the middle of an array of carefully-angled pieces of glass - designed to bend the light around the animal













The goldfish in the video appears to disappear behind the invisibility cloak, leaving just its wiggling tail visible




Zheng Bin, a researcher at Zhejiang University, told China View that the light humans see bounces off an object before it reaches our eyes.

'We found that if we could control the path of the light, we could make the object invisible.'

He said this means that they have worked to make the light bypass the object they want to hide, but still enable the light to reach a human's eyes.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...r-using-light-bending-INVISIBILITY-CLOAK.html

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*3D bioprinter a fair attraction*

2013-11-05 08:20

CHINA’S first self-developed 3D bioprinter, used by scientists to“print”human tissue, is among highlights at the China International Industry Fair, which opens in the city today.

Chinese scientists have used the printer to create human skin, ears and teeth.

Other highlights of the five-day fair are a model of a lunar rover and the world’s first automated LED bulb production line, said the Shanghai Science and Technology Commission.

The fair, which is being held at the Shanghai New International Expo Center in the Pudong New Area, takes green technology, clean energy and intelligent manufacturing as its themes, said organizers.

“The 3D bioprinter is a very promising technology. It can be used to develop tissue and organs to save patients’lives and make micro-tissue for drugs trials,”said Wang Yungan, president of Shanghai FoChif Mechatronics Technology Co.

“The self-developed printer, which is only 400,000 yuan (US$65,593), is much cheaper than imported ones that cost about 1.8 million yuan,”Wang said.

He said dozens have been sold to domestic universities and institutions.

http://english.eastday.com/e/131105/u1a7755181.html

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*Visual presentation of post no. 257 and 261
*

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## MohitV

armchairPrivate said:


> *Revealed: How Chinese scientists made a kitten and goldfish disappear using a light-bending 'INVISIBILITY CLOAK'
> *
> 
> 
> *
> 
> a novel way
> *
> 
> 
> 
> *
> 
> 'Invisibility cloak' made of glass works by bending light around an object at its centre to make it invisible to a viewer standing in a certain place
> *
> 
> 
> 
> *
> 
> The scientists hope that one day the technology could have security, entertainment, and surveillance applications
> *
> 
> Scientists have revealed the optical trickery behind an 'invisibility cloak' that has been shown to make a kitten and goldfish mysteriously disappear.
> 
> In a video demonstrating the team of Chinese and Singaporean researchers' work, a kitten and goldfish are hidden from view using the 'cloak' - which is not like the flowing material version worn by Harry Potter but carefully arranged thin panels of glass.
> 
> The cloak works by bending light around an object in the centre of a specially-designed glass construction to make it invisible to a viewer.
> 
> Scroll down for video
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Scientists have revealed the optical trickery behind an invisibility 'cloak' that has been shown to make a kitten (pictured) and goldfish mysteriously 'disappear'
> 
> 
> 
> The video of the disappearing animals had baffled some viewers, but now the scientists behind the 'magic' have revealed the shape of the device and how it works.
> 
> The video begins by showing a kitten seemingly disappearing behind a cloak or tubular screen and then a goldfish swimming until it disappears inside a similar cloak so that only its wriggling tail remains visible to the viewer.
> 
> 
> More...
> 
> And now on stage... it's the robots! Futuristic band Z-Machines featuring guitarist with 78 fingers and drummer with 21 sticks rock Tokyo technology festival
> Could the Tasmanian tiger still be roaming the island's forests? British scientists join new hunt for 'extinct' creature
> 
> 
> Researchers from the Zhejiang University, China and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have found a way to use light refraction to render objects invisible using their cloak, which is actually a cleverly-designed hexagonal array of panels of glass.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A diagram to explain how the illusion was created. The scientists used light refraction to render the kitten invisible - which sits in the middle of an array of carefully-angled pieces of glass - designed to bend the light around the animal
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The goldfish in the video appears to disappear behind the invisibility cloak, leaving just its wiggling tail visible
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Zheng Bin, a researcher at Zhejiang University, told China View that the light humans see bounces off an object before it reaches our eyes.
> 
> 'We found that if we could control the path of the light, we could make the object invisible.'
> 
> He said this means that they have worked to make the light bypass the object they want to hide, but still enable the light to reach a human's eyes.
> 
> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...r-using-light-bending-INVISIBILITY-CLOAK.html




wow this is very interesting


----------



## cirr

Lunar Rover undergoing tests in Chinese desert

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## shuttler

shuttler said:


> *An update with links to specific threads*
> 
> An important discovery in combating HIV/AIDS is found



Additional report on the above link

*Chinese scientists lead breakthrough in HIV research*
Chinese scientists lead breakthrough in HIV research|Life|chinadaily.com.cn

Updated: 2013-11-06 07:00
By Wang Hongyi in Shanghai (China Daily USA)

Chinese scientists together with US experts have determined the high-resolution structure of one of two gateways HIV uses to get into the human immune system, which could help develop better HIV drugs in the future.

The research was led by scientists from Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the study result was published in the peer-reviewed journal, Science.

CCR5, a receptor on the surface of human cells, is one of two main entry points the HIV virus uses to initiate its attack on the human immune system. By binding to the receptor, an HIV protein can fuse to the cell membrane beneath, ultimately digging its way inside the cell.

Both CCR5 and CXCR4 belong to a family of proteins called G-protein-coupled receptors, or GPCRs, which mediate a range of functions in the body and are thus important drug targets.

Only recently, however, have scientists been able to image GPCRs at high resolution, a critical step for drug design.




"Structural studies of GPCRs are enormously challenging," explains Wu Beili, a researcher from the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, who participated in the study.

CXCR4's structure has already been solved, but even so, aspects of how this receptor recognizes and binds to HIV viral proteins remain unclear.

In this study, Wu and her colleagues have gotten the first precise look at CCR5, which HIV strains penetrate more often, by using a drug for treatment of HIV-1 called Maraviroc.

This drug is a CCR5 receptor antagonist that works by binding the co-receptor so it's unavailable to circulate the virus.

Wu and her colleagues allowed Maraviroc to bind an engineered CCR5 receptor. Then they purified and crystallized the resulting receptor/drug complex at 2.7 angstroms - a very high resolution.

Based on the study, scientists have received a series of critical insights, which will assist them in improving existing HIV drugs based on CCR5 inhibition, and also in creating new HIV drugs.

"We hope that the structure we determined can be used to understand the molecular details of the current viral strains of HIV entry, to develop new molecules that can inhibit both CXCR4 and CCR5 receptors, and to block future strains that might emerge and be addressed with second-generation HIV-entry inhibitors," Wu says.

"This important research from a team of international scientists is another significant milestone in this field and provides insights critical for the development of better treatments for HIV," says Dr Helen Pickersgill, contributing editor of the journal Science.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*Rare earth recycling breakthrough in China*
November 06, 2013 by Editorial Staff

Rare earth recycling breakthrough in China | Research and Legislation - China - Recycling News | Recycling International - recycling magazine for professionals by professionals |

*China*: *Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have discovered a way to recycle rare earth elements from wastewater, according to their paper in the ‘ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces’ journal. Whereas previous projects in this area have failed owing to the complexity of recovery and high levels of expense, the new method is said to bring 'considerable economic benefits'.
*





The researchers based their project on the fact that a nanomaterial known as nano-magnesium hydroxide is capable of removing a proportion of metals and dyes from wastewater. The team successfully analysed the nanomaterial to produce relatively inexpensive flower-shaped nanoparticles under a high-powered microscope.

By conducting lab tests that replicated real-world conditions, the researchers found that more than 99% of the rare earth metals were diluted in the wastewater samples - with no less than 85% of them being 'captured' by their unique nanoparticles.

Additional analysis proved that the rare earth elements could be easily collected on the surface as metal hydroxide nanoparticles. This pilot-scale breakthrough will provide 'a good example' for the recycling of increasingly popular rare earth elements in practical industrial applications, according to the scientists.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## shuttler

*Chinese Scientists' new finding on curing psoriasis
Coding Variants Not Major Determinant Of Psoriasis Risk, Study | Asian Scientist Magazine | Science, Technology and Medicine News Updates From Asia*
November 14, 2013

*Scientists have found that gene variants representing protein-coding changes may play only a small part in the genetic risk for psoriasis.*





Credit: mayoclinic





Credit: novartis

_Asian Scientist (Nov. 14, 2013)_ – Genetic variants that represent functional protein-coding changes may play only a small part in the overall genetic risk for psoriasis, according to a new study led by researchers in China.

The study, published in _Nature Genetics_, looked at the contribution of functional protein-coding genetic variants to psoriasis in 21,309 Chinese individuals. The researchers discovered only two independent low-frequency coding variants with moderate effect on disease risk from this large-scale investigation.

Psoriasis is a complex, chronic, lifelong skin disease. It typically first strikes people between the ages of 15 to 35, but can affect anyone at any age, including children. The disease may arise due to multiple factors, including the environment, genetics, and immunology.

Researchers had identified numerous risk-associated genetic variants in psoriasis, but functional coding variants, particularly low-frequency and rare variants, have not been systematically study.

In this study, researchers used a two-phase strategy to identify coding variants. In the discovery stage, they conducted exome sequencing on 781 patients with psoriasis and used 676 people without psoriasis as controls.

To confirm their findings in the discovery stage, the researchers performed 2 further independent studies in a large sample of 9,946 patients with psoriasis and 9,906 controls using targeted sequencing of the variants identified.

Through their analysis, the researchers identified only two low-frequency coding variants and 5 common coding variants that were associated with psoriasis. They also investigated 622 immune disease-related genes and showed that coding variants have limited independent contribution to psoriasis risk. Taken together, the study provides a strong indication coding variants in the 1,326 targeted genes had limited contribution to the overall genetic risk of psoriasis.

By comparing their results with previous work in a European population, the study also found genetic differences between European and Chinese people with psoriasis.

Xin Jin, co-author of this study at BGI, said, “Target sequencing in such a large sample size enables us to investigate full spectrum of variants in these region. Although we did not identify any low-frequency or rare coding variants with strong genetic effect, the data helps us to refine several known GWAS loci and identify some candidate casual variants. It remains to be shown whether limited contribution of rare coding variants will also hold true for other regions outside the target and in other common diseases beyond psoriasis.”

The article can be found at:

*NATURE GENETICS | LETTER

A large-scale screen for coding variants predisposing to psoriasis*
http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ng.2827.html

*Authors and affiliations*

*Department of Dermatology, First Affiliated Hospital, Anhui Medical University, Hefei, China. *

Huayang Tang, Yang Li, Xianfa Tang, Hui Cheng, Gang Chen, Fusheng Zhou, Xianbo Zuo, Xiaodong Zheng, Xianyong Yin, Cheng Quan, Yong Cui, Fengli Xiao, Anping Zhang, Xing Fan, Zaixing Wang, Bo Liang, Yunqing Ren, Liangdan Sun, Jianjun Liu, Sen Yang & Xuejun Zhang

*BGI-Shenzhen, Shenzhen, China.*
Xin Jin, Hui Jiang, Xu Yang, Junpu Mei, Renhua Wu, Yong Zhang, Haojing Shao, Xia Zhao, Fengping Xu, Qibin Li, Liya Lin, Huiling Fu, Shaowei Huang, Xuefeng Xie, Qingquan Gu, Xueli Wu, Min Xia, Lin Yang, Yingrui Li & Jun Wang

*School of Bioscience and Bioengineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China.*
Xin Jin

*Department of Dermatology, Jining No. 1 People's Hospital, Jining, Shandong, China.*
Ying Qiu, Fangzhen Tian,Dongmei Shi, Tianhang Li & Xiuyun Zhang

*Department of Dermatology, Second Hospital, Chengdu, China.*
Qi Cai

*Shandong Provincial Institute of Dermatology and Venereology, Shandong Academy of Medical Science, Jinan, China.*
Hong Liu,

Hongqing Tian,

Baoqi Yang &

Furen Zhang

*Department of Dermatology, Affiliated Hospital of Inner Mongolia Medical College, Huhehot, China.*
Jianwen Han

*Department of Dermatology, Peking University People's Hospital, Beijing, China.*
Cheng Zhou,

Fang Wang,

Guangdong Wen &

Jianzhong Zhang

*State Key Laboratory of Molecular Oncology, Cancer Institute & Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College and Center of Basic Medical Sciences, Navy General Hospital, Beijing, China.*
Yulin Sun & Xiaohang Zhao

*Department of Dermatology, Second Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University, Harbin, China.*
Lin Dang & Yuzhen Li

*Department of Dermatology, Third People's Hospital of Hangzhou, Hangzhou, China.*
Junjun Shan & Aie Xu

*Department of Dermatology, No. 1 Hospital of China Medical University, Shenyang, China.*
Chundi He & Xinghua Gao

*School of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China.*
Liping Wei

*Department of Dermatology, Huashan Hospital of Fudan University, Shanghai, China.*
Jinhua Xu & Xuejun Zhang

*Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.*
Runsheng Chen

*Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.*
Jun Wang

*Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.*
Jun Wang

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*More on invisible cloak by Chinese young scientists like this:*






Link:
http://jgospel.net/news/tech/%E6%B5%99%E5%A4%A780%E5%BE%8C%E5%AD%B8%E7%94%9F%E7%99%BC%E6%98%8E%E9%9A%B1%E8%BA%AB%E8%A1%A3-%E5%A4%96%E5%BD%A2%E5%A6%82%E6%B5%B4%E5%B7%BE-%E5%9C%96._gc79258.aspx

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## shuttler

Top500 Supercomputers Nov 2013- Tianhe 2, China

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

**

*兰州大学研究动态可控隐形衣：装甲车眼中变牛车_军事频道_凤凰网*
*（Detailed report in Chinese）*

*Experiments on Active Cloaking and Illusion for Laplace Equation*

*
Qian Ma, Zhong Lei Mei*, Shou Kui Zhu, and Tian Yu Jin 
School of Information Science and Engineering, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, People’s Republic of China

Tie Jun Cui† 
Department of Radio Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, People’s Republic of China

Received 18 June 2013; revised 17 August 2013; published 22 October 2013

In recent years, invisibility cloaks have received a lot of attention and interest. These devices are generally classified into two types: passive and active. The design and realization of passive cloaks have been intensively studied using transformation optics and plasmonic approaches. However, active cloaks are still limited to theory and numerical simulations. Here, we present the first experiment on active cloaking and propose an active illusion for the Laplace equation. We make use of a resistor network to simulate a conducting medium. Then, we surround the central region with controlled sources to protect it from outside detection. We show that by dynamically changing the controlled sources, the protected region can be cloaked or disguised as different objects (illusion). Our measurement results agree very well with numerical simulations. Compared with the passive counterparts, the active cloaking and illusion devices do not need complicated metamaterials. They are flexible, in-line controllable, and adaptable to the environment. In addition to dc electricity, the proposed method can also be used for thermodynamics and other problems governed by the Laplace equation.

Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 173901 (2013): Experiments on Active Cloaking and Illusion for Laplace Equation*


----------



## cirr

Liquid Body Armour（TBS）：

今日热点视频汇总


----------



## armchairPrivate

The Yaogan XIX remote-sensing satellite is launched on the back of a Long March 4C carrier rocket from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in Taiyuan, capital of north China's Shanxi Province, Nov. 20, 2013. Successfully launched on Wednesday, the satellite will be used to conduct scientific experiments, carry out land surveys, monitor crop yields and aid in preventing and reducing natural disasters. The launch marked the 184th mission for the Long March rocket family. [Xinhua]


----------



## shuttler

The weather men:





credit: sina


----------



## shuttler



Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*Tsinghua University identifies new tumor marker*
_11-17-2013 21:56 BJT
_
Tsinghua University identifies new tumor marker CCTV News - CNTV English

click the above link to watch the video reporting





Professor 罗永章 Luo Yongzhang of the School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua University introduced the discovery during the press conference ( see the Tsinghua Univeristy link below)





Illustration of the structure of heat shock protein 90α (HSP-90α)
credit: cusabio.cn






Credit: Lung Cancer Answers | Lung Cancer
Scientists at China’s Tsinghua University have announced they have identified a protein that shows the presence of cancer, making it easier for doctors to make a diagnosis.

Researchers at Tsinghua University show that the protein, "H-S-P 90 alpha" is five times more prevalent in people with cancer than healthy people. The scientists discovered the elevated levels of the protein in lung cancer tumors and are continuing their research to determine if it can used as a marker to identify liver and stomach cancers. 

Prior to the discovery, there were 31 tumor markers, all of which were discovered and identified by scientists in other countries. 

*Link to other reports: *
Tsinghua University link:
罗永章研究组在国际上首次证明热休克蛋白90α为肿瘤标志物，自主研发定量检测产品已获准上市

Xinhua News link: 
清华大学在国际上首次证明热休克蛋白90α为肿瘤标志物 自主研发定量检测产品已获准上市 - 新华健康 - 新华网





*On another front:*


*Hepatocyte Nuclear Factor 6 suppresses the migration and invasive growth of lung cancer cells through p53 and the inhibition of epithelial-mesenchymal transition*

*http://www.jbc.org/content/early/2013/09/10/jbc.M113.480285.abstract*

*Authors and affiliations:*

Xin-Wang Yuan, Dong-Mei Wang, Ying Hu, Yun-Neng Tang*, *Wei-Wei Shi, Xiao-Jie Guo and Jian-Guo Song
*Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, CAS, China*

*Capsule*
*Background: The role of HNF6 in lung cancer growth and progression remains to be characterized.*

*Results: HNF6 upregulates p53 and inhibits EMT, cell migration and invasive growth in lung cancer cells.*

*Conclusion: HNF6 suppresses EMT and invasive growth of lung adenocarcinoma cells through p53.*

*Significance: HNF6 is potentially a molecular marker and target for diagnostic and therapeutic purpose for lung adenocarcinoma cancers.*

*Abstract*
Epithelial-mesenchymal transition plays an important role in many patho-physiological processes, including cancer invasion and metastatic progression. Hepatocyte Nuclear Factor 6 (HNF6) has been known to be an important factor for both physiological and pathological functions in liver and pancreas. However, its role in EMT and lung cancer progression remains unidentified. We observed that HNF6 level can be downregulated by TGF-β1 in human lung cancer cells. Knockdown of HNF6 induced EMT and increased cell migration. In contrast, ectopically expression of HNF6 inhibited cell migration and attenuated TGF-β1-induced EMT. 
The data suggest that HNF6 plays a role in maintaining epithelial phenotype, which suppresses EMT. HNF6 also inhibits both colony formation and proliferation of lung cancer cells. It pronouncedly reduced the formation of tumor xenograft in nude mice. In addition, HNF6 can activate the promoter activity of p53 by directly binding to a specific region of its promoter, and therefore increase the protein level of tumor suppressor p53. p53 knockdown induced EMT and increased cell migration, whereas the opposite effect was generated by p53 overexpression. p53 knockdown also inhibited the effect of HNF6 on EMT and cell migration, indicating that p53 is required for HNF6's functions herein. 
Moreover, there is a high positive correlation among the expression levels of HNF6, p53, and E-cadherin in human lung cancer cells and tissues. The data suggest that HNF6 inhibits EMT, cell migration, and invasive growth through a mechanism involving the transcriptional activation of p53.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Fsjal

shuttler said:


> *More on invisible cloak by Chinese young scientists like this:*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Link:
> http://jgospel.net/news/tech/%E6%B5%99%E5%A4%A780%E5%BE%8C%E5%AD%B8%E7%94%9F%E7%99%BC%E6%98%8E%E9%9A%B1%E8%BA%AB%E8%A1%A3-%E5%A4%96%E5%BD%A2%E5%A6%82%E6%B5%B4%E5%B7%BE-%E5%9C%96._gc79258.aspx


 
Chinese_Stealth_Suit.jpg



When I started playing this game called Fallout 3, there was this suit called Chinese stealth armor. I was impressed and always wanted to know if such suits exist. Looks like it is.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*Science talent program eyes Nobel Prize
*
Global Times | 2013-10-31 1:23:01

By Yang Jingjie

China has unveiled the first group of talents selected for an ambitious program, which aims to financially support Chinese scientists' bids for the Nobel Prize, while boosting innovation and development in both natural and social sciences.

The National Special Support Program for High-level Talents, also dubbed the "Ten Thousand Talents Program," was launched in 2012, and aims to support 10,000 people in the fields of natural sciences, engineering, philosophy, social sciences and higher education over the next decade.

It is similar to the "Thousand Talents Program" launched in 2008, which recruits top overseas scientists and professionals to China.

The "Ten Thousand Talents Program" will have three tiers, including 100 "outstanding talents" who have the potential to become world-class scientists and win the Nobel Prize, 8,000 "leading talents" in various fields and 2,000 "young talents" who are under 35.

According to the People's Daily, the first batch selected for the program includes six "outstanding talents," 72 "leading talents" for scientific and technological innovation and 199 "young talents."

Despite the huge economic leap, Chinese nationals have yet to reap a Nobel Prize for natural sciences, which has triggered debate and reflection for years.

Asked about his thoughts on when Chinese scientists will win their first Nobel Prize, Minister of Science and Technology Wan Gang told a press conference in mid-October that there is still a lack of investment in basic research, despite the government's recent increase in such investment.

But he struck an optimistic note, saying, "we have the conditions [to win a Nobel Prize]," and "some day the Chinese will reach the world's peak."

Among the first batch of "outstanding talents" in the program, Xue Qikun, a physicist at Tsinghua University, and his team reported the first experimental observation of the quantum anomalous Hall effect.

The finding was acclaimed as "of Nobel class" by Chinese American Nobel Laureate of Physics Chen Ning Yang.

According to the Xinhua News Agency, the program will help "outstanding talents" set up their own lab and provide financial assistance to their research. The 8,000 "leading talents" will receive 1 million yuan ($164,292) each for research, training and team building.

Xue Lan, director of the China Institute for Science and Technology Policy at Tsinghua University, Wednesday applauded the new method, which is different from the complicated competitive project application mechanism currently in use.

According to the survey and research by Xue Lan, to get research funding to complete a project, researchers generally need to go through a lengthy process of application. This includes writing a proposal, several rounds of evaluation meetings, submitting an opening report, inspection, conclusion and post-project evaluation.

"Scientific research has its uncertainties … there is a need for a relatively longer period of stable funding and greater autonomy for researchers," Xue Lan told the Global Times. "In contrast, the new method shifts its subject of support to the people from the project, and gives more autonomy to the qualified researchers."

Despite the optimism shown on the new method, it seems the program has yet to work out several details. Several researchers, who were selected as "leading talents" in scientific and technological innovation, told the Global Times they haven't received any word on how they will be financially supported for their research.

Science talent program eyes Nobel Prize - CHINA - Globaltimes.cn


----------



## shuttler

*Researchers create image of weak hydrogen bond using AFM*
*Oct 01, 2013 by Bob Yirka 

*




AFM measurements of 8-hq assembled clusters on Cu(111). (A and B) Constant-height frequency shift images of typical molecule assembled clusters, and their corresponding structure models (C and D). Imaging parameters: V = 0 V, A = 100 p.m., Δz …more


(Phys.org) —*Researchers at China's National Center for Nanoscience and Technology and Renmin University have used Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) to create an image of the weak hydrogen bonds present in a molecule.* In their paper published in the journal _Science_, the team describes how they used the non-contact form of AFM to capture an image of weak hydrogen bonds in a 8-hydroxyquinoline molecule (8hq).

Until recently, the most accurate images of molecules were obtained using scanning tunneling microscopy, recent advances with AFM, however (particularly the addition of a carbon monoxide molecule to the probe tip) have made it the method of choice for obtaining actual images of molecules and the bonds that hold them together. *In this new effort, the research team has advanced the science of AFM by capturing an image of the weak hydrogen bonds present in a 8hq molecule. Understanding how hydrogen bonds work is a very important part of science—they are responsible, for example, for holding together strands of DNA.*
Currently, there are two ways to capture images using AFM: contact, and non-contact imaging. With contact imaging, the tip of the mechanical probe is made to touch the surface of the material being analyzed. The amount of deflection of the probe tip as its dragged is used to create an image. In non-contact mode, the tip is brought near to the surface, but doesn't touch it. An image is created by measuring changes to the oscillating tip probe from weak forces emanating from the source.

The team in China used the non-contact form of AFM and chose 8hq as a test subject because it's a relatively flat molecule. *The resulting image is the first created using AFM to show weak hydrogen bonds, and is important because there is still debate about the nature of hydrogen bonds.* *For many years it was considered to be purely an electrostatic interaction—new evidence has cast doubt on that idea, suggesting that it might be at least partially chemical. The new image doesn't clear up the debate, but does offer some intriguing possibilities for the future as it demonstrates that as AFM matures, it will offer more and more evidence of the true nature of molecules and how they interact.*

*ABSTRACT*
We report a real-space visualization of the formation of hydrogen bonding in 8-hydroxyquiline (8-hq) molecular assemblies on a Cu(111) substrate using noncontact atomic force microscopy (NC-AFM). *The atomically resolved molecular structures enable a precise determination of the characteristics of hydrogen bonding networks, including the bonding sites, orientations, and lengths.* The observation of bond contrast was interpreted by ab initio density functional calculations, which indicated the electron density contribution from the hybridized electronic state of the hydrogen bond. Intermolecular coordination between the dehydrogenated 8-hq and Cu adatoms was also revealed by the submolecular resolution AFM characterization. *The direct identification of local bonding configurations by NC-AFM would facilitate detailed investigations of intermolecular interactions in complex molecules with multiple active sites.*

Read more at: Researchers create image of weak hydrogen bond using AFM


*The report in Science here the link*:

Real-Space Identification of Intermolecular Bonding with Atomic Force Microscopy

*-Author and Affiliations:*

Jun Zhang-1,*, Pengcheng Chen-1,*, Bingkai Yuan-1, Wei Ji-2,†, Zhihai Cheng-1,†, Xiaohui Qiu-1,†

Key Laboratory of Standardization and Measurement for Nanotechnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Center for Nanoscience and Technology, Beijing 100190, China.
Department of Physics, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China.



*Also:*

*This project is good for a link here:*





Credit：news.sciencenet.cn
China tests deep-sea mobile workstation prototype


----------



## cirr

Outfitting of “XiangYangHong 10” Marine Science Research Vessel：


----------



## shuttler

*Fast, Furious, Refined: Smaller Black Holes Can Eat Plenty*
*



*
*Artist’s visualization of the environment around M101 ULX-1, showing a stellar-mass black hole (foreground) with accretion disk. Gas from the Wolf-Rayet star (background) feeds the black hole’s voracious appetite. (Credit: Gemini Observatory/AURA artwork by Lynette Cook.)*

*Link to source:*
*Fast, furious, refined: Smaller black holes can eat plenty*

*Nov. 27, 2013 — Observations of a black hole powering an energetic X-ray source in a galaxy some 22 million light-years away could change our thinking about how some black holes consume matter. *

The findings indicate that this particular black hole, thought to be the engine behind the X-ray source's high-energy light output, is unexpectedly lightweight, and, despite the generous amount of dust and gas being fed to it by a massive stellar companion, it swallows this material in a surprisingly orderly fashion.

"It has elegant manners," says research team member Stephen Justham, of the National Astronomical Observatories of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Such lightweights, he explains, must devour matter at close to their theoretical limits of consumption to sustain the kind of energy output observed. "We thought that when small black holes were pushed to these limits, they would not be able to maintain such refined ways of consuming matter," Justham explains. "We expected them to display more complicated behavior when eating so quickly. Apparently we were wrong."

*A Surprising Twist*

X-ray sources give off high- and low-energy X-rays, which astronomers call hard and soft X-rays, respectively. In what might seem like a contradiction, larger black holes tend to produce more soft X-rays, while smaller black holes tend to produce relatively more hard X-rays. This source, called M101 ULX-1, is dominated by soft X-rays, so researchers expected to find a larger black hole as its energy source.

In a surprising twist, however, the new observations made at the Gemini Observatory, and *published in the November 28th issue of the journal Nature, indicate that M101 ULX-1's black hole is on the small side, and astrophysicists don't understand why.*

In theoretical models of how matter falls into black holes and radiates energy, the soft X-rays come primarily from the accretion disk (see illustration), while hard X-rays are typically generated by a high-energy "corona" around the disk. The models show that the corona's emission strength should increase as the rate of accretion gets closer to the theoretical limit of consumption. Interactions between the disk and corona are also expected to become more complex.

Based on the size of the black hole found in this work, the region around M101-ULX-1 should, theoretically, be dominated by hard X-rays and appear structurally more complicated. However, that isn't the case.

*"Theories have been suggested which allow such low-mass black holes to eat this quickly and shine this brightly in X-rays. But those mechanisms leave signatures in the emitted X-ray spectrum, which this system does not display," says lead author Jifeng Liu, of the National Astronomical Observatories of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences. "Somehow this black hole, with a mass only 20-30 times the mass of our Sun, is able to eat at a rate near to its theoretical maximum while remaining relatively placid. It's amazing. Theory now needs to somehow explain what's going on."*

*An Intermediate-mass Black Hole Dilemma*

The discovery also delivers a blow to astronomers hoping to find conclusive evidence for an "intermediate-mass" black hole in M101 ULX-1. Such black holes would have masses roughly between 100 and 1000 times the mass of the Sun, placing them between normal stellar-mass black holes and the monstrous supermassive black holes that reside in the centers of galaxies. So far these objects have been frustratingly elusive, with potential candidates but no broadly-accepted detection. Ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs) have been one of the main proposed hiding places for intermediate-mass black holes, and M101 ULX-1 was one of the most promising-looking contenders.

"Astronomers hoping to study these objects will now have to focus on other locations for which indirect evidence of this class of black holes has been suggested, either in the even brighter 'hyper-luminous' X-ray sources or inside some dense clusters of stars," explains research team member Joel Bregman of the University of Michigan.

*"Many scientists thought it was just a matter of time until we had evidence for an intermediate-mass black hole in M101 ULX-1," says Liu.* But the new Gemini findings both take away some of that hope to solve an old puzzle and adds the fresh mystery of how this stellar-mass black hole can consume matter so calmly.

To determine the mass of the black hole, the researchers used the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph at the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawai'i to measure the motion of the companion. *This star, which feeds matter to the black hole, is of the Wolf-Rayet variety. Such stars emit strong stellar winds, from which the black hole can then draw in material. *This study also revealed that the *black hole in M101 ULX-1 can capture more material from that stellar wind than astronomers had anticipated.*

*M101 ULX-1 is ultra-luminous, shining a million times more brightly than the Sun in both X-rays (from the black hole accretion disk) and in the ultraviolet (from the companion star)*. Co-author Paul Crowther from the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom adds, "Although this isn't the first Wolf-Rayet black hole binary ever discovered, at some 22 million light-years away, it does set a new distance record for such a system. The Wolf-Rayet star will have died in a small fraction of the time it has taken for light to reach us, so this system is now likely a double black hole binary."

"Studying objects like M101 ULX-1 in distant galaxies gives us a vastly larger sampling of the diversity of objects in our universe," says Bregman. "It's absolutely amazing that we have the technology to observe a star orbiting a black hole in another galaxy this far away."

you can find the publication in *Nature* here:

*Puzzling accretion onto a black hole in the ultraluminous X-ray source M 101 ULX-1*
Published online 27 November 2013

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v503/n7477/full/nature12762.html

*Authors and Affiliations*

*Key Laboratory of Optical Astronomy, National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 20A Datun Road, Chaoyang District, 100012 Beijing, China*
Ji-Feng Liu,; Yu Bai & Stephen Justham

*Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan, 500 Church Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan 40185, USA*
Joel N. Bregman

*Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Sheffield, Hounsfield Road, Sheffield S3 7RH, UK*
Paul Crowther

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*Finger-sized artificial heart developed at HKU 

*

Link: Finger-sized artificial heart developed at HKU - Headlines, features, photo and videos from ecns.cn|china|news|chinanews|ecns|cns



> *港大造出全球首个人造心脏 5年内可望临床应用*
> 缺乏器官捐赠，加上细胞疗法尚未成熟，令心脏病成为香港第三号杀手。由香港大学牵头的研究团队研究出数项专利技术，可以一个万能干细胞大量提炼出80个心肌细胞，5年内可望临床应用，帮助病人修复坏死的心肌细胞。团队更成功造出世上首个体积如手指头大小的人类人造心脏作药物测试，并已测试30至50种有毒性的药物，期望明年可测试3000以至更多种药物。[查看全文
> 港大造出全球首个人造心脏 5年内可望临床应用-中新网
> www.chinanews.com/ga/2013/11-29/5561495.shtml]


 ]_2013-11-29 16:25Ecns.cnWeb Editor: Si Huan_







(Photo source: Ta Kung Pao)

*(ECNS) – A research team at the University of Hong Kong has succeeded in extracting 80 cardiac muscle cells from an embryonic stem cell, and developed the world's first finger-sized artificial heart*, according to Ta Kung Pao.

Professor Li Ronald Adolphus, director of the university's research center on stem cell biology and regenerative medicine, said it may *take five years before the cardiac muscle cells are put into clinical application, but the artificial heart has been used for testing toxic drugs.*

The artificial heart cannot be transplanted to human beings yet, but it contains human cells and can be used to test whether a drug is toxic to the human heart, Li said.

"The team has tested about 30 to 50 kinds of toxic drugs with the heart, and we expect to test thousands of drugs with it next year."

The research focused on extracting heart muscle cells to help repair the dead cells in cardiac patients.

Heart disease is the No. 3 killer in Hong Kong.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*Chinese scientists upbeat on development of invisibility cloak*

Chinese scientists upbeat on development of invisibility cloak | South China Morning Post


----------



## cirr

*China unveils first domestic cloud computer *

Last Updated: 2013-12-11 21:32 | Xinhua






A leading information technology company on Wednesday unveiled China's first cloud computer, a major breakthrough for Chinese cloud computing.

The computer developed by the Unisplendour Corporation Limited of Tsinghua University, has a dynamically scalable function in computing power and storage capacity in accordance with customer requirements, according to a statement from the company.

*The number of the computer's CPU can be expanded to 65,535 and its storage space can reach up to 85 PB（that's 89128960GB） bytes, with a throughput of 1.2 GB bytes per second*, according to the statement.

It differs from personal computers and supercomputers in terms of distributed architecture and combines virtualization technology of cloud computing and computing resources with lower cost.

The computer's software consist of virtualization, big data and automatically-deployed modules, all with independent intellectual property rights, the statement said.

The computer's completely open nature allows high compatibility with various general hardware and industry application software, it added.

Cloud computing generally refers to services, including software and storage, accessed by users through the Internet.

China unveils first domestic cloud computer--China Economic Net

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

A fine piece of 3D-printing technology that's widely applicable in heavy industries such as nuclear power generation、shipbuilding、petrochemical etc：

南方风机股份有限公司控股子公司对外投资进展公告

南方风机股份有限公司（以下简称“公司”）于 2012 年 8 月 24 日召开的第二
届董事会第八次会议审议通过了《关于控股子公司<重型金属构件电熔精密成型技
术产业化项目可行性分析报告>及对其投资的议案》，该事项的相关公告已于 2012
年 8 月 25 日发布在中国证监会创业板指定披露媒体。该项目总投资为 16,760 万元，
由控股子公司——佛山市南方增材精密重工有限公司（以下简称“南方增材”）承
建，项目所需投资资金由南方增材自筹。

近日，该项目一期生产基地建设和设备部件采购工作已完成，电熔精密成型成
套工程专用设备的安装调试工作已开始，并将于 2014 年 2 月底完成，随后将进入
试生产状态。项目一期的生产能力具体如下：
（1）钢结构车间：长 280 米×宽 50 米，面积 15400 平方米；
（2）加工设备尺寸：长 28 米×宽 23 米×高 9.5 米；
（3）生长材料：中碳钢、低合金钢、不锈钢等；
（4）适用工件参数如下：
¾ 工件直径：φ2100mm～φ6000mm；
¾ 工件生长厚度：≤800mm；
¾ 工件生长长度：≤10000mm；
¾ 工件生长最大重量：≤300 吨。

上述设备安装调试完成后，公司将拥有目前全球最大型电熔精密成型（重型金
属“3D 打印”）成套工程专用设备，具备生产最大直径为 6 米，重量达 300 吨的重型
金属构件的能力。公司董事会将继续关注项目进展情况，并按照相关规则要求及时披
露进展情况。 

特此公告。
南方风机股份有限公司
董事会
二○一三年十一月七日


链接：南风股份(300004)：南风股份：控股子公司对外投资进展公告_和讯网

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## armchairPrivate

I just read this amazing medical feat. I don't know if this is the right thread, but I will post it here anyway.

Man whose hand was severed has it attached to his ANKLE for a month to keep it alive before being reattached | Mail Online

*Man whose hand was severed has it attached to his ANKLE for a month to keep it alive before being reattached *

*Doctors have successfully reattached a man's severed hand after it was attached to his ankle for a month. 

On November 10, Xiao Wei's right hand was severed due to an accident at work. 

He said: 'I was just shocked and frozen at the spot, until co-workers unplugged the machine and retrieved my hand and took me to the hospital.'






A Chinese man who had his right hand severed in a work accident had it attached to his ankle for a month to keep it alive



Read more: Man whose hand was severed has it attached to his ANKLE for a month to keep it alive before being reattached | Mail Online 
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook*

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Devil Soul

*Severed hand kept alive on man's ankle*



The procedure was carried out to keep Mr Wei's hand alive
Chinese doctors have saved a man's severed hand by grafting it to his ankle, it is reported.

Xiao Wei lost his right hand in an accident at work but could not have it reattached to his arm right away.

Instead, the hand was kept alive by stitching it to Mr Wei's left ankle and "borrowing" a blood supply from arteries in the leg.

A month later, surgeons were able to remove the hand and replant it back on his arm, according to Rex Features.

According to the report, Mr Wei's doctors from the Changsha region say he will need to undergo several other operations but they are hopeful that he will regain full function of his hand.

"His injury was severe. Besides ripping injuries, his arm was also flattened.

"We had to clear and treat his injuries before taking on the hand reattachment surgery."




The hand remained grafted onto the ankle for a month before surgeons could attempt reattaching it to Mr Wei's injured arm
Mr Cairian Healy of the Royal College of Surgeons in England said although procedures such as these were rare, they were not inconceivable.

"The Chinese are pretty experienced in microsurgery," he said.

"And the concept of saving a severed part of the body by attaching it to another part of the body to give it a blood supply is well recognised.

"The ankle is a hard place to graft though. Usually surgeons would go for the armpit because the blood supply is better."

He said there were many reasons why a surgeon might not want or be able to reattach a hand to its rightful home straightaway.

"The patient might not be fit enough for the surgery. It can take a skilled surgeon between eight and 15 hours to reattach a hand."

The vital factor is keeping the hand alive.

On ice, it may survive slightly longer, but Mr Healy said few surgeons would contemplate replanting a hand that had been detached for more than a few hours because the muscle inside it would be dead.

He said that, sadly, not all replantations are a success. Some patients do not like the end result and may later opt for amputation because of side-effects, such as pain and stiffness.
BBC News - Severed hand kept alive on man's ankle

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

The world's first large-scale graphene membrane production line goes online：

全球首条大规模石墨烯薄膜生产线实现量产-新华网

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## armchairPrivate

*China’s Deep Sea Ambitions*

BY JEFFREY MARLOW
12.30.13
10:38 AM






The Jiaolong deep-sea submersible being lowered into the water before a test dive at the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean in 2012. _Photo: Wang wensheng / Imaginechina via AP_



Recently, China’s _Jiaolong_ manned submersible became the world’s deepest-diving state-sponsored research vessel, with four trips to 7,000 meters depth. Around the same time, news broke of plans for a National Deep Sea Center, a $78 million facility that will operate the sea-going fleet and serve as a central base for oceanographic research and technology development. Months later, the center’s director, Liu Baohua, announced a nationwide search for oceanauts, men and women who will pilot_Jiaolong_ and its planned sister sub around the ocean’s depths.

It’s all part of China’s rhetorical, financial, and strategic return to the sea, a realm that it dominated several centuries ago. Chinese maritime strength reached its apex in the early 15th century, as admiral Zheng He crisscrossed the Indian Ocean with enormous fleets, returning with gifts (most famously a giraffe) for the Emperor. But a few years later, as political winds shifted, the Ming Dynasty ended the epic voyages, choosing instead to focus on other, more local, priorities. This abrupt 180 is frequently cited as a cautionary tale highlighting the dangers of isolationism, a poor strategic move that doomed the discoverers to become the discovered.

So why the resurgence in sea-based activity? Dean Cheng is a Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation and an expert on China’s technological ambitions. He points to the innocuously named “863 Program” as an underappreciated game changer that reconfigured the country’s relationship with technology across a number of disciplines.


In March of 1986 (hence the “863” title), four prominent engineers wrote to then-Chairman Deng Xiaoping, warning of impending doom for civil society’s scientific institutions. A long-standing focus on military might had neglected other aims of technological development, and if China didn’t redistribute its resources soon, it would be fated to watch the “new technological revolution” from the outside.

Xiaoping took the argument to heart, initiating research and exploration programs focused on seven key fields: biotechnology, space, information technology, lasers, automation, energy, and materials science.

Marine Technology was added to the roster in 1996, well coordinated with the country’s broadening regional influence and growing appetite for sea-based resources. “China has become much more dependent on the oceans and ocean-based trade for food and commerce,” notes Cheng. “They’d also like to know what’s off the coast; there are vast unexplored swaths of their seabed as well as deeper ocean reaches that could prove useful.”

And while Plan 863 indicates a formal commitment to oceanographic exploration, China’s movement has been measured and deliberate, similar to its spacefaring progress. With all the fanfare surrounding the country’s entry into manned spaceflight, it’s important to maintain historical perspective. In the decade since it became the third country to put a man in space, China has completed four flights; the bulk of the Space Race, from Gagarin to Armstrong, happened in less time.

It seems likely, then, that the oceanaut program will be a slow burning initiative, the leading edge of a larger oceanic strategy. Going forward, China will continue to consolidate its strategic interests and look to secure access to resources, whether in the form of deep ocean minerals or coastal fish. As Cheng explains, “there are relatively few sudden interests in Chinese politics. The broader set of research areas tend to be methodical in the development process – it’s been true for outer space and it’s true for inner space too.”

China's Deep Sea Ambitions - Wired Science

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## shuttler

*Scientists create glow-in-the-dark pig using jellyfish genes*

By Brett Wilkins
Jan 2, 2014 - 6 hours ago in Science

and here: 科学家对猪胚胎注射水母DNA 培育绿色荧光猪 --分子--新闻 --生物360 --中文生命科学界资讯站





*Credit:eteknix.com*





*South China Agriculture University scientists were able to create the glow-in-the-dark pigs by injecting fluorescent protein from jellyfish DNA into pig embryos.

Credit：.impactlab.net*






_*Green Pigs demonstrate success of reproductive science technique. Courtesy of UH Med on Vimeo.*_

Guangzhou - *Chinese researchers* have created transgenic glow-in-the-dark pigs using jellyfish DNA in a technique first developed by reproductive scientists at the University of Hawaii.

Researchers at South China Agricultural University (SCAU) in Guangzhou province announced late last month that 10 transgenic piglets were born in 2013. Utilizing a technique pioneered by scientists at the University of Hawaii (UH) at Manoa's John Burns School of Medicine, the Chinese team was able to quadruple the success rate at which plasmids carrying a fluorescent protein in jellyfish DNA were transferred to the embryonic piglets. The result: piglets that glow green under black light.

According to the researchers:

The... technique involves proprietary pmgenie-3 plasmids conferring active integration during cytoplasmic injection. This technique was also used to produce the world's first "glowing green rabbits" in Turkey earlier [in 2013]. Turkey is expected to announce results of similar research involving sheep in the new year.

The greenish glow indicates that fluorescent genetic material injected into the piglet embryos have become part of the animal's genetic makeup.

"It's just a marker to show we can take a gene that was not originally present in the animal and now exists in it," said Dr. Stefan Moisyadi, a bioscientist at the UH medical school's Institute for Biogenesis Research (IBR). Dr. Moisyadi insisted the genetically engineered pigs are not affected by the modification and will live as long as any other pigs.

*But why engineer glow-in-the-dark pigs? The researchers said they want to introduce beneficial genes into larger animals to create better, cheaper medicines for humans.*

"For patients who suffer from hemophilia and they need the blood-clotting enzymes in their blood, we can make those enzymes a lot cheaper in animals rather than in a factory that will cost millions of dollars to build," said Moisyadi.

Drs. Zhenfang Wu and Zicong Li of SCAU detailed their findings in an academic manuscript recently submitted to the peer-reviewed scientific journal _Biology of Reproduction_.

Read more: Scientists create glow-in-the-dark pig using jellyfish genes
​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*China rolls out the world's largest Rectangular TBM (Tunnel Boring Machine)

News Link:我自主研发世界最大矩形盾构下线





Credit: louruyue.notbad.cn












我国自主研发制造的世界最大矩形盾构在郑州下线 - 中国中铁工程装备集团有限公司
*

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## shuttler

An update of the project here in a thread started by cirr:

Construction of world's largest radio telescope in good progress

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*Spray bacteria on the desert to halt its spread*

02 January 2014 by *Hal Hodson*





*Living on the edge (Image: Qukai Shen/Panos)*

Spray bacteria on the desert to halt its spread - environment - 02 January 2014 - New Scientist

*A*N ODD ally could stall the encroachment of deserts – bacteria. In northern China, the eastern edge of the Qubqi desert is a shifting wasteland of sand dunes. Most of the land is dusty and barren, but bacteria are giving some of it a new lease of life.

Desertification is a big problem for China. Overgrazing by livestock has destroyed much of the fragile layer of lichen, algae and mosses – the cryptobiotic crust – that binds the sand and soil to the ground. If left unchecked, creeping sands can slowly engulf vital infrastructure such as roads and railways. Farmland and even major cities can be swamped by dust storms that began in the desert.

Planting hardy grasses helps keep sand in place, but the wind can still whip away particles between the grasses. So Chunxiang Hu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences's Institute of Hydrobiology in Wuhan has developed an alternative approach. She coats planted dunes with a mixture of photosynthesising cyanobacteria that can thrive in the semi-arid environment.

Grown in nearby ponds, the cyanobacteria are trucked into the desert every few days and sprayed over the dunes, where they form sticky filaments that hold soil particles in place and prevent them from being blown away. Cyanobacteria get their energy from sunlight via photosynthesis, and as part of the chemical reactions involved, they absorb carbon from the atmosphere and provide the organic matter the soil needs to be productive.

Hu's long-running trial shows that after eight years, dunes treated with cyanobacteria developed a biological crust nearly 1 centimetre thick when on the shady side of dunes. On the sunny side, the crust was about half as thick. The topsoil improved where the crust developed, spurring plant growth.

The method is vital if semi-arid regions are going to rebound on a reasonable timescale, says Brian Whitton, an ecologist at Durham University, UK. "Unless you do something to help, you're probably talking centuries for it to recover naturally," he says.

Hu says the cyanobacteria are now being used to shore up the verges of roads and railways in northern China as well as the margins of oases and farmland. Her team plans to seed 133 square kilometres over the next five years

(_Environmental Science and Technology_, doi.org/qn9).




> Artificially Accelerating the Reversal of Desertification: Cyanobacterial Inoculation Facilitates the Succession of Vegetation Communities - Environmental Science & Technology (ACS Publications)





> *Authors:*
> 
> Shubin Lan†, Qingyi Zhang†
> 
> 
> 
> , Li Wu†‡, Yongding Liu†, Delu Zhang†§, and Chunxiang Hu†*
> 
> † Key Laboratory of Algal Biology, Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, 430072, People’s Republic of China
> ‡ School of Resource and Environmental Engineering,Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070,People’s Republic of China
> § School of Sciences, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070, People’s Republic of China
> 
> 
> 
> Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100039, People’s Republic of China
> 
> *ABSTRACT*
> 
> *Desertification has been recognized as a global environmental problem, and one region experiencing ongoing desertification is the eastern edge of Qubqi Desert (Inner Mongolia). To investigate the facilitating effects of cyanobacterial inoculation technology on the desertification control along this steppe-desert transition region, artificial cyanobacterial crusts were constructed with two filamentous cyanobacteria 3 and 8 years ago combined with Salix planting. The results showed that no crusts formed after 3 years of fixation only with Salix planting, whereas after cyanobacterial inoculation, the crusts formed quickly and gradually succeed to moss crusts. During that course, topsoil environments were gradually improved, providing the necessary material basis for the regeneration of vascular plants. In this investigation, total 27 species of vascular plants had regenerated in the experimental region, mainly belonging to Asteraceae, Poaceae, Chenopodiaceae and Leguminosae. Using space time substitution, the dominant species along with the application of cyanobacterial inoculation technology succeeded from Agriophyllum squarrosum ultimately to Leymus chinensis. In addition, it was found that the shady side of the dunes is more conducive to crust development and succession of vegetation communities. Conclusively, our results indicate artificial cyanobacterial inoculation technology is an effective and desirable path for desertification control.*



*P*eople have been trying to use bacteria in this way since the 1980s, says Matthew Bowker, a soil ecologist at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. His group is working on a similar method, but hasn't yet used it on a large scale.

Desertification is also a problem in the US, says Bowker, but the issue isn't yet big enough to prompt the country to pour money into projects like Hu's. That might change soon, though. "The western US is getting dusty. With dust come automobile accidents and health issues," he says. "These biological soil crusts are like the living skin of the soil," Bowker says, and they need protecting.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

armchairPrivate said:


> *The artificial sun in central China*
> 
> *
> 
> *​*Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak, also known as "artificial sun", has been designed by the Institute of Plasma Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Hefei, central China. Just like the real sun, the "artificial sun" can generate electricity and help to solve the present global energy crisis.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *



*Fusion reactor achieves tenfold increase in plasma confinement time*

*Experimental design improved heat dissipation, reducing damage to reactor walls.*
by Matthew Francis - Nov 19 2013, 3:30am

Fusion reactor achieves tenfold increase in plasma confinement time | Ars Technica
.
.




The interior of the donut-shaped Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST). Hydrogen plasma is confined in this chamber by strong magnetic fields, where it fuses into heavier nuclei.
Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Institute of Science





All photo credits: sina tech
.
*T*he promise of fusion is immense. Its fuel is hydrogen plasma, made from the most abundant atom in the Universe, and the major byproduct is helium, an inert gas. In this era with the threat of climate change, clean alternative sources of energy are more necessary than ever. However, even after decades of research and enormous investments of money, scientists haven't succeeded in producing a working nuclear fusion plant. Nevertheless, many feel the potential payoff is worth continued investment.

For that reason, work is proceeding apace on the next generation of fusion reactors. *Researchers at the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) in Hefei, China, achieved a significant improvement in its confinement time and the density of the plasma it held. This step is necessary to maintain the appropriate conditions for fusion as well as to reduce the damage the hot plasma causes to the reactor walls. As described by J. Li and colleagues, the latest run at EAST achieved a plasma pulse lasting over 30 seconds, a record achievement that simultaneously demonstrated improvements in heat dispersal.*

Nuclear fusion requires overcoming the electric repulsion between positively charged nuclei until the strong nuclear force exerts itself. In practice, that requires very high temperatures, which ensure that the nuclei are moving fast enough to collide rather than repel each other. While fusion is relatively easy on a small scale, researchers have yet to produce a reliable chain reaction that safely yields more energy than is required to sustain it.

Ultimately the problem is one of plasma confinement: holding the nuclei within a limited space at sufficiently high temperature. (Plasma is a gas consisting of free electrons and nuclei; at cooler temperatures, these particles recombine to make neutral atoms, another reason to keep things hot.) Hot gas expands rapidly, so energy is required to force the plasma back together.



> *PRACTICAL FUSION*
> Hydrogen is the simplest atom, consisting of one proton and one electron. In practice, D-T fusion reactors are common, and they use the deuterium (D) and tritium (T) isotopes of hydrogen (with one and two neutrons, respectively). The presence of those neutrons lowers the energy bar to fusion. Ramping the temperature up beyond the minimum required for fusion, by increasing the number of nuclei moving fast enough to overcome electric repulsion, also helps.



Fusion requires temperatures greater than 15 million degrees Celsius; many reactors top 100 million degrees. That's hot enough to melt anything solid, so confinement requires something other than a wall. Stars have a natural plasma confinement system in the form of gravity: their large mass ensures high pressure and temperature in the core. But that's obviously impractical for Earth-bound scientists.

Magnetic confinement is one possible solution, and the one used by the donut-shaped reactors known as tokamaks.(Other types of reactors and confinement exist as well.) Electrically charged particles like deuterium nuclei can be steered by magnetic fields, so sufficiently strong fields can both heat and contain plasma. As its name suggests, EAST utilizes superconducting magnets to increase the force it can exert, a method also practiced to contain the protons that circulate at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

When plasma is magnetically confined and heated beyond a certain limit, it transitions to a high-confinement mode, or H-mode. In this mode, the plasma itself spontaneously generates an "edge" that partly prevents particles from escaping, and it throttles turbulence in the hot material. This more than doubles the time plasma can be confined. The present study achieved more than 30 seconds of a sustained H-mode pulse, an improvement of 10 to 20 times beyond anything achieved at other reactors. Thirty seconds may not sound like much until you realize this is plasma at more than 100 million degrees, more than five times the core temperature of the Sun.

Additionally, the authors described enhancements to the walls of the EAST reactor. When energetic particles collide with the atoms in the reactor chamber, they can create unwanted byproducts, which in turn may interfere with the operation of the equipment. For that reason, *the improvements to EAST were designed to dissipate the heat efficiently and to remove the helium "ash" produced by the fusion reactions.*

EAST can be thought of as a pathfinder for the larger International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), slated to begin operation in 2020 with full fusion power tests in 2028. However, thanks largely to budgetary cuts across science, the United States' long-term financial contribution to ITER is in question, which could delay the start further. (The previous version of this post said the US had withdrawn from the project, which was an incorrect statement.)

*Nevertheless, these results are necessary but incremental steps toward reliable nuclear fusion power. A tenfold increase in plasma confinement time is a significant accomplishment, and it came with an improvement in heat dissipation. The slow state of progress may or may not yield ultimate results, but the promise of clean abundant power could be a bit closer to reality.*



> _Nature Physics_, 2013. DOI: 10.1038/nphys2795 (About DOIs).
> *A long-pulse high-confinement plasma regime in the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak*
> 
> J. Li, H. Y. Guo, B. N. Wan, X. Z. Gong, Y. F. Liang, G. S. Xu, K. F. Gan,
> J. S. Hu, H. Q. Wang, L. Wang, L. Zeng, Y. P. Zhao, P. Denner,
> G. L. Jackson, A. Loarte, R. Maingi, J. E. Menard, M. Rack & X. L. Zou
> Click on the link for details of the authors affiliated institutions. For China, it is conducted by scientists at  *Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, China*

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*Next stop, Mars: Chinese scientists eye red planet probe within four years*

Tibetan Plateau scouted as potential proving ground for rover technology as country mulls probe to Red Planet in as few as four years


PUBLISHED : Thursday, 02 January, 2014, 10:00am
UPDATED : Friday, 03 January, 2014, 2:34am

Stephen Chenbinglin.chen@scmp.com





The Long March-3B rocket carrying the Chang'e-3 lunar probe blasts off from the launch pad at Xichang Satellite Launch Centre. Photo: Reuters

Scientists across China are pushing forward with a project to send a probe to Mars, possibly in four years, but the research is being done largely out of the public eye.

The technological challenges involved are much greater than those posed by the soft landing of the Chang-e 3’s rover on the moon in December, specialists involved in the programme say.

The environment is more harsh, and communicating with controllers back on earth more complex. But a successful touchdown on the Martian surface would bring China on par with the American leader in space exploration, they say.

One of the specialists involved in the programme is Professor Dong Zhibao, a desert engineering specialist with the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The government asked Dong last year to lead a team of more than a dozen researchers to scout the Tibetan Plateau for areas that could simulate conditions found on Mars.

The goal was to build a research facility where experts could test out how Mars rover technology and equipment reacted to extreme conditions, he said.

“It is a very difficult job. We are required to enter hostile areas probably never visited by a human before,” Dong said. “We are also under time pressure. The study must be concluded before the launch of the first Martian probe, which is likely to be in 2018.”

Dong said the plateau was an ideal stand-in for Mars. “Tibet is very cold, very dry with very low air pressure. It also has very strong winds and frequent dust storms,” Dong said. “Generally speaking, it has a hostile environment more similar to Mars than some famous sites overseas, such as Chile in South America or the Antarctic.




Scientists say the Tibetan plateau provides an ideal substitute for the surface of Mars. Photo: Xinhua

After analysing remote-sensing satellite data about the Tibetan Plateau, Dong’s team pinned down eight possible sites.

“We must visit all of them to obtain first-hand data. Some unmanned stations will be set up to monitor changes to the environment. But getting there is a headache. None of the sites are near any roads, as terrain must be free of any trace of people to ensure the best possible simulation,” Dong said.

The sites’ terrain is uneven and littered with sand and small rocks, ideal for researchers to try out soft landing mechanics, robotic rover manoeuvres and eventually astronaut field training.

But the construction and maintenance cost of Tibetan facility would be steep, requiring new roads, airports and other supporting facilities. “The best location for science often needs the highest budget,” he said.

Although China’s lunar landing went off without a glitch, Mars presents a more complex challenge. The US programme had its first success in 1964, when Mariner 3 carried out a fly-by of the planet and sent back 21 images. Twelve years later, Viking 1 became the first craft from earth to land on the Martian surface.

“China does not want to start a space race with the US as the Soviet Union did. China’s strategy is to catch up quietly.”
China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation Scientist
But more than half of all Mars missions, by the US, the former Soviet Union, Russia and Japan, have failed, including China’s Yinghuo-1 probe, which could not escape the earth’s orbit when a rocket burn on the Russian spacecraft carrying it failed in 2011. It eventually fell back into the atmosphere and disintegrated.

Professor Cao Qixin, a robotics specialist with Fudan University in Shanghai who is helping design a Martian rover, is well aware of the past failures but calls the planet the “ultimate arena for technical competition”.

Cao said his team was working on fundamental design issues, such as wheel design, the automatic navigation system, and energy generation and conservation technology.

“The Mars rovers of the US have taught us some valuable lessons,” Cao said. “We have learned, for instance, the importance of developing technology to counter dust storms as rovers had often lost contact in bad weather,” he said.




The operations room at the Beijing Aerospace Control Centre. Photo: AP

The rover would also need a sophisticated navigation system to negotiate the terrain on its own, due to the communication lag the operations team back on earth would face. And in the event of any unforeseen problems, the rover would have to be able to find its way back to the lander in order to re-establish a signal with the team.

Professor Shang Haibin, whose team at the Beijing Institute of Technology is receiving government funding to plot trajectories from the earth to Mars, said one of their main obstacles was a lack of first-hand data on Mars’ gravitational field.

Before any landing mission, China would likely send a probe to orbit the planet to gather crucial information about the strength of the field, he said.

That launch was widely expected to take place in 2018, when the two planets were best aligned for a flight that would require the least amount of energy.

But Shang was optimistic on China’s chances for success. “In some areas, we are already on par with the US. I think it is quite realistic now to think about meeting them on Mars,” he said.

A senior scientist with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation said the government would not officially announce any Mars expedition until much of the programme was well in place.

“China does not want to start a space race with the US as the Soviet Union did. China’s strategy is to catch up quietly,” he said, declining to the named due to the corporation’s media policy.

“If China announced it was going to Mars immediately after the moon landing, the US might feel a threat and increase spending on its space projects.

“If there is a race between China and the US in space, it would be a turtle-rabbit race. The more arrogant the rabbit is, the better for the turtle.”

Next stop, Mars: Chinese scientists eye red planet probe within four years | South China Morning Post

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Beidou2020

Wow a Mars rover already!
Great news!

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*University unveils new air purifier technology*
Updated: 2014-01-07 01:07
By WANG HONGYI in Shanghai ( China Daily)

University unveils new air purifier technology|Society|chinadaily.com.cn








A member of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University research team that invented a new air-purifying device demonstrates the machine. The device’s technology can prevent secondary pollution that existing air purifiers can create if not used properly. Du Xin / for China Daily


*Innovation removes pollutants by electrostatic and catalytic processes*

Chinese researchers have developed a new technology to clean up indoor air pollution that avoids secondary pollution that existing air purification products in the market can create if used improperly.

The new air purifier, developed by a research team from the School of Mechanical Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, removes indoor pollutants from air through physical and chemical methods.

Professor Shangguan Wenfeng, who led the research project, said at a news conference on Monday that current air purifiers clean the air mainly by absorption and filtering, but this technique has problems.

“For example, the filter needs to be replaced regularly because it will easily reach the saturation point, which might lead to further pollution,” he said.

Also, while some machines cannot filter smaller pollutants well, the school’s new technology overcomes that shortcoming, he said.

The new technology removes indoor pollutants through high-voltage electrostatic and catalytic purification.

The electrostatics process the PM2.5 — airborne particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers that can go deep into the lungs — and other air pollutants from outdoors.

During this process, volatile organic compounds and a small amount of ozone are produced. The second, catalysis module transforms these harmful organic compounds and ozone into harmless carbon dioxide and water.

A test was conducted during the news conference. Because Shanghai air quality was classified as “good” at the time, researchers made a smoggy indoor environment in a 30-square-meter room by lighting six cigarettes. The PM2.5 reading soon reached 700 micrograms per cubic meter, far exceeding the index limit level of 500.

When the machine was switched on, the particles in the room gradually disappeared, with the reading less than 100 within an hour.

Another innovation of the air purifier is that it allows air circulation between indoors and outdoors. Indoor air is circulated with outside air through a ventilation pipe at the bottom of the machine.

“Even in heavy smoggy weather, the indoor air will continue circulating and be cleaned. This technology is not available in existing machines on the market,” Shangguan said.

Yang Xin, an environmental expert at Fudan University, expressed optimism about the invention.

“In recent years, air cleaners have become more and more popular among residents. A well-designed air purifier will undoubtedly play an important role in improving air quality,” he said.

Poor air quality has been heatedly discussed by the public recently as smog enveloped many cities in autumn and winter. PM2.5 has become the country’s primary polluter and also the main source of indoor air pollution.

In Beijing, the average PM2.5 reading in 2013 was more than double the national standard, according to a Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau report earlier this month.

On average, heavy air pollution occurred every six or seven days in the city, said Zhang Dawei, director of the Beijing Environmental Monitoring Center.

Shanghai, a city whose air was once considered clean, saw its Air Quality Index reach nearly 500 on Dec 6. An index reading over 300 is considered “hazardous”, the highest in a six-tier rating system of air quality.

Persistent smog across the country has prompted a surge in sales of dust masks and air cleaners. Sales of air-cleaning machines in 2013 increased 420 percent year-on-year, according to JD.com, China’s e-commerce giant.

“So far, this technology is very developed, and it has already been awarded a patent. We are now looking for manufacturers to help bring this product to market,” Shangguan said.

The research team said the retail price of the new air purifier would be competitive with similar machines on the market from big international brands like Blueair, Daikin, Philips and Siemens. The price is expected to be 3,000 yuan ($496) to 6,000 yuan depending on the size of the room it’s used for.

wanghongyi@chinadaily.com.cn

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*China Exclusive: China to build new icebreaker*
_
01-05-2014 16:08 BJT_

SHANGHAI, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- China plans to build a new icebreaker for polar expeditions as its veteran Xuelong, or Snow Dragon, remains stuck in Antarctica after rescuing passengers from a Russian vessel.

Qu Tanzhou, director of the State Oceanic Administration's Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration, told Xinhua on Sunday that designs for the vessel were in the process after gaining official approval.

"The new icebreaker will be shorter and be equipped with blades both at the bow and the stern, which will be able to open ice 1.5 meters thick," said Qu.

Designed mainly for field research instead of transporting supplies, the new icebreaker will also have a better power system, larger decks and laboratories. It will be a "mobile research station," said Qu.

Put into use in 1994, the Ukraine-built Xuelong was designed for transporting supplies to China's research stations in the Antarctic. It can break ice that is 1.2 meters thick.

Xueying 12, a helicopter on board Xuelong, on Thursday successfully evacuated all 52 passengers aboard the Russian vessel MV Akademik Shokalskiy that had been stranded since Christmas Eve. The passengers were transferred to Australian icebreaker Aurora Australis. The Australian icebreaker had been sent to rescue the Russian ship.

After rescuing the passengers, Xuelong became stuck because of floating ice.

Xuelong is 66.65 degrees south latitude and 144.42 degrees east longitude. It is surrounded by sheets of ice up to four meters thick and is about 21 km away from unfrozen waters, according to the State Oceanic Administration.

China has sent a team to rescue Xuelong. There is no immediate danger to personnel aboard Xuelong, which is well stocked with food supplies and has enough fuel.

Zhang Jiansong, a Xinhua reporter, is aboard Xuelong. She said the blizzard on Sunday left the deck extremely slippery and people could hardly walk on it.

"Despite that, the Xuelong crew stay positive and have carried on experiments on board as scheduled," she said.

The U.S. Coast Guard will send its icebreaker Polar Star to assist Xuelong and the Russian vessel, Australian Maritime Safety Authority said Saturday.

Qu said the planned expedition by Xuelong will be altered once it is out of trouble. 

China Exclusive: China to build new icebreaker CCTV News - CNTV English

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

The world's 1st commercial F*emtosecond Graphene Fiber Laser* debuts in China：

中国商用石墨烯飞秒光纤激光器问世 系全球首台|石墨|激光器_凤凰军事

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## shuttler

Drawings (3) of the 4th of our scientific station" 泰山 Taishan" in Antartica when completed






credit: Huanqiu















From left to right:
Green dot 长城站 Changcheng Station
Near center green dot：昆仑站 Kunlun Station
Red dot: 在建中泰山站 Taishan Station in construction
Green dot (far right): 中山站 Zhongshan Station
South most red dot:Victoria station ( not owned by China)

Illustrations Credit: Sina

Construction carries on in the new year:











Credit: Sohu,. Xinhuanet (唐志坚 摄 Tang Zhijian -photographer)





Credit: hycfw.com

Click on this link for a TV reporting:
中国南极泰山站建站施工-20131229中国新闻-凤凰视频-最具媒体品质的综合视频门户-凤凰网

Above TV reporting pf the news starts at 0:22 which said the construction team are braving against the hostile weather but still we are still progressing well finishing the foundation on an altitude of above 2,600 meters and working in all time low temperature of more than -35 deg C and also facing the constant brutal assaults of cold blizzards

The additon of Taishan Station which weighs 400 tons when completed, is an enhancement to the existing facilities with better construction materials and improved internal facilities for scientific equipment, living and life support, rescue and emergency, storage, repair and maintenance, communications. Each steel column is 9.8 meters tall and each can support 50 tons weight. A total of 8 columns have been erected.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*Chinese scholars announce breakthough in HIV virus study*
(Xinhua) 07:41, January 10, 2014

Chinese scholars announce breakthough in HIV virus study - People's Daily Online

*HARBIN*: Chinese researchers said they have made a significant breakthrough in the structural analysis of the viral infectivity factor (Vif) of the HIV virus, which will help in the development of new medications to treat or even cure the disease.

The new research was published on the website of science journal "Nature" on Wednesday.It was carried out by *a team of Chinese researchers led by Huang Zhiwei, professor of structural molecular biology with the School of Life Science and Technology at Harbin Institute of Technology.*

The research reveals the structural analysis of HIV-1 protein Vif, whose role is to subvertantiviral activity.

The results lay a foundation for the design of novel anti-HIV drugs, the paper said. The Chinese team launched the research program in March 2012.

Ever since the AIDS virus was discovered in 1981, people have had insufficient knowledge of the virus itself, including the structure of Vif, which is extremely important to virus infection and replication, said Huang.

Analyzing Vif structure is vital to the design of AIDS treatment medicines, Huang added.

The study of Vif structure has been the most important subject for scientists worldwide on AIDS in recent years.

*China is the first to come out with research achievements on the subject, showing it is at the forefront of structural molecular biology study in AIDS, according to Huang.*

*The research team has begun cooperation with drug producers to develop new types of medicines for treating AIDS, Huang told Xinhua on Thursday.*

"*After medicine development succeeds, it will break a new path for treating AIDS worldwide, even hopefully curing it*," Huang said, adding that it will also pave the way for Chinese-made drugs to fight HIV/AIDS.

China has about 434,000 people living with HIV/AIDS, according to government statistics.Worldwide, the number reached about 35 million at the end of 2012.


Here the above research paper published in *Nature*:

Structural basis for hijacking CBF-[bgr] and CUL5 E3 ligase complex by HIV-1 Vif : Nature : Nature Publishing Group

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## shuttler

*We have successfully completed more than 300 meters saturation diving*:

我国首次人工潜入300米深海探摸成功|深海|人工潜入300米深海底|潜水_新浪新闻

We will be attempting greater depths in the near future!

Some pix:





































Credit: Xinhuanet and Huangqiu

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

shuttler said:


> *We have successfully completed more than 300 meters saturation diving*:
> 
> 我国首次人工潜入300米深海探摸成功|深海|人工潜入300米深海底|潜水_新浪新闻
> 
> We will be attempting greater depths in the near future!



Firing on all barrels。

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

The saturation diving is preparing to work in conjunction with our deep sea exploration station here:

Video clip of our 龙宫 Dragon Palace testing in water

[url="http://v.ifeng.com/news/tech/201311/01ba9303-3b0c-4b55-a704-39f086d41019.shtml"]江苏无锡：深海移动工作站龙宫今天试水-20131121东方午新闻-凤凰视频-最具媒体品质的综合视频门户-凤凰网[/URL]





Credit：csic.com.cn

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

China Focus: Top natural science prize honors superconductor findings - Xinhua | English.news.cn





_Diagram of the Iron-based hightemperature superconductors
Credit: China Academy of Science_

BEIJING, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Following a three-year vacancy, China's top natural science prize in its annual national science award was given for the discovery of iron-based compounds as high-temperature superconductors and research on their traits.

Superconductivity refers to a phenomenon where electrons travel with no resistance when a conducting material, known as a superconductor, is cooled below a certain temperature.

With applications in a range of high-tech inventions, superconductivity has become a part of daily life, from boosting cell phone signals to offering medical imaging.

At Friday's award ceremony, leading project contributors, including Zhao Zhongxian and Chen Xianhui, received the 200,000-yuan (33,040 U.S. dollars) prize on behalf of their research team with the Institute of Physics under Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the University of Science and Technology.

Most superconductors only work at temperatures close to 0 kelvin, or -273.15 degrees Celsius -- the lowest temperature possible, known as absolute zero.

The discovery marked a new "family" of iron-based superconducting materials that lift the highest temperature for resistance-free flow to 55k, Chen said.

The discovery was listed as a major achievement by science media and academic groups, including American magazine Science, which selected it among the top ten major scientific breakthroughs of 2008.

Ten people working in the superconductivity field have previously won the Nobel Prize in Physics.

"Awards are not the original motive for scientific exploration ... If a group of people go in the right direction and make constant and no-nonsense efforts, they will find discoveries that benefit humans," Zhao said.

The Chinese government has given the award to distinguished scientists and achievements for 14 consecutive years. The award is aimed at boosting innovation-fueled development.

Official figures show that this year's prize winners have an average age of 46.6, revealing a growing trend of young and middle-aged talents becoming the main force in the country's science and technology cause.

Winners of a second prize in the natural science category for their research on carbon-hydrogen bond activation include 39-year-old first contributor Professor Shi Zhangjie with Peking University. The team's youngest member is only 27.

China aims to build itself into an innovative country by 2020, when scientific progress will contribute nearly 60 percent of the nation's economic growth, according to a national science and technology development plan.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

Another nice reporting by cirr here:

China establishes advanced science research centers

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## dontsuspendme

Does not china already have infinite technology and the most powerful?


----------



## shuttler

dontsuspendme said:


> Does not china already have infinite technology and the most powerful?



We set our own courses in R and D.
What others see us, if not retarded / derogatory as that bloke on the net like @gambit, are up to the writers perception.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## gambit

dontsuspendme said:


> Does not china already have infinite technology and the most powerful?


Yes...It is called 'Chinese physics'. It is inscrutable and if you are not racially Chinese, you cannot comprehend it. Never can. 'Chinese physics' are most prominent on the Internet. Its principles are infinitely flexible, depending on the Chinese person's perspectives on things technical.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

gambit said:


> Yes...It is called 'Chinese physics'. It is inscrutable and if you are not racially Chinese, you cannot comprehend it. Never can. 'Chinese physics' are most prominent on the Internet. Its principles are infinitely flexible, depending on the Chinese person's perspectives on things technical.



Chinese physicists are some of the best in the world
There are so many articles written by Chinese physicists in reputed journals BUT those are not for people of your level of capacity to understand
Take your pills!

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## gambit

shuttler said:


> *Chinese physicists are some of the best in the world*
> There are so many articles written by Chinese physicists in reputed journals BUT those are not for people of your level of capacity to understand
> Take your pills!


Yes...And I have great respect for them. But they uses real physics, not 'Chinese physics'.

An example of 'Chinese physics' is on this forum where a Chinese member who claimed to be a physics professor, probably at some local community college somewhere, declared that the 10-lambda rule violated Born Approximation. Despite ample evidences presented to the man, from Chinese to Iranian sources, he never admitted his error on a public forum. And when it comes to the J-20, 'Chinese physics' abounds.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

gambit said:


> Yes...And I have great respect for them. But they uses real physics, not 'Chinese physics'.
> 
> An example of 'Chinese physics' is on this forum where a Chinese member who claimed to be a physics professor, probably at some local community college somewhere, declared that the 10-lambda rule violated Born Approximation. Despite ample evidences presented to the man, from Chinese to Iranian sources, he never admitted his error on a public forum. And when it comes to the J-20, 'Chinese physics' abounds.



just GTFO!
it was the comment made by one member and you are insulting all Chinese Physicists!

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## gambit

shuttler said:


> just GTFO!
> it was the comment made by one member and you are insulting all Chinese Physicists!


No...I made fun of the Chinese members here. Not professional Chinese scientists and engineers. If I used Chinese sources to prove the man wrong, then how can I have insulted real professionals?


----------



## shuttler

gambit said:


> No...I made fun of the Chinese members here. Not professional Chinese scientists and engineers. If I used Chinese sources to prove the man wrong, then how can I have insulted real professionals?



just GTFO! take your pills properly!

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## dontsuspendme

shuttler said:


> just GTFO! take your pills properly!


But i am surprized that china is still putting some effort on research.
As per PDF chinese, they say china is already saturated with lots of technology...


----------



## Beidou2020

China already has very advanced technology in many areas. Forget what the haters say, China is on the rise.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*Topology of H-Bonded Networks at Water/Solid Interfaces Could be Determined with Atomic Precision*

Published on January 10, 2014 at 4:02 AM

*The interaction of water with the surfaces of solid materials is ubiquitous. Many remarkable physical and chemical properties of water/solid interfaces are governed by H-bonding interaction between water molecules. As a result, the accurate description of H-bonding configuration and directionality is one of the most important fundamental issues in water science.*

Ideally, attacking this problem requires the access to the internal degrees of freedom of water molecules, i.e. the O-H directionality. However, resolving the internal structure of water has not been possible so far despite massive efforts in the last decades due to the light mass and small size of hydrogen.







(a) 3D STM topographic image of water monomers and tetramers adsorbed on the NaCl(001) surface. (b) and (c) HOMO and LUMO images of a water monomer, respectively. (d) and (e) HOMO images of two water tetramers with different H-bonding chirality. (f)-(i) Calculated isosurfaces of HOMO and LUMO orbitals, corresponding to (b)-(e).


Recently, the teams led by Professor Ying Jiang and Professor Enge Wang of International Center for Quantum Materials (ICQM) of Peking University succeeded to achieve submolecular-resolution imaging of individual water monomers and tetramers adsorbed on a Au-supported NaCl(001) film at 5 K, using a cryogenic scanning tunneling microscope (STM). They first decoupled electronically the water molecule from the metal substrate by inserting an insulating NaCl layer and then employed the STM tip as a top gate to tune controllably the molecular density of states of water around the Fermi level. These key steps enabled them to image the frontier molecular orbitals which are spatially locked together with the geometric structures of water molecules. Notably, they were able to discriminate in real space the orientation of water monomers and the H-bonding directionality of water tetramers based on the submolecular-resolution orbital images.

This work opens up the possibility of determining the detailed topology of H-bonded networks at water/solid interfaces with atomic precision, which is only possible through theoretical simulations in the past. The ability to resolve the O-H directionality of water provides further opportunities for probing the dynamics of H-bonded networks at atomic scale such as H-atom transfer and bond rearrangement. In addition, the novel orbital-imaging technique developed in this work reveals new understanding of STM experiments and may be applicable to a broad range of molecular systems and materials.

This work was published online in Nature Materials on Jan. 5, 2014 [Nature Materials DOI: 10.1038/nmat3848, http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nmat3848.html]. This work received supports from Ministry of Science and Technology of China, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Ministry of Education of China, and Peking University.

Topology of H-Bonded Networks at Water/Solid Interfaces Could be Determined with Atomic Precision

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## shuttler

*^^ great finding!
While in a previously reported scientific finding we have done the following (post # 279).
We have shown taking steps forward in the mastery of capturing visual images of some ultra minute phenomena using various AFM and STM means. Though it seems far-fetched to talk about it so soon, these findings are important for researchers to advance to more in-depth studies of molecular/atomic structures of complex material, diseases and the manipulation of which can lead to generation of new materials or to combat some prevalent deadly diseases *



shuttler said:


> *Researchers create image of weak hydrogen bond using AFM*
> *Oct 01, 2013 by Bob Yirka
> 
> *
> 
> 
> 
> 
> AFM measurements of 8-hq assembled clusters on Cu(111). (A and B) Constant-height frequency shift images of typical molecule assembled clusters, and their corresponding structure models (C and D). Imaging parameters: V = 0 V, A = 100 p.m., Δz …more
> 
> 
> (Phys.org) —*Researchers at China's National Center for Nanoscience and Technology and Renmin University have used Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) to create an image of the weak hydrogen bonds present in a molecule.* In their paper published in the journal _Science_, the team describes how they used the non-contact form of AFM to capture an image of weak hydrogen bonds in a 8-hydroxyquinoline molecule (8hq).
> 
> Until recently, the most accurate images of molecules were obtained using scanning tunneling microscopy, recent advances with AFM, however (particularly the addition of a carbon monoxide molecule to the probe tip) have made it the method of choice for obtaining actual images of molecules and the bonds that hold them together. *In this new effort, the research team has advanced the science of AFM by capturing an image of the weak hydrogen bonds present in a 8hq molecule. Understanding how hydrogen bonds work is a very important part of science—they are responsible, for example, for holding together strands of DNA.*
> 
> Currently, there are two ways to capture images using AFM: contact, and non-contact imaging. With contact imaging, the tip of the mechanical probe is made to touch the surface of the material being analyzed. The amount of deflection of the probe tip as its dragged is used to create an image. In non-contact mode, the tip is brought near to the surface, but doesn't touch it. An image is created by measuring changes to the oscillating tip probe from weak forces emanating from the source.
> 
> The team in China used the non-contact form of AFM and chose 8hq as a test subject because it's a relatively flat molecule. *The resulting image is the first created using AFM to show weak hydrogen bonds, and is important because there is still debate about the nature of hydrogen bonds.* *For many years it was considered to be purely an electrostatic interaction—new evidence has cast doubt on that idea, suggesting that it might be at least partially chemical. The new image doesn't clear up the debate, but does offer some intriguing possibilities for the future as it demonstrates that as AFM matures, it will offer more and more evidence of the true nature of molecules and how they interact.*
> 
> *ABSTRACT*
> We report a real-space visualization of the formation of hydrogen bonding in 8-hydroxyquiline (8-hq) molecular assemblies on a Cu(111) substrate using noncontact atomic force microscopy (NC-AFM). *The atomically resolved molecular structures enable a precise determination of the characteristics of hydrogen bonding networks, including the bonding sites, orientations, and lengths.* The observation of bond contrast was interpreted by ab initio density functional calculations, which indicated the electron density contribution from the hybridized electronic state of the hydrogen bond. Intermolecular coordination between the dehydrogenated 8-hq and Cu adatoms was also revealed by the submolecular resolution AFM characterization. *The direct identification of local bonding configurations by NC-AFM would facilitate detailed investigations of intermolecular interactions in complex molecules with multiple active sites.*
> 
> Read more at: Researchers create image of weak hydrogen bond using AFM
> 
> 
> *The report in Science here the link*:
> 
> Real-Space Identification of Intermolecular Bonding with Atomic Force Microscopy
> 
> *-Author and Affiliations:*
> 
> Jun Zhang-1,*, Pengcheng Chen-1,*, Bingkai Yuan-1, Wei Ji-2,†, Zhihai Cheng-1,†, Xiaohui Qiu-1,†
> 
> Key Laboratory of Standardization and Measurement for Nanotechnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Center for Nanoscience and Technology, Beijing 100190, China.
> Department of Physics, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*China unveils native mobile operating system*

English.news.cn 2014-01-09 19:37:38 

BEIJING, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- A new mobile phone operating system was unveiled by a Chinese tech firm on Thursday, making it the country's first smart phone system with independent intellectual property rights.


The system, named 960 OS, was developed by the Coship Electronics Co., Ltd. It is a brand new operating system following predecessors such as Android, IOS, and Windows phone, the Shenzhen-based company said.

960 OS is a native operating system based on the Linux kernel and took Coship 15 years to develop, said the company's chair, Yuan Ming, noting that the system can provide better protection for information stored in a smart phone.

As the majority of smartphones in the Chinese market use foreign operating systems such as Android and IOS, *the ownership of one system with independent IPR is essential for both national and individual information security*, according to Liu Yunjie, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

It can boost the competitiveness of China's mobile and Internet industry, he added.

China unveils native mobile operating system - Xinhua | English.news.cn

COS（China Operating System）announced on 15.01.2014：

中科院发布自主知识产权操作系统 中移动中电信已测试 - 要闻\新闻 — C114(中国通信网)

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## cirr

*China's top quantum tech center founded in Hefei*

_2014-01-16 09:06chinadaily.com.cnWeb Editor: Wang Fan_http://www.ecns.cn/2014/01-16/97201.shtml#comment

*The CAS Center for Excellence Quantum Information and Quantum Physics（place where China's first practical quantum computer is likely to be born？）* was founded in Hefei, Anhui province, on Wednesday.

The center, based in the University of Science and Technology of China and under the leadership of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, will be built into a top-notch academic institution with an international influence in quantum information and quantum physics, Bai Chunli, president of CAS, said at the founding ceremony.

Earlier this year, the CAS launched a program establishing five top innovation centers in China in wake of President Xi Jinping's call to deepen reform and innovation in science and technology to enhance the nation's strength.

The CAS aims to build the Hefei-based center into a model for the other four centers, specializing in the earth system science of Qinghai-Tibet plateau, particle physics, brain science and thorium molten salt reactors, according to the CAS president.

China's top quantum tech center founded in Hefei - Headlines, features, photo and videos from ecns.cn|china|news|chinanews|ecns|cns

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## shuttler

*Announcement of the successful clinical trial of China's "pace-makers" for brain disease patients ( incl. Parkinson's disease)





*
*Congratulations to the Tsinghua University researchers!*

*The video reporting here:

中国国产脑起搏器打破美国独家技术垄断-20131210新闻联播-凤凰视频-最具媒体品质的综合视频门户-凤凰网*

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## shuttler

*'Waterjet' printer set to make a splash*
29 January 2014 Tim Wogan







The use of different aromatic dyes that isomerise when wet have been used to create paper that can be printed on again and again © NPG

*M*any people are keen to reduce their paper waste, but storing and sharing data electronically is not always feasible. Rewritable paper would be one answer to this problem. Now, Chinese scientists have come up with 
‘waterjet printing’ that uses paper coated with dyes that change colour when wet and return to their colourless state when dry.

To create rewritable paper the researchers screened various organic compounds and picked four oxazolidines. The lower-energy closed ring isomers of these oxazolidines are colourless in the absence of water. But when the paper is wetted hydrogen bonding stabilises the more polar open ring form of the molecules, changing the dyes’ absorption of visible light. The exact wavelengths absorbed vary with the organic compound used, allowing the researchers to print in a variety of colours.

The rewriteable paper was made by first coating ordinary paper with a layer of polyethylene glycol (PEG) to prevent it reacting with the dye, before a second layer of PEG containing the chosen dye was laid on top. Finally, another layer of PEG was added to prevent the dye absorbing water from the air or, conversely, losing water too quickly.






The team used a commercial inkjet printer and a cartridge filled with water to print out their own _Nature Communications_paper on the dyes. The printed page is dry to the touch and the print can be rapidly ‘erased’ by heating it to 70°C. Under ambient conditions the print remained legible for around 22 hours before evaporation wiped the page clean. Paper prepared in this way can be printed on and then erased more than 50 times.

The researchers are now working to extend the print’s lifetime, but principal investigator Xiao-An Zhang of *Jilin University *says swift fading would have advantages for daily newspapers, for example. ‘After people had finished, they could put the paper back and the colour would disappear,’ he says. ‘Every morning you'd have a fresh issue.’ He suggests different papers could be manufactured on which printouts would last for different lengths of time. The team is also currently working towards multi-colour printouts. Zhang declines to give details but says ‘we have confidence that eventually we will deliver them’.

Organic photochemist Francisco Raymo of the University of Miami, US, who helped develop the dye molecules but was not involved in the latest research, says he was ‘very pleased to see that our molecules are being put to good use’. However, he suspects the idea's commercial prospects may be hampered by the need to specially prepare the paper with a multi-layer coating.

Link:
'Waterjet' printer set to make a splash | Chemistry World

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## shuttler

*Successful surgical operation of 3-D lower jaw bone implant in Naval 411 Hospital in Shanghai, the first in China*
发布时间：2014-01-03 21:38 来源:中国海军

411医院成功完成国内首例3D打印下颌骨植入手术-今日要闻-中国海军网





Credit: mongcz.com





Credit: mongcz.com

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*China Builds Mammoth Detector to Probe Mysteries of Neutrino Mass*
2014-02-10





*Heavy hitter*. China hopes its planned JUNO detector, 38 meters across, will be the first to nail which of the three neutrino flavors is heavier or lighter. CREDITS: (INSET) IHEP; (SOURCE) M. BLENNOW _ET AL._ ARXIV 1311.1822


* I*t isn't easy to weigh a ghost. After neutrinos were hypothesized in 1930, it took physicists 67 years to prove that these elusive particles—which zip through our bodies by the trillions each second—have mass at all. Now, a Chinese-led team is planning a mammoth neutrino detector, meant to capture enough neutrinos from nearby nuclear reactors to determine which of the three known types, or flavors, of neutrinos are heavier or lighter. That mass hierarchy could be key to explaining how neutrinos get their mass, and measuring it would be a coup for China's particle physicists.

*Last month, scientists gathered in Jiangmen, in China's southern Guangdong province, to review plans for the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO). Groundbreaking is slated for later this year on the $300 million facility, which China aims to complete by 2019. The facility, which backers say will be twice as sensitive as existing detectors, should not only pin down key properties of neutrinos themselves but also detect telltale neutrinos from nuclear reactions in the sun, Earth, and supernovas. *

*Other planned facilities aim to reveal the mass hierarchy (see table), but China could be the first to arrive at an ironclad result. If China can pull it off, says William McDonough, a geologist at the University of Maryland, College Park, JUNO "will not only lead to breakthroughs in neutrino physics, but revolutionize the field of geology and astrophysics." A successful project would also mark another triumph for China's neutrino research, 2 years after the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment in Guangdong nailed a key parameter describing how different types of neutrinos morph into one another (Science, 16 March 2012, p. 1287). *

In 1998, physicists working with the subterranean particle detector Super-Kamiokande in Japan showed that neutrinos of one flavor, muon neutrinos generated by cosmic rays in the atmosphere, can change flavor as they zip through Earth. In 2001, researchers at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Canada proved that electron neutrinos from the sun do the same. Such neutrino "oscillations" prove that neutrinos have mass: Without it, the particles would move at light speed and—according to relativity—time would stand still for them, making change impossible. 

Knowing a neutrino has mass isn't the same as knowing what it weighs. In the simplest model, neutrino oscillations depend on just six parameters—the three mass differences among the neutrinos and three abstract "mixing angles." Physicists have measured all six—including the last mixing angle, which was measured by Daya Bay. They know that two of the neutrinos are close in mass and one is further off. But they don't know whether there are two lighter neutrinos and one heavier one—the so-called normal hierarchy—or an inverse hierarchy of two heavier ones and one light one. 

How the masses shake out "is fundamental for a whole series of questions," says Wang Yifang, director of the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) here, including whether neutrinos, like other particles, get mass from tangling with Higgs bosons or from a more exotic mechanism. The answer depends on whether the neutrino is, oddly, its own antiparticle. Physicists may be able to tell that by searching for a weird new type of radioactive decay. But, if it even exists, that decay would occur at an observable rate only if neutrinos follow an inverse hierarchy. 

To explore this frontier, an international team led by Wang will build a detector 700 meters beneath a granite hill near Jiangmen, equidistant from two nuclear power plant complexes. A sphere about 38 meters in diameter will contain 20,000 tons of a material known as a liquid scintillator. About 60 times a day, one of the sextillion or so electron neutrinos spraying from the reactors every second should bump into an atomic nucleus, sparking a flash of scintillation light that the detector can measure and analyze. In the 53 kilometers that the neutrinos will traverse from reactor to detector, about 70% will change flavor, says Cao Jun, a particle physicist at IHEP. By studying the energy spectrum of the neutrinos, physicists should be able to tease out the mass hierarchy. "But it's not going to be easy because the amount of energy to be measured is minuscule," Cao says. He estimates the measurement will require 6 years of data-taking. 

The key to JUNO's success will be its energy resolution. The largest liquid scintillation detector to date—KamLAND in Japan, which has 1000 tons of detector fluid—can only make out energy differences of greater than 6%. JUNO needs to double the resolution to 3%—no mean feat, especially as the larger volume of scintillator itself absorbs more light. 

If it works, JUNO should also make finer measurements of the known mixing angles and mass differences. "This is particularly important for the search for a possible fourth form of neutrinos," says Lothar Oberauer of the Technical University of Munich in Germany. If the sum of all oscillations doesn't add up to 100%, then the data would point to a fourth flavor (Science, 21 October 2011, p. 304)—a possibility that could topple the standard model of particle physics and help explain a host of astronomical puzzles. 

Another mission for JUNO is to observe geoneutrinos emitted during radioactive decay in Earth's deep interior, which generates heat that helps drive plate tectonics and power our planet's magnetic field. Detecting geoneutrinos "is the only way to get a glimpse of Earth's internal heat budget and distribution," McDonough says. The three facilities now detecting geoneutrinos, including the revamped Sudbury detector, record about 45 a year in total. JUNO should spot about 500 a year, enough to test various models of Earth's composition and heat flow, McDonough says. And that would score China another triumph in neutrino physics. (_Science_ Magazine) 

Above source: China Builds Mammoth Detector to Probe Mysteries of Neutrino Mass---Chinese Academy Of Sciences

Science magazine: China Builds Mammoth Detector to Probe Mysteries of Neutrino Mass


*Strange Effects: The Mystifying History of Neutrino Experiments*

*



*
*Image: A physicist sits inside the LSND detector. (Los Alamos National Laboratory)*


Late last year, scientists with the OPERA collaboration in Gran Sasso, Italy reported an incredible finding: neutrinos that appeared to be moving faster than the speed of light.


The news spread at a barely slower pace, fascinating the public. One thing everyone knows is that a very famous physicist named Albert Einstein once said that nothing should travel faster than light speed.

In February, the OPERA researchers found a couple small problems with their experimental set-up, calling into question the original faster-than-light neutrino result. The event highlighted the difficulty of science at the edge of the unknown -- and neutrinos are especially tricky.

More often than not, neutrino experiments throughout history have turned up perplexing results. While most of these experiments didn’t get the high-profile attention that disputing Einstein provides, they've challenged scientists and helped them learn ever more about the natural world.

In this gallery, we take a look at some of the strangest historical neutrino results and the findings that still have scientists scratching their heads.

*Above:*

*What Is a Neutrino?*
Neutrinos are tiny, elusive and very common. For every proton or electron in the universe there are at least a billion neutrinos.

Researchers need to know how neutrinos work because they're relevant to many areas of physics. These ubiquitous specks came into existence milliseconds after the Big Bang, and new neutrinos are created during the radioactive decay of elements, nuclear reactions within stars and the explosive collapse of supernovas.

“They’re one of the dominant particles in the universe but we still know very little about them,” said physicist Bill Louis of Los Alamos National Lab, co-spokesperson for the MiniBooNE neutrino experiment.

Neutrinos are so hard to study because they barely interact with other matter. Unlike the more familiar electron, they have no electromagnetic charge. They pass as easily through lead walls as through mist, and are so light that scientists long thought they had no mass at all. Detecting them requires closely watching a large tank of material, such a water, on the off chance that a neutrino will hit another particle and produce an observable change.

More here:
Strange Effects: The Mystifying History of Neutrino Experiments - Wired Science

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*China's high-speed trains will soon receive wi-fi *

After a two year wait, a wi-fi network is finally set to be installed on the mainland's high-speed trains 

By Jeremy Blum 

Passengers on the mainland's high-speed train network will soon be able to enjoy wi-fi access on their journeys, thanks to a network built by Chinese technology company Feitian. 

"Providing high-speed mobile wi-fi access on trains necessitates specific technical requirements that are very different from accessing wi-fi in a home or office environment," Feitian research and development head Duan Shiping said in a Sina Technology interview.

"[Feitian's] high-speed train wi-fi system will provide passengers with a wealth of information and entertainment applications, but it will also give the train management staff a platform for communication and supervision." 

In order to implement wi-fi, Duan said that Feitian had to meet signaling requirements and ensure that access to the mainland's largest wireless communication network providers - China Mobile, China Telecom and Cina Unicom - was viable along the high-speed rail's routes. 

"Feitian [has been collaborating with] Southwest Jiaotong University and the railway departments [to] test the wi-fi system for one year now," Duan said, adding that the system would be finalised and implemented at a later date after receiving official government approval. 　

Currently, passengers on all mainland trains are only able to access the internet via 3G and 4G networks on mobile phones, although connection may be spotty depending on the train's location and speed.

Local reports have not indicated whether the upcoming wi-fi system will also be installed in China's non-high-speed trains.

Sina Technology netizens had a mixed reaction to the news, and many pointed out that talk of a high-speed railway wi-fi network had begun as early as 2011.

"[At this point], I'd rather just have a place to charge my phone on board the train," one commentator wrote. "A socket in each seat."

Others said that there was no indication the wi-fi network would be free of charge, and many expressed disappointment that it would likely be implemented after the beginning of Lunar New Year on January 30 - a time when massive-scale travel traditionally occurs in China as city workers return to the countryside to spend time with family.

In the greater China region, services for in-train wi-fi currently exist for Taiwan's High Speed Rail as well as Hong Kong's Airport Express

China's high-speed trains will soon receive wi-fi | South China Morning Post

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*Chinese Scientists Develop Fire Resistant Paper*
2014-02-15 06:20:11 People's Daily Online Web Editor: Fei








A comparative test shows the fire resistant paper is well-preserved after being put over an alcohol lamp flame for 30 seconds, while ordinary paper is burnt to ashes in six seconds. [Photo: Taiyuan Evening Newspaper]

Fire has been a nightmare for paper historical relics. Researchers with Shanghai institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, have developed a new paper which is resistant to fire. Even under (at) 1,000 degrees Celsius, the paper will not burn. They made this new substance from calcium phosphate compound. The research was published in "Chemistry - A European Journal" on Jan. 27, 2014.

This novel kind of inorganic paper is flexible and incombustible, but still feels like ordinary paper. It can be torn, folded, and destroyed by strong acid. It can be used for important documents - preserving them for prolonged periods of time.

Chinese Scientists Develop Fire Resistant Paper

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*China robot studies SW Indian Ocean seabed*
English.news.cn 2014-02-13 20:17:32





Credit：news.xinhuanet.com





Credit: :news.xinhuanet.com
*" 大洋 1号 Dayang-1" oceanic research vessel *


BEIJING, Feb. 13 (Xinhua) -- China has used a domestically made underwater robot to study polymetallic sulfide in the southwest Indian Ocean, the State Oceanic Administration (SOA) said on Thursday.


Scientists aboard the "Dayang-1" oceanic research vessel remotely operated the "Hailong" unmanned underwater vehicle on five occasions from late January to early February, with one of their five attempts failing.

They found sulfide in more areas of China's exploration contract area, and gained new understanding of the characteristics of the carbonate area, according to the SOA.

This detailed information is important for China's future research in the polymetallic sulfide exploration contract area, the SOA said.

The hydrothermal sulfide is a kind of sea-bed deposit containing copper, zinc and precious metals such as gold and silver. Those metals formed sulfides after chemical reactions and came to rest in the seabed in "chimney vents."

With the help of the Hailong, scientists observed these vents, blind shrimp and fish as well as other creatures in hydrothermal areas. The underwater vehicle also extracted a tube of water samples.

Chief expedition scientist Tao Chunhui said the high-precision positioning, real-time control, observation, picture-taking and sampling in this task could not have been achieved with conventional survey methods.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## shuttler

*China tops Europe in R&D intensity*
Reforms to commercial and academic research systems still needed despite reaching spending milestone, say scientists.
Richard Van Noorden
08 January 2014





ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images
Research at computer firm Lenovo is helping to drive China’s rising R&D spending.

*By* pouring cash into science and technology faster than its economy has expanded, China has for the first time overtaken Europe on a key measure of innovation: the share of its economy devoted to research and development (R&D).


In 2012, China invested 1.98% of its gross domestic product (GDP) into R&D — just edging out the 28 member states of the European Union (EU), which together managed 1.96%, according to the latest estimates of research intensity, to be released this month by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The figures show that China’s research intensity has tripled since 1998, whereas Europe’s has barely increased (see ‘Shooting star’). The numbers are dominated by business spending, reflecting China’s push in the manufacturing and information- and communication-technology industries.

James Wilsdon, a science-policy analyst at the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK, says that China’s R&D juggernaut is “astonishing”, considering that the entire system emerged only after the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. In absolute terms, China’s R&D spending is still almost one-third lower than that of Europe, but the new figures are “a significant milestone”, says Wilsdon.

The reorientation of China’s economy displays its soaring ambition. However, money does not buy innovation. Despite success in some areas, notably high-speed rail, solar energy, supercomputing and space exploration, leaders in China are concerned that innovation is lacking, say science-policy analysts. “Chinese leaders would like something equivalent to a Nobel prize, or a world-class product similar to an iPhone,” says Denis Simon, an expert on Chinese science and innovation at Arizona State University in Tempe. “But there is a lot of risk aversion within the Chinese R&D system that doesn’t allow for entrepreneurial behaviour.”




Source: OECD

Horizon 2020 deal reached in Brussels

China’s budget backs science

World view: What can little Europe do?
More related stories

Some analysts argue that Europe does not need to be too worried by the stasis in research intensity. The number is an increasingly poor indicator of innovative activity, argues Kieron Flanagan, a science-policy analyst at the University of Manchester, UK. For example, it fails to pick up on innovation in the service-oriented industries that dominate many Western economies. An architectural or advertising firm could innovate while meeting the demands of a contract — making advances that could be widely copied and meaningfully affect an economy. Yet they would not count as R&D spending.

In China, meanwhile, “a great stodgy mass” of state-owned enterprises dominates commercial R&D spending — and they might actually suppress innovation, says Wilsdon. According to a study co-authored by Wilsdon and published in October 2013 by the innovation charity Nesta, based in London, the state companies might block more-inventive small and medium-sized enterprises. China, the study argues, is an “absorptive state”: one that adopts and adapts incoming technologies from overseas but does little breakthrough research. However, Wilsdon points to a few eye-catching bright spots: privately held, globally minded companies that include the telecommunications firms Huawei Technologies and ZTE, the e-commerce giant Alibaba and the computer firm Lenovo.

China’s emphasis on applied and product-development research means that funding for basic science remains low: only 5% of the country’s total R&D is devoted to this, compared with 15–20% in other major OECD nations. That money has to support a larger number of researchers who are already poorly paid, says Xue. Many academics, he says, complement their salaries by taking on short-term projects for industry — work that can distract their focus from fundamental science problems.



> *“ Chinese leaders would like something equivalent to a Nobel prize, or a world-class product similar to an iPhone.”*



Funding and evaluation systems suffer other distortions, says Cong Cao, a science-policy analyst at the University of Nottingham, UK. Grant money is not disbursed transparently, and basic-research funding tends to go to eminent scientists and safe projects, he says, with academics judged mechanically on the number of publications that they author. A staggering rise in scientific output has not yet been matched by an equivalent rise in highly cited articles; swathes of patents are filed but rarely used. Wilsdon says that world-class research occurs at the country’s top 30 universities and at Chinese Academy of Science institutes. “But it is still very patchy, and a lot of it is reliant on a relatively small number of outstanding scientists lured back from overseas,” he says.

Simon adds that China’s scientists need more independence and freedom to work on risky projects. Such changes might be on the way: Cao expects that at the forthcoming review of China’s 2006 science plan, funding agencies will be told to be more transparent about their grants and grantees, and Chinese researchers will be allowed to use more of their funding to boost the salaries of research staff.

One of the plan’s paramount goals seems to be right on target, however: China, unlike Europe, looks set to boost its research spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2020.

Nature 505,144–145 (09 January 2014) doi:10.1038/505144a

China tops Europe in RD intensity : Nature News & Comment


----------



## shuttler

shuttler said:


> *Successful surgical operation of 3-D lower jaw bone implant in Naval 411 Hospital in Shanghai, the first in China*
> 发布时间：2014-01-03 21:38 来源:中国海军
> 
> 411医院成功完成国内首例3D打印下颌骨植入手术-今日要闻-中国海军网
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Credit: mongcz.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Credit: mongcz.com



*Meantime in Guangdong province:*

*Surgery performed using 3D printing technology*

By ZHENG CAIXIONG (chinadaily.com.cn) Updated: 2014-02-13 17:34
Comments Print Mail Large Medium Small





Credit: info.ebnew





Credit:.familydoctor.com.cn





Credit: mendmyhip.com


A hospital in Guangdong province successfully performed surgery on a patient who suffered from acetabular fractures using 3D printing technology, Southern Metropolis Daily reported on Thursday.

The full simulation of the "fracture of acetabulum" was printed out by a 3D printer before the surgery was conducted at the No 3 Hospital Affiliated to Southern Medical University in the provincial capital Guangzhou.

The patient surnamed Zhang, 43, who suffered serious acetabular fractures in a fall, could sit up the second day after the surgery.

*It was the first time 3D printing technology has been in clinical treatment in the southern province.*

Surgery performed using 3D printing technology - China - Chinadaily.com.cn

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*A world's first，a triboelectrification-based thin-film nanogenerator，using （acoustic vibrations）noise pollution to generate electricity。*



*Triboelectrification-Based Organic Film Nanogenerator for Acoustic Energy Harvesting and Self-Powered Active Acoustic Sensing*

Jin Yang†‡, Jun Chen†, Ying Liu†, Weiqing Yang†,Yuanjie Su†, and Zhong Lin Wang*†§
† School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. Georgia 30332-0245,United States
‡ Department of Optoelectronic Engineering, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400044, China
§ Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems,Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100083, China
ACS Nano, Article ASAP
*DOI: *10.1021/nn4063616
Publication Date (Web): February 13, 2014
Copyright © 2014 American Chemical Society
*Address correspondence to zhong.wang@mse.gatech.edu.

*Abstract*





As a vastly available energy source in our daily life, acoustic vibrations are usually taken as noise pollution with little use as a power source. In this work, we have developed a triboelectrification-based thin-film nanogenerator for harvesting acoustic energy from ambient environment. Structured using a polytetrafluoroethylene thin film and a holey aluminum film electrode under carefully designed straining conditions, the nanogenerator is capable of converting acoustic energy into electric energy _via_ triboelectric transduction. With an acoustic sensitivity of 9.54 V Pa–1 in a pressure range from 70 to 110 dB and a directivity angle of 52°, the nanogenerator produced a maximum electric power density of 60.2 mW m–2, which directly lit 17 commercial light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Furthermore, the nanogenerator can also act as a self-powered active sensor for automatically detecting the location of an acoustic source with an error less than 7 cm. In addition, an array of devices with varying resonance frequencies was employed to widen the overall bandwidth from 10 to 1700 Hz, so that the nanogenerator was used as a superior self-powered microphone for sound recording. Our approach presents an adaptable, mobile, and cost-effective technology for harvesting acoustic energy from ambient environment, with applications in infrastructure monitoring, sensor networks, military surveillance, and environmental noise reduction.

Triboelectrification-Based Organic Film Nanogenerator for Acoustic Energy Harvesting and Self-Powered Active Acoustic Sensing - ACS Nano (ACS Publications)

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

The world's most advanced 3rd generation 100% low-floor tram prototype rolling off the production line at CSR's Qingdao Sifang Co. Ltd on 17.02.2014:








Employing such world's leading technologies as permanent magnet synchronous motor direct drive and articulated bogies。

最新一代永磁有轨电车样车在青岛下线-新华网

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## shuttler

Post *#3234* of Chinese Economy News & Updates | Page 216
Thanks for positng @Martian2

*Chinese scientists make flat surface behave like spherical antenna*

Scientists make flat surface behave like spherical antenna | Christian Science Monitor

"*Scientists make flat surface behave like spherical antenna*
Scientists create an artificial surface that can bend and focus electromagnetic waves like an antenna
By Sudeshna Chowdhury, Staff writer / April 15, 2014




The prototype of the fabricated metasurface lens shown with simulated x components of electric fields at 9 GHz with the source placed at the bottom left, right and center of the lens. (Credit: T.J. Cui/Southeast University Nanjing)

Researchers from China have created artificial surfaces that can bend and focus electromagnetic waves just like an antenna.

By arranging a large collection of tiny, metallic, U-shaped structures on the surface of a dielectric material, the team manufactured what they are calling "the first broadband transformation optics metasurface lens." The new lens has properties not found in nature.

The unique lens was engineered to mimic the properties of a Luneburg lens, a spherical lens first developed in the 1940s. Most lenses made up of single materials, such as plastic or glass, can uniformly bend light. The refractive index of a lens depends on what material it is made of. Glass, for example, has a refractive index higher than than of quartz. But in a Luneburg lens, the refractive index varies across its spherical surface, so the light bends depending on which part it hits.

Also, a typical Luneburg lens is unusual because it “can focus plane waves to a point at the edge of the lens, or radiate waves of the point source with high directivities, according to the findings of the study published in the journal of Applied Physics Letters on April 14, 2014.

Simply put, such a lens is capable of focusing light or electromagnetic waves to an “off-axis point at the edge of the lens." This means that the lens doesn’t directly focus light in front of it or behind it like a normal lens does. It can also direct electromagnetic waves coming from a nearby point source and radiate them in a particular direction.

Luneburg lenses have a wide range of applications as radar reflectors and as microwave antennae.

But the spherical nature of a Luneburg lens limits its use in other applications, Tie Jun Cui from Southeast University in Nanjing, China and an author on the paper said in a press release.

Therefore, the idea was to create a lens which would be flat yet it would have all the properties of a Luneburg lens.

"We now have three systematical designing methods to manipulate the surface waves with inhomogeneous metasurfaces, the geometric optics, holographic optics, and transformation optics," Dr. Cui said. 'These technologies can be combined to exploit more complicated applications.'"

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## shuttler

Also some great contributions by our members: @cirr @Martian2 @StarCraft_ZT @Edison Chen @qwerty @xhw1986 @Fukuoka @LTE-TDD @Nan Yang @haidian for their postings on various threads:

Duplicated topic - my bad @cirr
Making ten 3-D Houses in 1 day, Shanghai, China
How a Chinese Company 3D-Printed Ten Houses in a Single Day

Airbus，university team on 3-D printing
I really want this Chinese store to make me a 3D-printed mini-me
3D Printing: Life in 3D

Chinese test self-printing robots
Use of robots increases in China, may overtake Japan

Semiconductor showdown: TSMC, Intel, Samsung, Global Foundries, IBM, SMIC, and UMC | Page 3
150 megapixel full-Frame CMOS image sensor from Chinese fabless

University of Chinese Academy of Sciences ranks 1st in Nature Publishing Index 2013 Asia-Pacific

China moves past France and U.K. into 7th place in USPTO patents

INEST‘s Multi-functional LBE Integrated Experimental Loop KYLIN-II Operational

China's New Wager - Pulling Energy From the Ocean
China to build a huge underground neutrino experiment
Chinese scientists urged to develop new thorium nuclear reactors by 2024
Which country has more solar capacity than rest of world combined?
China gives you the world's 1st triboelectrification-based thin-film nanogenerator
China sets world record on solar power installations of 12GW last year
China and Russia to build world’s biggest thermal power plant

"Space Odyssey": China' s aspiration in future space exploration
China to launch first "space shuttle bus" this year
China capable of exploring Mars: leading space scientist
Yuan Zheng-1 Upper Stage Set for Launch in 2014
Preparation for Chang'e-5 launch on schedule

China charts course into LNG shipbuilding

Chin Opens Fourth Station in Antarctica

Huawei to Invest $600M in 5G Research & Innovation by 2018

5 ways China’s WeChat is more innovative than you think

China’s poorest beat our best pupils
Brain drain in reverse: China now world's No. 3 education hub

Shanghai high: ‘Skywalkers’ use the force to scale world’s 2nd-tallest tower (PHOTOS, VIDEO)

China plans the world's longest undersea tunnel

Qinghai-Tibet Railway Extends to the City Nearest to Mt. Everest in 2014
Xiamen-Shenzhen、Xi'an-Baoji、Liuzhou-Nanning、Chongqing-Lichuan and more HSRs Open Today

12

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## shuttler

*Chinese Scientists' successful 3D printing of a Cervical Tumour*

*Source:*
Three-dimensional printing of Hela cells for cervical tumor model in vitro - Abstract - Biofabrication - IOPscience


_






_

Abstract

Advances in three-dimensional (3D) printing have enabled the direct assembly of cells and extracellular matrix materials to form _in vitro_ cellular models for 3D biology, the study of disease pathogenesis and new drug discovery. In this study, we report a method of 3D printing for Hela cells and gelatin/alginate/fibrinogen hydrogels to construct _in vitro_ cervical tumor models. Cell proliferation, matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) protein expression and chemoresistance were measured in the printed 3D cervical tumor models and compared with conventional 2D planar culture models. Over 90% cell viability was observed using the defined printing process. Comparisons of 3D and 2D results revealed that Hela cells showed a higher proliferation rate in the printed 3D environment and tended to form cellular spheroids, but formed monolayer cell sheets in 2D culture. Hela cells in 3D printed models also showed higher MMP protein expression and higher chemoresistance than those in 2D culture. These new biological characteristics from the printed 3D tumor models _in vitro_ as well as the novel 3D cell printing technology may help the evolution of 3D cancer study.

FEATURED ARTICLE
Yu Zhao1,2,6, Rui Yao1,2,6, Liliang Ouyang1,2, Hongxu Ding1,2, Ting Zhang1,2, Kaitai Zhang3, Shujun Cheng3 and Wei Sun1,2,4,5,7

*A*ffiliations
weisun@tsinghua.edu.cn sunwei@drexel.edu

1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Biomanufacturing Center, Tsinghua University, Beijing, People's Republic of China
2 Biomanufacturing and Rapid Forming Technology Key Laboratory of Beijing, Beijing, People's Republic of China
3 State Key Laboratory of Molecular Oncology, Beijing Key Laboratory for Carcinogenesis and Cancer Prevention, Cancer Institute (Hospital), Peking Union Medical College and Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing, People's Republic of China
4 Biomanufacturing Engineering Laboratory, Shenzhen Tsinghua Graduate School, Shenzhen, People's Republic of China
5 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA
6 These authors contributed to this work equally.
7 Author to whom any correspondence should be addressed.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## shuttler

*Generating electricity by moving a droplet of ionic liquid along graphene*
*
Abstract*
Since the early nineteenth century, it has been known that an electric potential can be generated by driving an ionic liquid through fine channels or holes under a pressure gradient. More recently, it has been reported that carbon nanotubes can generate a voltage when immersed in flowing liquids, but the exact origin of these observations is unclear, and generating electricity without a pressure gradient remains a challenge. Here, we show that a voltage of a few millivolts can be produced by moving a droplet of sea water or ionic solution over a strip of monolayer graphene under ambient conditions. Through experiments and density functional theory calculations, we find that a pseudocapacitor is formed at the droplet/graphene interface, which is driven forward by the moving droplet, charging and discharging at the front and rear of the droplet. This gives rise to an electric potential that is proportional to the velocity and number of droplets. The potential is also found to be dependent on the concentration and ionic species of the droplet, and decreases sharply with an increasing number of graphene layers. We illustrate the potential of this electrokinetic phenomenon by using it to create a handwriting sensor and an energy-harvesting device.

*Authors and Affiliations*
Jun Yin, Xuemei Li, Jin Yu, Zhuhua Zhang, Jianxin Zhou & Wanlin Guo
State Key Laboratory of Mechanics and Control of Mechanical Structures, Key Laboratory for Intelligent Nano Materials and Devices of the Ministry of Education, and Institute of Nanoscience, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 29 Yudao Street, Nanjing 210016, China

*LINK*

Another report on the same:

*Pouring Saltwater Over Graphene Generates Electricity*

*Adam Clark Estes*
*4/15/14 11:15am*




SEXPAND

A team of Chinese scientists did an impossible-sounding thing. They created electricity simply by dragging a droplet of saltwater across a layer of graphene. No big fires, no greenhouse gases, no fuss. They created energy with just a miracle material and one of the most plentiful substances on Earth.

The science behind the effect is actually quite simple. When the droplets of saltwater sat static on the graphene, they carried an equal charge on both sides. But, when moved across the surface of the graphene, the electrons in the saltwater were desorbed on one end of the graphene and absorbed on the other, generating a measurable voltage along the way. The faster the water moves, the higher the voltage it generates—although the total voltage was still pretty low, about 30 millivolts. A standard AA battery, by comparison, produces about 1.5 volts. It helps that graphene is insanely conductive.

So that's not much—not yet—but it's something. It's not the voltage that scientists are excited about, though. It's the scale. Current hydroelectric power solutions can only exist on a very large scale. Think Hoover Dam. However, this method for producing hydroelectric power could support nano-sized generators without any byproducts. They do believe the method will scale up, too. That is, if anybody can afford that much graphene.

*LINK*

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## shuttler

*中国新建远洋科考船“向阳红10”号正式入列
“Xiangyanghong 10" China's comprehensive Ocean Scientific Research vessel is Launched*
2014-3-30

*Link*










Above photo credits: Xinhuanet

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## shuttler

*The prestigious Gregori Aminoff Prize - 2014 goes to 
*
*施一公 Yigong Shi*
*Professor *
*School of Life Sciences*
*Tsinghua University *
"*for his groundbreaking crystallographic studies of proteins and protein complexes that regulate programmed cell death*"





Credit: chisa.edu.cn

Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien - Pristagare

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## shuttler

*New Chinese herbal medicine has significant potential in treating Hepatitis C




*
Photo Credit: 
Potential hepatitis C cure found in Chinese herb


*London, UK, Saturday 12 April 2014: *Data from a late-breaking abstract presented at the International Liver CongressTM 2014 identifies a new compound, SBEL1, that has the ability to inhibit hepatitis C virus (HCV) activity in cells at several points in the virus’ lifecycle.[1]

*SBEL1 is a compound isolated from Chinese herbal medicines that was found to inhibit HCV activity by approximately 90%*. SBEL1 is extracted from a herb found in certain regions of Taiwan and Southern China. In Chinese medicine, it is used to treat sore throats and inflammations. The function of SBEL1 within the plant is unknown and its role and origins are currently being investigated.

Scientists pre-treated human liver cells _in vitro _with SBEL1 prior to HCV infection and found that SBEL1 pre-treated cells contained 23 percent less HCV protein than the control, suggesting that SBEL1 blocks virus entry. The liver cells transfected with an HCV internal ribosome entry site (IRES)-driven luciferase reporter that were treated with SBEL1 reduced reporter activity by 50% compared to control. This suggests that that SBEL1 inhibits IRES-mediated translation, a critical process for viral protein production.

In addition, the HCV ribonucleic acid (RNA) levels were significantly reduced by 78 percent in HCV infected cells treated with SBEL1 compared to the control group. This demonstrates that SBEL1 may also affect the viral RNA replication process.

Prof. Markus Peck-Radosavljevic, Secretary-General of the European Association for the Study of the Liver and Associate Professor of Medicine, University of Vienna, Austria, commented: “People infected with hepatitis C are at risk of developing severe liver damage including liver cancer and cirrhosis. In the past, less than 20 percent of all HCV patients were treated because the available treatments were unsuitable due to poor efficacy and high toxicity. Recent advances means that we can now virtually cure HCV without unpleasant side effects. However, the different virus genotypes coupled with the complexity of the disease means there is still a major unmet need to improve options for all populations.”

Professor Peck-Radosavljevic continued: “SBEL1 has demonstrated significant inhibition of HCV at multiple stages of the viral lifecycle, which is an exciting discovery because it allows us to gain a deeper understanding of the virus and its interactions with other compounds. Ultimately this adds to our library of knowledge that may bring us closer to improving future treatment outcomes.”

HCV invades cells in the body by binding to specific receptors on the cell, enabling the virus to enter it.2 Once inside, HCV hijacks functions of the cell known as transcription, translation and replication, which enables HCV to make copies of its viral genome and proteins, allowing the virus to spread to other sites of the body.2 When HCV enters the host cell, it releases viral (+)RNA that is transcribed by viral RNA replicase into viral (-)RNA, which can be used as a template for viral genome replication to produce more (+) RNA or for viral protein synthesis. Once the viral RNA is transcribed, HCV initiates a process known as IRES-mediated translation, which allows the viral RNA to be translated into proteins by bypassing certain protein translation checkpoints that would normally be required by the host cell to start protein translation.[2],[3] Viral RNA is the genetic material that gives HCV its particular characteristics. This process enables the virus to take advantage of the host cell’s protein translation machinery for its own purposes.

*There are an estimated 150 million to 200 million people living with chronic HCV and more than 350,000 people die annually from HCV-related diseases*.[4] HCV is transmitted through blood contact between an infected individual and someone who is not infected. This can occur through needlestick injuries or sharing of equipment used to inject drugs.[5]

_Disclaimer: the data referenced in this release is based on the submitted abstract. More recent data may be presented at the International Liver Congress™ 2014._

- Ends -

Contributors:

[1] C.W Lin et al. Multiple Effects Of Chinese Herbal Medicine SBEL1 On Hepatitis C Virus Life Cycle. Abstract presented at the International Liver Congress™ 2014

Affiliated with
Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Department of Medicine, E-DA Hospital/I-Shou University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Graduate Institute of Medicine, College of Medicine, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

[2] Scheel, T.K.H. and Charles M Rice, C.M. Understanding the hepatitis C virus life cycle paves the way for highly effective therapies. _Nature Medicine, _2013; 19: 837–849

[3] Komar, A.A. and Hatzoglou. Cellular IRES-mediated translation. _Cell cycle_, 2011; 10 (2): 229-240

[4] European Comission. Horizon 2020. Breaking the Hepatitis C lifecycle. February 2014. Available atBreaking the Hepatitis C lifecycle - European Commission Accessed 19.03.14.

[5] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Hepatitis C FAQs for the Public. 2014. Available atCDC DVH - Hepatitis C FAQs for the Public Accessed 19.03.14.

*LINK*

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## shuttler

*The world's oldest cheese has been found buried with Chinese mummies*

By Katie Drummond on February 27, 2014

*LINK*

_USA Today_ reports, the cheese was found in clumps on the bodies of well-preserved mummies (including the one shown above) in China's Small River Cemetery Number 5. The location is unique, because bodies interred in the region were essentially freeze-dried, meaning their features, clothing, and culinary accompaniments are still discernible even thousands of years later. In large part, that incredible preservation is due to a combination of dry air, salty earth, and tightly-sealed burial conditions.

The cheese itself, which was found over a series of archeological digs dating back to 2002, was identified using analysis of protein and fat content. Investigators speculate that the cheese was made using a kefir starter (bacteria and yeast) which is then combined with milk. The majority of today's cheeses, in contrast, rely on rennet — an enzyme taken from an animal's gut — to curdle milk and yield a final product. But the kefir strategy, researchers say, makes sense: it's significantly easier because it doesn't necessitate the slaughter of a young animal, and kefir-based cheese is lower in lactose, which aligns with the prevalent lactose intolerance among Asian populations. More details on the researchers' methods and analyses will be laid out in a forthcoming issue of the _Journal of Archaeological Science_.

*Here*

*Proteomics evidence for kefir dairy in Early Bronze Age China*

*Authors*

Yimin Yang - a, b, 1;  Anna Shevchenko - c, 1; Andrea Knaust - c; 
Idelisi Abuduresule - d; Wenying Li - d; Xingjun Hu - d; Changsui Wang -a; 
Andrej Shevchenko - c

*Abstract
*
Cheese making has been inferred at several sites in northern Europe as early as the 6th millennium BC and was common in Egypt and Mesopotamia in 3rd millennium BC. However, the remains of ancient cheeses have never been found and recipes of ancient dairy, its production scale, social and economic impact remain poorly understood. Here we present direct proteomics evidence for the production of an earliest known cheese that was found as an organic mass associated with the mummies of Early Bronze Age cemetery of Xiaohe (1980–1450 BC) in Xinjiang, China. Kefir fermentation of ruminant milk by a symbiotic culture of_Lactobacillus kefiranofaciens_ and other lactic acid bacteria and yeasts was the basis of robust, scalable, probiotic, lactose-free dairy and a key technological advance that introduced economic benefits of extensive herding into a semi-pastoral household of the Eastern Eurasia population already in the Early Bronze Age.

*Graphical abstract*






*Affiliations

a*- Department of Archaeometry, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, PR China
*b*- Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100044, PR China
*c*- MPI of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, 01307 Dresden, Germany
*d*- Xinjiang Cultural Relics and Archaeology Institute, Ürümchi 830000, PR China

*1*- Equal contribution of Yimin Yang and Anna Shevchenko.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## shuttler

*Smart responsive phosphorescent materials for data recording and security protection*

*Nature Communications 5, Article number: 3601 doi:10.1038/ncomms4601*
Received 21 October 2013 
Accepted 10 March 2014 
Published 07 April 2014

*Abstract*

Smart luminescent materials that are responsive to external stimuli have received considerable interest. Here we report ionic iridium (III) complexes simultaneously exhibiting mechanochromic, vapochromic and electrochromic phosphorescence. These complexes share the same phosphorescent iridium (III) cation with a N-H moiety in the N^N ligand and contain different anions, including hexafluorophosphate, tetrafluoroborate, iodide, bromide and chloride. The anionic counterions cause a variation in the emission colours of the complexes from yellow to green by forming hydrogen bonds with the N-H proton. The electronic effect of the N-H moiety is sensitive towards mechanical grinding, solvent vapour and electric field, resulting in mechanochromic, vapochromic and electrochromic phosphorescence. On the basis of these findings, we construct a data-recording device and demonstrate data encryption and decryption via fluorescence lifetime imaging and time-gated luminescence imaging techniques. Our results suggest that rationally designed phosphorescent complexes may be promising candidates for advanced data recording and security protection.

*Affiliations
*
*Key Laboratory for Organic Electronics & Information Displays and Institute of Advanced Materials, Nanjing University of Posts & Telecommunications, 9 Wenyuan Road, Nanjing 210023, China*
Huibin Sun, Shujuan Liu, Wenpeng Lin, Kenneth Yin Zhang, Wen Lv, Huiran Yang, Gareth Jenkins, Qiang Zhao &
Wei Huang
*Institute of Advanced Materials and Jiangsu-Singapore Joint Research Center for Organic/Bio- Electronics & Information Displays, Nanjing Tech University, 30 South Puzhu Road, Nanjing 211816, China*
Huibin Sun, Xiao Huang, Fengwei Huo, Gareth Jenkins & Wei Huang

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## shuttler

*China unveils native mobile operating system*
Xinhua | 2014-1-9 19:54:07
By Agencies





Credit：expreview.com
Press Conference





Credit: kejixun.com
*The slogan reads: 960 OS - Protect your cellphone, Safeguard your livelihood*

*



*
Credit: upload.chinaz.com
*A 960 OS display*

A new mobile phone operating system was unveiled by a Chinese tech firm on Thursday, making it the country's first smart phone system with independent intellectual property rights.

The system, named *960 OS*, was developed by the *同洲电子* *Coship Electronics Co., Ltd*. It is a brand new operating system following predecessors such as Android, IOS, and Windows phone, the Shenzhen-based company said.

*960 OS is a native operating system based on the Linux kernel and took Coship 15 years to develop,* said the company's chair, 袁明 Yuan Ming, noting that the system can provide better protection for information stored in a smart phone.

As the majority of smartphones in the Chinese market use foreign operating systems such as Android and IOS, the ownership of one system with independent IPR is essential for both national and individual information security, according to Liu Yunjie, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

It can boost the competitiveness of China's mobile and Internet industry, he added.

*LINK*

*Chinese researchers discover poisonous plant remedies*
Xinhua | March 24, 2014 22:45 
By Agencies







Credit: cal.vet.upenn.edu


Chinese scientists said on Monday that they have "tamed" wild poisonous plants on the Tibetan plateau, an achievement that can help protect livestock and prevent desertification.

Researchers with Tibet's Academy of Agricultural and Animal Husbandry Sciences have developed both drugs against the effects of locoweed, a common name for any plant that produces swainsonine, a phytotoxin harmful to livestock.

Wang Baohai, a researcher with the Lhasa-based academy, said the remedies included therapeutic liquid for oral administration and preventive pills based on Western medicine and traditional Chinese medicine respectively.

"According to clinical tests, the liquid can cure 95 percent of livestock poisoned by locoweed," said Wang Jinglong, another expert with the academy. "China has granted it a national patent."

The researchers have also figured out a comprehensive mechanism for locoweed prevention and treatment. They removed locoweed in a fenced area of grassland, where poisoned livestock can be isolated and recover.

Herdsmen call locoweed the enemy of grassland because livestock show symptoms of intoxication after eating the plant, which causes animal reproduction rates to drop or even death. Its rampant growth can also lead to grassland degradation.

In Tibet alone, locoweed is distributed across a total area of nearly 100 million mu (about 7 million hectares), leading to economic losses of more than 100 million yuan (about 16 million US dollars) annually.

But it is not a totally useless plant. According to Tsering Dorje, an academic with Tibet's Academy of Agricultural and Animal Husbandry Sciences, it is a valuable Chinese herbal medicine and can be edible after a detoxication processing. "It enjoys huge economic potential," he said.

*Link*

More info on the poisonous plant here: 
Locoweed - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*The world's most powerful hydraulic forging hammer
2014-04-17 09:23 无锡日报
*
@19,500 tons output, it can curve/forge a piece of 450 ton steel ingot /slab into the shape of a piece of aircraft carrier flight deck in one shot!

*



*
Credit: *Wuxi Daily* and Huangqiu military

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## mike2000

i'm impress by this thread. though china still has a long way to go to match the U.S. but its indeed good to see the country is advancing/catching up very fast. Keep it up , the world always needs new innovations and research to move forward. Maybe the BRICS can one day create a scientific research organization were they can pool in their efforts,skills and knowledge together.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*Unmanned deep sea (4500 m) bathyscaphe "The Seahorse" passes the trial test*
April 22, 2014　Source：ChinaNews





Credit: sjtu.edu.cn





Credit: mydrivers.com




Credit: Caijing




Credit: Sohu





Credit: Sina










Credits for the above 2 pix: Xinhua News

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*China's high-speed trains will use 'Chinese chips'
*
People's Daily Online | 2014-4-23 10:56:55 

By Agencies


China's first 8-inch *IGBT* (insulated gate bipolar transistor) chip production line, built by CSR (China South Locomotive & Rolling Stock Corporation Limited) Zhuzhou base, will be put in operation in June 2014.

This means that China has broken foreign monopoly on the core technology of high-speed trains, and China's high-speed trains will use the "Chinese chips."

The high-speed trains manufactured by CSR, with the domestic 8-inch IGBT chips installed, achieved a speed of over 600 kilometers per hour in the test run. CSR will become the only company in China which has comprehensively mastered IGBT chip technology R&D, module packaging & testing and system application.

China's high-speed trains will use 'Chinese chips' - SCI_TECH - Globaltimes.cn

*China's high-speed trains will use 'Chinese chips'
*
People's Daily Online | 2014-4-23 10:56:55 

By Agencies


China's first 8-inch *IGBT* (insulated gate bipolar transistor) chip production line, built by CSR (China South Locomotive & Rolling Stock Corporation Limited) Zhuzhou base, will be put in operation in June 2014.

This means that China has broken foreign monopoly on the core technology of high-speed trains, and China's high-speed trains will use the "Chinese chips."

The high-speed trains manufactured by CSR, with the domestic 8-inch IGBT chips installed, achieved a speed of over 600 kilometers per hour in the test run. CSR will become the only company in China which has comprehensively mastered IGBT chip technology R&D, module packaging & testing and system application.

China's high-speed trains will use 'Chinese chips' - SCI_TECH - Globaltimes.cn

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## shuttler

*Plants used to weed out soil pollution*
*Updated: 2014-04-18 01:53*
*By Cheng Yingqi (China Daily)*

Chinese scientists have developed soil remediation technologies to prepare for large-scale applications.

The technologies focus on using plants to absorb heavy metal contaminants in soil.

*The technologies were developed by the Center for Environmental Remediation of the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Resources Research under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which began research 10 years ago.*

Soil contamination is serious in China, with large areas of cropland polluted, said Lei Mei, a professor at the center.

Soil remediation technologies have been applied on 133 hectares of land in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, Henan, Yunnan and Hunan provinces and Beijing on a trial basis, and Lei said she believes the technologies will have "good application prospects".

A report from the Ministry of Environmental Protection on Thursday showed that about 19.4 percent of farmland in China was polluted, according to Xinhua News Agency.

"The publication of the survey result is a milestone for soil remediation in China," Lei said.

Before the release of the survey results on Thursday, the latest official data available was released by the Ministry of Land and Resources in 2006. That report said that about 7 percent, or 10 million hectares, of arable land in China was contaminated by heavy metals.

By 2009, the country had 135.38 million hectares of arable land.






Credit: plants.ifas.ufl.edu

*I*n 2005, scientists from the center proved in the laboratory that the plant *Pteris vittata*, or *Chinese brake fern*, had cleansing abilities when planted in soil polluted by heavy metals such as lead, zinc, sulfur and arsenic.

After the fern becomes saturated with heavy metals from the polluted soil, the aboveground part of the plant is cut off and burned. A new shoot grows from the root, and the process is repeated.

Field experiments since 2010 on 60 hectares of polluted land in Hechi, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, showed the plant can reduce heavy metals by 10 percent a year, which means it can help reduce pollutants to safe levels within three to five years.

The scientists have promoted planting of the fern among local farmers. The ferns are intercropped, or grown in the same fields, as cash crops such as flax.

*Meanwhile, scientists are developing a new passivator, which is a coat with an oxide layer that protects against heavy metal contamination of the soil.

Liu Wenhua, chief engineer of the Guangdong province Research Center for Geoanalysis, recently developed a new passivator that could reduce cadmium, lead, copper and zinc in soil.*

*LINK*

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## shuttler

IBP (Institute of Biophysics) scientists discover left-handed double helix structure in 30nm chromatin fiber
2014-04-25





*Pic credit and showing: The Institute of Biophysics - Chinese Academy of Sciences

 Link

The world leading scientific journal Science published a research article entitled “Cryo-EM Study of the Chromatin Fiber Reveals a Double Helix Twisted by Tetranucleosomal Units” on April 25, 2014. This article described a recent scientific breakthrough brought by scientists from the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. 

As we know, DNA is the carrier of genetic information. Each of us has long enough DNA to reach from the earth to the sun and back more than 300 times. But our entire DNA is packaged tightly through DNA-histone complex with higher-order structure and squeezed into tiny nucleus so that our bodies don’t need to grow up like giants. The DNA- histone complex is called chromatin. The packaging of chromatin plays a central role in transcriptional regulation and other DNA-related biological processes. 

Studies have shown that by regulating chromatin structure within the nucleus (in particular the higher-order 30nm chromatin structure) , organisms can selectively activate or silence genes so as to control cell differentiation, tissue specificity, and cell fate. This phenomenon is called epigenetic regulation. However, the higher-order structure of chromatin has long been a "black box" to the researchers due to its tiny size and complexity. 

IBP Professors ZHU Ping and LI Guohong have many years of close cooperation and unremitting efforts in studying chromatin structure. Collaborating with Professor XU Ruiming, a professor studying epigenetics at IBP, the researchers recently determined the three dimensional structure of the 30 nm chromatin fiber through cryo-electron microscopy utilizing a single particle reconstruction technique. They found, for the first time in the world, that the 30nm chromatin fiber is composed of smaller structural units. Each unit consists of 4 nucleosomes. These unites further form a higher-order left-handed double helical structure, opposite to the right-handed DNA double helical structure. At the same time, they also demonstrated for the first time that the linker histone H1 plays a critical role in the formation of the 30nm chromatin fiber. 

One Science reviewer of the article comment on the achievement “How do nucleosome arrays fold into higher-order chromatin fibers remains a fundamental question in molecular biology. Over last three decades, solving the structure of the 30 nm fiber, …, remained a ‘holy grail’. The work … solving one of the most challenging biological structures”. Another reviewer comments on the study “… constitute the largest fragments of chromatin solved at this (or better) resolutions and,… constitute an important enough step forward in our understanding of how chromatin might pack …”.





（Song et al, Science，25 April 2014: Vol. 344 no. 6182 pp. 376-380，research article） 

This work provides critical insight and assists us to better understand mechanisms of many important biological processes, including differential gene expression and genetic regulation during cell proliferation, development, and differentiation process, stem cell maintenance and differentiation, aging and abnormal development, and such complicated diseases as tumor, diabetes, psychiatric, and nervous system diseases. 

This study is supported by funds from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, the National Natural Science Foundation, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Ministry of Education.

Link to Science
*

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## shuttler

*Intelligence industry research project launched in E China*
English.news.cn 2014-04-25 23:07:38

*Nanjing Qilin City and Technology Park (南京麒麟科技创新园)- landscape models and overview (中国智谷 The Intelligence Valley of China )*





Credit：http://www.qilinpark.com










Credit: http://www.qilinpark.com






Credit: rpgwebgame

*N*ANJING, April 25 (Xinhua) -- A research institute focusing on the intelligence industry was established in east China on Friday to help the country sharpen its competitive edge in an intelligence revolution.


The Nanjing Research Institute of Intelligence Industry was created by the Institute of Automation under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IACAS) in partnership with the Nanjing Qilin Technology Park.

*Located in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu Province, the research base consists of an institute, a technology park, a company and a foundation, in addition to a center for international communication, according to the IACAS.*

*The intelligence base will concentrate on five intelligence-related fields during its initial stage, including high-performance microprocessors, intelligence information and big data, intelligent medical equipment, advance process control and intelligent device, as well as cultural technology and visual industry.*

Wang Donglin, head of the IACAS, said that the research project is both necessary and important, as China needs to stay up-to-date with the international intelligence revolution.

Wang added that it will contribute to China's economic development and serve the needs of government departments and the general public by providing state-of-the-art information technology, as it boasts advanced research and a foundation for scientific development.

*LINK*

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## shuttler

*China sees increasing invention patents*
English.news.cn 2014-04-27 22:42:02


BEIJING, April 27 (Xinhua) -- China saw major progress in invention patent applications and grants as the country aims to forge an innovation-powered economy.


The State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) accepted 156,000 invention patent applications in the first quarter of 2014, up 10.6 percent year on year.

The portion of such applications in all the accepted patent applications expanded to nearly 40 percent in the first three months.

According to a joint survey conducted by the SIPO and the National Bureau of Statistics, every 10,000 people owned an average of 4.2 invention patents at the end of March, 0.2 more than at the end of 2013.

The SIPO director Shen Changyu said intellectual property creativity in China is improving notably and the number of patents, trademarks and copyrights, is growing at a fast speed.

The survey also showed that patented inventions play an important role in enhancing profitability in major industrial enterprises

*Link*

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## shuttler

*Chinese team's breakthrough may help fight deadly Mers virus*
UPDATED : Wednesday, 30 April, 2014, 8:21am
Lo Wei




_Masks protect against the Mers virus in Jeddah. Photo: AFP_

_



_

_Credit: virologydownunder.com_

_



_
_Credit: gulfnews.com_

*H*ong Kong and mainland scientists have identified two antibodies that could be "promising candidates" to help develop a treatment for Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers).

The team, led by Tsinghua University researchers, is turning its experience from the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) outbreak of 2003 to the new virus, which some fear could mutate and become even more deadly - although any cure for Mers remains years away.

Their research has found two antibodies - proteins produced by the immune system to identify and neutralise foreign objects - which bind effectively with the Mers virus and prevent it from entering host cells, cutting off the infection process.

The Mers virus may one day become as transmissible as the Sars coronavirus 

Team member Professor Yuen Kwok-yung, an expert in infectious diseases at the University of Hong Kong, said the results were promising at a time when the virus appeared to be spreading fast, with cases increasing since the middle of last month.

More than 300 cases of Mers - a coronavirus with similarities to Sars - have been diagnosed since it was identified two years ago, and 40 per cent have been fatal.

About 75 per cent of cases are from human-to-human transmission.

Scientists believe the virus may have spread from bats to humans via camels - much as Sars is thought to have spread to humans through civet cats.

"If that is indeed the case, the Mers coronavirus may undergo further genetic changes and one day become as transmissible as the Sars coronavirus," Yuen said.

"Therefore we must prepare for this scenario before it happens."

Sars infected more than 8,000 people around the world over the course of nine months in 2002 and 2003. One-fifth of the cases and 299 of the 774 deaths were in Hong Kong.

The team discovered that antibodies could form the basis of an effective treatment through their research into Sars and the 2009 swine flu outbreak.

They studied antibodies from 58 people contained in a US "library" of human antibodies, by putting them together with the Mers virus. Two of them bound to the virus' surface protein.

Mers has not yet spread to Hong Kong, though local doctors have been instructed to watch for symptoms and tourists travelling to affected areas have been told to exercise caution.

*LINK*

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## shuttler

*Chinese Researcher Enters Internet Hall of Fame*
By Alan Aw | Top News
April 30, 2014





钱华林 教授 Prof Qian Hualin delivering his speech during a internet forum
Credit: sina

*R*esearcher Qian Hualin has been recognized by the Internet Society for his contributions to the web.

Professor Qian Hualin, a researcher at the Computer Network Information Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), has been inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame, an international accolade launched by the Internet Society (ISOC).

Prof. Qian, who was commended for his innovative contributions to the Internet, has held directorial appointments at the National Basic Research Program of China and the World Bank-funded National Computing and Networking Facility of China. His contributions include playing a key role in linking China’s network to the global Internet in 1994, and presiding over the establishment of China’s domain name system, which helped secure to “.cn” as China’s top level domain.

A computer scientist by training, Prof. Qian also led a team in 2008 to create the theoretical basis for hierarchical switched network protocols, standards and algorithms, which resulted in five patents and two software copyrights.





胡启恒 教授
Prof Hu Qiheng
Credit: 中国互联网协会

*P*rof. Qian is the second Chinese to be inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame. The other member is former CAS Vice President Professor Hu Qiheng, who was inducted in 2013. A total of 24 inductees were recognized this year.

*Link*


The 2014 ASCE's Freudenthal Medal in Civil Engineering goes to
Professor Li Jie of Tongji University, China
for his contribution to "probabilistic density evolution analysis for nonlinear structural responses, and seismic reliability analysis of large-scale civil engineering foundation structures"






李杰教授 Professor Li Jie
Professor of Structural Engineering Dept, Tongji University

*Link*

*XU Chunye Honored with the 2014 “International Materials Science Prize"*
2014-04-23

*X*U Chunye, 徐春叶, a professor from Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale and School of Chemistry and Materials,was honored with the International Materials Science Prize at World Forum on Advanced Materials(POLYCHAR 22, 7-11 April 2014, Stellenbosch, South Africa).







_Photo: The award presentation. Middle: Prof. Chunye Xu, left: Conference Chairman Prof. P. E. Mallon (Chair of Dept. of Chemistry and Polymer Science, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa) and right: Prize Committee Chairman Prof. J. J. Pireaux (University of Namur, Belgium)_

Prof.XU Chunye has been devoted to advanced intelligent materials for around 20 years. Her research work has been published in over 70 journal articles. Over 20 patents (including US patents, international patents and Chinese patents) have been awarded. Since 2009, at the USTC, XU has focused on the synthesis and fabrication of functional materials including electrochromic polymers and electroactive polymers for the application of color changeable windows, sunglasses, sensors and actuators. She was elected in the Hundred Talents Program (Chinese Academy of Sciences) and the Recruitment Program of Global Experts (Thousand Talents Program of Chinese Central Government). Parts of her awarded patents have already been tech-transferred to international companies,e.g. 3M, AYA, Priva (USA) and Toyoukohan (Japan). Commercial antidazzle rearview mirrors have already been in market for automobile use.

The International Materials Science Prize was first set up in 2007 by international scientific organization of POLYCHAR (World Forum on Advanced Materials) in USA. The prize is awarded to those who make distinguishing contributions to the fundamental and application progress in the areas of macromolecule physics and chemistry. It aims to facilitate the development of polymer science by cultivating research talents and encouraging scientific innovations. Until now, eight scientists, from Czechoslovakia, Nepal, United Kingdom, South Africa, Germany, South Korea, have been awarded. It is notable that among those Prof. Chunye Xu is the first Chinese laureate.

(HFNL)

*LINK*

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## cirr

*Laser Science in China: A rich history of photonics research continues to bear fruit at SIOM*

05/01/2014





*Celebrating its 50th anniversary, the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics has pioneered advances in high-power lasers, high-field laser physics, and quantum optics.*
*RUXIN LI*

Founded in May 1964, the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics (SIOM) has been widely recognized as the most important research center of laser science and technology in China. SIOM is one of approximately 100 institutes of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and its origin lies with the laser research groups of the CAS institutes in Beijing and Changchun, where the first Chinese ruby laser oscillator was demonstrated in 1961.

SIOM has become a comprehensive research institute with primary research fields that include high-power laser technologies, high-field laser physics, information optics, quantum optics, solid-state laser technologies and their applications, and materials for laser and optoelectronics. Here, in commemoration of our 50th anniversary, I would like to highlight some recent progress on laser technology development and physics research.

*Fusion research*

SIOM has focused on the research and development of high-power laser technology and engineering for decades. In addition to the earlier achievements in the development of high-power laser technologies and facilities for laser fusion experiments, SIOM has developed in recent years the first Chinese multikilojoule laser facility, Shenguang (SG for short and means "magic light" in Mandarin)-II facility. The SG-II laser facility includes eight laser beams (Fig. 1) in two bundles and a multifunctional beam (the ninth beam). The time synchronization among laser beams is within 10 ps root-mean-square (RMS).





*FIGURE 1.* The SG-II laser facility with eight beams was completed in 2000, with a beam aperture of 240 mm and total output energy of 6 KJ at 1053 nm/1 ns and 3 KJ at 351 nm/1 ns, respectively. The ninth beam of SG-II was built in 2005 as a probe and high-pressure shock-wave driver; its output reaches 5.2 KJ/pulse with a 350-mm beam aperture.

In this facility, a fiber oscillator, fiber amplifier, and high-performance integrated waveguide element have been used in the seed units. The timing jitter (10 ps level) between different pulses is controlled efficiently by a unique short optical pulse trigger technology. A single-pixel spatial light modulator has been developed to actively control the near-field intensity of laser beams, and therefore an arbitrary spatial distribution can be easily obtained. Furthermore, an active wavefront control system is designed, optimized, and integrated in the ninth beam. The main components include a deformable mirror and a Hartmann wavefront sensor for each of the nine beams. A computer controller is adopted to correct laser aberrations, and then a good focusing ability can be obtained.

The SG-II laser facility has been stably operated for more than10 years and will be upgraded to a 20 kJ class laser facility in the near future. This facility has become an international user facility for high-energy density physics research. One of the most exciting experiments recently conducted in the facility involves laboratory astrophysics, such as the modeling of loop-top X-ray source and reconnection outflows in solar flares.1

*Ultra-intense fs lasers*

SIOM developed the first Chinese petawatt (PW) femtosecond laser facility in 2007 using a chirped pulse amplification (CPA) scheme. This laser system was recently upgraded to 2 PW based on a 100-mm dia. Ti:sapphire amplifier (see Fig. 2),2 which to our knowledge is the highest peak power ever achieved with a laser system. With a newly developed high-contrast broadband front end, the signal-to-noise ratio of the 26 fs long laser pulse was also improved.





*FIGURE 2.* The 100-mm-diameter Ti:sapphire multipass amplifier for the 2 PW femtosecond laser facility, where both active and passive schemes for suppressing transverse parasitic lasing was successfully implemented.

The suppression of transverse parasitic lasing is regarded as a serious technical bottleneck for larger aperture CPA amplifiers of 10 PW class. As an alternative, optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification (OPCPA) can support higher energy amplification without producing a photoluminescence effect. Lithium triborate (LBO) is an attractive nonlinear crystal that can support high-efficiency and broadband OPCPA near 800 nm wavelength. A 10 PW or higher peak power femtosecond laser system can be developed by combining the Ti:sapphire-based CPA chain and a LBO-based OPCPA booster amplifier. SIOM recently implemented a hybrid Ti:sapphire-CPA and LBO-OPCPA laser system,3 which can produce an amplified pulse energy of 28.68 J with a spectral bandwidth of 80 nm (FWHM). After pulse compression, the peak power of the laser system is 0.61 PW, and the pulse length is 33.8 fs.

*High-field laser physics*
The laser wakefield accelerator (LWFA) can now produce multi-GeV electron beams on a much smaller scale than the conventional radiofrequency accelerators. Based on the tunnel-ionization-induced injection in the first stage, an all-optical cascaded LWFA with near-GeV quasi-monoenergetic electron beams (QMEBs) was first realized at SIOM.4 The collimated QMEBs with peak energy of ~0.8 GeV are achieved with an acceleration gradient of 187 GV/m.

A key issue in the staged LWFA scheme is controlling the seeding phase of electrons into the second stage, which SIOM recently demonstrated for the two-stage LWFA. By optimizing the seeding phase of electrons into the second stage, electron beams beyond 0.5 GeV with 3% RMS energy spread were produced over a short acceleration distance of 2 mm. Peak energy of the electron beam was further extended beyond 1 GeV by lengthening the second acceleration stage to 5 mm.5

Filamentation of intense femtosecond laser pulses in air is an important topic in high-field physics. A spectacular snowfall was induced by the filamentation of high-repetition-rate femtosecond laser pulses in a cloud chamber for the first time.6 Furthermore, SIOM demonstrated waveform-controlled terahertz radiation from an air-filament plasma driven by phase-stabilized few-cycle laser pulses.7

In recent studies, remote air lasing was created due to instantaneous buildup of population inversion in air molecular ions.8,9 Of special note, it was also demonstrated that alignment-dependent ionization probabilities of molecules from lower-lying orbitals can be retrieved by detecting the alignment dependence of fluorescence emission from tunnel-ionized carbon dioxide molecules.10

*Advanced solid-state lasers*

SIOM has been developing space-borne solid-state lasers and lidar systems since 2001. To date, several lasers were implemented in lidar systems that are now in orbit. The first space-qualified solid-state laser was the transmitter of the laser altimeter on China's lunar explorer Chang'E-1. This diode-pumped NdCr:YAG laser with pulse energy of 150 mJ at 1064 nm and pulse width of 5 ns was launched in 2007 and operated at 1 Hz repetition rate for ~16 months in orbit.

Every aircraft in China's lunar program since then has been equipped with space-qualified solid-state lasers manufactured by SIOM. On the Chang'E-3 probe, a Yb-doped pulsed fiber laser system with 7 ns pulse width and 50 kHz repetition rate was developed as the transmitter of the scanning image lidar. To our knowledge, it was the first space-qualified fiber laser operating in deep space.

In addition to the lasers for the Chang'E Program, different types of space-qualified lasers with long life and high reliability have also been developed in SIOM, including mid-energy diode-pumped solid-state lasers, single-frequency lasers, and mid-average-power pulsed fiber lasers.

SIOM was also one of the earliest research institutes engaged in developing high-power fiber lasers in China. In 2002, a 3.9 W single-mode fiber laser was demonstrated. Using our own double-clad fiber, up to 1.75 kW CW was obtained in 2009. In 2013, SIOM successfully assembled a 1.5 kW all-fiber engineering prototype with a beam quality m2 of 1.46. Significant progress has also been achieved in high-peak-power pulsed fiber lasers. Coherent-beam-combining (CBC) technology was also demonstrated in 2008 with two-dimensional four-fiber-laser CBC output by using a self-imaging cavity. With the realization of pulse-superposition and phase-locking, we have obtained excellent CBC for a multichannel fiber amplifier array with approximately 88.7% visibility of the far-field interference pattern.

*Cold-atom physics*

In recent years, SIOM's research into cold-atom physics has mainly focused on the application of laser cooling techniques, including Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs), atom chips, atom guiding with a radio-frequency field, atom interferometers, and strong coupling plasma physics in cold-atom systems. A rubidium (Rb) BEC was demonstrated in 2002 and a Rb BEC on an atom chip in 2008 (see Fig. 3).





*FIGURE 3. *Bose-Einstein condensates on an atom chip: The mirror magneto-optical trap (MOT) configuration is in the top right corner; the image of a cold atom is shown in the bottom left corner; and the process from mirror MOT to BEC is shown from the top left corner to the bottom right corner.

Recently, we investigated the interactions between heteronuclear atoms, such as Rb and Yb, and demonstrated an atomic gyroscope on an atomic chip.

Research on time and frequency standards includes new conceptual microwave clocks, time and frequency transfer and dissemination in optical fibers, and optical frequency standards. The first Rb fountain clock was built in 2005; its stability now reaches to 2 ×10-15.

SIOM is also developing a space cold-atom clock that will be used in the Chinese Space Station to pursue the performance limit of microwave clocks. Besides the primary clock, the scientists developed two types of compact clocks with high stability to the level of ~10-15, including an integrating-sphere cold-atom clock and a pulsed optically pumped clock in a vapor cell.

Research on frequency transfer mainly focuses on control of noise in optical fiber for remote users. To meet the requirements of next-generation applications on frequency standards, SIOM is developing optical frequency standard techniques, including a mercury optical-lattice clock, an ultrastable laser via fiber interference, and optical frequency transfer and dissemination in a dark fiber.

*High-power laser materials*

Together with Hoya and Schott, SIOM is one of three global suppliers of large (up to 400 mm clear aperture) Nd-doped laser glass slabs, which are the key active material of high-power laser-fusion drivers. SIOM can provide commercial Nd:glass slabs up to 810 × 460 mm in size with a good wavefront performance (figure error less than 1/3 wavelength).

As for high-power long-lifetime flashlamps, more than 30 patented technologies have been granted to SIOM. Both pulsed and continuous flashlamps are available in different sizes and shapes, including linear, helical, and U-shaped. Dimensions range from 5 to 185 cm in arc length and from 3 to 42 mm in bore diameter.

Moreover, optical coatings for high-power laser applications can be customized for wavelength ranges from deep ultraviolet to infrared. The laser-induced damage thresholds for mirrors and polarizers are greater than 60 J/cm2 and 30 J/cm2 (1064 nm, 10 ns) respectively, which are the leading levels among the "thin film damage competition" results from the SPIE Laser Damage symposiums in recent years.

*References


Laser Science in China: A rich history of photonics research continues to bear fruit at SIOM - Laser Focus World
*

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

**
*Chinese scientists have achieved on any noise immunity of “Schrodinger’s cat State”*

Original title: I of any scientists realize the noise immunity of Schrodinger’s cat State
I
Staff writer, Hefei, May 11-reporter Li Chenxu recently learned from the ustc, Chen Yuao academician Pan Jianwei of the school and his colleagues, Liu Naile Photonic cascade coding approach implemented has high fault-tolerance for any noise rate of Schrödinger’s cat, and towards large-scale quantum network, as well as macroscopic entangled States has taken an important step forward. The results were published in the latest edition of the authoritative academic journal nature · on Photonics.

“Schrödinger’s cat” was one of the founders of quantum mechanics what Erwin Junker started · a hypothetical experiment proposed by Schrödinger in 1935, under the special set of circumstances, cat’s life or death depends on observation, unexplored at the time of “tangled”. In 2012, Austria introduced the concept of a cascade cat State, a physicist, in which a coding scenario using an ordinary cat State as logical units, use cascaded coding combinations, you can achieve the goal of effective against Decoherence effects.

FULI 





Pan Jianwei group developed a scalable encoding method using two-photon bit coded a bit of logic, has prepared a three-bit logic cascade cat State, by experimental observation on cascade cat State is different from ordinary cat State in its own haunting noise evolution illustrates coding cat State any notable advantages of noise immunity.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged Chinese scientists have achieved on any noise immunity of "Schrodinger's cat State", evidence for the prosecution, skout, window snyder on May 12, 2014 by admin.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*Chinese scientists successfully developed two-dimentional black phosphorus field-effect transistors*

**

*Two-dimensional crystals have emerged as a class of materials that may impact future electronic technologies. Experimentally identifying and characterizing new functional two-dimensional materials is challenging, but also potentially rewarding. Here, we fabricate field-effect transistors based on few-layer black phosphorus crystals with thickness down to a few nanometres. Reliable transistor performance is achieved at room temperature in samples thinner than 7.5 nm, with drain current modulation on the order of 105 and well-developed current saturation in the I–V characteristics. The charge-carrier mobility is found to be thickness-dependent, with the highest values up to ~1,000 cm2 V−1 s−1 obtained for a thickness of ~10 nm. Our results demonstrate the potential of black phosphorus thin crystals as a new two-dimensional material for applications in nanoelectronic devices.

Parts of research findings published in the Nature Nanotechnology：
*
*Black phosphorus field-effect transistors : Nature Nanotechnology : Nature Publishing Group*

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

China Sugon（Dawning）Information Industry Co., Ltd starts developing the Dawning-7000，a 100 petaflops monster of a computer using indigenous processors、high-speed communication networks、mass storage systems、operating system and application software：

我国将研发十亿亿次超级计算机- 中国日报网


----------



## cirr

*Not to be confused with the 100 petaflops Dawning 7000 in post #355 which will use domestic Loongson chips plus a host of other indigenous hardware and software (operating and application) *

*Shenwei-X mentioned below is a third 100 petaflops HPC. *

*MAY 12, 2014*

China will upgrade its world number one supercomputer to 100 petaflops next year and has sights on exaflop supercomputer[/paste:font]

The newest Intel Knight’s Landing chip will provide an approximately 3x speed boost. China can swap out the 48,000 Phi cards and maek the Tianhe-2 into a 100+ petaflops supercomputer. China will also likely upgrade the custom TH-express interconnect.

*China is also hard at work on the first legs of its exascale research program with the goal being to create an “advanced and feasible architecture” that falls into the target of 30GFlops per Watt.*











100PFlops projects will have More than double the investment compared the previous five year supercomputer project 

– MOST (863) 
– Local government 

1.  Tianhe-2 33.86/54.9PFlops now, 2015 ~100PFlops 
2.  Shenwei-x ~100PFlops 

China will then have two 100 Petaflop class supercomputers.(_three as a matter of fact_)

China is targeting over 50GFlops/watt for its exascale architecture

*New enable Tech Research*

* Reconfigurable Architecture
* Optical computing and communication 
* Nano-electronics 
* Quantum computing 

*New storage Architecture*

* Memristors (RRAM) 
* Carbon nanotubes (China is very strong strong in this)
* Graphene (China is also very strong in this)

China will upgrade its world number one supercomputer to 100 petaflops next year and has sights on exaflop supercomputer

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Beidou2020

@Hu Songshan @Aeronaut @WebMaster 

Why is @shuttler banned?

He is a very valuable member to this forum and the Chinese section.

When will his ban be lifted? 

Thanks.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Sasquatch

Beidou2020 said:


> @Hu Songshan @Aeronaut @WebMaster
> 
> Why is @shuttler banned?
> 
> He is a very valuable member to this forum and the Chinese section.
> 
> When will his ban be lifted?
> 
> Thanks.



Off Topic/Trolling posts.


----------



## Mugwop

Hu Songshan said:


> Off Topic/Trolling posts.



Where have you been man? I never see you posting here?

Do we have a thread here about Chinese Jet engine development?


----------



## Sasquatch

Jessica_L said:


> Where have you been man? I never see you posting here?



Busy.


----------



## Beidou2020

Hu Songshan said:


> Off Topic/Trolling posts.



If shuttler is trolling then 95% of PDF members should be banned for the same reason.

Without him, Chinese section loses such an incredibly valuable member providing lots of great articles on the development of China. No one here to going to replace him so the forum becomes dead, boring and full of trolls. Just look at the Vietnamese members such as BQ77 that constantly trolls yet nothing happens to him or atatwolf who does nothing but trolling.

Yet such a senior and irreplaceable member such as shuttler is the one that is banned. He is merely responding to trolls but he is the one that ends up getting banned whereas the instigators get off with a slap on the wrist. Very unfair.

Can you please tell us when shuttler will have his ban lifted? We all want him back ASAP and need a date so we can hopefully look forward to his return (if he decides to come back). He is the reason this particular thread has been doing well for so long.

If it's a permanent ban or a very lengthy ban, then can you kindly reduce the ban or lift the ban completely?

Thanks

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## eazzy

#BringBackOurShuttler 

Seriously I don't understand why he is banned...

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Beidou2020

The deadly Ebola virus has not made landfall in China yet, but in a country of 1.3 billion, that doesn’t stop people from wanting to be overly prepared, just in case.

Ebola test kits have just been given the ok for mass production in China by Shenzhen Puruikang Biotech Company, and this will be the first time a product of its kind will be released on a nationwide level.

According to the company, the test kit only needs a small sample in order to detect the disease, and results are produced within three to four hours. The test kits will be distributed to disease control centers around China.

With no effective way of controlling the virus once infection sets in, experts say that one of the most important ways to stop an outbreak is through early detection.

So far over 1,300 people have lost their lives to Ebola during the latest outbreak in West Africa. While there is no current vaccine for the virus, researchers in the US are currently testing new drugs based on a chimpanzee adenovirus. Human trials are to begin in September.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## BuddhaPalm

Make sure we don't sell it to Viets, Pinoys, Indians and Japanese. Let them die from ebola while we and our allies survive.


----------



## BuddhaPalm

Looks like Ebola is spreading in India. Let them invent their own serum.

Exclusive: Is India ready to tackle the deadly Ebola virus? : India, News - India Today


----------



## Götterdämmerung

BuddhaPalm said:


> Make sure we don't sell it to Viets, Pinoys, Indians and Japanese. Let them die from ebola while we and our allies survive.



Don't be mean. Remember the Hippocratic Oath!

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## TaiShang

*Wearable devices: China’s tech giants focus on next-gen gadgets*

It’s not just Samsung, Google and Intel that are innovating to create the next generation of wearable devices. Chinese tech giants such as Xiaomi and Tencent are also looking at expanding their market.

In fact, just this week, Xiaomi launched a smart bracelet that can help monitor exercise performance. However, that’s just the beginning.

The company aims to further develop the technology to create a bracelet that can work as per pre-set preferences to help in household chores, switch on and off other devices and even decide which shows you’d prefer to watch on TV.

*Watch this video for more on Xiaomi’s plans and the market for wearable devices in China.*

*



*

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## cirr

*Meet China's baby-shaped pears and heart-shaped melons*

BEC CREW 

FRIDAY, 22 AUGUST 2014






Image: Fruit Mould Co

Since the beginnings of agriculture, humans have been customising their fruits and vegetables to suit their needs. Early on, bigger fruits and higher yields were the most important considerations, and while these factors_ still_ outweigh the actual taste factor, other, slightly less pressing desires have come into play over the past decade or so.

Namely, people want to eat fruit that doesn’t look like regular fruit.

Which is how baby-shaped pears have come into existence. Grown by China-based manufacturing company, Fruit Mould Co., these strange little shapes have been selling like crazy in China, along with square-shaped apples, and heart-shaped watermelons and cucumbers. Their Buddha-shaped pears are apparently extremely popular.

The way these fruits are created, says Carl Engelking at _Discover Magazine_, is by placing very young fruits - still attached to their vines or branches - into a plastic mould. The moulds are then clamped shut with screws and shielded from direct sunlight using a sheet of tough, water-proof paper.

*At a certain point in the fruit’s maturity, the mould can be removed and the fruit will continue growing into the desired shape. This last bit can be very tricky, and farmers have spent many years getting the final shapes right*. According to Brian Ashcraft at Kotaku, it took farmers in Japan three years to perfect their version of the heart-shaped watermelon.

While this all looks like some frivolous fun, there is the opportunity to apply practical applications to this technology. Packing round fruits for transportation, storage, and display in supermarkets takes up lots of space, which means more money and trucks on the road, and securing their roly-poly shapes in trucks and display spaces takes time. The square watermelon idea originally came to be because Japanese supermarkets don't have a lot of room to display their large, round shapes, so local farmers developed easily-stackable square ones. Of course, they're around three times more expensive than regular watermelons, presumably due to the amount of work that went into their development, but as the technology ages, the prices should eventually come down.

See below for more images of Fruit Mould Co.'s current offerings:





Pears in their moulds. Credit: Fruit Mould Co.





Credit: Fruit Mould Co.





Credit: Fruit Mould Co.





Credit: Fruit Mould Co.





Credit: Fruit Mould Co.

Sources: _Discover Magazine_, Fruit Mould Co., Kotaku

Gallery: Meet China's baby-shaped pears and heart-shaped melons (Science Alert)

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Huaren

人参果！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！


----------



## cirr

**

*Is it a toy? Is it a jelly? No, it's a PEAR! Chinese farmer grows fruit in bizarre mould shapes and says 'kids love eating my babyfruit'*

*Chinese farmer De He sells fruit in the shape of babies and Buddhas*
*Cashing in on fairytale about baby-shaped fruit that gives immortality*
*Says: 'Who can resist a baby? And who can resist fruit that looks like one?'*
By SIMON TOMLINSON

PUBLISHED: 15:00 GMT, 15 May 2014 | UPDATED: 17:01 GMT, 15 May 2014

He believes they are a sure-fire way of getting children to eat fruit - and make him a healthy profit in the process.

But some think the bizarre produce being grown by one Chinese farmer is just too weird for consumption.

De He has been forcing pears on his farm near the city of Nanchang in south China's Jiangxi province into moulds that causes them to grow into the shape of babies and Buddhas.





That's a sweet trick: Chinese farmer De He has been growing baby and Buddha-shaped fruit by forcing them to grow into moulds on his farm near the city of Nanchang in south China's Jiangxi province





Bizarre: The fruits have been getting a lot of attention in local shops, but at £3 each they are ten times the price of ordinary fruit and reports suggest most people think they are 'rather weird'

*He is hoping to cash in on an old Chinese fairy tale about a magic fruit in the shape of human infants.*

*The tale says that whoever eats such a magic fruit attains immortality.*

He first practised by growing ginseng into the shape of a baby Buddha before making the human moulds.

He said: 'Who can resist a beautiful baby? And who could resist a lovely piece of fruit that looks like one?

'It occurred to me I would be on to a winner if I could market fruit in the form of perfectly formed, innocent babies and that has proven to be the case. 

'Local supermarkets cannot get enough of the stuff.'





A wise move? De wants to expand his fruit-moulding business to make some super-sized edible babies out of watermelons and pumpkins

De wants to expand his fruit moulding business to make some *super-sized edible babies out of watermelons and pumpkins.*

He added: 'Parents are particularly happy. Junk food and sweet consumption is on the rise in China and making many children obese.

'Getting them to eat fruit in a fun way is important and they love eating the babyfruit.'

The fruits have been getting a lot of attention in local shops, but at £3 each they are ten times the prices of the normal shaped fruit.

And reports so far are that despite all the attention, few people are buying the fruits, with most seeming to think its 'rather weird'.


Read more: PEARS grown in shape of babies and Buddhas by Chinese farmer | Mail Online 
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## TaiShang

*Chinese atomic clock given international recognition*

BEIJING, Aug. 21 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese atomic clock has been accepted by international authorities as a primary basis for high-precision international atomic time, announced the National Institute of Metrology (NIM) on Thursday.

The cesium atomic clock, known as NIM-5 and developed by the institute, is a kind of extremely accurate time-keeping device. It can be accurate to within one second over 20 million years, according to Chinese media.

The nod from the Paris-based Bureau International des Poids et Mesures, the authority for international time and frequency standards, has made China the eighth country to calibrate the international atomic time, after France, the United States, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and Russia.

*Insiders said the clock could define a Chinese atomic time independent from GPS signals or other international time-keeping data*.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## Beidou2020

Great news.


----------



## dlclong

A spine model implanted with a 3D-printed artificial axis is displayed at Peking University Third Hospital in Beijing, August 14, 2014. Chinese doctor Liu Zhongjun has successfully implanted an artificial axis produced by a 3D printer into the spine of a bone cancer patient. This was the first time that an axis produced by 3D printing had been implanted into a patient, according to Liu. Normally, a diseased axis would be replaced by a standardised, hollow titanium tube, said Liu. [Photo/Agencies]




Chinese doctor Liu Zhongjun poses for pictures with a spine model implanted with a 3D-printed artificial axis, at Peking University Third Hospital in Beijing, August 14, 2014. Liu has successfully implanted an artificial axis produced by a 3D printer into the spine of a bone cancer patient. This was the first time that an axis produced by 3D printing had been implanted into a patient, according to Liu. Normally, a diseased axis would be replaced by a standardised, hollow titanium tube, said Liu. [Photo/Agencies]




A medical staff member displays a spine model implanted with a 3D-printed artificial axis at Peking University Third Hospital in Beijing, August 14, 2014. Chinese doctor Liu Zhongjun has successfully implanted an artificial axis produced by a 3D printer into the spine of a bone cancer patient. This was the first time that an axis produced by 3D printing had been implanted into a patient, according to Liu. Normally, a diseased axis would be replaced by a standardised, hollow titanium tube, said Liu. [Photo/Agencies]




Chinese doctor Liu Zhongjun gives an explanation of the 3D-printed artificial axis he has successfully implanted into the spine of a bone cancer patient at Peking University Third Hospital in Beijing, August 14, 2014. [Photo/Agencies]





A spine model implanted with a 3D-printed artificial axis is displayed at Peking University Third Hospital in Beijing, August 14, 2014. Chinese doctor Liu Zhongjun has successfully implanted an artificial axis produced by a 3D printer into the spine of a bone cancer patient. This was the first time that an axis produced by 3D printing had been implanted into a patient, according to Liu. Normally, a diseased axis would be replaced by a standardised, hollow titanium tube, said Liu. [Photo/Agencies]





A spine model implanted with a titanium tube is displayed at Peking University Third Hospital in Beijing, August 14, 2014. Chinese doctor Liu Zhongjun has successfully implanted an artificial axis produced by a 3D printer into the spine of a bone cancer patient. This was the first time that an axis produced by 3D printing had been implanted into a patient, according to Liu. Normally, a diseased axis would be replaced by a standardised, hollow titanium tube, said Liu. Picture taken August 14, 2014. [Photo/Agencies]





A spine model is displayed at Peking University Third Hospital in Beijing, August 14, 2014. Chinese doctor Liu Zhongjun has successfully implanted an artificial axis produced by a 3D printer into the spine of a bone cancer patient. This was the first time that an axis produced by 3D printing had been implanted into a patient, according to Liu. Normally, a diseased axis would be replaced by a standardised, hollow titanium tube, said Liu. [Photo/Agencies

3D-printed implants just got one of their biggest real-world tests to date. Peking University Third Hospital has successfully implanted the first 3D-printed vertebra in a 12-year-old boy with cancer in his spinal cord. The bone substitute is made from titanium powder like many orthopedic implants, but promises to be both safer and longer-lasting than conventional replacements. Since it's designed to mimic the shape of the child's original vertebra, it doesn't need cement or screws to stay in place; healing should go faster, too. The construct is full of small holes that let natural bone grow inside, so it should eventually become a permanent, stable part of the spine that won't need adjustments at some point down the road.
CCTV notes that the full results of this surgery won't be available for some time. He'll have to wear gear that keeps his head and neck still for the next three months, and it will likely take much longer than that before we know how well the implant holds up in real-world conditions. If everything goes smoothly, though, the surgery will be proof that 3D-printed bones are useful virtually anywhere in the body -- and, in some circumstances, might save your life.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## BoQ77

actually this is product of powder metallurgy.


----------



## dlclong

BoQ77 said:


> actually this is product of powder metallurgy.


actually you still always funny
troll

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## BoQ77

dlclong said:


> actually you still always funny
> troll



then tell me how this part "printed", if you think that's a different way.
I means the "printer" used powder metallurgy tech to "print" this part.

Although sharing the same name 3D printing, printers of each part would use suitable tech to "print" out : plastic injection, powder metallurgy, 

this is one of 3D printer using a very simple tech


----------



## cirr

*Two Chinese firms among potential bidders for STATS ChipPac *

SINGAPORE Wed Aug 27, 2014 9:15pm EDT

(Reuters) - Two Chinese firms are among companies which have approached STATS ChipPAC Ltd about acquiring it, the Singapore provider of technology services said on Thursday.

STATS ChipPAC, which has a market value of $1.2 billion and is majority owned by state investor Temasek Holdings [TEM.UL], identified Jiangsu Changjiang Electronics Technology Co and Tianshui Huatian Technology Co as possible bidders.

The Singapore company, which provides semiconductor packaging design and assembly solutions, had said in May that it had received approaches by some companies but had not identified them.

"The company wishes to confirm that these parties include JCET and Huatian. There is no assurance that any of these approaches will result in any definitive agreement or transaction," it said in a statement on Thursday.

The Chinese companies, which were first named by Bloomberg news on Wednesday, each have a market capitalisation that is only slightly bigger than STATS ChipPAC.

STATS ChipPac's shares shot up 12 percent higher on Wednesday and were flat on Thursday. The stock has doubled this year on the view that it was a takeover target for Taiwanese or Chinese firms.

Moody's Investors Service cut its ratings for the company this month, citing its debt load as well as slowing growth in the high-end communications segment and muted demand from the personal computer and consumer-end markets. It noted that revenues have been on a declining trend since 2011.

STATS ChipPAC's corporate family rating and senior unsecured debt rating was cut to Ba2 from Ba1.

Temasek in early 2007 made a bid of up to $1.6 billion for the 64.4 percent of STATS ChipPAC it did not own, but it was unable to hit the 90 percent mark which would have allowed a delisting. It currently owns 83.8 percent of Stats ChipPAC, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Two Chinese firms among potential bidders for STATS ChipPac| Reuters

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*China's eyes in the sky point to space exploration's future *
_
2014-09-03 12:33

China Daily Web Editor: Wang Fan_

Just after China put its second high-definition Gaofen satellite into orbit on Aug 19, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) said that police had used the database of the first Gaofen, operational now since December, to discover illegal border crossings from Democratic People's Republic of Korea, poppy plantations in Inner Mongolia autonomous region, marijuana farms in Jilin province and a tanker smuggling oil off the coast of Fujian province, according to reports in China Daily.

China's Ministry of Public Security the same day announced that they were unclear about the release and use of data from CNSA, the paper also reported.

Ostensibly, of course, satellites are put into space for things like geographic and natural resource surveys, climate-change monitoring, city planning and disaster relief. But in the era of Big Data, who can resist taking a peek, especially when the pictures are so breathtaking and detailed.

"They're sending down good images, there's no doubt about that," said space historian and author Bob Zimmerman, who runs the website behindtheblack.com.

"These are earth resource satellites to look at the earth at high-resolution for doing things like agriculture and geology research and climate research," Zimmerman said. "They are comparable to the American Landsats, though of course modern."

Zimmerman called them "very highly sophisticated, well-designed ground resource satellites".

"It's remote sensing so it has high-resolution, so any data it gets will be used for both military and civilian - no different from the United States, in a sense - but it's not a purely civilian craft. It has both purposes at the same time," Zimmerman said.

China plans to launch another three Gaofens before the end of 2015, each with different purposes, with a sixth going up in 2016 and a seventh in 2018.

"NASA has a public relations thing they've been calling the A-Train," Zimmerman said. "That's a series of climate earth-resource satellites they're launching to look at the Earth at a variety of different wave lengths and resolutions to study the climate and the Earth's environment. It seems to me that's what this Gaofen program is."

As for China's overall space program, Zimmerman called it "a robust manned space program with very high ambitions". He said it was "a literal copy of the kind of space program that the Soviet Union had in the '60s", in which the government's purposes are public relations and developing the industrial base".

The big difference, of course, is that China does not have the high-stakes Cold War competition that was pressuring both the Soviets and the US to go fast. "Therefore they're going extremely slow," he said, recalling that China's first manned flight was in 2003 and in the 11 years since have done only four more.

"So you're talking about one every two to three years," Zimmerman said. "A very slow pace, but very deliberate and well-thought out."

Zimmerman believes China's future plans are to build and assemble a Mir-type space station in orbit, again modeled after what the Russians did in the '60s and '70s. Their prototype space station modules now are comparable to the early Salyut Russian stations "to get the feel of how to do something like this and then assemble a much larger station comparable to Mir", he said.

"Again, just like the Russians they are very clear on what the goal of the space station program is: it's learning how to build interplanetary spaceships that can travel to other planets," Zimmerman said. "That's what Mir was designed around and that's what the Chinese are doing. It's very clear they have this focus."

Zimmerman, who has written a book on why space stations are built, said, "It's not a laboratory in space. If you're doing it now, and putting people on it for a long period of time, you're learning the engineering and medical research necessary to build a vessel that will take people to other planets."

"It's a serious program that is going to happen, but once again the pace is going to be very slow," he said.

As for the future of orbital satellites, Zimmerman said the cutting-edge technology now is CubeSats, NASA's "nano-satellites" that are about 4-inches square and weigh about 3 pounds.

"The effort to shrink the size of satellites so you don't need as big a launcher to put them up or you can put significantly more capability on them because things have been miniaturized. That in the next five years is going to revolutionize the entire satellite industry, communications especially."

According to NASA's website, three CubeSats were piggybacked in the rocket that launched the first Gaofen, putting in orbit the mini-gadgets for Peru, Turkey and Argentina.

Another component has to do with the launch industry, which going through a significant revolution right now with competition from new companies. "That is a challenge for China, because they've had the lowest-cost launcher with the Long March family and because of US State Department regulations, it's difficult for American companies to use Chinese rockets. But they were still the cheapest company on Earth, and that's not the case anymore. They're under significant competition from Space X."

What comes from the completion? It's"fueling innovation that we haven't seen in decades", said Zimmerman, whose most recent book Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 is now available in ebook format.

China's eyes in the sky point to space exploration's future - Headlines, features, photo and videos from ecns.cn|china|news|chinanews|ecns|cns

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## TaiShang

*Chinese scientists build thought-powered arm*
*cntv*

*Chinese* scientists from Zhejiang University have successfully built a bionic arm which can be powered by thought. *The achievement is seen as a significant breakthrough for patients without limbs or who are paralyzed*.






_The achievement is seen as a significant breakthrough for patients without limbs or who are paralyzed._

The bionic hand can perform the gestures for “rock, paper, and scissor”... all controlled by human thought.

*The 28-year-old patient who tested the robotic arm was implanted with a brain electrode.*

"When she wants to play "rock, paper, scissor", the electrode can interpret her brainwaves and control the robotic hand. The accuracy of gestures can reach 80%," Snd Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang Univ. brain surgeon Zhu Junming said.

The implant was initially used to diagnose the patient’s epilepsy.

The research later became a way to overcome the challenges posed by the disorder.

"When the patient makes a gesture, the electrode will send signals. We use computers to model and analyze the signals," Brain-Machine Interface Project, Zhejiang Univ. Head, Zheng Xiaoxiang said.

The team started its research in 2006 and made its first breakthrough in 2012.

A monkey could successfully control a bionic arm to pinch or grasp.

Now that technology is being applied in clinical medicine to rebuild human motor functions.

"The outcome of this research will be used on paralyzed patients suffering from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or high paraplegia caused by spin injury. Motor functions can be rebuilt using the bionic arm. It will help patients live and work," 2nd Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang Univ., Chief brain surgeon Zhang Jiahua said.

The success of the latest experiment shows China’s progress in the field. But researchers say they still need to develop higher-end technology before more progress can be made.

Reactions: Like Like:
9


----------



## Kolaps

Ghost in the Shell!


----------



## terranMarine

Time to snatch a Vietcong and replace our previous test subject with it.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## senheiser

china is the future, japan and korea even have no technology in comparison to china

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## ChineseTiger1986

senheiser said:


> china is the future, japan and korea even have no technology in comparison to china



Instead of spending more time to make video games and other entertainment categories, we spend more time on this.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Aepsilons

senheiser said:


> china is the future, japan and korea even have no technology in comparison to china















Japan robot firm showcases thought-controlled suits - Channel NewsAsia

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## senheiser

Nihonjin1051 said:


> Japan robot firm showcases thought-controlled suits - Channel NewsAsia




gdp per capita 35k vs 8k, know the difference, china is cheaper than you to buy technology

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## ChineseTiger1986

senheiser said:


> gdp per capita 35k vs 8k, know the difference, china is cheaper than you to buy technology



Our project is more affordable and sustainable.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Aepsilons

senheiser said:


> gdp per capita 35k vs 8k, know the difference, china is cheaper than you to buy technology





senheiser said:


> japan and korea even have no technology in comparison to china



I'm not debating the cost differences, I'm simply correcting your false assumption that we haven't come up with this technology. In fact, we developed this even before the Chinese did.


----------



## senheiser

Nihonjin1051 said:


> I'm not debating the cost differences, I'm simply correcting your false assumption that we haven't come up with this technology. In fact, we developed this even before the Chinese did.


no you didnt your article is from 2014

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Aepsilons

senheiser said:


> no you didnt your article is from 2014



The article was published this summer, however, research on this goes back several years. 

The point of my rebuttal is to contest your claim that we lacked this technology, which is a gross lie on your part. 

I will counsel you to do research before you post something here, that's all. 


Kind Regards,
@Nihonjin1051


----------



## sms

senheiser said:


> china is the future, japan and korea even have no technology in comparison to china


BS!!
Japan is the leader of robotic tech in world!

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Kolaps

Nihonjin1051 said:


> Japan robot firm showcases thought-controlled suits - Channel NewsAsia




It's different between detecting pulse in the hand to predict movement, than using a thought in the brain.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## tranquilium

sms said:


> BS!!
> Japan is the leader of robotic tech in world!



In certain areas. I just replied to a thread on Fukushima. One thing to note is that during Fukushima disaster, Japan, a country boosted to be a leader in the field of robotic, actually couldn't find radiation-resistant remote controlled robots to save the plant. They have to rent remote robots from US and China.

Japanese export on industrial equipment is mainly concentrated on smaller, lighter objects such as printers, micro-electronics and of course, vehicles. Its presence in heavy industry, while not unknown, is not really that significant comparing to the likes of China, US and Germany.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## cirr

sms said:


> BS!!
> Japan is the leader of robotic tech in world!



Yes，Japan makes by far the best rice cookers in the world。

India should import Japanese rice cookers by the truckloads。

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## Aepsilons

Let's not troll, please. Let's keep this thread clean.


----------



## xunzi

terranMarine said:


> Time to snatch a Vietcong and replace our previous test subject with it.


[[[[

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*Google Glass? Baidu Eye!*

2014-09-03 16:47:50 CRIENGLISH.com Web Editor: Xie Tingting





_A rear view of Baidu Eye [Photo: thenextweb.com]_

Baidu, China's leading search engine company, has unveiled its own eyewear called Baidu Eye, but said it is a different product from Google Glass in terms of functionality.

The company demonstrated a working prototype on Wednesday (September 3) at its annual Technology Innovation Conference in Beijing.

Baidu Eye bears a resemblance to Google Glass, but it has no screen. Instead, the device uses a camera to scan objects, and focuses on analyzing information around its user and beaming that to a smartphone.

Baidu says the device is designed to support image search. The company's CEO Robin Li believes in five years' time, people will get used to searching by image and audio rather than text.

Li has given an example of how one can take advantage of Baidu Eye, "*If you are in a shopping mall and come across a woman whose skirt looks really attractive, you take a photo of her skirt using Baidu Eye, and you'll get to know where to buy one for yourself*."

According to Kaiser Kuo, Baidu's director of international communications, Baidu Eye can also recognize voice and gesture, "You can use voice commands, or gesture commands - like expanding to zoom, or circling an object in your field of view with your finger."

Baidu is yet to announce a release date or marketing plans for Baidu Eye.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## Cossack25A1

Whether it is Google Glass, Baidu Eye, etc., I wonder if this is compatible to people wearing eyeglasses or will there be versions for those who have eyesight problems.


----------



## cirr

*Take a Look at Baidu Eye, China's Version of Google Glass
*




IMAGE: BAIDU EYE

BY ANITA LI2 HOURS AGO

Chinese Internet giant Baidu publicly unveiled its version of Google Glass for the first time Wednesday.

A working prototype of the wearable tech device, called "Baidu Eye," was shown at the Baidu World conference in Beijing. First announced in April 2013, Baidu Eye initially drew many comparisons to Google's head-mounted display.

SEE ALSO: Baidu Eye Is China's Answer to Google Glass, Company Confirms

Unlike Glass, Baidu Eye has no screen or any optical display. Instead, the device looks like a wraparound headset that rests on top of a user's ears. There is an earpiece on its left arm and a camera on its right arm that takes photos, recognizes objects and analyzes information in its surroundings, according to the company.

Baidu Eye sends information to a user's mobile device (smartphone or tablet) via an app. In an apparent jab at Google, the company said this method makes it "easier to browse than on a small, mounted screen" and aims to "consume less energy so the battery lasts much longer."





IMAGE: BAIDU EYE

"Baidu Eye is able to sync information both visually (through smartphone — larger screen, less stress on eyes compared to the small visual display on Google Glass) and aurally," a spokesperson told _Mashable_ in an email, adding that it provides "the same kind of functionality" as Glass.

The device also features voice and gesture commands, including "expanding to zoom" and "circling an object with your finger," according to the company.

It can also find products, such as handbags and clothes, on e-commerce sites.





IMAGE: BAIDU EYE

When Baidu first confirmed the device's existence to _Mashable_ last April, it appeared to have a screen. At the time, Kaiser Kuo, the company's director of international communications, said Baidu Eye featured speech recognition for Mandarin, as well as image search. Here's how it looked back then:





In April 2013, Kuo said Baidu was conducting internal testing on the device, and evaluating it to see if it had market potential. Apparently, it did.

Baidu Eye is still in the prototype stage; the company currently has no information on pricing or availability.

Take a Look at Baidu Eye, China's Version of Google Glass

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## C130

China doesn't have an original bone in it's body.


----------



## cirr

*Smart Chopsticks That Test Your Food For Contamination*

Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan

Today 10:17pm




EXPAND

Recently, Stephen Colbert lampooned gadgets that track what you drink and other seemingly inane metrics. But the trend may have just found its ideal market. The Chinese search giant Baidu just introduced a pair of "smart chopsticks" designed to alert users to the presence of "gutter oil," or the illegal use of oil dredged up unsavory places.


The utensils are called Baidu Kuaisou, and according to the Wall Street Journal, they can detect "oils containing unsanitary levels of contamination." The product was hyped today at Baidu's annual conference in Beijing, alongside a Google Glass-like product called Baidu Eye. But Kuaisuo, like the recently-introduced Vessyl smart cup, reportedly uses a series of sensors to determine metrics like oil quality, temperature, PH levels, and even calories, then transmits that information to an app. A tiny blue LED at the tip of the chopsticks would give you an on-sight reading.



Pricing and availability is yet to come, in a manner befitting what could very likely be vaporware. But that it's even an idea of a product does reflect growing concerns in China about food safety. Gutter oil, in particular, is a disturbing trend. If you're unfamiliar with it (and have a strong stomach), check out this video about how the oil is processed. It's often dredged from sewers or garbage disposals, and then processed and sold to restaurants and even pharmaceutical companies, after which it gets passed along to unwitting consumers, who are put at serious risk from the toxic stuff. If it takes a pair of future-chopsticks to help discourage the practice, that's just as well. [Wall Street Journal]

Smart Chopsticks That Test Your Food For Contamination

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Cossack25A1

It may not be imaginative or original but the design of Baidu Eye allows all people to use it, even those who have to put on their eye-glasses most of the time. Google Glass may have started the idea but it has restrictions particularly to those who have to wear eye-glasses while seeing the pictures, Baidu Eye can also be worn by people with eye-glasses.


----------



## cirr

*Baidu boosts location-based platform with new services, $10 million investment*

BY PAUL CARSTEN

BEIJING Wed Sep 3, 2014 1:00am EDT





People talk in front of a Baidu's company logo at Baidu's headquarters in Beijing January 16, 2014.

CREDIT: REUTERS/JASON LEE

(Reuters) - Baidu Inc launched on Wednesday a service that helps retailers advertise on the smartphones of nearby users as China's dominant search engine company expands its location-based technology to drive growth.

Baidu currently makes most of its income from desktop-based search advertising and has lagged peers such as Tencent Holdings Ltd in capitalizing on the popularity of mobile internet in China, the world's largest market for smartphones.

It sees real-time, location-based technology as a way to boost advertising revenues from the rise of e-commerce in China, where government data shows more people now access the internet via a mobile device than a personal computer.

"In the mobile era consumer behavior is changing, and the mobile Internet has given us new businesses and opportunities," said Robin Li, Baidu's chief executive, during the launch of the Baidu Connect service.

The service offers toolkits for merchants and software developers to build online-to-offline (O2O) applications, which seek to attract potential customers to nearby shops and restaurants via promotions and ads displayed on smartphones.

Baidu also said it had recently bought a $10 million minority stake in IndoorAtlas, a company that offers a special technology that allows smartphone users' positions to be tracked inside buildings, which is often difficult due to the metal used in structures.

Baidu's push into location-based services and O2O puts it increasingly at odds with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd [IPO-BABA.N], China's biggest e-commerce company, and Tencent.

Last week, Baidu announced a 5 billion yuan ($813 million) tie-up with Beijing-based conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group and Tencent to provide O2O services inside Wanda's commercial developments.

Like other tech firms, Baidu is also branching out into wearables. On Wednesday, it demonstrated its Baidu Eye, which uses a camera to scan objects and then synchs with a smartphone.

Baidu boosts location-based platform with new services - Business - Chinadaily.com.cn

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## +4vsgorillas-Apebane

C130 said:


> China doesn't have an original bone in it's body.



Same old unoriginal litany.

Do you have anything original to write?

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## C130

+4vsgorillas-Apebane said:


> Same old unoriginal litany.
> 
> Do you have anything original to write?



aaaaaaaaayyye lmao, JK. they took an idea and made it better 
i wonder how the Chinese government would feel if millions of Chinese are wearing Baidu Glass and uploading things that would be considered dangerous to the state

and if you are pervert you would love to have one of these


----------



## Aepsilons

Awesome ! How much for one ?

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Hamartia Antidote

cirr said:


> check out this video about how the oil is processed. l.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Okemos

cirr said:


> *Smart Chopsticks That Test Your Food For Contamination*
> 
> Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan
> 
> Today 10:17pm
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> EXPAND
> 
> Recently, Stephen Colbert lampooned gadgets that track what you drink and other seemingly inane metrics. But the trend may have just found its ideal market. The Chinese search giant Baidu just introduced a pair of "smart chopsticks" designed to alert users to the presence of "gutter oil," or the illegal use of oil dredged up unsavory places.
> 
> 
> The utensils are called Baidu Kuaisou, and according to the Wall Street Journal, they can detect "oils containing unsanitary levels of contamination." The product was hyped today at Baidu's annual conference in Beijing, alongside a Google Glass-like product called Baidu Eye. But Kuaisuo, like the recently-introduced Vessyl smart cup, reportedly uses a series of sensors to determine metrics like oil quality, temperature, PH levels, and even calories, then transmits that information to an app. A tiny blue LED at the tip of the chopsticks would give you an on-sight reading.
> 
> 
> 
> Pricing and availability is yet to come, in a manner befitting what could very likely be vaporware. But that it's even an idea of a product does reflect growing concerns in China about food safety. Gutter oil, in particular, is a disturbing trend. If you're unfamiliar with it (and have a strong stomach), check out this video about how the oil is processed. It's often dredged from sewers or garbage disposals, and then processed and sold to restaurants and even pharmaceutical companies, after which it gets passed along to unwitting consumers, who are put at serious risk from the toxic stuff. If it takes a pair of future-chopsticks to help discourage the practice, that's just as well. [Wall Street Journal]
> 
> Smart Chopsticks That Test Your Food For Contamination


I always believe in power of free market and entrepreneurship. We will always have unscrupulous selfish businessmen; we will also have creative entrepreneurs to meet consumers' demands. 
I just heard on news that American chicken farmers are now abolishing any use of antibiotics on chicken.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Hamartia Antidote

Okemos said:


> I always believe in power of free market and entrepreneurship. We will always have unscrupulous selfish businessmen; we will also have creative entrepreneurs to meet consumers' demands.
> I just heard on news that American chicken farmers are now abolishing any use of antibiotics on chicken.



Perdue cuts way back on use of antibiotics on chickens


----------



## Hypersonicmissiles

China just keeps getting stronger and stronger.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## sms

cirr said:


> Yes，Japan makes by far the best rice cookers in the world。
> 
> India should import Japanese rice cookers by the truckloads。


LOL, No I'll buy it from China. I do have soft corner for China


----------



## Jlaw

sms said:


> BS!!
> Japan is the leader of robotic tech in world!



For show and exhibition, but in reality that's a different story.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*China wants global semiconductor leverage*

Posted: 05 Sep 2014

In the past weeks, two news items involving Intel andChina stirred up the investment industry, as well as attracted Chinese media attention. First is that Intel is eyeing China's Spreadtrum as an investment to shore up its mobile business, according to a Chinese news site. Second, Intel should consider acquiring Taiwan's MediaTek as urged by RBC Capital Markets analyst Doug Freedman.

Reached by _EE Times_ on Tuesday, Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy was, of course, mum, other than noting: "We don't comment on speculation nor do we speculate on what might have caused the speculation."

This is a predictable no-comment. Both items might indeed be pure "speculation" worthy of no further interest.

However, it was only a few weeks ago when a group of Chinese investors—including a state-owned firm—offered a buyout proposal to US digital imaging chipmaker OmniVision. Putting together a string of recent events, we couldn't help but wonder:

Does selling Spreadtrum to Intel, or allowing the foreign chip giant to invest in the now state-owned company, make sense for China?
What's the real motivation behind China's wanting to acquire OmniVision?
Do any of these moves have anything to do with China's recently unveiled "National Framework for Development of the Integrated Circuit Industry"? (After all, the Chinese government is setting up a huge annual investment fund to support the nation's semiconductor industry.)

Some US-based electronics industry executives told us that a Spreadtrum sale and an Omnivision purchase are both among the potential financial plays contemplated by China's investment community. Others, however, are sceptical of the whole scenario.

_EE Times_ has been scrambling to connect the dots of China's seemingly unrelated investment moves in recent months.

Nicky Lu, chairman of Etron Technology Inc. in Hsinchu, Taiwan, is one of those industry executives convinced that these manoeuvres are closely tied to China's national IC industry framework. He says they make perfect sense.

Just to be clear, we regard Lu as "the man in the know."

While serving as chair of the Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association (its politically correct name is "Semiconductor Industry Association in Chinese Taipei"), Lu earlier this year became the chair of the World Semiconductor Council (WSC).

Lu explains that China's new policy, different from those in the past, is the infusion of private investment funds. It allows professional financial investors to bet on which entities—fabless, foundries, and/or research institutes—deserve the funding.

In Lu's view, if the Chinese funds actually succeed in improving the value of Spreadtrum and manage to sell it off (to Intel or not), China wins.

China's proposal to buy OmniVision, on the other hand, will have further impact.

By taking over the world's leading CMOS image sensor vendor, China will gain instant access to the global market and the company's formidable market share. More importantly, such a deal generates demand for volume production of CMOS image sensors in China (not in Taiwan)—enough to fill the capacity of home-grown Chinese fabs like Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) based in Shanghai.

In short, China's investment funds are on the lookout for acquiring successful companies in the global market.





_How China funds are allocated. Source: Data compiled by EE Times based on media reports in China and Taiwan, and interviews with industry sources_

*As illustrated in the table above, as much as $98 billion, to promote M&A activity, will flow to local governments and their regional private equity investments in China. This is in addition to government funds for national IC industry support.*

Modelled after the Beijing IC Industry Equity Investment Fund, Chinese provinces including Wuhan, Shanghai, and Shenzhen are racing to build "regional" private equity funds. Rivalries between different regional private equity funds were already evident when the Beijing-based Tsinghua Unigroup outmaneuvered the Shanghai Pudong Science and Technology Investment Co. (PDSTI) to buy Shanghai-based Spreadtrum. Meanwhile PDSTI, not to be outdone by Beijing, unveiled a plan to acquire Montage Technology of Shanghai. PDSTI is also a part of the investment group that has offered to buy OmniVision.

China's national blueprint for semiconductor industry development is far from the stodgy, top-down model of the planned economy era, according to China hands familiar with the industry. Today, it's much more "market-driven."

A case in point is that the money made available by the government and China's private investment funds isn't just for investing in Chinese companies. The funds can go global to acquire technologies and companies with the best potential to expand China's semiconductor industry. The OmniVision deal would fit that bill, according to Lu.

*China to follow Taiwan's playbook*

It's well known that the Chinese government isn't happy about the widening gap between the number of chips China imports from multinationals and the volume China produces on its own.





_China's integrated circuit consumption and production comparison. Source: "Continuing to Grow, China's Impact on the Semiconductor Industry, 2013 update," PwC_

If history is any indication, every nation has harbored similar concerns. In other countries, the solution has been a national industrial policy to develop home-grown semiconductor production.

Lu observes that China has decided to follow Taiwan's playbook, rather than pursuing models practised by Korea, Japan, Europe, or the United States.

The Taiwan playbook, in a nutshell, is about creating a service model, says Lu. Taiwan first launched the foundry business, including such companies as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) and UMC, as a mother ship. Taiwan, in parallel, developed additional service-related businesses ranging from design services to packaging, equipment maintenance, and wafer-level testing companies. The mother ship, then, spawned a cluster of IC design houses—described by Lu as "a fleet."

It took Taiwan 15 years before consumption and production of chips got even, says Lu. Back in 1990, Taiwan's National Subµm Project, led by Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs, began. The project enabled Taiwan to build 8-inch wafer technology for design and manufacturing, thus facilitating growing investment in the semiconductor industry in Taiwan. In 2005, the semiconductor exports exceeded the country's total imports.





_Source: Etron Technology_

Lu predicts that it will only take 10 years for China to reach that break-even point. The next couple of years, however, will be critical, he feels. China's policymakers hope to show early signs of growth in a key business, in employment and technology, that matters to China's economy.

*Who's behind the national plan?*

As Lu tells the story, those who have drawn up the National Framework for Development of the Integrated Circuit Industry are an elite team—fewer than 10 people. Consisting of physicists, private equity people, and technology experts, the team composes the national semiconductor office, which sits right next to China's prime minister's office. Their goal is to find the most effective and meaningful path for China's semiconductor industry to plot its own future.

"I have a lot of respect for the intelligence of policymakers in China," says Lu.

Of course, a national plan without engineering talent can only produce empty promises. China, however, is ready to up its game, according to Lu, both in terms of the fundamental science and the volume of talented engineers to carry out some of the toughest projects.

He cautioned us: "Don't judge China just by looking at today's China." More important is what China is capable of doing in the next 10 years.

Consider the example of the fundamental science for developing a 3D topological insulator, says Lu. A project that originated at Stanford University now has a group of scientists at Tsinghua University (Prof S.C. Chang's group) and the China Academy of Science vigorously working on it.

Further, take note of the 400,000 students graduating from universities in China every year with engineering degrees. Fifty per cent have degrees in integrated circuits, according to Lu. Where else in the world could higher education pump out so many students with engineering degrees?

*Accountability*

Let's face it. China doesn't exactly have the best record of accountability when government gets involved in spreading around investment money. Even projects that started out with the best of intentions have failed as money disappeared somewhere along the food chain. How do you ensure the accountability of the National Framework for Development of the Integrated Circuit Industry?

Several things need to happen, notes Lu. First, policymakers must show results. They need to demonstrate that the policy can generate better domestic jobs. They also need to encourage China's system companies to design with parts produced in China. The use of domestic components is especially encouraged for "special-use" products such as military applications. Policymakers also need to demonstrate the use of the domestic chips in such applications as IoT and healthcare systems that will be particularly helpful in improving the lives of Chinese people, he says.





_Source: PWC_

By choosing credible and successful companies (foreign and domestic) as targets for investment, China is seeking to produce results quickly, Lu says. That's why he views the next two years as critical.

Unlike the old China, which often insisted on developing domestic versions of global standards (e.g., VCD vs DVD) so that it could avoid paying licensing fees or royalties, the success of China's new policy hinges upon following international rules, Lu points out. Instead of pursuing a domestic standard for the sake of, say, a home-grown operating system, China must put commercial deals first.

In sum, China is at a threshold. China is ready. If it succeeds in the OmniVision acquisition, China can easily take OminVision's business away from TSMC and bring it to SMIC. As far as Lu is concerned, "The game is fair, and things in China are moving faster than ever."

Other regions in the world, on the other hand, have only themselves to blame if China bypasses them. As Lu concluded, innovation is the only way for us to differentiate ourselves.

In 2013, China's semiconductor consumption market grew by 10.1 per cent (more than double the worldwide market growth of 4.8 per cent). It has reached a new record of 55.6 per cent of the global market. Ongoing global demand for smartphones and tablets is the main reason for this continued strong growth in China's semiconductor consumption and will continue to be a factor in the coming years.

China wants global semiconductor leverage

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Beidou2020

*Nuclear medicine equipment enters international market*

*Top Grade Healthcare*, a medical equipment company located in the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, has signed a sales agreement with a cancer treatment center in Philadelphia, People's Daily reported on Tuesday.

*The company will sell its medicine equipment, including PET–CT and PET–MRI, and its medical electron linear accelerator, the LA45, to the hospital. The diagnostic equipment is driven by nuclear technology, and this deal marks its first step into the international market.*

The company's nuclear medicine equipment system won the National Award for Science and Technology Progress in January of this year.


----------



## LeveragedBuyout

cirr said:


> As far as Lu is concerned, "The game is fair, and things in China are moving faster than ever."
> 
> Other regions in the world, on the other hand, have only themselves to blame if China bypasses them. As Lu concluded, *innovation is the only way for us to differentiate ourselves*.



It appears that China finally gets it. The best way to secure the future of China's semiconductor industry is to strictly enforce IP rights.


----------



## Beidou2020

When it comes to chips for powering smartphones, it has long been a story of the world's leading smartphone chip-maker -- US firm Qualcomm. This time, it is a Chinese-made chip that has caught the eye of market observers.

*The octa-core Kirin 920, unveiled by Huawei-owned HiSilicon on Friday, features support for QHD displays, 4K video recording and a high-speed LTE category-6 platform, something even the global industry leaders find it difficult to offer.*

While it is too early to say this signals the rise of China in the global mobile processor market, the news should still come as a boon to the country's IT sector, especially the chip-making industry, which has been lagging far behind the world heavyweights.

*China relies heavily on imported chips, which are among the country's top four import categories in terms of value, along with oil, iron ore and LCD panels.*

*As its reliance on foreign oil and iron ore cannot be reversed overnight, China has been working hard to promote the other two industries.*

*China has become less reliant on LCD panel imports in recent years, as its two leading makers of the panels, BOE and TCL, have been making strides in innovation. However, chips, known as the "heart" of the digital information industry for their importance, continue to be imported in massive quantities.*

*With China's smartphone market booming, the country imported $232.2 billion worth of integrated circuits, generally known as chips, in 2013, up 34.6 percent year on year*, according to customs authorities.

*The figure was higher than the $219.6 billion worth of imported oil for the year, making chips top the list of imports, resulting in a trade deficit of $144.1 billion for the industry*, which had been expanding for four years in a row.

However, there is still a long way to go before China can significantly reduce its chip imports.

Li Mingjun, deputy secretary general of the Shenzhen Semiconductor Industry Association, was quoted by local media as saying that most Chinese chip-makers are still only capable of making medium-to-low-end chips.

In addition, China's chip-making firms are still too small to challenge the US dominance of the market, at least in the near future

Qualcomm registered a business revenue of $17.3 billion in 2013, up 31.6 percent from a year earlier. The business revenue of HiSilicon, China's leading chip-maker, was only one eighth of Qualcomm's last year.

Another obstacle preventing HiSilicon's Kirin 920 from challenging the dominance of Qualcomm and other US players is Huawei's reluctance to do so.

Huawei is not aiming to export its chips and does not see them as a stand-alone product, the 21st Century Business Herald quoted Xu Zhijun, deputy president of Huawei, as saying.

Xu said, "The strategy we adopt is one plus one or one plus N," which means that for every HiSilicon chip that Huawei incorporates in its products, it will integrate one chip or more from other suppliers.

The reason for this is that Huawei doesn't want to stir concerns with Qualcomm or other industry giants, fearing such a situation might affect chip supplies, the Herald reported.

Huawei was taught a tough lesson in March 2012 when it unveiled its quad-core processor K3V2 and said it would use the new chips in its Ascend D smartphones.

The new mobile phones appeared on the market several months later than planned. A source close to Huawei told the Herald that the delay was at least partly down to the high-profile release of the chips making its screen supplier Samsung nervous and leading it to stall the supply.

"We can only lead US companies in sectors the size of a needle. But it is out of the question for our lead to expand to sectors the size of a matchstick," said Ren Zhengfei, Huawei's founder and CEO, during a speech earlier this year when publishing the firm's 2013 annual report.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## he-man

Meh................same based on big little congig like samsung exynos 5420
And design is from arm corp.................UK.

THE MONSTER RIGHT NOW IS NVIDIA TEGRA K1,,,KILLING EVERYTHING IN BENCHMARKS.


----------



## Beidou2020

he-man said:


> Meh................same based on big little congig like samsung exynos 5420
> And design is from arm corp.................UK.
> 
> THE MONSTER RIGHT NOW IS NVIDIA TEGRA K1,,,KILLING EVERYTHING IN BENCHMARKS.



China is not South Korea.

China is the largest chip consumer and any domestic rival that can replace foreign chips will be fully supported. China has already been looking to replace foreign chip brands on domestic smartphones (which dominate the Chinese market) to reduce the import of chips and to reduce the dominance of Qualcomm.

Kirin 925 is already used on Huawei's latest smartphone.

Huawei is a giant in the smartphone business already and growing fast.

Kirin will be fully supported in China as its a domestic rival to Qualcomm's Snapdragon chip. It's about replacing foreign brands in China in all industries.

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## he-man

Beidou2020 said:


> China is not South Korea.
> 
> China is the largest chip consumer and any domestic rival that can replace foreign chips will be fully supported. China has already been looking to replace foreign chip brands on domestic smartphones (which dominate the Chinese market) to reduce the import of chips and to reduce the dominance of Qualcomm.
> 
> Kirin 925 is already used on Huawei's latest smartphone.
> 
> Huawei is a giant in the smartphone business already and growing fast.
> 
> Kirin will be fully supported in China as its a domestic rival to Qualcomm's Snapdragon chip. It's about replacing foreign brands in China in all industries.



Don't waste my time with jingo claims..............no big company uses huawei chip as of now except huawei itself.
And it uses exactly same specs as samsung exynos with 4 cores of cortex a15 and 4 cores of cortex a7.
Even gpu is same mali 628.

Yes making it is commendable though.

But tegra k1 is much ahead than snapdragon 805,kirin and exynos especially its gpu

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

he-man said:


> Don't waste my time with jingo claims..............no big company uses huawei chip as of now except huawei itself.
> And it uses exactly same specs as samsung exynos with 4 cores of cortex a15 and 4 cores of cortex a7.
> Even gpu is same mali 628.
> 
> Yes making it is commendable though.
> 
> But tegra k1 is much ahead than snapdragon 805,kirin and exynos especially its gpu



Huawei won't make its processors available to other smartphone makers any time soon for a very simple reason：

conflict of interests。

Huawei‘s Kirin series of mobile chips are as good as any and will continue to get better。

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## jkroo

> Kirin 925 is already used on Huawei's latest smartphone.


That is Huawei Ascend Mate 7. I like this handset.
华为 - Ascend Mate7 - 手机 - 功能特征

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## he-man

cirr said:


> Huawei won't make its processors available to other smartphone makers any time soon for a very simple reason：
> 
> conflict of interests。
> 
> Huawei‘s Kirin series of mobile chips are as good as any and will continue to get better。



Again same straw man argument!!
Its not huawei's invention.

Its designed by ARM,UK and leased to anyone willing to make a chip.
The chip is pretty good i concede but not revolutionary

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Beidou2020

he-man said:


> Don't waste my time with jingo claims..............no big company uses huawei chip as of now except huawei itself.
> And it uses exactly same specs as samsung exynos with 4 cores of cortex a15 and 4 cores of cortex a7.
> Even gpu is same mali 628.
> 
> Yes making it is commendable though.
> 
> But tegra k1 is much ahead than snapdragon 805,kirin and exynos especially its gpu



You don't get it.

China has been looking for any domestic rival to take away marketshare from Qualcomm for many reasons and Kirin is the best domestic challenger to Qualcomm. Yes, it's only for Huawei now but it's only a matter of time before Huawei is forced to sell it to other smartphone makers to take away dominance from Qualcomm in the China market. Qualcomm is under massive monopoly pressure in China and they even now have China's SMIC foundry to make its chips to get on the good side of the Chinese government.

China is the largest smartphone market in the world and Qualcomm's revenues depend heavily on the China market. But since Qualcomm has had no proper domestic rival challenger until Kirin, they have had a monopoly in the China market.

It doesn't have to be the best but good enough and the Chinese government will force Huawei to let others use its chip to challenge Qualcomm. 

Domestic companies from all industries are heavily favoured and given first preference. It's happened in many industries from search engine, social media, web browsers, instant messaging, anti-virus software, office suite software, management software, e-commerce, telecommunication equipment, etc.

It's the same as China building the single aisle commercial airline C919 to replace Boeing and Airbus in the domestic market to replace the dominance of foreign brands in the China market.

China has been developing the Loongson chip as a PC chip to rival Intel to replace Intel chips in the China market.

Domestic brands are heavily favoured and pushed, even if they are not as good as foreign brands to develop domestic brands and reduce the dominance and leverage foreign brands hold in China.

Typical brainless ranting about Tegra this, ARM that and Mali this without understanding the point.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## he-man

Beidou2020 said:


> You don't get it.
> 
> China has been looking for any domestic rival to take away marketshare from Qualcomm for many reasons and Kirin is the best domestic challenger to Qualcomm. Yes, it's only for Huawei now but it's only a matter of time before Huawei is forced to sell it to other smartphone makers to take away dominance from Qualcomm in the China market. Qualcomm is under massive monopoly pressure in China and they even now have China's SMIC foundry to make its chips to get on the good side of the Chinese government.
> 
> China is the largest smartphone market in the world and Qualcomm's revenues depend heavily on the China market. But since Qualcomm has had no proper domestic rival challenger until Kirin, they have had a monopoly in the China market.
> 
> It doesn't have to be the best but good enough and the Chinese government will force Huawei to let others use its chip to challenge Qualcomm.
> 
> Domestic companies from all industries are heavily favoured and given first preference. It's happened in many industries from search engine, social media, web browsers, instant messaging, anti-virus software, office suite software, management software, e-commerce, telecommunication equipment, etc.
> 
> It's the same as China building the single aisle commercial airline C919 to replace Boeing and Airbus in the domestic market to replace the dominance of foreign brands in the China market.
> 
> China has been developing the Loongson chip as a PC chip to rival Intel to replace Intel chips in the China market.
> 
> Domestic brands are heavily favoured and pushed, even if they are not as good as foreign brands to develop domestic brands and reduce the dominance and leverage foreign brands hold in China.
> 
> Typical brainless ranting about Tegra this, ARM that and Mali this without understanding the point.




That point is well made but it means nothing.
All the chinese companies will not use huawei chip till its

1)better than rivals
2)cheaper than rivals.

As they have to run their businesses too...............so it won't be like what u are saying.

But as far as effort goes,,,very commendable,it will at least counter the media tek and samsung.
Qualcomm is too damn power efficent and tegra k1 too powerful at this point.

But certainly its impressive.
Whats rockchip upto nowadays??


----------



## Beidou2020

he-man said:


> That point is well made but it means nothing.
> All the chinese companies will not use huawei chip till its
> 
> 1)better than rivals
> 2)cheaper than rivals.
> 
> As they have to run their businesses too...............so it won't be like what u are saying.
> 
> But as far as effort goes,,,very commendable,it will at least counter the media tek and samsung.
> Qualcomm is too damn power efficent and tegra k1 too powerful at this point.
> 
> But certainly its impressive.
> Whats rockchip upto nowadays??



Other Chinese companies will definitely be pressurised to use Kirin by the Chinese government and Huawei forced to sell it to others.

Chinese government uses various methods to help domestic brands. Domestic brand doesn't have to be the best or the cheapest, it just has to be in the ballpark and it will be favoured.

As I said, they do this in every industry including military industry.
E.G. Huawei and ZTE are favoured in the telecommunication equipment market.

That's why China makes domestic variants of foreign fighter weapons so that China don't have to import and can be self-sufficient.

Rockchip is medium and low end chip. Same with Allwinner.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## jkroo

cirr said:


> Huawei won't make its processors available to other smartphone makers any time soon for a very simple reason：
> 
> conflict of interests。
> 
> Huawei‘s Kirin series of mobile chips are as good as any and will continue to get better。



That's I am worrying about. Kirin series will be better with no doubt but I'd like to see domestic manufacturers use Huawei's processors and it will be good to our chip industry.

Another player maybe lag behind of Huawei. ZTE's WiseFone 7550s which is 8 core 4g processor that enter trial in Jan, 2014. But we don't see their mature products that carry this processor during these months.

With 2-3 domestic chip makers, the industry will definitely boom.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## he-man

Beidou2020 said:


> Other Chinese companies will definitely be pressurised to use Kirin by the Chinese government and Huawei forced to sell it to others.
> 
> Chinese government uses various methods to help domestic brands. Domestic brand doesn't have to be the best or the cheapest, it just has to be in the ballpark and it will be favoured.
> 
> As I said, they do this in every industry including military industry.
> E.G. Huawei and ZTE are favoured in the telecommunication equipment market.
> 
> That's why China makes domestic variants of foreign fighter weapons so that China don't have to import and can be self-sufficient.
> 
> Rockchip is medium and low end chip. Same with Allwinner.



U cannot force companies to do this man,,,u just cannot.
Not to private firms u can't.

Yes as far as state corporations are concerned,u are right


----------



## cirr

he-man said:


> Again same straw man argument!!
> Its not huawei's invention.
> 
> Its designed by ARM,UK and leased to anyone willing to make a chip.
> The chip is pretty good i concede but not revolutionary



So what？ All the major chip companies use ARM architecture，including Apple and Qualcomm。

The point here is being able to use your own CPUs。

For your information，Meizu will be the 1st Chinese smartphone brand to use Huawei’s 8-core Kirin chips。

An initial order for 100000 SoC has been placed with Huawei。

The forthcoming 16nm Kirin 930 is an 8-core + 1-core CPU。

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## he-man

cirr said:


> For your information，Meizu will be the 1st Chinese smartphone brand to use Huawei’s 8-core Kirin chips。
> 
> An initial order for 100000 SoC has been placed with Huawei。
> 
> The forthcoming 16nm Kirin 930 is an 8-core + 1-core CPU。



Hate meizu..............total copy of iphone
I am a fan of xiomi though


----------



## jkroo

Good news.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## cirr

*The International ARM Race: Rise Of The Chinese SoC*

By Lucian Armasu, Dorian BlackAUGUST 28, 2014 12:00 AM


*ARM-Based SoCs From China Are Poised To Take Off*

Thanks to low prices and a gradual increase in both quality and performance, Chinese chip makers are starting to pose serious problems for Qualcomm, Nvidia and others.







Rockchip, Allwinner, Spreadtrum, and MediaTek are brand names that a lot of people probably won't recognize. But all of those companies are competing in the same space as Samsung, Qualcomm, and Nvidia for share of the Android-based device market.

When people talk about Android, they often mention products like the Nexus range from Google, the Galaxy line from Samsung, or one of Asus' Transformers, along with HTC, LG, and Sony. And sometimes, depending on the success of marketing campaigns and word of mouth, what also follows are the names of the SoCs powering those smartphones and tablets. Exynos. Snapdragon. Tegra. But that's only part of the story...As more companies compete for your dollar with an ever-increasing portfolio of mobile devices, we're seeing Chinese SoC manufacturers steadily staking claims in the low-cost Android device market. Android, iOS, and mobile computing in general are largely dependent on one U.K.-based company, ARM Holdings. Its history dates back to one of the first commercially successful home PCs of the early 1980s: the 8-bit BBC Micro. This computer was one of three that set the British and European home PC market in motion. The BBC Micro's war with another 8-bit system, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, is now computer legend.

Following the resounding success of the BBC Micro, Acorn (as the company was then known) cut its modern computing teeth on nascent adventures into the optimization of 16-bit CPUs. By intelligently simplifying and removing often-repeated instructions, Acorn developed a more efficient design that could do more with less. This approach is known as RISC, or Reduced Instruction Set Computing. The company's first commercial foray using this technology came in 1983 with the 16-bit Acorn RISC Machine, or ARM. It ran one of the first true multitasking operating systems in production, RISC OS, which, incidentally, was recently re-released as an open-source variant for the popular Raspberry Pi hobbyist PC—yet another device powered by an ARM SoC.

ARM’s emphasis on efficiency powered the company's own range of RISC PCs and operating systems for the next decade. ARM Holdings would later go on to design low-powered RISC-based SoCs for all manner of devices, starting with simple disk controllers and eventually winding up in the mobile computing SoCs at the heart of everything from the Compaq iPAQ to the Apple iPad—and, of course, the vast majority of Android devices.

This ubiquity happened when ARM Holdings cleverly removed manufacturer from its résumé. As part of a trend set in the late 1970s, ARM became a fabless semiconductor designer, allowing it to focus exclusively on design and constant improvements to its RISC architecture without worrying about manufacturing technology. That decision accelerated development and allowed some of the costs incurred during the design process to be offset by ARM licensees, which take the IP and determine how to implement it.

Such an approach has benefits beyond cost savings because it also allows for licensees to customize their SoCs to suit specific purposes. Aspects like the actual GPU, RAM, and modem can be selected, and often even modified, to satisfy any function or budget constraint. You could almost say that ARM SoCs can be built to order, which is of particular importance for companies that want to create devices for so many different needs and markets.

Given a diverse market with room for innovation _and_ a sensitivity to cost, ARM SoCs and the fabless semiconductor industry present an exceptionally good fit for China.

*2. China Needs Android, Not Google*

Android is central to Chinese success in the mobile marketplace. Independent hardware vendors (IHVs) utilizing Chinese SoCs for their tablets tend to use Google’s OS because it's cost-free and open-source. Android is what allows $100 to $200 devices to work just as well as $600 flagship devices. Some buyers of China-made tablets may brag that their budget devices can do everything the more premium products can do. In some ways, they are right. But the story isn’t that simple. In many cases, "cheap" can also be code for "unsupported and closed-source."

And therein lies the problem. While Android (specifically, the Android Open Source Project) is open source, many of the Chinese SoC vendors aren’t true to the initiative’s spirit. There's been some valid criticism aimed at some of these companies and the ways in which they enjoy the benefits of being part of the Android experience, yet don't actually give much back in return. Companies like Rockchip, MediaTek. and Allwinner are unapologetically closed source when it comes to their kernels, making it difficult for owners of products based on those platforms to move beyond the version of Android that shipped with their devices. Furthermore, this also makes it nearly impossible for these devices to properly utilize aftermarket ROMs like CyanogenMod, Paranoid Android, and AOKP.

There have been some strides made on the Rockchip front; for instance, a Spanish tablet manufacturer opened up the source for its kernel. In turn, a beta version of Ubuntu surfaced for the SoC. Ithas since grown up, settled down, and now goes by the unfortunate name of PicUntu. The distribution has been making the rounds in the HDMI media stick communities, and is generally well-regarded. While it doesn't include full hardware acceleration, it's full-featured in almost every other aspect.

Still, that's Linux. Most RK3066 owners are stuck using older versions of Android, and the situation doesn't seem like it's going to change anytime soon. Meanwhile, the more modern quad-core RK3188 has yet to see a Linux variant. And that's even more disappointing since, in some cases, RK3188 devices ship with 2 GB of RAM and are far more powerful than the older RK3066.

For these reasons, Chinese SoCs and the devices they power tend to be somewhat devalued compared with their more prominently-branded equivalents from Qualcomm, Samsung, and Nvidia. Even though those familiar names and their partners do sometimes engage in closed-source, locked-down shenanigans, alternatives to their preinstalled versions of Android often do exist. XDA has countless forums for devices with Snapdragon, Exynos, and Tegra SoCs. Yet, the community push for China-based SoCs just isn't as effective. Most owners are left to "alternative solutions" on smaller forums, many of which lack support or are simply administered unprofessionally.

Also worrying, some of these Chinese companies are forking Android. They're doing it to avoid having to appease Google's Open Handset Alliance (OHA), and to ship their own software storefronts instead of Google Play.

Right now, we're seeing two major Android forks coming out of China: LeWa OS and the controversial Aliyun OS, the latter of which has been caught offering pirated versions of for-sale Android games, which could become a big problem down the road.

To make things worse, other China-based Android variants are not being particularly friendly with the open-source community: Flyme and MIUI. Flyme is available on Meizu's range of phones, while MIUI can be found on phones from Xiaomi or as a ROM for other devices. Both skin the OS in much the same way as HTC's Sense or Samsung's TouchWiz. The issue lies in the fact that both of these Chinese operating systems are closed source, which flies in the face of Android's AOSP GPL license. It also sets a worrying precedent that further releases may remain that way, again locking users into non-upgradable software experiences.

That trend probably worries AOSP fans and ROM developers, particularly in regard to how it may affect future China-based SoCs and devices.

Now, let's take a closer look at some of China's homegrown SoCs, starting with Rockchip.

*3. Rockchip*

Founded in 2001 and based in Fuzhou, China, the Fuzhou Rockchip Electronics Co. Ltd., or simply Rockchip, designs and develops integrated circuits, particularly SoCs. The company is a well-established ARM licensee, utilizing the IP company’s architecture for the majority of its products. Rockchip's focus has been predominantly on the tablet and personal media player (PMP) markets, so Rockchip SoCs do not include support for radios other than Wi-Fi.

SoC

CPU Core

GPU Core

Max Resolution

Camera

Video Encode/Decode

RK2918

Cortex A8 (1-core) @ 1.0-1.2 GHz

Vivante GC800 @ 575 MHz

1280x800

5MP ISP

1080p @ 30 FPS

RK3066

Cortex A9 (4-core) @ 1.6 GHz

Mali-400 MP4 @ 400 MHz

2048x1536

5MP ISP

1080p @ 30 FPS (h.265/VP9 support)

RK3026

Cortex A9 2-core) @ 1.0 GHz

Mali-400 MP2 @ 330 MHz

1920x1080

5MP ISP

1080p @ 30 FPS

RK3168

Cortex A9 (2-core) @ 1.2-1.5 GHz

Mali-400 MP4 @ 400 MHz

1920x1080

5MP ISP

1080p @ 30 FPS

RK3188

Cortex A9 (4-core) @ 1.6 GHz

Mali-400 MP4 @ 600 MHz

2048x1536

5MP ISP

1080p @ 30 FPS (h.265/VP9 support)

RK3288

Cortex A17 (4-core) @ 1.8 GHz

Mali-T764 @ 400MHz

3840x2160

13MP ISP

1080p @ 30 FPS / 4k @30 FPS

*RK2918*

*



*

Released in 2012, the RK2918 was Rockchip's first ARMv7 chip. It used a Cortex-A8 CPU and Vivante GC800 GPU, supporting a display resolution of up to 1280x800, though it could encode and decode video of up to 1080p. The notable feature of this processor is that it was among the first to support the open-source VP8 codec.

*RK3066*

Released in 2012, the Rockchip RK3066 is a 40 nm, 1.6 GHz, dual-core Cortex-A9 SoC coupled with the Mali 400 GPU and up to dual-channel DDR3 support. It was designed to compete with the dual-core Samsung Exynos 4, and benchmarks proved its mettle, with the RK3066 registering around 7000 points in AnTuTu at the time.

*



*

In some ways, it went beyond its competitors' capabilities, offering support for faster memory, an upper limit of 2 GB (though implementations were rare) and five-point multitouch panels up to 1920x1080 (which, as far as we understand, never surfaced in devices, perhaps due to it being a largely budget-focused chipset). 

RK3066 was sold extensively in tablets from a wide variety of Chinese and European manufacturers, including Cube, Pipo, and Archos. In fact, Archos was still releasing RK3066-based devices in late 2012. That included some products in the company's budget line, Arnova, and the game-focused Gamepad, which includes a hardwired gaming controller. RK3066 also powered the OUYA competitor, GameStik.

RK3066 devices tended to be most popular in the budget 10-inch range of early- to mid-2012, and continued to sell well throughout the year. Another area of success for RK3066 was the HDMI stick form factor. Indeed, RK3066 quite clearly put HDMI Android Media devices on the map, with more than 20 such devices released over the 2012 period alone.

Interestingly, Archos released the 97 Titanium HD, which pushed the RK3066 beyond its theoretical limits by powering a 2048x1536 "Retinal" display. And while it didn't perform as smoothly as its 800p brothers in games, it still held its own in terms of browsing and general day-to-day tasks, proving the RK3066 to be extremely versatile.

*RK3188*

Building on the success of the RK3066, RK3188 ups the ante considerably by pushing into quad-core territory. The budget-oriented tablets that use it are in a performance tier previously reserved for premium devices like the Tegra 3-equipped Transformer Pad Infinity.






Excitement for this 28 nm quad-core Cortex-A9, Mali MP4-equipped SoC was so high that there was a record-breaking number of preorders for devices like the Cube U30GT2 and PIPO M4 Pro. The bump in GPU speed and CPU power meant that more devices with 1920x1200 screens were released, and the RK3188 SoC handled that gracefully, partly because almost all those devices came standard with 2 GB of DDR3 RAM. In fact, the only RK3188 devices that shipped with only 1 GB of RAM were budget HDMI media sticks.

Benchmarks put this chipset around the 14,000- to 18,000-point mark in AnTuTu, landing beyond Tegra 3's space at a lower price.

*RK3168*

Considering it has only a dual-core Cortex-A9 processor complex and a GPU that’s more commonly included with Cortex-A7-based SoCs, the RK3168 is a more budget-conscious revision of the RK3188. It's designed to ship in smaller, 7-inch tablets, which tend to be less expensive.

*RK3288*

The RK3288 is Rockchip's latest and most powerful SoC, and is expected to surface this year. It comes with a quad-core Cortex-A17 processor at 1.8 GHz, and a Mali-T760 GPU. Initially, Rockchip was supposed to use the Cortex-A12 core, but since ARM announced Cortex-A17 quite suddenly, improving Cortex-A12, Rockchip quickly updated its SoC to use the newer IP instead.






Cortex-A17 will target the mid-range market in 2015, while Cortex-A57 remains at the high end, possibly improved. Unfortunately, the -A17 core isn't based on the new and improved ARMv8 architecture, and it's still a 32-bit chip. That's disappointing for a piece of hardware surfacing in 2015, but Rockchip most likely chose it because of cost considerations. Rockchip sells some of the lowest-cost SoCs for mobile devices. It's also why the company chose the Cortex-A17 instead of something even more powerful for its mid-range chips.

On the GPU side, it doesn't look like Rockchip spares any expense, since the company is using a high-end Mali-T764 GPU. Considering Rockchip is mainly targeting tablets, it's not too surprising to see it match a high-end GPU with a more modest CPU. Tablets tend to use higher resolutions than phones, and a more powerful GPU can make sure the tablet doesn't overheat and doesn't use up the battery too quickly.

The GPU also supports the latest mobile graphics features, along with support for 4K video decoding. It even supports HDMI 2.0 and 10-bit color, in case you want to hook the tablet up to a 4K TV.

Rockchip recently partnered with Intel to build some 28 nm non-FinFET SoCs using the Atom core and branding. Intel hopes that with this partnership, it can lower the cost of Atom and push it into less expensive platforms. It remains to be seen how competitive these chips will be, particularly since Intel’s own 22 nm Atoms are barely fast enough to compete with high-end ARM chips. These SoCs will most likely be targeted at the mid-range market, and also use Intel's 3G modems. In the meantime, the ARM-based RK3288 will arrive with support for 4G LTE this year.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## cirr

*4. MediaTek*

MediaTek Inc. is a leading fabless semiconductor designer with a focus on 3G GSM HSPA+ and WCDMA phone handsets and phablet SoCs. The company emphasizes power efficiency mixed with performance and, up until recently, built around Cortex-A7, coupling lower-power ARM7 CPUs with a potent GPU to deliver SoCs that save battery while offering comprehensive application and multimedia performance.

*Smartphone Chips*
SoC

CPU Core

GPU Core

Max Resolution

Camera

Video Encode/Decode

MT6572

Cortex A7 (2-core) @ 1.3 GHz

Mali-400 MP1 @ 500 MHz

960x540

5MP ISP

720p @ 30 FPS

MT6573

ARM11 @ 650 MHz

PowerVR SGX531 @ 281MHz

854x480

8MP ISP

480p @ 30 FPS

MT6575

Cortex A9 (1-core) @ 1.0 GHz

PowerVR SGX531 Ultra @ 522 MHz

960x540

5MP ISP

720p @ 30 FPS

MT6577

Cortex A9 (2-core) @ 1.0 GHz

PowerVR SGX531 Ultra @ 522 MHz

1280x720

8MP ISP

1080p @ 30 FPS

MT6589

Cortex-A7 (4-core) @ 1.2 GHz

PowerVR SGX544 @ 286 MHz

1920x1080

13MP ISP

1080p @ 30 FPS

MT6592

Cortex-A7 (8-core) @ 1.7-2.0 GHz

Mali-450 @ 700 MHz

1920x1080

16MP ISP

1080p @ 30 FPS (h.265 support)

MT6595

Cortex A7 (4-core) @ 1.7 GHz/Cortex A17 (4-core) @ 2.2 GHz

PowerVR 6200 @ 600 MHz

2560x1600

20MP ISP

2160p @ 30 FPS (h.265 support)

MT6732

Cortex A53 (4-core) @ 1.5 GHz

Mali-T760 MP2 @ 500 MHz 

1920x1080

13MP ISP

2160p @ 30fps(h.265 support)


*MT6572*
MT6572 is one of MediaTek's newer chips, released in 2013. It’s aimed a low-end devices, and consists of a dual-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A7 CPU and Mali-400 MP1 graphics engine at 500 MHz. As you might imagine, it doesn’t support very high resolutions; its limit is 960x540p. The hardware also can't record video at higher than 720p and 30 FPS. But for an entry-level SoC, not much more can be expected.

*MT6573*
The MT6573 is based on the much older ARMv6 architecture, most likely for cost reasons. MediaTek still seems to be using it for ultra-cheap smartphones that have only the bare minimum of performance required to power Android, although with Cortex-A7 becoming almost ubiquitous for the low end, it should be on its way out within a year. The chip can't support resolutions and video playback higher than 480p, but it does seem to support 8 MP cameras.

*MT6575*
While the Cortex-A9 core is also pretty old, it still appears in some devices. Performance-wise, it should be between the MT6573 and MT6572, because the latter is higher-clocked and has two cores. The chip comes with support for display resolutions of up to 960x540 and 720p video playback, along with support for 8 MP cameras.

MediaTek made a cheaper version of this SoC back in 2012. Called MT6575M, it had a GPU that was half as powerful and was manufactured using an older 65 nm process.

*MT6577*
The MT6577 SoC also utilizes the older Cortex-A9 (in dual-core trim, operating at 1 GHz). MediaTek keeps selling the processor because of its popularity, which enabled a lot of phones to shoot 720p video back in 2012.

Despite its age, the chip continues to support 720p display resolutions, full-HD video playback, and 8 MP cameras, making it a valuable offering from MediaTek at the right price.

*MT6589 and Variants*





The MTK6589 is another popular offering. It’s so in-demand, in fact, that MediaTek created another two versions of this chip: one slower (MT6589M) and one faster (MT6589T).

SoC

CPU Core

GPU Core

Max Resolution

Camera

Video Encode/Decode

MT6589M

Cortex-A7 (4-core) @ 1.2 GHz

PowerVR SGX544 @ 156 MHz

960x540

8MP ISP

720p @ 30 FPS

MT6589

Cortex-A7 (4-core) @ 1.2 GHz

PowerVR SGX544 @ 286 MHz

1920x1080

13MP ISP

1080p @ 30 FPS

MT6589T

Cortex-A7 (4-core) @ 1.5 GHz

PowerVR SGX544 @ 357 MHz

1920x1080

13MP ISP

1080p @ 30 FPS


All three are based on the Cortex-A7 CPU, and all are quad-core. But the M version has half the GPU performance, supports cameras up to 8 MP, and can only play 720p video. The T version is 25 percent faster for both its CPU and GPU, and supports cameras up to 13 MP. All three of them use PowerVR GPUs from Imagination.

*MT6592*
The MT6592 is an eight-core Cortex-A7-based chip that runs between 1.7 and 2.0 GHz (typically 1.7 GHz), and comes with a Mali-450 MP4 GPU operating at 600 MHz. This chip can support cameras up to 16 MP, and you'll typically see it in higher-end Chinese smartphones that cost about half as much as the flagships we’re used to.

*MT6595*
The MT6595 isn't available yet, but it should be by the end of the year. This chip shows that MediaTek wants to compete against Qualcomm and Samsung near the high end of the market. The upcoming SoC will employ ARM’s big.LITTLE power optimization technology with a quad-core Cortex-A7 cluster clocked at 1.7 GHz and a quad-core Cortex-A17 cluster operating at 2.2 GHz. Of course, -A17 is a new core design from ARM that promises roughly twice the performance of Cortex-A7 at a given frequency, or around the same performance as the latest revision of Cortex-A15 (like the one from Tegra K1).






The new SoC will be coupled with a PowerVR 6200 GPU clocked at 600 MHz. It will also bring support for 20 MP cameras and 802.11ac Wi-Fi, in addition to integrating an LTE modem.

MediaTek must expect the chip to be very popular, because it's making two other versions of it: the MT6595M, which will have the Cortex A7 cores clocked at 1.5GHz, and the high-end Cortex A17 cores at 2.0 GHz, and the MT6595 Turbo, which will have its Cortex A7 cores clocked at 1.7 GHz and the Cortex A17 cores at 2.4-2.5 GHz.

*MT6732*
At this year's Mobile World Conference, MediaTek announced its first ARMv8-based 64-bit chip, the MT6732, which comes with a quad-core Cortex-A53 complex running at 1.5 GHz and a powerful Mali T760 GPU boasting OpenGL ES 3.0 and OpenCL 1.2 support.

The chip supports dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, LTE, an ISP supporting 13 MP sensors, and 1080p video at 30 FPS, with hardware-accelerated HEVC decoding.

*Tablet chips*
Soc

CPU Core

GPU Core

Max Resolution

Camera

Video Encode/Decode

MT8127

Cortex A7 (4-core) @ 1.5 GHz

Mali-450 MP4 @ 600 MHz

1920x1080

13MP ISP

1080p @ 30 FPS

MT8377

Cortex A9 (2-core) @ 1.2 GHz

IMGSGX531 Ultra @ 400 MHz

1280x720

8MP ISP

1080p @ 30 FPS

MT8135

Cortex A15 (2-core) @ 1.7 GHz / Cortex A7 (2-core) @ 1.2 GHz

IMGG6200 @ 600 MHz

1920x1080

13MP ISP

1080p @ 30 FPS

MT8125 / 8389

Cortex A7 (4-core) @ 1.5 GHz

IMGSGX544 @ 300 MHz

1920x1080

13MP ISP

1080p @ 30 FPS


*MT8127



*
The latest chip announced by MediaTek (MT8127) was designed specifically for tablets on which customers tend to watch more videos and movies. Unlike the MT6732, though, this is not meant as a high-end chip from MediaTek, but as a more low-cost SoC for low-end and mid-range tablets. As such, it comes with quad-core 1.5 GHz Cortex-A7 CPU, a Mali-450 MP4 GPU, and support for 1080p displays, 1080p video playback, and 13 MP cameras.

*MT8377*
The MT8377 is a lower-end offering for tablets, which was released last year. It comes with a dual-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A9 CPU made with the older 40 nm process and a PowerVR SGX531 Ultra GPU, which supports a maximum resolution of 1280x720. It also supports Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi, and GSM/GPRS/EDGE/HSPA modems.

*MT8135*
*



*

This is currently MediaTek's highest-end 32-bit tablet chip, which takes advantage of big.Little technology by integrating two Cortex-A15 cores at 1.7 GHz and two Cortex-A7 cores at 1.2 GHz. It also comes with a PowerVR Series6 G200 GPU that supports OpenGL ES 3.0. Tablets incorporating this processor should be capable of respectable gaming performance, even at 1080p.

*MT8125/8389*
These two chips are MediaTek's older "high-end" products for tablets that have been shipping since last year. They both support 1080p displays and 1080p video playback, along with cameras up to 13 MP. The difference between them is that the MT8389 packs an embedded GPS module and comes with Bluetooth 4.0 support. Both work with wireless standards like GSM, GPRS, EDGE and HSPA+.

*5. Allwinner*

Allwinner Technology is a China-based fabless semiconductor company founded in 2007. It was one of the first few independent companies to become an ARM licensee, and is probably the first Chinese SoC manufacturer to get our attention in the U.S. with its Android-oriented platforms. Its single-core A10 (Cortex-A8 with Mali 400 GPU), released in late 2010, proved that a Chinese processor could compete with more heavily-marketed brands. Even still, its focus has been largely on mid- and low-end budget tablets, PMPs. and HDMI media sticks, and not so much on smartphones.

The A10 was so prolific that it distorted prices in the Chinese tablet market for almost a year. Its combination of a modest ARMv7 CPU and a then-leading-edge Mali 400 GPU meant that even though it employed one core, it could match the gaming performance of Nvidia’s substantially more expensive Tegra 2. Indeed, such excitement grew around the Mali GPU that a GPU emulation layer, called Chainfire 3D (no longer in development), gained a lot of support from customers with A10-equipped devices.

Back then, forums were filled with reports of A10-based tablets running quite a few high-end Tegra 2-optimized games smoothly and, in some cases, with more features enabled (such as FSAA) than what was thought to be theoretically possible at the time on Nvidia’s GeForce ULP GPU.

Allwinner is again focusing on premium GPU performance with its quad-core A31, based on Cortex-A7 and equipped with the PowerVR SGX 544 GPU. This is the same GPU that was used in the third-gen iPad, thus enabling a whole swathe of 2048x1536p-class 9- and 10-inch Android tablets at budget prices.

Soc

CPU Core

GPU Core

Max Resolution

Camera

Video Encode/Decode

A10

Cortex A8 (1-core) @ 1.0 GHz

Mali 400

1920x1080

N/A

1080p @ 30 FPS

A10s

Cortex A8 (1-core) @ 1.0 GHz

Mali 400

1920x1080

N/A

1080p @ 30 FPS

A13

Cortex A8 (1-core) @ 1.0 GHz

Mali 400

1920x1080

N/A

1080p @ 30 FPS

A20

Cortex A7 (2-cores)

Mali 400 MP2

1920x1080

8MP

1080p @ 30 FPS / 2160p @ 30 FPS

A31

Cortex A7 (4-cores)

PowerVR SGX 544 MP2

2048 ×1536 

12MP

1080p @ 30 FPS / 4kx2k @ 30 FPS

A80

Cortex A7 (4-cores) / Cortex A15 (4-cores)

PowerVR 6230

2560x1600

16MP

4K×2K @ 30 FPS (h.265/VP9 support)


*A10*





The A10 SoC has been a major success for Allwinner; it's what put the company on the map as a Chinese mobile chip maker. It was mostly used to drive Android- and Linux-based mini-sticks, but also some sub-$150 tablets like the Ainol Novo 7 Aurora, from India. The processor supports a maximum resolution of 1920x1080, though it’s mostly often seen in tablets with 1024x600 or 1280x800 resolutions.

*A10s*





The A10s is basically a stripped-down A10 that’s less expensive. Allwinner uses the A10s to target cheap mini TV sticks. It also adds DLNA and Wi-Fi display support. Compared to the A10, you get better power management, too.

*A13*





Allwinner’s A13 is one of the company's more recently released chips, and is targeted mainly at small tablets and e-readers. However, even though it's new, the processor only comes with a Cortex-A8 CPU and Mali-400 MP1 GPU. This isn’t one of Allwinner's more powerful offerings.

*A20*






The A20 followed the A10, doubling CPU and GPU core count, while switching to Cortex-A7 from -A8 for better battery life and adding support for cameras. Cleverly, it was pin-compatible with the A10, theoretically meaning that tablet manufacturers could just use it in place of its predecessor to save design time. In practice, though, the market had already started shifting to quad-core platforms, so the A20 saw mixed success.

*A31*





The A31 seems to be recreating the A10 budget hero experience. Just as that old classic introduced 720/800p tablets to the market at affordable prices, the A31 seems to be doing the same for Retina-class resolutions in the 9.7-inch range. The -A7 CPU aspect of the chipset isn't particularly powerful, but it is extremely efficient. On the other hand, the PowerVR 544MP2 GPU is extremely powerful, maxing out many benchmarks. The chipset has also found its way into HDMI sticks. It's currently Allwinner's highest-end SoC, and it also supports camera sensors up to 12 MP.

*A80*

*



*

Allwinner A80 is expected to arrive this year, at which point it’ll be Allwinner's highest-end chip. It’s too early to tell, but the A80 could put Allwinner in competition with the likes of Samsung, Qualcomm, and Nvidia. The processor will utilize big.Little technology, with quad-core Cortex-A7 and -A15 clusters. The chip is as high-end as you could expect, so it will also have support for 4K video and the hardware-accelerated H.265 and VP9 codecs.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## SammiiPryo34

this is what we need to be doing. science and tech are the new age of power and we cant afford to fall behind


----------



## cirr

*6. Spreadtrum*

Spreadtrum Communications Inc. is a Shanghai-based fabless chip maker and the world's 17th largest semiconductor company. It is best known for making chipsets for the Chinese TD-SCDMA 3G network, but it also sells chips to customers from other countries. The company was acquired last year by Tsinghua Unigroup, a Chinese consumer electronics firm.

Back in 2011, Spreadtrum managed to win 25 percent of the 2G phone market in China, mainly from MediaTek, which introduced a weaker chip at the time and, in turn, gave Spreadtrum the opportunity to grow its market share rapidly.

Today, Spreadtrum is known mainly for making chipsets that work on China’s TD-SCDMA 3G network, which covers 50 percent of the customers there. But it's also making chips for other customers in other countries. If you’re looking at the overall Chinese smartphone market, Spreadtrum only has 11 percent share.

*SC6821*
While we generally think of companies like MediaTek as offering entry-level hardware, Spreadtrum goes even lower. Earlier this year, we learned that Spreadtrum and Mozilla are partnering to offer a $25 Firefox OS smartphone, which is way below the retail price of any phone we've tested on Tom’s Hardware.






This smartphone will come with a SC6821 chip. We don’t know too much about the platform, other than that it's based on ARM's Cortex-A5, has support for Wi-Fi (presumably 802.11b/g/n) and Bluetooth, and integrates FM radio functionality. It also supports a camera (most likely up to 5 MP) and HVGA resolutions, will run Firefox OS, and will work on WCDMA and EDGE networks.

Mozilla most likely chose Spreadtrum due to its processor's low price. Therefore, performance and features probably weren’t the priority. At least Mozilla picked an ARMv7-capable chip, as it prepares to completely drop ARMv6 support from both Firefox OS and the mobile Firefox app for Android. The sooner everyone gets rid of ARMv6, the sooner developers can focus on supporting ARMv7 and ARMv8 architectures.

*SC7735S*
Mozilla is not the only big-name customer serviced by Spreadtrum. HTC has also put the Spreadtrum Quak (SC7735S) chip inside its Desire 700 mid-range smartphone. This chip is based on a quad-core Cortex-A7 1.2 GHz CPU and Mali-400 GPU. It supports up to 2 GB of RAM, 1080p video playback at 30 FPS, VP8 hardware decoding, and up to 13 MP cameras.






HTC hasn't had the best luck with its low-end smartphone offerings because, for some reason, it always ends up more expensive than the competition sporting similar specs. Spreadtrum might help HTC reduce its overall prices for its low-end smartphones.

Earlier this year, there were some talks about a potential Spreadtrum/RDA Microelectronics merger, but this deal was met with opposition from RDA employees, who consider Spreadtrum a much less nimble company than their own.

*7. China Turns Up the Heat*

ARM’s open-license model has allowed it to become ubiquitous in the mobile market, simultaneously giving lesser-known or brand-new semiconductor companies the opportunity to use its IP to build SoCs of their own. Those chip makers can then use their hardware to compete against the well-known semiconductor giants.

Many of these companies, which don’t yet have pervasive brands, have to compete against the entry-level offerings from larger, more established competitors. This is exactly the kind of strategy Chinese companies use to excel, thanks to the low costs of manufacturing. Now, as some of those vendors cultivate more notable brands, many device manufacturers are starting to choose their wares, and not just because of low prices.

The Chinese semiconductor companies started out at the lower end of the performance spectrum, and have successively raised the bar to hit higher levels. More powerful SoCs command greater premiums and earn higher margins. Naturally, they all want to increase their profits. 

At the same time, since they've been offering aggressive pricing from the beginning, even their quicker processors are still considered affordable compared to the competition. This should allow them to steal market share from the better-known chip companies, even at the high end of the mobile chip market, earning positions in more popular flagship devices, which, in turn, will strengthen their brand.

The Chinese chip makers that seem to be doing the best right now are MediaTek, Rockchip, and Allwinner. Together, they have 75.7 percent of the tablet processor market in China, with Rockchip and Allwinner taking the lead.

MediaTek is doing much better in the phone market in China, with over 50 percent market share, thanks to the integration of its processors with baseband modems. Its main Chinese competition there is Spreadtrum, though that company’s market share is five times smaller.

Qualcomm is the only real challenge to MediaTek in the Chinese smartphone market. But even that juggernaut had to adopt stock Cortex-A5 and -A7 designs in order to become price-competitive. It had a brief advantage in the LTE market by integrating the cellular standard into its SoCs. However, Qualcomm’s market share is declining as more companies integrate baseband modems.

*With the Chinese government and manufacturing customers tending to favor Chinese chip makers as well, it's going to become increasingly difficult for an outsider like Qualcomm to compete against these fast-growing Chinese chip makers, especially when they can't even beat them on price.*

ARM-based SoC Competition From China Heats Up

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## cnleio

I wish i can use Made In China MicroProcessor in engineering project, not ATMEL / ST / TI / Freescale's MCUs.

In my hand, there's a STC production by China-TaiWan company but low-cost & low-level MCU not ARM Cortex Architecture.

Oneday Chinese engineers can write codes to China MCUs, and export our productions to foreign nations.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Beidou2020

he-man said:


> U cannot force companies to do this man,,,u just cannot.
> Not to private firms u can't.
> 
> Yes as far as state corporations are concerned,u are right



In China, if private firms don't do what the Chinese government wants, your company will be punished with fines, restriction of market access, removable of favourable tax breaks, loss of government contracts, removal of export subsidies, extra fees charged, and many other forms of punishment.

In China, there are 3 things you don't mess with:
1) You don't mess with mother nature.
2) You don't mess with your mother-in-law.
3) You don't mess with the mother freaking Chinese government.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## mike2000

he-man said:


> Don't waste my time with jingo claims..............no big company uses huawei chip as of now except huawei itself.
> And it uses exactly same specs as samsung exynos with 4 cores of cortex a15 and 4 cores of cortex a7.
> Even gpu is same mali 628.
> 
> Yes making it is commendable though.
> 
> But tegra k1 is much ahead than snapdragon 805,kirin and exynos especially its gpu



Ahahah...well said bro. In fact you don't even need to explain yourself that much/go into much details. 
A simple quote from the thread will be enough, which I quote:

Huawei is not aiming to export its chips and does not see them as a stand-alone product, the 21st Century Business Herald quoted Xu Zhijun, deputy president of Huawei, as saying.

Xu said, "The strategy we adopt is one plus one or one plus N," which means that for every HiSilicon chip that Huawei incorporates in its products, it will integrate one chip or more from other suppliers.

The reason for this is that Huawei doesn't want to stir concerns with Qualcomm or other industry giants, fearing such a situation might affect chip supplies, the Herald reported.
Huawei was taught a tough lesson in March 2012 when it unveiled its quad-core processor K3V2 and said it would use the new chips in its Ascend D smartphones.
The new mobile phones appeared on the market several months later than planned. A source close to Huawei told the Herald that the delay was at least partly down to the high-profile release of the chips making its screen supplier Samsung nervous and leading it to stall the supply.
"We can only lead US companies in sectors the size of a needle. But it is out of the question for our lead to expand to sectors the size of a matchstick," said Ren Zhengfei, Huawei's founder and CEO, during a speech earlier this year when publishing the firm's 2013 annual report.

This alone says it all, DONT MESS WITH AMERICAN EAGLE and its tech companies. Well not until you have reached parity with them.


----------



## FairAndUnbiased

he-man said:


> Again same straw man argument!!
> Its not huawei's invention.
> 
> Its designed by ARM,UK and leased to anyone willing to make a chip.
> The chip is pretty good i concede but not revolutionary



ARM is an instruction set architecture. Basically all chips on the smart phone market are ARM chips. Tegra K1 is also based on ARM architecture. That does not mean their physical design is the same - there are many physical design realizations for the same instruction set architecture.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## he-man

FairAndUnbiased said:


> ARM is an instruction set architecture. Basically all chips on the smart phone market are ARM chips. Tegra K1 is also based on ARM architecture. That does not mean their physical design is the same - there are many physical design realizations for the same instruction set architecture.



Yes i know that


----------



## Genesis

@he-man 

This chip is a step in the right direction, it's about building the infrastructure, and talent pool first. 

What do I mean, Indian scientists are pretty important in the US, but back in India they can't make a LCA work right. Does India make people stupid? Obviously not. 

What happened is India doesn't have the necessary infrastructure, talent pool, and teaching staff to make it possible. How can an Indian in India be as good as their Americans when in University, they have profs who have no experience in said industry due to it not existing, how can Indian graduates find experience due to the firm not existing or the senior staff very raw, how can a worker conduct research in good speed if he has nothing to base it on, and so on so forth. 


This Chip will create talent who has worked around it's creation and be able to pass on their experience onto new generations, has already set up the funding, research centers and everything else needed to continue it. 


Right now it doesn't matter how good or bad it is, just as long as it exists.


I can still remember, though very young at the time, people saying China should stop cause Type 53 frigates are lame and should stop or the JH-7 and J-10s are stupid and we should stop, that we never make anything of note and we suck.


Now look at it, J-10B, J-11B, J16, J15, J-20, J-31, all possible due to the earlier birds, while the emerging Type 54a and b, with 52C/D and 55, makes China a naval force to be reckon with.


The thing I learn is time goes by fast, 10 years sounds long, 20 years sounds far, but here we are, J-20 and type 55 on the verge of induction. 

Have patients.


----------



## he-man

Genesis said:


> @he-man
> 
> This chip is a step in the right direction, it's about building the infrastructure, and talent pool first.
> 
> What do I mean, Indian scientists are pretty important in the US, but back in India they can't make a LCA work right. Does India make people stupid? Obviously not.
> 
> What happened is India doesn't have the necessary infrastructure, talent pool, and teaching staff to make it possible. How can an Indian in India be as good as their Americans when in University, they have profs who have no experience in said industry due to it not existing, how can Indian graduates find experience due to the firm not existing or the senior staff very raw, how can a worker conduct research in good speed if he has nothing to base it on, and so on so forth.
> 
> 
> This Chip will create talent who has worked around it's creation and be able to pass on their experience onto new generations, has already set up the funding, research centers and everything else needed to continue it.
> 
> 
> Right now it doesn't matter how good or bad it is, just as long as it exists.
> 
> 
> I can still remember, though very young at the time, people saying China should stop cause Type 53 frigates are lame and should stop or the JH-7 and J-10s are stupid and we should stop, that we never make anything of note and we suck.
> 
> 
> Now look at it, J-10B, J-11B, J16, J15, J-20, J-31, all possible due to the earlier birds, while the emerging Type 54a and b, with 52C/D and 55, makes China a naval force to be reckon with.
> 
> 
> The thing I learn is time goes by fast, 10 years sounds long, 20 years sounds far, but here we are, J-20 and type 55 on the verge of induction.
> 
> Have patients.




I agree with u man.
Its a great achievement,,,20 nm is no joke,recent iphone 6 a8 processor is 20 nm too.

But i was giving a comparison and it has to be unbiased


----------



## Genesis

he-man said:


> I agree with u man.
> Its a great achievement,,,20 nm is no joke,recent iphone 6 a8 processor is 20 nm too.
> 
> But i was giving a comparison and it has to be unbiased


well yea, don't underestimate the Americans, why should we be able to catch up so fast, we are not the chosen people we must also walk the roads Americans did to make it that far.

The thing to remember for these sort of announcements like the OS, and this chip and other things, is as long as the first step is taken, the rest is a lot simpler, relatively, sort of.


----------



## xunzi

Everything is about building an ecosystem. Huawei didn't offer their chip because of the fear that supplier like Samsung will delay their LCD panel to Huawei for making their product. This is the shortsighted of our firm because we focus too much on short-term profit. This mentality must be changed. To get up to speed and breakaway from foreign blackmail, Huawei must cooperate and partnership with other, even to rival to create its own ecosystem and play supplier against one another. Unfortunately our LCD technology is maturing and will eventually catch up, and that is when Huawei Kirin will expand.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## kawaraj

Huawei shall share it's chip with other phone makers, that will significantly ecourage the competition in the industry and lower the cost of phones.

Mate 7 looks cool. It's not on sale in Japan yet.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*China completes design of Tianzhou cargo spacecraft*

*Sep 09, 2014 *

*





Long March 7 launch vehicle at Tianjin Test Facility. Photo: China Aerospace Science & Technology Corporation
*

*BEIJING (BNS): Chinese scientists and engineers will begin building a production-model of ‘Tianzhou’ having completed the design for the nation’s first cargo spacecraft.

The design and technology of the unmanned spacecraft have been approved by an expert panel from China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp and the China Academy of Space Technology, a Xinhua report said.

China is expected to launch Tianzhou or ‘Heavenly Vessel’ into space around 2016.

The cargo vehicle will deliver supplies to Tiangong-2 space laboratory which is planned to be put into orbit before the end of 2015. 

China launched the first space laboratory and target orbiter Tiangong-1 in 2011.

Development of the Tianzhou cargo spacecraft began in July 2012 and is based on the design of the Tiangong-1, and Shenzhou manned spacecrafts. 

The cargo spacecraft major tasks will be to refuel the manned space station and transport supplies including propellants, living necessities for astronauts and equipment for scientific research. It can also destroy various waste materials.

According to reports, three cabin structures are being designed for the cargo ship, a fully-enclosed one, a semi-open one and a wholly-open one. 

Tianzhou will weigh 13 metric tons and its cargo capacity will be about 6 tons, China Science Daily quoting Zha Xuelei, deputy chief designer of the Tianzhou system, said.

The cargo vehicle will be launched atop China’s new-generation medium-lift carrier rocket CZ-7 (Long March 7) equipped with a new-generation engine from the newly built Wenchang Launch Centre in Hainan province.

A cargo transportation system that supplies materials and fuel is vital to China building its own space station which the government plans to make it operational by 2020, the report said.*

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Beidou2020

Shenzhou manned spacecraft.
Tiangong space laboratory.
Tianzhou cargo spacecraft.

Awesome


----------



## cirr

*China to launch Tiangong-2 space lab in 2016: astronaut*

_2014-09-10 14:24

CRIENGLISH.com Web Editor: Qian Ruisha_
China's first astronaut Yang Liwei has revealed that China will launch the Tiangong-2 space lab in 2016 and will finish building a space station around 2022.

Yang, who is vice director of the China Manned Space Engineering Office, made the remarks at the international Planetary Congress of the Association of Space Explorers (ASE) which opened on Wednesday in Beijing.

China will also launch a manned spacecraft, the Shenzhou-11, and Tianzhou-1 cargo spaceship to dock with Tiangong-2, Yang said.

The country's first generation of astronauts are about to retire and new astronauts will be selected, including females, Yang said.

Three Chinese astronauts successfully completed a manual docking between the Shenzhou-9 spacecraft and the orbiting Tiangong-1 lab module in June 2012, the first such attempt in China's history of space exploration.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*Sci-Tech, innovation to play crucial roles in China's long-term growth*

(Xinhua) Updated: 2014-09-11 10:55





Chinese Premier Li Keqiang delivers a keynote speech at the opening of the Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2014, also known as the Summer Davos forum, in Tianjin Municipality, North China, Sept 10, 2014. [Photo/Xinhua]

LONDON - Chinese Premier Li Keqiang's speech at the opening ceremony of the Summer Davos forum has underlined government's commitment to supporting science, technology and innovation to play the crucial roles in underpinning Chinese industrial upgrade and long-term economic growth, said Rajiv Biswas, Chief Asia Economist at INC Inc, in an interview with Xinhua. 

The Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2014, also known as the Summer Davos forum, opened Wednesday in north China's port city Tianjin. 

Several highlights in the economic field could easily be spotted during Premier Li's speech, said Rajiv. 

For instance, Premier Li stressed the importance of economic and structural reforms as a driver of long-term economic growth, rather than relying on fiscal stimulus; China commits itself to increasing the network of multilateral and bilateral free trade agreements to create a strong free trade net work; and China would accelerate efforts to make the domestic economy more open for foreign investment and technology, elaborated Rajiv. 

Rajiv believed that science, technology and innovation are acting as the significant roles on China's economy restructure. 

"Over the last three decades, Chinese economic growth was driven by exports and investment related to external demand, as it became a global hub for low-cost manufacturing. With manufacturing labor costs rising in China, it is becoming harder for China to compete in very low-cost manufacturing industries," said Rajiv. 

"Therefore science, technology and innovation will play a crucial role over the next decade in helping Chinese industry to move up the value-adding chain into high-tech industries and maintain strong economic growth." 

A major focus of Premier Li's speech was on the need for innovation as an essential factor to upgrading the Chinese economy, noted Rajiv. 

"Premier Li stated that increasing scientific research and development would be a key focus to accelerate the development of higher value-added industries, including technological sophistication and brand quality of Chinese products. As part of China's policy efforts to improve science and technology as well as innovation, a key focus would be on further improving workforce skills through education and training, as well as ensuring greater protection of intellectual property rights," added Rajiv. 

On Sept 7, IHS, a United States-based data analysis company, said in a report that China would surpass the United States, becoming the world's largest economy in 2024, as the country's consumer spending is expected to almost quadruple from 2013 to 2024. 

Sci-Tech, innovation to play crucial roles in China's long-term growth - Business - Chinadaily.com.cn


​





​


Economists upbeat on China Summer Davos in Asia

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## TaiShang

*Tech innovation hub takes shape in Beijing*

*Statistics showed that in 2013, Haidian district had 21,372 patents, a rise of 7.6 percent year on year.*

After China's international technology transfer center and national technology transfer accumulation center were set up in the western region of Zhongguancun, Haidian's technology exchange was tipped to become more high-end, professional and international, officials said.

To build Haidian into a "never-ending technology exchange exhibition center," the Haidian district established a service platform for Zhongguancun's technology transfer and intellectual property protection.

The platform is based on Zhongguancun Science Park's beneficial policies and R&D centers. It mainly serves technological enterprises in the Zhongguancun Science Park and spreads the services to the country's major industrial parks in different fields.

The platform focuses on the resource advantages of Zhongguancun Science Park and shares information from the China Technology Exchange.

It also includes related agency services and encourages enterprises to take part in market-oriented activities including technology transfer and intellectual property exchange.

*The platform has four virtual halls featuring different functions.*

The information hall releases supply and demand information in Beijing and other places in the country.

The exchange hall publicizes projects with rights that have been confirmed. It also offers a space for price bidding exchanges of patents and trademarks.

The service hall provides support services from research institutes and investing agencies.

The news hall releases notices for exhibitions, exchanges, latest news and policy orientations.

Officials said that market demands were very important for the platform, which would also provide convenient Internet access to help users find information quickly.

A highlight of the platform is an online exhibition that helps both sides of exchanges discuss and negotiate through the Internet.

The platform also enables users to apply for projects on-line to save time and money.

*Haidian district also released several related policies to boost the development of intellectual property right protection and technology transfer.

The maximum awards for intellectual property right exchanges can reach 500,000 yuan ($81,976).

Maximum awards for commercializing patents can reach 1 million yuan.

Haidian district offers subsidies to enterprises that purchase high-end services for intellectual property rights, which can reach up to 500,000 yuan.*

The district encourages industrial leagues and associations to initiate innovational activities.

This year, Haidian district cooperated with Zhongguancun administration committee, Beijing Intellectual Property Bureau and Beijing Quality Inspection Bureau to create beneficial policies to support enterprises, intellectual property related exchanges and transfer activities.



*Smart technology helps software park stay top*

*In the wake of rapid urbanization in China, there have been nearly 100 "smart city" programs nationwide.*

An important part of smart city construction is the inclusion of smart parks.

Introducing smart technology to enhance core competitiveness and achieve sustainable development is recognized by the majority of park operators.

In terms of smart public services, the SPSP has developed an IT Services Cloud called SPSP Huizhi. It is based on the latest cloud computing technology and aims to help build a high-end IT service platform for companies registered with SPSP.

The project helped small and medium sized enterprises, which make up nearly half of all companies in SPSP, reduce their IT expenditure and transition into cloud computing services, said a development and planning official at SPSP.

The project led to a convergence of enterprises related to the cloud computing industry to build the SPSP into a base for cloud computing with influence on both domestic and foreign markets, he added.

"The Huizhi cloud service has received praise from users," said the official. "The functions and performances of the park will be further improved in the future, to make it one of the best in China," the official said.

*According to a goal set by the SPSP in its 2014 annual plan, the income of cloud computing was expected to exceed 20 million yuan ($3.3 million) this year.*

The SPSP established an information-sharing and full-cycle management system for its clients.

The system optimized the allocation of resources and provided information for company decision makers. The system can also analyze company data to help better predict the park's future.

*The SPSP, which was founded in July 1992, is a national center for the software industry and a base for software exports.

As of December 2013, the park completed 1.15 million square meters of land development and provided 570,000 sq m of office space for software companies.

There are currently 1,391 enterprises registered with the park, among which 562 have offices in the park, employing 38,000 people.

In 2013, software developers and information service companies in the park generated a total income of 55.2 billion yuan, paid 2.94 billion yuan in tax, and exported $760 million worth of software products.*

According to the park's 12th Five Year Plan (2011-15), the park aims to achieve a total output value of 60 billion yuan by 2015, up from 26.7 billion yuan by the end of 2012.

Chip design is expected to account for 15 billion yuan, or about a quarter of the total output, while mobile Internet companies are expected to contribute 5 billion yuan.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## jkroo

Good news for Zhongguancun, more innovations are expected.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*Quantum Photonics on a Single Chip?*

By Alexander Hellemans

Posted 11 Sep 2014 | 17:51 GMT





Photo: Nanjing University/American Physical Society

Researchers from Nanjing University, Beijing Institute of Aerospace Control Devices, and Southeast University, Nanjing, in China *have demonstrated the creation of entangled photons and their manipulation on a single chip*. The group reported this research last week in Physical Review Letters.

The researchers used lithium niobate (LN) as the material for the chip. LN, widely used in cellphones and modulators in telecommunications, is a material with a highly nonlinear response to light. Because of these optical properties it allows the integration of a number of quantum devices, and it is becoming the material of choice for the fabrication of photonic chips.

To demonstrate the extent to which the integration of optical elements is possible, the researchers created on the chip nine similar units that produce photon pairs of different wavelengths that match the C and L telecom bands. Three of these units contain elements for the manipulation of entangled photons.








Each of these units consist of three sections. In the first section, polarized light enters a Y branch and then passes through an electrooptical modulator which can change the phase difference between the light in the two paths. Then the photons enter two waveguides with periodical structures, created in the second section of the chip. The periodically poled LN (PPLN) is a part of the chip where the electric dipole moment of the NL crystals alternate from up and down in a periodical fashion, changing the waveguides into miniature "wigglers" if you will. This periodic structure is obtained by applying a very short high voltage pulse to the LN surface through a grid-like periodical electrical contact.

One of the properties of PPLN waveguides is that they can split each photon entering the waveguide into two photons with half the energy of the incoming photon. Because these two photons are created from a single photon, they are entangled.

In the third section the entangled photons meet in a waveguide beam splitter and realize quantum interference, then they are transferred to two adjacent waveguides.

The degree of entanglement can be changed by changing the phase difference between the photons in the two channels with the electrooptical modulator in the first section. The type of entanglement that takes place on the chip is called "path entanglement," explains Ping Xu of Nanjing University and a member of the research group. "The photon can be in one path or the other path simultaneously or separately — it is a superposition of the occupation of different paths," she says.

By changing the phase difference between the two photon streams with the electrooptical modulator, the researchers could control the amount of entanglement — the amount of "bunched" electrons. They verified the existence of the entangled photons with two-photon interferometry (Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer), which determines whether photons arrive exactly at the same time, which they do when they are entangled.

According to Xu, their research is a definite advance: "For the first time a PPLN is used for waveguide circuits, allowing the compact generation and manipulation of entangled photons," she notes.

_Illustration: Nanjing University/American Physical Society_

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*Synopsis: Quantum Photonics on a Chip*





H. Jin _et al_., Phys. Rev. Lett. (2014)
*On-Chip Generation and Manipulation of Entangled Photons Based on Reconfigurable Lithium-Niobate Waveguide Circuits*
H. Jin, F. M. Liu, P. Xu, J. L. Xia, M. L. Zhong, Y. Yuan, J. W. Zhou, Y. X. Gong, W. Wang, and S. N. Zhu

Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 103601 (2014)

Published September 4, 2014

*Before quantum information technologies can become part of everyday life, quantum devices will need to become cheaper and more compact*. The integration of quantum optical components into a solid-state chip would be a major step in that direction. Silicon-based chips, which can be integrated with existing CMOS electronics, would be a natural choice, but other materials may offer better performance. In particular, a larger optical nonlinearity would be needed to realize efficient sources of entangled photons—key components of any quantum system. As reported in _Physical Review Letters_, Ping Xu at Nanjing University, China, and co-workers have demonstrated a powerful alternative based on lithium niobate (LN)—a material sometimes heralded as the “silicon of photonics.”

The authors fabricated and tested a single LN chip containing elements for both the generation and the manipulation of entangled photons. Thanks to LN’s large nonlinearity, the chip features two efficient photon sources, generating a high flux of entangled photon pairs. On the same chip, these photons can be channeled and manipulated through components such as junctions and wavelength-selective filters, relying on LN’s mature waveguide technology. Further, the electro-optical properties of LN enable fast modulators that steer the photons along different channels and enable tests of the photons’ quantum coherence. Finally, periodic poling (the formation of LN layers with alternate orientation) allows the system to be tuned to resonate at a desired wavelength: the chip contains nine units working at nine different wavelengths, covering the most important bands of optical fiber communications. *The researchers envision that LN could become the ideal platform for fully integrated quantum optics schemes. If so, the material could indeed become the “silicon of quantum photonics.”* – _Matteo Rini_

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## cirr

*China* develope the world's highest power *sodium guide star laser*：

我国研制出世界最高功率钠导星激光器 -- 一版 -- 中国科技网（dated 13.09.2014）

The laser system is now composed of sodium lasers with an average power of *81W* instead of the 20-25W quoted in the following article published back in 2012.


*China Takes Leadership Role in TMT Laser Guide Star Facility*

02.24.2012

Corinne Boyer, _TMT Observatory Corporation_

During the last twelve months, TMT collaborators in China have made significant progress on the design of the Laser Guide Star Facility (LGSF) for TMT. Carried out by Dr. Kai Wei and his team, the Institute of Optics and Electronics (IOE) in Chengdu (China) has taken the lead for the design of the beam transfer optics and laser launch telescope sub-system. They recently updated the conceptual design originally developed by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) to adapt for changes in the telescope design and to include new requirements.

The updated conceptual design was successfully reviewed on June 22, 2011 in Beijing by a group of experts from other observatories including Maxime Boccas (Gemini), Jason Chin (Keck) and Scott Roberts (HIA).

Another very important activity, carried out by TMT colleagues in China at the Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry (TIPC) in Beijing, is the design, development and test of a 20W prototype sodium laser for TMT. The team at TIPC led by Dr. Yong Bo has refurbished their bench prototype into a field prototype that was tested on-the-sky during the spring of 2011 at the 1.8m telescope in Yunnan in collaboration with IOE.

A review of the TIPC work was organized after the IOE review on June 23–24, 2011 in Beijing. The review committee was composed of a group of renowned laser experts from the US and other observatories including: Roger Falcone (ALS), Roger Barty (LLNL) and Jason Chin (Keck). The laser prototype was brought back from Yunnan for display and operation at the review requiring a non-stop 3000 kilometer five day road trip.

*What is the Laser Guide Star Facility?*

The LGSF is the system that generates and projects onto the sky the laser guide star (or artificial guide star) constellations needed by first light and future generations of Adaptive Optics (AO) systems (See the Project Manager’s Corner: Making Your Own Stars in the March 2011 issue of Segments). The TMT first light AO system will use a constellation of six laser guide stars, which in combination with multiple deformable mirrors will enable full diffraction-limited imaging in the near infrared over a large field of view.

The LGSF consists of three main systems: the laser system that generates the sodium laser beams, composed of six 20 to 25W sodium lasers; the beam transfer optics and laser launch telescope system, which transports the laser beams using mirrors and relay lenses and then projects the laser beams from a laser launch telescope located behind the TMT secondary mirror; and the laser safety system, which ensures the lasers are operated safely.

The Institute of Optics and Electronics has recently supported the development and operations of a laser guide star system for the GaoMeigu 1.8m telescope located in the province of Yunnan (China).

Work is continuing now at IOE and TIPC, with more design and prototyping efforts scheduled for the next 12 months. China is taking a leadership role in the design, and development of the TMT LGSF.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## TaiShang

*China tests stem-cell therapy for heart disease*
Reporter: _Grace Brown _丨 CCTV.com

Monday is World Heart Day. One of the most serious heart conditions is Chronic Heart Disease. It has no cure to date, but in China scientists are hoping to find one, using stem-cell technology. 

Up to 10 new trial sites are being set up to test the use of stem-cell therapy in treating the disease.

Shen Ruijiang developed chronic heart disease five years ago. After surgery and a series of prescription drugs, dangerous side effects set in.

"The side effects are heavy. They can cause diabetes. I had to have a kidney transplant, so now I need to be more careful in treating my heart condition," Shen said.

While current treatments can slow his disease, they cannot cure it.
The government estimates chronic heart failure now affects 30 million Chinese people, more than the Australia’s entire population.

But stem cell therapy, a treatment now being tested at a Beijing hospital, could help.

A machine is used to sort the stem cells from the ordinary cells. Stem cells are very rare but very valuable, because they help regenerate organs. Stem-cell therapy works by re-programming patients’ own cells into new organ cells, such as heart cells. If it passes this latest trial, it will enter the Chinese market and potentially save millions of lives.

There is still a long way to go. A clinical trial on human patients would need regulatory approval. And once it hits the market, experts say it must be carefully controlled.

"Stem-cell therapy is very promising to deal with chronic heart disease. After one-two years, we want to get results. But in the world, we are trying to find any standard, any guideline. So I am afraid, if this new technique is over-used, or illegally used, it may injure patients," Prof. Zhou Yujie, vice-president of Beijing Anzhen Hospital, said.

As China’s stem cell therapy is still in its early stages, doctors are yet to fully understand its risks and its potential. But it could change prospects for millions of patients like Shen.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## Beidou2020

There must be cures for
Heart
Kidney
Liver
Eyes
Eardrums

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Aepsilons

TaiShang said:


> *China tests stem-cell therapy for heart disease*
> Reporter: _Grace Brown _丨 CCTV.com
> 
> Monday is World Heart Day. One of the most serious heart conditions is Chronic Heart Disease. It has no cure to date, but in China scientists are hoping to find one, using stem-cell technology.
> 
> Up to 10 new trial sites are being set up to test the use of stem-cell therapy in treating the disease.
> 
> Shen Ruijiang developed chronic heart disease five years ago. After surgery and a series of prescription drugs, dangerous side effects set in.
> 
> "The side effects are heavy. They can cause diabetes. I had to have a kidney transplant, so now I need to be more careful in treating my heart condition," Shen said.
> 
> While current treatments can slow his disease, they cannot cure it.
> The government estimates chronic heart failure now affects 30 million Chinese people, more than the Australia’s entire population.
> 
> But stem cell therapy, a treatment now being tested at a Beijing hospital, could help.
> 
> A machine is used to sort the stem cells from the ordinary cells. Stem cells are very rare but very valuable, because they help regenerate organs. Stem-cell therapy works by re-programming patients’ own cells into new organ cells, such as heart cells. If it passes this latest trial, it will enter the Chinese market and potentially save millions of lives.
> 
> There is still a long way to go. A clinical trial on human patients would need regulatory approval. And once it hits the market, experts say it must be carefully controlled.
> 
> "Stem-cell therapy is very promising to deal with chronic heart disease. After one-two years, we want to get results. But in the world, we are trying to find any standard, any guideline. So I am afraid, if this new technique is over-used, or illegally used, it may injure patients," Prof. Zhou Yujie, vice-president of Beijing Anzhen Hospital, said.
> 
> As China’s stem cell therapy is still in its early stages, doctors are yet to fully understand its risks and its potential. But it could change prospects for millions of patients like Shen.



Incredible! I wish success to their research in pluripotent stem cell research. This will be of benefit to all, no doubt.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*Chinese Scientists Use New Liquid Phase 3D Metal Printing Method To Print Quickly and Reliably*

BY BRIDGET BUTLER MILLSAPS · SEPTEMBER 30, 2014

The technology of 3D printing in metal has so far been thought of as rather arduous and limiting because it takes a long time, can only be performed using metal with high melting points, uses a lot of energy, and can be cost-prohibitive. Innovators and scientists have been hard-pressed to backtrack on this technology though, because of the potential they know lies in metal 3D printing in areas such as construction innovation, electronics, and breakthroughs in the medical industry. The current methods being applied are that of laser sintering, laser melting, and laser metal deposition.





So, how can we 3D print in metal, and how can we do it faster, better, and more affordably? Beijing engineers Lei Wang (Chinese Academy of Sciences) and Jing Liu (Tsinghua University) may have our answer, as they came to the obvious conclusion that if we want to reap the benefits of 3D printing with metal, we need to look beyond conventional methods. What if we could instead use metal for 3D printing that melts at a lower temperature? What if we could cool the product off faster—and we could 3D print everything in a more energy-efficient way which also offers the possibility of greater diversity in product?

Wang and Liu’s research paper, _Liquid Phase 3D Printing for Quickly Manufacturing Conductive Metal Objects with Low Melting Point Alloy Ink_ (Wang, L. and Liu, J., _Science China Technological Science_s, 2014, Volume 57) is a concise, clear view of how we can fix the current issues with liquid phase 3D printing, while offering greater affordability and more options. While they haven’t nailed it down to a completely streamlined, perfect process, major progress is obviously being made.

For liquid phase 3D printing, the engineers were searching for an alloy with melting points above room temperature and less than the traditional 300°C. These choices include gallium-, bismuth- and indium-based alloys, with which copper and silver particles can be mixed to make diverse and functional inks. While liquid phase 3D printing presented resolutions for all the current problems at the front end, the next challenge was in choosing a metal that did not result in the end-product melting.

The engineers settled on one particular alloy: Bi35In48.6Sn15.9Zn0.4, which is composed of bismuth, indium, tin and zinc. Then, they used an experimental device to work with issues regarding flow (they had to avoid solidification and blockage), temperature, air pressure, and cooling.






The liquid phase 3D printing uses syringes as their printing “nozzles,” which deposit droplets into the cooling fluid. Upon rapid cooling, the droplets solidify and fuse onto each other, over and over, until they complete the 3D structure being printed. This method works because the droplets melt so easily and then again retain their shape. Again though, with issues regarding melting and solidifying, manipulating the temperature of the alloy in the syringe was a consideration. Because the alloy they were using was just above room temperature, it was prone to settling back into shape and blocking up the syringes they were using to inject the liquid metal into the cooling fluid. The engineers were able to solve this problem by keeping the syringes at a constant temperature with a temperature controller.

With the proper temperature being controlled and air pressure being provided by a regulated nitrogen cylinder, the process works when the syringe is immersed in the liquid cooling fluid, which was water and ethanol for the purposes of this experiment—causing a dripping of metal droplets, rapidly and repetitively, which creates the desired 3D printed shape. Different shapes can be used, also, such as lines. The engineers point out that this method is much better than air cooling in that the buoyancy and ‘superior thermal qualities’ of the ethanol cooling fluid allow for rapid cooling—and rapid _production_.

Temperature, air pressure, and properties of the printer ink have to be controlled to produce the desired 3D printing effect. The engineers point out that this process would obviously require some refining, but they see it as a good start for enhancing current 3D printing in metal, with the suggestion that moving to adopt the combination between the ‘syringe pump array’ and the ‘syringe needle array’ as the best system–with the pump extracting fluid metal, and the needle injecting it for printing. Conveniently, the injection needles can be interchanged depending on the printing project.

Wang and Lie point out that in terms of using their new principle that all low melting point metals should be able to be used in this process in the right cooling conditions, different properties of ink can affect the actual printing itself, as well as speed. The study overall is obviously very positive for the future of 3D printing with metal, as the conclusion of the study points out that liquid phase 3D printing:

Is faster and can develop a wider variety of 3D printed bodies, including some unique metal structures.
Is a process that can be used with other materials—such as plastic—to create supports and conductive devices.
Is more energy efficient and cost effective.
Have you been involved in any metal 3D printing projects? What do you think of this research? Share your thoughts with us at the Liquid Phase 3D Metal Printing forum at 3DPB.com.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## cirr

*China's 3D printing market to quadruple*





The PrintrBot Simple 3D printer is one of a handful of sub-$500 consumer machines on the market. It prints using thermopolymer and supports Windows, OS X and Linux.

Credit: PrintrBot
*The consumer market will lead the surge.*




By Lucas Mearian
Computerworld | Sep 30, 2014 10:47 AM PT

While still a nascent market in China, the production and sale of 3D printers are expected to quadruple over the next four years, according to a new report.

"While 3D printing has been touted as a way for Western economies to compete with China's manufacturing advantages, the Asian giant is also taking rapid strides to parlay its traditional strengths into 3D printing as well," Richard Jun Li, a Lux Research director, said in a statement.

Li is the lead author of a new report titled, "China's Growing 3D Printing Ecosystem."

China is rapidly embracing 3D printing and sales of printers are expected to grow four-fold to 37,800 printers in 2018, as revenues more than triple to $109 million, according Lux Research.

Chinese 3D printers are competing on cost with leading global brands such as MakerBot, 3D Systems, EOS and Stratasys. Of the 21,550 printers produced by China in 2013, some 12,810 units were exported.

Just as in other regions of the world, China's automotive industry is the leading industrial application for the machines because creating prototype parts with 3D printers vastly improves time to market over traditional manufacturing methods.




GE
A Stratasys 3D printer that is commonly used in order to quickly create prototypes of design concepts.

China's automotive 3D printing market saw $6.8 million in revenue, followed by machines in education with $6.5 million.

China's automotive 3D printing sector will grow at 31% annually, riding on the strengths of the world's largest car market, according to Lux Research.

In terms of unit shipments, the consumer market was the largest application segment, with just over 5,900 units in 2013, according to Lux.

By 2018, the Chinese 3D printer market (excluding imported 3D printers) will grow to 37,800 units, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 34%, with printer revenue growing to $109 million in 2018, at a CAGR of 27%.

Worldwide, the sale of 3D printers and related materials is expected to balloon from $75 million this year to $1.2 billion by 2018, according to a Juniper Research reportreleased earlier this year.

Driving that surge from today's relatively low levels will be the entry of mainstream printer companies such as HP and Epson to the 3D fray, Juniper Research noted in its report, "Consumer 3D Printing and Scanning."

According to Juniper, the U.S. and Europe are leading the rest of the world for consumer 3D printer adoption; hobbyists and early tech adopters in those regions are driving that surge. Retailers such as Staples and service providers including UPS are testing in-store 3D printing services to provide their customers an opportunity to use the technology without having to buy the hardware and related materials.

China's consumer 3D printer market is expected to be led by purchases for the education sector. At the same time, 3D printing for China's healthcare market is also expected to increase, according to Lux Research.

In terms of printer type, metal 3D printers are forecast to be the fastest growing segment in the next five years, followed by low- to medium-end thermopolymer printers.

"Far from being disrupted by 3D printing, China will thrive as its expertise in electronics, manufacturing, and its growing domestic market make it a threat and an opportunity for aspiring 3D printing value chain participants," Li said.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*China expects to unveil first 3D printing industry plan within year*

_2014-09-30 14:07

Ecns.cnWeb Editor: Si Huan_

(ECNS) -- A plan aimed at boosting China's 3D printing industry is expected to come into play within this year, the 21st Century Business Herald reported.

Authorities are busy working on the country's first plan for the industry, said Su Bo, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

3D printing is one of the fastest-growing business sectors, facilities and services of which having maintained a growth rate of 27 percent since its birth 26 years ago, said Chen Zhu, Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress.

Sales of 3D printers and related services made up to 1.2 billion yuan ($194.4 million) last year in China, Chen added.

Su said *the ministry intends to lay emphasis on its support on development of 3D printing and medical apparatus, and aims to apply the technology to research & development on new drugs*.

*The technology has been widely used in printing models for medical use and personalized implants, helping repair bionic tissues*, Su noted. "*It's might also be possible to apply to living tissue and organs in the near future,*" he added.

*China has reached a few achievements on applying 3D printing to medical research. Tsinghua University printed out the world's first in vitro three-dimensional model of a tumor with this technology, while Peking University Third Hospital developed the country's first artificial axis to be applied in the treatment of malignant tumours.*

The world's market scale of 3D printing industry will grow to 6 billion dollars by 2019, with the sector for medical application accounting for 15.1 percent, according to Wohelrs Associate, a leading consulting firm focused on developments and trends related to this technology.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## TheMatador

Don't let our enemies enjoy lifestyle benefits from 3D printing. All technology belongs to China.


----------



## Keel

*British woman first person to recover from Ebola using new treatment*
00



Friday 27 March 2015 15.25




Anna Cross expressed her gratitude to the team that treated her, saying, "thanks to them I'm alive".


A British army reservist who contracted Ebola while working as a volunteer nurse in Sierra Leone has fully recovered after becoming the first patient in the world to receive an experimental new treatment.

Anna Cross, 25, was discharged today from the Royal Free Hospital in London where she was taken earlier this month after being evacuated from west Africa on a Royal Air Force plane.

"She has completely recovered from Ebola, she is now free of the virus," her doctor, Michael Jacobs, said.

"Anna is the first patient in the world to have received a new special treatment for Ebola, MIL 77," he said, adding that "the treatment went very well, it caused no side effects that we could elicit."

*He said the new treatment was produced in China and was similar to ZMapp, a cocktail of three antibodies that cling to the virus and inhibit its reproduction.*

Ms Cross, dressed in her army uniform, expressed her gratitude to the team that treated her, saying, "thanks to them I'm alive".

"I need to recover. I need to be fit enough to join the military again. It's going to take me a long time," she added.

Ms Cross, who works as a nurse in the state-run National Health Service, was exposed to the virus while treating patients but said she did not know exactly when this might have happened.

She was the third British healthcare worker to contract Ebola in Sierra Leone.

The two previous ones - nurses William Pooley and Pauline Cafferkey - both recovered after being treated at the Royal Free.

The hospital has a high-level isolation unit geared up to treat Ebola patients under quarantine.

Woman recovers from Ebola using new treatment - RTÉ News

Reactions: Like Like:
25


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

Keel said:


> *British woman first person to recover from Ebola using new treatment*
> 00
> 
> 
> 
> Friday 27 March 2015 15.25
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Anna Cross expressed her gratitude to the team that treated her, saying, "thanks to them I'm alive".
> 
> 
> A British army reservist who contracted Ebola while working as a volunteer nurse in Sierra Leone has fully recovered after becoming the first patient in the world to receive an experimental new treatment.
> 
> Anna Cross, 25, was discharged today from the Royal Free Hospital in London where she was taken earlier this month after being evacuated from west Africa on a Royal Air Force plane.
> 
> "She has completely recovered from Ebola, she is now free of the virus," her doctor, Michael Jacobs, said.
> 
> "Anna is the first patient in the world to have received a new special treatment for Ebola, MIL 77," he said, adding that "the treatment went very well, it caused no side effects that we could elicit."
> 
> *He said the new treatment was produced in China and was similar to ZMapp, a cocktail of three antibodies that cling to the virus and inhibit its reproduction.*
> 
> Ms Cross, dressed in her army uniform, expressed her gratitude to the team that treated her, saying, "thanks to them I'm alive".
> 
> "I need to recover. I need to be fit enough to join the military again. It's going to take me a long time," she added.
> 
> Ms Cross, who works as a nurse in the state-run National Health Service, was exposed to the virus while treating patients but said she did not know exactly when this might have happened.
> 
> She was the third British healthcare worker to contract Ebola in Sierra Leone.
> 
> The two previous ones - nurses William Pooley and Pauline Cafferkey - both recovered after being treated at the Royal Free.
> 
> The hospital has a high-level isolation unit geared up to treat Ebola patients under quarantine.
> 
> Woman recovers from Ebola using new treatment - RTÉ News




Great Work for Humanity! (y)

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## Ryuzaki

Great work by Chinese scientists

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## opruh

Chinese medicines are truly superior.

Reactions: Like Like:
14


----------



## cirr

*IS MIL-77 THE NEW EBOLA-FIGHTING WONDER DRUG?*







Corporal Anna Cross is the first person to be treated with the experimental drug MIL-77, raising hopes that the medicine may be a possible cure for the dealy Ebola virus.

Previously the drug Z-Mapp was being hailed as the best hope for fighting the disease, which has killed more than 10,000 people and infected around 25,000 since the latest outbreak last year.

Z-Mapp was used to treat the first Briton infected with the disease, nurse Will Pooley, as well as two US healthcare workers - Dr Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol.

Nurse Will Pooley was the first Briton infected

Pauline Cafferkey, a Scottish nurse infected, was treated with plasma donated by Ebola survivors, after stocks of Z-Mapp ran out in January.

All four made a full recovery.

Cpl Cross, 25, was admitted to the Royal Free Hospital on 12 March and two weeks on has appeared at a news conference with doctors announcing she is now Ebola-free. 

Dr Mike Jacobs, of the Royal Free Hospital, where Cpl Cross was treated, said the drug used to treat her - MIL-77 - was a close relative of Z-Mapp, which scientists claimed had healed 18 monkeys given a dose of Ebola.

*The drug is made in China and is also a combination of antibodies given intravenously.*

Dr Jacobs said it was impossible to say on the basis of treating one patient whether MIL-77 would work as well with others.

"Having recovered doesn't tell us it works because, in one patient, we just can't draw that conclusion. It will have to be used more widely...before we can say with certainty that the drug is helpful.

He said: "What I can tell you is that the treatment went very well.

"It caused no side effects that we were able to illicit and we were very happy with its use."

Meanwhile, the fight against Ebola in west Africa appears to be succeeding, with 79 new cases confirmed in the week to 22 March - the lowest weekly total this year so far, according to the World Health Organisation.

Guinea accounted for 45 of these cases and Sierra Leone had 33. Liberia, having had no new cases reported for the previous three weeks, had one new confirmed case.

Is MIL-77 The New Ebola-Fighting Wonder Drug?

Reactions: Like Like:
9


----------



## TheTruth

Wonder how the West is going to spin this into another "evil China" story?

Reactions: Like Like:
12


----------



## BoQ77

> Cpl Anna Cross, the U.K. military worker tested positive for Ebola, was the first person in the world to be treated with the experimental Ebola drug MIL 77 and was released from hospital after making a full recovery. *The doctors treating her confirmed it is too soon to speculate if the drug helped in her recovery*





> They described the drug she was given as a close relative of the medicine ZMapp - which British nurse William Pooley received when he was treated for Ebola.
> Experts at the Royal Free said MIL 77 was made in China and that a limited supply was available, should anyone need it.
> *It is too soon to know what role the drug played in Cpl Cross's recovery, they added.*



Back in Britain, the decision to try MIL 77 was not difficult. “I said ‘I have Ebola, so, yes, I’d rather have that than high-dose vitamin C,’” she said.

*She thanked her doctor, Mike Jacobs, an infectious disease consultant, and her team of clinicians*, adding: “_*Thanks to them I’m alive*_”.

Cpl Cross joined the Army reserves in 2013 and now plans to return to “military fitness”. She would have no qualms about going back to treat more Ebola patients, but does not think it is likely since the virus now appears to be under control.

*Dr Jacobs said* it was too early to draw conclusions about the drug’s effectiveness. He said: “*I can’t attribute Anna’s recovery to the medicine*. On the other hand, we wouldn’t have used the medicine unless it was hopefully going to be of benefit to her.”











Nina Pham gets a hug from Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, outside of National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland on Friday. Pham, diagnosed with Ebola Oct. 12 after treating an infected man at a Dallas hospital, is free of the virus. _(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)





Amber Joy Vinson was diagnosed with Ebola on Oct. 15. Just one week later, her family released a statement that she no longer had the disease._

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Keel

It is interesting for the British medical team to risk trial of the experimental drug made in China since they have successfully applied Z-Mapp to cure four patients before. May be Z-Mapp is out of stock.
Also it is not told in the news why they were going to give MIL-77 a chance for clinical trial assuming there could be also some other trial drugs available on the shelves already like the following vaccines from Canada (VSV-EBOV) and another medical source from China (JK-05) and also from other big drug/pharma manufacturers like GSK, Merck, Johnson and Johnson

Ebola: The race for drugs and vaccines - BBC News

Cure For Ebola Found: Canada To Ship 800 Vials of Experimental Vaccine, China Claims To Have Found Cure : News : TravelersToday






Long-sleeve dance China

Reactions: Like Like:
9


----------



## xunzi

TheTruth said:


> Wonder how the West is going to spin this into another "evil China" story?


If it works, expect them to say we copy their medicine. If it doesn't work, the evil Chinese poor medicine is killing their girl! LOL

Reactions: Like Like:
12


----------



## Aepsilons

Excellent news!

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Keel

China's medical team have successful cured ebola patients in Liberia in January 2015

Could this be the missing link to the Briitish medical team's confidence in trying MIL-77 on Cpl Cross
although the article in the OP said Cpl Cross was the "first" patient gotten cured by this new drug. 

If the Liberian patients were not cured by MIL-77, then which drug has done the job so well in Liberia?


allAfrica.com: Liberia: China-Team Cures Three Liberian Ebola Patients
14 JANUARY 2015

Beijing — The China-financed Ebola Treatment Unit (ETU) in Liberia discharged three Ebola patients on Monday after they all tested negative for the virus twice, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.

The three patients, two women and a seven-year-old boy, were found to be infected with the virus in December, spokesman Hong Lei said, adding that after 20 days of treatment at the Chinese facility all three were given the all clear.

China is encouraged by these success stories, Hong said, adding that it was willing to work closely with the international community to help those West African countries struggling to contain the outbreak of Ebola, Hong said.


The 163-member Chinese medical team, formed by the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA), has treated 67 patients since Dec. 23 last year, including five confirmed and 45 suspected patients.

Liberian Assistant Health and Social Welfare Minister Tolbert Nyenswah said President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf extended thanks to China for its assistance, according to Hong.

Liberia has the highest death toll from Ebola in West Africa, which stood at 3,471 by the end of last December, followed by Sierra Leone and Guinea.



Hereuneder are 2 earlier reports on the other Chinese trial drug "JK-05" posted by @TaiShang and @Nan Yang respectively

China firm eyes quick approval of drug to cure Ebola
China approves its first Ebola drug






"The Teahouse Master"
Clay Figurine Zhang Production, Tianjin

Reactions: Like Like:
9


----------



## ravi kiran

thanks to china. they have done excellent work. hope Chinese will provide this drug to poor African nations free of cost.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## dlclong

Thanks to those scientists
Thanks to the contribution they make.

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## ChineseTiger1986

China is now viewed with a savior image.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## war is peace

Ffs china keep.this drug to your allies not the enemy. How many times have west gave china medicine.

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## CN.Black

MIL77 is the improved version of ZMapp.ZMapp can only be strored at 4 centigrade.But MIL77 can be stored at 25 centigrade.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## Aepsilons

It is TOGETHER that we (humanity) can achieve the impossible. China is an indispensable and totally important member of the global family in helping stabilize war torn regions and also health emergencies. 

Congratulations to China!!

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Keel

CN.Black said:


> MIL77 is the improved version of ZMapp.*ZMapp can only be strored at 4 centigrade.But MIL77 can be stored at 25 centigrade*.



*Your information *is different from the following report

"军事医学科学院陈薇团队研发的疫苗不仅防控针对性强，而且是全球首创埃博拉疫苗冻干粉剂型，*37℃环境下可稳定存储2周以上，具备大规模生产条件，适合疫苗冷链条件难以保障的西非热带地区广泛使用，而国外正在进行临床研究的埃博拉疫苗均为1976基因型液体苗，需在-80℃条件下保存和运输*。"

So MIL77 excels over ZMapp in

1. it is developed from as recent genetic strands of ebola as 2014 (1976 strands were used for ZMapp)

2. the drug can be stored and still maintain its potency for longer periods (2 weeks) at higher temperature (*37 ℃*) while ZMapp has to be stored at *minus 80℃*

MIL77 is a lot more friendly to the clinical environment especially when the drug has to be transported and used for patients in Africa

3. it is ready for mass production

The story here: 上海市疾病预防控制中心网


Now the important link for the clinical trial on Cpl Cross can be traced to this paper published in Lancet:

http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(15)60553-0.pdf

Therefore before Lancet an important ground work has been laid by a team of Chinese medical professionals and volunteers who have been willing to take part in the trial tests in Taizhou, China, many days before Cpl Cross' treatment in UK

"A team of Chinese researchers, led by Zhu Fengcai with the disease prevention and control center in Jiangsu Province, tested the vaccine's safety in 120 individuals from the province."

New Ebola trial vaccine by Chinese researchers safe: Lancet - World - Xinhua Africa
中国埃博拉疫苗I期临床试验有效获权威认可-中国法院网

Good luck and thank you all





Chinese Art print Painting

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## scholseys

war is peace said:


> Ffs china keep.this drug to your allies not the enemy. How many times have west gave china medicine.


You sir are a moron!

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## CN.Black

Keel said:


> *Your information *is different from the following report
> 
> "军事医学科学院陈薇团队研发的疫苗不仅防控针对性强，而且是全球首创埃博拉疫苗冻干粉剂型，*37℃环境下可稳定存储2周以上，具备大规模生产条件，适合疫苗冷链条件难以保障的西非热带地区广泛使用，而国外正在进行临床研究的埃博拉疫苗均为1976基因型液体苗，需在-80℃条件下保存和运输*。"
> 
> So MIL77 excels over ZMapp in
> 
> 1. it is developed from as recent genetic strands of ebola as 2014 (1976 strands was used for ZMapp)
> 
> 2. the drug can be stored and still maintain its potency for longer periods (2 weeks) and at higher temperature (*37 ℃*) vs *minus 80℃* for ZMapp
> 
> 3. it is ready for mass production
> 
> The story here: 上海市疾病预防控制中心网
> 
> Now the important link for the clinical trial on Cpl Cross can be traced to this paper published in Lancet:
> 
> http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(15)60553-0.pdf
> 
> Therefore before Lancet an important ground work has been laid by a team of Chinese medical professionals and volunteers who have been willing to take part in the trial tests in Taizhou, China, many days before Cpl Cross' treatment in UK
> 
> "A team of Chinese researchers, led by Zhu Fengcai with the disease prevention and control center in Jiangsu Province, tested the vaccine's safety in 120 individuals from the province."
> New Ebola trial vaccine by Chinese researchers safe: Lancet - World - Xinhua Africa
> 中国埃博拉疫苗I期临床试验有效获权威认可-中国法院网
> 
> Good luck and thank you all
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Chinese Art print Painting


Thank you for your correction.I got the imformation from Baidu Tieba.It seems it's wrong.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Shotgunner51

China conducts debut launch of Long March 6 | NASASpaceFlight.com

*China conducts debut launch of Long March 6*
September 19, 2015 by Rui C. Barbosa

China initiated a new era in its space exploration with the debut of a new family of launch vehicle. The first Long March-6 (Chang Zheng-6) rocket was successfully launched from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, with a multi-payload cargo of 20 small satellites. Launch took place at 2300:00 UTC on Saturday.






*Long March 6:*


The CZ-6 Chang Zheng-6 is a liquid-propellant, small-load space launch vehicle developed by Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST).

The launch vehicle is based on the 3.35m-diameter boosters, which have been developed as a strap-on booster for the CZ-5 family of SLV.




The core stage consists of a single 120t-thrust YF-100 engine that burns oxygen and kerosene (LOX/Kerosene) propellant, which causes less pollution compared to the UDMH/N2O4 (nitrogen tetroxide) propellant currently in use.

The Long March-6 is designed for small-load launch missions, with a sun-synchronous orbit (700km SSO) capability of 1,080 kg.

In September 2009, the Chang Zheng-6 launch vehicle development program was officially approved by the Chinese Government and the first flight was expected to take place in 2013. SAST was tasked with the development of the new launch vehicle in July 2008.




Overall length is 29.237 m with a total mass at liftoff of 103,217 kg. Dry mass of the three stages combined is 9,020 kg. Fairing diameter is 2.25 m / 2.6 m, and the vehicle is capable of launching a payload of 1,080 kg to a 700 km SSO orbit (500 kg if only Chinese tracking stations are used).

The first stage has a 3.35 meter diameter and is equipped with a single YF-100 engine, consuming 76,000 kg of kerosene RP-1/LOX. The YF-100 engine is capable of a ground thrust of 1,177 kN and a ground specific impulse of 2.9 km/s. Burn time is 155 seconds. The first stage uses four 1000 N thrusters for roll control.

The second stage has 2.25 meter diameter and consumes 15,150 kg of kerosene RP-1/LOX. It is equipped with a YF-115 developing 147.1 kN (sea level) or 176.5 kN (vacuum), with a vacuum specific impulse of 3.35 km/s. The second stage uses four 25 N thrusters for roll control.

The third stage is equipped with four engines with 4 kN (each), along with eight 100 N thrusters for attitude control. The engines are powered by a mixture of kerosene and hydrogen peroxide.
*The Long March-6 first cargo: Twenty small Chinese satellites are the cargo of the Long March-6 first mission.*


The ZDPS-2 Zheda Pixing-2 satellites is a dual satellite platform mission designed by Zhejiang University to provide a technology demonstration of guidance, navigation and control (GNC) strategies for spacecraft formation flying.





ZDPS-2 is the latest Nano-satellite mission of Microsat Research Center, Zhejiang University. It constitutes an in-orbit test platform for formation flying technology with two identical nano-satellites, ZDPS-2A and ZDPS-2B.

The main objectives of ZDPS-2 mission are to demonstrate advanced guidance, navigation and control algorithms for formation flying; in-orbit performance test of self-designed ammonia micro-propulsion system; validate the precision of the S-Band Inter-Satellite Pseudo-Noise (PN) code ranging system; to validate the dual-frequency GPS receiver and the relative orbit determination algorithm; and to validate the MEMS accelerometer in-orbit calibration algorithm.

The main subsystems and components of the ZDPS-2 gained space heritage on the ZDPS-1A mission launched on September 22, 2010. Both ZDPS-2A and ZDPS-2B are 25 × 25 × 25 cm cube-shaped and weigh around 12 kg.

The satellites are equipped with tri-junction Ga-As solar cells as the primary power, tiled on all six planes of the satellite body, which have a 26.8% theoretical efficiency, and a Li-ion battery pack of ten cells from Sanyo serves as the secondary power. The transceiver works under the Universal S-Band (USB) TTC system, enjoys uplink data rates of 2kbps and adjustable downlink data rates of 1kbps-64kbps.

The on-board computer (OBC) is composed of multi-CPU with FPGA, providing a universal computing, storage, management platform for command execution, TT&C, attitude & orbit control, payloads, etc.

Sub-degree level attitude measurement will be achieved through a 3-axis magnetometer, a 3-axis MEMS gyroscope, four-quadrant analog sun sensors mounted on six surfaces and a digital sun sensor.

Attitude control utilizes a momentum wheel, installed on the pitch axis, to provide both momentum bias and reaction actuation for pitch attitude maneuver, and three orthogonally mounted magnetic coils provide active control torque for detumbling and three-axis stabilization, with pointing accuracy of better than 2° and steady precision 0.1°/s.




In order to obtain an accurate absolute position and velocity measurement, ZDPS-2 carries two GPS receivers. A UNICORE dual-frequency GPS receiver provides single point positioning accuracy of 2m (RMS), with observational data updating rate up to 10Hz. A Zhejiang University developed GPS receiver provides absolute position accuracy of 2m and velocity of 0.2m/s. A dual-frequency GPS antenna is mounted on the face opposite to the ground (-Z plane).

ZDPS-2A&B are each equipped with an S-Band inter-satellite communication transceiver to exchange position and velocity data, capable of providing data transmission rate of 8kbps and a maximum communication range of 5km. In addition, an S-Band PN code ranging system is designed to provide PN code rate of no more than 2Mcps and ranging accuracy of 4cm for 1Mcps code rate. It could support for multiple composite codes such as JPL1999, T2, T4 and so on.

The satellites are both equipped with a propulsion system, either of them can be treated as chief or deputy. The system uses liquid ammonia as a propellant with ISP greater than 900Ns/kg. With the fuel mass of 0.318kg and the satellite mass of below 12 kg, the system can provide a total ΔV of 24m/s.

Nine CAS-3 satellites were onboard. Originally named Chinese Amateur radio Satellite 3, six of these satellites have been renamed XW-2 Xiwang-2 (Hope-2), XW-2A through XW-2F. All XW-2 satellites were developed by DFH Satellite Co. Ltd and CAMSAT.

Xiwang-2A (CAS-3A) features a 398 × 398 × 398 mm cubic body with body mounted solar cells and a mass of approximately 25 kg mass. It features a three-axis stabilization system. The micro-satellite will be used for atmospheric physics experiments and amateur radio missions.

The amateur communications payload consists of U/V 20 kHz wide transponders with 145 MHz CW beacon and 19k2 GMSK AX25 telemetry downlinks. Two small satellites, XW-2E and XW-2F, will fly piggyback on top of XW-2A.

Xiwang-2B (CAS-3B), Xiwang-2C (CAS-3C) and Xiwang-2D (CAS-3D) are a constellation of three identical Chinese micro-satellites that will be used for atmospheric physics experiments and amateur radio missions.

The satellites are cubic bodies with dimensions of 246 × 246 × 246 mm with body mounted solar cells and a mass of approximately 10 kg mass. They feature a three-axis stabilization system. The amateur communications payload consists of U/V 20 kHz wide transponders with 145 MHz CW beacon and 19k2 GMSK AX25 telemetry downlinks.




The XY-2 Xinjishu Yanzheng-2 will test two kinds of electric propulsion engines (electric propulsion Hall LHT-100 engine and a magnetic and electric propulsion Hall engine) developed by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. The satellite was developed by Shenzhen DFH and has a mass of 130 kg.

Xiwang-2E (CAS-3E) and Xiwang-2F (CAS-3F) are two identical picosatellites that will fly piggyback on top of the XW 2A satellite. The small satellites will be used for amateur radio mission only. They have a cubic shape similar to a CubeSat-1U with dimensions 116 × 116 × 116 mm. The have a mass of approximately 1.5 kg mass each. The amateur communications payload consists of U/V 20 kHz wide transponders with 145 MHz CW beacon and 19k2 GMSK AX25 telemetry downlinks.

Developed by Shenzhen Aerospace Dongfanghong HIT Satellite Ltd. and CAMSAT, the DCBB (CAS-3G) is a CubeSat-U for the University educational purposes.




LilacSat-2 (CAS-3H) was developed by the Harbin Institute of Technology. This is a low-cost, nano-satellite for education, amateur radio communication and technology demonstration, providing hands-on experience for students who would not otherwise have the opportunity to build flight hardware for a space mission.

The 11 kg satellite is a cube-shaped 20 × 20 × 20 cm object carrying four payloads: a thermal infrared camera; an SDR based multi-band receiver, for reception and decoding of signals from AIS, ADS-B, etc.; a V/U amateur radio SDR platform; and a FPGA software testing platform . It can be configured as an FM repeater or an APRS digipeater. It will also provide a VHF CW beacon and UHF 9k6 BPSK telemetry downlink; and an FPGA software testing platform.

LilacSat-2 will operate on a 520 × 520 km altitude orbit with an inclination of 97° on a mission from 3 to 6 months long.

NUDT-Phone-Sat (CAS-3I) was developed by the National University of Defense Technology and CAMSAT and is an experimental pico satellite based on smartphone technology. Its dimensions are 98 × 98 × 7 mm and has a weight of 100 g.

Situated in the Kelan County in the northwest part of the Shanxi Province, the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center (TSLC) is also known by the Wuzhai designation. It is used mainly for polar launches (meteorological, Earth resources and scientific satellites).

The launch center has two single-pad launch complexes, a launch area for the new Long March-6 rocket, a technical area for rocket and spacecraft preparations, a communications centre, a mission command and control centre, and a space tracking centre.

The stages of the rocket were transported to the launch centre by railway and offloaded at a transit station south of the launch complex. They were then transported by road to the technical area for checkout procedures.

The launch vehicles were assembled on the launch pad by using a crane at the top of the umbilical tower to hoist each stage of the vehicle in place. Satellites were airlifted to the Taiyuan Wusu Airport about 300km away and then transported to the centre by road.

The TT&C Centre, also known as Lüliang Command Post, is headquartered in the city of Taiyuan, It has four subordinate radar tracking stations in Yangqu (Shanxi), Lishi (Shanxi), Yulin (Shaanxi), and Hancheng (Shaanxi).


@Martian2 @cirr

Reactions: Like Like:
24


----------



## AndrewJin

Congrats!

Reactions: Like Like:
10


----------



## $@rJen

20 sats!!! wow Impressive/// Congratulations

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## powastick



Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## hexagonsnow

Very impressive!New record for the aerospace industry!

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## VelocuR

Congratulations.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## TaiShang

*China's new carrier rocket succeeds in first trip*
2015-9-20 9:45:00







China successfully launched a new model of carrier rocket, Long March-6, at 7:01 am Sunday from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in north China's Shanxi Province.Photo: Xinhua


China successfully launched a new model of carrier rocket, Long March-6, at 7:01 am Sunday from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in north China's Shanxi Province.

The rocket carried 20 micro-satellites into the space, which will be used for space tests.

The new rocket is fueled by liquid propellant made of liquid oxygen and kerosene. It is China's first carrier rocket that uses fuel free of toxicity and pollution, said the source with the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, which designed the rocket.

The launch has tested the feasibility and accuracy of the rocket's design as well as other new technologies.

The new carrier rocket will be mainly used for the launch of micro-satellites.

Reactions: Like Like:
9


----------



## AndrewJin

TaiShang said:


> *China's new carrier rocket succeeds in first trip*
> 2015-9-20 9:45:00
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> China successfully launched a new model of carrier rocket, Long March-6, at 7:01 am Sunday from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in north China's Shanxi Province.Photo: Xinhua
> 
> 
> China successfully launched a new model of carrier rocket, Long March-6, at 7:01 am Sunday from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in north China's Shanxi Province.
> 
> The rocket carried 20 micro-satellites into the space, which will be used for space tests.
> 
> The new rocket is fueled by liquid propellant made of liquid oxygen and kerosene. It is China's first carrier rocket that uses fuel free of toxicity and pollution, said the source with the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, which designed the rocket.
> 
> The launch has tested the feasibility and accuracy of the rocket's design as well as other new technologies.
> 
> The new carrier rocket will be mainly used for the launch of micro-satellites.


Yesterday news, Long March 6 and Jilin-Hunchun HSR!

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## opruh

20 Satellites

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## cirr

CZ-6A with SSO capability of 4 tons：

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## cirr

*Scientists Uncover New Way of retaining Quantum Memories Stored in Light*

Wed, 09/30/2015 - 10:45am






Chinese scientists have uncovered a novel way of stopping light in a state that stores information encoded in photons, opening the door to applications in quantum information processing.

A team of Chinese physicists has developed a way to confine light. This is significant because the approach allows quantum memories stored within photons to be retained, opening the door to applications in quantum information processing. The results may herald the advent of a multitude of hybrid, optoelectronic devices relying on the use of quantum information stored in photons for processing information that can be used in communication networks or quantum computing.

These findings stem from a study by Nan Sun from Nanjing University of Posts & Telecommunications, China, and colleagues, which has just been published in EPJ D.

Indeed, stopping and storing light for a duration ranging from a few seconds to a few minutes is key for quantum information processing. Unfortunately, certain media induce a loss of coherence of the light, due to effects of the surroundings, which, in turn, affects the integrity of the quantum information stored in photons. This new study focuses on understanding the propagation properties of the electromagnetic wave associated with light to learn how best to stop it.

Previous attempts at stopping light by Georg Heinze and colleagues from Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany, showed it was possible to stop light for an entire minute. They dramatically slowed down light’s progression via interaction within its propagation medium.

In contrast, the authors here rely on electric and magnetic polarization to predict the conditions under which light could be confined. The authors’ theoretical approach is based on controlling the speed at which the light’s energy flows in order to stop it. At the same time, they also predict what it takes in terms of energy density to reach a stage where the electromagnetic waves constitutive of light can be stored, particularly in a medium in which waves travel at different speeds or are absorbed

Scientists Uncover New Way of retaining Quantum Memories Stored in Light

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*Software prototype unveiled to study the Earth*
By He Dan ( China Daily ) Updated: 2015-09-28 07:46:55

The prototype of a supercomputer system to explore the Earth and provide possible solutions for reducing environmental risks, including air pollution and global warming, was unveiled in Beijing on Wednesday.

The prototype of the earth system numerical simulator was jointly launched by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China's top science think-tank, and Sugon Information Industry Co Ltd at the Zhongguancun Science Park or Z-Park in the capital's Haidian district.

The Institute of Atmospheric Physics under the CAS has developed its first version of the software that can be used on the prototype.

The prototype will be used to study the Earth in terms of interplay between different aspects like the lithosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and the atmosphere, said Zeng Qingcun, a scientist with expertise in atmospheric dynamics.

The computer system will be able to process mass data and information, which is the precondition for scientists to discover rules in the function of the Earth system and the impact of human activity on the planet, he said.

The research will seek to establish an early-warning mechanism for possible natural disasters and environmental risks, said Zeng.

China's progress in Earth sciences can help political decision-making, especially in terms of environmental diplomacy, he said.

"Some neighboring countries accused China of causing sandstorm in their homelands, which is ridiculous as China is an 'import' instead of 'export' country of sandstorm, but we need solid statistics to dismiss such accusations," he said.

Ding Yihui, an academic from the Chinese Academy of Engineering, regarded the supercomputer system as a "remarkable" achievement in fundamental science.

"It can simulate the impact of cosmic rays and solar wind on the Earth, which can enable scientists to anticipate the climate change in at least three decades and such anticipation is vital to improving the environment," he said.

Zhu Jiang, head of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics under the CAS, told China Daily that the program can contribute to the municipal government's efforts to build the capital city into the national hub of technological innovation center. Zhu revealed that his institute, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Beijing municipal government will cooperate to establish an assembly base for large scientific devices in Huairou district.

hedan@chinadaily.com.cn

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Case in Point*
The Earth System Numerical Simulation from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) is composed of a multiple of coupled models with communication locality and uneven load balance.​

*China will build a supercomputer simulation of the Earth system*
Posted on September 25, 2015 by nancy in China Society

In a two-storey high, shaped like a Rubik’s cube, buzzing super computer, and Chinese scientists to calculate the Earth’s future climate change.

From the development of a cloud, to Earth hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of years after climate change, scientists wanted to be called “numerical Earth simulators” calculated.

23rd, Institute of atmospheric physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences and the dawning information industry (Beijing) co computer network information center, Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of computing technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences jointly issued a “numerical Earth simulators” research and prototype systems. This high performance computer system based on CAs Earth system model version 1.0 completion of filling the gaps in China’s Earth system model data platform.

This is located in Beijing’s Zhongguancun software Park in the dark blue cube while about 5.4 meters long, China’s future “numerical Earth simulators” a smaller version of the that contains the high performance computer hardware, application of numerical simulation of the Earth software, parallel software support, and many other parts of the Visual system, can meet the needs for simulation of the Earth System. Scientists can use the system in Earth system model development, short-term climate prediction, haze governance results.

Chinese Academy of engineering, the national climate Center of China Meteorological Administration experts said Ding Hui, China this is the significant progress of the study on the Earth Simulator is very amazing groundwork, will provide a solid foundation for integration of weather and climate.

The Earth’s atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and many layers to a coupling system a very scientific and reasonable. “Outside of the Earth system also has an impact on us, the earth itself can be simulated and outer space, cosmic rays, solar wind and other factors is very strong, can help us study is at least 30 years of environmental changes, changes in PM2.5, for cutting greenhouse gases and to improve the environment will play an important role. “Ding Hui said.

Con't->China will build a supercomputer simulation of the Earth system | News Hub of Golden BRIC

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## cirr

Ｇｒｅａｔ　ｇｏｉｎｇ！

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## TaiShang

cirr said:


> *Scientists Uncover New Way of retaining Quantum Memories Stored in Light*
> 
> Wed, 09/30/2015 - 10:45am
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Chinese scientists have uncovered a novel way of stopping light in a state that stores information encoded in photons, opening the door to applications in quantum information processing.
> 
> A team of Chinese physicists has developed a way to confine light. This is significant because the approach allows quantum memories stored within photons to be retained, opening the door to applications in quantum information processing. The results may herald the advent of a multitude of hybrid, optoelectronic devices relying on the use of quantum information stored in photons for processing information that can be used in communication networks or quantum computing.
> 
> These findings stem from a study by Nan Sun from Nanjing University of Posts & Telecommunications, China, and colleagues, which has just been published in EPJ D.
> 
> Indeed, stopping and storing light for a duration ranging from a few seconds to a few minutes is key for quantum information processing. Unfortunately, certain media induce a loss of coherence of the light, due to effects of the surroundings, which, in turn, affects the integrity of the quantum information stored in photons. This new study focuses on understanding the propagation properties of the electromagnetic wave associated with light to learn how best to stop it.
> 
> Previous attempts at stopping light by Georg Heinze and colleagues from Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany, showed it was possible to stop light for an entire minute. They dramatically slowed down light’s progression via interaction within its propagation medium.
> 
> In contrast, the authors here rely on electric and magnetic polarization to predict the conditions under which light could be confined. The authors’ theoretical approach is based on controlling the speed at which the light’s energy flows in order to stop it. At the same time, they also predict what it takes in terms of energy density to reach a stage where the electromagnetic waves constitutive of light can be stored, particularly in a medium in which waves travel at different speeds or are absorbed
> 
> Scientists Uncover New Way of retaining Quantum Memories Stored in Light



Good work by China's scientists.


----------



## Dungeness

*Forget driverless cars, China just put a massive self-driving bus on the road*

By  Trevor Mogg  — October 1, 2015


Google may have little pod-like driverless cars tootling about the streets of California, but a Chinese company recently sent a massive, self-driving bus packed with passengers on a 20-mile ride through the city of Zhengzhou.








Yutong, the firm that helped build the vehicle, said that on its maiden journey earlier this month the specially adapted bus “successfully completed a series of highly complex driving acts,” such as automatically changing lanes, overtaking, and responding to lights.

Hitting a top speed of 42 mph and reaching its destination without so much as a scratch, the journey apparently marked the *world’s first successful trial of a self-driving bus*.

Yutong has spent the last three years working with the Chinese Academy of Engineering and driverless-car experts to create tech for the bus that includes two cameras, four laser radars, and an integrated navigation system.

The company says the bus and its self-driving technology require further development and testing before a proper rollout can be considered.

A video posted this week by Russia Today shows the vehicle making its way along a highway. While the passengers may look a little unsure about the idea of a self-driving bus taking them around town, the “driver,” reclining in his seat with his hands behind his head, looks like he’s throughly enjoying the experience.

Perhaps it hasn’t dawned on him yet that he might soon be out of a job.

Reactions: Like Like:
10


----------



## kbd-raaf

Uhh, as far as all the passengers on the bus are concerned, all buses are already self driving.


----------



## Dungeness

kbd-raaf said:


> Uhh, as far as all the passengers on the bus are concerned, all buses are already self driving.




Make sense！

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## marbella

wow surprised to know this!! usually they make after someone makes somthing.. even they try to make same snd cheaper. the other day i saw a rangerover like chinese car and it was hard to distinguish between two.


----------



## Hamartia Antidote



Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## anon45

Id rather have a self driving car than get on a self driving bus.


----------



## Dungeness

anon45 said:


> Id rather have a self driving car than get on a self driving bus.




Yap! It will be prohibitively expensive for the most people though.



marbella said:


> wow surprised to know this!! usually they make after someone makes somthing.. even they try to make same snd cheaper. the other day i saw a rangerover like chinese car and it was hard to distinguish between two.



We will still see many bootlegged products from some Chinese business, but we will see more and more innovations from China state owned enterprises. They are spending huge sum on R&D these days, still behind the US though.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Hamartia Antidote

Dungeness said:


> Yap! It will be prohibitively expensive for the most people though.



There is certainly a lot of speculation as to what will happen in the future with driverless cars. Will they be too expensive for the average person? Will many people end up using an Uber like service that uses self driving cars to get around that?

Certainly an electric driverless Uber/taxi service is going to be popular. No gas and driver pay overhead.

Plus you'd be surprised how many people drive trucks/buses for a living. That will be a shakeup.


----------



## xyxmt

Hamartia Antidote said:


> There is certainly a lot of speculation as to what will happen in the future with driverless cars. Will they be too expensive for the average person? Will many people end up using an Uber like service that uses self driving cars to get around that?
> 
> Certainly an electric driverless Uber/taxi service is going to be popular. No gas and driver pay overhead.
> 
> Plus you'd be surprised how many people drive trucks/buses for a living. That will be a shakeup.



well we already have cars that apply the breaks and accelerator as needed in Cruise control, we have self parallel parking cars without any extra cost, so we have brake, accelerator and steering controls...all now is needed is some sophisticated sensor and some kick *** programming, wont be too much expensive.


----------



## Beast

Hamartia Antidote said:


> There is certainly a lot of speculation as to what will happen in the future with driverless cars. Will they be too expensive for the average person? Will many people end up using an Uber like service that uses self driving cars to get around that?
> 
> Certainly an electric driverless Uber/taxi service is going to be popular. No gas and driver pay overhead.
> 
> Plus you'd be surprised how many people drive trucks/buses for a living. That will be a shakeup.


They are many advanced countries where hiring a truck or bus driver is difficult. Having technology will reduce the need to import foreign bus or truck driver.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## Abotani

If the tech could be developed and matured to run on trucks for long distances,then the sky is the limit.


----------



## Dungeness

Beast said:


> They are many advanced countries where hiring a truck or bus driver is difficult. Having technology will reduce the need to import foreign bus or truck driver.



Lots of people will lost


Abotani said:


> If the tech could be developed and matured to run on trucks for long distances,then the sky is the limit.



Then there will be a lot of unemployed taxi drivers in New York City alone. Bro, stay safe there! Heard the beef eating story, horrified!

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Oldman1

Abotani said:


> If the tech could be developed and matured to run on trucks for long distances,then the sky is the limit.



No more drivers sleeping on the wheel causing accidents.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Abotani

Dungeness said:


> Then there will be a lot of unemployed taxi drivers in New York City alone. Bro, stay safe there! Heard the beef eating story, horrified!


Yup,horrifying,even now I can't get used to such news from mainland India.ST is mostly free from such idiocies though.


----------



## Oldman1



Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## TaiShang

*Science and technology in Central China*

October 02, 2015

"We have designed a 'sponge city' [Fengxi New City] that uniquely fits the climate of northern China, with an underground reservoir and an extensive network of collection ducts to save rainwater for the dry season."– Kang Zhenfeng

In central China, a science renaissance is happening. Away from the hectic coastal cities, scientists and entrepreneurs have found new opportunities in ancient cities, such as Xi'an, Zhengzhou, and Wuhan. This region also receives abundant funding for research and education, but the cost of living is lower than in the big cities. In recent years, universities in central China have been producing high-quality research and forging collaborations in key disciplines, such as hydraulic engineering, aerospace technology, and translational medicine. New urban centers, built using sustainable designs and high-tech infrastructure, are popping up and attracting investments from Chinese as well as global firms. As a result, this region is becoming a new hub for researchers and tech companies to launch exciting projects in science and engineering. 

Central China is less known to the West than the major coastal metropolises like Beijing and Shanghai; however, this has not always been the case. The entry point for Western goods and ideas shifted from inland China to the coast in the 12th century. Prior to this, the capitals of successive Chinese dynasties were to be found inland and were considered by many to be amongst the largest cities in the world. At the peak of the Tang dynasty, around 750 CE, more than a million people lived in Chang’an (present day Xi'an)—where trade with Europe and central Asia began via the Silk Road.

Today, as the coastal cities approach developmental saturation, Chinese policy makers, scientists, and entrepreneurs are taking a fresh look at the inland region's rich cultural and natural resources. Central China is a loosely defined geographical area that usually includes the provinces of Shanxi, Shaanxi, Henan, and Hubei, but can also refer to the Anhui, Hunan, and Jiangxi provinces. At the northern end, ancient cities dot the banks of the Yellow River and its major tributaries—a region that is considered the cradle of Chinese civilization. The Yangtze River runs along the southern border, serving as an artery for transportation and providing hydraulic resources.

Here, we highlight the region's rise in scientific research and education, as well as the push to recruit more talent and attract technology investments. The examples highlighted here showcase the renaissance of central China and the new opportunities in this "old" region.

*Strengthening international collaborations*
*Zhou Chuangbing* became president of Nanchang University in 2013 after spearheading science and technology affairs at Wuhan University in Hubei province for more than a decade. As a leading expert on rock mechanics and hydraulic engineering in China, Zhou has dedicated his career to improving the safety and environmental sustainability of hydraulic engineering projects. "China leads the world in many hydraulic engineering achievements," says Zhou. Perhaps the best known example is the Three Gorges Project, the largest hydropower station in the world, which is only a few hundred miles west of Nanchang on the Yangtze River.

Zhou's engineering philosophy is "safety always comes first." He adds, "We need to protect the ecological habitats at the site of any major hydraulic engineering project." Safety and sustainability are relatively new concepts in the booming Chinese economy. These concepts exemplify the pioneering, future-driven vision that Zhou has brought with him to Nanchang University, which is famous in China for research on the science and manufacturing of light-emitting diodes, food science and engineering, and medicine.

Desiring to build upon Nanchang's strengths, Zhou sees a need to internationalize the university's scientific research and education. He explains that central China's location can sometimes hinder the recruitment of top talent directly from abroad; however, he encourages young faculty members to seek opportunities to collaborate with researchers outside of China and to spend time overseas to learn how critical thinking is carried out. Zhou hopes that this type of exposure will improve Nanchang's scientists' abilities to formulate quality research questions. "When [our faculty members] come back after a period of training abroad, they become much better scientists," says Zhou. With a strong push for international collaboration, Zhou hopes to elevate the academic profile of Nanchang University by helping its existing students and faculty members succeed in education and research.

*Facilitating large-scale projects*





Lu Youming
Further up the Yangtze River, in Wuhan, *Lu Youming* is building a new brain research institute at Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) Tongji Medical College. When Lu was first nominated for the Chinese government's highly selective Thousand Talents Program in 2008, he was running a lab at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans. By that time, Lu had already established himself as a key contributor to the field of neuroscience, particularly in glutamate receptor research; however, he wanted to make a greater impact and thought there were two ways to do so: find something that will change clinical practice or make a discovery that is important enough to alter the textbooks.

Lu's research on death-associated protein kinase 1 (DAPK1) had already been making strides toward the clinic for stroke management. He wanted to further investigate some fundamental scientific questions, but the work would require large-scale ‘omics studies. It's a big challenge to fund such endeavors in the United States, Lu points out, adding that "even five R01 research grants cannot support the functional genomic work necessary to answer the key questions in neuroscience, such as the specific function of a gene expressed in individual brain cells." Science funding is different in China, Lu explains. "What takes a nationwide collaboration to accomplish in the United States can be supported by a handful of projects funded by the central government or the provincial authorities in the region."

In 2011, after touring a dozen major universities around China, Lu settled down at HUST and began building a brain research center. Instead of joining the crowded research hubs in Beijing or Shanghai, Lu believed he could make a larger difference by tapping into the local resources in Wuhan at HUST. Lu's team has already generated 16,000 knockout mouse lines in a systematic attempt to dissect out the function of genes expressed in the brain, and a new research building is already underway (scheduled for completion in 2016) to house this vast resource. Lu has also secured 170 million yuan (US$26 million) in funding to recruit top research talent, mainly through the government's Thousand Young Talents Program. "In two years," predicts Lu, "there will be more Thousand Young Talents Program scholars in Wuhan than in Shanghai."

Funding and resources are not an issue for doing scientific research in China. The real challenge is "to be able to identify and study important questions [that are at the forefront] of science," says Lu. For young scientists starting a career in China, Lu has two important pieces of advice: be willing to change and improve the research environment and do not single-mindedly focus on publishing papers. He encourages young scientists at his institute to spend more time on innovative thinking and to avoid chasing hot topics or doing incremental experiments. For scientists looking to relocate to China, Lu suggests visiting prospective institutes multiple times to really understand the environment and the support offered, because every institute in China has a unique culture.

*Finding coastal connections*
By building connections with the more established coastal region, Xi'an-based Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU) hopes to boost its status via an expansion at Research & Development Institute in Shenzhen (R&DIS) in Guangdong Province under the guidance of Dean *Shang Peng*.

The economic reforms of the 1980s in China led to conditions that limited growth in the technology sector in "special economy zones" like Shenzhen. Though private investments and the entrepreneurial spirit were plentiful in Shenzhen, its economy was almost entirely based on manufactured exports, with little focus on technology and innovation. To ensure the city's long-term success, the Shenzhen municipal government began inviting universities to bring technology, higher-education curricula, and scholars to the area. In 1999, NPU and other major Chinese universities began setting up satellite campuses, such as R&DIS, in Shenzhen. NPU has long been a leader in aerospace science and engineering education in China and thus made these fields the focus of R&DIS. In return, NPU gained access to venture capital–backed tech transfer resources and the entrepreneurial know-how in Shenzhen.

Last year, NPU received an empty plot of land within a designated high-tech zone, prompting the university to expand R&DIS into a full-fledged research and development center. Shang is now tasked with the major expansion. He already has a track record of success after having built the School of Life Science and a key laboratory at the NPU from scratch. With a background in biomedical engineering and pharmacology, Shang joined NPU 10 years ago to construct the school at a university that specialized mainly in airplanes and rockets. Over the past decade, research in extreme-environment biology, gravitational biology, and aerospace medicine, such as bone metabolism during space flight, has flourished under Shang's guidance.

At the newly expanded R&DIS, "apart from focus on the research and development of unmanned aerial vehicles for civil use, human health research will be another new major focus," explains Shang. NPU will build a 28-story research facility with 50,000 square meters of floor space on the new plot. Establishing this coastal connection with Shenzhen is "good for NPU in terms of recruitment, technology transfer, industrialization, and internationalization," says Shang, but it is mutually beneficial in that central China in turn "helps recruit high-level talent and supplies educational resources to the coast." In addition, he sees new concepts—such as entrepreneurship, teamwork, resilience to failure, and service-oriented operations—and access to venture capital flowing back to Xi'an, which further elevates the academic profile of NPU.

*Building a "sponge city"*
Xianyang, the ancient capital of the Qin dynasty, is a small city west of Xi'an. Against this historical backdrop, contemporary urban planning concepts are being used to build five new cities between Xi'an and Xianyang—collectively called the "Xixian New Area"—to accommodate the growing population and attract technology investments to the region. The arid climate and archaeological sites present unique challenges for new development in this area.





PHOTO BY KANG ZHENFENG
"We have designed a 'sponge city' [Fengxi New City] that uniquely fits the climate of northern China, with an underground reservoir and an extensive network of collection ducts to save rainwater for the dry season."– Kang Zhenfeng

One such place, the Fengxi New City, is designed as a 143-square-kilometer high-tech park and an urban service center. "We have taken the latest urban development concepts to plan Fengxi New City from scratch," says *Kang Zhenfeng*, deputy director of the managing committee for Fengxi New City. The city plan is plotted with parks and green belts at the center to avoid the type of concentric sprawl found in Beijing and many other Chinese cities that are plagued by traffic and air pollution. Other innovative concepts have been adapted to facilitate ecological preservation, green-energy use, and rainwater conservation. The latter is particularly important in northern China because of the uneven rainfall between the rainy and dry seasons. "We have designed a ‘sponge city' that uniquely fits the climate of northern China, with an underground reservoir and an extensive network of collection ducts to save rainwater for the dry season," says Kang. With a high-tech city in mind, the planners of Fengxi New City have laid a network of conduits for electrical and data cables underneath the roads, eliminating the need to dig in the future.

"Fengxi New City strives to lead in China in terms of urban planning," says Kang, and the innovations have already created a very attractive environment for the type of high-tech companies intended for the area, such as Microsoft and China Telecom. Fengxi is offering comprehensive packages to attract more tech companies, especially those in the areas of cloud computing and big data. It also partners with universities in nearby Xi'an to further strengthen the pool of highly skilled labor in information technology. "Sponge city" is not just a literal design that balances rainfall between seasons, but also a vivid metaphor for the area's ability to absorb investments and talent from other regions of China and all over the world.

*Incubating high-tech startups*
Technology recruitment is also taking place in other ancient cities within central China. In Zhengzhou, *Ma Gencan*, director of the National High-Tech Incubator in the Zhengzhou National Economic and Technological Development Zone (ZNETDZ), has set his 2015 priority as talent recruitment. Despite ZNETDZ's success, "the challenge in front of us is a shortage of talent and resources for science education," he says.

Since its inception in 1993, ZNETDZ has successfully established the city as a pivotal distribution hub for goods to all major Chinese markets by taking advantage of its central location and extensive network of railroads, highways, and airlines that all converge in the area. In 2013, a cargo train began running from Zhengzhou through western China, Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, and Poland to Hamburg, Germany. This train moves Chinese exports to Europe and returns with automobiles and other goods for the growing Chinese consumer market. The train has cut the transportation time for European goods coming in from several weeks to 15 days and has greatly enhanced safety. As a result, Zhengzhou is now the largest automobile manufacturing and distribution center in China.

The High-Tech Incubator within ZNETDZ was established in 1998 to offer policy, funding, and consulting services to (the now over 500) startups and to help them commercialize nascent technology products. Focusing on three key areas—sustainability technology, information technology, and health care—and armed with funding support from the provincial government, Ma is actively recruiting top tech experts from abroad and other regions in China. "More importantly, the region needs to keep local talent from migrating out," he says. Recruiting and retaining talent is more critical than ever as technology investments begin to come back to the region and demand more support from the local talent pool.

It may be true that, by many objective measures, central China still lags behind other regions in terms of scientific research, science education, and technological investments. However, with its rich culture, abundant labor force, and central location between major cities, central China is poised to become a new center of scientific capital and technological innovation in the near future.

@AndrewJin , @cirr

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## AndrewJin

Central China, economically refers to six provinces, Hunan, Hubei, Henan, Anhui, Jiangxi and Shanxi(not Shaanxi). The central triangle refers to the three provincial capitals, Wuhan, Changsha and Nanchang, 1-2hours by HSR from any one of them to another. ( plus Hefei, form the central quadrilateral) 

Major cities in Central China used to mainly focus on heavy industry and manufacturing. Now with the transition of economic structures, more and more locals are finding opportunities in high-tech sectors and high-end manufacturing instead of running to Shenzhen.
( The founder of Xiaomi was from Central China and educated in Wuhan) 

The GDP of Central China combined reached 2 trillion U.S. dollars in 2014. The foundation of transition is solid. 

In the first half of 2015, the GDP growth of my city(Wuhan) in Central China was at 10%. The growth is mostly from high-tech and service sector. Even the local steel giant is investing huge money in high value-added products. 

The cities in Central China are becoming greener, much more competitive and having a much brighter future.

I am now leaving from a 3/4th tier small city in Central China's Hunan province. 
Yueyang






The capital city Changsha I am going to is also an emerging high-tech city with per capita GDP more than $17,000. Ever heard of 远大/三一/中联？National University of Defense Technology is also there.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## TaiShang

*Information industry holds 26% of China's 2014 GDP*
October 1, 2015

The economic output of China's information industry reached 16.2 trillion yuan (2.5 trillion U.S. dollars) in 2014, accounting for 26 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), an official report showed.

Back in 2002, the economic output of the information industry only occupied 10.3 percent of GDP, according to the 2015 China Information Economy Research Report issued by the China Academy of Telecommunication Research under the Ministry of Industry and Information.

The information industry contributed 58.4 percent of China's GDP growth in 2014, higher than that in the United States, Japan and the United Kingdom, according to the report.

The information industry, including mobile Internet, cloud computing and the Internet of things, will bring enormous changes to technological development, production and business models, thus bringing opportunities for the upgrading of traditional industries, it said.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## TaiShang

Chinese Geographical Science

June 2015, Volume 25, Issue 3, pp 263-273

First online: 15 May 2015

*Global climate internal variability in a 2000-year control simulation with Community Earth System Model (CESM)*

Zhiyuan Wang
, Yao Li
, Bin Liu
, Jian Liu

*Abstract*
Using the low-resolution (T31, equivalent to 3.75° × 3.75°) version of the Community Earth System Model (CESM) from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), a global climate simulation was carried out with fixed external forcing factors (1850 Common Era. (C.E.) conditions) for the past 2000 years. Based on the simulated results, spatio-temporal structures of surface air temperature, precipitation and internal variability, such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO), the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), were compared with reanalysis datasets to evaluate the model performance. The results are as follows: 1) CESM showed a good performance in the long-term simulation and no significant climate drift over the past 2000 years; 2) climatological patterns of global and regional climate changes simulated by the CESM were reasonable compared with the reanalysis datasets; and 3) the CESM simulated internal natural variability of the climate system performs very well. The model not only reproduced the periodicity of ENSO, AMO and PDO events but also the 3–8 years variability of the ENSO. The spatial distribution of the CESM-simulated NAO was also similar to the observed. However, because of weaker total irradiation and greenhouse gas concentration forcing in the simulation than the present, the model performances had some differences from the observations. Generally, the CESM showed a good performance in simulating the global climate and internal natural variability of the climate system. This paves the way for other forced climate simulations for the past 2000 years by using the CESM.

*Keywords*
Community Earth System Model (CESM) climate simulation past 2000 years climate systeminternal variability

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## anon45

Oldman1 said:


> No more drivers sleeping on the wheel causing accidents.



The thing is, if this technology matures enough, won't you be able to do away with the cabin all together? Would you even need a steering wheel?


----------



## lastofthepatriots

I don't see this concept as a good idea.


----------



## Oldman1

anon45 said:


> The thing is, if this technology matures enough, won't you be able to do away with the cabin all together? Would you even need a steering wheel?



Doubt it. Just as concept of no more pilots or steering wheel on airplanes just because planes can fly or land automatically these days. Sure the military would want to do it, but even they still want pilots in control. And uavs are still controlled by pilots in trailers.

On this case, drivers are still need because when trucks go into the cities, its requires human involvement still. And in case if the truck has a flat tire or something, the driver will need to be involved.


----------



## Hyperion

One thing, for sure, is that I am never getting on a pilotless aircraft!


----------



## TaiShang

The second Eden Project in the world, China Eden, will be built in Qingdao, east China'sShandong Province. (Photo source:huanqiu.com)

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## Skull and Bones

In Mars, human beings will survive under such geodesic domes.


----------



## jkroo

It is a scientific scene with many futuristic elements. Good progress and some of these technologies may be used for interstellar exploration.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Dungeness

TaiShang said:


> The second Eden Project in the world, China Eden, will be built in Qingdao, east China'sShandong Province. (Photo source:huanqiu.com)




Is this real, or just CG?

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## TaiShang

Dungeness said:


> Is this real, or just CG?



CG. But the project is underway.

世界最大人工温室来中国：梦幻泡泡_科技_环球网

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## TaiShang

*1st natural science museum completed in Tibet*
October 1, 2015

The first natural science museum in Tibet, and the biggest museum in the southwestern autonomous region, went into trial operation on Thursday, local authorities said.

The 30,000 square-meter museum was backed by investment of more than 400 million yuan (63 million U.S. dollars). It includes two exhibition halls, one for natural science exhibits and the other on modern technology, according to Gang Qing, head of the regional department of science and technology.

Interactive devices have been installed so visitors can experience Tibet's natural wonders, such as Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and Yarlung Zangbu Grand Canyon "for real", he said.

The museum will also play host to the biggest calibre astronomical telescope in China.

The facility will help cultivate the innovative spirit of local youth, and instil and interest in science and technology in the wider community, Gang added.

The museum will be open to the public in the near future.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## opruh

Looks beautiful

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## opruh

As usual, China leading the world to the future.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

opruh said:


> As usual, China leading the world to the future.




Are your flags correct?


----------



## Martian2

Gene-edited 'micropigs' to be sold as pets at Chinese institute | Nature

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## Martian2

*Video: Hop aboard China’s first self-driving bus | Quartz*










----------

Video: Hop aboard China’s first self-driving bus | Quartz

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Hamartia Antidote

Hyperion said:


> One thing, for sure, is that I am never getting on a pilotless aircraft!



Some commercial planes already land themselves. They just don't tell you.











I think you'd be happy theplane can land by iteelf in the above two situations.


----------



## TaiShang

*China contributes to world's largest radio telescope*

China has joined the international effort to build the Square Kilometer Array, the largest radio telescope in the world, which is also a project that could completely change our understanding of the universe

This new global scientific undertaking will help uncover the mysteries of the universe. The Square Kilometer Array project is the largest and most sensitive radio telescope in the world.

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## Keel

This is not what the above article about, is it?
























''







*'Fast' & vast: China building world's largest 500-meter radio telescope*
Published time: 25 Jul, 2015 14:04Edited time: 26 Jul, 2015 11:03
Get short URL




© Amr Abdallah Dalsh / Reuters
http://t.co/Rfbiy0Zj5Vpic.twitter.com/X18eY4qhdW

— People's Daily,China (@PDChina) July 24, 2015
The construction of the highly sensitive telescope began in March 2011 and is due to be completed next year. On Thursday, technicians already began attaching 4,450 triangular-shaped panels to the telescope's reflector. To overlook the whole reflector, visitors will reportedly have to climb up to the top of one of the hills. An observation platform is currently said to be under construction.

The chief scientist of the FAST project, a Chinese astronomer Nan Rendong, explained that the bigger the dish is, the more powerful the telescope.

_"A radio telescope is like a sensitive ear, listening to dustinguish meaningful radio messages from white noise in the universe. It is like identifying the sound of cicadas in a thunderstorm,"_ the scientist said.

First of 4,600 panels for China's FAST telescope shipped, says state media. Will be world's largest radio telescope pic.twitter.com/Yt9FTZIE1d

— Andrew Jones (@AJ_FI) 21 июля 2015
The so-called Karst topography in the surrounding landscape is ideal for draining rainwater underground and protecting the reflector, according to Chinese scientists, adding that the surrounding area is characterized by a certain "radio silence."

The dish will shift to receive radio signals from different angles.

_"Panels can change their positions through connected wires and parallel robots. We can control their position with an accuracy of 1 mm,"_ Zheng Yuanpeng, chief engineer of the telescope's panel project, told Xinhua.

It's hoped that the new telescope will boost Chinese scientists' capacity to observe outer space.

Wu Xiangping, director-general of the Chinese Astronomical Society, lamented that for years local scientists had to work on _"second hand"_ data collected by other researchers.

_"Having a more sensitive telescope, we can receive weaker and more distant radio messages. It will help us to search for intelligent life outside the galaxy and explore the origins of the universe,"_ Wu said.

READ MORE: Hunt for alien life comes with great responsibility – investor of Hawking-backed project to RT

Earlier this week, it was reported that Russian internet billionaire Yuri Milner will be funding a project, backed by Stephen Hawking, to scan the skies in the search for alien life. Two of the world’s largest telescopes (in West Virginia and in New South Wales) will be used during the epic hunt.

_“I think it’s an important project for the whole humanity. We now have the technology, we have the capability, we have the software and hardware to really try to get to the answer to this pretty fundamental question: are we alone in the universe? And I think in the next 10 years we will be able to make significant progress, which in order of magnitude more significant than in the last 55 years,”_ Milner, whose background is physics, told RT on Thursday.

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## TaiShang

Keel said:


> This is not what the above article about, is it?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ''
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *'Fast' & vast: China building world's largest 500-meter radio telescope*
> Published time: 25 Jul, 2015 14:04Edited time: 26 Jul, 2015 11:03
> Get short URL
> 
> 
> 
> 
> © Amr Abdallah Dalsh / Reuters
> http://t.co/Rfbiy0Zj5Vpic.twitter.com/X18eY4qhdW
> 
> — People's Daily,China (@PDChina) July 24, 2015
> The construction of the highly sensitive telescope began in March 2011 and is due to be completed next year. On Thursday, technicians already began attaching 4,450 triangular-shaped panels to the telescope's reflector. To overlook the whole reflector, visitors will reportedly have to climb up to the top of one of the hills. An observation platform is currently said to be under construction.
> 
> The chief scientist of the FAST project, a Chinese astronomer Nan Rendong, explained that the bigger the dish is, the more powerful the telescope.
> 
> _"A radio telescope is like a sensitive ear, listening to dustinguish meaningful radio messages from white noise in the universe. It is like identifying the sound of cicadas in a thunderstorm,"_ the scientist said.
> 
> First of 4,600 panels for China's FAST telescope shipped, says state media. Will be world's largest radio telescope pic.twitter.com/Yt9FTZIE1d
> 
> — Andrew Jones (@AJ_FI) 21 июля 2015
> The so-called Karst topography in the surrounding landscape is ideal for draining rainwater underground and protecting the reflector, according to Chinese scientists, adding that the surrounding area is characterized by a certain "radio silence."
> 
> The dish will shift to receive radio signals from different angles.
> 
> _"Panels can change their positions through connected wires and parallel robots. We can control their position with an accuracy of 1 mm,"_ Zheng Yuanpeng, chief engineer of the telescope's panel project, told Xinhua.
> 
> It's hoped that the new telescope will boost Chinese scientists' capacity to observe outer space.
> 
> Wu Xiangping, director-general of the Chinese Astronomical Society, lamented that for years local scientists had to work on _"second hand"_ data collected by other researchers.
> 
> _"Having a more sensitive telescope, we can receive weaker and more distant radio messages. It will help us to search for intelligent life outside the galaxy and explore the origins of the universe,"_ Wu said.
> 
> READ MORE: Hunt for alien life comes with great responsibility – investor of Hawking-backed project to RT
> 
> Earlier this week, it was reported that Russian internet billionaire Yuri Milner will be funding a project, backed by Stephen Hawking, to scan the skies in the search for alien life. Two of the world’s largest telescopes (in West Virginia and in New South Wales) will be used during the epic hunt.
> 
> _“I think it’s an important project for the whole humanity. We now have the technology, we have the capability, we have the software and hardware to really try to get to the answer to this pretty fundamental question: are we alone in the universe? And I think in the next 10 years we will be able to make significant progress, which in order of magnitude more significant than in the last 55 years,”_ Milner, whose background is physics, told RT on Thursday.



I guess different. The above is more of an international project with telescopes spanning several countries


China contributes to world's largest radio telescope - Xinhua | English.news.cn

BEIJING, Oct. 3 (Xinhuanet) --China has joined the international effort to build the Square Kilometer Array, the largest radio telescope in the world.

This new global scientific undertaking will help uncover the mysteries of the universe.

The Square Kilometer Array project is the largest and most sensitive radio telescope in the world.

As its name suggests, the telescope will deploy huge fields of antennas across Africa and Australia, with a combined collecting area of about one square kilometre… or the size of about 140 soccer pitches.

The aim is to help astronomers study the sky in monitor with an unprecedented level of detail.

With its headquarters based at the world famous Jodrell Bank site near Manchester, the SKA project will build thousands of antennas across two continents, and completely change our understanding of the universe.

"The Square Kilometre Array, the SKA, is the next generation of the radio telescope, a much big version of the telescope you see behind me, much more capable. It will be fundamentally the instrument does science, exploring the true nature of gravity, looking at the universe is like around us. We want to try to understand the formation of planet, and even to detect signal from extraterrestrial civilization if they exist," Professor Philip Diamond, director general of SKA, said.

The SKA is one of the largest scientific endeavors of the 21st Century, and its sheer scale means it has to be an international collaboration.

The project brings together top scientists, engineers and policy makers from 20 countries, who are now in the process of establishing an inter-governmental organization to help formalize the relationship between the project and its members.

"We have agreed the best way of doing it is to set up an international organization. So this will be an organization where varies governments come together and sign a treaty, and create an organization which is fit for purpose for lasting for fifty to sixty years while the observatory is running. We have a number of countries, most recently including China, all made commitment to say they gonna work together to establish this organization. And the first meeting to establish this process is gonna take place in a few weeks led by Italian government in Rome," Simon Berry, director of Policy Dev't, SKA, said.

From the early stages China played an important role in the project, contributing several key technology developments.

The government will also join the negotiations with other member nations to define the level of contribution.

"The Chinese contribution will be cash contribution, together with in-kind contribution. China will deliver its products and technology needed for the project, such as antennas. China has very strong potential in this particular field. And like with time synthesizers, Tsinghua University got involved and also shows their strength. They all demonstrate China’s technology capabilities and contributions to the project," Dr. Qiming Wang, Head of Policy Dev't, SKA, said.

With preparation well underway, construction of the SKA project is set to start in 2018 with the telescope set to receive its first batch of data two years later.

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## bobsm

I'm guessing it is this one:


World's largest radio telescope to be located in N England
English.news.cn | 2015-05-02 02:26:37 | Editor: huaxia





Artist's impression of the expansion to the current headquarters at Jodrell Bank proposed by the UK. Credit. (Photo from the University of Manchester)

LONDON, May 1 (Xinhua) -- The world's largest radio telescope is to be headquartered in a rural area of northern England, it was announced Friday.

Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire is already home to an existing radio telescope, attracting tens of thousands of visitors every year as a tourist attraction.

Now the famous observatory will remain at the forefront of global scientific research for at least another 50 years after members of the international Square Kilometer Array (SKA) project chose Jodrell Bank as their headquarters.

Scientists say the SKA telescope will have the capability to look all the way back to the aftermath of the Big Bang. The facility will spread across several continents and comprise of 2,500 dishes and 1 million antennae.

The project will generate around 1.5 billion U.S.dollars of private sector investment and will create up to 200 new jobs at the Jodrell Bank base.

Professor Philip Diamond, director general of the SKA Organisation said: "I am delighted a permanent home for the SKA headquarters has been identified. Clarity over the location of the headquarters is an important step for SKA."

Professor Stephen Watts, who heads the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester said: "This is great news for Jodrell Bank. Not only will it mean cutting-edge science will continue to be carried out at the site for the foreseeable future, but it will also help inspire the thousands of children who visit Jodrell Bank every year from schools across the country."






Members of the international Square Kilometer Array(SKA) project chose the headquarters of the world's largest radio telescope to be located in Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire, northern England. (Photo from the University of Manchester)

The plan is supported by Britain's Science and Technology Facilities Council, the Universities of Manchester, Oxford and Cambridge Universities and the local authority covering the area, Cheshire East Council.

The project envisages designing and constructing a unique campus for one of the most inspirational science projects of the 21st Century, said a spokesman for the SKA Partnership, adding the Cheshire site offers the grow if the project requires it in the future.

The SKA project is an international effort to build the world's largest radio telescope to conduct transformational science to improve understanding of the universe and the laws of fundamental physics. It will monitor the sky in unprecedented detail and mapping it hundreds of times faster than any current facility.

The SKA project is backed by 11 member countries, Australia, Canada, China, Germany, India, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom. It has brought together some of world's finest scientists, engineers and policy makers and more than 100 companies and research institutions across 20 countries in the design and development of the telescope.

Construction of the SKA is due to start in 2018, with early science observations in 2020

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## AndrewJin

Keel said:


> This is not what the above article about, is it?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ''
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *'Fast' & vast: China building world's largest 500-meter radio telescope*
> Published time: 25 Jul, 2015 14:04Edited time: 26 Jul, 2015 11:03
> Get short URL
> 
> 
> 
> 
> © Amr Abdallah Dalsh / Reuters
> http://t.co/Rfbiy0Zj5Vpic.twitter.com/X18eY4qhdW
> 
> — People's Daily,China (@PDChina) July 24, 2015
> The construction of the highly sensitive telescope began in March 2011 and is due to be completed next year. On Thursday, technicians already began attaching 4,450 triangular-shaped panels to the telescope's reflector. To overlook the whole reflector, visitors will reportedly have to climb up to the top of one of the hills. An observation platform is currently said to be under construction.
> 
> The chief scientist of the FAST project, a Chinese astronomer Nan Rendong, explained that the bigger the dish is, the more powerful the telescope.
> 
> _"A radio telescope is like a sensitive ear, listening to dustinguish meaningful radio messages from white noise in the universe. It is like identifying the sound of cicadas in a thunderstorm,"_ the scientist said.
> 
> First of 4,600 panels for China's FAST telescope shipped, says state media. Will be world's largest radio telescope pic.twitter.com/Yt9FTZIE1d
> 
> — Andrew Jones (@AJ_FI) 21 июля 2015
> The so-called Karst topography in the surrounding landscape is ideal for draining rainwater underground and protecting the reflector, according to Chinese scientists, adding that the surrounding area is characterized by a certain "radio silence."
> 
> The dish will shift to receive radio signals from different angles.
> 
> _"Panels can change their positions through connected wires and parallel robots. We can control their position with an accuracy of 1 mm,"_ Zheng Yuanpeng, chief engineer of the telescope's panel project, told Xinhua.
> 
> It's hoped that the new telescope will boost Chinese scientists' capacity to observe outer space.
> 
> Wu Xiangping, director-general of the Chinese Astronomical Society, lamented that for years local scientists had to work on _"second hand"_ data collected by other researchers.
> 
> _"Having a more sensitive telescope, we can receive weaker and more distant radio messages. It will help us to search for intelligent life outside the galaxy and explore the origins of the universe,"_ Wu said.
> 
> READ MORE: Hunt for alien life comes with great responsibility – investor of Hawking-backed project to RT
> 
> Earlier this week, it was reported that Russian internet billionaire Yuri Milner will be funding a project, backed by Stephen Hawking, to scan the skies in the search for alien life. Two of the world’s largest telescopes (in West Virginia and in New South Wales) will be used during the epic hunt.
> 
> _“I think it’s an important project for the whole humanity. We now have the technology, we have the capability, we have the software and hardware to really try to get to the answer to this pretty fundamental question: are we alone in the universe? And I think in the next 10 years we will be able to make significant progress, which in order of magnitude more significant than in the last 55 years,”_ Milner, whose background is physics, told RT on Thursday.


This is in Guizhou.
Some information on this project
Discovery How China Works 运行中国 （运转中国） 02 - YouTube

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## Keel

AndrewJin said:


> This is in Guizhou.
> Some information on this project
> Discovery How China Works 运行中国 （运转中国） 02 - YouTube



Yes Thanks.
I know that is in Guizhou and we are in process of building the world's largest radio telescope but as @TaiShang and @bobsm pointed out, we are also joining an international group building "another" world's largest radio telescope so I am a bit uncertain if the one we are building are going to be ecliped by the one to be built by international efforts.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## TaiShang

Keel said:


> Yes Thanks.
> I know that is in Guizhou and we are in process of building the world's largest radio telescope but as @TaiShang and @bobsm pointed out, we are also joining an international group building "another" world's largest radio telescope so I am a bit uncertain if the one we are building are going to be ecliped by the one to be built by international efforts.




@Martian2 , sir, your input?

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

TaiShang said:


> @Martian2 , sir, your input?



The thing that China is building is a radar single aperture telescope. Single aperture is to be highlighted. 

The largest general radio observatory would be International collaboration.


----------



## Martian2

TaiShang said:


> @Martian2 , sir, your input?








China's FAST radio telescope has a 500 meter diameter (or 250 meter radius).

The current record holder Arecibo has a 305 meter diameter (or 153 meter radius).

Area = π*r^2

China's FAST = π * (250 meter) ^ 2 = 196,250 meter squared detector

Arecibo = π * (153 meter) ^ 2 = 73,504 meter squared detector

Sensitivity of China's FAST radio telescope = 196,250 / 73,504 = 2.67 times more sensitive than Arecibo

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

Martian2 said:


> China's FAST radio telescope has a 500 meter diameter (or 250 meter radius).
> 
> The current record holder Arecibo has a 305 meter diameter (or 153 meter radius).
> 
> Area = π*r^2
> 
> China's FAST = π * (250 meter) ^ 2 = 196,250 meter squared detector
> 
> Arecibo = π * (153 meter) ^ 2 = 73,504 meter squared detector
> 
> Sensitivity of China's FAST radio telescope = 196,250 / 73,504 = 2.67 times more sensitive than Arecibo




He's asking a very different question. 

There is obviously FAST that is being built by China.

And there is the Square Kilometer Array being built by International Colloboration, both of which were listed as the largest telescopes. So which is true? 

Also, Arecibo is a really old telescope.


----------



## TaiShang

*China Launched Its First Typhoon Detecting Missile*

China's first typhoon detecting rocket was launched 11p.m. in Hainan Wanning on Oct. 3. Several radiosondes were dropped into the center of Typhoon Mujigae only 6 minutes after the launch. The data retrieved from this launch was very accurate, with high scientific research value. This experiment is a breakthrough in China’s rocket science, with rocket launching, radiosonde dropping and remote data retrieval achieved at the same time.

The launch is collaboration between Shanghai Typhoon Institute of China Meteorological Administration and China Aerospace Science & Industry Corp. It took three years and the support from Hainan Meteorological Service to complete this launch. Scientists said there’s great potential in applying rocket science into typhoon detection and forecast. (File Photo)

China Launched Its First Typhoon Detecting Missile - People's Daily Online

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

FAST telescope is going to be the world largest single aperture radio telescope.
SKA telescope is going to be the world largest VLBI radio telescope. i.e. an array of radio telescopes combined as one.

Very-long-baseline interferometry - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
*Very-long-baseline interferometry* (*VLBI*) is a type of astronomical interferometry used in radio astronomy. In VLBI a signal from an astronomical radio source, such as a quasar, is collected at multiple radio telescopes on Earth. The distance between the radio telescopes is then calculated using the time difference between the arrivals of the radio signal at different telescopes. This allows observations of an object that are made simultaneously by many radio telescopes to be combined, emulating a telescope with a size equal to the maximum separation between the telescopes.​
Astronomical interferometer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An *astronomical interferometer* is an array of telescopes or mirror segments acting together to probe structures with higher resolution by means of interferometry. The benefit of the interferometer is that the angular resolution of the instrument is nearly that of a telescope with the same aperture as a single large instrument encompassing all of the individual photon-collecting sub-components.* The main drawback is that it does not collect as many photons as a large instrument of that size. Thus it is mainly useful for fine resolution of the more luminous astronomical objects, such as close binary stars.* Another drawback is that the maximum angular size of a detectable emission source is limited by the minimum gap between detectors in the array.[1]​FAST is more sensitive, SKA has better resolution.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## Martian2

Bussard Ramjet said:


> He's asking a very different question.
> 
> There is obviously FAST that is being built by China.
> 
> And there is the Square Kilometer Array being built by International Colloboration, both of which were listed as the largest telescopes. So which is true?
> 
> Also, Arecibo is a really old telescope.


You are confusing two different telescopes.

The Chinese FAST radio telescope is a large single telescope. It has incredible range. It should be able to see 2.67 times further than Arecibo. Objects that emit electromagnetic energy in the radio spectrum can be detected by the Chinese FAST that Arecibo cannot detect. Alternatively, China's FAST can see the same object with 2.7 times more clarity than Arecibo.

The Square Kilometer Array is an interferometer. It will have incredible resolution, because of the size of the virtual radio telescope dish via interferometry. However, it has a huge drawback. The range of the Square Kilometer Array is limited by the size of each small individual dish. The collective Square Kilometer Array interferometer cannot see any further than a single dish in its network. A single dish cannot gather data beyond its design sensitivity.

In conclusion, China's FAST is the world's largest telescope when you are discussing range. It can see deeper into space than any other radio telescope in the world. On the other hand, the Square Kilometer Array will have the world's highest resolution for any radio emitting object that is within the range of a single unit of the Square Kilometer Array.

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## Keel

Thanks guys for the explanations.
The radio telescope deals appear great for us that we can have access to the best of both worlds - one in depth the other in precision

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## cirr

Sorry guys，for readers well versed in Chinese only。

台风彩虹最新消息：我国首次用火箭探测台风内部 放多枚探空仪

发表时间：2015-10-07 09:22:21

关键字: 首次用火箭探测台风内部台风彩虹最新消息 

台风彩虹最新消息：今年第22号台风“彩虹”日前过境广东、广西，造成较大灾害，与此同时，中国科研人员也发射火箭探测到“彩虹”的中心，探测其内部结构和强度，这是我国首次利用火箭探测台风的“内部世界”。 

据人民网10月5日报道，2015年10月3日23时，伴随着一声轰隆的巨响，我国首枚台风探测火箭在海南万宁点火发射。 






资料图：此前中国航天科工集团公司展示的近海台风探测火箭。 





近海台风探测火箭发射瞬间。 

仅仅6分钟后，探测火箭将多枚下投式探空仪成功送入远在数百公里之外的强台风“彩虹”云团中心区域并实时传送高质量观测数据。初步分析表明此次试验所获取的台风数据资料，精度高，质量好，同步性强，具有显著的科研业务应用潜在价值。此次试验完美解决了火箭发射、探空仪高空高速抛撒、远程数据获取等一系列技术障碍，获得圆满成功。 

基于火箭平台下投式探空技术是由中国气象局上海台风研究所和中国航天科工集团，历时三年的共同设计研发的原创性创新台风探测手段，并最终在海南省气象局大力协助下展开首次试验。 

这项探测试验技术主要用于探测海上台风的结构和强度，是一项军民融合，航天事业与国民经济生活特别是气象减灾应用结合的典范，也是一项多单位协同创新提高气象能力的探索性尝试。此次试验成功，标志着利用火箭平台的探测近海台风技术的重大突破，填补了我国海上台风结构和强度直接探测的空白。 

发射总结 

据参试专家介绍，试验的成功证明火箭探空台风技术对于分析研究近海台风的强度和内在结构特征有很强的参考价值和应用潜力，对于进一步提高台风路径和强度预报能力以及防台预警能力方面有着重大科学意义。此外，此次试验还得到了万宁市委、市政府以及万宁市气象局的大力支持。 





发射过程示意图，火箭在空中多次变轨，投放多个探测器。 





资料图：此前中国航天科工集团公司展示的近海台风探测火箭。

台风彩虹最新消息：我国首次用火箭探测台风内部 放多枚探空仪

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

cirr said:


> Sorry guys，for readers well versed in Chinese only。
> 
> 台风彩虹最新消息：我国首次用火箭探测台风内部 放多枚探空仪
> 
> 发表时间：2015-10-07 09:22:21
> 
> 关键字: 首次用火箭探测台风内部台风彩虹最新消息
> 
> 台风彩虹最新消息：今年第22号台风“彩虹”日前过境广东、广西，造成较大灾害，与此同时，中国科研人员也发射火箭探测到“彩虹”的中心，探测其内部结构和强度，这是我国首次利用火箭探测台风的“内部世界”。
> 
> 据人民网10月5日报道，2015年10月3日23时，伴随着一声轰隆的巨响，我国首枚台风探测火箭在海南万宁点火发射。
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 资料图：此前中国航天科工集团公司展示的近海台风探测火箭。
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 近海台风探测火箭发射瞬间。
> 
> 仅仅6分钟后，探测火箭将多枚下投式探空仪成功送入远在数百公里之外的强台风“彩虹”云团中心区域并实时传送高质量观测数据。初步分析表明此次试验所获取的台风数据资料，精度高，质量好，同步性强，具有显著的科研业务应用潜在价值。此次试验完美解决了火箭发射、探空仪高空高速抛撒、远程数据获取等一系列技术障碍，获得圆满成功。
> 
> 基于火箭平台下投式探空技术是由中国气象局上海台风研究所和中国航天科工集团，历时三年的共同设计研发的原创性创新台风探测手段，并最终在海南省气象局大力协助下展开首次试验。
> 
> 这项探测试验技术主要用于探测海上台风的结构和强度，是一项军民融合，航天事业与国民经济生活特别是气象减灾应用结合的典范，也是一项多单位协同创新提高气象能力的探索性尝试。此次试验成功，标志着利用火箭平台的探测近海台风技术的重大突破，填补了我国海上台风结构和强度直接探测的空白。
> 
> 发射总结
> 
> 据参试专家介绍，试验的成功证明火箭探空台风技术对于分析研究近海台风的强度和内在结构特征有很强的参考价值和应用潜力，对于进一步提高台风路径和强度预报能力以及防台预警能力方面有着重大科学意义。此外，此次试验还得到了万宁市委、市政府以及万宁市气象局的大力支持。
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 发射过程示意图，火箭在空中多次变轨，投放多个探测器。
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 资料图：此前中国航天科工集团公司展示的近海台风探测火箭。
> 
> 台风彩虹最新消息：我国首次用火箭探测台风内部 放多枚探空仪




At least give a broad summary.


----------



## JSCh

* China launches cube satellites for civil aircraft tracking *
Source:Xinhua Published: 2015-10-7 14:17:52


China has successfully launched three cube satellites (CubeSats), which are expected to help track civil aircraft and ships and avoid tragedies like missing flight MH370.

The three CubeSats in a mission coded STU-2 were launched on Sept. 25 and have entered their designed orbit, according to the mission's chief designer, Wu Shufan.

The three spacecraft are equipped with polar region observation cameras as well as automatic identification system (AIS) receivers for information from ships and automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) receivers for messages sent from civil flights.

The ADS-B system was developed to be installed on civil aircraft and transmit readings of the flight's position, height, speed, direction and other information automatically every second to receivers on the ground or in the air. Currently more than 70 percent of aircraft have such systems installed.

As of the evening of Sept. 28, the STU-2 CubeSats had collected hundreds of thousands of ADS-B messages from more than 12,400 aircraft flying within receiving range.

The paths and traffic flow of civil flights within the satellites' monitoring area may be collected in real time.

"If there are enough satellites in orbit to cover a region wide enough, a specific flight could be tracked and that may help with spotting, search and rescue in cases like Malaysia Airlines flight MH370," Wu said.

CubeSats may also be used to provide information support for ship operations such as the Chinese icebreaker Xuelong (Snow Dragon) in polar regions.

Wu said the STU-2 mission, the first of its kind by China, is a step in the country's satellite network development for civil aircraft and ship monitoring.

He also called for more international cooperation to expand the network's reach.

Like a Rubik's cube, a CubeSat is a satellite composed of smaller cubic units. Depending on its different uses, a CubeSat may contain two, three or more such units.

Compared with other integral satellites, cube spacecraft are generally smaller, lighter and much more economical in development and production costs.

Wu said the three STU-2 CubeSats weigh only 6.8 kilograms in total.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## Martian2

Look Out GoPro, Drone Giant DJI Is Getting Into The Handheld Camera Business | Fast Company | Business + Innovation









----------
*Beautiful DJI Osmo video of Peru.*

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Control the flow of light: Nature-inspired nanostructure created*
Posted 4 days ago

The catenary is the curve that a free-hanging chain assumes under its own weight. It is a “true mathematical and mechanical form” in architecture described by Robert Hooke in the 1670s. The catenary could be found in many circumstances. For example, the silk on a spider’s web form multiple elastic catenaries. The catenaries are also widely used in architectures to construct bridges and arches.





*Figure: An illustration of optical catenaries for the OAM generation. When a light beam incident on the catenary structures, orbital angular momenta are transferred from the structure to photons. This process is independent of the wavelength. Credit: SKLOTNM, Chinese Academy of Science*​
In an article published in _Science Advances_, a journal established by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, *Prof. Xiangang Luo from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the co-workers have now demonstrated that ultrathin and lightweight optical devices could be constructed using nanostructures catenaries.*

The researchers use optical catenary-shaped structures to convert circularly polarized light to helically-phased beam that carrying geometric linear phase profile. Similar to the “catenary of equal strength”, the phase gradient of the optical catenary is equal everywhere, which is a direct result of its special geometric shape. “The catenary structure could find applications in optics, architectures, and many other disciplines. This means that we could construct novel optical devices with strong similarity to the structures occurring in the natural world.” Prof. Luo explains.

Many previous methods used discrete nanostructures to generate space-variant phase distribution. The discrete structures lead to strong resonance, which makes the operating bandwidth of these samples limited. Prof. Luo’s group therefore uses the continuous catenary structures to obtain much broader bandwidth. They demonstrated that broadband orbital angular momentum (OAM) could be achieved by using the catenary array. The operating bandwidth of the devices could covers the entire electromagnetic spectrum ranging from microwave, terahertz, and infrared to the visible regime.

The catenaries could be used as a unique building block for optical metasurfaces, which are thought to be the key of the next-generation integrated optical systems. According to the metasurface-assisted law of reflection and refraction,* many novel optical elements, such as flat lenses, axicons, and prisms, could be obtained with performance far beyond their traditional counterparts.* Prof. Luo says, “The method of using catenary nanostructures to modulate phase works in many different cases. On the one hand, these nanostructures are natural candidates for the light manipulation on the nanoscale. *On the other hand, when these structures are fabricated on flexible substrate, very lightweight and large-aperture lens could be realized. Such lenses make very large space telescopes become possible.”*

*Paper information: *M. Pu, X. Li, X. Ma, Y. Wang, Z. Zhao, C. Wang, C. Hu, P. Gao, C. Huang, H. Ren, X. Li, F. Qin, J. Yang, M. Gu, M. Hong, X. Luo, Catenary optics for achromatic generation of perfect optical angular momentum. Sci. Adv. 1, e1500396 (2015). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1500396

Control the flow of light: Nature-inspired nanostructure created - Technology Org

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## TaiShang

*Chinese scientists 3D-print building blocks of liver*
October 9, 2015

A Chinese team has used a specialized 3D printer to produce tiny sections of the liver that could eventually be used a form a full artificial version of the organ, it announced on Friday.

The hepatic lobules, of which there are around a million in a human liver, were printed on the Regenovo 3D bio-print Work Station designed by the team at *Hangzhou Electronic Science and Technology University.*

This had a far more specific medical design than most 3D printers, which have industrial purposes, said team leader Xu Mingen.

Reactions: Like Like:
13


----------



## TaiShang

*Chinese Researchers Used 3D Printer for Liver*

A Chinese team has used a specialized 3D printer to produce tiny sections of the liver that could eventually be used a form a full artificial version of the organ, it announced on Friday.

The hepatic lobules, of which there are around a million in a human liver, were printed on the Regenovo 3D bio-print Work Station designed by the team at Hangzhou Electronic Science and Technology University.

This had a far more specific medical design than most 3D printers, which have industrial purposes, said team leader Xu Mingen.

Reactions: Like Like:
9


----------



## AndrewJin

Awesome

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## cirr

TaiShang said:


> *Chinese scientists 3D-print building blocks of liver*
> October 9, 2015
> 
> A Chinese team has used a specialized 3D printer to produce tiny sections of the liver that could eventually be used a form a full artificial version of the organ, it announced on Friday.
> 
> The hepatic lobules, of which there are around a million in a human liver, were printed on the Regenovo 3D bio-print Work Station designed by the team at *Hangzhou Electronic Science and Technology University.*
> 
> This had a far more specific medical design than most 3D printers, which have industrial purposes, said team leader Xu Mingen.



*Hangzhou Electronic Science and Technology University.*

Is this the same university that bio-printed kidneys last year？

*China unveils the world’s largest 3-D printed structure*

ALEXANDRA SARABIA 
_
October 8, 2015 at 4:00 PM EDT_ | _Updated: Oct 9, 2015 at 4:49 PM
_




Photo by Beijing Design Week.

VULCAN, the world’s largest 3-D printed architectural structure, was recently unveiled during Beijing Design Week 2015.

The pavilion, which is displayed in Beijing’s Parkview Green was constructed from 1,023 individually printed 3-D units and measures 26.5 feet in length and 9.5 feet in height, according to Inhabitat. Twenty large-scale 3-D printers were used to complete the units that assemble the pavilion, as described on the site Designboom. The white undulating lattice structure resembles a volcano, hence the name Vulcan, the Latin term for volcano. Silkworm cocoons inspired the architects behind the design, Yu Lei and Xu Feng of the Laboratory for Creative Design.

3-D printing creates three-dimensional objects from computer-generated designs. A design can be made using digital or animation modeling software like computer-aided design, which can then be sent to a 3-D printer, as explained in Mashable. Rubber and plastic can be used to make these designs.

Previously, only small-scale objects from industries ranging from fashion tomedicine could be 3-D-printed. There has been much discussion about how 3D printing could transform the architecture and construction industries.

VULCAN was just awarded the Guinness World Record for the world’s largest 3-D printed structure.

China unveils the world's largest 3-D printed structure

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## cirr

*China successfully launches Pujiang-1 satellite featuring 3D printed parts into space*

Sep 28, 2015 | By Alec






Over the past year or so, we’ve seen that the Chinese government is very enthusiastically adopting high quality 3D printing in a variety of its branches. In January, we saw how their warships are taking *3D printers out on missions to manufacture replacement parts* and just a few weeks ago *the army branch has started doing the same*. However China is also ambitious in regards to aerospace, so it is hardly surprising that they have relied on the same high quality metal 3D printing principles during the development of a recent satellite. Called the Pujiang-1, it is the Chinese first satellite to feature 3D printed parts and has just been successfully launched.

The Pujiang-1 was one of four satellites that were carried into space on 25 September by the solid-fuel Long March-11 rocket. Lift-off took place at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Gansu (Northwestern China), at 9:41 AM (local time).











While NASA has also been experimenting with 3D printed satellite parts in recent years, the Pujiang-1 is a particularly interesting creation. Developed by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology, its designers chose to reduce costs and manufacturing time by creating the satellite’s titanium antenna holder with 3D printing. These parts were completed over a period of three days, while they usually take up to four months to create. And despite this short production time, the performance of the parts are said to be completely similar to those of traditionally manufactured parts.

But aside from an excellent money-saving innovation, the Pujiang-1 is also part of Beijing’s ambitious ‘internet plus’ strategy. With an eye on the country’s economy, this plan aims to transform Chinese businesses by making high-speed internet widely available. Through Wi-Fi technology principles, the satellite is intended to conveniently collect and send data on things like the weather, traffic and population growth to the people – perfect data for supporting marketing strategies and even for resource surveys, emergency response and rescue, and much more.





















The problem with those kinds of satellite programs in China is that they usually take exceptionally long to develop – establishing a dedicated program, creating and testing the models and prototypes quickly takes years. However, 3D printing technology is perfect for not only drastically reducing the costs involved, but also for greatly speeding up the program itself. If successful, the same principles will likely be applied to further satellite programs in China.

3ders.org - Singapore: Ultra Clean Asia Pacific opens largest 3D printing factory in Southeast Asia | 3D Printer News & 3D Printing News

Reactions: Like Like:
8


----------



## TaiShang

cirr said:


> While NASA has also been experimenting with 3D printed satellite parts in recent years, the Pujiang-1 is a particularly interesting creation. Developed by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology, its designers chose to reduce costs and manufacturing time by creating the satellite’s titanium antenna holder with 3D printing.



3D printing put in multiple use, from medical care to space. 

Good job!

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## AndrewJin

TaiShang said:


> 3D printing put in multiple use, from medical care to space.
> 
> Good job!


One aspect of the industrial revolution.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## AndrewJin

cirr said:


> Hangzhou Electronic Science and Technology University.


I have never heard of this uni before, great job!

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Martian2

*Taiwan ITRI Flexible AMOLED Display Technology*

Take a Look at Taiwan Flexible Display Technology | CTimes

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## Martian2

*Taiwan's High-Quality Adronic Argus Endoscopes*

Touring Taiwan’s Medtech Sector: High Quality Adronic Argus Endoscopes | medGadget

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## Martian2

*Taiwan's Andes Technology challenges ARM and Imagination as chip licensor*

Andes Wins CPU Role in MediaTek SoCs - Electronics360










----------

Taiwan's Andes Adds Peripherals IP for IoT, Wearables - Electronics360





----------

SemiWiki.com - A Brief History of Andes Technology

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## Martian2

*Taiwan's ITRI partners with American MachineWorks to challenge Siemens and FANUC*

The two major suppliers of machine tool software are Germany's Siemens and Japan's FANUC. China has written new laws that allow for low- or no-tariff sales of machine tools with domestic software. Since Taiwan is considered a province of China under the "One China" policy, Taiwan's ITRI has partnered with America's MachineWorks to create a joint-venture that qualifies for domestic software categorization in machine tools.
----------

ITRI shaping Taiwan CNC industry with MachineWorks Software

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## cirr

*An Empire of Robot - Dongfeng Peugeot Citroen Plant in Chengdu China*

| Posted: 12 Oct 2015, 15:43

It is released on Oct. 10 that Dongfeng Peugeot Citroen plant in Chengdu, China has open up the bodywork line in welding workshop, marking the mass production capability of welding bodywork line, reported by robot.ofweek.com.






It is said that rising welding technologies such as laser brazing and laser welding have been applied in Chengdu plant. The mainlines are flexible to produce 6 vehicle models at random and the speed is 60 pieces per hour. 435 robots build the 100% automated plant where the direct labors are less then 100 people, which is 1/10 of traditional automobile factory of the same size. The labor intensity is reduced dramatically and the productivity is highly enhanced. 

The advanced techniques include laser welding, laser brazing, automatic arc welding, robot stud welding, medium frequency welding, punching-riveting, auto anti sling spray, high speed roller beds, and so on.Chengdu plant remains leading level of welding in China.

"Generally speaking, the wielding automation rate is about 50% in Chinese joint ventures, while the automation rate of our welding workshop reaches to 100%, which is world-leading position."Sun Jisheng, principal of the welding workshop said. It is revealed that, human station is almost disappear after the adoption of robot. The fence of workshop has been changed as advanced transparent macromolecule PC plastic plate, which features good visual effects and fireproofing function. Dongfeng Peugeot Citroen Chengdu project was founded in last October and will be put into production in 2016, which is expected to produce 360 thousand cars, including three vehicle models as Dongfeng Citroen, Dongfeng Peugeot and Dongfeng.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## rcrmj

cirr said:


> *Hangzhou Electronic Science and Technology University.*


this Uni is not far away from my company, mostly a tier 3 uni, IT companies in my area recruit most interns from there

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese researchers discover naturally occurring uranium*
By Gao Yinan (People's Daily Online) 08:32, October 12, 2015




For a long time it was thought metal uranium did not exist in nature. This latest study has proved the contrary.

The latest issue of Geology (English version) published a cover story saying that researchers from China have discovered naturally occurring uranium. The results not only provide important essentials that reveal the nature of hydrothermal uranium mineralization, but are also of great significance to study the origin of the uranium, the formation and evolution of the Earth's heat.

Uranium is both the basic element of the nuclear arms industry and the civilian use of nuclear energy. And it is widely distributed on Earth, but because of its instability, science hitherto assumed that uranium does not occur in nature in pure form but only in oxygen-containing minerals.

The research team, led by president of the Beijing Institute of Geology, Li Ziying, conducted a systematic study of the composition and the valence of uraninite in hydrothermal uranium deposits. The study found that the uranium uraninite was not only in tetravalent and hexavalent form, but also existed as uranium metal (zero valence).

Due to the strong reduction environment inside the Earth, uranium remains in a metallic state or low valence state. When the uranium fluids are transported to near the Earth’s surface, due to the continuous increase of contact with oxygen, most of the uranium combines with oxygen to form tetravalent or hexavalent compounds.

The samples for Li’s research were collected from two famous mineral deposits in China: "Guidong 330" and "Zhuguang 302" in the northeast of Guangdong province in the far south of China. The research team has analyzed the samples by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.

Only a portion of the uranium remains in its metallic state. Li Ziying considers that the proportion of pure uranium, tetravalent and hexavalent in the field of hydrothermal uranium ore may reflect the depth of the ore formation.

This important discovery provides important fundamentals in understanding the nature of hydrothermal uranium mineralization and the basic elements for ore control, and thus has an important practical value. 

(Editor:Gao Yinan,Bianji)​

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## JSCh

*Production of China's first unmanned subway complete*
2015-10-12 21:03:12

CHANGCHUN, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- Production of Beijing's first fully automatic subway trains has been finished, Changchun Railway Vehicles Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of China CRRC Corporation, announced on Monday.

They will be the first fully automatic trains on the Chinese mainland and are scheduled to be put into service this year.

The trains, with a top speed of 80 kilometers an hour, can carry a maximum of 1,262 passengers.

Unmanned subway trains were first introduced in Copenhagen, Denmark and are used in cities including Paris, Barcelona and Nuremberg.


*Tibet's largest hydropower station starts full operation*
14:09, October 13, 2015

WUHAN, Oct. 13 -- Zam Hydropower Station, Tibet's largest, is now fully operational, according to one of the station's contractors.

All six of the station's units were incorporated into the power grid on Tuesday, said the China Gezhouba Group, a major hydropower contractor based in Wuhan, capital of Hubei Province in central China.

Located in the Gyaca County, Shannan Prefecture, the Zam Hydropower Station harnesses the rich water resources of the Yarlung Zangbo River, a major river which flows through Tibet. It produces 2.5 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity a year.

"It will alleviate the electricity shortage in central Tibet and empower the development of the electricity-strapped region. It is also an important energy base in central Tibet," the company said.

Sources say when the electricity is ample in the summer season, part of the electricity will be conveyed to the neighboring Qinghai province.

Investment of the hydropower station, about 140 kilometers from Tibetan capital Lhasa, totalled 9.6 billion yuan (about 1.5 billion U.S. dollars). China Huaneng group is it owner and operator.

The first unit began operation last November.
(Editor:Liang Jun,Bianji)​

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*18-Months Operation of Lunar-based Ultraviolet Telescope: A Highly Stable Photometric Performance*
J. Wang, X. M. Meng, X. H. Han, H. B. Cai, L. Cao, J. S. Deng, Y. L. Qiu, S. Wang, J. Y. Wei, J. Y. Hu
(Submitted on 6 Oct 2015)

We here report the photometric performance of *Lunar-based Ultraviolet telescope (LUT), the first robotic telescope working on the Moon, for its 18-months operation*. In total, 17 IUE standards have been observed in 51 runs until June 2015, which returns a highly stable photometric performance during the past 18 months (i.e., no evolution of photometric performance with time). The magnitude zero point is determined to be $17.53\pm0.05$ mag, which is not only highly consistent with the results based on its first 6-months operation, but also independent on the spectral type of the standard from which the magnitude zero point is determined. The implications of this stable performance is discussed, and is useful for next generation lunar-based astronomical observations.​
Comments: 6 pages, 3 figures and 2 tables. To be published in Ap&SS
Subjects:* Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)*
Cite as: arXiv:1510.01435 [astro-ph.IM] (or arXiv:1510.01435v1 [astro-ph.IM] for this version)

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## cirr

*China successfully hosted the new airship alternative satellite near future or suborbital space *

2015-10-14

At 2:10 on October 13, China's first military and civilian space platform near the new "Dream Number" in Inner Mongolia Xilinhot flying success.






China Aviation News Data Figure

Original title: China's new airship successfully parked near space, in the airspace of alternative satellite suborbital

Technology Daily News October 14, October 13 2 8:10, China's first military and civilian space platform near the new "Dream Number" in Inner Mongolia Xilinhot flying success.

This is the world's first with continued momentum, controlled flight, re-use capability of near space airship flight, is the first to provide commercial services to businesses and individual users on the fly. The flight carrying the customer's broadband communications, data relay, high definition observation, space situational awareness and airborne imaging systems. As of press time reporter, the airship is 20 km height specified range and flight in space, the system as usual.

Reporters at the scene saw the launch, "Dream Number" is a huge silver airship, a volume of 18,000 cubic meters, rely on helium buoyancy rose into the air. It takes three six-dimensional motor propeller, rely on solar energy to power after launch, scheduled to air in 48 hours.

"Dream No." South River by the Beijing Aerospace Technology Co., Ltd. joint Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Xilin Gol League in Inner Mongolia jointly developed.

At the launch site, the Chinese Academy of Engineering, told reporters the whole, is a region of space near the Earth's surface from 20 km to 100 km, it is a traditional joint aviation space and aerospace space. Due to the influence of the physical height and density of the air, the traditional aircraft and spacecraft can not fly in this space, and thus become very special among the highest altitude of general aviation aircraft and space-based satellite lowest orbital altitude areas.

"Dream Number" and continued use of solar power, energy autonomous and remote control off, landing, fixed and cruise flight, perform communication coverage with the relay, to be imaged with a variety of tasks and other observations.

"Spacecraft approaching the biggest difficulty lies in going up, but also to retain, due to the great temperature difference between day near space, materials and systems for controlling high demands." The whole told reporters.

"Our capsule material lighter, more pressure, flexible solar energy conversion rate of over 18%, and avionics system is the world's lightest." South River Aerospace chairman Lin Lixin told reporters .

News Background

According to the China Aviation News Network data, because of the near space potentially huge business, political and military interests have a more profound understanding of, including the United States, Russia, Britain, Germany, Japan, in developed countries have stepped up within the near space exploration intensity and frequency, have launched various types of near space steerable aerostat development.

Economically speaking, an object of near space development and utilization, is by arranging in the airspace near space steerable aerostat (NearSpaceControllableAerostat) sub-orbital satellite to replace some of the features, to complete a variety previously only by satellite to complete the work, such as crop production estimates, weather forecast, severe weather warnings, earth observation, communications relay, etc., thereby greatly reducing operational costs and improve overall efficiency.

From the national security side, near space steerable aerostat can rely on height advantage for early warning, wartime communications support or attack platforms. It is particularly important near space steerable aerostat as cooperative relaying empty days between aircraft, make up air and space integration jobs gap. It is not difficult to see, near space for the future development of mankind has a very great significance, it will also be the human exploration and use of sky next stop.

China successfully hosted the new airship alternative satellite near future or suborbital space - Sunning View

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## cirr

*Laser technology is developing further*

10/13/2015




*VOLODYMYR S. KOVALENKO*

_Editor's note: For obvious reasons, it is not the practice of _ILS _to present details of the many conferences on industrial laser material processing held around the world. However, the following report of a conference held under the most difficult, headline-generating circumstances is an exception. _ILS_ congratulates the organizers for continuing this conference series and the presenters and attendees for their dedication in making this conference happen._

There is war now in the very center of Europe—independent and sovereign Ukraine. One year ago, the Russian Army invaded the southern part of Ukraine and occupied the Crimea peninsula on the Black Sea. Here in Crimea is a small town, Katsively, where at the beginning of the new millennium a new tradition was born—to conduct the International Conference on Laser Technologies in Welding and Material Processing (LTWMP) every two years. This tradition was initiated by two Ukrainian institutions, the Paton Welding Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NASU) and the Laser Technology Research Institute (LTRI) of the National Technical University of Ukraine (KPI). The first conference was organized under the chairmanship of Prof. Boris Paton and Prof. Kovalenko in 2003, where experts from 22 countries successfully presented their research results. After that, six more conferences were conducted in Katsively—the last one in 2013.

The next planned conference was organized in spite of the war in Ukraine. However, because of the occupation of Crimea, LTWMP 2015 was conducted in Odessa—the “Southern Palmira” of Ukraine—from September 14-19, 2015.

Presented at the conference were 29 reports on different aspects of laser technology development. The theme of the event was research activity in 3D additive laser processing in components manufacturing and remanufacturing, and its implementation into industry. The papers presented came from researchers in China, Germany, Poland, Spain, Russia, and Ukraine. Because of the complicated political and military situations due to the war in the area, the number of participants from Ukraine and abroad was limited, but the atmosphere of event was businesslike, very friendly, and cooperative.

A plenary paper titled “Development of 3D additive processing for product manufacturing in modern industry” was presented by Prof. Kovalenko. A cooperative paper titled “Research progress of supersonic laser deposition technology” by Prof. Jianhua Yao (director of the Research Center of Laser Processing Technology and Engineering of Zhejiang University of Technology, China) and Prof. Kovalenko was accepted by the audience with great interest.

A paper on the “Interaction of CO2 laser beam with electric arc plasma in hybrid (TIG + laser) welding” by Prof. Igor Krivtsun (NASU) demonstrated some key results of joint theoretical research of hybrid processing with colleagues Dr. U. Reisen et al. from RWTH Aachen University (Germany).

In line with the conference theme was the presentation “Advancement in joint research of laser cladding at components manufacturing” by authors J. Yao, O. Zang, and H. Hu (Research Center of Laser Processing Technology and Engineering, Zhejiang University of Technology, China), and Prof. Kovalenko, M. Anyakin, and R. Zhuk (KPI).

In collaboration with Chinese colleagues (Dr. Luo Ziyi, Guangdong General Research Institute of Non-ferrous metals), Prof. Krivtsun demonstrated the results of joint research of welding aluminum alloys, “The increase of efficiency of hybrid welding of aluminum alloys”.

Prof. V. Shelyagin with his group at NASU presented an interesting paper with Chinese colleagues Wang Chusheng, Wan Dinda, and Zhen Shukhuey (China-Russian Technological Park, Changchun and Changchun Railway Car Building Plant) on “Laser manual machine for welding of railway transport products."

Several papers were devoted to the study of combined laser irradiation with other energy sources. So, postgraduate student Dymytro Lesik and his supervisor Prof. Vitaliy Dzhemelinski (KPI), in collaboration with Dr. S. Martinesz and Dr. A. Lamikiz (University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, Spain) studied material processing with combined laser radiation and ultrasonic treatment. Their paper “Surface hardening of the steel parts with laser and ultrasonic treatment” precipitated useful discussion.

Other combined processing also fostered interesting discussion. A paper titled “Plasma + laser – new capabilities of plasma-powder surfacing" was presented jointly by Dr. A. Som (Plasma-Master Ltd., Kiev, Ukraine) and Prof. Krivtsun (NASU).

Chinese colleagues Dr. Wang Liang and Prof. Yao, with his group from Zhejiang Provincial Collaborative Innovative Center of High-end Laser Manufacturing Equipment, Hangzhou, China, presented the results of the use of magnetic field to improve the quality of laser cladding in a paper titled “Effect of electro-magnetic composite field on WC particulate reinforced metal matrix composite layers by laser melt injection.”

Another research paper from the same institutions by Prof. Yao, Dr. Bo Li, and others, titled “Microstructure and wear-resistant properties of WC/SS316L composite coatings prepared with supersonic laser deposition,” was devoted to the improvement of composite coatings with supersonic laser deposition. These results met with great interest.

The use of laser irradiation for electrode wire improvement was considered as well by NTUU researchers Prof. L. Golovko, S. Shevchenko, Prof. Krivtsun, and V. Slobodyanyuk (PJSC “PlasmaTek,” Vinnitsa, Ukraine). These researchers presented the main results of their research in a paper titled “Capabilities of application of laser treatment for increasing the quality of electrode wire.”

The processing of materials in the conference title means not only the study of laser interaction with nonorganic material, different metal alloys, powder materials, etc., but irradiation of live tissue as well. Thus, the researchers from the Filatov Institute of Eye Diseases and Tissue Therapy of the National Academy of Medical Science of Ukraine (Odessa) presented a paper on “Strength of chorioretinal joints after influence of high-frequency welding tissues and diode endolaser coagulation.” Another paper of this type was presented by Prof. I. Khudetsky with colleagues from KPI, Paton Welding Institute of NASU, and Junction Railway Hospital #1 “Darnitsa” (Kiev, Ukraine). Both presentations were also accepted with great interest.

A number of presentations disclosed the new efforts in developing different types of hybrid equipment, devices, and techniques to achieve advanced technology based on 3D laser additive processing.

In spite of all the difficulties, the conference proved that research in laser technology is far from saturation and further developments are in progress. The unanimous conclusion of all LTWMP 2015 participants was that the event was a success—and the next conference will be organized in 2017.

Laser technology is developing further - Industrial Laser Solutions

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Pak_Sher

Chinese economic progress is a good example for many developing countries.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists sink teeth into history of humans in Asia*
*By CHENG YINGQI (China Daily) Updated: 2015-10-15 08:35 *




Some of the 47 human teeth discovered in a cave in Hunan province. [Photo/China Daily]​
The discovery of 47 human teeth in a cave in Hunan province by Chinese scientists has unearthed new evidence that the earliest modern humans lived in East Asia.

The teeth and a number of animal fossils were excavated from Fuyan Cave in Daoxian county.

After geological dating tests and analysis, the scientists determined that the teeth belonged to Homo sapiens, the species of modern humans that lived between 80,000 and 120,000 years ago.

The discovery of the teeth, made between 2011 and 2013, has just been reported in the online version of the scientific journal Nature.

Nick Campbell, the journal's executive editor, said, "The human teeth from China ... open up a new window on an area we had little information on before.

"These fossils ... are approximately double or more the age of any previous well dated, well preserved human fossils from southern Asia."

The first appearance of humans in the eastern Mediterranean and East Asia has remained a mystery due to lack of fossil evidence.

Human fossils found earlier in Beijing's Tianyuan Cave, Huanglong Cave in Hubei province and Zhiren Cave in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region narrowed this down to between 11,000 and 40,000 years ago, but none of these species evolved fully into modern humans.

Liu Wu from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and lead author of the paper in Nature, said, "This is a milestone discovery because the species we found in the Fuyuan Cave is from well developed modern humans, almost identical to living humans.

"This means that we were present in southern China 30,000 to 70,000 years earlier than in the eastern Mediterranean and Europe."

Campbell, from Nature, said, "The findings really do substantially change our understanding of how modern humans established themselves in Asia.

"The findings may have some intriguing implications for the ever-evolving story of how modern humans replaced Neanderthals."

Neanderthals were closely related to modern humans and lived between 24,000 and 130,000 years ago.

They were smaller than modern humans and had low, flat elongated skulls.

Maria Martinon-Torres from University College London, a co-author of the paper, said, "Now we know that modern humans were present in southern China as early as 80,000 years ago, but there is no evidence that our species entered Europe before 45,000 years ago, when Neanderthals were already extinct."

Robin Dennell from the Department of Archaeology at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, said of the teeth discovery, "More revelations about our species' history can surely be expected from southern China."

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## Raphael

China develops new super capacitors - Xinhua | English.news.cn

BEIJING, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) -- China's largest rolling stock manufacturer CRRC Corp. has developed a new generation of super graphene capacitors that can power electric buses with higher efficiency and for a longer period.


The train maker has produced two types of capacitors, 2.8 Volt/30,000 F and 3 Volt/12,000 F. The former can power trolley buses for up to 10 km after a one-minute charge, compared with 6 km in the previous generation. The latter one can provide enough electricity to power a tram for 6 km with only 30 seconds of charging.

The capacitors are world leaders in their arm of technology, Ruan Dianbo, deputy technical director of CRRC Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive Co., said on Saturday.

Apart from the improvements to performance, the new products are also more energy-saving and environmentally friendly. Ruan estimated China can save 584 GWh of electricity and cut 6.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emission a year if all the newly-added buses, around 60,000 a year, can be installed with the new capacitors.

Compared with traditional power storage devices, super capacitors boast shorter charging time, do not pollute and have no risk of explosion. They are widely used in electronics, rolling stocks, aviation and power generation.

China To Mass Produce Ebola Vaccine Developed By Chinese Military Scientists

A private Chinese firm plans to mass produce an Ebola vaccine developed by Chinese military scientists. Tianjin CanSino Biotechnology Inc. is building a $315.14 million facility in the northeastern city of Tianjin, where it will produce the vaccine, the company told China’s state news agency Xinhua Wednesday.

The facility will be completed in September 2018, but no date has been set for the production launch. The firm already produces other vaccines against pneumonia, meningitis and tuberculosis, with annual production around 200 million.

A team of biotech experts at Academy of Military Medical Sciences in China developed the Ebola vaccine, which is based on the 2014 mutant gene type and in the form of freeze-dried powder. The vaccine can remain stable for at least two weeks in temperatures of up to 37 degrees Celsius, making it suitable for the tropical climate of West Africa where the ongoing Ebola outbreak has killed more than 11,000.




A Chinese military health worker, part of a delegation sent by China to help in the fight against Ebola, had her temperature taken as she arrives at Roberts airport outside Monrovia, Liberia, Nov. 15, 2014. Reuters/James Giahyue

China approved the experimental vaccine for clinical trials in December last year. The Ministry of Health of Sierra Leone, one of the worst-affected countries, said the vaccine has proven “clinically safe,” according to Xinhua. China has provided $120 million in aid and 500 medical staff and experts to affected countries since the outbreak was declared in March 2014.

Other companies have already made strides toward developing a successful vaccine against the deadly virus. The U.S. Defense Department’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency recently awarded NewLink Genetics Corp. an $8.1 million base contract to work on development of an Ebola vaccine candidate. The biopharmaceutical company has licensed research, development and manufacturing of the vaccine candidate to Merck, an American pharmaceutical company and one of the largest in the world. Clinical trials are ongoing but the test vaccine proved 100-percent effective in a clinical study in Guinea in July, according to Reuters.

The number of new Ebola cases has dropped sharply this year. Earlier this month, the three West African countries at the epicenter of the epidemic -- Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea -- recorded their first week with no new cases since the outbreak started.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## bobsm

*Handheld camera eliminates the shakes*
2015-10-14 16:38chinadaily.com.cn
_Editor: Wang Fan_





China's largest commercial drone manufacturer DJI, announced the launch of Osmo, the world's first fully integrated and stabilized handheld 4K camera. (Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn)

China's largest commercial drone manufacturer DJI, announced the launch of Osmo, the world's first fully integrated and stabilized handheld 4K camera, on Wednesday.

Using the company's signature three-axis gimbal stabilization technology, Osmo eliminates the shake of traditional handheld devices, creating stable photos and videos.

"With Osmo, we have created a camera specifically designed to capture a smooth moving image regardless of filming conditions." said Frank Wang, DJI CEO and founder.

Users can view live images of what the camera sees, adjust settings and control smart filming functions including panorama, long exposure and slow motion.

"Traditional handheld cameras are either shaky or require bulky stabilizers that are difficult to set up," said Paul Pan, DJI's senior product manager. "The Osmo moves the experience of handheld filmmaking from capturing what happened, to sharing expressive, smooth video that shows what an experience was like".

Shenzhen-based DJI's global operation spans North America, Europe and Asia and its products have been chosen by customers in more than 100 countries and applied in film, advertising, construction, firefighting, farming and many other industries.

The Osmo is available for pre-order online priced 3,999 yuan on the Chinese mainland and will begin shipping October 15.

Handheld camera eliminates the shakes

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## JSCh

Can the World’s Smallest Nano-thermometer be Used to Diagnose Cancer Early? Chinese Team Sees Ray of Hope in New Breakthrough---Chinese Academy of Sciences
*Oct 16, 2015*




Small semiconducting nanocrystals called ‘quantum dots’ can produce a spectrum of colours depending on their size to read the temperature of individual cells. Photo: SCMP Pictures

Chinese scientists claim to have developed the world’s smallest thermometer, which is capable of measuring the temperature of individual cells and gauging their health.

Some believe the technological breakthrough will later find important applications in cancer therapy.

Each instrument is made of tiny particles only a few nanometers in diameter. The minuscule particles contain light-emitting materials that makes it easy for them to enter a living cell.

As the cell’s temperature rises, the particles produce increasingly stronger light - producing a visual effect akin to glowing fish swimming in a lake at night, but on a dramatically smaller scale.

"This will help our fight against cancer," said Dr Han Rongcheng, a lead scientist of the research project. Han works with the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology in Beijing.

Scientists have long been aware that tumour cells can be killed by very high temperatures, but the clinical use of thermal therapy has been extremely limited due to the collateral damage on healthy cells.

In order to perform such treatments safely, doctors must be incredibly careful so that they apply the right dosage to kill the cancerous cells without harming the healthy ones.

This means they would need to know the precise change in temperature of each targeted cell, as well as those around it.

But such technology has not been at their disposal, which makes the latest breakthrough so full of promise.

"With the help of nano-thermometers, physicians may one day give patients the perfect dose that can wipe out all the bad cells without hurting the healthy tissue," Han said.





A nanothermometer takes a temperature reading inside a cell. Photo: SCMP Pictures​
Many tumour cells have unusually high internal temperatures, so the new technology might also help with their early diagnosis, he added.

If you place a thermometer containing mercury inside a patient’s armpit, its colour will not change. But if the device is shrunk to a billionth of the size and viewed through an infrared laser microscope, quantum physics kick in and convert the electric or thermal energy into light.

Moreover, the smaller the particle, the brighter the glare due to the stronger effect of the quantum mechanics at work.

These particles are usually made of semiconductors like selenium. In the 1980s, American physicist Mark Reed coined the term “quantum dots” to describe them.

The advantages of these quantum dots have attracted much research interest and spurred a race to exploit their use in many sectors in recent years, from medical science to television screens.

But Han’s team say they have now moved one step ahead of their competition.

The Chinese team was not the first to check the temperatures of cells using such “quantum dot thermometers”. Similar prototypes have been developed by other teams. But previous experiments and devices have been hindered by serious roadblocks.

The biggest problem was distortion caused by the cell itself. For example, biochemical elements in the cell, such as its pH level or ionic strength, could affect the level of brightness, making the temperature readings unreliable.

In their paper, which was published in the journal Scientific Reports last week, Han and his colleagues said they had solved the problem of environmental distortion for the first time by blanketing the quantum dots in a thin protective membrane.

"This is like the layer of glass that covers a mercury metre," Han said in a telephone interview with the South China Morning Post.

"The layer separates the light-emitting materials from external elements, while also allowing light to pass through."

The researchers encountered many challenges along the way, one of which was finding the most suitable materials to use in their experiments. It took them over five years to fabricate the nano particles in the way they wanted, they said.

However, some problems still need to be solved before the technology can be used on patients, Han said.

The team is still in the process of calibrating the device’s readings so it can be converted into traditional forms of measurement, a job somewhat akin to converting degrees Celsius into Fahrenheit, they said. (South China Morning Post)

Reactions: Like Like:
8


----------



## cirr

*Xiaomi brings Segway to the masses with $315 Ninebot mini*

By *Steve Dent* | @stevetdent | 14 hours ago





We'd be throwing money at our screen right now, if we could. Chinese company Xiaomi has launched a small Segway device, the Ninebot mini, for a mere $315 (£203), on the same day it revealed a $790, 60-inch 4K TV. If you'll recall, Xiaomi is a major investor in Ninebot, the China-based company that recently purchased Segway. This is the first device the companies have launched since the acquisition, and while the self-balancing scooter looks a bit like the original, it costs less than a twentieth the price.

The performance is nothing to sneeze at, though -- it can move at up to 16km/h (10 mph), tackle 15 degree hills and run up to 22 km on a single charge. It's portable at 12.8 kilograms (28 pounds) and "fits easily in the trunk of your car," according to Xiaomi. You can also upgrade the firmware and monitor your speed, traffic data and systems via a smartphone.






Sure, Xiaomi's marketing the Ninebot mini as a "cool youth toy," according to the rough translation -- but it looks like it could get you around nicely, too. You'll have to put your checkbook away for now, though. The self-balancing device is coming to China on November 3rd, but there's no word on Xiaomi's plan for a wider launch. That said, Ninebot has updated its French website with an offer to be "informed of the availability." That means it'll likely be sold in Europe, so it may come to the US after all. We've reached out to Xiaomi for more information.

Xiaomi brings Segway to the masses with $315 Ninebot mini

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

Oct 19, 2015

*Here’s the Xiaomi Phone-Controlled Scooter You’ve Been Waiting For*





Xiaomi founder Lei Jun demonstrates the new smartphone-controlled scooter.----Xiaomi

When it comes to weird futuristic things, Silicon Valley leads in smart cars, and Japan in creepy robots, but China is now at the forefront in… smartphone-controlled scooters.





Lei Jun riding a Ninebot Mini scooter.---Xiaomi

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi and its scooter-making startup Ninebot unveiled a bargain Segway-like scooter Monday. The Ninebot Mini can be controlled by the smartphone and costs only 1,999 yuan ($316), a fraction of the price of a Segway.

Chinese startup Ninebot scooted from obscurity to the top of the global self-balancing scooter sector in April when it acquired Segway with Xiaomi’s backing. Analysts were skeptical at whether Segway would be a good investment, but Xiaomi said it was part of its plan to build out an ecosystem of Xiaomi-connected devices.

The low price of the Ninebot Mini could give Segways one more shot at becoming the vehicle of the future. While Segways were originally launched to great hype in 2001, they failed to go mainstream due to their high price tag. Segway’s most affordable model, the i2 SE, starts at $6,499. Ninebot’s Segway-like vehicle costs 14,900 yuan ($2,342), significantly cheaper but still pricey.

Xiaomi is now betting on the popularity of the Ninebot Mini in the land where police, at least, have long favored scooting for transportation.

The Ninebot Mini will be available only in China for now.

Here’s the Xiaomi Phone-Controlled Scooter You’ve Been Waiting For - China Real Time Report - WSJ

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*Xiaomi reveals 60-inch 4K TV for US$800*

3 hours ago






BEIJING, CHINA- Xiaomi Inc. The Chinese tech giant has launched its own 60-inch TV with 4K resolution whose display is made by LG, priced at US$800.

Xiaomi has a strict pricing policy that follows up to the letter and luckily for the company it seems to be working out pretty well so far. The Chinese tech giant has already shaken to the core the smartphone industry, by releasing to the markets high-quality smartphones at midrange prices.

Now, during an effort to expand even further, and shake the smart TV industry, Xiaomi will circulate a 60-inch 4K smart TV that does not exceed the price of $800.

In more details, the goal is to bring out a large-screen TV with ultra-high-definition 4K resolution at 4,999 yuan (roughly $785, AU$1,075 or ‎£510). “_The average price for a 60-inch 4K display is often more than double that in China,_” Lei added.

So far so good. Just the price next to the specs could get anyone’s attention. But some are still skeptic concerning the quality of the product. To those, Xiaomi answers with an innovative approach to upgrades.

*Here’s where the good stuff begins*: Almost all smart TVs have embodied their electronics and speakers into the frame, whereas Xiaomi’s new MiTV has its motherboard and processor fitted into a detachable speaker. This means that the TV’s connection ports are located on a separate speaker instead of the display.

Simply put, thanks to the detachable speaker, owners will one day be able to upgrade their smart-TVs without having to buy a whole new TV in their place; much like Samsung’s Evolution Kit. You can also purchase the detachable speaker as a standalone device to attach to an existing TV for 999 yuan (around $155, AU$215 or ‎£100).

According to research firm Canalys, Xiaomi has been China’s top smartphone vendor since the second quarter of 2015, while based on further info from TrendForce, in the third quarter, it has been ranked fourth in the world for smartphone shipments.

That’s an extraordinary achievement, though, as the company’s smartphones are not available yet in the States, Europe or Australia, while other products, such as the Mi Band and the Mi Headphones, are.

In the same way, the MiTV is Xiaomi’s third TV but its first 60-inch one. The display comes from LG and is fitted in a metal frame, a mere 36.7mm at its thickest point. For those of you who would like to try out the MiTV, there’s a dead end. You probably need to wait until the product reaches your country or find another way around it. Regardless, it’s a wise choice and a great product to have.

Xiaomi reveals 60-inch 4K TV for US$800

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## cirr

*Xiaomi's new 60-inch 4K TV is upgradable and under $800*

*The rapidly growing Chinese company unveils its third-generation MiTV, an affordable smart TV that offers ultra HD resolution and can be easily upgraded.*

October 19, 20155:09 AM PDT

By Michael Kan





Xiaomi

A 60-inch 4K TV for less than $800? Xiaomi's new product is an effort to shake up the smart TV industry in the same way it has smartphones.

The Chinese company, which made its name selling quality phones at reasonable prices with oodles of online hype, wants to challenge just how low a high quality TV can cost, CEO Lei Jun said at a Beijing event Monday.

The goal is to bring out a large-screen TV with ultra high-definition 4K resolution at 4,999 yuan (roughly $785, AU$1,075 or ‎£510). The average price for a 60-inch 4K display is often more than double that in China, Lei added.

While the price alone makes it noteworthy, Xiaomi's 60-inch MiTV also has an innovative approach to upgrades. Most smart TVs come with their speakers and electronics built into the frame, but the new MiTV has its motherboard and processor fitted into a detachable speaker.

This means that all the TV's ports are found on the separate speaker, instead of the display. The device's screen then connects to the speaker through a single cord that combines the signal and power lines. The detachable speaker means that you can one day upgrade your MiTV's smart capabilities without having to buy a whole new TV, in a similar manner to Samsung's Evolution Kit. You can also purchase the detachable speaker as a standalone device to attach to an existing TV for 999 yuan (around $155, AU$215 or ‎£100).





The MiTV offers ultra HD 4K resolution.

Xiaomi is one of China's hottest tech companies. In the second quarter, it beat Apple and Huawei to become the country's top smartphone vendor, according to research firm Canalys, and in the third quarter it ranked fourth in the world for smartphone shipments, according to TrendForce.

The new MiTV is the first 60-inch display from the company, and its third smart TV. Over the last three years it's worked with suppliers to lower manufacturing costs, Xiaomi's CEO said. The display comes from LG and is fitted in a metal frame, a mere 36.7mm at its thickest point.

Xiaomi's phones and TV range aren't yet available in the US, Europe or Australia, though many of its other products, such as the Mi Band and Mi Headphones, are. In September, the company said it would be bringing out a line of laptops, though it hasn't yet said when.

The MiTV 3 will go on sale in China early in November.

Xiaomi's new 60-inch 4K TV is upgradable and under $800 - CNET

Reactions: Like Like:
8


----------



## +4vsgorillas-Apebane

They should charge more and get a better margin to pay the workers more.

From what I have gathered, Xiaomi makes decent quality products. Why charge so little?

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Genesis

+4vsgorillas-Apebane said:


> They should charge more and get a better margin to pay the workers more.
> 
> From what I have gathered, Xiaomi makes decent quality products. Why charge so little?



I don't personally use Xiaomi, from what I heard, micro transactions.

China is the number 1 gaming revenue country, mostly, it's from that. The outright sale of games revenue s abysmal.

China to Earn an Estimated $22 Billion in 2015 Video Game Revenue - IGN

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## TaiShang

*China Is Building The Great Green Wall To Hold Back The Desert*
October 19th, 2015 |







In 1978, China began planting The Great Green Wall to create a 2,800-mile long green belt in an effort to tame the expanding Gobi Desert. *Over the last few decades, more than 66 billion trees have been planted in northern China.* The Wall is planned to be completed by 2050 and is expected to increase forest cover across China from 5% to 15%. *By 2050, more than 100 billion trees will occupy a 2,800-mile belt, 1.6 million square miles – covering about a tenth of the country in greenery. *Chinese officials claim that by 2050 much of the arid land can be restored to a productive and sustainable state.

China has seen 1,400 square miles of grassland overtaken every year by the Gobi Desert. The encroaching Gobi, about half a million square miles in area, has swallowed up entire villages and small cities and continues to cause air pollution problems in Beijing and elsewhere while racking up some $50 billion a year in economic losses. The Wall will have a belt with sand-tolerant vegetation arranged in checkerboard patterns in order to stabilize the sand dunes. A 6-foot-wide gravel platform will hold sand down and encourage a soil crust to form. The trees will serve as a windbreak from dust storms.

According to a study published recently in the journal _Nature Climate Change_, the total amount of carbon stored in all living biomass above the soil has increased globally by almost 4 billion tons since 2003, with China contributing in a notable way to the increase.





_“The increase in vegetation primarily came from a lucky combination of environmental and economic factors and massive tree-planting projects in China,”_ said Liu Yi, the study’s lead author and a remote sensing scientist from the Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

A 2014 study, led by Dr Minghong Tan from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, found that Chinese government’s ambitious plan is working. *“The results show that in The Great Green Wall region, vegetation has greatly improved, while it varied dramatically outside *_*The Great Green Wall region. In most places in the study area, greenness continued to increase between 2000 and 2010.* In North China as a whole, we think the environment is getting well. From the results, we infer that the implementation of The Great Green Wall programme has effectively decreased dust storm intensity by improving the vegetation conditions,”_ the researchers wrote.





Tree cover in the North, the Northeast and the Northwest area has increased from 5% to 12% since 1977. That’s a commendable feat. But still more than one quarter of China is either covered by desert or is land that is suffering desertification adversely affecting the lives of over 400 million people. Since 2003, 450,000 people in Inner Mongolia have been moved off land to prevent it degrading further. Is this a sign that The Great Green Wall is failing to beat the sand?

A senior Chinese official, Liu Tuo, who leads China’s efforts to tackle the problem, said in 2011 that it will take 300 years to turn back China’s advancing deserts at the current rate of progress.





@AndrewJin

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## TaiShang

*Xiaomi plans to introduce Ninebot*

Today the Chinese smartphone vendor Xiaomi announced it would begin selling what it calls a “self-balancing scooter” to customers on its domestic website. Dubbed the Ninebot mini, the two-wheeled, battery-powered vehicle can travel up to 22 kilometers per charge, at a maximum speed of 16 kilometers per hour. The price? 1999 yuan, about $316.

The term “self-balancing scooter” these days might draw comparisons to the current craze for so-called “hoverboards”—two-wheeled platforms (which don’t actually float or “hover”) made by companies such as Swagway and Likary. But for those with slightly longer memories, if the above image makes you think “Segway,” you’re onto something: Xiaomi helped Ninebot, a Beijing-based robotics startup,acquire the makers of that doomed invention of the early 2000s in April of this year.

In an interview with Chinese domestic media, Ninebot founder Wang Ye admitted that he bought Segway primarily for the patents and brand name. But there are other reasons that the two-wheeled vehicle deserves a second chance in the coming years.

Technology has evolved dramatically since the original Segway’s release in 2001. Early models weighed a minimum of 30 kilograms. The Ninebot mini, meanwhile, weighs 12.8 kilograms—light enough for the physically fit to carry up a set of stairs. A quick glance through Amazon’s sales listings for “scooters” reveals a number of gadgets with similar price points, weights, and charging cycles.


Whereas early Segways were steered using a shoulder-level handlebar, newer scooters like the Ninebot mini track one’s knee movement to drive direction. That could potentially free one’s hands to do something else during a short trip.

“An overwhelming majority of the trips we take are within the range of one to five kilometers,” Ninebot founder told Chinese media in April. “You can think of the self-balancing scooter as a mode of transportation that you can carry, one that you can keep closer to you than your car.”


In China, Xiaomi and Ninebot’s true competition is the standard moped-like scooter, of which there are an estimated 200 million on the road in China (link in Chinese) in 2013.

But China’s cities might make good testing grounds for a Segway revival. Westerners often think of bike lanes as skinny veins squeezed towards the edges of a busy road. But in China, main roads oftenaccommodate one or several types of bike lanes, many of them quite wide, and some physically gated apart from roads and sidewalks. These spacious stretches of pavement could potentially accommodate a handful of Ninebot vehicles during commutes—particularly among tech-savvy professionals who can’t afford a car and view bicycles as old-fashioned.




It’s not clear whether the Segway will ever become more than a toy for gadget lovers or vehicle for park rangers and mall cops. But Xiaomi has created winners out of thin air in the past. In addition to its robust smartphone business—it sold 61 million handsets last year—the company sells the world’s third-most-popular wearable fitness tracker. With the help of a Chinese owner, the Segway’s wheels might spin again.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Martian2

*China's third Yangjiang nuclear reactor connected to grid | World Nuclear News*

At China's Yangjiang nuclear complex, there are six nuclear reactors in operation or under construction.

Yangjiang 1 & 2 nuclear reactors are domestic CPR-1000 (or Chinese Pressurized Water Reactor). Yangjiang 1 & 2 are currently operational. A picture of both nuclear reactors can be seen in the second citation (dated June 11, 2015) below.

Yangjiang 3 & 4 nuclear reactors are domestic CPR-1000+ improved designs. Yangjiang 3 was connected to the electric grid today. A picture of Yangjiang 3 can be seen in the first citation (dated October 20, 2015) below. Yangjiang 4 will become operational in 2017.

Yangjiang 5 & 6 nuclear reactors are domestic ACPR-1000, which means "Advanced" CPR-1000 design. Yangjiang 5 & 6 started construction in 2013. Both Yangjiang 5 & 6 are expected to be operational by 2019.

Each Yangjiang nuclear reactor produces 1 Gigawatt of power. Altogether, the six Yangjiang nuclear reactors will produce 6.1 Gigawatts of power annually.

Third Yangjiang unit connected to grid | World Nuclear News





----------

Second Yangjiang unit enters commercial operation | World Nuclear News

Reactions: Like Like:
8


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists make new breakthrough in quantum storage technology*
*Xinhua Finance 2015-10-21 11:20 BEIJING*

A scientist team with the University of Science and Technology of China has successively achieved storage of multiple single-photon pulses emitted from a quantum dot in a solid-state quantum memory, the Xinhua-run cnstock.com reported on Wednesday.

The achievement is expected be helpful in the development of quantum repeaters and the construction of efficient quantum repeaters based on all-solid-state devices, according to an article published by the Nature Communications on Oct. 15.

Quantum communication will play a significant role in information security areas, and its market size will reach 100 billion yuan in the future. Quantum storage is a key to building long-distance quantum communication system.

China has begun the construction of the world's first quantum communication confidential trunk line connecting Beijing and Shanghai.

******

*Storage of multiple single-photon pulses emitted from a quantum dot in a solid-state quantum memory*

Jian-Shun Tang1, 2, n1
Zong-Quan Zhou1, 2, n1
Yi-Tao Wang1, 2,
Yu-Long Li1, 2,
Xiao Liu1, 2,
Yi-Lin Hua1, 2,
Yang Zou1, 2,
Shuang Wang1, 2,
De-Yong He1, 2,
Geng Chen1, 2,
Yong-Nan Sun1, 2,
Ying Yu2, 3,
Mi-Feng Li2, 3,
Guo-Wei Zha2, 3,
Hai-Qiao Ni2, 3,
Zhi-Chuan Niu2, 3,
Chuan-Feng Li1, 2,
Guang-Can Guo1, 2,
Nature Communications 6, Article number:8652, doi:10.1038/ncomms9652
Received 25 October 2014 Accepted16 September 2015 Published15 October 2015

*Abstract*

Quantum repeaters are critical components for distributing entanglement over long distances in presence of unavoidable optical losses during transmission. Stimulated by the Duan–Lukin–Cirac–Zoller protocol, many improved quantum repeater protocols based on quantum memories have been proposed, which commonly focus on the entanglement-distribution rate. Among these protocols, the elimination of multiple photons (or multiple photon-pairs) and the use of multimode quantum memory are demonstrated to have the ability to greatly improve the entanglement-distribution rate. Here, we demonstrate the storage of deterministic single photons emitted from a quantum dot in a polarization-maintaining solid-state quantum memory; in addition, multi-temporal-mode memory with 1, 20 and 100 narrow single-photon pulses is also demonstrated. Multi-photons are eliminated, and only one photon at most is contained in each pulse. Moreover, the solid-state properties of both sub-systems make this configuration more stable and easier to be scalable. Our work will be helpful in the construction of efficient quantum repeaters based on all-solid-state devices.

Storage of multiple single-photon pulses emitted from a quantum dot in a solid-state quantum memory : Nature Communications : Nature Publishing Group

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## Saifullah Sani

*Google has taken a stake in a Chinese artificial intelligence startup which is aiming to develop smart wearable technologies, the companies said Tuesday.*
The amount on investment in Mobvoi was not disclosed. But the companies said that the firm, created by a former Google researcher, has now raised $75 million in equity financing.
Google will lead the latest round and hold a minority stake, according to the statement.
The move comes five years after Google's highly contentious exit from its Chinese operations over censorship.
"Mobvoi is very excited to welcome Google as an investor as both companies share a long-term view on technologies and are dedicated to deliver an uncompromising user experience through emerging technologies," said Mobvoi founder Zhifei Li.
The new funding is aimed at helping develop “a new generation of wearable experiences and explore consumer-oriented products for the in-vehicle environment” as well as exploring robotics technologies.
"Mobvoi has developed some very unique speech and natural language processing technologies," said Don Harrison, vice president of corporate development at Google Inc.
"We were impressed by their innovative approach and the early traction that they've seen, which is why we're pleased to support them with this investment."
The two firms announced an agreement earlier this year to bring the Google Android Wear operating system to China.
Google invests in Chinese artificial intelligence firm - Business - DAWN.COM

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Jlaw

google in China is bad.


----------



## Shotgunner51

8 examples of Chinese-British co-operation Xi Jinping mentioned in his speech to MPs | Bailiwick Express

Wartime co-operation, a sponsored walk, and the treatment of a nurse with Ebola were among an eclectic set of examples of Chinese-British co-operation cited by President Xi Jinping in his address to MPs and peers.

Perhaps conscious of the way British politicians like illustrating speeches with ancient nuggets of Chinese wisdom, he also made sure to litter his own with a smattering of quotations from notable Britons.





Xi Jinping had much to say to the assembled MPs and peers (Dan Kitwood/PA)
But he was also quick to remind the assembled legislators that while they may sit in the world’s oldest parliament, his country had been developing political thought for at least three millennia before it was even contemplated.

Here are some of the references in the speech which he said highlighted the “mutual understanding, support and friendship” behind co-operation between the two nations:

.
.
.


*3. Saving the life of Corporal Anna Cross*




Cpl Cross was volunteering with Ebola patients in Sierra Leone (Philip Toscano/PA)
China helped save the Army reservist and NHS worker by “promptly responding” to the UK’s request to deliver a newly-developed drug to the UK, he noted.

She was the first person in the world to be treated with experimental MIL 77.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## cirr

*Harry Potter and the new-age stealth submarines: Chinese researchers create 'cloak of invisibility'*

*'Cloak of invisibility' is one of two new materials created by Chinese researchers to enable underwater vessels to escape enemy detection*

PUBLISHED : Monday, 19 October, 2015, 2:21am
UPDATED : Monday, 19 October, 2015, 2:21am

Stephen Chen chen.binglin@scmp.com




Two teams of scientists have created new materials to hide submarines from their enemies' underwater sonar systems. Photo: SCMP Pictures

*Two teams of scientists* have created new materials to hide submarines from their enemies' underwater sonar systems - one that transforms the vessel into a "chameleon", and the other a prototype of a Harry Potter-like invisibility cloak.

The chameleon-like ceramic-type material, created by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, manipulates sound waves that come into contact with it, such as pulses generated by anti-submarine vessels that can identify underwater threats.

This ability means sonar operators analysing the submarine's acoustic pattern can be fooled into thinking it is a whale, a huge shoal of fish, or even a friendly submarine.

Researchers call such materials "phononic" crystals. In recent years, various forms of phononic crystals have been developed to control, direct and manipulate the transmission of sound in gases, liquids and solids, but they all suffered one limitation.

Once created, their physical properties were fixed forever, giving the enemy tracking it the opportunity to trace its acoustic traits.

But the Chinese team, led by Professor Zheng Hairong, solved the problem by making it possible to control the crystal's ability to change its acoustic pattern in a way similar to a chameleon changing its colour.

In the journal, _*Physical Review Applied*_, Zheng's team demonstrated that the new material could change its acoustic properties in different temperatures. Raising the temperature by 20degrees Celsius, for instance, could cause a 20 per cent shift in its sound frequency pattern.

Research on phononic crystals has been carried out in many countries because of their potential applications in military and civilian sectors. Earlier this year, researchers in Singapore reported that it was theoretically possible to hide a submarine from sonar detection by coating it with phononic crystals.

But a second team of Chinese scientists could be a step ahead thanks to the *huge government funding* for technologies with military uses.

Wu Jiuhui, professor of mechanical engineering at Xian Jiaotong University, said his team had developed the prototype for an "invisibility cloak" for submarines. Its coating material could render a smartphone-sized object undetectable to sonar, even at low frequency.

To remain undetected, a submarine not only has to dodge the enemy's active sonar beams, but also prevent its own low-frequency generated sounds, such as its engine or crew members' voices, from reaching an enemy's listening devices.

"No submarine nowadays can escape low-frequency detection. [But] our research will change the game of seek-and-hunt in the oceans," Wu said.

"The military wants the simplest solution because it will be the most reliable … They may prefer straightforward invisibility, rather than camouflage."


This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as Harry Potter and the stealthy submarines

Harry Potter and the new-age stealth submarines: Chinese researchers create 'cloak of invisibility' | South China Morning Post

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## oproh

Great development, hope that this can help in China's effort to ensure freedom of navigation not only within the bodies of water that is close to China but also the other vital international sea-lanes.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## cirr

*Is This China’s Newest Tool To Thwart US Military Power?*

Beijing has recently successfully completed a test flight of its largest high-altitude airship.

By Franz-Stefan Gady

October 21, 2015







China has reportedly conducted a 48 hour test flight of its largest high-altitude airship, the _Yuanmeng_ (Dream) in *near space*–the atmosphere between 20 kilometers to 100 kilometers altitude–_IHS Jane’s Defense Weekly_ reports.

The _Yuanmeng_, according to a Chinese media outlet, ascended to an altitude of 20 kilometers at a test area near Xilinhot in Inner Mongolia using solar power to power its three propeller engines.

Beijing’s new high-altitude aircraft is one of the largest solar-powered airships in existence to date. According to _Popular Science_, the _Yuanmeng_ has a volume of 18,000 cubic meters, a length of 75 meters and a height of 22 meters. It can carry a payload of 5 to 7 tons including “broadband communications, data relay, high-definition observation, space situational awareness, and airborne imaging systems” all powered by the sun.

A Chinese scientist involved with the project told _Want China Times_ that the airship has been made of an extremely lightweight material capable of enduring tremendous pressure and that it is equipped with a highly efficient solar battery and lightweight avionics. “The biggest challenge for the near-space airship is the big temperature difference in the day and night,” another scientist told _The People’s Daily Online_.

The airship has purportedly been designed and built by Beijing Aerospace Technology Company and the Beijing University of Astronautics and Aeronautics (BUAA) first and foremost for civilian purposes such as weather monitoring, estimating crop yields, and disaster relief assistance.

However, according to a Chinese report cited by _IHS Jane’s Defense Weekly_, “from a national security perspective near-space steerable airships can rely on their height advantage for early warning, wartime communications support, or aiding attack platforms.”

During a future conflict where China’s satellite communications are blocked or satellites, in fact, destroyed through anti-satellite weapons, the _Yuanmeng_could as a communications relay station for Chinese aircraft and ships.

According to _Popular Science_:

_Operating higher in near space means that the Yuanmeng would have constant line of sight over a hundred thousand square miles–an important requirement for radar and imaging. Increased sensor coverage means increased warning time against stealthy threats such as cruise missiles, giving Chinese forces a greater opportunity to detect and shoot down such threats. It would also be harder for fighters and surface-to-air missiles to attack near space objects._

*While the airship will be vulnerable to missile attacks and other types of anti-satellite weapons, the Yuanmeng, equipped with sensors, could nevertheless serve as an early warning system in a future high-tech conflict. In particular, it could supplement China’s burgeoning anti-access/area denial capabilities by detecting incoming missiles, stealth planes, and warships from several hundred kilometers away.*

Is This China’s Newest Tool To Thwart US Military Power? | The Diplomat

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## Kashmiri Pandit

Mystery Floating City Appears Over China ... And It's Not A 'Star Wars' Promo

Did anyone of U guys saw it ????

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## BATTLE FIELD

its the chinese new secret floating military base
they are building military base in sea, land, underwater and now in the sky.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## yugocrosrb95

For all we know it could be light refracting from all that smog...


----------



## Muhammad Omar

Are they Making something like this??


----------



## TianyaTaiwan

Maybe it is a mirage.
海市蜃楼。

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Basel

Huge UFO mothership appears above Manipur in India | Weird News | Funny, Strange & Bizarre UK News Stories | Daily Star


----------



## Kashmiri Pandit

BATTLE FIELD said:


> its the chinese new secret floating military base
> they are building military base in sea, land, underwater and now in the sky.


----------



## applesauce

its a mirage, light reflects off of a distant city and projected into the clouds. has to do with layers of very cold and very warm air. its the same as the ghost ship effect

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## ahojunk

It looks to me like Google is slowly trying to crawl back into the world's biggest internet market.

Google knows it can't be a big player by ignoring the biggest market.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Aepsilons

Saifullah Sani said:


> *Google has taken a stake in a Chinese artificial intelligence startup which is aiming to develop smart wearable technologies, the companies said Tuesday.*
> The amount on investment in Mobvoi was not disclosed. But the companies said that the firm, created by a former Google researcher, has now raised $75 million in equity financing.
> Google will lead the latest round and hold a minority stake, according to the statement.
> The move comes five years after Google's highly contentious exit from its Chinese operations over censorship.
> "Mobvoi is very excited to welcome Google as an investor as both companies share a long-term view on technologies and are dedicated to deliver an uncompromising user experience through emerging technologies," said Mobvoi founder Zhifei Li.
> The new funding is aimed at helping develop “a new generation of wearable experiences and explore consumer-oriented products for the in-vehicle environment” as well as exploring robotics technologies.
> "Mobvoi has developed some very unique speech and natural language processing technologies," said Don Harrison, vice president of corporate development at Google Inc.
> "We were impressed by their innovative approach and the early traction that they've seen, which is why we're pleased to support them with this investment."
> The two firms announced an agreement earlier this year to bring the Google Android Wear operating system to China.
> Google invests in Chinese artificial intelligence firm - Business - DAWN.COM



They have vested interests in regards to intellectual property rights to intelligence start up core technologies in China. Of course they will stay vested in China. I suppose it has something to do with the recent understanding that was clarified with Xi's recent visit to Washington this past month.

Expectedly, we should endorse and support this process. Good.


----------



## Beast

MIRV | Tiananmen's Tremendous Achievements






CZ-6 despite using liquid fuel propulsion need not go through the usual hassle of liquid fueling the rocket before pre launch shows it can be done on DF-5B too.

That means DF-5B can be launch anytime in silo without pre fuel process and best thing is its ignition can be control. Making its predicting its path near impossible.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## applesauce

Beast said:


> MIRV | Tiananmen's Tremendous Achievements
> 
> View attachment 266816



that truck has such tiny looking wheels lol

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*Tiny genetically modified 'micropigs' from China could be boon for science and pet sellers*

October 19, 2015

*Julie Makinen*






A BGI technician with a micro pig. BGI is a Chinese biotech firm._ Photo: BGI_

Have you been pining for a "teacup" pig but worried that the supposedly petite porcine pet might grow as big as your bathtub?

A Chinese biotech firm says it now has the answer: a genetically modified swine that tops out around 15 kilograms.

*BGI, a company based in the southern city of Shenzhen that is known for its work sequencing human, plant and animal DNA, recently announced that it intends to start selling $US1600 ($2203) miniature pigs that it initially created as laboratory models for studying human ailments.*





A BGI micro pig at a summit in Shenzhen, China._ Photo: BIG_

The pigs created a splash late last month when BGI showed them at the Shenzhen International Biotech Leaders Summit. The pint-size porkers were created through a process known as gene editing. Rather than introduce another organism's DNA into the pigs, scientists "edit" the swine's own genetic material, disabling a copy of the growth hormone receptor gene so that cells don't get a signal to grow.

Swine-loving celebrities will have to wait for further innovation for truly purse-portable pigs (Miley Cyrus' Bubba Sue and Paris Hilton's Princess Piglette are more than a handful, while George Clooney's 18-year companion, Max, grew to 113 kilograms before he died in 2006).

But animal breeders and advocates say the prospect of even a 30-kologram pig could reduce the problem of people abandoning pet swine that pack on the kilograms beyond their owners' expectations. Curt Mills, a board member of the Southern California Association for Miniature Pot-Bellied Pigs, says four regional shelters for the animals are all at capacity, with about 150 oinkers looking for homes.

"Pigs are good pets, but a lot of issue is the size," said Patty Morrisroe, a pig breeder in Dallas, Oregon, who says she has spent 30 years selectively breeding swine to produce pigs she calls "Royal Dandies" and "Dandie Extremes" that can be around 17 kilograms full grown. But with just four breeding sows, her litters are limited - about 20 piglets per year - and she charges $US2500 ($3443) to $US5500 ($7574) per animal.

"If you could immediately make a small pig, it would be very cool, but there are still a lot of questions," she said.

Kenneth Bondioli, a professor of animal sciences at Louisiana State University, said BGI's gene-edited micro pigs would need to be evaluated to see if they develop healthily and to determine whether they could harm the environment or other livestock if they were released or escaped. It is unclear whether BGI intends to offer its pigs for sale outside China, but if Australians wanted them, regulators would have to determine whether they could be imported.

"If these and other questions are addressed, the fact that they are gene-edited is irrelevant," Bondioli said.

Researchers say the creation of micro pigs could be a boon for scientists, cutting down on the cost of raising them as laboratory animals and making their care more manageable. "Their utility for research will depend on whether they are otherwise normal like a regular pig and unaffected by the edited gene other than their diminutive size," said Willard Eyestone, an associate professor of biotechnology at Virginia Tech.

These micro pigs could be useful "especially for long-term studies, during which even currently available 'mini pigs' grow to substantial size."

But Alison Van Eenennaam, a biotechnology specialist at the University of California, Davis who visited BGI about three months ago and saw their micro pigs, said the fact that the company has resorted to marketing them as pets reflects the "global regulatory gridlock" around gene-edited animals for food production and other more serious purposes.

"Genome editing is a powerful technology that can be used for many beneficial applications ... such as producing disease-resistant animals and other things that would have real benefits for the sustainability of food production," she said. But worldwide, she said, no genetically engineered animal for food production has been able to be brought to market, and only a few genetically engineered animal therapeutic products have been approved for humans. That, she believes, is making companies hesitant to invest in the technology.

Bioengineered pets, though, have found easier acceptance. A transgenic florescent fish, marketed under the brand GloFish, has been popular for a number of years in the United States. The fish were created by Singaporean researchers who inserted jellyfish and sea anemone genes into zebrafish eggs.

"People are happy to have them in their aquarium, but it's when it's on their dinner plate that they have a different attitude," said Van Eenennaam.

A company called AquaBounty has been seeking for more than 20 years to win US Food and Drug Administration approval to bring a genetically modified fast-growing salmon to supermarkets. While the AquAdvantage salmon and the GloFish have been engineered to incorporate genes from other fish, the technique used by BGI to create its micro pigs is different and presents a new question for regulatory agencies like the FDA if they were to be imported to the United States.

Pigs are technically food animals, said Max Rothschild, an agriculture professor at Iowa State University, and the FDA reserves the right to regulate any genetic modification introduced into such organisms. But in sharp contrast to genetically modified organisms with DNA added into their genomes, he said, the micro pig was made by removing just a few, highly targeted letters of DNA from its own genome.

"The FDA should be grappling with this major difference right now as to how it will affect regulatory policy," he said, "and whether gene-edited organisms should be regulated in the same way as more traditional GMOs."

It's not just pigs that have been gene-edited. The technique has been demonstrated in cattle as a way to add muscle, and to ensure dairy cows don't grow horns (Holsteins often have their horns mechanically chopped). But those applications have not yet been developed to commercial scale, said Van Eenennaam.

What rules should apply to gene editing is an increasingly pressing question for not just agencies like the FDA but scientists themselves and medical ethicists as the technique moves from the animal world to the human realm. Although the gene editing holds the promise of significant medical breakthroughs, it also could open a Pandora's box of eugenic-like applications.

For several years, scientists have been using editing to modify genes in adult human cells, by, for example, changing bone marrow cells to make people resistant to HIV. But this year, a team of Chinese researchers caused an international stir when they announced that they had used gene editing to alter DNA in human embryos in an attempt to repair a defect that causes a potentially fatal blood disorder.

While Chinese researchers' application of gene-editing techniques - for pigs or people - may give some people pause, Chinese scientists are mindful that the global regulatory environment, particularly in the US, has consequences for their efforts.

"When I was in China the researchers there ... were asking why isn't the FDA approving the genetically engineered fish because it's making the global regulatory agencies hesitant to do anything," said Van Eenennaam, who believes data show the AquAdvantage is safe and that gene-editing animals like pigs and cattle is not materially different from traditional selective breeding.

"It's impeding this technology from being utilised - if you go to all the effort of making an animal and it's unclear whether you're going to be able to market it."

BGI agrees there is a need to regulate gene editing both for creating pets as well as for medical research, which is central to the company's micro pig business. Yong Li, the technical director of BGI's animal-science platform, told the journal _Nature _that any profits from BGI's pet micro pigs would be ploughed into medical research. *BGI believes it can use gene-editing not just to control size but also to give consumers a choice of colours.*

"We plan to take orders from customers now," he told the journal, "and see what the scale of the demand is."

*Los Angeles Times*

Tiny genetically modified 'micropigs' from China could be boon for science and pet sellers

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## xhw1986



Reactions: Like Like:
9


----------



## Basel

xhw1986 said:


>



Unable to watch video.


----------



## xhw1986

Basel said:


> Unable to watch video.


If you cant view, just write the title in youtube, and you will find it.


----------



## Basel

xhw1986 said:


> If you cant view, just write the title in youtube, and you will find it.



YouTube is banned in Pakistan.


----------



## xhw1986

Basel said:


> YouTube is banned in Pakistan.


Sry, only youtube have this video.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## liall

well that looks fascinating. R&D was done by China or someone else?


----------



## esolve

liall said:


> well that looks fascinating. R&D was done by China or someone else?



of course, china

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Taygibay

*World's Thinnest 0.01 mm Flexible Display*

and clearly from the video also the world's most fragile … so I'll pass, thank you!

Tay.


----------



## jamahir

this rollable-display computer shown in the film "red planet" will soon become reality...






tablet computers will become obsolete.



Taygibay said:


> and clearly from the video also the world's most fragile … so I'll pass, thank you!



umm, i am sure it can be strengthened for rollable-ness by attaching some transparent material or making a separate material part of the display... the chinese were i suppose targeting "thin is in" to gather publicity.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## ConcealCarry

Awesome


----------



## Taygibay

He said _Thin is in_, LOL Well, I'm not into anorexics then! 

For anything gear, I'll take rugged first, please! Your Uber-gadgets may have unique capabilities …
it sure doesn't show nor help if they're broken. They've minimized dead weight? Yeah! 'Still deadweight!

Good evening my friend, Tay.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## jamahir

Taygibay said:


> Well, I'm not into anorexics then!



glad to know, neither am i ( especially if we are talking about womanly kind  ).



Taygibay said:


> For anything gear, I'll take rugged first, please! Your Uber-gadgets may have unique capabilities …
> it sure doesn't show nor help if they're broken. They've minimized dead weight? Yeah! 'Still deadweight!
> 
> Good evening my friend, Tay.


----------



## gambit

I can see those who have no experience in engineering, R/D, and manufacturing are going to make fantastic claims about this.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Taygibay

For the gals I'd go with *fit* … ideally! I'm the rugged part there …

GN  Tay.


----------



## bobsm

*China makes world's 1st 3D blood vessel bio-printer*
English.news.cn 2015-10-25 22:26:12 

CHENGDU, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese biotechnological company announced on Sunday it has developed the world's first 3D blood vessel bio-printer, which makes it possible to produce personalized functional organs.

Sichuan Revotek Co., Ltd. based in Chengdu, capital of southwest China's Sichuan Province, said the significant breakthrough has been achieved through its self-developed stem cell bio-ink technology, 3D bio-printer and cloud computing platform.

"The creative breakthrough in the 3D blood vessel bio-printing means we have mastered the stem cell-based 3D bio-printing technology," said Yang Keng, chairman of Sichuan Languang Development Co., Ltd. Revotek is a subsidiary of Sichuan Languang.

Blood vessels that transport nutrients to organs are indispensable elements when creating any organs, according to James Kang, an expert who led the program.

Kang's team has created a novel type of bio-ink - "Biosynsphere", whose primary goal is the personalized stem cell bio-printing to pave the way for organ regeneration.

"We have successfully realized the blood vessel regeneration by relying on the 3D bio-printer, the biosynsphere technology and the data model based on cloud computing," he said.

The company said it is willing to absorb more talent and seek international cooperation for the application of the achievements.

China makes world's 1st 3D blood vessel bio-printer - Xinhua | English.news.cn

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## TaiShang

*China spends big on nuclear fusion as French plan falls behind*








China’s will be bigger and better _(Image: David Parker/SPL)_

The world’s largest nuclear fusion machine, currently being built in France, is unlikely to produce more energy than it consumes until the early 2030s, warned the UK’s head of fusion research this week. *That is five years later than planned – by which time China could be ahead of everyone.*

Nuclear fusion involves heating a plasma of hydrogen isotopes so that they fuse into helium, releasing a large amount of energy in the process. Many physicists see it as the holy grail for producing cheap zero-carbon energy. But initiating the fusion reactions requires temperatures 10 times as hot as the core of the sun. And decades of experiments have yet to produce self-sustaining fusion reactions – known as “burning plasma” – that generate the energy required to produce such temperatures.

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), a $20 billion machine being built in Cadarache, France, should get there. “We are confident that it will,” Steven Cowley, director of the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in Oxfordshire, told the science and technology committee of the UK’s House of Lords on Tuesday. But it is taking time and money.

*Burning plasma*
Constructing ITER has already cost three times as much as budgeted, and completion has slipped from 2016 to 2019, with the first plasma experiments the following year. Cowley told the committee: “ITER says 2020, but I believe the first plasma will be [generated] in 2025.” Burning plasma is unlikely before “the early 2030s”, he said. He likened the moment when burning plasma is achieved to the moment in the early 1940s when the first “critical” nuclear fission reactions were produced.

Only then will the international researchers, many of whom have been working together for decades, move on to building a new plant that could generate continuous power – the forerunner for what they hope will be commercial nuclear fusion by late in the century. “But the biggest investment now is in China,” says Cowley. China is a collaborator on ITER, along with the European Union, the US and others. But it is investing heavily in building its own reactor, the China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor, which will be bigger than ITER and may be finished by 2030, he said.

Cowley disclosed that some partners had discussed whether to continue collaboration with China or shut them out. “We decided to continue to collaborate.” Shutting China out “would only slow them down by a few months”, he told the Lords, who are investigating whether the UK government is getting value for money in its fusion investments. Fusion currently accounts for 14 per cent of UK government spending on energy research, Sharon Ellis of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills told the committee.

@Martian2

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## TaiShang

*China makes world's 1st 3D blood vessel bio-printer*
October 26, 2015

A Chinese biotechnological company announced on Sunday it has developed the world's first 3D blood vessel bio-printer, which makes it possible to produce personalized functional organs.

Sichuan Revotek Co., Ltd. based in Chengdu, capital of southwest China's Sichuan Province, said the significant breakthrough has been achieved* through its self-developed stem cell bio-ink technology, 3D bio-printer and cloud computing platform.*

"The creative breakthrough in the 3D blood vessel bio-printing means we have mastered the stem cell-based 3D bio-printing technology," said Yang Keng, chairman of Sichuan Languang Development Co., Ltd. Revotek is a subsidiary of Sichuan Languang.

Blood vessels that transport nutrients to organs are indispensable elements when creating any organs, according to James Kang, an expert who led the program.

*Kang's team has created a novel type of bio-ink - "Biosynsphere", whose primary goal is the personalized stem cell bio-printing to pave the way for organ regeneration.*

"We have successfully realized the blood vessel regeneration by relying on the 3D bio-printer, the biosynsphere technology and the data model based on cloud computing," he said.

The company said it is willing to absorb more talent and seek international cooperation for the application of the achievements.

@Martian2 , @AndrewJin , @cirr

Reactions: Like Like:
11


----------



## TaiShang

cirr said:


> *Tiny genetically modified 'micropigs' from China could be boon for science and pet sellers*
> 
> October 19, 2015
> 
> *Julie Makinen*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A BGI technician with a micro pig. BGI is a Chinese biotech firm._ Photo: BGI_
> 
> Have you been pining for a "teacup" pig but worried that the supposedly petite porcine pet might grow as big as your bathtub?
> 
> A Chinese biotech firm says it now has the answer: a genetically modified swine that tops out around 15 kilograms.
> 
> *BGI, a company based in the southern city of Shenzhen that is known for its work sequencing human, plant and animal DNA, recently announced that it intends to start selling $US1600 ($2203) miniature pigs that it initially created as laboratory models for studying human ailments.*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A BGI micro pig at a summit in Shenzhen, China._ Photo: BIG_
> 
> The pigs created a splash late last month when BGI showed them at the Shenzhen International Biotech Leaders Summit. The pint-size porkers were created through a process known as gene editing. Rather than introduce another organism's DNA into the pigs, scientists "edit" the swine's own genetic material, disabling a copy of the growth hormone receptor gene so that cells don't get a signal to grow.
> 
> Swine-loving celebrities will have to wait for further innovation for truly purse-portable pigs (Miley Cyrus' Bubba Sue and Paris Hilton's Princess Piglette are more than a handful, while George Clooney's 18-year companion, Max, grew to 113 kilograms before he died in 2006).
> 
> But animal breeders and advocates say the prospect of even a 30-kologram pig could reduce the problem of people abandoning pet swine that pack on the kilograms beyond their owners' expectations. Curt Mills, a board member of the Southern California Association for Miniature Pot-Bellied Pigs, says four regional shelters for the animals are all at capacity, with about 150 oinkers looking for homes.
> 
> "Pigs are good pets, but a lot of issue is the size," said Patty Morrisroe, a pig breeder in Dallas, Oregon, who says she has spent 30 years selectively breeding swine to produce pigs she calls "Royal Dandies" and "Dandie Extremes" that can be around 17 kilograms full grown. But with just four breeding sows, her litters are limited - about 20 piglets per year - and she charges $US2500 ($3443) to $US5500 ($7574) per animal.
> 
> "If you could immediately make a small pig, it would be very cool, but there are still a lot of questions," she said.
> 
> Kenneth Bondioli, a professor of animal sciences at Louisiana State University, said BGI's gene-edited micro pigs would need to be evaluated to see if they develop healthily and to determine whether they could harm the environment or other livestock if they were released or escaped. It is unclear whether BGI intends to offer its pigs for sale outside China, but if Australians wanted them, regulators would have to determine whether they could be imported.
> 
> "If these and other questions are addressed, the fact that they are gene-edited is irrelevant," Bondioli said.
> 
> Researchers say the creation of micro pigs could be a boon for scientists, cutting down on the cost of raising them as laboratory animals and making their care more manageable. "Their utility for research will depend on whether they are otherwise normal like a regular pig and unaffected by the edited gene other than their diminutive size," said Willard Eyestone, an associate professor of biotechnology at Virginia Tech.
> 
> These micro pigs could be useful "especially for long-term studies, during which even currently available 'mini pigs' grow to substantial size."
> 
> But Alison Van Eenennaam, a biotechnology specialist at the University of California, Davis who visited BGI about three months ago and saw their micro pigs, said the fact that the company has resorted to marketing them as pets reflects the "global regulatory gridlock" around gene-edited animals for food production and other more serious purposes.
> 
> "Genome editing is a powerful technology that can be used for many beneficial applications ... such as producing disease-resistant animals and other things that would have real benefits for the sustainability of food production," she said. But worldwide, she said, no genetically engineered animal for food production has been able to be brought to market, and only a few genetically engineered animal therapeutic products have been approved for humans. That, she believes, is making companies hesitant to invest in the technology.
> 
> Bioengineered pets, though, have found easier acceptance. A transgenic florescent fish, marketed under the brand GloFish, has been popular for a number of years in the United States. The fish were created by Singaporean researchers who inserted jellyfish and sea anemone genes into zebrafish eggs.
> 
> "People are happy to have them in their aquarium, but it's when it's on their dinner plate that they have a different attitude," said Van Eenennaam.
> 
> A company called AquaBounty has been seeking for more than 20 years to win US Food and Drug Administration approval to bring a genetically modified fast-growing salmon to supermarkets. While the AquAdvantage salmon and the GloFish have been engineered to incorporate genes from other fish, the technique used by BGI to create its micro pigs is different and presents a new question for regulatory agencies like the FDA if they were to be imported to the United States.
> 
> Pigs are technically food animals, said Max Rothschild, an agriculture professor at Iowa State University, and the FDA reserves the right to regulate any genetic modification introduced into such organisms. But in sharp contrast to genetically modified organisms with DNA added into their genomes, he said, the micro pig was made by removing just a few, highly targeted letters of DNA from its own genome.
> 
> "The FDA should be grappling with this major difference right now as to how it will affect regulatory policy," he said, "and whether gene-edited organisms should be regulated in the same way as more traditional GMOs."
> 
> It's not just pigs that have been gene-edited. The technique has been demonstrated in cattle as a way to add muscle, and to ensure dairy cows don't grow horns (Holsteins often have their horns mechanically chopped). But those applications have not yet been developed to commercial scale, said Van Eenennaam.
> 
> What rules should apply to gene editing is an increasingly pressing question for not just agencies like the FDA but scientists themselves and medical ethicists as the technique moves from the animal world to the human realm. Although the gene editing holds the promise of significant medical breakthroughs, it also could open a Pandora's box of eugenic-like applications.
> 
> For several years, scientists have been using editing to modify genes in adult human cells, by, for example, changing bone marrow cells to make people resistant to HIV. But this year, a team of Chinese researchers caused an international stir when they announced that they had used gene editing to alter DNA in human embryos in an attempt to repair a defect that causes a potentially fatal blood disorder.
> 
> While Chinese researchers' application of gene-editing techniques - for pigs or people - may give some people pause, Chinese scientists are mindful that the global regulatory environment, particularly in the US, has consequences for their efforts.
> 
> "When I was in China the researchers there ... were asking why isn't the FDA approving the genetically engineered fish because it's making the global regulatory agencies hesitant to do anything," said Van Eenennaam, who believes data show the AquAdvantage is safe and that gene-editing animals like pigs and cattle is not materially different from traditional selective breeding.
> 
> "It's impeding this technology from being utilised - if you go to all the effort of making an animal and it's unclear whether you're going to be able to market it."
> 
> BGI agrees there is a need to regulate gene editing both for creating pets as well as for medical research, which is central to the company's micro pig business. Yong Li, the technical director of BGI's animal-science platform, told the journal _Nature _that any profits from BGI's pet micro pigs would be ploughed into medical research. *BGI believes it can use gene-editing not just to control size but also to give consumers a choice of colours.*
> 
> "We plan to take orders from customers now," he told the journal, "and see what the scale of the demand is."
> 
> *Los Angeles Times*
> 
> Tiny genetically modified 'micropigs' from China could be boon for science and pet sellers



China is indeed making some strides in bio-engineering. Still lots of fronts to be discovered!

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Keel

*"A Chinese biotechnological company announced on Sunday it has developed the world's first 3D blood vessel bio-printer, which makes it possible to produce personalized functional organs."*

So starting from the success of "printing" the vessels, any other organs can be developed from the patients' own stem cells through this marvellous invention!!

People who are waiting for organ donors can find the replacement organs in themselves.

It is an invenion worthy of a Nobel Prize!
*Congratulations*!

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Keel

About us | Royole Corporation













*Another Chinese company also has claimed the same some months ago*

Home | Technology News >> Mobile >> *In New Vision is ready to prototype very flexible AMOLED panel thickness of only 0.01 mm*

*In New Vision is ready to prototype very flexible AMOLED panel thickness of only 0.01 mm*
Your News Ticker | June 12, 2015 

The Chinese company, New Vision, a year ago, which demonstrated a five-inch flexible AMOLED display on a plastic base , boasted another achievement in this area. She showed a prototype panel with a thickness of 0.01 mm.







The prototype is very flexible – minimum radius of curvature of only 4.5 mm. The prototype uses a polyimide substrate, control circuitry and thin film transistors oxide radiating elements to direct radiation from the primary colors (RGB). Features flexible panel is well shown in the video released by the manufacturer.

The New Vision expect a quick commercialization

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Hamartia Antidote

Story and video from Dec 2014.
Royole shows a 0.01 mm thick flexible AMOLED prototype | OLED-Info

Dec 17, 2014
Royole, a startup established in the US in 2012, unveils their first prototype, a 0.01 mm thick (thin?) flexible AMOLED prototype (which they say is the thinnest ever). Here's a video showing the display in action:






The display is bendable, and has a bending radius of 1 mm. Samsung's recent flexible AMOLED prototypes has a radius of 5 mm - but these prototypes are closer to production units (the flexible OLED in the Galaxy Note Edge has a radius of 7 mm). Samsung's aim is to achieve a radius of 1 mm in production within two years.






Apart from the video and photos, we have very little details. As far as I understand, Royole is developing flexible AMOLED backplane technologies and other OLED related technologies and materials. Hopefully we'll learn more about this interesting new company soon.


----------



## JSCh

* 1st nuclear plant in W. China begins operation *
*By Chen Xia
China.org.cn, October 26, 2015*

The first nuclear power plant in western China began operation on Oct. 25. It is expected to provide up to 15 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) a year of cheap, safe and clean power to the Beibu Gulf Economic Zone in southwest China, China News Service reported.




The phase 1 project of the Fangchenggang nuclear power plant, first of its kind in western China, began operation on Oct. 25 in Fangchenggang City, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. [Photo/Chinanews.com]​
Lying only 45 kilometers from the border with Vietnam, the plant is located in Fangchenggang City, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The phase-1 project contains two 1,000-magawatt (MW) CPR-1000 reactors, which are domestically-developed second-generation, pressurized water reactors. Construction of the plant started on July 30, 2010.

Compared with a coal-fired power plant of the same capacity, the nuclear facility can save 4.82 million tons of standard coal every year. It can also cut down the annual emission of carbon dioxide by 11.86 million tons, and sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide by 190,000 tons. In environmental terms, this is equivalent to the growth of 32,500 hectares of forest a year.

According to the development plan, * Hualong One, China's third-generation nuclear reactor design, will be used in the plant's Unit 3 and Unit 4. This is of international significance as the same type of reactor will be used in the Bradwell nuclear plant in Essex, southeast England.*

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

* Scientist collects award for work on solar storms*
Xinhua, October 27, 2015

A researcher at the State Key Laboratory of Space Weather of the National Space Science Center under the Chinese Academy of Sciences has made an outstanding contribution to research on solar storms, and was recently awarded the Zhao Jiuzhang Science Prize, named after China's space science pioneer.

Delivering a report at the award presentation, scientist Liu Ying said a super solar storm could cause trillions of dollars worth of damage, from which it could take between four and 10 years to recover.

A super solar storm on September 1, 1859 first triggered research on the phenomenon.

The Carrington Event, as it was known, caused colorful auroras that could be seen even in low latitude regions like Hawaii. It also caused the failure of telegraph systems in northern America and Europe.

The most recent solar storm happened on March 15 this year. Although not a super storm, it caused the biggest geomagnetic storm on earth in a decade.

"Our research shows that the geomagnetic storm was caused by the interaction of two coronal mass ejections," Liu said.

Understanding solar storms is important to China's space development. The high-energy particle radiation of a solar storm could be carcinogenic for astronauts and damage electronic devices on a spacecraft, he said.

If the solar storm hit earth's magnetosphere, it could trigger a geomagnetic storm and damage power grids, and navigation and telecommunication systems, he said.

In 2012, Japanese, European and Chinese scientists respectively found a remarkable increase of radioactive carbon-14 in tree rings and corals, which dated back more than 1,200 years to about AD775.

Scientists believe the phenomenon was caused by a super solar storm, after finding a record of splendid auroras on the night of January 17 in historical documents from China's Tang Dynasty (618-907).

According to the documents, the auroras covered most of the sky above the northern hemisphere, and lasted for about eight hours.

Another super solar storm, on July 23, 2012, was regarded as "perfect" by scientists.

*Perfect conditions*

"We call it a 'perfect storm,' because all the conditions aligned to create such a big storm," Liu said.

He cooperated with scientists in the United States and Europe to observe the whole process of a super solar storm for the first time in history, and to identify the formation mechanism. Their research was published on the scientific journal, Nature Communications.

"Had the solar storm happened nine days earlier, it would have hit the earth, destroying power grids, satellites and GPS systems, causing huge losses," Liu said.

US scientists have estimated the probability of a super solar storm happening in the coming decade at about 12 percent, while Japanese scientists have put the figure at 6 percent.

"We believe the probability could be from 5 percent to 10 percent, but it's only a rough estimate," Liu said.

The formation of solar storms is attributed to the unstable process of the corona magnetic field, but as this is still difficult to observe the actual cause remains a mystery.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

* COMAC developing wide-body jetliner*
China Daily, October 27, 2015

China has begun to develop its C929 wide-body jetliner as its predecessor, the C919 narrow-body airliner, is about to make its first test flight, according to aviation industry insiders.

Commercial Aircraft Corp of China, developer of the nation's large civil aircraft, is working on key technologies that will be used on the C929, Wang Jian, chairman of AVIC Electromechanical Systems Co, a subsidiary of Aviation Industry Corp of China, said at an industry forum on civil aircraft electromechanical systems that concluded on Friday in Nanjing, Jiangsu province.

Wang did not specify what those technologies were but said the aircraft will be capable of carrying more than 300 passengers.

Earlier reports had said that the C929 will be equipped with domestically developed engines and aims to compete with the Boeing 777, the world's largest wide-body, twin-engine jetliner.

Wang's remarks were echoed by AlanJones, president and CEO of Aviage Systems, a joint venture of General Electric and Aviation Industry Corp of China that provides avionics systems for the C919 project.

"COMAC has invited my company to take part in the bidding for the C929's avionics equipment, and I believe that will be very competitive bidding. Most of the top-tier manufacturers of avionics systems will be eyeing a contract," he said.

COMAC is expected to distribute a request for proposals for the C929 project to suppliers in 2016 and then sign a letter of intent with its chosen partners in 2017, Jones said.

COMAC is currently preparing for the first test flight of the C919, set for the third quarter of next year, though it's also possible that the test will be postponed to 2017 because of technical uncertainties, Wang said.

Launched in 2008, the C919 project is China's attempt to break the Airbus-Boeing duopoly. The plane is set to compete against the Airbus A320, the Boeing 737 and Russia's Irkut MS-21. It will be able to carry up to 168 passengers and will have a maximum range of about 5,500 kilometers, according to COMAC.

The first prototype of the C919, to be used for test flights, will roll off the assembly line on Nov 2 at COMAC's Shanghai factory, Wang said. It will take months of static testing on the ground before it will be tested in flight.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## Martian2

*Robots are taking over China's factory floors | CNNMoney*

Quote from the CNNMoney video (at 0:21) on Chinese Robots: "China is now the biggest user of industrial robots in the world. It took that position last year from Japan."

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Shotgunner51

Martian2 said:


> *Robots are taking over China's factory floors | CNNMoney*
> 
> Quote from the CNNMoney video (at 0:21) on Chinese Robots: "China is now the biggest user of industrial robots in the world. It took that position last year from Japan."




Already? That's faster than forecast by IFR (International Federation of Robotics)! By end 2014 Japan still leads the world in industrial robots by far. While China Mainland was 100,000 units behind, on par with South Korea & Germany, about 4 times of Taiwan. Check data from IFR:




Given the fast growth, chances are China might have matched Japan by now, anyway I am waiting for new data from IFR. However for sure in terms of density (Units per 10,000 workers) China Mainland is still way behind top leaders e.g. South Korea, Japan, Germany & Taiwan.

With initiatives like "Made in China 2025", wish China Mainland may close gap with peers in East Asia within a decade!

Statistics - IFR International Federation of Robotics

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

Martian2 said:


> *Robots are taking over China's factory floors | CNNMoney*
> 
> Quote from the CNNMoney video (at 0:21) on Chinese Robots: "China is now the biggest user of industrial robots in the world. It took that position last year from Japan."



All reports I have ever read use the same factories to bring forward their case regarding automation. 

The factories are Rapoo factory (as used here), Irwin Precision Shenzhen (used in other reports, the ones talking about "workerless" factories) and one two more. 

Showing one factory doesn't change things. 

Automation is very expensive, inflexible, and limited. There are some fields where automation simply doesn't work. 

Automobile is the most automation intensive field, and virtually a third of all robots sold are in the automobile sector.


----------



## applesauce

Bussard Ramjet said:


> All reports I have ever read use the same factories to bring forward their case regarding automation.
> 
> The factories are Rapoo factory (as used here), Irwin Precision Shenzhen (used in other reports, the ones talking about "workerless" factories) and one two more.
> 
> Showing one factory doesn't change things.
> 
> Automation is very expensive, inflexible, and limited. There are some fields where automation simply doesn't work.
> 
> Automobile is the most automation intensive field, and virtually a third of all robots sold are in the automobile sector.



and guess where the biggest automotive market is?

moreover, china is the biggest manufacturer in the world, it only makes sense that its becoming the biggest robot user as well. but as noted, per capita wise its still very, very low.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

applesauce said:


> and guess where the biggest automotive market is?
> 
> moreover, china is the biggest manufacturer in the world, it only makes sense that its becoming the biggest robot user as well. but as noted, per capita wise its still very, very low.



Noted. 

Also, as I say, the automobile sector will automate. But what about other sectors? 

Over here, jobs will shift to SE Asia. It is already gradually happening in things like assembling, textile apparel etc.


----------



## applesauce

Bussard Ramjet said:


> Noted.
> 
> Also, as I say, the automobile sector will automate. But what about other sectors?
> 
> Over here, jobs will shift to SE Asia. It is already gradually happening in things like assembling, textile apparel etc.



depending on the sector, but many things could be automated actually, to varying degrees, but obviously some such as mining for instance cannot be(yet), currently there must always be people involved. but as far as assembling and texiles is concerned, it also depends on the market. for instance, assembling iphones in china makes sense because china itself is a huge market and the components are all located in close proximity. textiles is inherently a light manufacturing work, it's natural for it to move to cheaper countries since there isnt much in terms of components, skill or infrastructure to worry about. but things are different for electronics

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

World first G4 RORO containership delivered in Shanghai - People's Daily Online







The "Atlantic Star", the world’s first G4 (Generation 4) roll on roll off (RORO) containership, made by Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding Group, was delivered on Changxing island in Shanghai Tuesday.

The "Atlantic Star" is the first of five ships made by Hudong-Zhonghua for the Atlantic Container Line (ACL). It can transport nearly 45,000 tons of goods on its routes between Mediterranean, Atlantic and American markets. At 296 meters long and 37.6 meters wide, the giant has been designed to have 7 layers of RORO deck with a car loading area of 28,900 square meters, and the capacity for 3,800 containers. It is the largest, newest and most advanced RORO containership in the world.

According to He Jianghua, Deputy general manager at Hudong-Zhonghua, the upper four layers of deck can be freighted with the small private cars, the lower three layers can both carry all types of engineering vehicles and containers. The ship can serve short-haul routes in the Mediterranean Sea or the Atlantic Ocean. As it can both transport containers and vehicles, it offers greater flexibility to the owner.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

* Main AP1000 pumps pass qualification tests*
29 October 2015

*Final performance testing and post-test inspections have been successfully completed for the reactor coolant pump for the first Westinghouse AP1000 reactor, under construction in China. The first two of four such pumps for Sanmen 1 will now be shipped from the USA to China by the end of the year.*





_An AP1000 reactor coolant pump (Image: Curtiss-Wright)_​
In a joint statement, Westinghouse, Curtiss-Wright Corporation and China's State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation (SNPTC) said, "Throughout the testing, the reactor coolant pump performance met the design requirements which are necessary to support safe and reliable AP1000 plant operation."

The final performance testing verified reactor coolant pump operation during a full range of AP1000 plant operating conditions for more than a total of 1600 hours, including more than 600 start-and-stop cycles. Extensive reviews by the Chinese regulator and detailed post-test inspections have almost been completed. Pump manufacturer Curtiss-Wright conducted the testing and inspection at its electro-mechanical division facility in Cheswick, Pennsylvania.

The successful completion of the tests and inspections means the first and second pumps for unit 1 of the Sanmen plant in China's Zhejiang province can be delivered to the site by the end of December. Fabrication and subsequent delivery of the third and fourth pumps for the unit can also proceed, as well as for the pumps for the seven further AP1000 units currently under construction in China and the USA.

Westinghouse senior vice president for new plants and major projects Jeff Benjamin said, "Conclusion of the reactor coolant pump testing program is a major milestone in the delivery of the world's first AP1000 plant." He added, "With the completion of this phase, we are now positioned for the next steps in providing our customers with a new generation of safe, clean, reliable energy."

"Designing and manufacturing the technically sophisticated and demanding AP1000 reactor coolant pump has been a close, collaborative effort," said SNPTC president Zhongtang Wang. "After seven years of hard work among Chinese and US companies and a rigorous regulatory review and strong support of the National Nuclear Safety Administration and the National Energy Administration of China, development of the reactor coolant pump has succeeded."

Each AP1000 employs four main reactor coolant pumps - each almost seven metres tall and 1.5 metres wide and weighing some 91 tonnes - which circulate reactor coolant through the core, loop piping and steam generators. The first two pumps for Sanmen 1 were manufactured by Curtiss-Wright and initially passed qualification testing in June 2012. However, final testing of a similar pump in January 2013 revealed potential quality problems. As a result of the problems, SNPTC decided to ship three of the four main pumps it had already received back to the USA for replacement of components including the impeller and guide vanes and factory re-testing.

Westinghouse is currently constructing four AP1000 units in China, two each at Sanmen in Zhejiang province and Haiyang in Shandong. Curtiss-Wright was awarded a contract by Westinghouse to produce 16 reactor coolant pumps for the units in 2007. Sanmen unit 1 is currently expected to begin generating electricity in September 2016.

_Researched and written
by World Nuclear News_

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

* China plans world's most powerful particle collider*
China Daily, October 29, 2015

Chinese scientists have completed an initial conceptual design of a super giant particle collider which will be bigger and more powerful than any particle accelerator on Earth.

"We have completed the initial conceptual design and organized international peer review recently, and the final conceptual design will be completed by the end of 2016," Wang Yifang, director of the Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, told China Daily in an exclusive interview.

The institute has been operating major high-energy physics projects in China, such as the Beijing Electron Positron Collider and the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino experiment.

Now scientists are proposing a more ambitious new accelerator with seven times the energy level of the Large Hadron Collider in Europe.

In July 2012, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, also known as CERN, announced that it had discovered the long sought-after Higgs boson－the "God particle", regarded as the crucial link that could explain why other elementary particles have mass－on LHC.

The discovery was believed to be one of the most important in physics for decades. Scientists are hopeful that it will further explain nature and the universe we live in.

While LHC is composed of 27-kilometer-long accelerator chains and detectors buried 100 meters underground at the border of Switzerland and France, scientists only managed to spot hundreds of Higgs boson particles, not enough to learn the structure and other features of the particle.

With a circumference of 50 to 100 km, however, the proposed Chinese accelerator Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC) will generate millions of Higgs boson particles, allowing a more precise understanding.

"The technical route we chose is different from LHC. While LHC smashes together protons, it generates Higgs particles together with many other particles," Wang said.

"The proposed CEPC, however, collides electrons and positrons to create an extremely clean environment that only produces Higgs particles," he said.

The Higgs boson factory is only the first step of the ambitious plan. A second-phase project named SPPC (Super Proton-Proton Collider) is also included in the design－a fully upgraded version of LHC.

LHC shut down for upgrading in early 2013 and restarted in June with an almost doubled energy level of 13 TeV, a measurement of electron volts.

"LHC is hitting its limits of energy level, it seems not possible to escalate the energy dramatically at the existing facility," Wang said. The proposed SPPC will be a 100 TeV proton-proton collider.

If everything moves forward as proposed, the construction of the first phase project CEPC will start between 2020 and 2025, followed by the second phase in 2040.

"China brings to this entire discussion a certain level of newness. They are going to need help, but they have financial muscle and they have ambition," said Nima Arkani Hamed from the Institute for Advanced Study in the United States, who joined the force to promote CEPC in the world.

David J. Gross, a US particle physicist and 2004 Nobel Prize winner, wrote in a commentary co-signed by US theoretical physicist Edward Witten that although the cost of the project would be great, the benefits would also be great.

"China would leap to a leadership position in an important frontier area of basic science," he wrote.

Gerard't Hooft, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1999, said in an earlier interview to Doha-based broadcaster Al Jazeera that the proposed collider, if built, "will bring hundreds, probably thousands, of top class scientists with different specializations, from pure theory to experimental physics and engineering, from abroad to China".

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## TaiShang

*China to set up civil satellite systems by 2020*
October 29, 2015
China aims to finish building satellite systems for remote sensing, communications and navigation before 2020, a national plan showed Thursday.

The three satellite systems should be able to provide continuous and stable service, according to the plan for long-term development of civil space infrastructure posted on the website of the National Development and Reform Commission, the top economic planner.

In the next decade, China will build civil space infrastructure featuring cutting-edge technology, independent development and control, and reasonable distribution and global coverage, the plan said.

The three systems should meet demands for different industries and regions to support China's modernization drive, ensure national security and improve people's lives, it said.

Through the combined use of satellites from different systems or constellations, the country should be able to provide diversified, high-quality and reliable services to different industries.

For remote-sensing satellite systems, the priority should be on development of land, ocean and atmospheric observation satellites with seven different satellite constellations, the plan showed.

The system will meet the demands of various fields, including monitoring land and ocean resources, environmental protection, disaster relief, traffic, agriculture and weather forecasts.

The communications satellite system will be used for broadband Internet, mobile telecommunications and live television broadcasts.

China will improve the service capabilities of its Beidou Navigation Satellite System, a domestic alternative to U.S.-operated GPS, the plan added.

By 2020, China will set up a complete Beidou system consisting of 35 satellites, which will provide global coverage with positioning accuracy of less than 10 meters and timing accuracy of 20 nanoseconds.

The country will also improve research to catch up with world-class technology and promote the use of domestic satellite systems.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

* Submersible touches depths of 4,000m*
October 30, 2015, Friday 




​A deep-sea submersible, developed by the Shanghai Ocean University, has reached depths of 4,000 meters during a trial operation from September 26 to October 25 in the South China Sea. The “Rainbow Fish” submersible is expected to reach depths of 11,000 meters by 2016. It can go down deeper than the nation’s first deep-sea submersible “Jiaolong,” which touched depths of 7,000 meters. The submersible will probe under the 26 oceanic trenches beneath 6,500 meters. It has three seabed landers, both unmanned and manned. It will try to reach the depths of 11,000 meters under the Mariana Trench in 2019 with a researcher onboard. The project also includes a mother ship named “Zhang Jian” named after an entrepreneur and educationist in modern China. — Ti Gong


*Deep-sea submersible 'Rainbow Fish' fulfills first trial voyage*
Reporter: _Hu Nan_ 丨 CCTV.com
10-30-2015 13:22 BJT

Shanghai Maritime University has welcomed its deep-sea submersible "Rainbow Fish," the first non-government-funded submersible, back from its one-month dive mission in the South China Sea.

During the past month, "Rainbow Fish" has dived more than a dozen times in the South China Sea, reaching a depth of 4,328 meters. It is set to take sea trials near the Mariana islands next year, before eventually trying to scale the depths of the Mariana Trench in 2019.

The retrieving system, surface control system and optical fiber of "Rainbow Fish" were all manufactured domestically, and these features will help combat the hydraulic pressure of being 11,000 meters below the sea surface.

An ambulatory deep-sea science lab will also be founded, relying on bathyscaphes and their mothership.

"It's an open, ambulatory science lab. The samples and data collected by the submersibles will pave the way for fields of science research, such as biology, ecology, chemistry, marine technology, and marine surveying and mapping, etc," said Chen Xinjun, dean of Marine Science College, Shanghai Maritime University.

This open platform will facilitate continuous, systematical research of the deep-sea. Aberdeen University, Hawaii Pacific University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have already signed agreements of cooperation with the "Rainbow Fish" project, co-developed by Shanghai Maritime University and the Rainbow Fish Ocean Technology Company.

"The study of the Hadal Trench, 6,000 meters beneath the sea, remains limited. If we have sufficient funds to survey and investigate each trench, we will accomplish a meaningful task for the understanding of marine science and ecological structuring," said Cui Weicheng with Shanghai Maritime University.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## cirr

*Huawei’s new smartwatch looks like a Swiss watch… made in China*

October 30th, 2015 | by Alfred Siew






I don’t mean to be funny with that headline.

If you look at the sophisticated watch faces and finishes in terms of straps and cases, you’d be hard pressed to say the new Huawei Watch doesn’t remind you of an expensive Swiss masterpiece.

The only things missing are the brand and the iconic “Swiss made” on the front. If you flip the watch around, the strap says it’s from Huawei and made in China.

Though there have been Chinese-made mechanical watches, they are nowhere valued as highly as those from established Swiss watch houses. In the Huawei Watch, strangely, you feel that the playing field has been levelled.






By far, the new watch is the closest you’d come to emulating the “complications” – or features on mechanical watches – on a smart watch.

If no one told you this was a smart watch at first glance, you might think it takes after the well-proven mechanical designs of old. Look at the moon phase complication, for starters.

Or the brown leather and gold plated case, which form a classic pairing. The same for the designs with the silver steel mesh strap and more modern all-black steel finish.

The common 42mm diameter is also another cue from Huawei that it has taken after more expensive Swiss designs. And yes, these watches come with sapphire crystal as well to protect against scratches.

Why go through all the hassle? Huawei probably has sensed a demand for classic-looking watches that sport some of the smarts of the latest wearable technologies.






In the digital department, the new watches seem to keep pace with the best as well. Powered by Google’s Android Wear software, they sport a bright AMOLED display.

You, of course, get to monitor your heart rate throughout the day, while also getting alerts for calls and messages. Really standard stuff for smartwatches by now.

Question is, will people would buy these as keepsakes, as mechanical watches are often seen as (read our opinion piece on this), likely because of their high prices?

Huawei certainly isn’t selling its new watches for cheap. A top-end “limited edition” model with 64GB storage that’s gold-plated costs *S$999*.

Regular versions start from *S$549* for a leather and stainless steel option and *S$649* if you pick pick a stainless steel bracelet.

The black options cost S$649 and S$749, depending on your choice of leather or steel strap. And finally, if you go for the steel case that’s gold plated, get ready to pay S$899 or S$999, again depending on the strap.

Huawei’s new smartwatch looks like a Swiss watch… made in China Techgoondu

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## cirr

*Huawei Mate 8 specs: Kirin 950 chipset more powerful than Nexus 6P; Tipped for launch on Nov. 5*

Sanjit Dutt Oct 30, 2015 8:50 AM




The Huawei Mate 8 running on Kirin 950 is tipped for launch on Nov. 5 (Reuters)

Huawei will reportedly be introducing its next proprietary Kirin chipset for smartphones in the first week of November alongside the Huawei Mate 8 flagship phablet. The Chinese smartphone maker has posted an invitation on social networking website Weibo, announcing the launch of the new chipset, possibly the powerful Kirin 950 SoC, on Nov. 5, when it will also launch the Huawei Mate 8.

Huawei's invitation comes in the company's usual cryptic style, showing the image of a chip bearing the name "Kirin", which, according to PhoneArena, could be with the new Kirin 950 SoC. According to previous reports, the Kirin 950 features an eight core design, with four Cortex A72 cores clocked at 2.4GHz for performing demanding tasks and four Cortex A53 cores clocked at 2.1 GHz for energy-savings.

Earlier benchmark tests on Geekbench have already shown the Kirin 950 processor to be more powerful than the Samsung Exynos 7420 chipset, which powers the current Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge, Galaxy S6 Edge Plus and Galaxy Note 5 range of devices.

The Huawei Mate 8 will also be the first smartphone to be powered by the Kirin 950, with both likely to be announced on Friday. The Huawei Mate 8 is a successor to the Mate 7 and will feature a 6-inch QHD display with a resolution of 2,560 x 1,440 pixels.

The phablet will be available in two variants, one with 32GB of on-board storage and 3 GB of RAM, while the other variant will come with 64 GB of internal storage and 4 GB of RAM, both models paired with a Mali-T880 graphics unit. The Huawei Mate 8 will sport a 21 megapixel rear camera along with either a 5 megapixel or 8 megapixel front facing camera for selfies and video chats.

The Huawei Mate 8 and the Kirin 950 chipset powering the handset will both be unveiled on Nov. 5 at an event in China. Stay tuned.

Huawei Mate 8 specs: Kirin 950 chipset more powerful than Nexus 6P; Tipped for launch on Nov. 5

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## TianyaTaiwan

Mate 8

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## nForce

how often do one has to charge them ? I'm thinking of getting one.


----------



## cirr

*China to start work on supercollider by 2020, staking claim as science leader*

The facility is planned to generate millions of Higgs bosons, far more than the current capacity of the Large Hadron Collider at Cern on the Swiss-French border





The Compact Muon Solenoid, a particle physics detectors built on the Large Hadron Collider at Cern in Switzerland and France. China plans to build a supercollider at least twice as big. Photograph: Rex Features
AFP in Beijing

Thursday 29 October 2015 19.46 GMT

Last modified on Thursday 29 October 201519.48 GMT

*China will begin work on the world’s largest supercollider in 2020, a mega-machine aimed at increasing understanding of the elusive Higgs boson, state-run media has reported.*

The facility, designed to smash subatomic particles together at enormous speed, will reportedly be at least twice the size of Europe’s physics lab, the Swiss-based Cern, where the Higgs boson was discovered.

Scientists believe the Higgs – sometimes dubbed the “God particle” – endows mass, making it a fundamental building block of the universe.

How the Higgs boson is born and how it dies: the most precise picture so far

The final concept design for the project is on track for completion by the end of 2016, Wang Yifang, director of the Institute of High Energy Physics at the China Academy of Sciences, told the China Daily.

The facility is expected to generate millions of Higgs bosons, far more than the current capacity of Cern’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), where the particle’s existence was demonstrated in 2012.

As planned, the Chinese project will generate seven times the energy of the LHC, smashing subatomic particles together to generate “Higgses” on an unprecedented scale.

“[The] LHC is hitting its limits of energy level,” Wang told the China Daily, which is published by the government. “It seems not possible to escalate the energy dramatically at the existing facility.”

Cern was quick to point to its own plans for a major upgrade to the LHC. It said it aimed for a tenfold increase by 2025 in the “luminosity” of the LHC, meaning the rate of particle collisions that the machine can generate.

“The LHC already delivers proton collisions at the highest energy ever,” Cern chief Rolf Heuer said in a statement.

“The High-Luminosity LHC will produce collisions 10 times more rapidly, increasing our discovery potential and transforming the LHC into a machine for precision studies: the natural next step for the high-energy frontier,” he insisted.

More than 230 scientists and engineers from around the world met at Cern this week to discuss the project, which would be operational from 2025, the organisation said on its website.

Cern said its upgrade would allow its giant lab – a 27-kilometre (17-mile) ring-shaped tunnel straddling the French-Swiss border – to produce 15m Higgs bosonparticles per year, compared with the 1.2m it generated in total between 2011 and 2012.

China plans to land lunar probe on far side of moon

At a time when austerity measures have led many developed nations to reduce research funding for projects without clear applications, China has been pouring huge sums money into theoretical as well as practical science, hoping to become a world leader in fields from biology to cosmology.

Planning for the Chinese project began in 2013, shortly after the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson, according to slides from a presentation by Wang in Geneva that appeared on his institute’s website.

He suggested Qinhuangdao, a northern port city that is the starting point of the Great Wall, as an ideal location for the underground facility, noting its favourable geological conditions and local wineries as important selling points.

China’s rapid economic growth and large population put it in a unique position to invest in basic scientific research, he wrote.

“This is a machine for the world and by the world: not a Chinese one,” he added, saying physicists from around the globe had travelled to China to help with the project.

China to start work on supercollider by 2020, staking claim as science leader | Science | The Guardian

Reactions: Like Like:
8


----------



## Albatross

The Jinping Underground Labatory in southwestern China's Sichuan province is making Western countries nervous, according to German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung.

First put into service in late 2010, the Jinping Underground Labatory is China's first deep underground lab which provides an experimental platform for cutting-edge underground scientific research.

Inping is the deepest underground lab in the world with vertical rock coverage of 2,400 meters. Cosmic rays are said to be 200 times weaker in the lab compared to the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy.

Jinping underground lab may give China the lead in research: report｜WCT

*PandaX*

PandaX is designed to build and operate a ton-scale liquid xenon experiment to detect the so far elusive dark matter in the Universe. The PandaX experiment will use a two-phase (liquid and gas) xenon position-sensitive time projection chamber detector. The program will evolve in two stages, initially probing the low-mass regime (<10 GeV) with a nuclear- recoil energy threshold of about 5 keV and ultimately employing a ton-scale detector to probe the higher-mass regime (10–1,000 GeV), reaching a sensitivity down to 10^-47 cm^2 for spin-independent WIMP-nucleon cross section.




Design of the PandaX stage-1a TPC integrated with the inner vessel

*CJPL*

The PandaX experiment is designed as a next generation liquid xenon experiment using the two-phase technique. It is located at the China Jin-Ping underground Laboratory (CJPL), which is in the middle of a 18-km tunnel under 2400 meters of rock overburden, in the Sichuan province of south-west China. As one of the deepest underground labs in the world, the CJPL has an extremely low flux of muon rate of less than 20/m^2/100-day, which is about two orders of magnitude lower than the flux at the Gran Sasso underground laboratory (LNGS) in Italy. The low muon rate and the resulting background makes the lab ideal for a sensitive dark matter detection.




Located in the Sichuan province of China, CJPL is one of the deepest underground labs in the world



Scientists across China and the United States collaborating on the PandaX search for dark matter from an underground lab in southwestern China report results from the first stage of the experiment in a new study published in the Beijing-based journal SCIENCE CHINA Physics, Mechanics and Astronomy.

PandaX is the first dark matter experiment in China that deploys more than one hundred kilograms of xenon as a detector; the project is designed to monitor potential collisions between xenon nucleons and weakly interactive massive particles, hypothesized candidates for dark matter.

In the new study, scientists explain, "Dark matter is a leading candidate to explain gravitational effects observed in galactic rotational curves, galaxy clusters, and large scale structure formation."

"Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), a particular class of dark matter candidates, are interesting in particle physics and can be studied in colliders [and in] indirect and direct detection experiments."

If confirmed, dark matter particles would extend understanding of the fundamental building blocks of nature beyond the Standard Model of particle physics, and would provide support for theories on supersymmetry and extra dimensions of space-time.

"Direct positive detection of WIMPs using ultra-low background detectors in deep underground laboratories would provide convincing evidence of dark matter in our solar system and allow the probing of fundamental properties of WIMPs," they add in the new study.

Direct detection experiments using different technologies have produced many interesting results, but not universally confirmed evidence of weakly interacting massive particles. These results have produced much excitement across the global scientific community and call for further examination of WIMP signals through other experiments.

"In recent years, new techniques using noble liquids (xenon, argon) have shown exceptional potential due to the capability of background suppression and discrimination, and scalability to large target masses," state the PandaX collaborators.

"The XENON10/100 and LUX experiments using the dual-phase technique have improved WIMP detection sensitivity by more than two orders of magnitude in a wide mass range."

China's PandaX experiment, operated at the China Jinping Underground Laboratory, uses the dual-phase xenon technique to search for both low and high mass WIMP dark matter.

The initial success of the PandaX project demonstrates China has joined the global competition at the scientific frontier marking dark matter searches.

Today more than twenty dark matter search experiments are being conducted worldwide. Many dark matter search experiments, such as the DAMA/LIBRA experiment in Italy, the CoGeNT and CDMS experiments in the US, and the German-led CRESST experiment have reported findings that could be interpreted as positive signals of dark matter in recent years.

The PandaX collaboration joins this effort with results from a dark matter search that started in May of 2014.

No dark matter signal was observed in the first PandaX-I run, which places strong constraints on all previously reported dark matter-like signals from other similar types of experiments.

The PandaX experiment to date has collected about 4 million raw events; only about ten thousand events fell into the energy region of interest for dark matter. In the quiet central part of the xenon target only 46 events were observed.

However, the data from these 46 events was consistent with signals marking background radiation, not dark matter.

PandaX stands for Particle and Astrophysical Xenon Detector. The experiment is being conducted by an international team of about 40 scientists, and led by researchers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

The goal of the first stage of PandaX experiment is to examine previously reported dark matter-like signals. The scale of the PandaX-I experiment is second only to that of LUX, which is currently the planet's largest dark matter experiment and is located in a South Dakota mine in the US.

To shield the Chinese experiment from cosmic rays, the PandaX detector is located at the China Jinping Underground Laboratory (CJPL), the deepest underground laboratory in the world. CJPL was developed by Tsinghua University and the Yalong River Hydropower Development Company in 2010.

First dark matter results from underground China lab hosting PandaX-I

Congrats to Chinese bros and Tsinghua Uni for creating such a state of the art facility.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

* Chinese students develop highly-efficient battery *
_Xinhua, November 1, 2015_

A spoon of sugar can generate 80 hours of electricity for a battery, thanks to a novel microbial fuel cell (MFC) developed by students from north China's Tianjin Municipality.

A group of 19 college and high school students led by instructors from Tianjin University worked out a three-species co-cultured system of electricity generation, which won them a gold medal and the award for the best energy project at the 2015 International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Competition.

The poor performance and limited practical application of traditional single-strain MFC inspired the team to extend their engineering capabilities to multicellular microbial consortia, according to Liu Yue, a team member and a postgraduate majoring in biological engineering.

According to Yuan Yingjin, the team instructor, this is the first time for three different species, namely E. coli, Shewanella and B. subtilis to be introduced into an MFC system.

"Every microbe has its own unique functions and responsibilities in the 'team', which reduces the metabolic burden for all the microbes, improves the transmission efficiency of electrons and provides more electricity," Liu said.

Through the electricity generation platform they designed, the final output reached over 520 mV and lasted over 80 hours. The microbes feed on organic substances such as sugar or grass.

"After technical optimization, our MFC is able to generate the same electricity output as a lithium battery, with longer battery life, lower cost and zero pollution," Yuan said.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*Walking Chinese robot breaks Guinness world record*
English.news.cn 2015-11-01 18:24:42




CHONGQING, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- A quadruped robot in the southwestern municipality of Chongqing walked its way on to the pages of the Guinness World Records book on Sunday.

"Xingzhe No. 1" was developed by Li Qingdu, a professor with the college of automation under the Chongqing University of Post and Telecommunications. Starting on Oct. 24, it took 340,000 continuous steps over 54 hours covering a distance of 134.03 km and used 0.8 kwh of power.

The previous record was set by Ranger, a quadruped robot developed by Cornell University in America, which walked 65 km in 30 hours consuming 0.5 kwh.

Li and his team began developing the robot in November 2014. The first prototype was produced in January

"We can apply the technology and processes involved to a wide range of robotic devices, to make them more efficient, durable and reliable. In the future we could begin to use these robots for dangerous or remote tasks," Li said.

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## Martian2

China unveils jetliner in bid to compete with Boeing, Airbus - US News

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*我国首台大型反场箍缩磁约束聚变实验装置建成运行
China's first large scale reversed field pinch magnetic confinement fusion device up and running*
*发表时间：2015-11-03 16:54来源：新华网 *
*Published: 2015-11-03 16:54 Source: Xinhua*​










这是已进入常态化运行的大型反场箍缩磁约束聚变实验装置（11月3日摄）。
Up and running large scale reversed field pinch experimental device (3rd Nov photo).​
近日，我国首台大型反场箍缩磁约束聚变实验装置（KTX，中文简称“科大一环”），在中国科学技术大学完成安装调试并进入常态化运行。据悉，该装置为科技 部“国家磁约束核聚变能发展研究专项”支持的大型装置建设项目，主机总体直径8米，磁场可达7000高斯，等离子体电流达1兆安培，电子温度达600万 度，放电时间达100毫秒。据项目工程总指挥、中科大物理学院刘万东教授介绍，KTX是中国完全自行设计、自主研制集成的国际先进反场箍缩装置。它的建成 将为国内外从事等离子体物理研究的科研人员提供一个全新的大型实验平台，对中国磁约束聚变领域高端人才培养，发展磁约束聚变能科学技术研究事业具有重要意 义。新华社记者刘军喜摄

Translation help by machine:

Recently, China's first large scale reversed field pinch magnetic confinement fusion experimental device (KTX, Chinese referred to as Keda Torus eXperiment), has complete the installation and commissioning by the University of Science and Technology of China. And is now in full operation.

It is reported that the device is supported by MOST(Ministry of Science and Technology)'s national magnetic confinement fusion energy research and development project.

It has a main overall diameter of eight meters, up to 7,000 gauss magnetic field, plasma current up to 1 mega amps, electron temperature of 600 eV, discharge time of 100 milliseconds.

According to the project leader, USTC(University of Science and Technology of China) School of Physics Professor Liu Wandong, KTX is entirely China designed and developed reversed field pinch device. Its completion is essential for providing a new platform for domestic and foreign scientists in conducting large-scale experiments in plasma physics research, for training of China own high-end talent in the field of magnetic confinement fusion, and for the advancement of science and technology of magnetic confinement fusion energy research.

Xinhua News Agency reporters Liu Jun and Xi She

*New Chinese nuclear fusion device installed*
*By Zhang Lulu*
*China.org.cn, April 10, 2015*





Keda Torus eXperiment (KTX), China's first large-scale reversed field pinch (RFP) device, has been installed and been undergoing trials since the end of March, according to media reports.





KTX Design​The KTX is used in controllable nuclear fusion that is one of the most cutting-edge technologies in the world. It is complementary to the tokamak and stellarator usually used in nuclear fusion. It is currently under construction in China's University of Science and Technology.

Reports say the device is independently designed and produced by China.

The KTX is six meters high and the diameter of the main body is eight meters, with a total weight of more than 70 tons. It has a major radius of 1.4 m and a minor radius of 0.4 m with an Ohmic discharge current up to 1 MA, according to the website of the University of Science and Technology.

After it goes into full operation, the device will provide scientists with a new platform to carry out plasma research.

China and the United States are the heaviest investors in controllable nuclear fusion. China currently has 16 large-scale nuclear fusion devices, compared to 28 of the U.S.

Reactions: Like Like:
8


----------



## TaiShang

*China unveils model of first Martian probe *




CNTV, November 4, 2015

A model of China's Martian probe will debut at China International Industry Fair, it was announced Monday.



Working staffs install a Mars probe model by China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation in east China's Shanghai, Nov.2, 2015. The Mars probe model will be exhibited on the 17th China International Industry Fair (CIIF) held from Nov. 3 to 7. [Xinhua] 

The 17th China International Industry Fair will open on Tuesday in Shanghai, lasting until Saturday. The golden model, which is a third of its real size, has been given pride of place at China's Aerospace Science and Technology Corp.'s exhibition stand.

Niu Shengda, a satellite expert with the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology, explained that the probe consists of two parts: an orbiter and a lander.

China's astronomers have set their sights on the Red Planet following a successful soft landing on the moon late last year. They plan to launch the probe in 2020.

"The project is going smoothly," Niu said.

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## Martian2

*China launches ChinaSat-2C geostationary military communications satellite.*

Long March 3B launches with Chinasat-2C | NASASpaceFlight.com

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## Beast

TaiShang said:


> *China unveils model of first Martian probe *
> 
> 
> 
> 
> CNTV, November 4, 2015
> 
> A model of China's Martian probe will debut at China International Industry Fair, it was announced Monday.
> 
> 
> 
> Working staffs install a Mars probe model by China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation in east China's Shanghai, Nov.2, 2015. The Mars probe model will be exhibited on the 17th China International Industry Fair (CIIF) held from Nov. 3 to 7. [Xinhua]
> 
> The 17th China International Industry Fair will open on Tuesday in Shanghai, lasting until Saturday. The golden model, which is a third of its real size, has been given pride of place at China's Aerospace Science and Technology Corp.'s exhibition stand.
> 
> Niu Shengda, a satellite expert with the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology, explained that the probe consists of two parts: an orbiter and a lander.
> 
> China's astronomers have set their sights on the Red Planet following a successful soft landing on the moon late last year. They plan to launch the probe in 2020.
> 
> "The project is going smoothly," Niu said.


China is smart to do the Mars orbiter and Mars lander at the same time. In these way, we can claim the Asian first bragging right again

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## cirr

*何梁何利基金2015年度颁奖大会在京举行*

中央政府门户网站　中华人民共和国中央人民政府门户网站

2015-11-05 13:46 来源： 科技部网站
















11月4日，何梁何利基金2015年度颁奖大会在京举行。最高奖项——“科学与技术成就奖”由解放军信息工程大学邬江兴和海军工程大学马伟明获得。俞茂宏等31名科学家荣获“科学与技术进步奖”，陈占胜等14名科学家荣获“科学与技术创新奖”。

全国政协副主席、科技部部长万钢出席颁奖大会并致辞。何梁何利基金信托委员会主席、评选委员会主任朱丽兰作工作报告。中国药学会理事长、中国工程院院士桑国卫，中国科学院院长白春礼，中国人民解放军副总参谋长乙晓光等出席并为获奖人颁奖。

邬江兴和*马伟明*带领其团队在各自研究领域成绩斐然，在军用技术向民用转移转化和军民融合协同创新方面业绩突出，最终赢得今年何梁何利奖的最高奖项。今年，*除了两位成就奖获得者，国防科技领域另有多项突破性成果值得关注。高级自动寻的飞行器技术研究（hypersonic vehicle）、新型护卫舰总体设计（Type 057 FFG）、新一代舰载战斗机（5th generation carrier-borne stealth fighter）研制等技术成果顺应国家战略需求，为“能打仗、打胜仗”提供了强力技术支撑。*

今年获奖人平均年龄为57岁，45岁以下的约占12.8%，获奖人员年龄梯次和结构更加优化。海外归国人员比例达到63.8%。朱丽兰表示，这说明中青年人才和海外归国人员已经成为科技创新的主要力量。其中，一位从台湾地区来到昆山腾达广电科技企业创新创业的领军人物，10年来致力于国内光电产业技术深耕研发，为促进我国TFT-LCD产业长足发展做出重要贡献。（记者 李艳）

何梁何利基金2015年度颁奖大会在京举行_部门新闻_新闻_中国政府网



*邬江兴、马伟明获2015年度何梁何利基金“科学与技术成就奖”*

2015年11月04日 18:53:30 来源： 新华网

　　新华网北京１１月４日电（记者余晓洁、刘陆）何梁何利基金２０１５年度颁奖大会４日在京举行。全国政协副主席、科技部部长万钢和中国药学会理事长、中国工程院院士桑国卫分别为本年度何梁何利基金最高奖项——“科学与技术成就奖”获得者邬江兴和马伟明颁奖。

　　国家数字交换系统工程技术研究中心教授邬江兴长期从事信息通信网络工程科技研究工作，主持研制成功我国第一台万门数字程控交换机，在信息通讯、宽带网技术、高效能计算机体系结构领域取得了一系列开拓性成果。*海军工程大学教授马伟明在舰船新型集成化发电技术（new shipboard integrated power generation technology）、舰船综合电力技术（all-electric ship integrated power system）、电磁发射技术（EMALS）领域破解世界科技难题，推进了我国电磁能武器（electromagnetic energy weapon）装备的跨越式发展。*

　　俞茂宏等３１名科学家荣获“科学与技术进步奖”，陈占胜等１４名科学家荣获“科学与技术创新奖”。

　　何梁何利基金由香港爱国金融家何善衡、梁銶琚、何添、利国伟于１９９４年创立，旨在奖励中国杰出科学家，促进祖国科学技术进步与创新。２１年来，何梁何利基金共表彰了１１４７位杰出科技工作者。

邬江兴、马伟明获2015年度何梁何利基金“科学与技术成就奖”-新华网

@Bussard Ramjet

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

cirr said:


> *何梁何利基金2015年度颁奖大会在京举行*
> 
> 中央政府门户网站　中华人民共和国中央人民政府门户网站
> 
> 2015-11-05 13:46 来源： 科技部网站
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 11月4日，何梁何利基金2015年度颁奖大会在京举行。最高奖项——“科学与技术成就奖”由解放军信息工程大学邬江兴和海军工程大学马伟明获得。俞茂宏等31名科学家荣获“科学与技术进步奖”，陈占胜等14名科学家荣获“科学与技术创新奖”。
> 
> 全国政协副主席、科技部部长万钢出席颁奖大会并致辞。何梁何利基金信托委员会主席、评选委员会主任朱丽兰作工作报告。中国药学会理事长、中国工程院院士桑国卫，中国科学院院长白春礼，中国人民解放军副总参谋长乙晓光等出席并为获奖人颁奖。
> 
> 邬江兴和*马伟明*带领其团队在各自研究领域成绩斐然，在军用技术向民用转移转化和军民融合协同创新方面业绩突出，最终赢得今年何梁何利奖的最高奖项。今年，*除了两位成就奖获得者，国防科技领域另有多项突破性成果值得关注。高级自动寻的飞行器技术研究（hypersonic vehicle）、新型护卫舰总体设计（Type 057 FFG）、新一代舰载战斗机（5th generation carrier-borne stealth fighter）研制等技术成果顺应国家战略需求，为“能打仗、打胜仗”提供了强力技术支撑。*
> 
> 今年获奖人平均年龄为57岁，45岁以下的约占12.8%，获奖人员年龄梯次和结构更加优化。海外归国人员比例达到63.8%。朱丽兰表示，这说明中青年人才和海外归国人员已经成为科技创新的主要力量。其中，一位从台湾地区来到昆山腾达广电科技企业创新创业的领军人物，10年来致力于国内光电产业技术深耕研发，为促进我国TFT-LCD产业长足发展做出重要贡献。（记者 李艳）
> 
> 何梁何利基金2015年度颁奖大会在京举行_部门新闻_新闻_中国政府网
> 
> 
> 
> *邬江兴、马伟明获2015年度何梁何利基金“科学与技术成就奖”*
> 
> 2015年11月04日 18:53:30 来源： 新华网
> 
> 新华网北京１１月４日电（记者余晓洁、刘陆）何梁何利基金２０１５年度颁奖大会４日在京举行。全国政协副主席、科技部部长万钢和中国药学会理事长、中国工程院院士桑国卫分别为本年度何梁何利基金最高奖项——“科学与技术成就奖”获得者邬江兴和马伟明颁奖。
> 
> 国家数字交换系统工程技术研究中心教授邬江兴长期从事信息通信网络工程科技研究工作，主持研制成功我国第一台万门数字程控交换机，在信息通讯、宽带网技术、高效能计算机体系结构领域取得了一系列开拓性成果。*海军工程大学教授马伟明在舰船新型集成化发电技术（new shipboard integrated power generation technology）、舰船综合电力技术（all-electric ship integrated power system）、电磁发射技术（EMALS）领域破解世界科技难题，推进了我国电磁能武器（electromagnetic energy weapon）装备的跨越式发展。*
> 
> 俞茂宏等３１名科学家荣获“科学与技术进步奖”，陈占胜等１４名科学家荣获“科学与技术创新奖”。
> 
> 何梁何利基金由香港爱国金融家何善衡、梁銶琚、何添、利国伟于１９９４年创立，旨在奖励中国杰出科学家，促进祖国科学技术进步与创新。２１年来，何梁何利基金共表彰了１１４７位杰出科技工作者。
> 
> 邬江兴、马伟明获2015年度何梁何利基金“科学与技术成就奖”-新华网
> 
> @Bussard Ramjet




You tag me. 

You know I don't speak Chinese yet.

And you don't even present a brief summary!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am boiling over with anger right now!


----------



## cirr

Bussard Ramjet said:


> You tag me.
> 
> You know I don't speak Chinese yet.
> 
> And you don't even present a brief summary!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
> 
> I am boiling over with anger right now!



I have highlighted for you the military-related breakthroughs which won 2015 HLHL Foundation achievement awards for progresses in science and technology。

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## Martian2

*China launches multi-spectral Yaogan 28 satellite.*

The Yaogan 28 carries high-resolution electro-optical and infrared sensors (see citation below and the underlined red text).

If you don't already know, I will explain the term "electro-optical."

During the 1960s, the US Corona satellites were purely optical. They recorded images on film and ejected them towards Earth in a "film bucket payload."

Today, the Chinese Yaogan satellite series record the images with a CCD (charge coupled device) sensor. The images are transmitted by encrypted radio to Earth. The CCD is an *electro*nic device. Together with the satellite's *optical* lenses, you have *electro-optical*.

China launches Yaogan Weixing-28 via Long March 4B | NASASpaceFlight.com

Reactions: Like Like:
8


----------



## bobsm

*Chinese team wins breakthrough prize for neutrino research*

English.news.cn 
2015-11-10 01:04:25 

BEIJING, Nov. 9 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have won the 2016 Breakthrough Prize Award in fundamental physics for their research on neutrino oscillation, according to a statement released Monday by an institute with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

The Chinese team, Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment, was led by Wang Yifang, a researcher with the Institute of High Energy Physics under the CAS and professor Kam-Biu Luk with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

This is the first time Chinese scientists have won the prize, which was awarded at the Ames Research Center of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

In 2012, through the neutrino experiment conducted near the Daya Bay Reactor in Guangdong Province, Chinese and foreign physicists announced that they had confirmed and measured a new type of neutrino oscillation.

The Chinese team will share the prize award equally with another four teams from Japan and Canada.

The award is presented to the five teams for the fundamental discovery and exploration of neutrino oscillations, revealing a new frontier beyond, and possibly far beyond, the standard model of particle physics, according to a statement posted on the prize organization's website.

Neutrinos, the wispy particles that flooded the universe in the earliest moments after the Big Bang, are continually produced in the hearts of stars and and other nuclear reactions.


Chinese team wins breakthrough prize for neutrino research - Xinhua | English.news.cn

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## JSCh

*3-D printed ‘building blocks’ of life*
*4 Nov 2015, Bristol, UK*


Scientists have developed a 3-D printing method capable of producing highly uniform ‘blocks’ of embryonic stem cells.

These cells – capable of generating all cell types in the body – could be used as the ‘Lego bricks’ to build tissue constructs, larger structures of tissues, and potentially even micro-organs.

The results are published today, Wednesday 4th November, in the journal _Biofabrication_.

“It was really exciting to see that we could grow embryoid body in such a controlled manner”, explains Wei Sun, a lead author on the paper. “The grown embryoid body is uniform and homogenous, and serves as a much better starting point for further tissue growth.”

The researchers, based at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, and Drexel University, Philadelphia, USA, used extrusion-based 3-D printing to produce a grid-like 3-D structure to grow embryoid body that demonstrated cell viability and rapid self-renewal for 7 days while maintaining high pluripotentcy.

“Two other common methods of printing these cells are either two-dimensional (in a petri dish) or via the ‘suspension’ method (where a ‘stalagmite’ of cells is built up by material being dropped via gravity.)” continues Wei Sun. “However, these don’t show the same cell uniformity and homogenous proliferation.”

“I think that we’ve produced a 3-D microenvironment which is much more like that found _in vivo _for growing embryoid body, which explains the higher levels of cell proliferation.”

The researchers hope that this technique can be developed to produce embryoid body at a high throughput, providing the basic building blocks for other researchers to perform experiments on tissue regeneration and/or for drug screening studies.

“Our next step is to find out more about how we can vary the size of the embryoid body by changing the printing and structural parameters, and how varying the embryoid body size leads to “manufacture” of different cell types” adds Rui Yao, another author on the paper.

“In the longer term, we’d like to produce controlled heterogeneous embryonic bodies” concludes Wei Sun. “This would promote different cell types developing next to each other – which would lead the way for growing micro-organs from scratch within the lab.”

3D-printed building blocks of life - Institute of Physics

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## cirr

The world's first 100PFlops supercomputer is coming！

无锡超级计算机中心

无锡恒鼎超级计算中心有限公司成立于2014年7月，是国家超级计算无锡中心的运行主体和服务平台。

国家超级计算无锡中心是以国家高技术研究发展计划（863计划）信息技术领域“高效能计算机及应用服务环境（二期）”重大项目“十亿亿次国产高效能计算机系统”研制成果为基础构建的国家级超级计算中心。该*超级计算机全面采用国产处理器和操作系统*，具有运算高效和数据安全的行业优势。其系统峰值性能大于*100PFlops*；系统整机Linpack效率大于等于*70%*；系统能效比达到*5GFlops/W*；内存容量大于*2.3PB*；存储容量*20PB*。

公司将依托国家超级计算无锡中心为平台，与国内外专家、应用单位等进行密切合作。面向医疗服务、生物医药、海洋科学、现代农业、油气勘探、气候气象、金融分析、信息安全、工业设计、动漫渲染等领域提供计算和技术支持服务，承接国家、省部等重大科技或工程项目，为我国科技创新和经济发展提供平台支撑。

Three hurrys to the SW-5 CPUs。

@Bussard Ramjet

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

cirr said:


> The world's first 100PFlops supercomputer is coming！
> 
> 无锡超级计算机中心
> 
> 无锡恒鼎超级计算中心有限公司成立于2014年7月，是国家超级计算无锡中心的运行主体和服务平台。
> 
> 国家超级计算无锡中心是以国家高技术研究发展计划（863计划）信息技术领域“高效能计算机及应用服务环境（二期）”重大项目“十亿亿次国产高效能计算机系统”研制成果为基础构建的国家级超级计算中心。该*超级计算机全面采用国产处理器和操作系统*，具有运算高效和数据安全的行业优势。其系统峰值性能大于*100PFlops*；系统整机Linpack效率大于等于*70%*；系统能效比达到*5GFlops/W*；内存容量大于*2.3PB*；存储容量*20PB*。
> 
> 公司将依托国家超级计算无锡中心为平台，与国内外专家、应用单位等进行密切合作。面向医疗服务、生物医药、海洋科学、现代农业、油气勘探、气候气象、金融分析、信息安全、工业设计、动漫渲染等领域提供计算和技术支持服务，承接国家、省部等重大科技或工程项目，为我国科技创新和经济发展提供平台支撑。
> 
> Three hurrys to the SW-5 CPUs。
> 
> @Bussard Ramjet




Great! 

When can we expect it to be completed?


----------



## cirr

Bussard Ramjet said:


> Great!
> 
> When can we expect it to be completed?



It is more or less done。

It was originally scheduled for unveiling to the public during China HPC 2015 11.10 -11.12。

2015年全国高性能计算学术年会: Home

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## qwerrty

> *Chinese team wins breakthrough prize for neutrino research*
> Nov 10,2015
> 
> BEIJING, Nov. 9 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have won the 2016 Breakthrough Prize Award in fundamental physics for their research on neutrino oscillation, according to a statement released Monday by an institute with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
> 
> The Chinese team, Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment, was led by Wang Yifang, a researcher with the Institute of High Energy Physics under the CAS and professor Kam-Biu Luk with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
> 
> This is the first time Chinese scientists have won the prize, which was awarded at the Ames Research Center of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
> 
> In 2012, through the neutrino experiment conducted near the Daya Bay Reactor in Guangdong Province, Chinese and foreign physicists announced that they had confirmed and measured a new type of neutrino oscillation.
> 
> The Chinese team will share the prize award equally with another four teams from Japan and Canada.
> 
> The award is presented to the five teams for the fundamental discovery and exploration of neutrino oscillations, revealing a new frontier beyond, and possibly far beyond, the standard model of particle physics, according to a statement posted on the prize organization's website.
> 
> Neutrinos, the wispy particles that flooded the universe in the earliest moments after the Big Bang, are continually produced in the hearts of stars and and other nuclear reactions.
> 
> 
> 
> Code:
> 
> 
> http://www.shanghaidaily.com/article/article_xinhua.aspx?id=308602






> ‘*Breakthrough’ science awards total US$22 million*
> Published: 10 November 2015 3:33 PM
> 
> Researchers in physics, mathematics and life sciences were awarded a total of US$22 million (RM96.2 million) in the third Breakthrough Prize Awards funded by key Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.
> 
> The prizes aimed at giving glamour and star power to scientific research were awarded at a glitzy event Sunday in Mountain View, California, attended by film stars including Kate Beckinsale, Cameron Diaz and Benedict Cumberbatch.
> 
> "By challenging conventional thinking and expanding knowledge over the long term, scientists can solve the biggest problems of our time," said Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, one of the backers of the program along with Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Alibaba's Jack Ma.
> 
> "The Breakthrough Prize honors achievements in science and math so we can encourage more pioneering research and celebrate scientists as the heroes they truly are."
> 
> In life sciences, five prizes of $3 million each were awarded in Sunday's ceremony to Edward Boyden of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Karl Deisseroth of Stanford University and Howard Hughes Medical Institute; John Hardy of University College London; Helen Hobbs of University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and Howard Hughes Medical Institute; and Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
> 
> The life sciences awards recognize advances toward understanding living systems and extending human life, with one prize dedicated to work helping the understanding of Parkinson's disease and neurodegenerative disorders.
> 
> In physics, the prizes recognizing advances beyond the standard model of particle physics went to five research teams: the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment at University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; the KamLAND Collaboration at Iwate Prefectural University, Japan; K2K and T2K at Japan's High Energy Accelerator Research Organization; the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory at Queen's University, Canada; and the Super-Kamiokande Collaboration at several Japanese universities and research center.
> 
> The mathematics prize was awarded to Ian Agol of the University of California at Berkeley and Institute for Advanced Study.
> 
> Additional prizes went to junior researchers in physics and mathematics and a new "junior challenge" award was given to Ohio high school student Ryan Chester.
> 
> The program was founded by Brin and his former wife Anne Wojcicki; Jack Ma and Cathy Zhang; Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner and Julia Milner; and Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan. – AFP, November 10, 2015.
> 
> 
> 
> Code:
> 
> 
> http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/technology/article/breakthrough-science-awards-total-us22-million#sthash.Ttd8uUtX.dpuf

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*Ultra-thin, tunable, broadband microwave absorber may advance radar cloaking*
*Chinese scientists have developed an ultra-thin, tunable microwave absorber that can operate over a broad range of frequencies, demonstrating its potential in improving aircraft cloaking, warship stealth and broadband antenna*

From the Journal: Journal of Applied Physics

By Zhengzheng Zhang

Washington, D.C., Nov. 10, 2015 – Microwave absorbers are a kind of material that can effectively absorb incident microwave energy to make objects invisible to radar; therefore they are commonly used in aircraft cloaking and warship stealth. Recently, as radar detection devices have been improved to detect the near-meter microwave length regime, scientists are working on high-performance absorbers that can cloak objects in the equivalent ultra-high frequency regime (from 300 megahertz to two gigahertz). However, conventional absorbers for the ultra-high regime are usually thick, heavy or have narrow absorption bandwidth, making them unsuitable for stealth missions.

To solve this problem, a team of researchers from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China has developed an ultra-thin, tunable broadband microwave absorber for ultra-high frequency applications. This ultra-thin absorbing surface, called an active frequency-selective surface absorber, consists of arrays of patterned conductors loaded with two common types of circuit elements known as resistors and varactors. The unit patterned cell absorbs microwaves and can also be actively controlled by stretching to expand the tunable bandwidth. In a paper published this week in the_ Journal of Applied Physics_, from AIP Publishing, the researchers presented this work.

“Our proposed absorber was fabricated with a stretching transformation pattern, which is both thin and can absorb a wide range of frequencies for near-meter microwave application,” said Wenhua Xu, the primary researcher in the team led by Jianjun Jiang, a professor of School of Optical and Electronic Information at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China. “Its absorption range covers a broad band from 0.7 to 1.9 gigahertz below -10 decibel, and the total thickness of the absorber is only 7.8 millimeters, which is one of the thinnest microwave absorbers reported.”

“Usually the thickness of conventional radar absorbers is a quarter the wavelength of the incident microwave. In the high frequency regime, take one gigahertz as an example, the thickness of the absorber would be around 7.5 centimeters, which is too thick and heavy to be used in aircrafts or warships. Our proposed absorber is almost ten times thinner than conventional ones,” Xu said.

Other alternative absorbers, such as metamaterial absorbers made from a resonant metallic structure printed on a dielectric substrate, though significantly thinner than the wavelengths absorbed, have a narrow working bandwidth.

To develop a novel absorber that is both thin and with broadband performance, Jiang’s team employed a type of thin, light periodic structure called a frequency-selective surface, which consists of an assembly of patterned conductors arranged in a two-dimensional array, usually backed by a thin dielectric, to reflect incident microwaves according to their frequency.

In the experiment, Jiang’s team fabricated a broadband active frequency-selective surface with a stretching transformation pattern on a printed circuit board, and soldered the resistors and varactors between each of the two unit patterned cells. The fact that the surface could be stretched meant that the parameters of the unit patterned cell can be actively controlled by stretching.





For the first time, Stretching Transformation is applied to the unit cell pattern to expand the tunable bandwidth. With this technique, it is realizable to be thin and achieve broadband absorption simultaneously. 
CREDIT: Intelligent Electronics Institute, Huazhong University of Sci&Tec.

By modeling the absorber using a transmission line, the researchers found that the varactor provides a variable capacitance at varying bias voltage, which produces the device’s tunability, while the lumped resistor with constant resistance reliably produces strong absorption at the resonance frequency. Besides the lumped impedances of the loaded elements, the researchers discovered that the parameters of the unit patterned cells contribute to the device’s absorption performance as well.

“We applied various stretching transformation coefficients to the unit cell pattern to obtain the available parameters to expand the tunable bandwidth,” Xu said. “Our results suggest that a cell pattern with a smaller stretching transformation coefficients ratio (i.e. width to length ratio of the unit cell) leads to higher resonance frequency absorption and produces a wider tunable bandwidth as well.”

Xu noted that it is the first time that stretching transformation pattern is used in the active frequency-selective surface absorber to expand the bandwidth, which turns out to be an effective technique for producing broadband tunability.

“At frequencies below two gigahertz, conventional microwaves absorbers are limited in application by their thickness and narrow absorption bandwidth. Our proposed absorber has achieved broadband tunability and ultra-thin film simultaneously,” Xu said. “The total thickness of 7.8 millimeters is around one twenty-ninth wavelength of the central frequency of incident microwaves, and the ultra-thin absorber with broad bandwidth may be widely used in warship stealth, airplane cloaking and tunable, broadband antennae.”

The researchers’ next step is to study the polarization and the oblique incidence performance for the proposed active frequency-selective surface absorber.

###

For More Information:
Jason Socrates Bardi
jbardi@aip.org 
240-535-4954 
@jasonbardi

Article title:
An ultra-thin broadband active frequency-selective surface absorber for ultrahigh-frequency applications

Authors:
Wenhua Xu, Yun He, Peng Kong, Jialin Li, Haibing Xu, Ling Miao, Shaowei Bie and Jianjun Jiang

Author affiliations:
Huazhong University of Science and Technology

Ultra-thin, tunable, broadband microwave absorber may advance radar cloaking | American Institute of Physics

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## Martian2

*Taiwan’s first $165 million proton therapy center*

Taiwan’s 1st proton therapy center opens in New Taipei | Taiwan Today

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## bobsm

*NUDT student becomes first Chinese winner of William Sweet Smith Prize*

Source: China Military OnlineEditor: Ouyang
2015-11-11 16:340

CHANGSHA, Nov. 11 (ChinaMil) -- The Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), a London-based professional engineering institution with a history of 168 years, granted the William Sweet Smith Prize, its highest prize in the aerospace area, to Tang Jun, a 27-year-old PhD at the College of Information System and Management of the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) on November 9, Beijing time, in honor of his significant contributions to improving the air collision avoidance system.

Tang Jun is the first Chinese scholar winning this prize since it was established more than 30 years ago, he is also the youngest among winners of the prize.

Founded in 1847, IMechE set up the William Sweet Smith Prize in 1984 to commend the primary author of the best paper on an aerospace subject published by the Institution in the previous year or a contribution or achievement in that field. The prize is conferred to one person only every year, with the possibility of no winner at all. There have been only 21 winners in the past 30-plus years.

Matriculated by NUDT as a four-year cadet in 2006, Tang Jun was recommended to pursue his postgraduate studies majoring in military operation research in 2010. In 2012, he was selected by the NUDT to continue his doctoral studies in the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona in Spain.

While in Spain, Tang focused his research on the improvement of air collision avoidance system. His creations on this regard consist of the air collision avoidance models, a 4D information database, the best collision prevention strategy and the decision support system for air traffic control. His improved plan will effectively help uplift safety and reliability of the collision avoidance system under the multi-plane circumstance and is of great significance for optimizing the route density, improving air traffic efficiency, reducing human error and ensuring flight safety.

An oral defense committee comprised of American and European experts appraised Tang Jun's research results in July this year and agreed that the results could be incorporated in the improvement plan for the new-generation global air traffic collision avoidance system.


NUDT student becomes first Chinese winner of William Sweet Smith Prize - China Military Online

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*Mirror currents in the wall make the most beautiful plasma of all*
* November 11, 2015 
*



Groundbreaking US-China experiments continued in September between DIII-D, led by GA's Dr. Andrea Garofalo (at center), and China's ASIPP at the EAST fusion program, whose scientists connect via videoconferencing (pictured at left screen). At right is Huiqian Wang, an ASIPP post-doctoral scientist being trained at DIII-D. Credit: Lisa Petrillo/General Atomic 
​The way to increase the power and efficiency of magnetic fusion energy may be to risk running the plasma - hotter than 100-million-degrees C - closer than ever to the wall, according to new experimental results achieved by the first U.S.-China fusion research team.

The team is led by Dr. Xianzu Gong of ASIPP and Dr. Andrea Garofalo of General Atomics (GA) in San Diego. Using both China's EAST facility and the DIII-D National Fusion Facility, operated by GA for the U.S. Department of Energy, the team has investigated the "high-bootstrap current" scenario, which enhances self-generated ("bootstrap") electrical current to find an optimal tokamak configuration for fusion energy production.

Magnetic fusion energy research uses magnetic fields to confine plasma (ionized gas) heated to temperatures hotter than the Sun's core. This enables the ions to fuse and release excess energy that can be turned into electricity, harnessing the Sun's power on Earth. The most developed configuration is the tokamak, and the team's work helps prepare for the 500-megawatt ITER fusion research facility that is currently being built in France by a consortium of 35 nations, including China and the U.S.

This joint U.S.-China experiment directly demonstrates the stabilizing effect of reducing the plasma-wall distance in tokamaks with high plasma pressure and large bootstrap current fraction, according to Dr. Gong, who said, "I think, in simple terms, these experiments may provide better physics and operation foundation for ITER plasmas."

The focus was on resolving the "kink mode" instability, a wobbling effect that reduces performance, by moving the plasma closer to the vessel's wall, Dr. Garofalo explained . Operating closer to the wall suppresses the kink mode and enables higher pressure inside the tokamak, the toroidal or doughnut-shaped steel-lined fusion device. This gives rise to "pressure-driven" plasma flows that maintain the confinement quality even with lower external injection of velocity.

"This is unlike any other regime," said Dr. Garofalo. "It's very risky to move the plasma that close to the wall. The chief operator said 'You can't do that anymore, you're going to damage the machine,' so it was a struggle to prove our theory was correct."

The gambit paid off. Moving the plasma closer to the wall removed the kink mode and enabled higher plasma pressure, which, in turn, makes the plasma less dependent on externally injected flow. This is important because in a tokamak reactor, such as ITER, it is very difficult and expensive to drive a rapid plasma flow with external means.

The team performed the most recent bootstrap exploration in DIII-D, following-up work on the record-setting milestone achieved at China's EAST tokamak, where GA scientists have also been collaborating. An ASIPP scientist Dr. Qilong Ren will deliver the invited talk on the topic of Magnetic Confinement-Experiments.

While fusion has been in the public domain since the 1950s and its advances have been achieved by teams around the world, this U.S.-China team is setting new milestones in global cooperation. For realization of magnetic fusion energy, global cooperation is needed, said Dr. Gong of ASIPP, who cited the EAST/DIII-D partnership as "an efficient and effective new model" for international science collaborations that benefits both partners and the field of study.

"We have made a very good start of international collaboration in fusion research between China and the U.S., and we are very proud to be a pioneer in this field," said Dr. Gong.

*More information:* Abstract: KI2.00004 Progress Toward Steady State Tokamak Operation: Exploiting the high bootstrap current fraction regime
Session Session KI2: MFE Regime Optimization

*Provided by:* American Physical Society

Mirror currents in the wall make the most beautiful plasma of all

Note: ASIPP is Chinese Academy of Science Institute of Plasma Physics.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## cirr

China launches 150-Megapixel CMOS image sensors：

日本讽中国做不出CMOS 自主1.5亿像素传感器亮相_科技频道_中华网

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## Martian2

Confinement State for Plasma Co-Developed by U.S-China Holds the Key to Revolutionize Fusion Energy

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## bobsm

*Imitating synapses of the human brain using graphene*
Nov 12, 2015

Graphene applications
Medicine
Technical / Research


Researchers at Tsinghua University, China, have created an artificial synapse out of aluminum oxide and twisted bilayer graphene. By applying different electric voltages to the system, they found they could control the reaction intensity of the receiving “neuron.” The team says their novel dynamic system could aid in the development of biology-inspired electronics capable of learning and self-healing.









In recent years, researchers have been building artificial neurons and synapses with some success but without the flexibility needed for learning. However, this first-of-its-kind synthetic synapse mimics the plasticity of the brain, bringing science one step closer to human-like artificial intelligence. 

Imitating synapses of the human brain using graphene | Graphene-Info

________________________________________

*Imitating synapses of the human brain could lead to smarter electronics*
13-Nov-2015

Making a computer that learns and remembers like a human brain is a daunting challenge. The complex organ has 86 billion neurons and trillions of connections - or synapses - that can grow stronger or weaker over time. But now scientists report the development of a first-of-its-kind synthetic synapse that mimics the plasticity of the real thing, bringing us one step closer to human-like artificial intelligence.

While the brain still holds many secrets, one thing we do know is that the flexibility, or plasticity, of neuronal synapses is a critical feature. In the synapse, many factors, including how many signaling molecules get released and the timing of release, can change. This mutability allows neurons to encode memories, learn and heal themselves. In recent years, researchers have been building artificial neurons and synapses with some success but without the flexibility needed for learning. Tian-Ling Ren and colleagues set out to address that challenge.

The researchers created an artificial synapse out of aluminum oxide and twisted bilayer graphene. By applying different electric voltages to the system, they found they could control the reaction intensity of the receiving "neuron." The team says their novel dynamic system could aid in the development of biology-inspired electronics capable of learning and self-healing.

*Original publication:*

_He Tian, Wentian Mi, Xue-Feng Wang, Haiming Zhao, Qian-Yi Xie, Cheng Li, Yu-Xing Li, Yi Yang, and Tian-Ling Ren; "Graphene Dynamic Synapse with Modulatable Plasticity"; Nano Letters; 2015_

Imitating synapses of the human brain could lead to smarter electronics

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## bobsm

*China makes breakthrough in Li-Fi technology, with speed of 50 Gbps*
English.news.cn 2015-11-13 19:51:03

BEIJING, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) -- A new Chinese breakthrough in visible light communication (VLC) technology may enable people to download a HD Hollywood movie in around 0.3 second simply using the light of a lamp.

A test conducted by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology confirmed that the real-time traffic rate of a Chinese VLC system had reached 50 gigabytes per second (Gbps), the ministry announced Friday.

The real-time speed is the highest obtained by China so far. In August 2014, media reported a group of Mexican scientists used similar technology to transmit data with speeds up to 10 Gbps.

IT expert and academic Wu Jiangxing said it will be possible to establish a huge VLC network based on the billions of bulbs and LED lighting facilities already around the globe.

"Every bulb can serve as a high-speed Internet access point (similar to a WIFI hotspot ) after VLC technology is widely applied in the future," said Wu, unable to give a specific time frame. "Imagine downloading several movies while you are waiting for a green light at a crossroad or surfing the Internet on planes and high-speed trains via the lights."

The technology is green and consumes far less energy and can secure information better than radio, which has loopholes such as signal disturbance, leaks and interception, according to the ministry.

The VLC system was developed by the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Information Engineering University and has entered a phase of "integration and micromation in design." The university succeeded in developing a wireless broadcasting system based on VLC in 2013.

The ministry and the university have not specified when the Li-Fi system will be accomplished and put into practical use.


China makes breakthrough in Li-Fi technology, with speed of 50 Gbps
- Xinhua | English.news.cn

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## cirr

*Huawei Develops New Lithium-Ion Batteries That Charge Crazy Fast, Possibly Ten Times As Quick As Normal Batteries*



Bertel King, Jr.

11 hours ago





At the 56th Battery Symposium in Japan, Huawei showed off its next generation of quick charging batteries. Huh? Yes, there's a Battery Symposium in Japan, and yes, there have been fifty-five of them in the past. Stay focused here.

Huawei says its new lithium-ion batteries can achieve charging speeds ten times faster than normal batteries.

The company has shared videos of two types of batteries. One has a 600mAh capacity and can reach 68% capacity in two minutes.

The larger battery has a capacity of 3,000mAh. It apparently takes just five minutes to reach 48%.

For comparison, Qualcomm boasts that Quick Charge 3.0 can rejuvenate a battery to a comparable level in closer to half an hour.

As for the science, Huawei says it "bonded heteroatoms to the molecule of graphite in anode, which could be a catalyst for the capture and transmission of lithium through carbon bonds." This, the company says, increases charging speed without decreasing energy density or battery life.

For now, this is just wow factor. Hopefully we see the technology make its way into smartphones, smartwatches, or something similarly smart soon enough.

Huawei Develops New Lithium-Ion Batteries That Charge Crazy Fast, Possibly Ten Times As Quick As Normal Batteries

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

* China's Invention Patent Applications Grow 21.7% in the First Three Quarters*

Recently, SIPO published data of patents in the first three quarters of 2015. In the first three quarters of 2015, China received 1.876 million applications of the three kinds of patents, up 22.0%. Among them, 709,000 were invention patent applications, up 21.7%; 779,000 were utility model patent applications, up 33.6%; 388,000 were design patent applications, up 4.4%, respectively were 37.8%, 41.5% and 20.7% of the total.

In all the invention patent applications, 610,000 were from domestic, up 24.9%; 99,000 were from overseas, up 5.1%. In the domestic invention patent applications, 492,000 were service applications, accounted for 80.7%; 118,000 were non-service applications, accounted for 19.3%.

In the first three quarters of 2015, SIPO granted 1.176 million patents of all the three kinds, up 25.8%. Among them, 248,000 were invention patents, up 46.0%; 599,000 were utility model patents, up 18.9%; 329,000 were design patents, up 26.1%.

In all the invention patents granted by SIPO, 181,000 were domestic, up 52.5%; 67,000 were from overseas, up 31.1%. In the domestic invention patents, 164,000 were service invention patents, accounted for 90.6%; 17,000 were not service invention patents, accounted for 9.4%.

According to official from SIPO, there were three characteristics in the data. Firstly, the quantity of patent applications was growing rapidly, especially the growth rate of invention patents were up 9.5 percent than last year. Secondly, invention patents granted got a high growth rate of nearly 50%, while the rates of utility model patents and design patents were both higher than invention patents. Thirdly, the proportion of domestic service invention patents applications provided a stable level of over 80%, and the proportion of service invention patents granted in domestic patents was over 90%.

SIPO is State Intellectual Property Office of China.

SIPO ENGLISH

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## bobsm

*Scientists report first measurement of antiproton interaction*
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2015-11-06 16:22

SHANGHAI - A team of physicists announced a huge breakthrough in the understanding of antimatter by being the first to measure interaction between antiprotons, hailed as a potential and powerful new source of energy.

Scientists have been aware of antiprotons, the antimatter equivalent of protons, for sometime, but it proves challenging to create sufficient antiprotons for measuring their interaction.

The team, led by Ma Yugang with Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics (SINAP) in China; and Tang Aihong with the Brookhaven National Laboratory in the US, collided gold atoms to produce abundant antiprotons and measured two important parameters of their interaction: the scattering length and the effective range.

They concluded that when two antiprotons interacted the scattering length and the effective range were consistent with proton-proton interaction, according to a paper published in the journal "Nature."

Scientists believe that almost equal amounts of matter and antimatter were created in the Big Bang, but it remains an unsolved problem why the visible universe today is composed mostly of ordinary matter.

While antimatter is rare, a huge amount of energy is released when particles collide with antiparticles, which many see as a new form of energy.

"Harnessing this form of energy can help with lighter and more powerful space engines ... a well as potential for energy and weaponry application," Ma told Xinhua.

Scientists report first measurement of antiproton interaction - China - Chinadaily.com.cn

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Plane sailing: Titanium-made aircraft may give China new edge in aviation as scientists develop method to make pure metal better than alloys*
_Scientists say new material could make Chinese aeroplanes 10 per cent tougher than Western rivals, and safer to boot, but same tech may find initial applications in surgery, implants_

PUBLISHED : Thursday, 12 November, 2015, 1:03pm
UPDATED : Thursday, 12 November, 2015, 1:59pm
Stephen Chen binglin.chen@scmp.com

A breakthrough in material science could help China make large aircraft that are at least 10 per cent tougher than their foreign competitors, with significantly less chance of metal fatigue, according to Chinese scientists.

The technology can make pure metal, such as titanium, stronger than the best alloys in use today while maintaining a high level of elasticity to “prevent catastrophic failure during service,” the research team said.

They published their findings in the _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America_.

“It would be very possible for a big [Chinese] aircraft to use our new material. That’s the purpose of our research,” said Professor Wu Xiaolei, a lead scientist of the project who works with the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Mechanics.

“A wholly titanium plane would not only be stronger, but stay longer in service, be more fuel efficient with significant weight reduction, and much, much cheaper to build,” he added.

China recently unveiled its first homegrown jetliner in Shanghai, with initial flights likely for next year. Boeing predicted last year the country will need more than 6,000 new aircraft over the next 20 years to keep pace with domestic demand as incomes grow and outbound tourism continues to surge.

Since ironsmiths discovered long ago that pure metal could be given extra strength by mixing it with other elements, alloys have come to replace pure metal in almost every sector of human industry.

For centuries, much effort was concentrated on the search for better alloys, with the list of mixing materials growing longer and the manufacturing process becoming increasingly sophisticated.

But Wu, together with Professor Zhu Yuntian from North Carolina State University in the United States, decided to head in the opposite direction.

In recent years, the rapid advancement of nano-technology has allowed scientists to develop materials from the same metal source but with very different physical traits, largely due to variations in their micro-structure.

By combining these materials, researchers found it was possible to bestow on pure metal some extraordinary physical properties.

But one nagging dilemma remained: Whether to go for greater strength or more flexibility.

Though nano-technology has helped researchers develop especially hard or flexible metals, they were unable to combine the two properties - an essential step for their real-life application.

Aircraft require both of these in a high degree as they may experience metal fatigue after extended periods of service that can potentially prove catastrophic.

It was long believed that pure metals would always be limited in their application, but Wu’s team claim to have solved the problem.

Using a new fabrication method, they brought hard and elastic titanium sheets together and created a new kind of pure titanium that is not only strong but ductile.

Their findings “provided a new principle for designing metals with mechanical properties that have not been reachable before,” the authors wrote in their paper.

Wu and his colleagues were surprised by how well the pure titanium performed compared to the alloys used in modern aircraft.

Their laboratory test results showed that the new pure material could be 15 per cent tougher than Ti6a14v - a special titanium alloy used in plane engines and structural components such as the hull and frame - and up to 20 per cent more flexible.

This meant it was much less likely to experience metal fatigue, they said.

It could also give China a strategic advantage in aviation.

The formula and manufacturing process of special alloys are among the most guarded industrial secrets by Western countries, and China has been struggling to compete with them with high-quality products of its own.

“China can make high-quality alloys, but they are not better than similar products overseas,” Wu said.

“To sell our planes and other high-end industrial products abroad, our materials must be way better than those of our competitors - and now we have a chance [to do that].”

Professor Xiong Yuexi, an expert in plane design at Beihang University in Beijing, said the new breakthrough could trigger a “revolution” in the aviation industry if the technology performs as reported.

“Materials are very important to plane manufacturers. [Using the right one] is a matter of life and death,” he said.

“I can’t wait to learn more about this new material and related technology.”

But Xiong cautioned that it could take a long time before the new material is applied to aircraft as extensive tests are first required both in the lab and field.

The new material must also prove it can handle the impact of acid rain and other environmental factors which could potentially erode it or cause other damage.

However, Wu said the new development has already caught the eye of manufacturers in China. He said part of its appeal is that it is simpler to make than most alloys.

But before it is used in planes, it may find its way onto the operating table.

“The first application of the new material will [likely] be in heart surgery,” Wu said.

“Pure titanium does not contain elements found in most alloys that can be harmful to people’s health, so it is perfect for metallic implants,” he added.

“We are working with several companies to bring the technology from the lab to people’s lives as soon as possible.”

The researchers said the technology may later be applied to other metals like iron.

“In the future we may have pure-iron cars that will be much safer and more fuel-efficient than those made with steel alloys today,” Wu said.

Plane sailing: Titanium-made aircraft may give China new edge in aviation as scientists develop method to make pure metal better than alloys | South China Morning Post

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientist solves global titanium problem*
(People's Daily Online) 14:45, November 16, 2015





By embedding ductile, large-grained columns (shown here as colors) in a harder, ultrafine-grained matrix (shown here as black), researchers were able to improve titanium's strength without impairing its ductility. (Photo provided by Prof. Zhu Yuntian)​
Zhu Yuntian, professor at the Nanjing University of Science and Technology, and his research team have developed a technique to make titanium stronger without sacrificing any of the metal’s ductility – a combination that no one has achieved before, solving a global problem in material engineering. The research outcome has been published in the PNAS - the official scientific journal of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers believe the technique could also be used for other metals, and the advance has potential applications for creating more energy-efficient vehicles.

"Historically, a material is either strong or ductile, but almost never both at the same time,” says Yuntian Zhu, “We’ve managed to get the best of both worlds. This will allow us to create strong materials for use in making lighter vehicles, but that are sufficiently ductile to prevent the material from suffering catastrophic failure under strain."

The key idea here is grain size, or the size of the crystals in the metal. Metals with a small grain size are stronger – meaning they can withstand more force before they start to deform. But metals with a small grain size are also less ductile, which means they can withstand less strain before breaking. Materials that aren’t ductile won’t bend or stretch much – they just snap. Conversely, metals with a large grain size are more ductile, but have lower strength.

The new technique manipulates the grain size to give the metal the strength of ultrafine-grained titanium but the ductility of coarse-grained titanium.

"In addition to creating a metal with an unprecedented combination of strength and ductility, this material has higher strain hardening than coarse-grained titanium – which was thought impossible," says X.L. Wu, co-corresponding and first author of the paper, based at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Mechanics.

Wu and Zhu are already working on projects to confirm whether this technique will work for other metals and alloys.

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## JSCh

* Tianhe-2 retains world's most powerful supercomputer*
Xinhua, November 17, 2015

China's Tianhe-2 supercomputer has retained its position as the world's most powerful system for the sixth consecutive time, according to a biannual Top500 list of supercomputers released Monday.





Photo taken on June 16, 2013 shows the supercomputer Tianhe-2 developed by China's National University of Defense Technology. The supercomputer Tianhe-2, capable of operating as fast as 33.86 petaflops per second, was ranked on Monday as the world's fastest computing system, according to TOP500, a project ranking the 500 most powerful computer systems in the world. [Photo: Xinhua] ​
Tianhe-2, or Milky Way 2, with a performance of 33.86 petaflops per second (Pflop/s), was developed by China's National University of Defense Technology and deployed at the National Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou. It has held the title since June 2013.

The Chinese system is almost twice as fast as the next on the list, Titan of the U.S. Department of Energy, which has a performance of 17.59 Pflop/s.

In fact, there has been no change among the ranking of the world's top5 supercomputers since June 2013 in the latest edition of the closely watched list.

"The top five computers are very powerful and expensive," Jack Dongarra, professor of the University of Tennessee and editor of the report, said in an email. "It will take perhaps another year before a new system enters the top five."

Among the significant changes to this list from July 2015's list is the sharp decline in the number of systems in the United States, now at 201.

"This is down from 231 in July and is the lowest number of systems installed in the U.S. since the list was started in 1993," the statement said.

In contrast, China made "a great leap" to 109 systems.

"China received a big boost from Sugon, Lenovo and Inspur," said Dongarra. "The large number of submissions came from Sugon."

According to the Top500 statement, Sugon has overtaken IBM in the system category with 49 systems, while Lenovo, which acquired IBM's x86 server business last year, has 25 systems in the list, up from just three systems on the July 2015 list.

In addition, some systems that were previously listed as IBM are now labeled as both IBM/Lenovo and Lenovo/IBM.

Inspur, the third vendor from China, now has 15 systems on the list.

"China is ... carving out a bigger share as a manufacturer of high performance computers with multiple Chinese manufacturers becoming more active in this field," the statement concluded.

Overall, HP leads the list with 156 systems followed by Cray with 69 systems and China's Sugon with 49 systems. IBM ranks fourth with 45 systems. Lenovo ranked sixth while Inspur ranked eighth on the list.

The Top500 list is considered one of the most authoritative rankings of the world's supercomputers. It is compiled on the basis of the machines' performance on the Linpack benchmark by experts from the United States and Germany.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## Martian2

*Chinese indigenous Tunnel Boring Machines (TBMs)*

Many Chinese companies manufacture Tunnel Boring Machines (TBMs). Examples include TBMs by Gansu Construction Equipment Manufacturing Co., China Railway Tunneling Equipment Co., and Wuhan Machine Equipment Co.

Gansu takes the lead to make shield TBM - China - Chinadaily.com.cn





----------

Xiamen invites public to name tunnel boring machine for Metro Line 1





----------

Tunnel Boring Machine - China Tunnel Boring Machine - Tunnelling Shield - China Tunnelling Shield

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## bobsm

*Chinese scholar wins Germany's top research award*

BERLIN, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scholar Zhuang Xiaoying, along with 5 other international researchers, have received one of Germany's most valuable research awards, according to the awards' sponsor.

Winners of the 2015 Sofja Kovalevskaja Awards will each receive up to 1.65 million euros (1.71 million U.S. dollars) in award money to establish their own research groups in Germany, according to the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, which chose six researchers aged between 31 and 33 to receive the award this year.

Zhuang Xiaoying, associate professor of College of Civil Engineering at Tongji University, is the seventh Chinese to win this award since 2002.

The 32-year-old said at the awards ceremony that she would start her research project focusing on nano-composite materials in December at the Institute of Continuum Mechanics, University of Hannover.

She said she aims to help engineers and scientists design a new generation of composite materials by designing an open source computer simulation platform.

"I want to be able to design an analytical framework for multi-scale materials to support the design of the next generation of nano-materials," Zhuang said.

The president of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Helmut Schwarz said Zhuang performed very well in research, and her study and research experience in China, Britain and Norway also made her a deserving candidate.

The previous six Chinese award-winners have successfully completed their work in Germany, said Schwarz, adding "we are very satisfied with their performance."

The Sofja Kovalevskaja Award, financed by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, aims to integrate internationally sought-after research talents into collaborations with academics in Germany at the beginning of their promising careers.

Scientists and scholars of all disciplines from abroad who have completed their doctorates within the last six years are eligible to apply.

Chinese scholar wins Germany's top research award | GlobalPost

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## TaiShang

*208-meter-high elevator holds three world records*
November 19, 2015

An outdoor elevator installed on a mountain has received three world record certifications by the World Record Association (WRA) in one day, reported chinanews.com on Wednesday.




The elevator is 208 meters in height and entirely outdoors. [Photo/Chinanews.com]

The elevator has become a must-ride when visiting Taihang Mountain in Shanxi province since it opened in October.

It can take a maximum of 21 people for one trip that takes about 52 seconds. While riding the elevator, people can enjoy a thrilling panoramic view of Taihang Mountain, one of the ten most beautiful valleys in China.

On November 17, it became certified as the world's tallest outdoor sightseeing elevator, the world's fastest outdoor multi-level sightseeing elevator on a cliff, and the world's highest multi-level transparent sightseeing platform on a cliff.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*Smart supercapacitor fiber with shape memory*
_November 20, 2015_

Wearing your mobile phone display on your jacket sleeve or an EKG probe in your sports kit are not off in some distant imagined future. Wearable "electronic textiles" are on the way. In the journal _Angewandte Chemie_, Chinese researchers have now introduced a new type of fiber-shaped supercapacitor for energy-storage textiles. Thanks to their shape memory, these textiles could potentially adapt to different body types: shapes formed by stretching and bending remain "frozen", but can be returned to their original form or reshaped as desired.

Any electronic components designed to be integrated into textiles must be stretchable and bendable. This is also true of the supercapacitors that are frequently used for data preservation in static storage systems (SRAM). SRAM is a type of storage that holds a small amount of data that is rapidly retrievable. It is often used for caches in processors or local storage on chips in devices whose data must be stored for long periods without a constant power supply. Some time ago, a team headed by Huisheng Peng at Fudan University developed stretchable, pliable fiber-shaped supercapacitors for integration into electronic textiles. Peng and his co-workers have now made further progress: supercapacitor fibers with shape memory.

The fibers are made using a core of polyurethane fiber with shape memory. This fiber is wrapped with a thin layer of parallel carbon nanotubes like a sheet of paper. This is followed by a coating of electrolyte gel, a second sheet of carbon nanotubes, and a final layer of electrolyte gel. The two layers of carbon nanotubes act as electrodes for the supercapacitor. Above a certain temperature, the fibers produced in this process can be bent as desired and stretched to twice their original length. The new shape can be "frozen" by cooling. Reheating allows the fibers to return to their original shape and size, after which they can be reshaped again. The electrochemical performance is fully maintained through all shape changes.

Weaving the fibers into tissues results in "smart" textiles that could be tailored to fit the bodies of different people. This could be used to make precisely fitted but reusable electronic monitoring systems for patients in hospitals, for example. The perfect fit should render them both more comfortable and more reliable.

*More information:* Jue Deng et al. A Shape-Memory Supercapacitor Fiber, _Angewandte Chemie International Edition_ (2015). DOI: 10.1002/anie.201508293

Smart supercapacitor fiber with shape memory

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## Martian2

China’s Long March 3B rocket successfully launches first Laotian satellite - SpaceFlight Insider

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## Martian2

Coal-to-chemicals grows in China, technology exports considered | Plastics News

"The Chinese have successfully converted coal to olefins at a cost of $20 to $25 per ton at facilities in remote coal-rich regions."

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## zeronet

Martian2 said:


> Coal-to-chemicals grows in China, technology exports considered | Plastics News
> 
> "The Chinese have successfully converted coal to olefins at a cost of $20 to $25 per ton at facilities in remote coal-rich regions."


if similar cost can be achieved to coal's liquid conversion, $20~25 per ton meaning $3~4 per barrel for conversion cost. , the total cost of converted liquid could be controlled under $10/barrel for produced crude oil, almost as cheap as Saudi's average $7/barrel, much cheaper than American's shale oil. That's a great news for all coal-rich countries in the world. The major problem is the environmental affect, if it is no worse than shale oil production, then that's very acceptable. Geez, the middle east oil rich countries will be on grill with so many new technologies such as shale oil, coal oil, and green energies suddenly coming out of nowhere.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## Beast

zeronet said:


> $20~25 per ton meaning $3~4 per barrel for conversion cost, the total cost could be controlled under $10/barrel for produced crude oil, almost as cheap as Saudi's average $7/barrel, much cheaper than American's shale oil. That's a great news for all coal-rich countries in the world. The major problem is the environmental affect, if it is no worse than shale oil production, then that's very acceptable. Geez, the middle east oil rich countries will be on grill with so many new technologies such as shale oil, coal oil, and green energies suddenly coming out of nowhere.



The era of fossil fuel is almost certainly coming to an end.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Solid electrolyte interphases on lithium metal anode*
_November 23, 2015 
_




​The prestigious _Advanced Science_ journal has just published a review paper on solid electrolyte interphases of lithium metal anodes contributed by Prof. Qiang Zhang in Tsinghua University, China and Ji-Guang Zhang in Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

"Lithium (Li) metal is regarded as the 'Holy Grail' of rechargeable battery technologies due to the high theoretical specific capacity, 3860 mA h g-1, 10 times that of commercial graphite anode, and the lowest redox potential, -3.040 V vs. the standard hydrogen electrode. Therefore, lithium metal batteries, such as lithium-sulfur and lithium-oxygen batteries with the theoretical energy density of 2600 and 3400 Wh kg-1, could be promising candidates in next-generation energy storage devices," said Dr. Qiang Zhang, an associate professor at Department of Chemical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.

"However, the safe use of lithium metal as an anode is still a great challenge, for the dendritic and mossy metal deposits are very easily obtained on working lithium metal anode. Lithium dendrites induce a low Coulombic efficiency and severe safety risk, hindering the practical demonstration of high-energy-density lithium metal batteries. The dendrite nucleation and growth are closely related to the surface layer between the electrolyte and anode, called the solid electrolyte interphase (SEI). The surface component and structure of the SEI layer play an extremely important effect on the morphology of lithium deposits and decide the cycling performance of lithium metal anode. Consequently, it is of great importance to have a deep understanding on the SEI layer."

"The recent achievements on the SEI layer of the lithium metal anode are highlighted in my manuscript," said Xin-Bing Cheng, a graduate student and the first author of the review, "We have briefly summarized the mechanisms of SEI formation and models of SEI structure. The analysis methods to probe the surface chemistry, surface morphology, electrochemical property, dynamic characteristics of the SEI layer are emphasized. The critical factors affecting the SEI formation, such as electrolyte component, temperature, current density, are comprehensively debated. The paper summarizes efficient methods to modify the SEI layer with the introduction of a new electrolyte system and additives, ex-situ formed protective layer, and electrode design."

Although these works afford new insights into SEI research, a robust and precise route for SEI modification with a well-designed structure, as well as the relationship between structure, properties, and electrochemical performance, is still inadequate. More studies on SEI layer building require collaborative works from physics, chemistry, nanomaterials, and engineering communities.

"Through further investigation on the science and engineering of SEI on lithium metal, the use of lithium metal as a superior anode in a rechargeable cell is quite promising. The ultra-stable and robust SEI will enable broad applications of rechargeable Li metal in advanced Li–S batteries, Li–air batteries, and other advanced Li batteries," Qiang told Phys.org.

*More information:* Xin-Bing Cheng et al. A Review of Solid Electrolyte Interphases on Lithium Metal Anode, _Advanced Science_ (2015). DOI: 10.1002/advs.201500213

*Provided by:* Tsinghua University

Solid electrolyte interphases on lithium metal anode

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## Martian2

Taiwanese researchers use nanoparticles to produce algae biodiesel : Biofuels Digest

"The new method can extract 97.1 percent of the fats for conversion into biodiesel compared to less than 60 percent using existing technology."

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Spotlight on Optics*
Highlighted Articles from OSA Journals

*October 2015*

Spotlight Summary by Taek Yong Hwang
*High-energy large-aperture Ti:sapphire amplifier for 5 PW laser pulses*

Ultrafast lasers have contributed to expanding continuously our understanding of light-matter interactions with an increase in their peak power. Historically, to generate ultrafast laser pulses with a higher peak power, laser scientists put great efforts on amplifying the energy of pulse without creating any nonlinear effects or damages in the amplifier, while keeping the final output pulse duration nearly the same as that before amplification. These efforts eventually led to the invention of chirped pulse amplification (CPA) technique in 1985, significantly elevating the achievable peak power of ultrafast laser pulses by stretching out the seed pulse prior to amplification and then compressing the amplified pulse into nearly original seed pulse duration. Currently, the CPA technique is used even in a state of the art petawatt level femtosecond laser system by employing a series of amplifiers.

To further boost the peak power of the output laser pulse without adding additional amplifiers, a larger aperture Ti:sapphire crystal can be used in the amplifiers. However, using a larger aperture crystal will significantly increase the chance of inducing transverse amplified spontaneous emission (TASE) and parasitic lasing (PL), and the suppression of these two are essential to avoid deteriorating the efficiency of amplification. In this Optics Letters article, Yuxi Chu et al. use two traditional techniques, a matched index cladding and transverse gain control techniques, in the multipass (4 passes) amplifiers pumped with two high-energy pulses (527 nm), and search for optimal conditions to suppress TASE and PL effectively. First, the authors apply absorber-doped index-matching oil as the cladding of the Ti:sapphire crystal. This index-matching oil highly increases the transmittance at the crystal-oil interface by reducing the difference in index of refraction at the interface, and the absorber in the oil absorbs the transmitted emission from the crystal. This eventually results in reducing TASE and PL by enhancing the loss of emission. Next, the control of transverse gain in the crystal is used for further optimization by adjusting the pump-seed time delay during 4 passes of amplification. At each seed-pulse energy, the authors also show that the delay needs to be re-optimized, since the injected seed pulse affects the transverse gain. With these two optimization processes, considering a loss of 28% at the pulse compressor, the authors for the first time demonstrate an output pulse energy of 138.5 J at the maximum peak power of 5.13 PW with the Ti:sapphire laser system.

In summary, the authors successfully describe how to implement a large-aperture Ti:sapphire crystal in a petawatt laser system, and how to generate hundred-joule level pulses by effectively suppressing the TASE and PL through the optimization of the matched index cladding and transverse gain control techniques. As the authors note, the peak power of ultrafast laser pulses can potentially be increased further with these optimization techniques, because a larger aperture of Ti:sapphire crystal can be easily employed.



*Article Reference*

*High-energy large-aperture Ti:sapphire amplifier for 5 PW laser pulses*
Yuxi Chu, Zebiao Gan, Xiaoyan Liang, Lianghong Yu, Xiaoming Lu, Cheng Wang, Xinliang Wang, Lu Xu, Haihe Lu, Dingjun Yin, Yuxin Leng, Ruxin Li, and Zhizhan Xu
Opt. Lett. *40*(21) 5011-5014 (2015) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

OSA | Spotlight on Optics


*Abstract*
We report on the generation of 192.3 J centered at 800 nm wavelength from a chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) Ti:sapphire laser system. The experimental results demonstrate that parasitic lasing can be suppressed successfully in the final amplifier based on a Ti:sapphire crystal of 150 mm in diameter. An over 50% pump-to-signal conversion efficiency was measured for the final amplifier by optimizing the time delay of two pump pulses and enhancing the injected seed energy. With 72% compressor throughput efficiency and 27 fs long compressed pulse duration obtained at a lower energy level, this laser could potentially support a compressed laser pulse of 5.13 PW peak power. The experimental results represent notable progress regarding the CPA laser.

© 2015 Optical Society of America​

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## bobsm

*Chinese astronomers shed new light on black hole emissions*

English.news.cn 2015-11-26 21:05:03

BEIJING, Nov. 26 (Xinhua) -- Chinese astronomers have discovered a new explanation for how black holes form and project jets of matter, marking one of the most significant findings in the field this year.

The formation of relativistic jets - streams of matter emitted nearing the speed of light - and accretion - the accumulation of cosmic dust particles near a black hole - remain one of the biggest mysteries of astrophysics.

Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) used the Great Canary Telescope in Spain and the Keck Observatory in the United States to monitor a black hole in the M81 galaxy hundreds of millions of light-years away from earth.

They unexpectedly discovered the black hole was emitting ultraluminous supersoft X-rays at velocities around 17 percent the speed of light.

"Most of astronomers didn't expect black holes to produce supersoft X-ray spectra by gobbling matter," said Liu Jifeng, a professor at CAS and a researcher at the National Astronomical Observatories under CAS, who led the research team.

"And they believed relativistic jets would only be produced by sources with soft, or low-energy, X-ray spectra or hard, high-energy, X-ray spectra."

"The new findings have provided a new perspective for astronomers to look into black hole accretion and the formation of jets," Liu said.

The teams research was recently published in top science journal Nature.

In recent years, Chinese astronomers have published several major findings in the world's top science journals, showcasing China's progress and great potential in the study and research of astronomy, said Yan Jun, the head of the National Astronomical Observatories.

Chinese astronomers shed new light on black hole emissions - Xinhua | English.news.cn

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*North Sea semi-submersible drilling rig delivered in Shandong(1/3)*
2015-11-27 08:37 Xinhua
















Photo taken on Nov. 26, 2015 shows the North Dragon, a North Sea semi-submersible drilling rig delivered by CIMC Raffles to North Sea Rigs AS in Yantai, east China's Shandong Province. North Dragon, which is the first semi-submersible drilling rig ever built by China having the capacity of operating in the Arctic area, is designed to operate in water depths of 500 meters, up to 1,200 meters and drill to depths of 8,000 meters. (Photo: Xinhua/Tang Ke)​

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## JSCh

*Researchers discover how to manipulate nanomaterials*
chinadaily.com.cn 2015-11-27 16:34




Xi'an Jiaotong University, one of China's top universities based in Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi province, recently found a new method to significantly control the morphology and properties of micro/nano scale Zinc Oxide.

The method was found with advanced in situ transmission electron microscopy technology by the researchers of the school's micro/nano scale material behavior research center, and has significant implications for the application of ZnO nanowires in nano devices such as nano generators.

This research result has recently been published online in the top journal of the material field (NanoLetters,DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b02852).

ZnO nanostructures have received wide attention in the world because of their excellent physical and chemical proerties, good biocompatibility and easy preparation, and they have broad potential applications in electronics, sensing, luminescence, power generation and biomedicine.

The testing of the ZnO nano structure and the overall performance is developing fast, but the material's performance has varied greatly in different research teams' results. The analysis showed that these differences were likely to be derived from the differences in material compositions, but the literature survey showed that there was little research on the relationship between the growth conditions and the properties of ZnO nanowires.

In view of the above problems, Wang Xiaoguang, doctoral student at the university's micro and nano center, found that the nanowires with circular and hexagonal cross sections can be obtained by slight adjustment of nanowire growth conditions after four years of research under the guidance of his advisoer Shan Zhiwei.

Other researchers involved in the research include the center's associate professor Chen Kai, doctoral student Zhang Yongqiang, master's degree student Wan Jingchun, professor Li Ju, professor Ma En and Dr. Oden Warren and Dr. Jason Oh at U.S. Hysitron company.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*New membrane improves energy harvesting by reverse electrodialysis*
November 30, 2015 by Lisa Zyga




In the engineered asymmetric heterogeneous membrane, one type of asymmetry is the pore geometry of the PET membrane—as shown in b and c, the conical pores have a large opening on one side and a small opening on the other side of the membrane. The BCP membrane has pores of various sizes, as shown in d and e. Credit: Zhang, et al. ©2015 American Chemical Society 

(Phys.org)—Researchers have constructed a new type of nanoporous membrane that does an exceptionally good job at selectively controlling ion transport—for instance, allowing negatively charged ions to pass through the pores, while prohibiting the passage of positively charged ions. To demonstrate one possible application, the researchers developed the membrane into an energy conversion device that harvests energy using its ability to separate charged particles. The technique is very similar to reverse electrodialysis, but the membrane's structure eliminates one of the limitations of traditional reverse electrodialysis, resulting in increased power generation.

The scientists, Zhen Zhang and Liping Wen from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and their coauthors, have published a paper on the new membrane in a recent issue of the _Journal of the American Chemical Society_.

The researchers describe the new membrane as an "engineered asymmetric heterogeneous membrane": "engineered" because it is a robust version of the fragile cell membranes used in living organisms, "asymmetric" because each side of the membrane filters the ions differently, and "heterogeneous" because each side is composed of a different material. Here, the researchers used two types of polymer materials: block copolymer (BCP) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Although not all asymmetric membranes are heterogeneous, heterogeneous ones have certain advantages such as being easier to fabricate and offering greater multifunctionality than asymmetric membranes made of a single material.

The greatest feature of the new membrane is that it promotes ion transport in one direction and inhibits it in the other direction. As a result, a much larger current is generated in one direction across the membrane than in the opposite direction, which is called "ionic current rectification." The new membrane has a rectification ratio of about 1075, which is more than twice the highest ratio reported to date. As the rectification ratio represents an asymmetric flow of charge, it arises from asymmetries in the new membrane (including chemical, geometrical, and charge asymmetries), and is highly desirable for various applications.

"This behavior is similar to the mechanism of semiconductor diodes for controlling the transport of electrons, and it represents the ability of directionally delivering specific types and controllable amounts of molecules or ions," Wen told _Phys.org_.

"It will open a new way to handle molecular or ion species in fluid and show broad application prospects in many fields. Similar to the semiconductor electronic circuits, the nanofluidic diode with a high rectification ratio represents the key building block for ionic circuits, which would allow for regulating, sensing, concentrating, and separating ions and molecules in electrolyte solutions. Also, in asymmetric-membrane-based photoelectric energy conversion systems, a high rectification ratio is favored, as the opposite transmembrane ionic transport will suppress the power density."

As an energy conversion device, the new membrane functions similar to reverse electrodialysis, in which energy can be harvested from the differences in the ion concentration (for example, negatively charged chlorine ions and positively charged potassium ions) on opposite sides of the membrane. Under a concentration gradient, the chlorine ions spontaneously diffuse across the membrane in order to lower the concentration gradient, and the energy generated by the current produced by the ion diffusion can be harvested.

The researchers predict that the new membrane can produce a power output of thousands of watts per square meter, which is equivalent to and potentially exceeding that generated by some commercially available reverse electrodialysis membranes. When investigating the reason for this high performance, the researchers found that the new membrane's asymmetries allow it to eliminate the "concentration polarization" problem that hinders traditional reverse electrodialysis membranes. The problem is that, on the side of the membrane with the low concentration of chlorine ions, the chlorine ions tend to clump together at the positively charged pore openings. This clumping creates a higher concentration of chlorine ions near the pore openings than in the bulk solution, which makes the concentration difference across the membrane seem lower than it actually is, causing fewer chlorine ions to diffuse across the membrane.

The new membrane not only eliminates this problem, but it actually make the chlorine ion concentration near the pore openings lower than in the bulk concentration, which promotes ion diffusion. The researchers attribute this advantage to the membrane's asymmetric structure and slightly negatively charged pores, in contrast to the symmetric structure and positively charged pore openings of traditional membranes.

"When the new developed membrane is applied in salinity gradient power generation, the output power density can be increased considerably due to the fact that the concentration polarization phenomenon that commonly exists in traditional reverse electrodialysis can be eliminated using the asymmetric bipolar structure, which provides guidance on the current ion-exchange-membrane-based energy conversion systems," Wen said.

In the future, the researchers hope to further improve the membranes so that they can be used for applications including power generation, water purification, and desalination.

"We would like to develop ionic diode membranes with more powerful functions by optimizing the composition of the selective membrane, increasing the porosity, and reducing the cost, which will finally meet the requirements for real-world applications," Wen said.

*More information:* Zhen Zhang, et al. "Engineered Asymmetric Heterogeneous Membrane: A Concentration-Gradient-Driven Energy Harvesting Device." _J. Am. Chem. Soc_., Article ASAP. DOI: 10.1021/jacs.5b09918

New membrane improves energy harvesting by reverse electrodialysis

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Oldest Peach Pits Found in China *
Dec 1, 2015 02:03 PM ET // by  Rossella Lorenzi 





These are the fossilized peach pits.
Scientific Reports/Creative Commons​

The oldest peach pits have been found near a bus station in China, according to a new study that sheds new light on the little-known evolutionary history of the fruit.

The eight fossilized peach endocarps, or pits, date back more than two and a half million years. They were found by Tao Su, associate professor at Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, when road construction near his house in Kunming, capital of Yunnan in southwest China, exposed a rock outcrop from the late Pliocene.

Preserved within the Pliocene layers, the fossils looked “strikingly modern,” according to Su. With colleague Peter Wilf, a professor of paleobotany at Pennsylvania State University, and others, Su detailed his findings last week in Scientific Reports.

“The fossils are identical to modern peach endocarps, including size comparable to smaller modern varieties, a single seed, a deep dorsal groove, and presence of deep pits and furrows,” the researchers wrote.

The discovery suggests that peaches, juicy and sweet, much like the ones we eat today, were a popular snack long before the humans arrived on the scene.

After analyzing the morphological characters of the pits, the researchers concluded they belonged to the genus Prunus and proposed a new species name, _Prunus kunmingensis._

“We aim to provide an unambiguous epithet for the fossils in the absence of a whole-plant reconstruction,” the researchers said.

A popular tree fruit worldwide, with an annual production near 20 million tons, peach (_Prunus persica_) is widely believed to have originated in China. However, much of the evolutionary history of the fruit remains unknown.

The oldest evidence had been found within archaeological records dating back roughly 8,000 years, but no wild population has ever been found.

The discovery of _Prunus kunmingensis_ supports the belief that the peach originated in China.

“The peach was a witness to the human colonization of China. It was there before humans, and through history we adapted to it and it to us,” Wilf said.

Several tests carried out at Penn State University confirmed that the pits, preserved in the Pliocene rocks along with many other plant fossils, are more than 2.5 million years old.

Electron microscope analysis showed that the seeds inside the flattened pits were mostly replaced by iron oxides, while radiocarbon dating of the fossils showed them to be older than the range of radiocarbon dating, which is about 50,000 years.

The researchers explained that peaches evolved their modern morphology under natural selection, with animals and primates snacking on the fleshy fruit and dispersing their seeds.

Much later, peach size and variety increased through domestication and breeding.

So what did _Prunus kunmingensis_ look like? Su and colleagues compared the size correlation between pits and fruits in modern peaches, and concluded that the size of the fruit in the late Pliocene was about 5.2 cm (2.05 inches) in diameter.

“If you imagine the smallest commercial peach today, that’s what these would look like,” Wilf said.

“It’s something that would have had a fleshy, edible fruit around it,” he said. “It must have been delicious.”

Oldest Peach Pits Found in China : Discovery News

*************************
Maybe that is why peach feature frequently in Chinese traditional folklore and legend and in present day custom too.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Martian2

*Taiwan's Plasmon-Coupled Organic Light Emitting Diode (PCOLED) lasts 27 times longer than OLED*

Forget OLED: Taiwan-Based ITRI Unveils PCOLED With Display Lifetime Longer By 27 Times | Tech Times

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## antonius123

Martian2 said:


> *Taiwan's Plasmon-Coupled Organic Light Emitting Diode (PCOLED) lasts 27 times longer than OLED*
> 
> Forget OLED: Taiwan-Based ITRI Unveils PCOLED With Display Lifetime Longer By 27 Times | Tech Times





How about ULED?

Is ULED better than OLED? Hisense launch XT910 4K TV | AVForums

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Martian2

*Taiwan-made cancer drug gains landmark FDA approval in U.S. | Focus Taiwan*

A Taiwan-developed cancer drug (called Onivyde) "could raise the five-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer patients from 6 percent to 50 percent." Onivyde was developed by Taiwan's National Health Research Institutes (NHRI).

Taiwan-made cancer drug gains landmark FDA approval in U.S. | Society | FOCUS TAIWAN - CNA ENGLISH NEWS

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## JSCh

*800 mln cubic meters south-north water delivered to Beijing*
Xinhua, 2015-12-04 15:10

A total of 812 million cubic meters of water from the south-to-north water diversion project have been delivered to Beijing as of Thursday, the municipal authorities announced on Friday.

The number is expected to reach 880 million cubic meters by the end of this year, said Sun Guosheng, director of the project's Beijing office.

Designed to take water from China's longest river, the Yangtze, through eastern, middle and western routes to feed dry areas in the north, the water diversion project now provides 70 percent of Beijing's water supply. It reaches downtown areas and suburban districts including Daxing and Mentougou, benefiting more than 10 million residents, according to Guo.

Per capita water resources in the city has surged from 100 cubic meters to 150 cubic meters since the project went into operation last December, Guo said.

"The project has secured water resources for the capital while protecting underground water resources," Guo added.

*The water diversion project is the world's largest at an estimated cost of 500 billion yuan (about 82 billion U.S. dollars). It was officially approved by the State Council, China's Cabinet, in 2002, five decades after late Chairman Mao Zedong came up with the idea.*

The middle route, which provides the primary flow to the capital, began supplying water on Dec. 12, 2014 as part of the project's first phase. It begins at Danjiangkou Reservoir in central Hubei Province and runs across Henan and Hebei provinces before reaching Beijing and Tianjin. It has benefited approximately 34 million residents along the route.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*Engine uses debris as propellant in concept to clean space junk*
December 6, 2015 by Nancy Owano



Debris engine. Credit: arXiv:1511.07246 [astro-ph.IM]​
Space debris is a pressing problem for Earth-orbiting spacecraft, and it could get significantly worse. It threatens satellites and craft; now scientists at Tsinghua University in Beijing are looking at an approach that could draw more attention among those looking for solutions.

Space debris refers to an unhappy situation resulting from human activities in the space—defunct rockets and satellites, ejection from rockets and spacecraft, the waste of manned space missions and products of collisions from other debris.

A collision between space junk and an operating satellite can result in the loss of equipment worth hundreds of millions of dollars, along with the general business disruptions.

Actually, "problem" is too light a word. _MIT Technology Review_ illustrated the serious effects of space debris with an incident in 2009 which involved an Iridium communications satellite and a defunct Russian satellite. A high speed collision caused space debris such that the "impact created over 1,000 fragments greater than 10 centimeters in size and a much larger number of smaller pieces. This debris spread out around the planet in a deadly cloud." The situation could get worse.

In an arXiv paper reported on by _MIT Technology Review,_ three scientists, Lei Lan, Jingyang Li and Hexi Baoyin wrote about their work in the paper titled "Debris Engine: A Potential Thruster for Space Debris Removal."

The authors noted that as more and more satellites have come into service, the threat to in-orbit satellites coming from more and more space debris have been grimmer.

What about a spacecraft that could convert junk to fuel? Cleaning up the skies? Their design concept calls for debris as the propellant.

Christopher Klimovski wrote in _Engadget_ that the concept involves a spacecraft that collects the debris "in a wide-cast net and uses it as fuel to propel itself forward. This technically means it could keep cleaning forever, unless an unforeseen event brings its efforts to an untimely end."

Lindsey Kratochwill in _Popular Science_: "The concept, posted to arXiv, details an engine that could ingest debris, break it into tiny pieces (if it happens to be a large chunk), and then grind it (or blast with a laser) into a powder. Heating that powder up could then render it into a plasma, to be used as fuel."

Why not lasers? The limitation with lasers, said Klimovski, is that that they are designed for smaller bits. The smaller bits are difficult to find.

"Pieces that are less than 10cm (approximately four inches) in size are caught in a net and then passed through a ball mill. This is a rotating cylinder that pulverizes the junk into a fine powder. It is then heated and passed through a system that sorts out the positive from the negatively charged ions. The positive are pushed through an electric field which increases their overall energy, generating thrust, while the negative are expelled into the surrounding space."

At present, major space organizations are monitoring debris but elimination is a theoretical target, said the authors of the paper.

They said that "Huge fuel consumption is the biggest inhibitor to space cleaners' lifetime and makes the mission cost increase sharply. Why don't we just obliterate the debris in the space locally and make full use it, so that fuel used to come back to inner atmosphere can be saved for cleaners."

_MIT Technology Review_ discussed their paper and raised the question about a source of power. It said, "while the spacecraft does not need to carry propellant, it will need a source of power. Just where this will come from isn't clear. Lei and co say that solar and nuclear power will suffice but do not address the serious concerns that any nuclear-powered spacecraft in Earth orbit will generate." Still, "the work provides food for thought. Space debris is an issue that looks likely to get significantly worse in the near future. It is an area where new ideas are desperately needed before the next big collision fills Earth's orbits with even more debris."

Elsewhere, in a report earlier this month from the AAP (Australian Associated Press), Canberra-based EOS Space Systems' chief executive, Professor Craig Smith, said the amount of space junk was growing at an alarming rate as junk collides with other junk. Even a tiny piece of junk travelling at high velocity can punch a hole through an operating satellite, making it inoperable.

*More information:* Debris Engine: A Potential Thruster for Space Debris Removal, arXiv:1511.07246 [astro-ph.IM] arxiv.org/abs/1511.07246

*Abstract*
We present a design concept for a space engine that can continuously remove the orbit debris by using the debris as a propellant. Space robotic cleaner is adopted to capture the targeting debris and to transfer them into the engine. Debris with larger size is first disintegrated into small pieces by using a mechanical method. The planetary ball mill is then adopted to grind the pieces into micrometer or smaller powder. The energy needed in this process is get from the nuclear and solar power. By the effect of gamma-ray photoelectric or the behavior of tangently rub of tungsten needles, the debris powered is charged. This behavior can be used to speed up the movement of powder in a tandem electrostatic particle accelerator. By ejecting the high-temperture and high-pressure charged powered from the nozzle of the engine,the continuously thrust is obtained. This thrust can be used to perform orbital maneuver and debris rendezvous for the spacecraft and robotic cleaner. The ejected charged particle will be blown away from the circumterrestrial orbit by the solar wind. By digesting the space debris, we obtain not only the previous thrust but also the clean space. In the near future, start trek will not just a dream, human exploration will extend to deep universe. The analysis shown, the magnitude of the specific impulse for debris engine is determined by the accelerating electrostatic potential and the charge-to-mass ratio of the powder.​
© 2015 Tech Xplore

Engine uses debris as propellant in concept to clean space junk

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists to transform castor oil into jet fuel*
2015-12-07 14:21, Ecns.cn _Editor: Feng Shuang
_




(File photo of castor)​
(ECNS) -- A team from China's Nankai University has announced that they are able to make jet fuel out of castor oil, aiming at the production of tens of thousands of tons next year.

The team led by professor Li Wei had their research results published in the international journal Bioresource Technology.

Currently, most planes are burning fossil fuels that causes air pollution. Li said bio fuels could help cut emissions of sulfur and carbon by half, and largely ease the "carbon tax" burden on the Chinese aviation industry, the world's largest civil plane market.

Li said teams in the United States and Israel have explored possibilities with castor oil but failed. The team can now make one ton of fuel with less than 1.3 tons of castor oil, with a cost of less than 150,000 yuan ($23,400).

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Martian2

*Latest Nature Index*

The Nature Index is the best yardstick to measure quality scientific research in different countries. The Nature Index represents the research published in 68 highly-reputable science journals (see citation below in underlined red text).

FAQ | Nature Index





----------

This is the most updated Nature Index from September 2014 to August 2015.

Country outputs | Nature Index





----------

This is the older Nature Index from September 2013 to August 2014.

Top 100 countries : Nature Index tables : Nature : Nature Publishing Group

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Beidou2020

Martian2 said:


> *Latest Nature Index*
> 
> The Nature Index is the best yardstick to measure quality scientific research in different countries. The Nature Index represents the research published in 68 highly-reputable science journals (see citation below in underlined red text).
> 
> FAQ | Nature Index
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ----------
> 
> This is the most updated Nature Index from September 2014 to August 2015.
> 
> Country outputs | Nature Index
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ----------
> 
> This is the older Nature Index from September 2013 to August 2014.
> 
> Top 100 countries : Nature Index tables : Nature : Nature Publishing Group



You should create a separate thread for this so people can discuss. It get lost in this thread.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Martian2

Beidou2020 said:


> You should create a separate thread for this so people can discuss. It get lost in this thread.


Okay, I'll do it because of your request.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Beidou2020

Martian2 said:


> Okay, I'll do it because of your request.



Really important topics like this one and high-tech exports deserve a thread of their own. People need to know the success of China. By putting it here, no one realises it and thinks China is not progressing.

Don't be afraid to create new threads. Taishang and I do it all the time. Only then do people actually read it.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Martian2

Beidou2020 said:


> Really important topics like this one and high-tech exports deserve a thread of their own. People need to know the success of China. By putting it here, no one realises it and thinks China is not progressing.
> 
> Don't be afraid to create new threads. Taishang and I do it all the time. Only then do people actually read it.


Many people think that I really care about these important topics. Actually, I don't care that much.

I tend to be objective.

I gather the data. I post it. I move on.

They attribute all sorts of crazy things (like Han superiority or something along those lines) to my posts. In actuality, my posts are an attempt to capture an accurate snapshot and the trends in comparing countries.

My posts are very impersonal. It compares countries. That's it.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Beidou2020

Martian2 said:


> Many people think that I really care about these important topics. Actually, I don't care that much.
> 
> I tend to be objective.
> 
> I gather the data. I post it. I move on.
> 
> They attribute all sorts of crazy things (like Han superiority or something along those lines) to my posts. In actuality, my posts are an attempt to capture an accurate snapshot and the trends in comparing countries.



Don't worry about the trolls. It's jealousy. But they need to see China succeeding.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*New Triceratops Cousin Had a Gnarly, Bumpy Skull*
_The Jurassic fossil indicates that Triceratops’ ancestors diversified earlier than previously thought, a new study suggests.
_




An artist's impression of Hualianceratops wucaiwanensis, a newly discovered ancestral cousin of Triceratops.
©2015 PortiaSloanRollings​
By *Michael Greshko*, National Geographic
PUBLISHED Wed Dec 09 17:21:18 EST 2015

A newly discovered dog-sized relative to _Triceratops_ had a showy skull covered with mysterious bumps of bone.

The newly discovered dinosaur is named _Hualianceratops_ _wucaiwanensis _(“ornamental face”) after its facial furrows. Its remains are about 160 million years old, researchers report Wednesday in _PLoS ONE_, making this one of the oldest ceratopsians—the group of dinosaurs that includes _Triceratops_—ever found.

Despite _Hualianceratops_’ “ornamental” name, the researchers don’t know what function its bone bumps served. But study co-author Jim Clark of George Washington University suspects that they’re evolutionary holdovers from ceratopsians’ ancestors, which also sired the knobby-skulled pachycephalosaurs.

“It’s really weird,” says Nick Longrich, a paleontologist at the University of Bath who wasn’t involved with the study. Other _Triceratops_ relatives also have gnarled, bumpy bones, "but this guy’s really taking it to an extreme.”

Longrich, for one, suggests that _Hualianceratops_’ skull furrows could have protected facial blood vessels from injury. He notes that similar bony bumps form on the skulls of giraffes and muskoxen, which fight among themselves for mates and territory.

“It's a small animal,” he adds, “but even very small animals can get pretty combative.”

The study describing _Hualianceratops_ also rearranges the dinosaur family tree, suggesting that at least five different lineages of ceratopsians walked the earth more than 150 million years ago in an unexpectedly early burst of dinosaur diversification.

“It just shows how little we know and how much is left to discover, especially in the Jurassic,” says Clark,who coauthored the study with support from the National Geographic Society.

The fossils were first recovered in 2002 by a joint Chinese-American expedition to northwestern China’s Shishugou Formation, a site dated to the late Jurassic. Previous visits had yielded many remains of _Yinlong downsi_, a sheep-sized ancestral cousin of _Triceratops_ that ran around on two legs and nibbled on vegetation with its parrot-like jaw.

(_See photographs of _Yinlong_ and other small dinosaurs found at a fossil trove in China_.)

But among the _Yinlong_ remains, researchers found an enigmatic, poorly preserved skull and part of a hind foot. At the time, the oddball fossils aroused faint suspicions among the team’s paleontologists, but they relegated the finds to the _Yinlong _drawers in Beijing’s Institute for Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, where they would gather dust for the next 12 years.

In 2014, however, Fenglu Han of the Chinese University of Geosciences reexamined the remains as part of his Ph.D. research, and found that the bones were hiding extra secrets. Gnarled, furrowed bumps dotted every skull fragment’s surface, forming a much more extreme bone texture than _Yinlong _had ever sported. And a closer look at the specimen’s jaw revealed that it was much beefier than _Yinlong_’s.

Han quickly realized that the skull belonged to a new species closely related to _Yinlong_, a revelation that has Han and his colleagues excited about what untold species are still hiding in the world’s museums.

“I just love it when you can just pluck something out of a [museum] collection and find something new,” says Catherine Forster of George Washington University, who coauthored the study. “It’s kind of what we live for.”

_Follow Michael Greshko on __Twitter_.

New Triceratops Cousin Had a Gnarly, Bumpy Skull - National Geographic

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## bobsm

*Double quantum-teleportation milestone is Physics World 2015 Breakthrough of the Year*
Dec 11, 2015

The _Physics World_ 2015 Breakthrough of the Year goes to Jian-Wei Pan and Chaoyang Lu of the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, for being the first to achieve the simultaneous quantum teleportation of two inherent properties of a fundamental particle – the photon. Nine other achievements are highly commended and cover topics ranging from astronomy to medical physics




Quantum teleporters: Chaoyang Lu (left) and Jian-Wei Pan win the_Physics World_ 2015 Breakthrough of the Year
Synonymous with the fictional world of _Star Trek_, the idea of teleportation has intrigued scientists and the public alike. Reality caught up with fiction in 1993, when an international group of physicists proved theoretically that the teleportation of a quantum state is entirely possible, so long as the original state being copied is destroyed. Successfully teleporting a quantum state therefore involves making a precise measurement of a system, transmitting the information to a distant location and then reconstructing a flawless copy of the original state. As the "no cloning" theorem of quantum mechanics does not allow for a perfect copy of a quantum state to be made, it must be completely transferred from one particle onto another, such that the first particle is no longer in that state.

*Complete and perfect*
In other words, a complete and perfect transfer is completed when the first particle loses all of the properties that are teleported to the other. The first experimental teleportation of the spin of a photon was achieved in 1997, and since then, everything from individual states of atomic spins, coherent light fields and other entities have been transferred. But all of these experiments were limited to teleporting a single property, and scaling that up to even two properties has proved a herculean feat.

Pan and Lu's team has now simultaneously transferred a photon's spin (polarization) and its orbital angular momentum (OAM) to another photon some distance away. Teleportation experiments usually require a "quantum channel" via which the transfer actually takes place. This channel is normally an extra set of "entangled" photons with quantum states that are inextricably linked so that any change made to one instantly influences the other. In this experiment, this is a "hyper-entangled" set, where the two particles are simultaneously entangled in both their spin and their OAM (see"Two quantum properties teleported together for first time").

Although it is possible to extend Pan's method to teleport more than two properties simultaneously, this becomes increasingly difficult with each added property – the likely limit is three. To do this would require the ability to experimentally control 10 photons, while the current record is eight. The team is currently working hard to change that though, and Pan says that they "hope to reach 10-photon entanglement in a few months". An alternate method that is also being developed could allow the team to double that figure to 20 within three years. "We should be able to teleport three degrees of freedom of a single photon or multiple photons soon," he adds.

The ability to teleport multiple states simultaneously is essential to fully describe a quantum particle, and is a tentative step towards teleporting anything larger than a quantum particle. Pan adds that "quantum teleportation has been recognized as a key element in the ongoing development of long-distance quantum communications that provide unbreakable security, ultrafast quantum computers and quantum networks".

• Watch our Google+ Hangout, where _physicsworld.com_ editor Hamish Johnston talks with Pan and Lu about all things quantum







Double quantum-teleportation milestone is Physics World 2015 Breakthrough of the Year - physicsworld.com

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

* Dog DNA study reveals the incredible journey of man's best friend *
_Descended from the grey wolf, domesticated dogs have been companions to humans for about 33,000 years, a genetic study has shown_

Tim Radford
Tuesday 15 December 2015 15.28 GMT Last modified on Tuesday 15 December 2015 15.39 GMT

Man’s proverbial first best friend was probably a grey wolf that may have made contact with the first human companions about 33,000 years ago, somewhere in south-east Asia.

About 15,000 years ago, a small pack of domesticated dogs began trotting towards the Middle East and Africa. _Canis lupus familiaris_ made it to Europe about 10,000 years ago, and when civilisation began in the Fertile Crescent, and humans began to build farmsteads and villages with walls, dogs were already there to help keep guard, herd the first flocks, and demand to be taken for a walk.

The details of the story – the characters, the action and the precise locations – are unknowable. But the outlines of the great adventure are written in DNA.

Scientists from China, Canada, Finland, Singapore, Sweden and the US report in the journal Cell Research that they compared the genomes, or genetic inheritances, of 58 canids. These included 12 grey wolves, 12 indigenous dogs from the north Chinese countryside, 11 from south-east Asia, four village dogs from Nigeria and 19 specimens of selective breeding from Asia, Europe and the Americas, including the Afghan hound, the Siberian husky, the Tibetan mastiff, the chihuahua and the German shepherd.

Because each genome is a text copied (with regular misspellings, or mutations) through the generations, and every genome is related to every other genome, any comparison begins to tell a story of family connections and separations long ago. The more “texts” that can be compared, the more certain the story they start to tell.

“After evolving for several thousand years in east Asia, a subgroup of dogs radiated out of southern East Asia about 15,000 years ago to the Middle East, Africa as well as Europe. One of these out-of-Asia lineages then migrated back to northern China and made a series of admixtures with endemic east Asian lineages, before travelling to the Americas,” the scientists say.

“Our study, for the first time, reveals the extraordinary journey that the domestic dog has travelled on this planet during the past 33,000 years.”

The grey wolf connection has been made before, along with the link with East Asia. The scientists, led by Guo-Dong Wang, a molecular biologist at the Kunming Institute of Zoology, have once more confirmed it. The indigenous Chinese dogs revealed closer links to their wolf ancestors, and retained the greatest genetic variety, another indicator that the domestic canine began somewhere in East Asia. The modern European specialist breeds showed less genetic diversity, suggesting that they descended from a subset of the first dogs, and the DNA of village dogs of Africa showed even less diversity, implying that they owed their origins to an even smaller set of migrant ancestors.

But the same genetic evidence suggests that at least some dogs from Europe and western Asia may have travelled back into China to interbreed, complicating the story. The ancestral dog and wolf may have continued to interbreed for a while, but the scientists are confident enough of their findings not only to put a date for the emergence of what became the domestic dog – around 33,000 years ago – but even to guess at an original or founder population of about 4,600 individuals.

Whether these joined forces with Ice Age human hunter gatherers, or whether they stayed as wild as the wolves, scavenging on human kills, and subsequently joined up with human companions as part of the civilisation package about 15,000 years ago on the journey to the west, is still uncertain.

“Our study, for the first time, begins to reveal a large and complex landscape upon which a cascade of positive selective sweeps occurred during the domestication of dogs,” the scientists write. “The domestic dog represents one of the most beautiful genetic sculptures shaped by nature and man.”

Dog DNA study reveals the incredible journey of man's best friend | Science | The Guardian

Cell Research - Out of southern East Asia: the natural history of domestic dogs across the world

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*World's first polar heavy transport vessel named in S China city*
2015-12-17 09:05 Ecns.cn Editor:Yao Lan












The world's first polar heavy transport vessel is seen as it is named as 'AUDAX' during the naming ceremony at a shipping base in Guangzhou, South China’s Guangdong province on December 15, 2015. The polar transport vessel is more than 200 meters long and 40 meters wide. The Chinese-made vessel will be used to transport massive modules of ocean engineering equipment to polar areas.(Photo/CFP)​

Reactions: Like Like:
9


----------



## JSCh

Department of Nuclear and Particle Physics, University of Geneva
Artist’s impression of DAMPE, the first of four purely scientific Chinese space missions. ​
*China launches satellite to join the hunt for dark matter*

By Dennis Normile
17 December 2015 5:00 am
*SHANGHAI*-China's space science efforts got a boost today with the launch of the first of 4 planned scientific missions. The Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) rode into space on a Long March 2-D rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi desert, about 1600 kilometers west of Beijing, at about 8:12 a.m. local time.

"This is an exciting mission," says theoretical astrophysicist David Spergel of Princeton University. If dark matter annihilates, as some theories predict, "DAMPE has an opportunity to detect dark matter annihilation products," Spergel says. The launch also marks China’s new commitment to scientific space missions. "DAMPE is the first Chinese space mission for astronomy and astrophysics," says Yizhong Fan, an astrophysicist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing who is one of the mission scientists.

Dark matter is believed to make up most of the matter in the universe. But it has never been detected directly; its existence is inferred from observed gravitational effects on visible matter and the structure of the universe. DAMPE is designed to observe the incoming direction, energy and electric charge of extremely high-energy photons and electrons that result when dark matter candidate particles called Weekly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) annihilate. The satellite's payload is made up of a stack of thin criss-crossed strip detectors tuned to catch signals created by photons and electrons as well as gamma rays and cosmic rays.

"We are, of course, confident that DAMPE will contribute to the dark matter search," says Philipp Azzarello, a University of Geneva astrophysicist who collaborated in the design of DAMPE’s detector. Azzarello says the satellite improves on the energy range and resolution of previous space-based dark matter experiments. "The project is starting at an exciting time of intense searches for dark matter," agrees Vitaly Kudryavtsev, a particle physicist at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom who is also searching for dark matter. He says DAMPE will complement other space-based detectors as well as underground laboratories seeking to detect WIMPS directly.

The DAMPE collaboration comprises four institutes under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), including the National Space Science Center in Beijing; also involved are the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, the University of Geneva in Switzerland, and Italian universities in Bari, Lecce, and Perugia. The satellite has been named Wukong, after the Monkey King character in the 16th century Chinese novel _Journey to the West_. It will enter a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 500 kilometers. Fan says everything is going as planned but that it will take several days to confirm that all systems are working properly. Calibration of the DAMPE detector will then take about two months. "Scientific observations may start in February, 2016," Fan says.

DAMPE is the first of four purely scientific satellites that add a new dimension to China's space efforts, which until now were strongly focussed on engineering and applications. The Chang’e-3 lunar lander, launched in December 2013, investigated the moon’s surface topography and soil composition. And there were two previous scientific missions: the Geospace Double Star Exploration Program, developed with the European Space Agency and launched in 2004 to study Earth's magnetosphere; and a Mars probe, Yinghuo-1, launched on a Russian rocket in 2011, that failed to exit an Earth orbit.

But CAS’s 2011 Strategic Pioneer Program on Space Science has put research missions on a firmer footing. They are being managed by CAS's National Space Science Center (NSSC), which hopes to launch 3 more missions in 2016. One is the Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope to observe black holes, neutron stars, and other astronomical phenomena. NSSC and other CAS institutes are also working on a microgravity and life science research mission, dubbed Shijian-10, that features a re-entry capsule to return some of the experiments to Earth for analysis. There is also a satellite for quantum science experiments in the works. NSSC has set up a new mission control center for scientific satellites in Huairou, a northern suburb of Beijing.

"For sure, more [scientific missions] are to come," says Azzarello, who adds that he is looking forward to future opportunities to collaborate with China's growing space science program.

China launches satellite to join the hunt for dark matter | Science/AAAS | News

Reactions: Like Like:
8


----------



## JSCh

*Millet: the missing piece in the puzzle of prehistoric humans’ transition from hunter-gatherers to farmers | University of Cambridge*




*New research shows a cereal familiar today as birdseed was carried across Eurasia by ancient shepherds and herders laying the foundation, in combination with the new crops they encountered, of ‘multi-crop’ agriculture and the rise of settled societies. Archaeologists say ‘forgotten’ millet has a role to play in modern crop diversity and today’s food security debate.*

The domestication of the small-seeded cereal millet in North China around 10,000 years ago created the perfect crop to bridge the gap between nomadic hunter-gathering and organised agriculture in Neolithic Eurasia, and may offer solutions to modern food security, according to new research.

Now a forgotten crop in the West, this hardy grain – familiar in the west today as birdseed – was ideal for ancient shepherds and herders, who carried it right across Eurasia, where it was mixed with crops such as wheat and barley. This gave rise to ‘multi-cropping’, which in turn sowed the seeds of complex urban societies, say archaeologists.

A team from the UK, USA and China has traced the spread of the domesticated grain from North China and Inner Mongolia into Europe through a “hilly corridor” along the foothills of Eurasia. Millet favours uphill locations, doesn’t require much water, and has a short growing season: it can be harvested 45 days after planting, compared with 100 days for rice, allowing a very mobile form of cultivation.

Nomadic tribes were able to combine growing crops of millet with hunting and foraging as they travelled across the continent between 2500 and 1600 BC. Millet was eventually mixed with other crops in emerging populations to create ‘multi-crop’ diversity, which extended growing seasons and provided our ancient ancestors with food security.

The need to manage different crops in different locations, and the water resources required, depended upon elaborate social contracts and the rise of more settled, stratified communities and eventually complex ‘urban’ human societies.

Researchers say we need to learn from the earliest farmers when thinking about feeding today’s populations, and millet may have a role to play in protecting against modern crop failure and famine.

“Today millet is in decline and attracts relatively little scientific attention, but it was once among the most expansive cereals in geographical terms. We have been able to follow millet moving in deep history, from where it originated in China and spread across Europe and India,” said Professor Martin Jones from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, who is presenting the research findings today at the Shanghai Archaeological Forum.




“These findings have transformed our understanding of early agriculture and society. It has previously been assumed that early agriculture was focused in river valleys where there is plentiful access to water. However, millet remains show that the first agriculture was instead centred higher up on the foothills – allowing this first pathway for ‘exotic’ eastern grains to be carried west.”

The researchers carried out radiocarbon dating and isotope analysis on charred millet grains recovered from archaeological sites across China and Inner Mongolia, as well as genetic analysis of modern millet varieties, to reveal the process of domestication that occurred over thousands of years in northern China and produced the ancestor of all broomcorn millet worldwide.

“We can see that millet in northern China was one of the earliest centres of crop domestication, occurring over the same timescale as rice domestication in south China and barley and wheat in west China,” explained Jones.

“Domestication is hugely significant in the development of early agriculture – humans select plants with seeds that don’t fall off naturally and can be harvested, so over several thousand years this creates plants that are dependent on farmers to reproduce,” he said.

“This also means that the genetic make-up of these crops changes in response to changes in their environment – in the case of millet, we can see that certain genes were ‘switched off’ as they were taken by farmers far from their place of origin.”

As the network of farmers, shepherds and herders crystallised across the Eurasian corridor, they shared crops and cultivation techniques with other farmers, and this, Jones explains, is where the crucial idea of ‘multi-cropping’ emerged.




“The first pioneer farmers wanted to farm upstream in order to have more control over their water source and be less dependent on seasonal weather variations or potential neighbours upstream,” he said. “But when ‘exotic’ crops appear in addition to the staple crop of the region, then you start to get different crops growing in different areas and at different times of year. This is a huge advantage in terms of shoring up communities against possible crop failures and extending the growing season to produce more food or even surplus.

“However, it also introduces a more pressing need for cooperation, and the beginnings of a stratified society. With some people growing crops upstream and some farming downstream, you need a system of water management, and you can’t have water management and seasonal crop rotation without an elaborate social contract.”

Towards the end of the second and first millennia BC larger human settlements, underpinned by multi-crop agriculture, began to develop. The earliest examples of text, such as the Sumerian clay tablets from Mesopotamia, and oracle bones from China, allude to multi-crop agriculture and seasonal rotation.

But the significance of millet is not just in transforming our understanding of our prehistoric past. Jones believes that millet and other small-seeded crops may have an important role to play in ensuring future food security.

“The focus for looking at food security today is on the high-yield crops, rice, maize and wheat, which fuel 50% of the human food chain. However, these are only three of 50 types of cereal, the majority of which are small-grained cereals or “millets”. It may be time to consider whether millets have a role to play in a diverse response to crop failure and famine,” said Jones.

“We need to understand more about millet and how it may be part of the solution to global food security – we may have a lot still to learn from our Neolithic predecessors.”

_Inset images: Martin Jones with millet in North China (Martin Jones); Inner Mongolian millet farmer in Chifeng (Martin Jones)._

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## JSCh

* Chinese scientist among Nature's ten people for 2015*
Xinhua, December 18, 2015

The world-renowned journal Nature Thursday released its annual list of ten people who mattered in science in 2015, which includes one Chinese scientist whose work in human embryo gene editing has caused repeated debate in the academic circle.





Huang Junjiu, a biologist at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou.​
"This year's list, compiled after much discussion by Nature's journalists and editors, spans the globe, highlighting individuals who have played important roles in issues ranging from climate change to gene editing to research reproducibility," said Helen Pearson, Nature's Chief Features Editor.

The explosion of interest in CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing has been a major story of this year, and for this reason biologist Junjiu Huang at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou earned a place on the list.

In April, Huang published the first report of a human embryo with edited genes, sparking a global debate on the ethics of such research.

In his study, Huang and his team used spare embryos from fertility clinics that could not progress to a live birth, and modified the gene, responsible for a kind of blood disorder, in the embryos. To accomplish the task, they adopted a powerful technique known as CRISPR-Cas9, which can be programmed to precisely alter DNA at specific sequences.

He told Nature in April that he wanted to edit the genes of embryos because it "can show genetic problems related to cancer or diabetes, and can be used to study gene function in embryonic development."

Chinese-born chemical engineer Zhenan Bao is also included in the list. The female chemical engineer at Stanford University in California built an artificial skin using carbon nanotube sensors in a multidisciplinary lab focused on integrating electronics into the human body.

Another female on the list is Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). She is featured for her role in the Paris climate negotiations. Figueres has spent more than five years rallying support and bringing nations together in an effort to produce a meaningful accord.

Ali Akbar Salehi, nuclear engineer and head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran is also included in the list. He helped to forge a historic agreement with world powers concerning his country's nuclear activities.

The editors also chose to include Alan Stern, who led NASA's New Horizons mission, which successfully swept past Pluto in July, which is one of the biggest events in planetary science for years.

In addition to Huang, two scientists were included in the list for their gene-related research works.

Christina Smolke is featured for a controversial feat of synthetic biology: stitching together a pathway of 23 different genes from plants, mammals, bacteria and yeast to produce a yeast strain capable of making the powerful pain-killing drugs, opioids. David Reich has been sequencing and analyzing ancient genomes en masse to unpick human history.

Also featured is Russian physicist Mikhail Eremets, whose decades of perseverance with high-pressure physics finally struck gold when he discovered high-temperature superconductivity in the hydrogen sulfide system -- a hugely exciting development in the field.

Meanwhile, Brian Nosek earned his place in the list by leading the campaign to understand issues in scientific reproducibility, culminated this year in a high-profile attempt to replicate findings in 100 psychology studies.

Solar physicist Joan Schmelz is included in the list for her behind-the-scenes efforts to encourage female astronomers to speak up about their experiences of harassment, which helped to bring a festering problem to light.

"Nature's ten reveals how science and scientists continue to play crucial roles in addressing global challenges," said Pearson.

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## JSCh

*'Red Deer Cave people' bone points to mysterious species of pre-modern human | (e) Science News*
Published: Thursday, December 17, 2015 - 18:15 in Paleontology & Archaeology

A thigh bone found in China suggests an ancient species of human thought to be long extinct may have survived until as recently as the end of the last Ice Age. The 14,000 year old bone -- found among the remains of China's enigmatic 'Red Deer Cave people' -- has been shown to have features that resemble those of some of the most ancient members of the human genus, (_Homo_), despite its young age.

The discovery was made by a joint team led by Associate Professor Darren Curnoe from UNSW Australia (The University of New South Wales) and Professor Ji Xueping from the Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology (YICRA, China).

Their study is published today in the journal _PLOS ONE_.

The findings result from a detailed study of the partial femur, which had lain unstudied for more than a quarter of a century in a museum in southeastern Yunnan, following its excavation along with other fossilised remains from Maludong ('Red Deer Cave') in 1989.

The investigators found that the thigh bone matched those from species like _Homo habilis_ and early _Homo erectus_ that lived more than 1.5 million years ago but are cautious about its identity.

"Its young age suggests the possibility that primitive-looking humans could have survived until very late in our evolution, but we need to careful as it is just one bone," Professor Ji said.

The discovery is expected to be controversial because, until now, it had been thought that the youngest pre-modern humans on mainland Eurasia -- the Neanderthals of Europe and West Asia, and the 'Denisovans' of southern Siberia -- died out about 40,000 years ago, soon after modern humans entered the region.

"The new find hints at the possibility a pre-modern species may have overlapped in time with modern humans on mainland East Asia, but the case needs to be built up slowly with more bone discoveries," Associate Professor Curnoe said.

Like the primitive species _Homo habilis_, the Maludong thigh bone is very small; the shaft is narrow, with the outer layer of the shaft (or cortex) very thin; the walls of the shaft are reinforced (or buttressed) in areas of high strain; the femur neck is long; and the place of muscle attachment for the primary flexor muscle of the hip (the lesser trochanter) is very large and faces strongly backwards.

Surprisingly, with a reconstructed body mass of about 50 kilograms, the individual was very small by pre-modern and Ice Age human standards.

When the team first announced the discovery of the remains of the Red Deer Cave people from Maludong (Red Deer Cave) in Yunnan Province and Longlin Cave in nearby Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in 2012, it divided the scientific community.

At the time, the UNSW-YICRA team speculated the bones could represent an unknown new species, or perhaps a very early and primitive-looking population of modern humans, which had migrated to the region more than a hundred thousand years ago.

"We published our findings on the skull bones first because we thought they'd be the most revealing, but we were amazed by our studies of the thigh bone, which showed it to be much more primitive than the skulls seem to be," Professor Ji said.

The new discovery once again points towards at least some of the bones from Maludong representing a mysterious pre-modern species. The team has suggested in another recent publication that the skull from Longlin Cave is probably a hybrid between modern humans and an unknown archaic group -- perhaps even the one represented by the Maludong thigh bone.

"The unique environment and climate of southwest China resulting from the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau may have provided a refuge for human diversity, perhaps with pre-modern groups surviving very late," Professor Ji said.

Associate Professor Curnoe said: "This is exciting because it shows the bones from Maludong, after 25 years of neglect, still have an incredible story to tell. There may have been a diversity of different kinds of human living until very recently in southwest China. "The riddle of the Red Deer Cave people gets even more challenging now: Just who were these mysterious Stone Age people? Why did they survive so late? And why only in tropical southwest China?"


Source: University of New South Wales

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*Researchers Fabricate Tungsten Alloy with High Ductility and Strength*
Dec 17, 2015

As for developing fusion energy, one of the key issues is the research and development of plasma-facing materials (PFMs). In nuclear fusion facilities, the PFMs are exposed to high temperature, high thermal load and high dose irradiation. In this case, performance of PFMs concern the stable operation of fusion reactor. Given this, tungsten materials are considered as one of the most promising candidates for PFMs due to their high melting temperature, high thermal conductivity, high sputtering resistance and low tritium retention. However, as to practical application tungsten materials have their limitations such as room-temperature embrittlement, high ductile to brittle transition temperature (DBTT>400°C), poor machinability, recrystallization embrittlement and irradiation-induced embrittlement.

Since 2012, a study team led by Prof. FANG Qianfeng and Prof. LIU Changsong from the Institute of Solid State Physics, Chinese Academy of Science (ISSP, CAS) have conducted a series of systemic investigations on the strengthening and toughening of tungsten materials through GB purifying/strengthening, oxide/carbide dispersion-strengthening, micro-alloying and hot plastic working. These studies provide a basis for fabricating high performance tungsten alloys with optimal microstructures.

Recently, the study team joined force with LUO Guangnan from the Institute of Plasma Physics (IPP, CAS) and LIU Xiang from Southwestern Institute of Physics (SWIP) conducted an experiment through which they managed to design and manufacture tungsten alloys plate with extraordinary high strength and ductility as well as excellent thermal shock resistance. The design possesses strengthening of the tungsten grain through intragranular ZrC nano-particles pinning and accumulating dislocations, the special coherent interfaces of grain/phase boundaries (GB/PBs) and the diminishing oxygen (O) impurity at GBs, which strengthens GB/PBs and thereby enhances the ductility, strength and plasticity of W alloy. An unprecedented three-point bending as well as tensile ductility and strength, in terms of flexural strain and total elongation to failure, has been derived from the resulting W-Zr-C alloy.

The W-Zr-C alloy thick plates (8.5 mm in thickness) show a high flexural strength of 2.5 GPa and a flexural strain of 3% at room temperature (RT) and a low DBTT of about 100°C. The tensile strength is about 991 MPa at RT and 582 MPa at 500°C, while the total elongation is about 1.1% at RT and as large as 41% at 500°C, respectively. In addition, the W-Zr-C alloy plate can sustain 4.4 MJ/m2 (0.88 GW/m2, 5 ms/pulse) or 100 shots of 1.0 MJ/m2 (1 GW/m2, 1 ms/pulse) transient thermal load without any cracks.

The synergistic effects of strengthening tungsten grain through intragranular ZrC nano-particles dispersion, the completely coherent or semi-coherent interfaces between W matrix and ZrC dispersoids, enhancing GBs by formation of high thermal stability W-Zr-Cx-Oy at GBs as well as fine grains lead to the extraordinary ductility/strength in bulk W-Zr-C alloy. This design idea not only benefits batch production of engineering-applied W alloy but also lays foundation for new alloys with higher ductility and strength.

The study was published in the journal of _Scientific Reports_ entitled Extraordinary high ductility/strength of the interface designed bulk W-ZrC alloy plate at relatively low temperature.

This study was supported by the National Magnetic Confinement Fusion Program (Grant No. 2015GB112000), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos.11374299, 51301164, 11375230, 11274305, 11475216), Anhui provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 1408085QE77) and Users with Potential of Hefei Science Center.






Figure 1. Advanced carbide dispersion-strengthened tungsten alloys from laboratory to industrial scale (Image by XIE Zhuoming and LIU Rui) ​





Figure 2. The mechanical properties, microstructure and heat shock resistance of W-ZrC alloys. (Image by XIE Zhuoming)​

Reactions: Like Like:
8


----------



## bobsm

*Electrical advance offers power without the wait*
2015-12-19 10:57China DailyEditor: Li Yan

Electric cars seem to be an ideal option among next-generation automobiles: They are eco-friendly and accelerate fast with less noise, among other benefits.

The trouble is that every 300 kilometers you may have to wait hours to refill your batteries at a charging station.

Now, researchers from China and the United States have come up with a possible solution. On Friday, a research result published in the journal Science reported a method that promises to triple the energy capacity of supercapacitors, making them comparable - and perhaps superior - to some advanced batteries.

"We have managed to find a balance between fast-charging and storage capacity that could make supercapacitors available for practical applications," said Lin Tianquan, a member of the research team from the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Lithium-ion batteries, like those used in mobile phones and electric cars, are characterized by high capacity compared with their volume and weight. But the disadvantage is obvious, too: they usually take a long time to charge and have limited peak power because the risk of overheating.

Supercapacitors are a different type of energy storage device. Usually, supercapacitors have superfast recharging times and higher limits on output power, but the storage capacity is only 5 percent of that of lithium-ion batteries.

Researchers at the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Peking University and the University of Pennsylvania improved a material called grapheme to increase the storage of supercapacitors while keeping their other good features.

"We managed to enhance the properties of supercapacitors by changing the structure of graphene," said Huang Fuqiang, a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics.

Graphene is one of the thinnest, lightest, strongest and most conductive materials known to man. It consists of a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb structure. The scientists changed the structure into tubes 4 to 6 nanometers wide. The tubes allow an increase storage capacity.

Before the improvement, a bus could recharge for 30 seconds and run for 5 kilometers on a traditional supercapacitor.

"That works in a small city or airport, but there is obviously a lot to be desired," I-Wei Chen, a materials physicist at the University of Pennsylvania who also worked on the breakthrough, was quoted as saying by IEEE Spectrum, a magazine of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in the US.

*"Our battery has five times the energy, so it can run 25 kilometers and still charge at the same speed. We are then talking about serious applications in a serious way in transportation," he said.*

Electrical advance offers power without the wait


_________________________________________________________________________


*Nitrogen-doped mesoporous carbon of extraordinary capacitance for electrochemical energy storage
Tianquan Lin1,2, I-Wei Chen3, Fengxin Liu1, Chongyin Yang1, Hui Bi1, Fangfang Xu1, Fuqiang Huang1,2,**
+ Author Affiliations

1State Key Laboratory of High Performance Ceramics and Superfine Microstructure and CAS Key Laboratory of Materials for Energy Conversion, Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050, P.R. China.
2Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences and State Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Materials Chemistry and Applications, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, P.R. China.
3Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.

ABSTRACT EDITOR'S SUMMARY
Carbon-based supercapacitors can provide high electrical power, but they do not have sufficient energy density to directly compete with batteries. We found that a nitrogen-doped ordered mesoporous few-layer carbon has a capacitance of 855 farads per gram in aqueous electrolytes and can be bipolarly charged or discharged at a fast, carbon-like speed. The improvement mostly stems from robust redox reactions at nitrogen-associated defects that transform inert graphene-like layered carbon into an electrochemically active substance without affecting its electric conductivity. These bipolar aqueous-electrolyte electrochemical cells offer power densities and lifetimes similar to those of carbon-based supercapacitors and can store a specific energy of 41 watt-hours per kilogram (19.5 watt-hours per liter).


https://www.sciencemag.org/content/350/6267/1508.abstract?related-urls=yes&legid=sci;350/6267/1508

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## JSCh

* Chinese-led study finds different variants of MERS virus *
Source:Xinhua Published: 2015-12-19 13:01:00

The Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus has become enzootic in dromedary camels in Saudi Arabia and diverged into five different variants, according to a Chinese-led study published in the Friday issue of the journal Science.

In a second study published in the same journal, researchers designed a vaccine shown to be effective in protecting dromedaries against the virus.

Over the past three years, several MERS outbreaks have been reported in the Middle East and most recently in South Korea, with a fatality rate of roughly 35 percent.

Arabian camels are a common host for the MERS virus, and one of the most likely sources of human infection, the researchers said. The virus can diversify in the animals and then be passed to people, but little is known about its prevalence there and the route by which it is transmitted to humans.

To gain more insights, researchers took samples from more than 1,300 camels in Saudi Arabia, the country most affected by MERS, between May 2014 and April 2015.

The overall infection rate of the MERS virus among this sample was 12 percent with a peak during the winter season, December 2014 to January 2015, at 21 to 23 percent, said the study, led by Professor Yi Guan and Assistant Professor Huachen Zhu at the University of Hong Kong, in collaboration with King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia; and scientists from Mainland China, Australia and Egypt.

The MERS virus was predominantly shed from the respiratory tracts of camels, with over 25 percent of nasal swabs positive for coronaviruses, and only one percent of samples from digestive tracts positive. "Thus, air-borne transmission is the most likely way to spread the virus," they concluded.

Genetic sequencing identified five different lineages of the virus, all of which have the ability to infect both humans and camels, said the study.

Viruses that led to the South Korean outbreak and the recent human infections in the Middle East were from lineage 5, which was generated by recombination between viruses of lineages 3 and 4. 

"This novel recombinant virus lineage appeared in Saudi Arabian camels as early as in July 2014, while human infections with viruses of this lineage were only reported from February 2015 onwards," Zhu said.

"The human MERS coronavirus identified in South Korea early this summer shows extremely high similarity to a camel virus sampled in March 2015 in Riyadh, indicating the origin of Korean viruses is from camels of the Middle East," he added.

The researchers also found two other coronaviruses co-circulating with the MERS coronavirus in the camels, including one closely related to the human 229E coronavirus that causes common colds in humans.

The results showed that around 6.9 percent of Saudi Arabian camels were simultaneously infected by two or three coronavirus species, and over half of the MERS coronavirus-positive camels were also infected with at least one other coronavirus.

Co-infections of different coronavirus species occur frequently in camels, highlighting the role of dromedary camels as an important host for coronaviruses, they said.

In addition, young dromedary camels, under one year old, played an important role in maintaining and spreading this virus.

In the second study, European researchers found after administering a candidate vaccine both nasally and intramuscularly, all camels developed detectable levels of antibodies against the MERS virus within three weeks.

Upon infection with the virus, these vaccinated camels experienced only mild clinical symptoms and were found to have significantly lower levels of the virus compared to those who did not receive the vaccine. 

"This is nonetheless a very significant step forward in the fight against this pathogen," study author Joaquim Segales, lecturer at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, said in a statement.

"Now we need to delve more deeply into the duration of the immunity and dosage before applying it in real situations."

Reactions: Like Like:
8


----------



## Martian2

*TSMC's patent portfolio tops international semiconductor manufacturing rankings | IEEE*

TSMC's patent portfolio tops international rankings - The China Post





----------

On the right, select only the "Semiconductor Mfg (ie. manufacturing)" sector.

Interactive: Patent Power 2015 - IEEE Spectrum

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## TaiShang

*Chinese scientists develop material for super-powered battery*
December 20, 2015

Chinese scientists have successfully developed a supercapacitor with better energy capacity using nitrogen and graphene-like carbon.

"We are able to make carbon a much better supercapacitor," said Huang Fuqiang, a material chemist at the the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics.

The new material will enable electric vehicles travel 35 kilometers after charging for just seven seconds, said the research team from the institute.

Details of the research were published in the latest issue of the journal "Science."

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*CIMC Raffles pins hopes on offshore*

By Zhong Nan In Shanghai And Wangqian In Yantai, Shandong (China Daily)
Updated: 2015-12-21 10:07







CIMC Raffles Offshore Ltd conducts trial of a newly completed $550 million deepwater semisubmersible drilling rig named North Dragon at its Yantai production base in East China's Shandong province. [Photo/Provided To China Daily]​*
Firm thinks focus on maritime engineering vessels and equipment is key to Chinese shipyards' turnaround *

With the global shipbuilding industry adrift in choppy waters amid waning demand, Yantai-based CIMC Raffles Offshore Ltd is looking to not only stay afloat but maintain robust growth by exporting more offshore oil rigs and engineering vessels.

CIMC Raffles is an equipment manufacturing subsidiary of China International Marine Containers (Group) Ltd, the country's transportation equipment producer.

Earlier this month, it completed development of a $550 million deepwater semi-submersible drilling rig named North Dragon at its Yantai production base in East China's Shandong province.

The rig was built for North Sea Rigs Holding AS of Norway, one of the largest offshore oil producers in Europe. It is the first China-made semi-submersible drilling rig capable of operating in the Arctic area with temperatures of minus 20 degrees Centigrade and withstanding storms in the North Sea and Barents Sea.

The platform will be able to operate in seawater depths of up to 1,200 meters and drill to a depth of 8,000 meters.

According to a survey by the United States Geological Survey, the North Sea has 13 percent of undeveloped petroleum and 30 percent of undeveloped natural gas.

Yu Ya, president of CIMC Raffles, said many Chinese shipyards' earning capability is being squeezed by low technical content, appreciation of renminbi and blind expansion.

So, developing maritime engineering vessels and equipment will be key to Chinese shipyards' turnaround. Competition with South Korean and Japanese shipbuilders could also help.

In the first half of this year, Chinese shipyards received orders for new vessels with a collective capacity of 11.19 million deadweight tons, accounting for 27.6 percent of the global market share, while South Korea's shipbuilding industry, a powerful rival of China's, secured 44.6 percent of the world's market share, data from the Beijing-based China Association of the National Shipbuilding Industry show.

Offshore engineering products are essentially functional vessels and oil drilling platforms that can float in deep water.

Offshore gas and oil companies use these vessels to process the natural gas and crude pumped up from the ocean floor. In some cases, they are also used in the extraction process.

Since 2009, CIMC Raffles has delivered 10 semi-submersible drilling rigs and another five are under construction, two of which will be able to work in the North Sea in 2016 and 2017.

The company's sales of offshore engineering products totaled $1.8 billion across global markets in 2014. Energy companies from Brazil, Norway, Mexico, Malaysia, Russia and Italy are its main clients.

"Even though offshore engineering products and vessels are more costly and complex to build, the burgeoning global demand for energy resources is expected to keep orders flowing. While the global shipping industry is unlikely to see a notable upturn anytime soon, demand for offshore energy vessels has steadily increased in recent years," said Yu.

Supported by more than 13,000 employees, including 800 engineers and researchers, CIMC Raffles already has the technology to make products that have a longer life cycle, perform better under extreme weather conditions and the methods to use more advanced materials in building oil rigs or vessels.

Eager to enhance the company's export abilities, its parent CIMC acquired Bassoe Technology AB, the well-known Swedish provider of design services and equipment for offshore drilling rigs in 2013.

With a comprehensive concept and creative design capabilities of Bassoe Technology, CIMC Raffles has initiated a China-European researching methodology.

"This acquisition gives us an opportunity to build new offshore engineering equipment and related ships with more complex technical edges," said He Changhai, director of CIMC Raffles' research and development center.

He said the main reasons why the company is betting big on offshore engineering products are high international energy demand and the insatiable global appetite for natural resources.

Established in 1977 as a shipyard to build bulk carriers, the company now operates three offshore engineering product manufacturing bases in Yantai, Haiyang and Longkou. Eager to diversify its business categories, its research and development center also focuses on wind power systems, high-end shipbuilding, seawater desalination, rotating machinery, condition assessment and equipment life extension programs.

"If you look at the global market for ships, you can see signs of decline everywhere," He said.

"We want to shift our core business to more high-end offshore engineering as apart from higher profits, there is less competition as not too many shipyards are capable of making either offshore engineering equipment or vessels."

Guo Dacheng, president of the CANSI, said offshore engineering is unlikely to see a slowdown in the near future. Deepwater fields are expected to be the main sources of conventional energy yet to be discovered and developed.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

The World’s First Smart Ship “i-Dolphin” Unveiled | Maritime news | VesselFinder
By John Stansfield, December 4, 2015, Vessels

The world’s first smart ship has been revealed at the *Smart Ship Development Forum & Smart Ship Demo “i-Dolphin” Release Meeting* sponsored by CSSC on December 1st in Shanghai, China.

The *38,800 dwt smart ship project* is the first civilian program of *CSSC Innovation*, planed and led by *Shanghai Ship Design* and Research Institute with participation from *CSSC Systems Engineering Research Institute*, CSSC Huangpu-Wenchong Shipbuilding Co., Ltd, CSSC Power Research Institute and *Hudong Heavy Machinery Co., Ltd*.






_Image: DNV GL_​
The project is aimed at the shipbuilding of smart demo ship based on* “Green Dolphin”* a 38,800 dwt bulk carrier. The 38,800 dwt smart ship will be designed with the highest technical specifications, smart management and control systems. The ordering specifications have been completed. Several modules have been applied in trial assembly and used on other ships, with the commercial plans for building a smart demo ship having been confirmed.

The smart ship is based on big data and applies up-to-date information technology including real-time data transmission and collection, large-capacity calculations, digital modeling and remote control. All of this is designed in to the ship to better guarantee navigational safety and improve operational efficiency of ship.

According to Wei Muheng, an engineer working at the Intelligent Maintenance Laboratory for Platform System Research Institute under CSSC Systems Engineering Research Institute, the 38,800 dwt smart ship project will set up a whole-ship information perception system and realize information integration and data sharing between all the systems and equipment on the ship.

The project will also utilize intelligent management and control systems, independent analysis, assessment and predictions. This will help with communication between the smart ship and shore as well as providing remote maintenance and upgrades of ship systems.

Designed with remote monitoring, support, management and control by using onshore resources to improve the ships operations and safety. With the ships data analysis and optimizing ship design and shipbuilding techniques, the project can provide the shipowner with life cycle value of the ship.

Key smart functions by the smart ship include the overall performance and status monitoring; ship status safety assessment; ship energy efficiency monitoring, analysis, assessment and optimization; engine room equipment and system operation, status and monitoring; engine room equipment operation, safety and performance analysis; engine room equipment maintenance including prediction and reliability, status assessment and maintenance optimization; sea route; ship navigation; navigational operation and control information analysis; environmental impact analysis; navigational optimization.

The companies involved plan to start construction September 2016 and deliver in 2017. The entire ship will be run on smart systems, optimizing everything while maintaining safe operations.

Today, China’s smart ship development aided by good policy and a highly technical environment. In May of this year, the State Council announced the “Made in China 2025” policy, encouraging a comprehensive implantation and manufacturing in China. As a high-tech ship, the smart ship is highlighted for priority development in Made in China 2025. In August, China published the Action Program for Promoting Big Data Development and vigorously developing big data has ascended as a national strategy.

China has accelerated smart ship research in recent years. Under the guidance of CSSC, CSSC Systems Engineering Research Institute launched the “Intelligent Information Management and Practical Technology Innovation Center for Marine Equipment” with NSF IMS in 2013, with the aim of boosting relevant core technology and product R&D.

In September 2015, CSSC Systems Engineering Research Institute and China Merchants Energy Transport Co., Ltd. signed the strategic cooperation agreement on “Ship and Shipping Intelligence,” to drive industry and network integration, carry out intelligent technology applications in new-buildings and explore shipping information in new ways. The implementation of the 38,800 dwt smart ship project will push China’s smart ship R&D forward.

_Source: 中国船舶工业集团公司_

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## Martian2

*China Launches Country's First Dark Matter Satellite | CCTV*











----------

China’s dark-matter satellite launches era of space science : Nature News

*"But Wukong, more officially known as the Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE), is also notable for being the first in a series of five space-science missions to emerge from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Strategic Priority Program on Space Science, which kicked off in 2011." (third paragraph in article below)*

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*China doctors conduct "animal-human" cornea transplant *
2015-12-21 21:02:52 | Editor: huaxia 

QINGDAO, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Shandong Eye Institute, east China, announced Monday the successful transplant of a bio-engineered pig cornea into a human eye in late September.

"The patient's vision has gradually improved after a three month recovery period, which means the transplant was a success," said Zhai Hualei, director of the institute's cornea division.

Wang Xinyi, 60, had a serious corneal ulcer. He could only see moving objects within 10 centimeters.

"The doctors originally told me that my father might lose sight in one eye because there are not enough cornea donations," Wang's son said.

The transplant used a bio-engineered cornea named Acornea, the first such product to be accredited by the China Food and Drug Administration in late April.

"With the pig cornea as the main material, the product is devoid of cells, hybrid proteins, and other antigens. It retains a natural collagen structure with remarkable bio-compatibility and biological safety," said Zhai.

Cornea diseases are one of the biggest causes of blindness in China, blinding around 4 million people. New cases are increasing by 100,000 each year, however, only about 5,000 people receive a cornea transplant annually.

Beijing Tongren Hospital and Wuhan Xiehe Hospital, among others, have been conducting clinical trials of Acornea since 2010, recording a success rate of 94.44 percent, similar to the results seen with donated human corneas.

"This bio-engineered cornea may help millions of people to see again," Zhai said.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Sino-Russian cooperation on nuclear cures for cancer*

By Ma Chenguang in Hefei (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2015-12-21 15:07
Chinese and Russian top scientific agencies signed an agreement on Friday to make superconducting cyclotron (SC) therapy equipment, the first of its kind in the world aiming to provide the most advanced nuclear cure to some 14 million cancer suffers worldwide.

An official from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) said as high-energy proton and heavy-ion radiotherapies are the world's most advanced radiation therapy technology, offering precision "strikes" for solid tumors in cancer patients, the design of the SC200 will be a "substantive contribution" to world healthcare.

The China-Russia Superconducting Cyclotron Joint Research Center, set up on Friday, will try to bring out related systems and components of SC200 in 2017 and construct the equipment in 2018, said Kuang Guangli, president of CAS Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (CASHIPS).

The research center is jointly launched by CASHIPS' Institute of Plasma Physics and Russia's Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) based in Dubna, 110 kilometers north of Moscow. The two have been cooperating for more than 30 years.

According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer of the World Health Organization, the number of cancer sufferers rose to an estimated 14 million new cases per year since 2012 and is expected to hit 22 million annually within the next 20 years.

Ludmila Ogorodova, vice-minister of Russia's Ministry of Education and Science, said at the launching ceremony that she is fully confident the advanced equipment will provide better cures for cancer, which is a mutation with a wide range of causes, including environmental risks.

She said the 21st century will be a century for big science, and the establishment of the Russian-Chinese joint center will be a base for research and innovation for scientists from the two nations.

Cao Jianlin, former vice-minister of China's Ministry of Science and Technology, said he is pleased to see the steady growth and enrichment of the long-term Sino-Russian cooperation in the field of science and technology.

While believing the SC therapy equipment will be a success, he called for the early completion of it in order to offer cures to cancer sufferers as soon as possible.

Kuang said the future SC therapy equipment will be stationed in Hefei's Ion Medical Center, which is to be built by CASHIPS and Hefei municipal government and hoped to be one of the country's leading institutions providing appropriate medical treatment and rehabilitation services for cancer patients.

According to China's National Cancer Registry Center, the number of new cancer patients rose to some 3.12 million each year in the country, and is expected to climb to 4 million by 2020.

_machenguang@chinadaily.com.cn_

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese rover analyzes Moon rocks: First new 'ground truth' in 40 years *
_Rover finds volcanic rocks unlike those returned by Apollo and Luna missions, tantalizing clues to the period of lunar volcanism_

December 22, 2015
By Diana Lutz





CNAS/CLEP
The Chinese lunar rover, Yutu, photographed by its lander Chang’e-3, after the lander touched down in Mare Imbrium, a giant impact basin that had been filled by successive lava flows.​
In 2013, Chang'e-3, an unmanned lunar mission, touched down on the northern part of the Imbrium basin, one of the most prominent of the lava-filled impact basins visible from Earth.

It was a beautiful landing site, said Bradley L. Jolliff, PhD, the Scott Rudolph Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, who is a participant in an educational collaboration that helped analyze Chang'e-3 mission data. The lander touched down on a smooth flood basalt plain next to a relatively fresh impact crater (now officially named the Zi Wei crater) that had conveniently excavated bedrock from below the regolith for the Yutu rover to study.

Since the Apollo program ended, American lunar exploration has been conducted mainly from orbit. But orbital sensors mostly detect the regolith (the ground-up surface layer of fragmented rock) that blankets the Moon, and the regolith is typically mixed and difficult to interpret.

Because Chang'e-3 landed on a comparatively young lava flow, the regolith layer was thin and not mixed with debris from elsewhere. Thus it closely resembled the composition of the underlying volcanic bedrock. This characteristic made the landing site an ideal location to compare in situ analysis with compositional information detected by orbiting satellites.

“We now have ‘ground truth’ for our remote sensing, a well-characterized sample in a key location,” Jolliff said. “We see the same signal from orbit in other places, so we now know that those other places probably have similar basalts.”






NASA/GSFC/ASU
Chang'e-3 landing site is indicated with a white square in this lunar map, a mosaic made with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's Wide Angle Camera. The landing sites of the Apollo missions are in red.​
The basalts at the Chang'e-3 landing site also turned out to be unlike any returned by the Apollo and Luna sample return missions.

“The diversity tells us that the Moon’s upper mantle is much less uniform in composition than Earth's,” Jolliff said. “And correlating chemistry with age, we can see how the Moon’s volcanism changed over time.”

Two partnerships were involved in the collection and analysis of this data, published in the journal Nature Communications Dec. 22. Scientists from a number of Chinese institutions involved with the Chang'e-3 mission formed one partnership; the other was a long-standing educational partnership between Shandong University in Weihai, China, and Washington University in St. Louis.

*A mineralogical mystery*

The Moon, thought to have been created by the collision of a Mars-sized body with the Earth, began as a molten or partially molten body that separated as it cooled into a crust, mantle and core. But the buildup of heat from the decay of radioactive elements in the interior then remelted parts of the mantle, which began to erupt onto the surface some 500 million years after the Moon’s formation, pooling in impact craters and basins to form the maria, most of which are on the side of the Moon facing the Earth.

The American Apollo (1969-1972) and Russian Luna (1970-1976) missions sampled basalts from the period of peak volcanism that occurred between 3 and 4 billion years ago. But the Imbrium basin, where Chang'e-3 landed, contains some of the younger flows — 3 billion years old or slightly less.






NASA/LPI
Four views of the Mare Imbrium basin and the Chang'e-3 landing site demonstrate how different the Moon looks to different types of remote sensing, underscoring the need for ground truth to calibrate the orbital observations. For a larger version of this image click here. ​
The basalts returned by the Apollo and Luna missions had either a high titanium content or low to very low titanium; intermediate values were missing. But measurements made by an alpha-particle X-ray spectrometer and a near-infrared hyperspectral imager aboard the Yutu rover indicated that the basalts at the Chang'e-3 landing site are intermediate in titanium, as well as rich in iron, said Zongcheng Ling, PhD, associate professor in the School of Space Science and Physics at Shandong University in Weihai, and first author of the paper.

Titanium is especially useful in mapping and understanding volcanism on the Moon because it varies so much in concentration, from less than 1 weight percent TiO2 to over 15 percent. This variation reflects significant differences in the mantle source regions that derive from the time when the early magma ocean first solidified.

Minerals crystallize from basaltic magma in a certain order, explained Alian Wang, PhD, research professor in earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University. Typically, the first to crystallize are two magnesium- and iron-rich minerals (olivine and pyroxene) that are both a little denser than the magma, and sink down through it, then a mineral (plagioclase feldspar), that is less dense and floats to the surface. This process of separation by crystallization led to the formation of the Moon’s mantle and crust as the magma ocean cooled.

The titanium ended up in a mineral called ilmenite (FeTiO3) that typically doesn’t crystallize until a very late stage, when perhaps only 5 percent of the original melt remains. When it finally crystallized, the ilmenite-rich material, which is also dense, sank into the mantle, forming areas of Ti enrichment.

“The variable titanium distribution on the lunar surface suggests that the Moon’s interior was not homogenized,” Jolliff said. “We’re still trying to figure out exactly how this happened. Possibly there were big impacts during the magma ocean stage that disrupted the mantle’s formation.”

*Another clue to the Moon's past*

The story has another twist that also underscores the importance of checking orbital data against ground truth. The remote sensing data for Chang'e-3’s landing site showed that it was rich in olivine as well as titanium.

That doesn’t make sense, Wang said, because olivine usually crystallizes early and the titanium-rich ilmenite crystallizes late. Finding a rock that is rich in both is a bit strange.

But Yutu solved this mystery as well. In olivine, silicon is paired with either magnesium or iron but the ratio of those two elements is quite variable in different forms of the mineral. The early-forming olivine would be magnesium rich, while the olivine detected by Yutu has a composition that ranges from intermediate in iron to iron-rich.

“That makes more sense,” Jolliff said, “because iron-enriched olivine and ilmenite are more likely to occur together.

“You still have to explain how you get to an olivine-rich and ilmenite-rich rock. One way to do that would be to mix, or hybridize, two different sources," he said.

The scientists infer that late in the magma-ocean crystallization, iron-rich pyroxene and ilmenite, which formed late and at the crust-mantle boundary, might have begun to sink, and early-formed magnesium-rich olivine might have begun to rise. As this occurred, the two minerals might have mixed and hybridized.

“Given these data, that is our interpretation,” Jolliff said.

In any case, it is clear that these newly characterized basalts reveal a more diverse Moon than the one that emerged from studies following the Apollo and Luna missions. Remote sensing suggests that there are even younger and even more diverse basalts on the Moon, waiting for future robotic or human explorers to investigate, Jolliff said.

Chinese rover analyzes Moon rocks: First new 'ground truth' in 40 years 
| 
Newsroom 
| Washington University in St. Louis

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## JSCh

China moves a big step closer to ‘Star Wars’ laser weapons | South China Morning Post
_Mainland scientists claim they have developed the world’s most powerful supercapacitor, which could lead to advanced ‘Star Wars-type’ laser weapons._

PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 22 December, 2015, 9:40pm
UPDATED : Wednesday, 23 December, 2015, 10:46am
Stephen Chen binglin.chen@scmp.com






A new laser cannon, which has been developed by Chinese scientists. Photo: SCMP Pictures​
Mainland scientists are developing the world’s most powerful supercapacitor that could make _Star Wars_ weapons a reality.

Prototypes of directed-energy weapons such as laser cannons and railguns have been developed in many countries, but few have made it out of their laboratories due to their size and weight.

_If the new technology really works and wins a nod from military, a Star Wars weapon may not be very far from us_
_Zhu Heyuan_​
The Boeing YAL-1 airborne laser test-bed system had to be mounted on a 400-tonne Boeing 747 simply to kill a small drone. The project was cancelled in 2012.

Laser scientists say it is not their fault. After decades of effort, the actual laser weapon has been reduced to the size of a suitcase. But the enormous power supply needed to supply has remained prohibitively large.

The type of storage devices that can provide very large bursts of energy in a short time are called capacitors. Smaller versions are used widely, from starter motors of vehicles to medical implants.

Large, or supercapacitors have been used in lasers and other forms of electrically powered weapons as to store energy and boost power. Traditionally, such capacitors have been heavy and bulky – some are bigger than shipping containers.

Now, a research team from Peking University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences led by professor Huang Fuqiang has reported a breakthrough in capacitor technology. In a paper published in the latest issue of the journal _Science,_ they describe how the power density of their supercapacitor can reach 26 kilowatts per kilogram, or 130 times that of lithium-ion batteries.

The Yal-1 laser cannon required a power output of one megawatt. A capacitor required to meet that power demand, using conventional technology, would weigh more than 10 tonnes. Huang’s team’s new supercapacitor, in theory, would weigh 40kg.

“A significant weight loss in the power unit can reduce the overall mass of a laser system. It can extend the application of laser weapon to fighter jets or even spacecraft,” said professor Zhu Heyuan, an expert of laser technology at Fudan University in Shanghai, who was not involved in the research.

“If the new technology really works and wins a nod from military, a Star Wars weapon may not be very far from us.”

A remaining problem for capacitors is their very low energy-storage capacity, which means their high power output might not last long enough to inflict fatal damage on an enemy target.

Huang’s supercapacitor broke the traditional limits of ordinary capacitors with an ability to store 41 watt-hours of electricity per kilogram. Though lower than a lithium battery, it was equivalent to lead-acid cell batteries used in cars today. It was the first time that a capacitor could store as much energy as a mainstream battery.

The higher new energy storage capacity opens up new application in other advanced weapons.

Recent years have seen rapid advances in electrically powered weapons for naval and army use. Rail guns, for instance, used electromagnetic force to accelerate projectiles at 10 times the speed of sound to hit long-distance targets, penetrate thick tank armour and intercept incoming missiles.

These new weapons, like the laser cannon, were too big and heavy to be mounted on most aircraft. The world’s most powerful rail gun, which can deliver 32 megajoules of kinetic energy, was tested by the US navy because the warship could bear the weight of its power supply unit.






A cutaway illustration showing attempts by the United States military in the 1970s to create an airborne laser system.​

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## JSCh

*Pilot nuclear power project gains steam *
2015-12-22 22:48:01 | Editor: huaxia






The No. 6 unit of a pilot nuclear power project breaks ground in Fuqing, southeast China's Fujian Province, Dec. 22, 2015. The No. 5 and No. 6 units of the nuclear power project in Fuqing will use Hualong One technology, a domestically-developed third generation reactor. Construction on the No. 6 unit began here on Tuesday. Construction on the No. 5 unit began in May. (Xinhua/Wei Peiquan) ​
FUZHOU, Dec. 22 (Xinhua) -- Construction on the second unit of a pilot nuclear power project, which uses a Chinese-designed reactor, began in southeast China on Tuesday.

Workers on Tuesday morning broke ground on the unit that will use Hualong One technology, a domestically-developed third generation reactor, in Fuqing, Fujian Province.

Hualong One was jointly designed by China's nuclear power giants, China General Nuclear Power Group and China National Nuclear Corp. (CNNC). It passed inspection by a national panel in August 2014.

The government has approved the CNNC Fuqing branch to build six nuclear power units. The No. 5 and 6 units will be a pilot project featuring Hualong One. Construction on the No. 5 unit began in May.

The latest unit will take about 62 months to build, according to the CNNC Fuqing branch.

"The Hualong One technology will eventually become a powerful source of energy that will support economic growth along the southeastern coast," said Xu Ligen, deputy general manager of the CNNC Fuqing branch.

Another pilot project using Hualong One will begin later this month in Fangchenggang City in southern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

Xing Ji, chief designer of Hualong One, said China owns the complete intellectual property rights of Hualong One and the pilot project will help pave the way for China's nuclear power equipment to go global.

China plans to reach 58 million kilowatts of installed nuclear capacity by 2020.

The country has actively promoted Hualong One at home and abroad, with an agreement with Argentina in November guaranteeing the use of it in the fifth nuclear plant in Argentina, a key emerging market for Chinese companies.






The No. 5 unit of a pilot nuclear power project is under construciton in Fuqing, southeast China's Fujian Province, Dec. 22, 2015. The No. 5 and No. 6 units of the nuclear power project in Fuqing will use Hualong One technology, a domestically-developed third generation reactor. Construction on the No. 6 unit began here on Tuesday. Construction on the No. 5 unit began in May. (Xinhua/Wei Peiquan) 






Construction starts on Fuqing 6 (Image: CNNC)​

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## Martian2

Taiwanese lab develops smallest-ever transistor - Taipei Times

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: *22-Dec-2015*

*China successfully developed 'Darwin,' a neuromorphic chip based on Spiking Neural Networks *
Science China Press






IMAGE: Photos of the chip and the demonstration board.
Credit: ©Science China Press​
Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is a type of information processing system based on mimicking the principles of biological brains, and has been broadly applied in application domains such as pattern recognition, automatic control, signal processing, decision support system and artificial intelligence. Spiking Neural Network (SNN) is a type of biologically-inspired ANN that perform information processing based on discrete-time spikes. It is more biologically realistic than classic ANNs, and can potentially achieve much better performance-power ratio. Recently, researchers from Zhejiang University and Hangzhou Dianzi University in Hangzhou, China successfully developed the Darwin Neural Processing Unit (NPU), a neuromorphic hardware co-processor based on Spiking Neural Networks, fabricated by standard CMOS technology.

With the rapid development of the Internet-of-Things and intelligent hardware systems, a variety of intelligent devices are pervasive in today's society, providing many services and convenience to people's lives, but they also raise challenges of running complex intelligent algorithms on small devices. Sponsored by the college of Computer science of Zhejiang University, the research group led by Dr. De Ma from Hangzhou Dianzi university and Dr. Xiaolei Zhu from Zhejiang university has developed a co-processor named as Darwin.The Darwin NPU aims to provide hardware acceleration of intelligent algorithms, with target application domain of resource-constrained, low-power small embeddeddevices. It has been fabricated by 180nm standard CMOS process, supporting a maximum of 2048 neurons, more than 4 million synapses and 15 different possible synaptic delays. It is highly configurable, supporting reconfiguration of SNN topology and many parameters of neurons and synapses.Figure 1 shows photos of the die and the prototype development board, which supports input/output in the form of neural spike trains via USB port.

The successful development ofDarwin demonstrates the feasibility of real-time execution of Spiking Neural Networks in resource-constrained embedded systems. It supports flexible configuration of a multitude of parameters of the neural network, hence it can be used to implement different functionalities as configured by the user. Its potential applications include intelligent hardware systems, robotics, brain-computer interfaces, and others.Since it uses spikes for information processing and transmission,similar to biological neural networks, it may be suitable for analysis and processing of biological spiking neural signals, and building brain-computer interface systems by interfacing with animal or human brains. As a prototype application in Brain-Computer Interfaces, Figure 2 describes an application example ofrecognizingthe user's motor imagery intention via real-time decoding of EEG signals, i.e., whether he is thinking of left or right, and using it to control the movement direction of a basketball in the virtual environment. Different from conventional EEG signal analysis algorithms, the input and output to Darwin are both neural spikes: the input is spike trains that encode EEG signals; after processing by the neural network, the output neuron with the highest firing rate is chosen as the classification result.

###

For more details, please refer to the upcoming paper "Darwin: a Neuromorphic Hardware Co-Processor based on Spiking Neural Networks",to be published in _SCIENCE CHINA Information Sciences_, 2016 No.2 issue: Darwin: a Neuromorphic Hardware Co-Processor based on Spiking Neural Networks

China successfully developed 'Darwin,' a neuromorphic chip based on Spiking Neural Networks | EurekAlert! Science News

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists develop polygraph based on AI technology*
Xinhua Finance 2015-12-23 14:53 CHONGQING





Chinese scientists have introduced a polygraph based on facial recognition technology and artificial intelligence (AI), which is expected to detect human lies more accurately.

Jointly developed by the Cloudwalk company under the Chongqing Institute of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, the new type of polygraph was introduced earlier this week, after the release of the facial recognition system at the beginning of this month.

The polygraph can detect people's gender, tiny facial expressions, skin color, temperature, heart rate and voice characteristics through its camera and non-contact sensor. It can then analyze people's thoughts and mood based on the information collected, according to Zhou Xi, CEO of Cloudwalk company, and the head of the facial recognition project.

The core technology of the polygraph is called "AI brain." It includes six modules - facial recognition, voice recognition, semantic recognition, morphology recognition, physical recognition, and intelligence decision and control, Zhou said. "Traditional polygraphs usually use a contact sensor to detect blood pressure, pause and muscle activities of the targets, but sometimes it doesn't work on people who have received professional training," Zhou said,"the advantage of our new polygraph is the non-contact detector, which will lower the vigilance of targets." Compared with the traditional polygraph, the new model cost is quite high.The camera alone is worth about 500,000 yuan (77,200 U.S. dollars), but its advantage is obvious too, Zhang added. "It can work in both daylight and dark environment, and offer more accurate test results," said Zhang.

According to the country's 13th Five-year Plan (2016-2020), the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) will make efforts to promote the development in advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, to guide the development of the electronics and information industry.

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## JSCh

*Man vs machine: Robot plans to beat 80% students in exam*
By Cheng Yingqi(China Daily)
Updated: 2015-12-23 07:52:54






​ 
Chinese IT company iFly Tek CEO Liu Qingfeng said artificial intelligence's participation in the gaokao is the best proof of its ability to learn and reason. [Photo/people.com.cn]​
*Goal is to score in top 20 percent to qualify for major university admission *
Chinese IT company iFly Tek is developing an artificial intelligence robot that will take part in the country's college entrance exam in 2020, with the goal of beating 80 percent of the students in China, the company announced at a product launch in Beijing.

"It is easy for AI to pass an exam, because the machine has much stronger memory ability than humans. But to beat 80 percent of students - which means it can enroll at a key university in China - is difficult," said Liu Qingfeng, the company's CEO.

The national college entrance exam, also known as the gaokao, is one of the most highly competitive exams and has about 9 million participants across China every year.

"AI's participation in the gaokao is the best proof of its ability to learn and reason," Liu said.

The project is sponsored by Program 863, an initiative endorsed by then-leader Deng Xiaoping in 1986 to boost high-tech development.

"Performing well in the gaokao requires advanced technology in human-machine interaction, knowledge management and inference-learning, which are the key technologies we are committed to developing through this project," Liu said.

Now the AI device, known as iFly Hyperbrain, performs well in tests on politics and essay writing, showcasing its ability to think.

Currently Japan is developing an AI named Todai, which is scheduled to participate in Japan's National Center Test for University Admissions in 2016.

In September, the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence in the United States, also known as AI2, announced that it had created an AI system that can solve SAT college test geometry questions as well as the average 11th-grade student in the country - a breakthrough in AI research.

Between 2009 and 2013, some $17 billion was poured into the AI sector, which has seen 60 percent annual growth, according to a report published in 2014 by quantitative analysis firm Quid.

Hu Yu, senior deputy president of iFly Tek, said the fast development of AI in recent years is tied to the rise of neural network technology and big data.

"Most important, the Internet has changed the way we think. In the past, we tried to ensure that every detail was perfect before we transferred lab research into products. But now we put the AI online even though it still needs much improvement, and we complete the perfection process with feedback from tens of thousands of users," he said.

Based on current technology, the company has created two products: one to evaluate students' in-class performance so that teachers can assign different homework to students according to gaps of their knowledge; the other can score students' oral English competence, which has replaced teachers' scoring in the gaokao in Guangdong and Guangxi, as well as in a number of other key tests nationwide.

"The concept of AI was proposed 60 years ago, but scientists had no luck developing a true AI. Now we are at the edge of success because millions of users are providing rich materials for the machine to learn," Hu said.

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## bobsm

* After decades of innovation catch-up, China moves to the fore*

English.news.cn 2015-12-22 20:27:29 

BEIJING, Dec. 22 (Xinhua) -- In the Pingshan industrial zone in south China's Shenzhen City, BYD's hexagonal museum is a must-see for more than architectural reasons, as it charts the company's path from workshop to world-beater.

From batteries through computers to electric vehicles, BYD's progress in only two decades is nothing short of phenomenal. Today, one in every 10 new energy passenger vehicles sold worldwide is made by BYD.

It was innovation that took BYD to the status it enjoys today: the Chinese auto-maker with the most patents, across many industries.

About 800 km north of Shenzhen, a low-speed maglev train links downtown Changsha to the airport. Test operations begin at the end of this month. Intellectual property rights generated by the project are all Chinese.

The train was created by Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive, a subsidiary of rolling-stock giant CRRC, the company whose high-speed trains link almost all parts of China and are beginning to connect the world.

In North China's port of Tianjin, Tianjin Motor Dies, a leading motor dies producer in the world, is no longer waiting for orders or design papers, but is evaluating vehicle appearance design and helping car makers improve their ideas.

Innovation is nothing new in China, but now it is the center of considerable government attention. In late October, the Communist Party of China made innovation one of five key concepts in the 2016 to 2020 five-year plan.

China's decades of rapid growth were driven mostly by foreign technology and imported practices along with domestic advantages in labor costs, but now China's home-grown technology is starting to catch up with developed countries'.

Hu Angang, director of the center for China studies at Tsinghua University, believes that world economic history shows two patterns of development: pursuer-style, featuring high growth with borrowed technology; and innovative-style, with reduced growth, but greater contributions to mankind's knowledge base.

"China is transforming from pursuer to innovator, like the United States in the early 20th century," Hu said, adding that only the United States had successfully completed the transformation.

China is quickly catching up. In 2008, the first high-speed railway linked Beijing with Shanghai. Seven years later the country has more than 17,000 km of high-speed track.

In 1995, the United States had 1,750 times more internet users than China. In a reversal of fortune, China now has twice as many as the United States; remarkable progress by any standard.

Companies such as Huawei, Lenovo and Alibaba are becoming household names the world over, and it is mostly down to home-grown innovation.

Less than 10 years since its founding, drone-maker DJI meets about 70 percent of world civilian demand with a market value around 10 billion U.S. dollars.

"Our innovation comes from our personnel," said vice president Oliver Wang. About 40 percent of DJI staff work in R&D. The company is ready to open an R&D center in Palo Alto, California and looking forward to the time when people from all industries find uses for unmanned aerial vehicles in their work. After the catastrophic Nepal earthquake in April, DJI drones were used to map the disaster area, helping rescue and reconstruction work.

Innovation is being supported by governments at all levels. DJI's home in Nanshan District of Shenzhen is also the site of the headquarters of some of most trendy companies in China like ZTE, Tencent and software producer Kingdee.

In 2015 the R&D/GDP ratio in Nanshan is expected to hit 6 percent, 3.7 percentage point higher than that of the country as a whole and over 1 percentage point higher than that of Israel, which tops the world in the ratio. In the past eight years the district has provided technology startups with lending facilities of 4 billion yuan at a cost of only 200 million.

China still lags behind in many sectors, such as basic science, new materials and major equipment manufacturing industries, but Mark Bartlam of Nankai University, Tianjin, is optimistic.

"Innovation cannot be planned, expected or taught. It will take time and it will come sooner or later," the British biochemist said, adding that China has already has conditions for major breakthroughs, including talented students, high-quality and hardworking scientists, and unprecedented policy support.

"Pursuing," Hu Angang said, "is eye-catching, but innovation is sustainable when focused on quality and efficiency. The transformation of a 10-trillion-dollar plus economy will be a great contribution to the world."

Xinhua Insight: After decades of innovation catch-up, China moves to the fore - Xinhua | English.news.cn

Reactions: Like Like:
8


----------



## JSCh

*Could fast radio bursts be produced by collisions between neutron stars and asteroids?*
December 23, 2015 by Tomasz Nowakowski

 

Artist impression of a fast radio burst reaching Earth. Photo credit: Jingchuan Yu, Beijing Planetarium​
(Phys.org)—Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are short bursts of radio emissions from the sky lasting only few milliseconds. However, their origin is still unknown, perplexing astronomers for years since the discovery of the first FRB in 2007. According to various studies, these peculiar radio bursts could be a product of a supernova, two black holes colliding, a spinning neutron star, or they could be related to hyperflares of magnetars. Now, astronomers from the Nanjing University in China are offering another explanation for this puzzling question, asking if collisions of asteroids with neutron stars are producing FRBs.

A paper, detailing the latest finding, co-authored by Yong Feng Huang and Jin-Jun Geng, was published online in the arXiv journal on Dec. 21.

The authors of the paper, using the data from about ten FRBs, obtained key parameters that could help solve the mystery of these radio bursts. FRBs were generally discovered through single-pulse search methods by using archive data of wide-field pulsar surveys at the multi-beam 64-meter Parkes radio telescope in Australia and the 305-meter Arecibo telescope, located in Puerto Rico.

Read more at: Could fast radio bursts be produced by collisions between neutron stars and asteroids?

*More information:* Collision between Neutron Stars and Asteroids as a Mechanism for Fast Radio Bursts, arXiv:1512.06519 [astro-ph.HE] arxiv.org/abs/1512.06519

*Abstract* 
As a new kind of radio transient sources detected at ∼1.4 GHz, fast radio bursts are specially characterized by their short durations and high intensities. Although only ten events are detected so far, fast radio bursts may actually frequently happen at a rate of ∼103 —- 104 sky−1 day−1. We suggest that fast radio bursts can be produced by the collisions between neutron stars and asteroids. This model can naturally explain the millisecond duration of fast radio bursts. The energetics and event rate can also be safely accounted for. Fast radio bursts thus may be one side of the multifaces of the neutron star-small body collision events, which are previously expected to lead to X-ray/gamma-ray bursts or glitch/anti-glitches.​

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## JSCh

* First Haiyang AP1000 unit passes containment tests*
23 December 2015

*Tests of the containment vessel of the first AP1000 unit under construction at the Haiyang nuclear power plant in China have been completed, Westinghouse announced yesterday. The tests were completed two days ahead of schedule.*






_Haiyang 1's containment vessel top head was installed in March 2013_
_(Image: Westinghouse)_​
The two-part tests to confirm that the containment vessel meets design and construction quality requirements began on 30 November. The first part - the structural integrity test - involved the vessel being pressurized and monitored to confirm that its design and construction meet all applicable industry codes and standards at 110% of design pressure. This test was completed on 6 December.

The vessel was then pressurized to design pressure and the integrated leak rate test was performed to demonstrate its ability to prevent the release of radioactive materials in the event of an emergency. This was completed on 9 December. Westinghouse said final data reports on the testing are in process and will be issued by the end of the year.

Westinghouse noted that the Haiyang 1 containment tests were completed two days ahead of schedule. The testing team, it said, used the experience gained from the containment tests completed last month at unit 1 of the Sanmen plant, also an AP1000. By doing so they were able to "pre-emptively troubleshoot potential testing challenges and increase efficiency, leading to shorter test duration".

Westinghouse senior vice president for new plants and major projects Jeff Benjamin said, "The containment vessel pressure testing is another significant milestone in the delivery of one of the world's first AP1000 nuclear power plants and confirms the integrity of the containment vessel structure." He added, "Westinghouse and our delivery partners remain on a clear path to project completion."

Westinghouse is currently constructing four AP1000 units in China, two each at Sanmen in Zhejiang province and Haiyang in Shandong. Sanmen unit 1 is expected to be the first AP1000 to begin operating, in September 2016. Haiyang 1 is expected to start up by the end of 2016. All four Chinese AP1000s are scheduled to be in operation by the end of 2017.

Four AP1000 reactors are being built in the USA - two each at Vogtle and Summer - while three AP1000s are also proposed for the Moorside site in the UK.

_Researched and written
by World Nuclear News_

_First Haiyang AP1000 unit passes containment tests_

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## JSCh

* Newly discovered rock by Chinese rover sheds light on lunar volcanism *
Source:Xinhua Published: 2015-12-24 14:29:46

A new type of basaltic rock, discovered by Chinese moon rover Yutu (Jade Rabbit) during an unmanned lunar exploration mission, may help shed light on lunar volcanism.

The rock was sampled at a fresh crater called Zi Wei, a landing site of Chang'e-3, which reached the moon with the rover in December 2013.

Measurements of the rock composition indicate that the basalt contains a high enrichment of titanium dioxide and olivine. Researchers from China and the United States said the basalt is distinctive from samples collected by the Apollo and Luna missions, carried out by the United States and the former Soviet Union decades ago.

They reckon the area was covered in a late-stage magma ocean during the moon's development around three billion years ago. While rock samples found by the Apollo and Luna missions mainly date back from the early-stage magma oceans between three and four billion years ago.

The measurements were made by the rover-mounted Active Particle-induced X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) and the Visible and Near-infrared Imaging Spectrometer (VNIS). 

A team of scientists from China and the United States, led by Ling Zongcheng from China's Shandong University, published the findings on the journal Nature Communications this week.

"The chemical and mineralogical information of the landing site provides new grounds for some of the youngest volcanism on the moon," said the journal.

Yutu was designed to roam the lunar surface for three months while surveying for natural resources and sending data back to earth. However, mechanical problems made it unable to move in January 2014, though authorities said later it was still able to send data back to earth.

Reactions: Like Like:
8


----------



## JSCh

* China develops heavy-ion medical accelerator *
Source:Xinhua Published: 2015-12-24 16:47:20

Chinese researchers have developed a heavy-ion medical accelerator to be used in radiotherapy for cancer, researchers said Thursday.

A recent test of the machine's beam was successful, marking the end of China's dependence on imported equipment, according to researchers with the Institute of Modern Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which is based in northwest China's Gansu Province.

The researchers said the newly-developed machine is able to accelerate carbon ion beams to 400 mega electron volts per nucleon and provide slow and resonant non-linear extraction.

Modern day cancer radiation treatments employ heavy-ion accelerators to bombard a target with high-energy electrons to kill cancer cells.

The institute started developing the machine from May 2012 after six decades of research. Currently only one Chinese hospital, based in Shanghai, has imported the expensive equipment from abroad for cancer treatment.

As soon as the accelerator passes evaluation and inspection by the China Food and Drug Administration, clinical tests will start before the machine is finally put into full use for therapy.

*China's first home-grown medical heavy ion accelerator hurls beams of ions*

People's Daily Online 

18:04, December 25, 2015









China's first home-grown medical heavy ion accelerator has successfully hurled beams of ions, according to the Institute of Modern Physics of China's Academy of Sciences (CAS) on Dec. 24, 2015. In the future, the ion beam treatment of cancers will not need to rely on the foreign equipment.

China began to develop the accelerator which is placed in Wuwei city, northwest China's Gansu province in May 2012. The accelerator can give heavy ion beam treatment to patients suffering from cancers of rare types, cancers which are not suitable for surgery and cancers that have a high probability of recurrence after treated in other ways.

China has only one set of imported heavy ion accelerator in Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center.

The scientists of the Institute of Modern Physics of the CAS revealed that they can apply for a test for the accelerator by the China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) after it hurled beams of ions. This accelerator can be used to treat cancer patients if it passes the test of the CFDA and meets the requirements of the clinical trials.

(Editor:Ma Xiaochun,Bianji)​

Reactions: Like Like:
8


----------



## bobsm

*Maglev on trial run in central China*
English.news.cn
2015-12-26 16:51:38 | Editor: Xiang Bo






Photo taken on Dec. 26, 2015 shows a magnetic suspended train in Changsha, capital of central China's Hunan Province. China's first low and medium speed magnetic suspended railway was put into test run in Changsha on Dec. 26. China has independent intellectural property rights on the 18.55-kilometer railway. (Xinhua/Long Hongtao)





Photo taken on Dec. 26, 2015 shows a train running on a magnetic suspended railway in Changsha, capital of central China's Hunan Province. China's first low and medium speed magnetic suspended railway was put into test run in Changsha on Dec. 26. China has independent intellectural property rights on the 18.55-kilometer railway. (Xinhua/Long Hongtao)





Photo taken on Dec. 26, 2015 shows the test running ceremony of a magnetic suspended railway in Changsha, capital of central China's Hunan Province. China's first low and medium speed magnetic suspended railway was put into test run in Changsha on Dec. 26. China has independent intellectural property rights on the 18.55-kilometer railway. (Xinhua/Long Hongtao)

For more photos: Maglev on trial run in central China - Xinhua | English.news.cn

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## cirr

*Server, data services provider Inspur eyes foreign markets*

By Gao Yuan (China Daily)

Updated: 2015-12-17 07:26





Products of the Inspur Group Ltd are on display at an exhibition in Beijing. [Wu Changqing / For China Daily]

Inspur Technologies Co Ltd, the leading Chinese server and data services provider, is now focused squarely on expanding its business outside of the country, particularly in Europe and Africa, according to Chairman and CEO Sun Pishu.

He said major Chinese telecommunications equipment vendors such as Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and ZTE Corporation had already created widespread networks in the regions.

"Now it is our turn to add data centers and services on top of that infrastructure," Sun said.

The country's Belt and Road Initiative and the creation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank－flagship economic programs which will help strengthen relationship with neighboring economies－also offer Inspur what Sun called a "golden opportunity" to sell its products to the government agencies and large enterprises involved in both.

"Technically, many of our overseas customers now face similar challenges when it comes to education, healthcare and energy that China had to tackle in the past," said Sun.

Gene Cao, a Beijing-based analyst with Forrester Research Inc, said some Chinese IT companies still face fierce competition when it comes to winning overseas customers, because domestic vendors are still relative newcomers on the world stage.

"It is easier to gain market share in lower-end markets where they can compete well on price. But often the technology gap makes it difficult to enter higher-end markets," said Cao.

Sun said, however, he is confident that with sustained investment in research and development, Inspur is capable of taking on high-end markets, and so has pledged to increase its R&D spending to 12 percent of annual revenue over the next five years from the current 7 percent.

In recent months, there have been various headline acquisitions by cash-rich Chinese tech giants, in an effort to address their technology shortcomings.

Tsinghua Unigroup Ltd, for instance, is buying stakes in two Taiwan-based chipmakers for 13.5 billion yuan ($2.1 billion), while Lenovo Group Ltd earlier bought IBM's x86 server unit.

"Inspur has no intention of fueling its expansion by acquisition, and will instead be relying instead on development its own cutting-edge technology.

"We have a very different approach when it comes to expansion. We also prefer to sign partnerships to beef up the business," Sun said .

Inspur has maintained steady growth over the past five years, fueled by ongoing domestic demand for information technology products and data analytical services.

Rising concern over data security has also helped the Jinan-based firm gain market share of the government-procurement sector, previously dominated by United States vendors including IBM Corp and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

*According to recent figures from industry consultancy International Data Corporation, Chinese server vendors－led by Inspur and Lenovo－took more than half of that procurement market this year, up from less than a fifth in 2011*.

Server, data services provider Inspur eyes foreign markets - Business - Chinadaily.com.cn

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## JSCh

*Special tanks help fight urban and forest fires*

2015-12-28 08:59
China Daily 





Firefighting tanks can cross half-meter-high obstacles and spray water as far as 65 meters. (Photo: China Daily/Zhang Lihong)​
China's largest land arms producer, China North Industries Group Corp, has developed a series of firefighting tanks that can be used in urban areas and to control forest blazes.

Made by Inner Mongolia First Machinery, a subsidiary, the tanks are in service with at least 28 firefighting departments in Shandong, Shaanxi, Shanxi and Hunan provinces.

The latest type, designed to control forest fires, has received 50 orders and is being delivered to buyers, China North Industries said in a statement.

With the chassis and armor of a military tank, the vehicles can protect crew members from fire, explosions, building collapses and can cross half-meter-high obstacles or 2-meter-wide trenches. They have an automatic spray device and fireproof coating that can prevent scorching heat from spreading inside the vehicles.

Compared with fire engines, the tanks can get closer to blaze scenes and be used for search-and-rescue missions, according to the statement.

Using 520-horsepower diesel engines and equipped with hydraulic devices, the tanks can clear obstacles weighing up to 15 metric tons. Their metal tracks allow them to operate on slopes, in rocky terrain and among the debris of collapsed buildings.

The water cannon on the vehicles can spray water as far as 65 meters. A secondary water gun, which can be fitted if required, can be used to disperse rioters.

Buyers can choose to install a sensor that can detect flammable and toxic gases, the company said.

"A single tank can spray nearly 15 tons of water onto a fire within 1 minute-equivalent to the capacity of six fire engines," said a firefighter in Taiyuan, Shanxi province, who wanted to be identified only as Fang.

"It can operate deep into a fire scene without putting the firefighters' safety at risk. It has good mobility and protection, allowing us to handle dangerous situations such as chemical blasts and toxic leaks."

He said many injuries to firefighters are caused by explosions and buildings collapsing as they enter a blaze scene where debris has prevented fire engines from getting closer.

Russia and Germany have also transformed old tanks into firefighting vehicles.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Huawei Marine to build trans-Atlantic cable system *

2015-12-28 14:21
CRIENGLISH.com 





Huawei Marine Networks is contracted to construct Cameroon-Brazil Cable System (CBCS), connecting Africa to Latin America. (Photo/huaweimarine.com)​
Huawei Marine Networks is looking to construct a Cameroon-Brazil Cable System (CBCS), connecting Africa to Latin America.

The project is invested by CamTel, China Unicom and Telefónica, who will support the initiative by providing their international facilities and experience.

The four parties involved sealed the agreement in October this year.

Sales director for Huawei Marine's business in Middle East and Africa, Lan Tu, says the project will meet the increasing demand for Internet access in the two regions, which are strategically emerging market for Chinese telecom operators.

CBCS, which is approximately 6,000 km long, will cross the south Atlantic sea connecting Kribi, Cameroon to Fortaleza, Brazil. Utilising Huawei Marine's leading 100G technology, it will have an initial system capacity of 32 Tbps with 4 fiber pairs. The system will come into service at the end of 2017.

Huawei Marine will deploy its 6fp submarine Repeater 1660, the industry's first innovative titanium repeater, which boasts a slim-line profile to allow direct lay and plough burial for the installation. This simultaneous operation significantly reduces system installation costs by eliminating the need for an expensive secondary, post-lay burial operation.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*Construction company in Hunan shows new way to build houses*

Updated: 2015-12-28 11:19
chinadaily.com.cn
A group of foreigners, including overseas students and experts, visited factories that seek environment-friendly solutions during a trip to understand how Changsha is transforming itself into a resource-conserving and environment-friendly society in Changsha, Hunan province, on Wednesday.

The foreign representatives showed a great interest in an enterprise which uses new technology and eco-friendly ideas in construction.

The Broad Homes Industrial International Co, Ltd advocates building houses like automakers build cars - separately constructing parts to improve the quality of the building and using less energy during the process.

The representatives visited the production line where many pieces are made as individual parts. According to the company, the walls are made first then the rooms take shape. The building, the company claims, built this way can last more than 100 years.

According to a staff member at the construction site, there is no dust, noise or wastage of water and material when the walls are build.

The company said the new method reduces the usage of five tons of construction waste to build one square meter of construction.

To build a 125-square-meter house with the new method, Broad claims it saves 70 percent of energy, 20 percent of materials, 80 percent of water, 60 percent of time and 20 percent of space compared to houses constructed in traditional way.

In March, Broad became famous when it completed a 57-storey skyscraper in 19 days in Hunan. Its time-lapse video of the construction and its innovative method left people amazed.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

Posted: Dec 28, 2015

*Understanding the mechanism for generating electric current without energy consumption at room temperature*

(_Nanowerk News_) A group of researchers in Japan and China identified the requirements for the development of new types of extremely low power consumption electric devices by studying Cr-doped (Sb,Bi)2Te3 thin films. This study has been reported in _Nature Communications_ ("Carrier-mediated ferromagnetism in the magnetic topological insulator Cr-doped (Sb,Bi)2Te3").

At extremely low temperatures, an electric current flows around the edge of the film without energy loss, and under no external magnetic field. This attractive phenomenon is due to the material's ferromagnetic properties; however, so far, it has been unclear how the material gains this property. For the first time, researchers have revealed the mechanism by which this occurs. “Hopefully, this achievement will lead to the creation of novel materials that operate at room temperature in the future,” said Akio Kimura, a professor at Hiroshima University and a member of the research group.







Ferromagnetism mediated by Sb or Te atoms. (Image: Hiroshima University) 
​Their achievement can be traced back to the discovery of the quantum Hall effect in the 1980’s, where an electric current flows along an edge (or interface) without energy loss. However, this requires both a large external magnetic field and an extremely low temperature. This is why practical applications have not been possible. Researchers believed that this problem could be overcome with new materials called topological insulators that have ferromagnetic properties such as those found in Cr-doped (Sb,Bi)2Te3.

A topological insulator, predicted in 2005 and first observed in 2007, is neither a metal nor an insulator, and has exotic properties. For example, an electric current is generated only at the surface or the edge of the material, while no electric current is generated inside it. It looks as if only the surface or the edge of the material has metallic properties, while on the inside it is an insulator.

At extremely low temperatures, a thin film made of Cr-doped (Sb,Bi)2Te3 shows a peculiar phenomenon. As the film itself is ferromagnetic, an electric current is spontaneously generated without an external magnetic field and electric current flows only around the edge of the film without energy loss. However, it was previously unknown as to why Cr-doped (Sb,Bi)2Te3 had such ferromagnetic properties that allowed it to generate electric current.

“That’s why we selected the material as the object of our study,” said Professor Kimura.
Because Cr is a magnetic element, a Cr atom is equivalent to an atomic-sized magnet. The N-S orientations of such atomic-sized magnets tend to be aligned in parallel by the interactions between the Cr atoms. When the N-S orientations of Cr atoms in Cr-doped (Sb,Bi)2Te3 are aligned in parallel, the material exhibits ferromagnetism. However, the interatomic distances between the Cr atoms in the material are, in fact, too long to interact sufficiently to make the material ferromagnetic.

The group found that the non-magnetic element atoms, such as the Sb and Te atoms, mediate the magnetic interactions between Cr atoms and serve as the glue to fix the N-S orientations of Cr atoms that face one direction. In addition, the group expects that its finding will provide a way to increase the critical temperature for relevant device applications.

The experiments for this research were mainly conducted at SPring-8. “We would not have achieved perfect results without the facilities and the staff there. They devoted themselves to detecting the extremely subtle magnetism that the atoms of non-magnetic elements exhibit with extremely high precision. I greatly appreciate their efforts,” Kimura said.

Source: _Hiroshima University_

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

* Oldest Hoabinhian site discovered in SW China *
Xinhua, December 30, 2015 





Xiaodong Rockshelter [Photo/Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology of Yunnan]​
The oldest Hoabinhian culture, an important technological adaptation by hunter-gatherers to the humid tropical and subtropical environments of southeast Asia some 43,500 years ago, was identified in southwest China's Yunnan Province.

Discovered at Xiaodong Rockshelter, it is the first-ever Hoabinhian site to be found in China, according to a research team at the Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology.

The Hoabinhian culture was first discovered in the 1920s in the northern Vietnam's Hoa Binh Province by French scholar M. Colani, who defined it in 1932 at the First Conference for Prehistoric Archaeologists in the Far East.

The Hoabinhian technocomplex is characterized by large and elongated adze-like unifacial cobble tools, which are thought to be used for woodworking in forested habitats, including the hilly limestone landscapes where the Xiaodong Rockshelter is located.

Leading researcher Ji Xueping said most known Hoabinhian sites have been dated to between 25,000 to 5,000 years ago, with the oldest about 29,000 years from today.

As a technological adaptation practiced by the latest hunter-gatherers to cope with the humid environments of southeast Asia, Hoabinhian sites provide significant clues for understanding the surviving strategies of hominids, and the transition from nomadic populations to more settled agricultural communities, Ji said.

The Xiaodong Palaeolithic site was first found in 1981. In 2004, archaeologists conducted the first systematic investigation in the Xiaodong Cave and collected stone artifacts, which made them realize the value of the site.

From 2007 to 2015, further investigations were carried out at the site. A soil layer containing more than four meters of cultural deposits was excavated. Collected samples confirmed the Hoabinhian affinity of Xiaodong after comparisons with other materials in southeast Asian countries.

The carbon 14 dating method shows the site was occupied some 43,500 to 24,000 years ago. The bottom layer may even be older.

"Xiaodong can be regarded as a typical early Hoabinhian site, the first such site found in China and currently the oldest in Asia as well," Ji said, adding the new discovery may indicate the origins of the widespread Hoabinhian sites in southeast Asia are likely to be in the upper valley region of the Lancang-Mekong river system of southwest China.

"The study shows that the Lancang River valley is a possible home for the Hoabinhian culture and a source of migration for modern humans and the transmission of their culture to southeast Asia," Ji said. "The early Hoabinhian adaptation in southwest Yunnan played an important role in the Late Palaeolithic and Early Neolithic cultures in southeast Asia and south China."

The research team has spent nearly ten years on field investigations that covered tens of thousands of kilometers, and paid several visits to southeast Asian countries for comparative studies. Scholars from France and South Africa also participated in the study.

The finding results have been published online in the journal "Quaternary International" on Dec. 23.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Mysterious radio signals from space discovered to be a much better test of Einstein's General Relativity theory*
_December 30, 2015_





Limits on the differences of the γ values for three FRB observations. Credit: _Phys. Rev. Lett_. 115, 261101 – Published 23 December 2015. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.261101 ​
A new way to test one of the basic principles underlying Einstein's theory of General Relativity using brief blasts of rare radio signals from space called Fast Radio Bursts is ten times, to one-hundred times better than previous testing methods that used gamma-ray bursts, according to a paper just published in the journal _Physical Review Letters_. The paper received additional highlighting as an "Editor's Suggestion" due to "its particular importance, innovation, and broad appeal," according to the journal's editors.

Read more at: Mysterious radio signals from space discovered to be a much better test of Einstein's General Relativity theory

*Editors' Suggestion*
*Testing Einstein’s Equivalence Principle With Fast Radio Bursts*

Jun-Jie Wei, He Gao, Xue-Feng Wu, and Peter Mészáros
Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 261101 – Published 23 December 2015
*Abstract*

The accuracy of Einstein’s equivalence principle (EEP) can be tested with the observed time delays between correlated particles or photons that are emitted from astronomical sources. Assuming as a lower limit that the time delays are caused mainly by the gravitational potential of the Milky Way, we prove that fast radio bursts (FRBs) of cosmological origin can be used to constrain the EEP with high accuracy. Taking FRB 110220 and two possible FRB/gamma-ray burst (GRB) association systems (FRB/GRB 101011A and FRB/GRB 100704A) as examples, we obtain a strict upper limit on the differences of the parametrized post-Newtonian parameter γ values as low as [γ(1.23  GHz)−γ(1.45  GHz)]<4.36×10−9. This provides the most stringent limit up to date on the EEP through the relative differential variations of the γ parameter at radio energies, improving by 1 to 2 orders of magnitude the previous results at other energies based on supernova 1987A and GRBs.

DOI: Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 261101 (2015) - Testing Einstein's Equivalence Principle With Fast Radio Bursts

© 2015 American Physical Society​

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*20,000 items and counting at Haihunhou*

2015-12-31 16:34
CNTV 
The Han Dynasty burial site of Haihunhou is one of the great archaeological finds of all time. It has been a huge story in China's cultural scene. Five years of excavation have unearthed more than 20,000 pieces, even surpassing the star site known as Ma Wangdui.

Dating from the western Han Dynasty more than 2,000 years ago, Haihunhou is the probable resting place of Liu He. He was the grandson of famed emperor Wu, but, apparently lacking either talent or morals, was deposed after only 27 days on the throne himself. He was then named Marquis of Haihun State, a small kingdom to the west of today's Jiangxi province.

Since excavations began in March 2011, archaeologist have unearthed more than 20,000 items including gold, bronze, iron, jade, lacquerware, textiles, pottery, bamboo slips, and wooden tablets. Such findings from the period are extremely rare.

"What's on the wooden tablets are letters to the royal court sent by the Marquis of the Haihun State. The bamboo tablets haven't been read through and analyzed by experts, but going by our experience of archaeology of the period, we think they might be books of medicine, agriculture, and calendars," said Xin Lixiang, an archaeologist.

Some 2 million bronze coins, together weighing some 10 tons, have been dug up. They shed light on the monetary system of the period.

"Previously we thought 'one thousand coins making one Guan' started during the Song Dynasty, but now we know it began in the Western Han Dynasty, which is a thousand years earlier," said Zhang Zhongli, an archaeologist.

Chariots, pots, distillers, a chess board, and many musical instruments have also been excavated from the corridors of the tomb.

Digging on the main rooms of the tomb started in mid November. In the western chamber, a folding screen was found with an image thought to be of Confucius, along with biographical inscriptions.

On December 20, the outer coffin was opened to reveal 285 gold pieces, the largest number ever found in a Han-Dynasty tomb.

All in all, Haihunhou has stunned the archaeological world with the quantity and quality of finds.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*China identifies new dinosaur with bow-shaped hip bone*

2016-01-01 08:28
Xinhua 




​Paleontologists in east China's Shandong Province have named a new dinosaur species in the genus Leptoceratops after its unique hip bone.

The partial skeleton of Ischioceratops zhuchengensis, which lived during the Cretaceous Period, the last dinosaur era, was found in the world's largest dinosaur fossil field at Zhucheng, according to the local dinosaur research center

Leptoceratops are small, herbivorous dinosaurs that walked on four legs but could probably stand or walk on their hind legs alone. The new species features a recurve bow-shaped ischium (back and lower part of the hip bone), which has an obturator process in the middle part and an axehead-shaped expansion at the distal end.

The discovery has been published in the U.S. journal PLOS ONE.

More than ten new dinosaur species have been discovered and named at Zhucheng.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Martian2

*Taiwan's AUO develops indigenous zero-liquid-discharge process technology for TFT-LCD production*

CTIMES News - Taiwan’s First Locally Made Water Full-recycling System Launches at AUO’s Lungtan Site

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 29-Dec-2015

* Scientists variable vectoring technique for propeller powered unmanned aerial vehicles *
Science China Press





The proposed variable thrust direction mechanism is shown in Fig.1, a conventional propeller engine is mounted on a two dimensional rotate disk, which is driven by two servo actuators. By combining the linear motions of the actuator, both the azimuth and the altitude angle of the disk with respect to the fuselage can be controlled, and thus changing the thrust direction of the propeller. *Credit: *©Science China Press

The unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) designed for plateau missions are usually installed with high span chord ratio wings, which provides more lifting force at a relatively low airspeed. The UAVs employ high span chord ratio wings, however, tend to lose their maneuverability. Hence, they usually need larger turning radius and unable to maintain the altitude during sharp slope turning as the lifting force produced by the wings decrease dramatically when the bank angle is large. The discarding of the flight performances may risk the safety of the flight in plateau mountain regions. Variable thrust direction (VTD) technology is a type of thrust vectoring control (TVC) approach that allows to manipulate the directions of thrust to the fuselage of the aircraft.

Most of the existing works are designed for jet engines, which cannot be applied to the conventional propeller engine aircraft. In a paper published in _SCIENCE CHINA Information Sciences_ recently, researchers develop a novel VTD mechanism to the conventional propeller engine UAV, which allows redirecting parts portion of the thrust from the propeller engine to other directions rather than normal axial direction. A combination flight controller for the VTD enhanced UAV is then proposed to coordinate the VTD controlled forces and aerodynamic surfaces forces.

The proposed variable thrust direction mechanism is shown in Fig.1, a conventional propeller engine is mounted on a two dimensional rotate disk, which is driven by two servo actuators. By combining the linear motions of the actuator, both the azimuth and the altitude angle of the disk with respect to the fuselage can be controlled, and thus changing the thrust direction of the propeller.

By the introduction of the VTD capability to the conventional propeller UAV, the maneuverability of the UAV has been greatly enhanced, since the VTD engine enables direct force control of the aircraft. The newly developed VTD UAV was applied to implement plateau missions, which demonstrates the usefulness of the proposed technique.

###

*See the article:*

Research on Variable Thrust Directional Control Technique for Plateau Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
Yin WANG & Daobo WANG
College of Astronautics, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China;
College of Automation Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China 
_SCIENCE CHINA Information Sciences_, DOI: 10.1007/s11432-015-5505-5 
Research on Variable Thrust Directional Control Technique for Plateau Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Scientists variable vectoring technique for propeller powered unmanned aerial vehicles | EurekAlert! Science News

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Watch this space: Telescope releases mass of data*

 Updated: 2016-01-04 08:35
By CHENG YINGQI(China Daily)


A file photo of the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope, also known as the Guo Shoujing Telescope. XINHUA

Astronomers in China working with one of world's largest optical telescopes released a huge collection of data over the new year holiday, increasing the chances of "significant findings" in space exploration, experts say.
The latest update to the National Astronomical Observatories' sky survey, conducted using the LAMOST telescope, includes some 4.62 million spectral data relating to the structure, formation and evolution of the Milky Way.

LAMOST－short for Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope－has been used to carry out a massive sky survey since September 2012. So far, it has collected more data than all previous sky surveys combined, according to the NAO.

"As more and more data are released, there will be more significant findings," said Yan Jun, director of the NAO.

Chu Yaoquan, deputy director of operations and development at LAMOST, described the survey as like a census of the stars. "The project gives us a large sample of stars. With the large sample－say, a few million－we can know more about the past and present of the galaxy," he explained in an earlier interview.

The first phase of the survey is to collect more than 5 million star spectra by September this year. The data, which will be used to create a "digital galaxy" for research on the Milky Way, will be shared with 31 colleges and institutes in China and overseas.

Previous surveys have provided long-lasting resources. For example, Chen Xuelei, a researcher with the NAO, recently reported a fast radio burst spotted by Green Bank Telescope in the United States' West Virginia.

Working together

"Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are bright bursts of radiation that usually last for only a fraction of a second before disappearing. Sometimes we joke they are aliens tying to talk to us, but the fact is we have no idea what they are," he said.

An international team made up of scientists from China, the US, Canada and South Africa, among other countries, carried out 700 hours of surveys using the Green Bank Telescope and accumulated a large database. When they started to analyze the data, they found the radio bursts and reported the discovery to Nature magazine in December.

"FRBs take place a few thousand times a year, but it's very difficult to see them," Chen said. "We accumulated mass data, which has increased our chances of observing FRBs."

Meanwhile, Gou Lijun and his students, also with the NAO, have been collaborating with US scientists to measure a black hole named X-ray Nova Muscae 1991 in the Milky Way using data collected in 1991 by the Japanese satellite GINGA.

The size of the black hole is comparable to the size of Beijing: It is about 60 kilometers across. It also weighs roughly 11 times more than the sun, and travels at a speed of about 387 rotations per second.

Scientists have identified 19 black holes in the Milky Way but so far have managed to measure only six of them.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

* Chinese researchers find flavonoids in cotton petals to treat Alzheimer's*

English.news.cn 
2016-01-03 18:56:37
URUMQI, Jan. 3 (Xinhua) -- A new drug to treat Alzheimer's disease that uses flavonoids found and extracted by Chinese researchers from cotton petals has entered clinical trial.

Researchers at Xinjiang Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry under the Chinese Academy of Sciences said this week that they had discovered flavonoids capable of improving animals' learning ability in a study that began in 2003.

These flavonoids were found to improve the memory of mice with dementia and that of naturally aged mice.

Researchers then identified the 20 flavonoid compounds in the petals and made tablets that can produce a similar effect at small dosages.

The research institute signed a deal with a pharmaceutical marker to apply the research finding.

The white and pink cotton-petal blossom bloom before the cotton bolls. Xinjiang is a major cotton production base in China. Previously these petals were discarded but after their medicinal property were uncovered, they now sell for around 15 yuan per kilogram in the market.

Editor: Mengjie​

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## Martian2

*China's Pebble-bed nuclear reactor technology advances*

Pebble-bed nuclear reactor technology is safe. It can't melt down. Normal air circulation is sufficient to keep it cool.

"HTR-10 is a 10 MegaWatt prototype pebble bed reactor at Tsinghua University in China. Construction began in 1995, achieving its first criticality in December 2000, and was operated in full power condition in January 2003."

"In 2005, China announced its intention to scale up HTR-10 for commercial power generation. The first two 250-MWt High Temperature Reactor-Pebble-bed Modules (HTR-PM) will be installed at the Shidao Bay Nuclear Power Plant, near the city of Rongcheng in Shandong Province, and together drive a steam turbine generating 200 MWe.
...
Construction finally began at the end of 2012,[5] with the pour of the concrete basemat occurring in April 2014.[6] It is expected to begin operating around 2017.[6]"
----------

Simulator delivered for China's HTR-PM | World Nuclear News

"The demonstration plant's twin HTR-PM units will drive a single 210 MWe turbine. It is expected to start commercial operation in late 2017. Eighteen further units are proposed for the Shidaowan site, near Rongcheng in Weihai city.

A proposal to construct two 600 MWe HTRs at Ruijin city in China's Jiangxi province passed a preliminary feasibility review in early 2015. The design of the Ruijin HTRs is based on the smaller Shidaowan demonstration HTR-PM. Construction of the Ruijin reactors is expected to start in 2017, with grid connection in 2021."

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## Martian2

Taiwan develops 'X-ray eyes' system for surgeons | Tech | FOCUS TAIWAN - CNA ENGLISH NEWS

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists identify "fear switch" neurons in mice*
2016-01-05 15:53:58

HANGZHOU, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have discovered two types of neurons that can arouse or suppress innate fear induced by odor.

Innate fear, which include things like fear of height and insects, is a basic animal instinct to avoid danger, but in excess it can lead to anxiety and even mental disease. Understanding its neuron mechanism can benefit therapy for fear-related disorders, said Duan Shumin with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

By exposing mice to the odor of their predator's feces and recording fear-related responses such as frozen movement, shaking and accelerated heart rate, Duan's team studied how such fears were related to their somatostatin-positive neurons and parvalbumin-positive (PV) neurons.

When their PV neurons were inhibited, the mice remained bold and continued to act normally despite the threat of a predator, while activation of the somatostatin neurons produced the same effect, said Wang Hao from Zhejiang University, who also participated in the research.

"These neurons are like fear switches. Even without the odor, the neurons can generate a fear response in mice, such as fleeing, increased heart rate and incontinence," Wang said.

The study was published in the latest issue of Nature Neuroscience.

Editor: Tian Shaohui​

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*01.05.2016 14:21*

*Banking on Gene Power for 'Precision Medicine'*
_Genome sequencing companies, including niche service providers, are at the heart of a new health care initiative backed by the Chinese government
_

By staff reporter Wang Qionghui

(Beijing) – The Chinese government is powering a homegrown "precision medicine" initiative aimed at improving patient treatment for chronic ailments such as cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes.

Officials have declared precision medicine – a customized form of health care based on genome-sequencing technology – as one of the nation's foremost science and technology projects under the 13th Five-Year Plan for the 2016-20 period.

A document published after a March meeting hosted by the Ministry of Science and Technology says the central government plans to spend 20 billion yuan to support precision medicine research by 2030, matching an anticipated 40 billion yuan in private investment. Moreover, the top public health authority, the National Health and Family Planning Commission, is drafting a strategic plan for promoting precision medicine's development nationwide.

Companies that expect to benefit from the initiative include Shenzhen-based BGI Genomics Co., Hangzhou's Berry Genomics Co. and Beijing Biomarker Technologies. Although young, the genetics services sector in the country is already diversifying, with firms staking claims in specialties such as prenatal care and niche services like disease and cancer detection through genetic testing.

BGI, the nation's leader in genome sequencing, is a 16-year-old company that bought U.S. medical equipment maker Complete Genomics in 2012 and last October rolled out its first homegrown genome sequencing machine. Berry, established in 2010, is China's second-largest genome sequencer and the developer of non-invasive prenatal testing procedure that's been offered since 2011. Beijing Biomarker, founded in 2009, serves research institutions with genetic analyses and testing services.

The precision medicine movement has also won the attention of Internet and computer companies. In October, the U.S. chip maker Intel Corp. and China's e-commerce leader Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. announced a three-way partnership with BGI. The firms said they will collaborate to build a cloud-based online platform allowing clinics to access genetic data and other precision medicine services.

"Precision medicine requires sharing an individual's genetic data and comparing it to huge amounts of data from similar patients," said Li Yingrui, chief executive of BGI Tech Solution Co., a subsidiary of BGI. Health specialists then use those comparisons "to find differences and similarities to work out precise treatment regimes for individual patients."

*The Next Step*

China's initiative parallels a similar movement in the United States. In January 2015, U.S. President Barack Obama mentioned the field in his State of the Union address, calling for the government to spend US$ 215 million in fiscal 2016 to support precision medicine and build a national genome register. The effort would be coordinated by the National Cancer Institute and other agencies.

Precision medicine is considered a step up from today's basic approach to medical treatment, which is based on the general idea that "one size fits all." Such an approach to diagnosis and treatment can mean curing some patients but not others.

Precision medicine revolves around customized disease prevention, diagnostics and treatment services based on a patient's unique biological, environmental and behavioral circumstances. Supporters say the approach gives health care specialists the tools they need to work out unique treatment strategies backed by genome sequencing.

Many medical experts are particularly excited about precision medicine's role as a powerful tool in the fight against cancer, particularly for its ability to help with early detection. Cancer is now a leading killer in China. A report by the Cancer Hospital of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences said an average of six people in the country were diagnosed with cancer every minute in 2015, and five of those six would eventually die of the disease. Many tumor experts blame the nation's high cancer death rates on diagnoses that come too late.

The World Health Organization found that half of all newly diagnosed cancer patients worldwide in 2014 lived in Asia. China saw the biggest increase in cancer patients between 2013 and 2014.

A doctor who tells a patient that he or she is at risk of getting cancer, but does not use genome sequencing, usually offers no more than a "rough probability" diagnosis, said Cai Qiang, the founder of the health care consultancy Beijing Saint Lucia Hospital Management Consulting. But "probability sometimes is meaningless," he said.

"For instance, a 50 percent probability of breast cancer provides little in terms of references" that can help a patient decide whether or how to pursue treatment options, Cai said.

Li agrees that genetic testing can play a key role in precision medicine treatment for cancer patients. "With new technologies, we can accurately catch a tumor's DNA molecules in blood and detect mutations at early stages," he said.

*Lucrative Market*

Genome sequencing began in the United States in 1990 with the launch of the Human Genome Project. Scientists from around the world participated in what became a 15-year, US$ 3 billion program that ended with the first comprehensive catalogue of human genetic variations.

Genetic testing costs have fallen dramatically in recent years. Genome sequencing had fallen to about US$ 1,000 per person as of October, from about $100 million in 2001, says the National Human Genome Research Institute, a division of the U.S. government's National Institutes of Health. Sequencing a person's genome can now be completed in only two weeks.

Medical experts expect costs to continue to fall even as sequencing takes less time. Future testing will "get faster and cheaper," said BGI's CEO Yin Ye.

The business is also expected to become more lucrative. A Guolian Securities report said global revenues for genome sequencing services rose to US$ 4.5 billion in 2013 from US$ 7.9 million in 2007. That figure is expected to reach US$ 11.7 billion by 2018.

Companies that could benefit from the precision medicine movement include genetic services providers BGI, Berry and Guangdong Province-based DAAN Gene Co. Experts say companies that find niches in the growing market space will come to stand out.

"Profit margins are low for genome sequencing" companies, said Xu Junpu, chairman of Beijing ACCB Biotech Ltd., a sequencing provider. "The future points to profits in downstream businesses, where the competition will intensify,"

Genome sequencing's core technologies are controlled by a few upstream companies that, for example, make sequencing machines. Most of the world's genome sequencing relies on equipment made by the U.S. firm Illumina Inc., California-based Life Technologies Corp. and Switzerland's Roche Holding, which combine to control about 70 percent of the market, Li said.

"The most profitable part of the genome sequencing market is equipment manufacturing," said Li Tao, investment director at Huaxia Renhe Capital, a venture capital firm. "It will remain the most profitable business for quite some time."

In 2010, BGI bought 128 gene sequencing machines from Illumina. It was the manufacturer's largest order ever, and it helped BGI become the world's largest provider of genome sequencing services. Clients include international research institutions and pharmaceutical companies, the company says.

Like other precision medicine companies, BGI is looking for ways to expand genetic services into other areas of health care. For instance, BGI has rolled out a service that can be used to test a person's ability to tolerate alcohol. Other companies claim they can use sequencing to detect specific talents in a child.

The rise of precision medicine has raised questions about data access, patient privacy, and how companies and hospitals should share genetic data.

Some medical experts have urged the government to work with companies to build an information-sharing platform and make new rules for the sector. But others argue that the industry should not be forced into sharing information, since a genetic test's impact on a patient can be complicated.

Experts such as Yu Ying, a former emergency room doctor at Peking Union Medical College Hospital and a popular blogger of health care issue, noted that genetic testing may cause adverse effects for people with certain health conditions. "Not everyone is suitable for genome sequencing," she said.

"We have no idea whether a therapy to change a patient's gene with breast cancer risks will trigger Parkinson's disease," said Ketan Paranjape, general manager of Life Sciences and Analytics, Health Strategy and Solutions Group at Intel.

"With advanced technology, we can test a person's genome sequence at a very lost cost," said a genetics expert at Beijing's Tsinghua University who asked not to be named. "But there is still a wide gap between understanding a gene sequence and human life."

(Rewritten by Han Wei)

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Catalyst helps convert waste CO2 into fuel*

Updated: 2016-01-07 08:27
By Zhu Lixin in Hefei and Cheng Yingqi in Beijing(China Daily USA)
There's a basic contradiction between modern lifestyles and environmental protection: The more we consume, the more we produce and the more damage we cause to the environment.

But what if carbon dioxide emissions could be recycled?

Since the 1990s, scientists have been working on making liquid fuel from carbon emissions. However, one of the major bottlenecks is finding the proper catalysts and how to use them.

On Thursday, scientists from the University of Science and Technology of China reported a new catalyst mechanism to create liquid fuel from carbon dioxide. The study was published by the British scientific journal Nature.

"Driven by increasing concerns about CO2-induced global warming and depletion of finite fossil fuel resources, developing renewable energy alternatives represents one of the major scientific challenges of the 21st century", said Xie Yi, a professor at the university and a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

"In this regard, electrochemical reduction of waste CO2 into useful energy-rich fuels is considered a potentially clean strategy for turning trash into treasure," she said.



Xie's team used cobalt, an element that usually exists in nature in chemically combined form, as a catalyst to convert carbon dioxide into formate, which can be used as liquid fuel.

"Cobalt has been considered nearly non-catalytic for this reaction before, but we have demonstrated it as a very active catalyst if placed in the correct condition," said Gao Shan, one of the nine authors of the paper.

Carbon dioxide reduction - the chemical process to convert CO2 into multiple chemical products, including those that can be used as liquid fuel - has required too much energy to be feasible.

The Chinese scientists evaluated the activity of cobalt in two different forms: pure cobalt metal and a mixture of cobalt metal and cobalt oxide.

"Carbon dioxide reduction to formate has never before been reported for cobalt, despite the long history of the field and numerous surveys of metallic electrodes by multiple authors," said an anonymous peer review comment provided by Nature.

The new catalysis results may cause many to rethink the accepted strategies for the reaction, according to the review.

Industrial applications of the technology still face a number of challenges besides the chemical reaction itself, such as collecting CO2 and gathering the produced fuel, according to Gao.

"There are several teams around the globe devoted to related research. It is hard to tell who is doing better, since each team has its own emphasis and so many trivial things need to be explored," he said.

Contact the writers at zhulixin@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily USA 01/07/2016 page5)​*****
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v529/n7584/full/nature16455.html

*Partially oxidized atomic cobalt layers for carbon dioxide electroreduction to liquid fuel*

Shan Gao,
Yue Lin,
Xingchen Jiao,
Yongfu Sun,
Qiquan Luo,
Wenhua Zhang,
Dianqi Li,
Jinlong Yang & Yi Xie
*Editor's summary*

The production of useful fuels from carbon dioxide through electroreduction would be a clean way of replacing fossil fuels and reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Shan Gao _et al_. have turned cobalt, a metal generally considered not active for this reaction, into a very efficient electrocatalyst by synthesizing it in the form of four-atom-thick layers. This finding, and the observation that partial oxidation of the surface boosts activity further, points to a general strategy for turning otherwise unreactive metals into efficient electroreduction catalysts.

Reactions: Like Like:
10


----------



## Martian2

*China develops indigenous large-scale Air Separation Unit (ASU) compressor*

Air compressor first in China as Shengu breakthrough affirms domestic equipment potential | News | gasworld

Reactions: Like Like:
9


----------



## JSCh

*A New Water Robot "Born" to Detect Water Quality*
Jan 06, 2016





Autonomous surface vehicle (ASV) (Image by YU Daoyang)​
As for water quality detection and sampling technology, the available domestic water robot has its own limitations that through on-line detection, it generally detects conventional water quality parameters. In this case, it is difficult to comprehensively detect the organic substances, nutrients and heavy metals in water and the water detection is conducted only through water samples in the laboratory. Thus, the conventional water detection technology fails in the in-situ and real-time detection of heavy metals and other important pollutants. In addition, the available technology apply only to shallow water. While it fails in detecting the distribution of the water quality at different depth levels in the water.

Given this, employing wind and solar hybrid generating system, a study team led by Prof. LIU Jinhuai’s from Institute of Intelligent Machines, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IIM, CAS), fabricated an autonomous surface vehicle (ASV) which can be applied on the water surface for float automatic cleaning, automatic oil removal and in-situ water measurements and so on.

This new-designed ASV has absolute advantages over the existing water unmanned surface vehicle. The power source comes from large capacity battery, wind and solar power hybrid generating system which solve the motive forces problem of the long duration cruising for surface robot. Additionally, to cope with the robot global path planning and local real-time obstacle avoidance, the new ASV employs two-mode target recognition method based on vision and radar to develop intelligent algorithm. Moreover, the new ASV manages to overcome difficulty in automatic control of surface target via integrating multi-mode navigation system, the three dimensional electronic compass, drive automatic control of motor speed control technology, high bandwidth wireless data real-time transmission technology and artificial intelligence technology.

Since the advantages mentioned above, the water surface vehicle is taken as a platform to achieve the three-dimensional section in-situ and real-time detection and pollution state analysis of water quality. Moreover, the water quality monitoring instrument developed by the water vehicle is state-of-the-art and it is integrated into the surface of the water robot platform to build mobile water quality monitoring laboratory that can replace the available water quality monitoring station or monitoring buoy to achieve in-situ monitoring and early warning in any water and all-weather with low cost water quality.

Taking the ASV as the common platform, researchers have developed surface autonomous trash-cleaning robot, which consists of surface float automatic recovery device and the ASV. Similar to house cleaning robot, it is mainly used in sea, lakes, rivers, beaches and scenic lakes, ponds, and other solid waste disposal. It can be used even in danger zone by remote operations to enhance safety and efficiency.

Furthermore, researchers have also developed an efficient reusable super hydrophobic lipophilic material at a low cost. With the help of this material, surface vehicle can automatically identify the oil spill water, autonomous cruise, automatic cleaning and recovery of spilled oil. In this way, efficiency and automation level are improved with the cost saved.

At present, IIM has fabricated a prototype and its industrialization is underway.

Drawing extensive attention, the new design was reported by Xinhua Net, China News Network, People's Daily, CCTV network, Anhui Daily and other medias.

*



*
Interface for control system of ASV (Image by YU Daoyang)​*
*
(Editor: YUAN Linlin)​

Reactions: Like Like:
9


----------



## JSCh

8 Jan 2016
*Visualising Atoms of Perovskite Crystals*

Organic-inorganic perovskite materials are key components of the new generation of solar cells. Understanding properties of these materials is important for improving lifetime and quality of solar cells. Researchers from the Energy Materials and Surface Sciences (EMSS) Unit, led by Prof. Yabing Qi, at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) in collaboration with Prof. Youyong Li’s group from Soochow University (China) and Prof. Nam-Gyu Park’s group from Sungkyunkwan University (Korea) report in _the Journal of the American Chemical Society_ the first atomic resolution study of organic-inorganic perovskite.

Perovskites are a class of materials with the general chemical formula ABX3. A and B are positive ions bound by negative ions X. Organic-inorganic perovskites used in solar cells are usually methylammonium lead halides (CH3NH3PbX3, where X is bromine, iodine, or chlorine). The OIST scientists used a single crystal of methylammonium lead bromide (CH3NH3PbBr3) to create topographic images of its surface with a scanning tunneling microscope.

This microscope uses a conducting tip that moves across the surface in a manner very similar to a finger moving across a Braille sign. While the bumps in Braille signs are a few millimetres apart, the microscope detects bumps that are more than million times smaller — atoms and molecules. This is achieved by the quantum tunneling effect — the ability of an electron to pass through a barrier. The probability of an electron passing between the material surface and the tip depends on the distance between the two. The resulting atomic-resolution topographic images reveal positions and orientations of atoms and molecules, and also provide a detailed look at structural defects in the surface.





Topography image of atoms of the perovskite crystal and calculated images with position of atoms and molecules indicated. ​
"At room temperature atoms and molecules are quite mobile, so we decided to freeze the crystal to almost absolute zero (-269ºC) to get a good picture of its atomic structure,” says Dr Robin Ohmann, a member of the EMSS Unit and the first author of the paper. The crystal was cut and studied in a vacuum to avoid contamination of the surface. Dr Ohmann's colleagues from Soochow University calculated atomic structures using principles of quantum physics and then compared them with scanning tunneling microscopy data.





Dr Robin Ohmann, first author of the paper, transfers a sample into the scanning tunneling microscope.​
The researchers discovered that methylammonium molecules can rotate and that they favour specific orientations that lead to two types of surface structures with distinctly different properties. Apart from rotation, these molecules affect positions of neighbouring bromine ions, further altering the atomic structure. Since the structure dictates the electronic properties of the material, the geometric positions of atoms are essential for understanding of solar cells.





The researchers discovered that methylammonium molecules (represented by a ball-and-stick model in the centre) can rotate and that they favour specific orientations that lead to two types of surface structures with distinctly different properties (left and right images).​
Scanning tunneling microscope images also reveal local imperfections caused by dislocations of molecules and ions and, probably, missing atoms. These imperfections may affect device performance, for example, by changing electrical properties such as conductivity.

The structure of perovskite materials is temperature-sensitive and the observed structure of the frozen crystal might not be fully identical to the structure at room temperature. However, the comprehensive description of perovskite crystals at the atomic level paves the way to better understanding of their behaviour under real-life conditions. The current findings shed light on molecule-ion interplay on the surface of an organic-inorganic crystal and should help to improve designs of future solar cells. The next goal of the researchers is to examine interactions between perovskites and other molecules, for example water molecules that are known to interfere with the performance of solar cells.

By Olga Garnova

Visualising Atoms of Perovskite Crystals | Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University OIST

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## Martian2

*Taiwan's ITRC builds indigenous lithography projection lens for 3D integrated circuit steppers*

Manufacturing technology for lithography optics | SPIE Homepage: SPIE

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## cirr

*Lattice Power Receives National Science & Technology Invention Award for Development of Silicon Based LED Technology*

HONG KONG, Jan. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Shunfeng International Clean Energy Limited ("SFCE" or the "company", HK stock code: 1165) today announced that its subsidiary, Lattice Power Corporation ("Lattice Power"), has won the first prize of the National Science and Technology Invention Award for the "High Efficacy GaN-on-Si Blue LED" technology that was jointly developed by Lattice Power, *Nanchang University*, CECEP Lattice Lighting Co., Ltd. and the China Energy Conservation and Environmental Protection Group. 

"*Currently there are three LED technology paths in the LED lighting industry – sapphire substrate, silicon carbide substrate and silicon substrate*," said Eric Luo, SFCE's executive director and CEO. "*While the first two of these technologies have already been monopolized in the US and Japan, after a decade of research and development, the silicon substrate technology has finally been patented and commercialized by Lattice Power in China. I would like to congratulate Professor Fengyi Jiang, Dr. Qian Sun, Dr. Min Wang and their team at Lattice Power for achieving this impressive technological breakthrough and winning this award.*" 

Silicon substrate LED technology benefits from good thermal conductivity, low-cost materials as well as competitive wafer sizes, which enables lighting products to be manufactured at lower cost, with higher power and better directivity. Compared to sapphire substrate and silicon carbide substrate technologies, the silicon substrate technology can be applied to a wider range of applications including residential lighting, commercial lighting, landscape lighting and automotive lighting.

Professor Fengyi Jiang and Dr. Min Wang co-founded Lattice Power with the goal of commercializing silicon substrate LED lighting technology in 2006. Lattice Power subsequently completed four rounds of fund-raising from GSR Ventures, Temasek Holdings, IFC and APAC Resources Limited, respectively. In May 2015, SFCE acquired a 59% equity stake in Lattice Power as an important part of its low-carbon, integrated, clean energy platform.

*About SFCE *

Shunfeng International Clean Energy Limited (SFCE) is committed to becoming the largest low-carbon, integrated, clean energy generation provider globally. Through strategic acquisitions and integration, SFCE owns a number of well-known product and technology brands in the industry. SFCE fosters a continuous improvement in energy generation including in solar, sea water power and ground source heat pumps, combined with energy management and storage capabilities. SFCE aims to provide clean energy solutions to large scale public facilities and commercial users such as business facilities, office buildings, schools, hospitals sports stadiums and households. SFCE's energy solutions can achieve energy cost reductions of 50% - 70%, creating energy generation choices for its customers to reduce both carbon emissions and energy costs. To learn more about the company, please visitwww.sfcegroup.com/en/.

Lattice Power Receives National Science & Technology Invention Award for Development of... -- HONG KONG, Jan. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## Keel

*中国首架极地固定翼飞机在南极成功试飞*
2015-12-07 20:49 来源： 新华社




12月7日，中国首架极地固定翼飞机“雪鹰601”在中山站附近成功试飞后，科考队员们合影留念。当日，中国首架极地固定翼飞机“雪鹰601”在南极中山站附近的冰盖机场成功试飞。固定翼飞机在南极考察，特别是内陆考察中可发挥快速运输、应急救援等重要保障作用，同时可搭载多种科学观测设备，是高效的科研平台。据介绍，目前世界上只有少数几个国家在南极拥有集快速运输、应急救援和航空科学调查于一体的多功能固定翼飞机。加快固定翼飞机在中国南极考察中的成熟应用，具有重要意义。新华社记者 朱基钗 摄




12月7日，“雪鹰601”在中山站附近飞行。新华社记者 朱基钗 摄




12月7日，中国首架极地固定翼飞机“雪鹰601”停在中山站附近。新华社记者 朱基钗 摄




12月7日，“雪鹰601”在中山站附近冰盖上滑行，即将起飞。新华社记者 朱基钗 摄



12月7日，中国科考队员登上“雪鹰601”。新华社记者 朱基钗 摄

Translation:
*China's first aircraft fixed-wing aircraft in the Antarctica successful test flight*
2015-12-07 20:49 Source: Xinhua News Agency

December 7, China's first aircraft Polar fixed-wing aircraft, "Snow Hawk 601" after a successful test flight near the Zhongshan station, expedition team members posed for pictures. The same day, China's first aircraft Polar fixed-wing aircraft, "Snow Hawk 601" Zhongshan Station in Antarctica ice sheet near the airport successful test flight. Fixed-wing aircraft in the Antarctic expedition, especially inland expedition can play fast transport, emergency rescue, and other important security role, but can carry a variety of scientific observation equipment, efficient research platform. According to reports, the world only a few countries have set rapid transit in the Antarctic, emergency rescue and aviation scientific investigation multifunctional fixed-wing aircraft. Accelerate the maturity fixed-wing aircraft used in Chinese Antarctic expedition of great significance. Xinhua News Agency reporters Zhu Ji and Chai She

December 7, "Snow Hawk 601" near the Zhongshan Station flight. Xinhua News Agency reporters Zhu Ji and Chai She

.



















*我科考船“海洋六号”完成科考任务 明年将挺进南极*
2015-11-10 19:29 来源： 新华社

新华社广州１１月１０日电（记者王攀）历时１９７天、航程近６万公里——隶属中国地质调查局广州海洋地质调查局的科考船“海洋六号”完成了入列以来航次时间最长、参航和轮换人数最多、作业区跨度最大的一次大洋科考任务，于１０日归航广东省东莞市专用码头。据介绍，这也是“海洋六号”遭遇恶劣海况时间最长、受厄尔尼诺现象影响程度最大的一次科考航次。

在当天举行的欢迎仪式上，广州海洋地质调查局高级工程师、“海洋六号”总首席科学家何高文说，“海洋六号”于今年４月２８日从广州启航，横跨西、中、东太平洋，经受１０个台风袭扰，８家单位１２１人参与，在多个区域开展调查，在深海稀土资源调查、我国富钴结壳合同区资源与环境考察和多金属结核资源调查以及“海马”号无人遥控潜水器（ＲＯＶ）应用等方面取得了丰硕成果。本航次一共获得作业区测线调查２．３万千米和航渡测线调查１４万千米综合地球物理调查数据资料、测站调查１２８个站位样品资料，获取沉积物岩心样品总长２９７米，多金属结核样品１．１吨，现场分析各类样品３０００个，为室内进一步研究提供了宝贵的第一手数据和样品。

其中，“海洋六号”承担的２０１５年深海资源调查航次历时７７天，取得两项成果：一是继续在太平洋国际海域开展深海稀土资源调查，首次发现高含量稀土富集层段，初步圈定新成矿远景区；并对深海沉积物稀土富集机制等问题进行了探讨，为下一步开展成矿机制和资源评价研究提供了基础资料；二是首次在东太平洋国际海域开展多道地震为主的综合地质地球物理调查，初步查明了调查区的地层和构造特征，为后续研究提供了基础资料。

此外，“海洋六号”还承担了中国大洋第３６航次任务，航次历时１２０天，取得多项成果，包括继续履行我国与国际海底管理局签订的富钴结壳勘探合同义务、实现了多波束回波勘探新技术在多金属结核和富钴结壳资源调查领域的推广应用、进一步扩展富钴结壳合同区环境调查范围，深化深海环境认知水平等，特别是首次成功将我国自主研制的４５００米级无人遥控潜水器（ＲＯＶ）“海马”号应用于我国富钴结壳合同区调查，填补了我国在海山区资源和环境调查手段方面的一项空白，提升了我国在该领域的技术水平。

自１９８６年以来，中国地质调查局广州海洋地质调查局先后组织“海洋四号”、“海洋六号”完成了１６个航次的中国大洋科学考察活动。何高文说，明年“海洋六号”计划挺进南极执行新一轮科考任务，预计用时约３００天。

Translation:

*China's research vessel "Ocean VI" to complete the task next year will advance to the Antarctic expedition*
2015-11-10 19:29 Source: Xinhua News Agency


Xinhua News Agency, Guangzhou, November 10 (Reporter Wang Pan) - Lasted 197 days, nearly 60,000 km voyage - under the China Geological Survey Bureau of Guangzhou Marine Geological Survey research vessel "Ocean VI" time since the completion of the voyage into the column the longest, largest number of Senate flight and rotation, once the operation area spans the largest ocean expedition mission, on the 10th owned by Air Dongguan, Guangdong Province wharf. According to reports, this is the "Ocean VI" in bad sea conditions, the longest time, the degree of influence by the El Nino phenomenon biggest expedition voyage.
At the welcoming ceremony held the same day, a senior engineer of Guangzhou Marine Geological Survey, "Ocean VI" Total Chief Scientist 何高文 said, "Ocean VI" on April 28 this year, set sail from Guangzhou, across the West, East Pacific, subjected to 10 typhoons harassment, eight units of 121 people involved to carry out investigations in a number of areas in the deep earth resources survey, China's cobalt-rich crusts contract Land Resources and Environment Investigation and polymetallic nodule resources in the investigation and "hippocampus" No. aspects of ROV (ROV) applications and achieved fruitful results. The cruise line received a total operating area measuring 2.3 million kilometers and a sea-crossing survey survey line survey 14 million meters of integrated geophysical survey data, station 128 stations sample survey data, sediment core samples get the total length of 297 meters, more 1.1 tons of metal tuberculosis sample, on-site analysis of various samples 3000, for further study provided valuable firsthand indoor data and samples.

Among them, the "Ocean VI" assumed 2015 survey of deep-sea resources voyage lasted 77 days, and achieved two outcomes: First, continue to carry out deep-sea surveys of rare earth resources in the Pacific international waters, first discovered high levels of REE enrichment layer segment, preliminary delineation of new metallogenic prospect areas; and issue deep-sea sediments REE enrichment mechanisms were discussed for further mineralization mechanisms and resources to carry out evaluation studies provide basic data; the second is for the first time to carry out multi-channel seismic-based international waters in the eastern Pacific Comprehensive geological and geophysical surveys, preliminary identification of the stratigraphic and structural characteristics of the survey area, provided the basic data for future study.

Moreover, "Ocean VI" also bear the China Ocean Voyage 36th mission, the voyage lasted 120 days, made a number of achievements, including cobalt-rich crusts continue to fulfill our obligations under the contract for exploration signed with the International Seabed Authority to achieve a multibeam echo promote the use of new technologies for exploration for polymetallic nodules and cobalt resources survey in the field of environment to further expand the scope of investigation Crust contract area, deepening the cognitive level of the deep ocean environment, especially for the first time China has independently developed successfully 4500 m level ROV (ROV) "hippocampus" was applied to the investigation of cobalt-rich crusts contract area, to fill our resources and the environment in an investigation means sea mountain gaps, to enhance the country in this field skill.

Since 1986, China Geological Survey Bureau of Guangzhou Marine Geological Survey Bureau has organized the "Ocean IV", "Ocean VI" China completed 16 scientific expeditions ocean voyage.何高文 said that next year, "Ocean VI" plan to advance the implementation of a new round of the Antarctic expedition mission, expected to be approximately 300 days when used.

.

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## cirr

*Another Enemy For Qualcomm: Huawei*

Dec. 29, 2015 11:57 AM ET

*Summary*

Huawei is going to sell more than 100M smartphones in 2015.

Huawei, through HiSilicon, is building some of its own SoCs.

It looks like it is working on a personalized GPU and personalized memories.

It is only time to see also personalized CPU cores from HiSilicon.

This is another decreasing revenue source for Qualcomm.

I have already written something about Huawei and other companies that are building their own application processors, in order to detach from Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM), improve system optimization and increase profits.

Huawei has been able to build low cost and competitive SoCs in a very narrow time frame, even if they are still not very fast from the graphic point of view. For example, Huawei has managed to build a very competitive SoC with its Kirin 950, which shows various specs that are able to better face competitors' solutions.

But recently, it looks like Huawei is willing to become even more independent and it may also become a serious SoC supplier for other producers.

*Kirin 950*

The Kirin 950 looks to be a very good piece of silicon: it is a big.LITTLE application processor (big cluster of 4 high performance ARM A72 cores - LITTLE cluster of 4 low power ARM A53 cores), powered by a Mali T880 MP4 at 900 MHz. From the CPU point of view, it has a lot of power, while the GPU is modern and updated, it will be no match for the Snapdragon 820 or the Exynos 8890. But, generally, these are more paper specifications than effective user experience features: the CPU power is more than enough to drive any kind of typical application and the same goes for the GPU, where even high demanding mobile games do not push actual GPUs to their fullest.

Huawei did not only build a good CPU/GPU SoC, but it has been able to build an overall interesting solution: it has an i5 co-processor that reduces power consumption from 90 mA to 6.5 mA, there is a LTE Cat-6 integrated modem, it uses a 16nm technology node, it has VoLTE support, it provides high support for voice frequencies from 50 Hz to 7 KHz and it reduces audio latency by 80%. The i5 implementation is particularly interesting given the wide difference for power consumption and it is likely to provide some consistent power efficiency boost.

This Kirin 950 also provides other important characteristics: the ISP is finally competitive, with a dual ISP 14 bit, which is the new PrimISP and IVP32 DSP. This feature will permit to reach good camera and video results, probably at competitors' level. In addition, HiSilicon implemented a hybrid memory controller, compatible with both LPDDR3 and LPDDR4, getting even ahead of the ARM (NASDAQ:ARMH) team.

It is quite clear that HiSilicon/Huawei has been able to massively improve in the Application processor field: it has started from low end SoCs, getting now to high end SoCs and the results are very promising.

*More autonomy*

Recent rumors state that Huawei is working on its own personal GPU: this is something that both Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (OTC:SSNLF) and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) are already trying to do; therefore, it is not a surprise to see such an important producer trying to develop some personal IP. Developing a personalized GPU would permit to improve profit margins and to better scale software optimization. If we also remind that Huawei is even working on a new operative system, the choice to develop a personal GPU makes even more sense.

All of this gets more interesting once we read that Huawei is also working on some kind of personalized flash memory to be produced by Samsung, SK Hynix or Micron (NASDAQ:MU). In this way, Huawei would get more autonomy and it would undertake a similar path to Apple, which is actually developing its own Application Processor that are produced by TSMC (NYSE:TSM) and Samsung, a path extended to the overall platform.

*Market results*

If we recall that Huawei is selling more than 100M devices in 2015, we can get the entity of such policy: tens of millions of devices are still powered by Qualcomm; therefore, if Huawei continues on this route with personal SoCs with integrated modems, it will be able to completely exclude Qualcomm from its smartphones.

In addition, if Huawei decides to provide its SoCs for a consistent number of producers, it would erode additional market share from Qualcomm and Mediatek. If we consider that Huawei products are already competitive, this company has a great potential to gain market share in this sector.

*And what about ARM custom cores?*

In this overall discussion, the fact that Huawei has no project about some customized ARM cores looks quite strange: a custom core like Samsung Mongoose, Qualcomm Kryo or Apple Twister would suit very well in a completely optimized platform (custom CPU, personal GPU, personal ISP, personal flash memory).

It is probably only a matter of time before we see some move on this frontier, but this delay is quite sensible since the ARM A72 cores are very powerful and the actual high performance level is more than sufficient for every kind of smartphone computing requirement. In addition, the next ARM substitute of A53 looks very promising and energy efficient.

A different story must be told for the Mali architecture, since it has never been able to provide constant leading edge performances in comparison to Adreno or Power VR. Think about the Snapdragon 810: even if it has a very hot CPU, the GPU was very good and was consistently faster than the Mali T760 on long-term performance (due to lower throttling).

*Personalized OS doubts*

The most relevant issue that comes to my mind regards Huawei OS: Huawei is working on some kind of OS, codenamed Kirin OS, and it would be useful to detach from Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL).

The criticism here is quite obvious: such a detach from Android would be probably deleterious for what concerns the Android applications ecosystem and services. The only profitable way to achieve such an objective would be to push developers to support Kirin OS.

But, my question is Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) is still struggling to do so and it is doing it very slowly, even if it will be able to exploit the massive Windows installed base. Huawei cannot do it, therefore, how is it possible for it to build a solid and effective ecosystem when Android and iOS are very solid and Microsoft is still struggling? I personally doubt that a detach from Android could be a feasible and profitable way for its business: the Chinese market could be good enough for their projects, but Europe, US and other countries are a completely different story.

*Takeaway*

Huawei is becoming a strong competitor in the application processor field and it has the potential to gain good market share. Mediatek is also growing fast, providing updated SoCs every year, and becoming more and more competitive. Samsung is also growing fast and it is gradually using its own SoCs to substitute competitors' solutions even for the mid-end and the low-end devices.

In this scenario, the company, which is risking more to lose further market share is Qualcomm. Qualcomm is going to suffer a more and more oppressive competition in the AP market, while it has also has to face some infringement matters.

Qualcomm still has additional revenue sources to exploit, like the healthcare and the drone field, but the application processor market pressure and the gradually declining royalties yield are not good points to take into account.

On the contrary, the new Snapdragon 820 provides renewed good performances for a good enough power consumption tradeoff, with a completely personalized SoC and a very competitive GPU. Given the announced producers' adoption, the SD 820 is likely to provide a better financial performance than the SD 810 and it is going to improve Qualcomm's image that was somewhat scratched last year.

I actually rate it a hold, with a possible short-term upgrade if the SD 820 will provide optimal performance once released on real products.

Another Enemy For Qualcomm: Huawei - Qualcomm Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM) | Seeking Alpha

Reactions: Like Like:
8


----------



## bobsm

*Chinese scientists develop shape-shifting material*
2016-01-10 20:49:45 | Editor: huaxia

Hangzhou, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- The plastic-flake-turned "paper crane" is not a work of origami - it is the result of a demonstration of a shape-shifting polymer developed by scientists at east China's Zhejiang University.

The material can change between different preset shapes under certain conditions, such as temperature. The crane was formed by dunking the material into water heated to 60 degrees Celsius.

The scientists' findings were published on Friday in Science Advances, an online journal from AAAS, the publisher of Science magazine.

Shape-shifting materials have been under development for years. Most of these materials are incapable of accumulating multiple changes over time.

However, the polymer developed by the scientists at Zhejiang University is able to snap between different shapes, opening new applications for shape-changing materials.

"It can be used to make veins or heart brackets or on surgical equipment that can get rid of blood clot thrombosis," said Zhao Qian from Zhejiang University. He is the first author of the paper published in Science Advances.

The material may also be used to make flexible medical equipment that can change shape in response to changes in body temperature.

Chinese scientists develop shape-shifting material - Xinhua | English.news.cn

Reactions: Like Like:
8


----------



## JSCh

*Interview: U.S. scientists thrilled to receive China's top science honor *
English.news.cn | 2016-01-09 04:29:21 | Editor: huaxi

WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 (Xinhua) -- Two U.S. scientists, who were among the seven recipients of China's International Cooperation Award in Science and Technology on Friday in Beijing, said they were thrilled to be awarded the highest Chinese honor in science for foreigners.

"It is one of the greatest honors that a scientist can hope to achieve," Walter Ian Lipkin, director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, said of his first reaction when he first heard this honor.

Lipkin told Xinhua in an interview before the award ceremony that in 2013, at the height of the SARS outbreak, he was invited by the Chinese government to help assess the state of the epidemic and develop a strategy for containing the virus and reducing morbidity and mortality.

After the SARS outbreak was contained, he helped China create a series of centers aimed at more rapidly detecting and responding to emerging infectious disease threats.

Currently, Lipkin's academic efforts in China focused on areas such as mentoring young Chinese scientists, encouraging China-born scientists to return home for positions in drug diagnostics and discovery, and helping them prosper through technology transfer and collaboration.

He also served as a member of the Scientific Steering Committee member of the Joint Center for Global Change Studies at Beijing Normal University.

"I am pleased to say that China now has state of the art infectious disease research and surveillance and am proud to have participated in the birth of the new era of science in China that we are celebrating today," he said.

As to how to further promote Chinese-foreign science cooperation, he said China should build academic and research programs that attract not only Chinese nationals but also the best students and investigators worldwide irrespective of country of origin.

Peter Stang, a distinguished professor of chemistry and former dean of science at the University of Utah, also told Xinhua he was "very surprised and greatly honored" to receive this award. "I did not at all expect this very special recognition," he said.

Stang's collaborations with Chinese chemists originated from a visit to the Institute of Chemistry the Chinese Academy of Sciences, where he discovered that they "had expertise that we did not have but would be very interesting to apply in our research," he recalled.

Noting that he likes Chinese culture, Chinese history, Chinese people and Chinese food, Stang said: "I have many excellent visiting scholars and postdoctoral fellows from China. In fact, my current research group of 10 persons has seven researchers from China."

He called China's investment in science and technology a "wise" decision because it's very important for the future.

"I hope China will continue to strongly support science and technology," Stang said. "Future economic wellbeing and the health and wealth of people all over the world depend on new discoveries and developments in science and technology."

Seven foreign scientists received this year's International Cooperation Award in Science and Technology at a ceremony on Friday in Beijing. The awards were presented by state leaders including Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang, Liu Yunshan and Zhang Gaoli.

Besides Lipkin and Stang, the other five recipients were Jan-Christer Janson from Sweden, Kazuki Okimura from Japan, Evgeny Velikhov from Russia, Carlo Rubbia from Italy and Joannes E. Frencken from the Netherlands.

Since 1995, China has given the International Cooperation Award in Science and Technology to 101 foreign scientists and two international organizations.

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## JSCh

*New material can fold itself into hundreds of shapes*

By John Bohannon
8 January 2016 2:00 pm
Call it one small step for material science, one giant leap for origami. Researchers have created the first heat-reactive polymer material that can not only remember its current shape but also memorize new ones. The material—which currently requires high temperatures to change shape and reset its memory—could lead to a new generation of reusable self-folding materials that could be useful for everything from medical implants to shape-shifting electronics.

Self-folding materials aren’t new. The first generation of shape memory polymers folded into a single predetermined shape whenever they were heated. Later generations could be triggered by other stimuli, such as light, electrical charges, or a magnetic field. But they all relied on a property known as elasticity. When cool, their stringy polymers coil up. They straighten out into a new shape when heated, and then they bend right back to the default shape once they cool off again. In this way, they keep a “memory” of their original shape.

But elastic shape memory materials can only memorize two or three shapes. A 2005 _Science_ paper offered a possible route to hundreds or even thousands: Rather than elasticity—the tendency for a material to come back to the same shape—the paper demonstrated a way to trigger a change in a material's plasticity, that is its ability to be reshaped. "The question was ... can we incorporate these two shape-shifting behaviors in one polymer?" says Tao Xie, a chemical engineer at the State Key Laboratory of Chemical Engineering in Hangzhou, China.

To make a material that is both plastic and elastic, Xie and colleagues started with a known elastic material: crosslinked poly(caprolactone), or PCL. To give the material plasticity, they added a chemical called 1,5,7-triazabicyclo[4.4.0]dec-5-ene (TBD). If it works, then above and below PCL's elastic temperature point the material should flip between a default shape and one other shape. But if the temperature is raised above the plasticity threshold, then the TBD kicks in by creating chemical bonds between the polymer chains. If you physically manipulate the material into a new shape before this plastic "annealing" process starts, then the default shape gets replaced.

But the trick for Xie was to combine PCL and TBD in such a way that the elastic and plastic temperatures were far enough away from each other that the material can switch cleanly between its different shapes. Otherwise, it could become a chaotic shape-shifting mess, like the death scene of the liquid metal T-1000 in the film _Terminator 2_. (You're welcome, sci-fi geeks.)

After months of fine-tuning the mixture of these chemicals, the team nailed the critical temperature gap. The new substance has transition temperatures of 70°C and 130°C for elasticity and plasticity, respectively. To demonstrate its multishape capabilities, Xie's team turned a 30-millimeter square of the material into an origami masterpiece that could fold between two shapes using elasticity and change into other shapes using plasticity.





​Drs. Qian Zhao and Tao Xie​The steps that the new material goes through to change from one shape to another.​
Not only did the material fold into multiple different shapes, but it could also snap between them hundreds of times with little sign of fatigue—a critical feature if the material is to be used in real-world applications, they report today in _Science Advances_.

The team is already working on a version of the material that works at lower temperatures. "The biggest challenge for us is not necessarily technical, but rather our imagination of what the possibilities are with this type of shape-shifting behavior," Xie says. He considers flexible electronics to be one possible "killer application." Imagine an electronic newspaper that becomes plastic in the heat of your hands but always folds back down when you're done reading it.

The new material is a “step forward” in shape-programmable systems, says Timothy White, a chemical engineer at the Air Force Research Laboratory at the Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, who was not involved in the research. Among the possible applications on his mind is a "reconfigurable antenna." Not only could it be bent into many different shapes, but it would still always be able to retract.

Science| DOI: 10.1126/science.aae0202

New material can fold itself into hundreds of shapes | Science/AAAS | News

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*China’s AUV Qianlong-2 Successfully Conducted Its First Undersea Exploration*
By Zhu Xi (People's Daily Online) 04:21, January 12, 2016






China’s self-developed unmanned autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) Qianlong-2 accomplished its first undersea exploration on January 10, 2016.​
Independently developed by Shenyang Institute of Automation, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the 4500-meter AUV dived to a depth of 1600 meters in the hydrothermal area of the Indian Ocean. It explored the seabed and collected high-precision hydrological data without any cable control.














(Editor:Shen Chen,Bianji)​

Reactions: Like Like:
8


----------



## JSCh

*CGN launches small demonstrative ACPR50S offshore nuclear reactor project*
Xinhua Finance 2016-01-13 10:40 BEIJING




China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN) announced Tuesday that it has started preliminary design for a small demonstrative ACPR50S offshore nuclear reactor project, which has been approved by the National Development and Reform Commission to enlist in the 2016-2020 development plan for energy technology innovation.

Construction on the demonstrative offshore nuclear reactor is expected to start in 2017 and complete by 2020, said CGN. ACPR50S is an independent offshore nuclear reactor technology developed by CGN with unit thermal power capacity of 200MW, which could provide reliable and stable electricity for power and heat supply in offshore oil and gas exploration and island development.

Besides, CGN is studying on ACPR100, an inland small nuclear reactor technology with unit thermal power capacity of 450MW, which could supplement largest nuclear power generating units. (Contributed by Li Xiaohui, lixh@xinhua.org)

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## Martian2

*China's CCRSS hyperspectral satellite sees in 328 electromagnetic bands with 15 meter resolution.*

The hidden man fuelling China’s military ambitions: Xiang Libin honoured for work on ‘super camera’ to aid spy satellites | South China Morning Post

"The China Commercial Remote-sensing Satellite System (CCRSS) will be able to collect data on 328 bands offering very high resolution of up to 15 metres, according to the researchers from the Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth in Beijing. This means each pixel in the image measures 15 metres squared.

Hyperspectral research efforts have been going on in China for several decades, having begun at the start of the 1970s, the team said in a presentation.

The technology was tested extensively and improved over time on aircraft-based platforms, before researchers shifted their attention to devices in space.

The first satellite-based hyperspectral camera, called the CMODIS, was installed on Shenzhou-3, an unmanned spacecraft that China launched in 2002.

The camera was fairly primitive with just 34 spectral bands and resolution as low as 500 metres, but it was soon replaced as Chinese technology in this area developed at a fast clip.

By 2008 the small satellite constellation known as HJ-1 was able to scan 115 bands with resolution of 100 metres, according to the researchers.

But as these developments and sensors all took place in equipment destined for the civilian sector, many suspect the cameras used by China’s military can perform significantly better."

Reactions: Like Like:
8


----------



## JSCh

*Archaeologists discover world's oldest tea buried with ancient Chinese emperor*
_The tea aficionado ruler – the Han Dynasty Emperor Jing Di – died in 141 BC, making the leaves 2,150 years old_

David Keys Archaeology Correspondent @davidmkeys 

Sunday 10 January 2016 21:22 BST





The tea drinking emperor, Jing Di ​
Archaeologists have discovered the oldest tea in the world among the treasures buried with a Chinese emperor.

New scientific evidence suggests that ancient Chinese royals were partial to a cuppa – at least 2150 years ago.

Indeed, they seem to have liked it so much that they insisted on being buried with it – so they could enjoy a cup of char in the next world.

Previously, no tea of that antiquity had ever been found – although a single ancient Chinese text from a hundred years later claimed that China was by then exporting tea leaves to Tibet.

The new discovery was made by researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

By examining tiny crystals trapped between hairs on the surface of the leaves and by using mass spectrometry, they were able to work out that the leaves, buried with a mid second century BC Chinese emperor, were actually tea.

The scientific analysis of the food and other offerings in the Emperor’s tomb complex have also revealed that, as well as tea, he was determined to take millet, rice and chenopod with him to the next life.






Human figures buried in the tea-drinking emperor, Jing Di tomb complex near Xian ​
The tea aficionado ruler – the Han Dynasty Emperor Jing Di – died in 141 BC, so the tea dates from around that year. Buried in a wooden box, it was among a huge number of items interred in a series of pits around the Emperor’s tomb complex for his use in the next world.

Other items included weapons, pottery figurines, an ‘army’ of ceramic animals and several real full size chariots complete with their horses.

The tomb, located near the Emperor Jing Di’s capital Chang’an (modern Xian), can now be visited. Although the site was excavated back in the 1990s, it is only now that scientific examination of the organic finds has identified the tea leaves.

The tea-drinking emperor himself was an important figure in early Chinese history. Often buffeted by intrigue and treachery, he was nevertheless an unusually enlightened and liberal ruler. He was determined to give his people a better standard of living and therefore massively reduced their tax burden. He also ordered that criminals should be treated more humanely – and that sentences should be reduced. What’s more, he successfully reduced the power of the aristocracy.

“The discovery shows how modern science can reveal important previously unknown details about ancient Chinese culture. The identification of the tea found in the emperor’s tomb complex gives us a rare glimpse into very ancient traditions which shed light on the origins of one of the world’s favourite beverages,” said Professor Dorian Fuller, Director of the International Centre for Chinese Heritage and Archaeology, based in UCL, London.

The research has just been published in Nature’s online open access journal Scientific Reports.

The tea discovered in the Emperor’s tomb seems to have been of the finest quality, consisting solely of tea buds – the small unopened leaves of the tea plant, usually considered to be of superior quality to ordinary tea leaves.

Archaeologists discover world's oldest tea buried with ancient Chinese emperor | Archaeology | News | The Independent

Reactions: Like Like:
8


----------



## JSCh

*Prosthetic Leg with Hoofed Foot Discovered in Ancient Chinese Tomb*
by Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor | January 11, 2016 09:41am ET





​
 A 2,200-year-old prosthetic leg was discovered in a tomb in China and would've been worn by a man with a deformed knee.
Credit: Images courtesy Chinese Archaeology ​
The 2,200-year-old remains of a man with a deformed knee attached to a prosthetic leg tipped with a horse hoof have been discovered in a tomb in an ancient cemetery near Turpan, China.

The tomb holds the man and a younger woman, who may or may not have known the male occupant, scientists say. 

"The excavators soon came to find that the left leg of the male occupant is deformed, with the patella, femur and tibia [fused] together and fixed at 80 [degrees]," archaeologists wrote in a paper published recently in the journal Chinese Archaeology. [In Photos: Ancient King's Mausoleum Discovered in China]

The fused knee would have made it hard for the man to walk or ride horses without the prosthetic leg, the researchers found. The man couldn't straighten his left leg out so the prosthetic leg, when attached, allowed the left leg to touch the floor when walking. The horse hoof at the bottom of the prosthetic leg acted like a foot.

The prosthetic leg was "made of poplar wood; it has seven holes along the two sides with leather tapes for attaching it to the deformed leg," the archaeologists wrote. "The lower part of the prosthetic leg is rendered into a cylindrical shape, wrapped with a scrapped ox horn and tipped with a horsehoof, which is meant to augment its adhesion and abrasion."

"The severe wear of the top implies that it has been in use for a long time," they added.

Radiocarbon dating indicates that the tomb in Turpan (also spelled Turfan) dates back around 2,200 years. The only other known prosthetic leg in the world that dates to that time is part of a bronze leg found in Capua, Italy. That leg was destroyed in a bombing raid during World War II. Prosthetic toes, dating to earlier times, have been found in Egypt.

*Who used it? *

Two other studies, published in the journals Bridging Eurasia and Quaternary International, provide more details about the man who used the hoofed leg. Researchers estimate that the man was about 5 feet 7 inches (1.7 meters) tall, and between 50 and 65 years old when he died.






The man died when he was 50 or 60 years old; some time after he died his tomb was reopened and the body of a woman was put in, disturbing the man's bones.
Credit: Images courtesy Chinese Archaeology​
What caused the odd fusion of his left knee joint? "Different causes, like inflammation in or around the joint, rheumatism or trauma, might have resulted in this pathological change," archaeologists wrote in the journal Bridging Eurasia.

Researchers found evidence that the man was infected with tuberculosis at some point in his life. They think that inflammation from the infection may have resulted in a bony growth that allowed his knee to fuse together. "The smooth surface of the bones affected by the ankyloses [joint fusion] suggests the active inflammatory process stopped years before death," the researchers wrote in Bridging Eurasia.

The man appears to have been a person of modest means, as he was buried with nonluxurious items: ceramic cups and a jar, a wooden plate and wooden bows, the archaeologists found. Sometime after he died, his tomb was reopened, and the body of a 20-year-old woman was put in, disturbing the man's bones. What relationship the man and woman had (if any) is unknown. The tomb was one of 30 that archaeologists excavated in the cemetery.

*Gushi people *

Based on the results of the radiocarbon dating, "the occupants of the cemetery might have belonged to the Gushi [also spelled Jushi] population," archaeologists wrote in the Chinese Archaeology article.

Little is known about these people. Ancient Chinese texts suggest that the Gushi had a small state. "As recorded in the Xiyu zhuan (the Account of the Western Regions) of the Hanshu (Book of Han, by Ban Gu), during the middle of the Western Han, there lived in the Turfan Basin the Gushi population, who constitutes one of the 'Thirty-six States of the Western Regions' of the Qin and Han Dynasties," the archaeologists wrote.

The Gushi state was conquered by China's Han Dynasty during a military campaign in the first century B.C., according to ancient records. "Given that the study of the Gushi culture is yet at its nascent stage, the [cemetery] provides valuable new materials," the archaeologists wrote.

Excavations at the cemetery were conducted between 2007 and 2008 by scientists at the Academia Turfanica, a research institute. A paper reporting their findings was published in 2013, in Chinese, in the journal Kaogu. That paper was recently translated and published in the journal Chinese Archaeology.

The papers reporting the study of the man's skeleton were published in 2014 in the journal Bridging Eurasia and in 2013 in the journal Quaternary International.

_Follow us __@livescience__, Facebook & __Google+__. Original article on __Live Science__._

Prosthetic Leg with Hoofed Foot Discovered in Ancient Chinese Tomb

Reactions: Like Like:
8


----------



## JSCh

*China starts construction of world's first 1,100kv DC line *
2016-01-14 09:08 CRIENGLISH.com _Editor: Wang Fan_







The world's first 1,100 kilovolt direct current electricity transmission line project starts on January 11, 2016, in eastern Junggar Basin, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. (Photo/People.cn)​
China started to build world's first 1,100 kilovolt direct current electricity transmission line on Monday.

This is a power line with the highest voltage, biggest transmission capacity, longest distance and the latest technology in the world.

It will start from northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, connecting Gansu Province, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Shaanxi Province, Henan Province and Anhui Province.

The whole length will be over 3,300 kilometers. When finished in 2018, its transmission capacity will be 12 million kilowatt.

Researcher of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chen Weijiang, said the system adopted the 1,100 kilovolt voltage for the first time.

"Its nominal voltage is 37.5 percent higher than those with a 800-kilovolt nominal voltage. And the transmission capacity is 50 percent more. We also increased the transmission distance from 2,000 to 3,000 kilometer."

Another ultra-high voltage AC transmission lines are now under live-line operations in Tianjin.

It will deliver clean energy from Inner Mongolia to Tianjin, Hebei and Shandong Province.

The 1,000 kilovolt ultrahigh AC transmission line project will reduce coal consumption by 9 million tons and carbon dioxide by 26.9 million tons.

It is of great significance in controlling haze and fog and improving the air quality.

The whole project is expected to end in April this year and put into operation by the end of October.

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## bobsm

*China’s quantum space pioneer: We need to explore the unknown*
Pan Jian-Wei is masterminding a project to test quantum entanglement in space
Celeste Biever
14 January 2016




Tengyun Chen

Pan Jian-Wei is leading a satellite project that will probe quantum entanglement.

Physicist Pan Jian-Wei is the architect of the world’s first attempt to set up a quantum communications link between Earth and space — an experiment that is set to begin with the launch of a satellite in June.

The satellite will test whether the quantum property of entanglement extends over record-breaking distances of more than 1,000 kilometres, by beaming individual entangled photons between space and various ground stations on Earth. It will also test whether it is possible, using entangled photons, to teleport information securely between Earth and space.

On 8 January, Pan, who works at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, won a major national Chinese science prize (worth 200,000 yuan, or US$30,000) for his contributions to quantum science. He spoke to _Nature _about why his experiments are necessary and about the changing nature of Chinese space-science missions.

*How are preparations for the launch going?*
We always have two feelings. We feel, “Yes, everything is all right,” and then we are happy and excited. But we have, a couple of times, thought, “Probably our project will collapse and never work.” I think the satellite should be launched on time.

*What technical challenges do you face?*
The satellite will fly so fast (it takes just 90 minutes to orbit Earth) and there will be turbulence and other problems — so the single-photon beam can be seriously affected. Also we have to overcome background noise from sunlight, the Moon and light noise from cities, which are much stronger than our single photon.

*What is the aim of the satellite?*
Our first mission is to see if we can establish quantum key distribution [the encoding and sharing of a secret cryptographic key using the quantum properties of photons] between a ground station in Beijing and the satellite, and between the satellite and Vienna. Then we can see whether it is possible to establish a quantum key between Beijing and Vienna, using the satellite as a relay.

The second step will be to perform long-distance entanglement distribution, over about 1,000 kilometres. We have technology on the satellite that can produce pairs of entangled photons. We beam one photon of an entangled pair to a station in Delingha, Tibet, and the other to a station in Lijiang or Nanshan. The distance between the two ground stations is about 1,200 kilometres. Previous tests were done on the order of 100 kilometres1.

*Does anyone doubt that entanglement happens no matter how far apart two particles are?*
Not too many people doubt quantum mechanics, but if you want to explore new physics, you must push the limit. Sure, in principle, quantum entanglement can exist for any distance. But we want to see if there is some physical limit. People ask whether there is some sort of boundary between the classical world and the quantum world: we hope to build some sort of macroscopic system in which we can show that the quantum phenomena can still exist.

In future, we also want to see if it is possible to distribute entanglement between Earth and the Moon. We hope to use the Chang’e programme (China’s Moon programme) to send a quantum satellite to one of the gravitationally-stable points [Lagrangian points] in the Earth-Moon system.

*How does entanglement relate to quantum teleportation?*
We will beam one photon from an entangled pair created at a ground station in Ali, Tibet, to the satellite. The quantum state of a third photon in Ali can then be teleported to the particle in space, using the entangled photon in Ali as a conduit.

*The quantum satellite is a basic-science space mission, as is the Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE), which China launched in December. Are basic-research satellites a new trend for China?*
Yes, and my colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and I helped to force things in this direction. In the past, China had only two organizations that could launch satellites: the army and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. So scientists had no way to launch a satellite for scientific research. One exception is the Double Star probe, launched in collaboration with the European Space Agency in 2003 to study magnetic storms on Earth.

*What changed?*
We at CAS really worked hard to convince our government that it is important that we have a way to launch science satellites. In 2011, the central government established the Strategic Priority Program on Space Science, which DAMPE and our quantum satellite are part of. This is a very important step.

I think China has an obligation not just to do something for ourselves — many other countries have been to the Moon, have done manned spaceflight — but to explore something unknown.

*Will scientists also be involved in China’s programme to build a space station, Tiangong?*
The mechanism to make decisions for which projects can go to the space station has been significantly changed. Originally, the army wanted to take over the responsibility, but it was finally agreed that CAS is the right organization. 

We will have a quantum experiment on the space station and it will make our studies easier because we can from time to time upgrade our experiment (unlike on the quantum satellite). We are quite happy with this mechanism. We need only talk to the leaders of CAS — and they are scientists, so you can communicate with them much more easily.


China’s quantum space pioneer: We need to explore the unknown : Nature News & Comment

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## JSCh

* Astronomers spot brightest-ever supernova in universe*
Source: Xinhua 2016-01-15 03:26:23

WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- An international team of astronomers, led by Subo Dong from China's Peking University, said Thursday they have spotted a violent stellar explosion, known as a supernova, that is about 200 times more powerful than a typical supernova and more than twice as luminous as the previous record holder.

At its peak intensity, the explosion, called ASASSN-15lh, shone brighter than 570 billion Suns.

The record-breaking blast, reported Thursday in the U.S. journal Science, is thought to be an outstanding example of a "superluminous supernova," or a recently discovered, supremely rare variety of explosion unleashed by certain stars when they die.

Scientists are frankly at a loss, though, regarding what sorts of stars and stellar scenarios might be responsible for these extreme supernovae.

"ASASSN-15lh is the most powerful supernova discovered in human history," said the study lead author Dong, an astronomer and a Youth Qianren Research Professor at the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics (KIAA) at Peking University. "The explosion's mechanism and power source remain shrouded in mystery because all known theories meet serious challenges in explaining the immense amount of energy ASASSN-15lh has radiated."

About 3.8 billion light years from Earth, ASASSN-15lh was first glimpsed in June 2015 by the All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASAS-SN) team, an international collaboration headquartered at the Ohio State University, which uses a network of 14-centimeter telescopes around the world to scan the visible sky every two or three nights looking for very bright supernovae.

Further observations revealed that ASASSN-15lh bears certain features consistent with "hydrogen-poor" (Type I) superluminous supernovae, which are one of the two main types of these epic explosions so named for lacking signatures of the chemical element hydrogen in their spectra.

Yet in other ways, besides its brute power, ASASSN-15lh stands apart. It is way hotter, and not just brighter, than its apparently nearest of supernova kin, they said.

The galaxy it calls home is also without precedent. Type I superluminous supernovae seen to date have all burst forth in dim galaxies both smaller in size and that churn out stars much faster than the Milky Way, but ASASSN-15lh's galaxy appears even bigger and brighter than the Milky Way.

The researchers also speculated that the extraordinary emission of luminosity by ASASSN-15lh may be powered by a staggering amount of decaying radioactive nickel, or perhaps a rapidly rotating, highly magnetic neutron star.

"The honest answer is at this point that we do not know what could be the power source for ASASSN-15lh," said Dong. "ASASSN-15lh may lead to new thinking and new observations of the whole class of superluminous supernova, and we look forward to plenty more of both in the years ahead."

Editor: Mu Xuequan​_______________________________________________________________​
*ASASSN-15lh: A highly super-luminous supernova*

Subo Dong1,*,
B. J. Shappee2,
J. L. Prieto3,4,
S. W. Jha5,
K. Z. Stanek6,7,
T. W.-S. Holoien6,7,
C. S. Kochanek6,7,
T. A. Thompson6,7,
N. Morrell8,
I. B. Thompson2,
U. Basu6,
J. F. Beacom6,7,9,
D. Bersier10,
J. Brimacombe11,
J. S. Brown6,
F. Bufano12,
Ping Chen13,
E. Conseil14,
A. B. Danilet6,
E. Falco15,
D. Grupe16,
S. Kiyota17,
G. Masi18,
B. Nicholls19,
F. Olivares E.4,20,
G. Pignata4,20,
G. Pojmanski21,
G. V. Simonian6,
D. M. Szczygiel21,
P. R. Woźniak22

1Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Peking University, Yi He Yuan Road 5, Hai Dian District, Beijing 100871, China.
2Carnegie Observatories, 813 Santa Barbara Street, Pasadena, CA 91101, USA.
3Núcleo de Astronomía de la Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad Diego Portales, Av. Ejército 441, Santiago, Chile.
4Millennium Institute of Astrophysics, Santiago, Chile.
5Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 136 Frelinghuysen Road, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA.
6Department of Astronomy, The Ohio State University, 140 W. 18th Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
7Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics (CCAPP), The Ohio State University, 191 W. Woodruff Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
8Las Campanas Observatory, Carnegie Observatories, Casilla 601, La Serena, Chile.
9Department of Physics, The Ohio State University, 191 W. Woodruff Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
10Astrophysics Research Institute, Liverpool John Moores University, 146 Brownlow Hill, Liverpool L3 5RF, UK.
11Coral Towers Observatory, Cairns, Queensland 4870, Australia.
12INAF-Osservatorio Astrofisico di Catania, Via S.Sofia 78, 95123, Catania, Italy.
13Department of Astronomy, Peking University, Yi He Yuan Road 5, Hai Dian District, 100871, P. R. China.
14Association Francaise des Observateurs d’Etoiles Variables (AFOEV), Observatoire de Strasbourg 11, rue de l’Université, F-67000 Strasbourg, France.
↵*Corresponding author. E-mail: dongsubo{at}pku.edu.cn
Science 15 Jan 2016:
Vol. 351, Issue 6270, pp. 257-260
DOI: 10.1126/science.aac9613

*The most luminous supernova to date*
Supernovae are exploding stars at the end of their lives, providing an input of heavy elements and energy into galaxies. Some types have near-identical peak brightness, but in recent years a new class of superluminous supernovae has been found. Dong _et al._y report the discovery of ASASSN-15lh (SN 2015L), the most luminous supernova yet found by some margin. It appears to originate in a large quiescent galaxy, in contrast to most super-luminous supernovae, which typically come from star-forming dwarf galaxies. The discovery will provide constraints on models of superluminous supernovae and how they affect their host galaxies.

_Science_, this issue p. 257

*Abstract*
We report the discovery of ASASSN-15lh (SN 2015L), which we interpret as the most luminous supernova yet found. At redshift _z_ = 0.2326, ASASSN-15lh reached an absolute magnitude of _Mu_,AB = –23.5 ± 0.1 and bolometric luminosity _L_bol = (2.2 ± 0.2) × 1045 ergs s–1, which is more than twice as luminous as any previously known supernova. It has several major features characteristic of the hydrogen-poor super-luminous supernovae (SLSNe-I), whose energy sources and progenitors are currently poorly understood. In contrast to most previously known SLSNe-I that reside in star-forming dwarf galaxies, ASASSN-15lh appears to be hosted by a luminous galaxy (_MK_ ≈ –25.5) with little star formation. In the 4 months since first detection, ASASSN-15lh radiated (1.1 ± 0.2) × 1052 ergs, challenging the magnetar model for its engine.

ASASSN-15lh: A highly super-luminous supernova | Science

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 13-Jan-2016
* Physicists propose the first scheme to teleport the memory of an organism *
Science China Press






Quantum teleportation between two microorganisms is shown. The internal state (an electron spin) or the center-of-mass motion state of a microorganism on an electromechanical oscillator can be teleported to a remote microorganism on another electromechanical oscillator assisted with superconducting circuits.
Credit: ©Science China Press​
In "Star Trek", a transporter can teleport a person from one location to a remote location without actually making the journey along the way. Such a transporter has fascinated many people. Quantum teleportation shares several features of the transporter and is one of the most important protocols in quantum information. In a recent study, Prof. Tongcang Li at Purdue University and Dr. Zhang-qi Yin at Tsinghua University proposed the first scheme to use electromechanical oscillators and superconducting circuits to teleport the internal quantum state (memory) and center-of-mass motion state of a microorganism. They also proposed a scheme to create a Schrödinger's cat state in which a microorganism can be in two places at the same time. This is an important step towards potentially teleporting an organism in future.

In 1935, Erwin Schrödinger proposed a famous thought experiment to prepare a cat in a superposition of both alive and dead states. The possibility of an organism to be in a superposition state dramatically reveals the profound consequences of quantum mechanics, and has attracted broad interests. Physicists have made great efforts in many decades to investigate macroscopic quantum phenomena. So far, matter-wave interference of electrons, atoms, and molecules (such as C60) have been observed. Recently, quantum ground state cooling and the creation of superposition states of mechanical oscillators have been realized. For example, a group in Colorado, US has cooled the vibration of a 15-micrometer-diameter aluminum membrane to quantum ground state, and entangled its motion with microwave photons. However, quantum superposition of an entire organism has not been realized. Meanwhile, there have been many breakthroughs in quantum teleportation since its first experimental realization in 1997 with a single photon. Besides photons, quantum teleportation with atoms, ions, and superconducting circuits have been demonstrated. In 2015, a group at University of Science and Technology of China demonstrated the quantum teleportation of multiple degrees of freedom of a single photon. However, existing experiments are still far away from teleporting an organism or the state of an organism.

In a recent study, Tongcang Li and Zhang-qi Yin propose to put a bacterium on top of an electromechanical membrane oscillator integrated with a superconducting circuit to prepare quantum superposition state of a microorganism and teleport its quantum state. A microorganism with a mass much smaller than the mass of the electromechanical membrane will not significantly affect the quality factor of the membrane and can be cooled to the quantum ground state together with the membrane. Quantum superposition and teleportation of its center-of-mass motion state can be realized with the help of superconducting microwave circuits. With a strong magnetic field gradient, the internal states of a microorganism, such as the electron spin of a glycine radical, can be entangled with its center-of-mass motion and be teleported to a remote microorganism. Since internal states of an organism contain information, this proposal provides a scheme for teleporting information or memories between two remote organisms.

The proposed setup is also a quantum-limited magnetic resonance force microscope. It not only can detect the existence of single electron spins (associated to protein defects or DNA defects) like conventional MRFM, but also can coherently manipulate and detect the quantum states of electron spins. It enables some isolated electron spins that could not be read out with optical or electrical methods to be used as quantum memory for quantum information.

Li says "We propose a straightforward method to put a microorganism in two places at the same time, and provide a scheme to teleport the quantum state of a microorganism. I hope our unconventional work will inspire more people to think seriously about quantum teleportation of a microorganism and its potential applications in future." Yin says "Our work also provides insights for future studies about the effects of biochemical reactions in the wave function collapses of quantum superposition states of an organism."

###

The related article "Quantum superposition, entanglement, and state teleportation of a microorganism on an electromechanical oscillator" was published in _Science Bulletin_. This research was funded by Purdue University and National Basic Research Program of China (2011CBA00300 and 2011CBA00302), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11105136 and 61435007).

See the article: Tongcang Li, Zhang-Qi Yin. Quantum superposition, entanglement, and state teleportation of a microorganism on an electromechanical oscillator. _Science Bulletin_, 2016(2). DOI:10.1007/s11434-015-0990-x

This article was published online, in the _Science Bulletin_, by Science China Press and Springer.

Physicists propose the first scheme to teleport the memory of an organism | EurekAlert! Science News

Reactions: Like Like:
8


----------



## bobsm

*Chinese scientists make Ebola breakthrough*
Source: Xinhua 2016-01-15 14:24:14 

BEIJING, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- Scientists have discovered how the Ebola virus enters cells and infects humans, marking a major breakthrough in the battle against the virus after the deadly outbreak in West Africa in March 2014.

The research, published by the scientific journal "Cell", provides a theoretical basis for the prevention and control of Ebola, offering a new direction for drug development.

Ebola is like influenza and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which uses the host cells to initiate the life cycle of the virus, said Gao Fu, researcher with the Institute of Microbiology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, who led the research team.

NPC1, an endosomal protein, has been identified as a necessary entry receptor for Ebola entering cells, but the trigger of the fusion process remained a mystery for scientists.

"Previous research has revealed four manners of viruses entering cells. But we've found the fusion between Ebola and host cells does not follow the known ways. It's a fifth type," said Gao.

Based on the new discoveries, researchers will be able to develop small-molecule or polypeptide inhibitors targeting the fusion trigger, preventing Ebola entry at the very beginning, said Gao.


Chinese scientists make Ebola breakthrough
- Xinhua | English.news.cn


Article
*Ebola Viral Glycoprotein Bound to Its Endosomal Receptor Niemann-Pick C1*
Han Wang10, Yi Shi10, Jian Song10, Jianxun Qi10, Guangwen Lu, Jinghua Yan, George F. Gao

http://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(15)01708-0

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## cirr

*China will fly to the dark side of the Moon in 2018 in a world first*

JANUARY 15, 20164:52PM




New frontier ... the dark side of the waning crescent moon. Picture: Casey Bishop

Network writers and wiresNews Corp Australia Network

CHINA will launch a mission to land on the dark side of the Moon in two years’ time, state media reported, in what will be a first for humanity.

The Moon’s far hemisphere is never directly visible from Earth and while it has been photographed, with the first images appearing in 1959, it has never been explored.

China’s Chang’e-4 probe — named for the goddess of the moon in Chinese mythology — will be sent to it in 2018, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

“The Chang’e-4’s lander and rover will make a soft landing on the back side of the Moon, and will carry out in-place and patrolling surveys,” it cited the country’s lunar exploration chief Liu Jizhong as saying on Thursday.

Beijing sees its military-run, multibillion-dollar space program as a marker of its rising global stature and mounting technical expertise, as well as evidence of the ruling Communist Party’s success in transforming the once poverty-stricken nation.

MORE: NASA spots strange ‘spiders’ on Mars





New mission ... China will send a probe to the undiscovered side of the Moon.Source:Supplied

But for the most part it has so far replicated activities that the US and Soviet Union pioneered decades ago.

“The implementation of the Chang’e-4 mission has helped our country make the leap from following to leading in the field of lunar exploration,” Liu added.

In 2013, China landed a rover dubbed Yutu on the Moon and the following year an unmanned probe completed its first return mission to the earth’s only natural satellite.

Beijing has plans for a permanent orbiting station by 2020 and eventually to send a human to the moon.

Space flight is “an important manifestation of overall national strength”, Xinhua cited science official Qian Yan as saying, adding that every success had “greatly stimulated the public’s ... pride in the achievements of the motherland’s development.” Clive Neal, chair of the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group affiliated with NASA, confirmed that the Chang’e-4 mission was unprecedented.





The Moon’s surface transmitted to earth by China’s Chang'e-3 probe carrying its first lunar rover prior to landing on the moon on December 14, 2013. Picture: AFP

“There has been no surface exploration of the far side,” he told AFP. It is “very different to the near side because of the biggest hole in the solar system — the South Pole-Aitken basin, which may have exposed mantle materials — and the thicker lunar crust”.

The basin is the largest known impact crater in the solar system, nearly 2,500 kilometres wide and 13 kilometres deep.

“I am sure the international lunar science community will be very excited about this mission,” he told AFP. “I know I am.”

*China's space mission*

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Green Light for LHAASO: China Approves Cosmic Ray Physics Exploration Project*
Jan 04, 2016

The National Development and Reform Commission, China's top economic planning body, approved the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) project on December 31, 2015. The LHAASO project is designed to explore physics goals in gamma ray astronomy and cosmic ray physics.

The main scientific objectives of LHAASO are to search for the origin of high energy cosmic rays, to study the evolution of the universe and high energy celestial bodies, and to push forward the frontier of new physics. Statistical samples of various gamma ray sources will be accumulated through an all-sky gamma ray source survey and precise measurement of gamma ray energy spectra. Internationally, LHAASO will be a key frontier project for cosmic ray research.

Work on the project started in 2008, when scientists at the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) initiated a pre-study and conducted extensive field surveys in China's high-altitude areas. In 2014, the highlands at Daocheng County, Sichuan, where there is an average altitude of 4400 meters, was selected as the observation station site. In August 2014, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Sichuan provincial government signed a framework agreement to build the LHAASO project, marking the establishing of a scientific base in Sichuan for the international forefront of cosmic ray research.

Over one hundred scientists from more than 20 Chinese research institutions and researchers from Italy, France, Russia and other countries have joined LHAASO. The total cost of the project is projected at 1.2 billion yuan, with an estimated construction time of four years.





Layout of LHAASO Project (Image by IHEP) ​
(Editor: CHEN Na)​

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*China Exclusive: Chinese scientists develop bioartificial liver*
Source: Xinhua 2016-01-16 20:44:53

SHANGHAI, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have developed a new bioartificial liver that can help liver failure patients survive long enough for an organ transplant.

Designed to be attached outside a patient's body, the bioartificial liver is based on human liver cells, according to research findings published in the new issue of international science magazine Cell Research on Friday.

In its first clinical use last week, the device saved a 61-year-old woman who was dying from acute liver failure, said Prof. Ding Yitao, a member of the research team, which comprised scientists from the Shanghai Institute for Biological Sciences and doctors from Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital.

They are planning more clinical tests in Shanghai and the neighboring cities this year.

A bioartificial liver can help recover patients' liver functions and prolong their lives so they can wait for suitable donor livers for a transplant, which is currently the only solution to critical cases.

Prof. Ding said Chinese researchers have been using artificial livers since 1998, and earlier devices used liver cells from pigs.

"The new device is based on cells taken from human skin, fat or other tissues and reprogrammed into [liver] cells," he said. "It is safer and less likely to cause a rejection reaction."

Tests on lab animals found pigs with acute liver failures had an average 80 percent survival rate after they were treated with the new bioartificial liver, whereas untreated pigs died in about three days.

The researchers believe the artificial liver is a blessing for China, which has a lot of patients with hepatitis B and liver cancer.

The country has more than 100 million people infected with the hepatitis B, according to official figures.

Editor: Luan​

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Two-in-one packaging may increase drug efficacy and reduce side effects *
2016-01-12 09:31:21





A new device creates tiny capsules filled with multiple inner droplets by funneling different ingredients through two inner needles. As all the ingredients exit the needles through a single nozzle, a high-speed gas forces the liquids into a narrow stream that breaks up into individual droplets. Credit: Ronald Xu/The Ohio State University​　 　
　 　Chemotherapy often comes with powerful side effects, and one of the reasons for this is that the drugs used to kill cancer cells can also damage other fast-growing cells in the body, like hair follicles. But one possibility for reducing these side effects may be if the chemotherapy drugs only become toxic when they reach the tumor.

　 　The search for such targeted drug delivery options for chemotherapy and other treatments inspired a team of researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China and The Ohio State University to develop a new way to package two or more ingredients into a single capsule. If the ingredients must be mixed for the drug to work, doctors could trigger the mixing in targeted area of the body, boosting drug efficiency while reducing side effects.

　　The researchers report their method for multi-ingredient encapsulation and triggered mixing in a new paper in the journal _Applied Physics Letters_. While the work has shown promise because it allows the researcher to produce micro capsules, they have not yet used the technique to encapsulate cancer treatments. If such capsules can be made, they will have to prove safe and effective in clinical trials before becoming widely available to treat cancer.

　　"One of the limitations of chemotherapy is that less than 5 percent of the drugs typically get to the tumor, while the rest can be absorbed by other organs," said Ronald Xu, a professor in biomedical engineering at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. One possible way to address the problem could be to make the drugs non-toxic when injected into the body and trigger mixing that would produce a toxic product only near the tumor site.

　　For such drugs to work on a large scale, there must be a way to quickly, controllably, and cost-effectively produce capsules with two or more active ingredients. If the drugs are to be injected and spread through the body via the bloodstream, the capsules should also be small.

　　 Xu and his colleagues from the University of Science and Technology of China developed a device that can produce tiny capsules approximately 100 microns across (about the size of a speck of dust) with multiple inner ingredients. Ting Si, the first author on the paper and an expert in fluid mechanics, also developed mathematical models that show the relationship between process parameters, like flow rate and needle diameter, and the size of the final capsules. The models were used to achieve the designated capsule sizes.

　　The device works by funneling different ingredients through two inner needles. The inner needles run parallel to each other and are both enclosed in a larger outer needle, which contains an ingredient for making the outer shell of the capsule. As all the ingredients exit the needles through a single nozzle, a high-speed gas forces the liquids into a narrow stream that breaks up into individual droplets. An electric field stabilizes the flow so that uniform droplets are created. Depending on the relative flow rates, each droplet may contain two or more smaller inner droplets made from the ingredients in the inner needles.

　 　The researchers tested their device with colored paraffin wax - red in one needle and blue in the other. The outer shell was made from sodium alginate - a material extracted from seaweed that turned gelatinous when the droplets fell into a calcium chloride solution.

　 　Depending on the experimental conditions, the team was able to produce between 1,000 to 100,000 capsules per second, and nearly 100 percent of the inner liquids were incorporated into the capsules without any waste. Once encapsulated, the two colors of wax did not mix, because of surface tension, but the team demonstrated that they could force the red and blue wax to merge by vibrating the capsules. The team also demonstrated that they could release the inner droplets by dissolving the outer shell.

　　The key features of the new device are its high efficiency and yield, and the fact that the size of the droplets can be uniformly controlled, Xu said. By further fine-tuning the device's operation Xu predicts that the team could make capsules that are 3-5 microns across, about the size of a red blood cell. The process can also be easily scaled up by building an array of nozzles and could be modified to encapsulate 3 or more active ingredients by adding additional inner needles.

　　 While Xu and his colleagues were motivated by drug delivery, their device might also find wider use in a range of applications that require controlled reactions, such as regenerative medicine, and nuclear and chemical engineering, Xu said.

　　*More information:* "Steady cone-jet mode in compound-fluidic electro-flow focusing for fabricating multicompartment microcapsules," is authored by Ting Si, Chuansheng Yin, Peng Gao, Guangbin Li, Hang Ding, Xiaoming He, Bin Xie and Ronald X. Xu. It will be published in the journal _Applied Physics Letters_ on January 11, 2016. DOI: 10.1063/1.4939632

　　*Journal reference:* *Applied Physics Letters*

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Advanced seawater treatment plant cuts energy use*

Updated: 2016-01-19 07:55
By Zheng Caixiong in Guangzhou(China Daily)
A new desalination system that can produce more than 60,000 liters of fresh water a day has recently been put into operation on Guishan, an island in the Zhuhai special economic zone, Guangdong province.

According to a statement from the Guangzhou Institute of Advanced Technology, an affiliate of the Chinese Academy of Science, the desalination system is the first on the Chinese mainland to use waste heat from diesel generators to produce fresh water.

The water it produces is sufficient to meet the daily needs of 150 to 300 people, the statement said. And lab tests have shown that the water it makes fully meets national safety standards and is potable without any further treatment.

Compared with other desalination systems, which usually consume high amounts of energy, the new system, developed by the institute in Guangzhou, uses little energy and requires only relatively low heat that can be produced easily by diesel generators, said the statement published on the institute's website.

The system has a patent on it method of removing salt and other harmful elements from seawater using the heat produced by a 1,000 kilowatt diesel generator. It complies with the most advanced technological standards, according to the statement

The system will be a significant tool in resolving China's shortage of fresh water. The Chinese mainland has a long coastline, with many large islands, and an abundant source of fresh water will help in the development of tourism and related industries on remote islands, the statement said. It could also benefit the mainland's northern and inland provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions that have water shortages.

Deng Disi contributed to this story.

zhengcaixiong@chinadaily.com.cn






日产60吨淡水的柴油机余热海水淡化示范系统(珠海桂山岛)​

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese find world's largest canyon below Antarctic*

Updated: 2016-01-19 14:50
(People's Daily Online)





Researchers from China's 32nd scientific expedition to the Antarctic discovered a 1,000 kilometer-long canyon beneath an Antarctic ice sheet. The canyon exceeds the US Grand Canyon in size; it is now the largest known canyon on the earth's surface, Xinhua News reported on Monday. [Photo/Xinhua]​
Researchers from China's 32nd scientific expedition to the Antarctic discovered a 1,000 kilometer-long canyon beneath an Antarctic ice sheet. The canyon exceeds the US Grand Canyon in size; it is now the largest known canyon on the earth's surface, Xinhua News reported on Monday.

Discovered near the Princess Elizabeth Land, the canyon is more than 1,000 kilometers in length and 1,500 meters in depth. The maximum width at the top of the canyon is 26.5 kilometers. This is the first time that any large canyon has been found in the region.

According to data collected on the site, Chinese scientists have made three major scientific discoveries there, said Sun Bo, vice director of China's 32nd Antarctic expedition team.

The first big discovery is the world's largest canyon, which was beneath an Antarctic ice sheet near the Princess Elizabeth Land.

The second big discovery is that there are numerous subglacial lakes and subglacial water channels, also beneath the Antarctic ice sheet. These lakes and bodies of water are interconnected. The width of one of the lakes reaches 26.5 kilometers, and another was formed in a location where the thickness of the ice is over 4,000 meters. This discovery will play an important role in future research.

The third key finding is that the temperature of deep ice in Princess Elizabeth Land is noticeably higher than in other regions, which makes it easier for ice to melt, meaning that lakes and other water systems form more easily.






Since late November 2015, China's 32nd scientific expedition to the Antarctic has been using new equipment, including the first polar airplane (named Snow Eagle 601), to conduct large-scale scientific probes around Princess Elizabeth Land, covering an area of 866,000 square kilometers. [Photo/Xinhua]​

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

* Chinese unmanned helicopter completes South Pole flight *
Source:Xinhua Published: 2016-1-19 23:22:28

An unmanned Chinese helicopter has completed its maiden flight from the Great Wall Station in the South Pole and has photographed fauna and flora in the area.

"Polar Hawk-2," which was developed by the Beijing Normal University, can operate for about one hour at a time at an altitude of up to 1,500 meters. The lithium-battery powered aircraft is highly efficient, quiet and has low emissions, according to Cheng Xiao, head of the research team.

During the hour's flight on Monday, the helicopter took over 350 high-quality photos. Since the station is located in the Fildes Peninsula, which is known for its changeable weather, there is a lack of clear satellite photos of the station, while pictures taken by the helicopter clearly show the station, said Cheng.

China currently has four Antarctic research stations -- Taishan, Great Wall, Zhongshan and Kunlun.

The photographing conducted by the aircraft also recorded the population of animals including penguins and skua, and it has helped inform estimates of the quantity of greenhouse gases over Philip Island, providing support for climate change studies, Cheng added.

Huang Huabing, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said China's research and development of unmanned helicopters is among the most advanced in the world.

Chinese unmanned helicopters have also conducted flights at the Svalbard archipelago in the North Pole and Zhongshan Station in the South Pole.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

* Company claims to have developed air-purifying walls*
Source: Xinhua 2016-01-20 23:22:03

HANGZHOU, Jan. 20 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese enamel manufacturer claimed it has invented a new construction material that turns the exterior of buildings into air purifiers.

Kaier New Materials Co. Ltd., based in east China's Zhejiang Province, recently announced that it had developed a new kind of enamel block that can decompose air pollutants, including PM2.5, into carbon dioxide, mineral salt and water.

Shu Wenxiao, a researcher with the company, said, "We have added a highly oxidizing and hydrophilic nanometer material into the enamel. The new material will have a photosynthesis-like reaction with organic air pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and sulfides."

PM2.5, airborne particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter, is made up of pollutants including organic matter, sulfates and nitrates.

Shu estimates that every 200 square meters of enamel block have a similar air purifying effect as 14 mature poplar trees. "If we cover a 100-meter tall building with 20,000 square meters of the material, the building will be able to purify air as efficiently as 1,400 poplar trees."

Shu Wenxiao said that the water produced from the chemical reaction can form a thin film on the outside of the buildings, which will mean the walls need not be washed.

According to the company, the self-cleaning ability was confirmed by a construction material testing center earlier this month, but the air-purifying function is waiting authentication.

"The material has been used on the exterior walls of our building for ten months as a trial and it has decomposed pollutants," he said. "However, we have no plans to bring the product to market just yet. Domestic testing institutions lack standards for such material, and we are looking for foreign organizations."

Doubts have been raised. Pan Liangjiang from a Zhejiang-based environmental protection technology developer said, "Technically speaking, it is possible for nanometer material to decompose organic matters using sunlight. However, the feasibility of actually using the material in construction is questionable. There are some issues to consider. For example, whether the mineral salt created will reduce the material's effectiveness life. Will reduced sunlight in smoggy weather affect the decomposition effect?"

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

China Mobilizes HPC in Pursuit of Drug Discovery Says New Paper
___________________________________________​*Applying high performance computing in drug discovery and molecular simulation*

Tingting Liu,
Dong Lu,
Hao Zhang,
Mingyue Zheng,
Huaiyu Yang,
Yechun Xu,
Cheng Luo,
Weiliang Zhu,
Kunqian Yu* and
Hualiang Jiang
+ Author Affiliations

State Key Laboratory of Drug Research, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 201203, China

↵**Corresponding author.* E-mail: yukunqian@simm.ac.cn
*Abstract*
In recent decades, high performance computing (HPC) technologies and supercomputers in China have significantly advanced, resulting in remarkable achievements. Computational drug discovery and design (CDDD), which is based on HPC and combines pharmaceutical chemistry and computational biology, has become a critical approach in drug research and development and is financially supported by the Chinese government. This approach has yielded a series of new algorithms in drug design, as well as new software and databases. This review mainly focuses on the application of HPC to the fields of drug discovery and molecular simulation at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, including virtual drug screening, molecular dynamics simulation, and protein folding. In addition, the potential future application of HPC in precision medicine is briefly discussed.

© The Author(s) 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of China Science Publishing & Media Ltd. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com

Applying high performance computing in drug discovery and molecular simulation

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Tungsten/copper Plasma Facing Components Set New Records in High Heat Flux Tests*
Jan 20, 2016

Several days ago, French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) / Magnetic Confinement Fusion Research Institute (IRFM) brought great news that two kinds of test mockups of tungsten/copper (W/Cu) plasma facing component (PFC), developed at Institute of Plasma Physics Chinese Academy of Sciences (ASIPP) for CEA’s Tungsten Environment in Steady-state Tokamak (WEST) project, presented outstanding performance in the high heat flux (HHF) tests which was carried out by CEA independently.

*Read more -> Tungsten/copper Plasma Facing Components Set New Records in High Heat Flux Tests---Chinese Academy of Sciences*

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*China Nuclear to bring nuclear power to Saudi Arabia*
By Lyu Chang and Hu Meidong in Fuzhou (China Daily) Updated: 2016-01-21 07:28







Nuclear reactors under construction in Sanmen, Zhejiang province.[Photo/Xinhua]​
China Nuclear Engineering Group Corp signed an agreement with Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to develop its homegrown fourth-generation nuclear technology in the oil-rich Middle East country.

Gu Jun, president and general manager of CNEC, said the agreement was a major step toward the export of high-temperature gas-cooled reactors, an indigenous nuclear technology jointly developed by CNEC and Tsinghua University.

He made the remarks during a ceremony in Beijing held by the Fuzhou New Economic Area, in which the Chinese company plans to invest nearly 16.3 billion yuan ($2.48 billion) to build a nuclear manufacturing equipment industrial cluster and a production base for nuclear graphite, a key material used in high-temperature gas-cooled reactors.

"The timing is right for the export of such a type of nuclear reactor," CNEC said in a statement.

About 95 percent of the high-temperature reactor, which uses a graphite-moderated core with a uranium fuel cycle to generate heat with less radioactive effect and higher efficiency, can be manufactured domestically, apart from the nuclear graphite, which relies largely on imports.

Experts said despite Saudi Arabia being a fossil-fuel rich country, the country still needs to meet demand from growing energy consumption.

"Nuclear power plants with a design life of more than 40 years cannot only provide energy security but also have the potential to resolve growing emissions concerns in the Middle East," said Lin Boqiang, director of the China Center for Energy Economics Research at Xiamen University.

Saudi Arabia hopes to build 16 reactors by 2032 to meet its growing energy demand, involving a total investment of more than $80 billion. Its first reactor is likely to go on line in 2022, earlier reports said.

CNEC said it is also targeting other foreign markets including South Africa and the United Arab Emirates.

It said that the agreement with Saudi Arabia will bring other possibilities for nuclear cooperation between China and other partners along the Belt and Road Initiative, which includes more than 60 economies along the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## JSCh

*Localized oxidative killing of tumor cells by glassy iron nanoparticles*
January 20, 2016

Amorphous iron nanoparticles have a specific toxicity in tumor cells. In the journal _Angewandte Chemie_, Chinese scientists describe their design and synthesis of a special amorphous state of nanoparticulate iron, which can locally release reactive iron species in the acidic and hydrogen peroxide rich environment of cancer cells, providing new possibilities for theranostics and chemodynamic therapies.

Read more at: Localized oxidative killing of tumor cells by glassy iron nanoparticles

*More information:* Chen Zhang et al. Synthesis of Iron Nanometallic Glasses and Their Application in Cancer Therapy by a Localized Fenton Reaction, _Angewandte Chemie International Edition_ (2016). DOI: 10.1002/anie.201510031

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

20 January 2016
*Glass-based Ultraviolet Absorbers Act as ‘Biological Shields’*
_A special metal oxide glass created by researchers in China can help protect living cells by absorbing and blocking damaging ultraviolet rays_ 

WASHINGTON – If you’ve ever experienced a bad sunburn, you know the damage that ultraviolet (UV) light can cause to living cells (like your skin). Out in space, where the level of radiation from the sun can be even higher, it can damage sensitive electronics aboard in-flight spacecraft.

The dangers of UV light have prompted scientists to search for versatile materials that block UV and can withstand long radiation exposure times without falling apart. Now a group of researchers in China has developed a new method to create transparent, glass-based materials with UV–absorbing power and long lifetimes. The team demonstrated that the new glass effectively protects living cells and organic dyes, and believe it could also be developed as a transparent shield to protect electronics in space. They describe their results in _Optical Materials Express_, a journal of The Optical Society.

The researchers used a metal oxide —cerium (IV) oxide (CeO2)— well-known for its ability to absorb UV photons to craft the composite glass-based UV absorber.

Other key features of the final composite material are the optical transparency of the glass and the material’s ability to suppress the separation of photo-generated electrons and holes. The later feature slows down a light-induced reaction that would lead to the ultimate breakdown of the material under prolonged exposure to UV radiation.

The method the team developed is based on the self-limited nanocrystallization of glass.

“Self-limited nanocrystallization of glass can be achieved by taking advantage of the rigid environment of the solid-state matrix, rather than the conventional solution and vapor conditions to modulate the ionic migration kinetics,” explained Shifeng Zhou, School of Materials Science and Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China. “It allows us to create glass-ceramics embedded with a CeO2:fluorine (F) nanostructure.”

The viscous glass matrix involved poses a considerable constraint for oxide (O2-) and F- ion diffusion, so the group gradually etches trifluorocerium (CeF3) by O2- ions within an oxide matrix until F--doped CeO2 is generated in a controllable manner. It’s important to note that this technology is also routinely used to prepare other UV absorbers such as zinc oxide (ZnO) and titanium oxide (TiO2).

“This work establishes an effective approach for the functionalization of glass,” said Zhou. “And it allowed us to demonstrate the construction of a novel glass-based UV absorber.”

The group’s innovative approach for fabricating the UV absorber has important implications “for the construction of novel glass materials with new functions via microstructure engineering,” he added.

Among the group’s key discoveries was finding that the self-limited nanocrystallization of glass is indeed an effective way to functionalize it. The special glass they created suppresses photocatalytic and catalytic activity, while boasting an extremely high UV-absorbing capacity.

“Our glass shows excellent optical quality, and it can be easily fabricated either in bulk form or as a film,” said Zhou. “It effectively protects organic dye and living cells from UV radiation damage.”

Potential applications for the group’s work include radiation hardening of electronic devices, serving as a biological shield, and preserving cultural artifacts and relics.

“In space, the high-energy radiation environment encountered by electronic equipment aboard spacecraft can be quite damaging,” noted Zhou. “Fortunately, in the future, if you add a radiation-blocking coating onto the surface of the package – a transparent glass/polymer material – the device would be well protected, and its service lifetime may be prolonged.”

In terms of applications as biological shields and to preserve cultural artifacts and relics, the special glass can “protect cells from UV-induced damage,” he added.

Going forward, the group plans to focus their efforts on developing other novel and effective glass-based UV absorbers, using the self-limited nanocrystallization method.

“We’ll explore ways for large-scale fabrication of this type of film, which is extremely important for practical applications,” said Zhou. “Our group will also further study the functionalization of glass based on its microstructure engineering, because we believe this fundamental research may have great significance for the glass industry.”

Paper: B. Zheng, Z. Wang, Q. Guo, S. Zhou. "Glass Composite as Robust UV Absorber for Biological Protection,” Optical Materials Express 6, 531-539 (2016)

Glass-based Ultraviolet Absorbers Act as ‘Biological Shields’ | News Releases | The Optical Society

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## cirr

*Intel Xeon chips to get a Chinese sidekick*

By Pete Carey / January 21, 2016 at 10:53 AM






Intel unveiled a “strategic collaboration” Thursday with a Chinese university to make a computer processor module that would run alongside the Xeon processors that power Chinese data centers.

Intel is providing more than $100 million to support the project.

The Santa Clara chip giant said the module would “add capabilities that address specific local requirements” and help protect the intellectual property of both Intel and China.

The new module — containing a processor and system software — will be developed by Intel and Tsinghua University and commercialized by Montage Technology Global Holdings. It will be based on “reconfigurable” technology developed by Tsinghua University, which is spearheading China’s drive to develop a home-grown chip industry.

“Intel wants to expand its market presence in China, especially in the large data center,” said industry analyst Jack Gold of J. Gold Associates. “The way to do that is to partner with local users who are going to drive the market. It’s like Intel partnering with MIT or Stanford.” The arrangement allows Intel to protect its processes while Tsinghua will keep what it designs, he said.

The Chinese government has also been concerned about protecting its technology following revelations of eavesdropping by the National Security Agency.

“China wants their own CPU for government-funded organizations,” said industry analyst Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights and Strategy. “It’s part of what is called China 2016 with the desire to own the security. In this scenario, Intel provided the Xeon and then Montage adds the security bits, packages it, and ships it” to Chinese manufacturers.”

Raj Hazra, Intel data center group vice president, explained in the announcement that the Chinese data center market is growing rapidly and diversifying, and the chip would address various “local requirements.”

He said Intel collaborates with companies that use Xeon chips but add on their own innovations.

“We believe this new collaboration is a win-win as it enables TU and Montage to innovate alongside standard Intel Xeon processors to create new and compelling indigenous products while preserving the respective intellectual property of all parties,” Hazra said in a blog post.

Montage Technology Group specializes in chips for home entertainment and the data center cloud. It was acquired by Montage Technology Global Holdings in 2014, an investment group that was formed by Shanghai Pudong Science and Technology Investment and China Electronics Investment Holdings, which is a subsidiary of CEC, the largest state-owned IT company in China.

Intel said it has invested more than $7.5 billion in China in the past 30 years, including recent collaborations with Rockchip and Spreadtrum Communications targeting mobility.

Intel Xeon chips to get a Chinese sidekick

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*Intel Links Up With China in Server-Chip Venture*

*The alliance comes as China looks to step up local production of tech components amid cybersecurity concerns*





Intel, which has operated in China for three decades, is in a server-chip venture with two Chinese entities. PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS

By DON CLARK and EVA DOU

Jan. 21, 2016 1:06 a.m. ET

Intel Corp. has formed an unusual chip venture with two partners in China that could help address concerns about the security of imported technology.

The arrangement with Tsinghua University and Montage Technology Global Holdings Ltd., aided by more than $100 million in research funding from Intel, follows calls by Chinese officials to reduce the country’s reliance on foreign-made semiconductors—particularly those used in systems that could be targeted by spies from abroad.

Intel said the university, known as* TU, will develop a programmable chip that would be placed in a plastic module alongside one of its Xeon microprocessors, the most widely used calculating engine in corporate and government data centers. The additional chip—called a reconfigurable computing processor, or RCP—and associated software developed by the university would add capabilities that address “specific local requirements.”*

The company declined to discuss what those requirements may be. ButMartin Reynolds, a Gartner Inc. analyst briefed on the ventures, said a likely possibility is that the RCP would help ensure that the Intel chip doesn’t carry out suspicious activity.

“It lets you kind of prove the Xeon is behaving as it is supposed to be,” Mr. Reynolds said.

Intel in 2014 announced a deal to invest $1.5 billion for a 20% stake in a holding company owned by Tsinghua Unigroup Ltd., which is owned by the university. That holding company owns two Chinese chip designers.

Montage, a subsidiary of one of China’s largest state-owned tech companies, CEC, which makes electronics for the government and military, will commercialize the modules containing the two chips, starting in 2017.

“We believe this new collaboration is a win-win as it enables TU and Montage to innovate alongside standard Intel Xeon processors to create new and compelling indigenous products while preserving the respective intellectual-property ownership of all parties,” said Raj Hazra, a vice president in Intel’s data-center group, in a blog post.

The venture was announced in a ceremony in Beijing.

Intel has operated in China for three decades. The company has one chip-fabrication facility, which Intel said in October it would adapt to begin making memory chips at a cost of up to $5.5 billion.

The Santa Clara, Calif., company’s latest announcement comes amid widening concerns about the health of the Chinese economy. Intel echoed such concerns in a forecast issued last week for the 2016 first quarter that caused a sharp drop in its stock price.

But most analysts believe any slowdown in China’s technology purchase is most likely to affect personal computers. They don’t see a slowdown in local purchases to expand the capacity of the country’s data centers.

Indeed, the company’s announcement follows a server-chip venture announced Sunday by Qualcomm Inc., a dominant maker of chips for mobile phones that is taking steps to diversify its business. That venture, which will be 55% owned by the province of Guizhou and 45% by Qualcomm, will rely on the technology licensed by ARM Holdings PLC that is a mainstay in smartphones. But Qualcomm officials said the venture may make chips with modifications for the local market.

Intel Links Up With China in Server-Chip Venture - WSJ

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## bobsm

*China planning new supercomputer*
Source: Xinhua 2016-01-22 19:26:01

TIANJIN, Jan. 22 (Xinhua) -- China is planning a supercomputer 1,000 times more powerful than its groundbreaking Tianhe-1A as it faces rising demand for next-generation computing.

Meng Xiangfei, head of the applications department of the National Supercomputer Center, said on Friday that the center will release a prototype in 2017 or 2018 of an "exascale" computer -- one capable of at least a billion billion calculations per second

Exascale computing is considered the next frontier in the development of supercomputers.

Tianhe-1A was recognized as the world's fastest computing system in 2010. Though it has since been superseded by Tianhe-2, Tianhe-1A is being more widely used. Computer scientists are finding it challenging to run contemporary applications at their optimum on faster supercomputers.

With its uses including oil exploration data management, animation and video effects, biomedical data processing and high-end equipment manufacturing, Tianhe-1A's capacity is being stretched, said Meng.

It is carrying out more than 1,400 computing tasks and serving about 1,000 users per day.

The exascale computer will be wholly independently developed by the National Supercomputer Center, according to Meng.

About a seventh of Tianhe-1A's CPU chips are Chinese.


China planning new supercomputer - Xinhua | English.news.cn

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## Keel

*GAOFEN 4, THE WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL GEO SPY SATELLITE, CONTINUES CHINA’S GREAT LEAP FORWARD INTO SPACE*
January 8, 2016

Blog, Discovery, Images, Latest News, Science, Technology, Trends
FacebookTwitterSubscribe


On December 28, 2015, a Long March 3B/G2 rocket launched from Xichang and lofted into space the 4.6 ton Gaofen-4 imaging satellite.

Billed as a disaster relief satellite, the Gaofen 4 was placed in Geosynchronous Orbit (GEO). GEO satellites constantly stay above a patch of Earth, thus providing constant 24 hour surveillance of a geographic area. By contrast, low earth orbit (LEO) satellites such as the U.S. KH-11 spy satellites are closer to the Earth, so their speed exceeds that of the Earth’s rotation (meaning that they cannot maintain continuous surveillance over specific locations). In the Gaofen 4’s case, its range of view is a 7,000km by 7,000km box of 49 million square kilometers of Asian land and water in and around China.

The Gaofen 4 is the world’s most powerful GEO spy satellite. It has a color image resolution of slightly less than 50 meters (*which is enough to track aircraft carriers by their wake at sea*) and a thermal imaging resolution of 400m (good for spotting forest fires). It may also have a lower resolution video streaming capacity. *Because of its round-the-clock coverage of Chinese territory and near aboard, Gaofen 4 can provide instant coverage of earthquake or typhoon hit areas to support humanitarian relief. It will also allow China to monitor strategic foreign sites such as WMD facilities and naval bases inside its observation box.*





Jilin Constellation
When the Jilin satellite constellation is completed in 2030, it will have 138 small satellites that provide a snapshot of any place on Earth every ten minutes. | Jilin Provincial Government

The satellite is part of the dual use China High-Resolution Earth Observation System (CHEOS), which already has five other satellites (Gaofen 1, 2, 3, 5 and 8). This fits within a larger program of radar, imaging, hyperspectral and atmosphere monitoring satellites that will support Chinese civilian missions like agriculture, construction, disaster relief and climate change monitoring. Of course, the Chinese Aerospace Force (a new branch of the PLA following its December 2015 reorganization) could easily make use of such satellites during Chinese military operations. Also of interest is the Jilin LEO imaging satellites (sponsored by the Jilin Provincial government); the first four Jilin satellites launched in October 2015 and already have 80cm imaging resolution. By 2030, the Jilin constellation will have 138 imaging, high-resolution small satellites that provide all weather coverage of any point on Earth, at 10 minute intervals.

With a lifespan of 8 years, the Gaofen 4 will likely be superseded by future GEO observation satellites with higher resolution imaging capabilities. *One intriguing possibility is revealed in a study from a Chinese engineering journal. Enterprising scientists propose that a future GEO spy satellite could deploy a foldable telescope lens of over 20 meters diameter, which could be powerful enough provide sub 1-meter resolution* (similar to Ball Aerospace and DARPA’s Membrane Optics program). Such a futuristic GEO spy satellite wouldn’t just be able to find interesting targets like aircraft carriers and missile launcher trucks, it could beam back real time video streams of enemy forces underway.

http://astronaut.com/gaofen-4-the-w...ntinues-chinas-great-leap-forward-into-space/

.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

* Genetic research on monkeys offers hope for autism sufferers*
By Cai Wenjun | January 26, 2016, Tuesday

MONKEYS could lead the way in the pursuit of a cure for autism.

Pioneering local scientists have for the first time successfully implanted a human autism gene into a monkey and produced two generations of animals that exhibit symptoms of the neurodevelopment disorder.

The “transgenic” macaques behaved similarly to humans afflicted with autism, the team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Neuroscience wrote — making repetitive gestures, and displaying anxiety and poor social interaction.

This meant they could serve as a reliable animal model for researching the causes of, and possible cures for, autism in humans.

Previous research on autism has been focused on mice, whose brains are much smaller and less complex than those of humans, and are therefore unable to exhibit significant autism-like symptoms.

Autistic people usually have trouble interacting socially and struggle with anxiety and emotional problems.

Among children aged 6 and under, 78 percent of those who are treated for psychiatric problems are autistic.

There is so far no cure for autism, and its exact effects on the brain remain unclear.

“Autism is a highly genetic disorder and it is related to over 100 genes. So the treatment of autism and the establishment of an autism animal model are critical goals in both medicine and neuroscience,” said Qiu Zilong, who led the study.

“Among the responsible genes, we chose MECP2, as all people with duplicated MECP2 are found to have autism. It is an important gene for autism.”

Qiu’s team began its research in 2009, producing the first generation of transgenic monkeys to manifest human MECP2 duplication in 2011.

The monkeys were borne by surrogate females, and their behavior studied as they grew up.

The researchers observed “an increased frequency of repetitive circular locomotion, increased anxiety, reduced social interaction,” among other behaviors.

The second generation of these monkeys, who were born in 2014, also exhibited autism-like behaviors, demonstrating a genetic heritage of MECP2.

“This work demonstrated the feasibility and reliability of using genetically engineered non-human primates to study brain disorders,” Qiu said. “We have started further research on these monkeys, which are receiving brain-imaging tests to study which parts of the brain and which neural circuits experience abnormal functions.

“Once we identify this brain circuit [problem] associated with the autism-like behavior, we will use therapeutics such as gene-editing tools to manipulate this MECP2 transgene in the transgenic monkey,” he explained.

“With such information, scientists can develop more medicines and gene therapies for autism treatment.”

http://www.shanghaidaily.com/metro/...ffers-hope-for-autism-sufferers/shdaily.shtml
__________________________________​*Autism-like behaviours and germline transmission in transgenic monkeys overexpressing MeCP2*

Zhen Liu,
Xiao Li,
Jun-Tao Zhang,
Yi-Jun Cai,
Tian-Lin Cheng,
Cheng Cheng,
Yan Wang,
Chen-Chen Zhang,
Yan-Hong Nie,
Zhi-Fang Chen,
Wen-Jie Bian,
Ling Zhang,
Jianqiu Xiao,
Bin Lu,
Yue-Fang Zhang,
Xiao-Di Zhang,
Xiao Sang,
Jia-Jia Wu,
Xiu Xu,
Zhi-Qi Xiong,
Feng Zhang,
Xiang Yu,
Neng Gong,
Wen-Hao Zhou,
Qiang Sun
_et al._
Nature (2016) doi:10.1038/nature16533
Received 31 May 2015 Accepted 14 December 2015 Published online 25 January 2016

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature16533.html

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*CSNS First Drift Tube Linac Completes Beam Commissioning*
Jan 26, 2016

The first tank of the Drift Tube Linac (DTL-1) of the China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS) completed its beam commissioning on January 20. The beam commissioning lasted for twelve days, and on January 18, the beam reached the end of the first DTL tank with a peak current of 18 mA at 21.6 MeV, a transmission rate of 100% within the error of the Current Transformer. The success of CSNS DTL-1 is an important milestone of the CSNS project.






CSNS DTL-1 (Image by IHEP) ​
CSNS First Drift Tube Linac Completes Beam Commissioning---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Group develops environmentally friendly liquid battery*
January 26, 2016 by Bob Yirka






Schematic illustration of cell structure. Credit: Science Advances (2016). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1501038​
(Tech Xplore)—A small team of researchers at Fudan University, in China has developed a liquid battery that is more environmentally friendly than others of its kind. In their paper published in the journal _Science Advances_, the team describes the idea for their battery, the parts of it that have been tested already and its many positive attributes.

Because of the large scale nature of power storage for large solar or wind collection schemes, liquid batteries are used, but to date, none of those developed are environmentally friendly or safe for those in the immediate area (most contain components that are flammable, toxic, corrosive or need to be kept in a very hot environment). For that reason scientists continue to look for better alternatives. In this new effort, the team in China reports that they have developed an environmentally friendly Li (or Na) ion battery that is not just kinder to the environment, but has faster electrode kinetics and an extremely long life.

The battery (which is still in the proof-of-concept phase) is made using triiodide ions and a water-soluble iodide to make a cathode which is dissolved in a water based electrolyte that has either lithium or sulfur ions in it, an anode that is solid and made of a polymer of imide monomers, and a polymer membrane that sits between the anode and cathode to allow for diffusing ions. The creative team notes that neither the anode or cathode or the electrolytes rely on the use of metals, which makes the battery much nicer on the environment. They also note that testing revealed it capable of carrying out 50,000 cycles, which far surpasses other conventional batteries. It can also be discharged or charged as quickly as just 6.6 seconds, which is also much better than conventional batteries, and puts it in competition with super-capacitors. They also calculated that versions of their battery would have energy densities of between 63.8 and 65.3 watt hours per kilogram, which is in the same ballpark as other mass storage liquid batteries.

The team is not sitting on its laurels, they plan to continue their research to find ways to make such batteries bigger and with improved energy densities. Also, it is still not clear if the battery would be economically feasible.


*More information:* X. Dong et al. Environmentally-friendly aqueous Li (or Na)-ion battery with fast electrode kinetics and super-long life, _Science Advances_ (2016). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1501038

*Abstract*
Current rechargeable batteries generally display limited cycle life and slow electrode kinetics and contain environmentally unfriendly components. Furthermore, their operation depends on the redox reactions of metal elements. We present an original battery system that depends on the redox of I−/I3− couple in liquid cathode and the reversible enolization in polyimide anode, accompanied by Li+ (or Na+) diffusion between cathode and anode through a Li+/Na+ exchange polymer membrane. There are no metal element–based redox reactions in this battery, and Li+ (or Na+) is only used for charge transfer. Moreover, the components (electrolyte/electrode) of this system are environment-friendly. Both electrodes are demonstrated to have very fast kinetics, which gives the battery a supercapacitor-like high power. It can even be cycled 50,000 times when operated within the electrochemical window of 0 to 1.6 V. Such a system might shed light on the design of high-safety and low-cost batteries for grid-scale energy storage.

© 2016 Tech Xplore

Group develops environmentally friendly liquid battery

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Invisible ink for secret data, product and document security*
January 26, 2016




Ciphers and invisible ink – many of us experimented with these when we were children. A team of Chinese scientists has now developed a clever, high-tech version of "invisible ink". As reported in the journal _Angewandte Chemie_, the ink is based on carbon nitride quantum dots.

*Read more->*http://phys.org/news/2016-01-invisible-ink-secret-product-document.html

*More information:* Zhiping Song et al. Invisible Security Ink Based on Water-Soluble Graphitic Carbon Nitride Quantum Dots, _Angewandte Chemie International Edition_ (2016). DOI: 10.1002/anie.201510945

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*CaO makes the graphene hierarchy for high-power lithium-sulfur batteries*
January 26, 2016






Porous Graphene Casted on CaO template​
Structural hierarchy is the cornerstone of the biological world, as well as the most important lesson that we have learned from nature to develop ingenious hierarchical porous materials for various applications in energy conversion and storage. Recently, a research group from China, led by Prof. Qiang Zhang in Tsinghua University, has developed a novel kind of hierarchical porous graphene (HPG) via a versatile chemical vapor deposition (CVD) on CaO templates for high-power lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries. This work is published in the journal _Advanced Functional Materials_.

"Due to the urgent demand for sustainable energy systems and portable energy storage devices, the Li-S battery has been cited as the most promising alternative for next-generation energy storage devices, due to its high theoretical energy density of 2600 Wh kg-1, low cost, and eco-friendliness," said Prof. Zhang. "Despite these advantages, the practical application still suffers from a formidable challenge due to the intrinsic insulation of sulfur and lithium sulfides, the dissolution of polysulfides with a shuttle effect, and the huge volume change of cathode materials during operation."

*Read more->*http://phys.org/news/2016-01-cao-graphene-hierarchy-high-power-lithium-sulfur.html

*More information:* 10.1002/adfm.201503726 Cheng Tang et al. CaO-Templated Growth of Hierarchical Porous Graphene for High-Power Lithium-Sulfur Battery Applications, _Advanced Functional Materials_ (2016). DOI: 10.1002/adfm.201503726

Nanowerk's Nanotechnology Spotlights also featured the same paper*,* 
*Link:* http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=42439.php

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Keel

*Chinese robotic tests and challenges*:






























.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

* Study reveals why giant star clusters could be home to variously aged star populations*
Source: Xinhua 2016-01-28 03:48:35

LONDON, Jan. 27 (Xinhua) -- A team of Chinese and U.S. researchers has found evidence to explain why globular clusters can somehow bear second or even third sets of thousands of sibling stars, instead of having all their stellar progeny at once, according to a study published online Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Globular clusters are spherical, densely packed groups of stars orbiting the outskirts of galaxies. Astronomers had long thought globular clusters formed their millions of stars in bulk at around the same time, with each cluster's stars having very similar ages, much like twin brothers and sisters. Yet the recent discoveries of young stars within old globular clusters have scrambled this tidy picture.

Using observations by the Hubble Space Telescope, the team, led by researchers at the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics (KIAA) at Peking University, focused their attention on young and intermediate-aged clusters found in two nearby dwarf galaxies, collectively called the Magellanic Clouds.

The team found young populations of stars within globular clusters that have apparently developed courtesy of star-forming gas flowing in from outside of the clusters themselves.

This developing method stands in contrast to the conventional idea of the clusters' initial stars shedding gas as they age in order to spark future rounds of star birth, according to the study.

"Our study suggests the gaseous fuel for these new stellar populations has an origin that is external to the cluster, rather than internal," said study lead author Chengyuan Li, an astronomer at the KIAA.

The discovery "offers new insight on the problem of multiple stellar populations in star clusters," said Li. That means globular clusters appear capable of "adopting" baby stars - or at least the material with which to form new stars - rather than creating more "biological" children as parents in a human family might choose to do.

The team thus proposes that globular clusters can sweep up stray gas and dust they encounter while moving about their respective host galaxies.

"We have now finally shown that this idea of clusters forming new stars with accreted gas might actually work," said Richard de Grijs, co-author of the study.

Future studies will aim to extend the findings to other Magellanic Cloud as well as Milky Way globular clusters, according to the team.

________________________________________​
* Stellar parenting: Giant star clusters make new stars by 'adopting' stray cosmic gases *
_A new study reveals why globular clusters can be home to differently aged populations of stars_

*The Kavli Foundation*
​




A portrait of the massive globular cluster NGC 1783 in the Large Magellanic Cloud taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. This dense swarm of stars is located about 160,000 light years from Earth and has the mass of about 170,000 Suns. A new study by astronomers from the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University, the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Northwestern University, and the Adler Planetarium suggests the globular cluster swept up stray gas and dust from outside the cluster to give birth to three different generations of stars.
*Credit*
ESA/Hubble & NASA. Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt (geckzilla.com)​
Among the most striking objects in the universe are the dense, glittering swarms of stars known as globular clusters. Astronomers had long thought globular clusters formed their millions of stars in bulk at around the same time, with each cluster's stars having very similar ages, much like twin brothers and sisters. Yet the recent discoveries of young stars within old globular clusters have scrambled this tidy picture.

Instead of having all their stellar progeny at once, globular clusters can somehow bear second or even third sets of thousands of sibling stars. Now a new study led by researchers at the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics (KIAA) at Peking University, and including astronomers at the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC), Northwestern University, and the Adler Planetarium, might explain these puzzling, successive stellar generations.

Using observations by the Hubble Space Telescope, the research team has for the first time found young populations of stars within globular clusters that have apparently developed courtesy of star-forming gas flowing in from outside of the clusters themselves. This method stands in contrast to the conventional idea of the clusters' initial stars shedding gas as they age in order to spark future rounds of star birth.

The study is publishing today in the journal _Nature_.

"This study offers new insight on the problem of multiple stellar populations in star clusters," said study lead author Chengyuan Li, an astronomer at KIAA, NAOC and affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Purple Mountain Observatory. "Our study suggests the gaseous fuel for these new stellar populations has an origin that is external to the cluster, rather than internal."

In a manner of speaking, globular clusters appear capable of "adopting" baby stars -- or at least the material with which to form new stars -- rather than creating more "biological" children as parents in a human family might choose to do.

"Our explanation that secondary stellar populations originate from gas accreted from the clusters' environments is the strongest alternative idea put forward to date," said Richard de Grijs, also an astronomer at KIAA and Chengyuan's Ph.D. advisor. "Globular clusters have turned out to be much more complex than we once thought."

Globular clusters are spherical, densely packed groups of stars orbiting the outskirts of galaxies. Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, hosts several hundred. Most of these local, massive clusters are quite old, however, so the KIAA-led research team turned their attention to young and intermediate-aged clusters found in two nearby dwarf galaxies, collectively called the Magellanic Clouds.

Specifically, the researchers used Hubble observations of the globular clusters NGC 1783 and NGC 1696 in the Large Magellanic Cloud, along with NGC 411 in the Small Magellanic Cloud. Scientists routinely infer the ages of stars by looking at their colors and brightnesses. Within NGC 1783, for example, Li, de Grijs and colleagues identified an initial population of stars aged 1.4 billion years, along with two newer populations that formed 890 million and 450 million years ago.

What is the most straightforward explanation for these unexpectedly differing stellar ages? Some globular clusters might retain enough gas and dust to crank out multiple generations of stars, but this seems unlikely, said study co-author Licai Deng of NAOC and Chengyuan's second Ph.D. advisor.

"The most massive stars that form in a globular cluster only live about 10 million years before exploding as supernovae, which blow away the remaining gassy, dusty fuel required for making new stars," Deng said.

The KIAA-led research team proposes that globular clusters can sweep up stray gas and dust they encounter while moving about their respective host galaxies. The theory of newborn stars arising in clusters as they "adopt" interstellar gases actually dates back to a 1952 paper. More than a half-century later, this once speculative idea suddenly has key evidence to support it.

"We have now finally shown that this idea of clusters forming new stars with accreted gas might actually work," said de Grijs, "and not just for the three clusters we observed for this study, but possibly for a whole slew of them." Future studies will aim to extend the findings to other Magellanic Cloud as well as Milky Way globular clusters.

Other members of the research team include Yu Xin and Yi Hu of NAOC, Aaron M. Geller of Northwestern University and the Adler Planetarium, and Claude-André Faucher-Giguère of Northwestern University.

###

The research is funded, in part, by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

Stellar parenting: Giant star clusters make new stars by 'adopting' stray cosmic gases | EurekAlert! Science News

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

* World's oldest tea remains discovered on ancient trade route *
_Residues found in burial pits near tomb of Han dynasty emperor Liu Qi shows plant was being transported along Silk Road route over 2,000 years ago_

Agence France-Presse
Thursday 28 January 2016 17.31 GMT Last modified on Thursday 28 January 2016 23.14 GMT





Pamir mountains in western Asia have some of the world’s most highly elevated roads and are believed to have formed part of the ancient trade route. Photograph: Jim Richardson/Corbis​
The tomb of a Chinese emperor who lived more than 2,100 years ago has yielded the oldest remains of tea, said researchers who used it to re-date part of the ancient Silk Road network of Asian trade routes.

The plant remains were retrieved from burial pits around the tomb of Liu Qi, the fourth emperor of the Han dynasty who lived between 188BC and 141BC, and his wife, according to research by a team of academics from China and Britain, published in the journal Scientific Reports.

The oldest written reference to tea is from 59BC. And the oldest physical remains ever discovered previously were hundreds of years younger than the new find – dating from the northern Song Dynasty (AD960-AD1,127).

“Our study reveals that tea was drunk by Han Dynasty emperors as early as 2,100 years BP [before present],” wrote the team.

They compared this tea to residues unearthed among burial artefacts at Gurgyam cemetery in Tibet, and dated to about the second or third century AD.

This revealed that tea, which does not grow in Tibet, was already being transported from China to central Asia and the Tibetan Plateau several hundred years earlier than previously recorded, said the researchers.

“This indicates that one branch of the Silk Road passed through western Tibet at that time,” they said. The previous oldest record of tea having been carried along the Silk Road into Tibet, central Asia or southern Asia from Chia, was from the Tang Dynasty (AD618-AD907).

“These data indicate that tea was part of trade of luxury products, alongside textiles, that moved along the Silk Road around 2,000 years ago and were traded up into Tibet,” the study said.

Tea today is considered the most popular drink after water – drunk regularly by three-quarters of the world’s population.

The plant remains were too decayed to be unequivocally identified as leaves and buds, so the team used molecular analysis to identify what they were. The tea was most likely from the Camellia plant, said the study.

World's oldest tea remains discovered on ancient trade route | Life and style | The Guardian

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

* China Exclusive: Research finds cattle hearts used in ancient cosmetics*
Source: Xinhua 2016-01-28 22:07:37

BEIJING, Jan. 28 (Xinhua) -- Thousands of years before the glitz and glamour of modern fashion, ancient residents in today's Xinjiang were already taking cosmetics to heart.

Chinese scientists have discovered two "cosmetic sticks" unearthed from Xiaohe Cemetery in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region that were made from the hearts of cattle, the first time such organs have been found to serve as cosmetic tools.

Dating back about 3,600 years ago, the irregularly-shaped red "sticks" were found in leather bags laid beside female mummies. The bodies were placed in boat-shaped wooden coffins and buried with objects such as wooden combs and wooden phallus, believed to be symbols of fertility worship, according to an article published in the journal Scientific Reports.

A team led by Yang Yimin with the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences employed proteomics analysis and found the objects' proteins were derived from bovine hearts. Using SR micro CT and Raman spectrum, they found a layer of hematite powders, which served as red pigment, on the dehydrated hearts.

"The red paint found on faces of the female mummies leads us to presume the tools were, first of all, used in make-up," Yang told Xinhua on Thursday, while not ruling out the possibility of the hearts being used to paint other objects.

Heart muscles contain fat and collagen, which can serve as a natural adhesives to attach the pigments to paint. Yang also believed the use of cattle heart might carry religious connotations.

Red paints were commonly found inside Xiaohe tombs, from red lines on the mummies' foreheads to painting on the huge pillars worshipping fertility in front of each coffin. That the sticks were mostly buried beside female mummies implied that women played a special role in the religious ritual of painting in red, researchers said.

The study has provided clues to understanding the role of cattle in the Xiaohe Culture, which existed about 4,000 years ago, and the history of early cosmetics, according to Yang.

The Xiaohe Cemetery, located in the Taklamakan Desert, is best known for its many mummies in ship-shaped coffins. Archaeologists say the dry and hot environment helped preserve a large number of organic relics.

The site has seen a number of amazing discoveries, including a skull with a hole indicating brain surgery and China's oldest adhesive made from cattle gelatine, found on a ritual staff and also identified by Yang's team.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Heavy fermions get nuclear boost on way to superconductivity*
Jade Boyd – January 28, 2016

_Study finds surprise link between nuclear spins, unconventional superconductivity_







This microscopic closeup shows a small sample of ytterbium dirhodium disilicide, one of the most-studied "heavy fermion" composites. The scale bar in the center of the screen is one millimeter wide. (Photo courtesy of Marc Tippmann/Technical University of Munich)​In a surprising find, physicists from the United States, Germany and China have discovered that nuclear effects help bring about superconductivity in ytterbium dirhodium disilicide (YRS), one of the most-studied materials in a class of quantum critical compounds known as “heavy fermions.”

The discovery, which is described in this week’s issue of Science, marks the first time that superconductivity has been observed in YRS, a composite material that physicists have studied for more than a decade in an effort to probe the quantum effects believed to underlie high-temperature superconductivity.

Rice University physicist and study co-author Qimiao Si said the research provides further evidence that unconventional superconductivity arises from “quantum criticality.”

Source: Rice University
http://news.rice.edu/2016/01/28/heavy-fermions-get-nuclear-boost-on-way-to-superconductivity-2/
*Read more->* http://news.rice.edu/2016/01/28/heavy-fermions-get-nuclear-boost-on-way-to-superconductivity-2/

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

* Were cats domesticated more than once?*
By David Grimm, Jan. 26, 2016

The rise of cats may have been inevitable. That’s one intriguing interpretation of a new study, which finds that early Chinese farmers may have domesticated wild felines known as leopard cats more than 5000 years ago. If true, this would indicate that cats were domesticated more than once—in China, and 5000 years earlier in the Middle East. It would also suggest that the rise of farming was destined to give rise to the house cat.

“This is very important work that should have a great impact,” says Fiona Marshall, a zooarchaeologist at Washington University in St. Louis in Missouri. Cats, she notes, largely domesticated themselves, and if this happened twice it could indicate that a whole host of animals—from donkeys to sheep—may have become domesticated with less human involvement than previously thought. “This is the leading edge in a shift in thinking about domestication processes.”

Marshall was not involved in the new study, but a few years ago she helped analyze eight cat bones unearthed from Quanhucun, an early millet farming village in central China. The bones—including a pelvis and mandible—dated to about 5300 years ago, and had been dug from the site in 2001. All contained forms of carbon and nitrogen that indicated that the felines ate small animals, which in turn had eaten grain. This supported a longstanding hypothesis about how cats became domesticated: Wild cats slunk into ancient farming villages to hunt rats and mice, and humans kept them around to combat these crop-destroying rodents. Indeed, one of the Quanhucun cats, based on the wear of its teeth, appeared to be an older individual, perhaps suggesting that people had taken care of it.

But a big question remained. Were the Quanhucun cats related to Near Eastern wildcats (_Felis silvestris lybica)_, the ancestors of today’s house cat and the first cats to be domesticated about 10,000 years ago in the Middle East? Or were they a different species of feline, perhaps one of the small local wildcats such as the Central Asian wildcat (_Felis silvestris ornata_) or the leopard cat _(Prionailurus bengalensis)_? If the former, the cats likely came to Chinese farming villages via ancient trade routes and were already domesticated. If the latter, Chinese villagers may have embarked on a completely separate domestication of the cat from a local species.

And that’s indeed what the new study suggests. Scientists led by Jean-Denis Vigne, the director of research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris, performed additional analysis on the Quanhucun bones, as well as bones from two other ancient Chinese farming sites. They focused specifically on the mandibles, using a technique called geometric morphometrics, which employs a computer to take thousands of measurements of the size and shape of bones to determine what species they belong to. All of the bones unequivocally belonged to leopard cats, not a Near Eastern species, the team concludes this month in _PLOS ONE_.

*Read more-> *Were cats domesticated more than once? | Science | AAAS

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*You’ll Never Be-Leaf What Makes up This Battery*
January 28, 2016

Scientists at the University of Maryland have a new recipe for batteries: Bake a leaf, and add sodium. They used a carbonized oak leaf, pumped full of sodium, as a demonstration battery’s negative terminal, or anode, according to a paper published yesterday in the journal _ACS Applied Materials Interfaces_.

"Leaves are so abundant. All we had to do was pick one up off the ground here on campus," said Hongbian Li, a visiting professor at the University of Maryland’s department of materials science and engineering and one of the main authors of the paper. Li is a member of the faculty at the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology in Beijing, China.

Other studies have shown that melon skin, banana peels and peat moss can be used in this way, but a leaf needs less preparation.

The scientists are trying to make a battery using sodium where most rechargeable batteries sold today use lithium. Sodium would hold more charge, but can’t handle as many charge-and-discharge cycles as lithium can.

One of the roadblocks has been finding an anode material that is compatible with sodium, which is slightly larger than lithium. Some scientists have explored graphene, dotted with various materials to attract and retain the sodium, but these are time consuming and expensive to produce. In this case, they simply heated the leaf for an hour at 1,000 degrees C (don’t try this at home) to burn off all but the underlying carbon structure.

The lower side of the maple leaf is studded with pores for the leaf to absorb water. In this new design, the pores absorb the sodium electrolyte. At the top, the layers of carbon that made the leaf tough become sheets of nanostructured carbon to absorb the sodium that carries the charge.

"The natural shape of a leaf already matches a battery’s needs: a low surface area, which decreases defects; a lot of small structures packed closely together, which maximizes space; and internal structures of the right size and shape to be used with sodium electrolyte," said Fei Shen, a visiting student in the department of materials science and engineering and the other main author of the paper.

"We have tried other natural materials, such as wood fiber, to make a battery," said Liangbing Hu, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering. "A leaf is designed by nature to store energy for later use, and using leaves in this way could make large-scale storage environmentally friendly."

The next step, Hu said, is "to investigate different types of leaves to find the best thickness, structure and flexibility" for electrical energy storage. The researchers have no plans to commercialize at this time.

The work was supported by the Department of Energy’s Energy Frontier Research Center program, as part of Nanostructures for Electrical Energy Storage.

_ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces ,_2016, 8 (3), pp 2204–2210

DOI: 10.1021/acsami.5b10875

You’ll Never Be-Leaf What Makes up This Battery | Division of Research | University of Maryland

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*NSFC - UNEP Project Launched to Boost Food and Water Security in Zambezi Basin*
Jan 29, 2016

Zambezi Basin, the largest river basin in southern Africa is a risk zone facing water and food shortages largely due to climate change. To address this problem, a joint project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) was launched in Beijing on 20 January to explore the impact of agricultural development on food security and water vulnerability under climate change in the Basin.

With an area of 1.3 million km2, Zambezi Basin is a potential zone of soybean production. However, the countries in this Basin including Zambia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi are suffering serious food shortages. The Basin has abundant arable land resources, among which cropped land only accounts for 10%. Less rainfall caused by warm-dry climate change, more evapotranspiration (ET) generated by hydraulic power plants, coupled with poor irrigation systems, impact greatly on the food production in this region.

To clarify the competitive relationship of “food, water and hydropower” under climate change in the basin, the project has built an international research team that covers remote sensing monitoring, crop modeling, climate change, and hydrology fields. The involved partners are the Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth (RADI) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) International Ecosystem Management Partnership (UNEP-IEMP), several local universities and meteorological agencies.

The project is co-led by Prof. WU Bingfang from RADI and Dr. LIU Jian from UNEP-IEMP. Prof. WU’s team has long been engaging in agricultural and water resources remote sensing monitoring. His team has developed a CropWatch system and ETWatch system to monitor various indicators related to crop production at regional, national and global scales. They also release CropWatch Bulletins quarterly to assess worldwide crop production, providing valuable references for governments and related organizations to predict food prices and food security.

A network collaborative platform will be built to facilitate the research. The web-based platform will integrate the CropWatch and ETWatch from RADI, a crop modelling system, and weather and hydro database from local metrological agencies, capable of data analysis, crop monitoring, water consumption estimation, modeling and forecasting the crop production, soybean production and export potential under different climate scenarios.

If the research outcomes can facilitate climate compatible agriculture and hydropower planning in this region, the land will unlock great potential for soybean production, which can ensure food security in the Basin, and, in the long run, meet rising demands of China for soybean importation.

(Editor: CHEN Na)​

NSFC - UNEP Project Launched to Boost Food and Water Security in Zambezi Basin---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

* New tech turns potato effluent into fertilizer*
Source: Xinhua 2016-02-01 17:22:22

LANZHOU, Feb. 1 (Xinhua) -- Scientists in China have developed a way of making fertilizer from waste water discharged by potato processing plants, solving a pollution problem which has held back China's potato ambitions.

China sees potatoes as a new staple food to ensure food security, but protein-rich water discharged by starch processors, a major buyer of the spuds, has been blamed for polluting rivers and lakes.

"For years, there has been no technical solution to this problem, forcing environmental authorities to close more than 10,000 small plants, which has hurt the potato market and farmers," said Liu Gang, researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou institute of chemical physics.

Liu's team has developed technology that can halve the chemical oxygen demand (COD) of the effluent by removing starch, fiber and protein. The processed water does not need to be dumped either, because of its high nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus content make it a perfect irrigation water.

LA four-year test has shown the water harmless to crops, and three starch companies are now using the technology to purify their discharge.

China is the world's largest potato producer, with 5.6 million hectares under the crops. Given its resistance to cold and drought, the tubers are more suitable for cultivation in China's arid west and northwest than wheat and rice.

The Ministry of Agriculture has plans to expand potato acreage to 10 million hectares to produce 50 million tonnes by 2020.

Chinese companies have developed buns, noodles and other products made from potato starch, products that are more familiar to the Chinese as staple food.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*HiSilicon ramps orders to Taiwan foundry, backend service companies, says report*

EDN, February 1; Steve Shen, DIGITIMES [Monday 1 February 2016]

China-based chipset vendor HiSilicon Technologies has increased wafer and IC packaging/testing orders at Taiwan-based foundry and backend service companies as it plans to ramp output of chips for its parent company, Huawei, according to a Chinese-language _Economic Daily News _(_EDN_) report.

Huawei aims to ramp up its smartphone shipments from 108 million units shipped in 2015 to 130 million units in 2016, with 70% of chipsets used to be supplied by its subsidiary, HiSilicon, said the report. In other words, HiSilicon will have to supply over 90 million chips to Huawei in 2016.

As a result, HiSilicon has increased its foundry orders at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) for the first quarter of 2016, said the paper, noting that HiSilicon is TSMC's first client for its 16nm FinFET process node.

Meanwhile, HiSilicon has also placed more IC packaging orders with Siliconware Precision Industries (SPIL) as well as testing orders with King Yuan Electronics (KYEC), added the paper.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

* China plans to build new national laboratories*
Source: Xinhua 2016-02-03 13:50:50

BEIJING, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese government is planning to build a batch of comprehensive national laboratories, according to Bai Chunli, President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

Bai said this at the opening ceremony of the International Seminar on National Laboratory Management on Tuesday. It was attended by thirteen national lab directors from China and seven other countries, including the U.S., Germany, the U.K., Sweden, Italy, Japan and Singapore. They exchanged experiences of building and managing national laboratories.

In his speech, Bai said it is one of Chinese government' s priorities to build national laboratories into a cornucopia of the best talents from home and abroad. In recent years, the Chinese government has made a series of policies about the scientific and technological system reform, so as to implement the innovation-driven development strategy.

According to Ding Hong, one of the speakers and Chief Scientist of Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics of CAS, part of the plan features the building of three scientific facilities and five interdisciplinary research platforms. The three scientific facilities are Synergetic Extreme Condition User Facilities, Beijing Advanced Photon Source and Earth System Simulator, and the five platforms focus on accelerator technology, clean energy, materials genome, environment science and brain science.

"It is very important to build several comprehensive national laboratories." Ding said, "compared to laboratories of a single discipline, comprehensive national laboratories can undertake more large-scale scientific projects and interdisciplinary research projects, for example new energy, materials genome and brain science."

As a national research institute, CAS boasts more than 65,000 researchers and 80 percent of the country' s large-scale scientific facilities, including the world' s biggest radio telescope and Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## TaiShang

*Inseparable: Taiwan semiconductor giant to build factory in Nanjing *
Xinhua, February 3, 2016




Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world's leading semiconductor maker, said Wednesday that its application to set up a wafer plant in the mainland had been approved by Taiwan authorities. [File photo]


Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world's leading semiconductor maker, said Wednesday that its application to set up a wafer plant in the mainland had been approved by Taiwan authorities.

The company will invest US$3 billion in Nanjing, capital of eastern China's Jiangsu Province.

One third of the funds will come from the parent company in Taiwan, while the remainder will be provided in the form of loans from TSMC's subsidiaries around the world.

The new plant will have an annual capacity of 240,000 twelve-inch wafers with production planned to begin in the latter half of 2018.

TSMC expects its global market share to rise from the current 55 percent to 57 percent by 2018.

The company's net profit grew 16.2 percent last year to 307 billion New Taiwan dollars (about US$9.1 billion).


----------



## JSCh

中国新一代“人造太阳”实验装置获重大突破 
发表时间：2016-02-04 17:07来源：新华社​





这是全超导托卡马克核聚变实验装置（2015年7月30日摄）。




这是EAST5000万度、102秒等离子体放电实验数据图。​
记者4日从中科院合肥物质科学研究院了解到，该院等离子体所承担的大科学工程“人造太阳”实验装置（EAST）在1月底的实验中，成功实现了电子温度超过 5000万度、持续时间达102秒的超高温长脉冲等离子体放电。这是国际托卡马克实验装置在电子温度达到5000万度时，持续时间最长的等离子体放电。专 家们介绍，这一重大成果展示了EAST作为超导装置在较高参数下开展稳态实验研究的特长和能力，标志着中国在稳态磁约束聚变研究方面继续走在国际前列。新 华社发

Summary:
Xinhua news reported from Chinese Academy of Science, Hefei Institute of Physical Science.

The experimental fusion device - Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) of the Hefei Institude of Plasma Physics has made a breakthrough on 28 Jan, 2016.

The device has successful achieved temperature more than 50 million Kelvin, duration of up to 102 seconds long pulse ultra-high temperature plasma discharge.

EAST物理实验获重大突破

——实现5千万度102秒高温先进偏滤器等离子体运行
2016-02-03 | 作者：龚先祖 王亮 常加峰 邵林明

　　2016年1月28日凌晨零点26分，全超导托卡马克核聚变实验装置EAST成功实现了电子温度超过5千万度、持续时间达102秒的超高温长脉 冲等离子体放电。这是国际托卡马克实验装置上电子温度达到5000万度持续时间最长的等离子体放电，展示了EAST作为超导装置在较高参数下开展稳态实验 研究的特长和能力，这一里程碑性的成果标志着我国在稳态磁约束聚变研究方面继续走在国际前列。

　　超高温长脉冲等离子体放电是未来聚变堆的基本运行模式。目前，国际上大部分磁约束聚变实验装置为常规非超导托卡马克且偏滤器位形等离子体持续时 间基本都在20秒以下，只有欧盟和日本科学家曾获得最长为60秒的高参数偏滤器等离子体。EAST既定科学目标是实现1亿度1000秒的等离子体运行，但 实现该科学目标目前仍面临着众多科学和技术（物理和工程）的挑战。本轮实验以来，EAST团队的工程技术人员和科学家们夜以继日，解决了一系列关键科学和 工程技术问题：长脉冲等离子体磁位形的精确控制、全超导磁体安全运行技术、稳态有效的等离子体加热与电流驱动、长时间的等离子体与壁强烈相互作用下粒子和 热排出、实时的高时空分辨的先进物理诊断等。通过集成创新和开展全面的实验研究，利用低杂波与电子回旋波协同加热和电流驱动，在中性束共同加热 下，EAST成功实现了102秒、等离子体电流0.4MA、芯部电子温度超过5千万度、中心电子密度2.4x1019m-3的高温等离子体放电。

　　近年来，在国家发改委、科技部、国家自然科学基金委、中国科学院以及安徽省和合肥市等各部门的大力支持下，EAST的实验运行能力得到大幅提 升。EAST团队的科学工作者们秉承“甘于奉献、团结协作、锐意进取、争创一流”的大科学文化团队精神，全面深入地开展国内国际合作吸收国内外先进科学知 识和技术，EAST已成为国际上稳态磁约束聚变研究的重要实验平台，其研究成果将为未来国际热核聚变实验堆ITER实现稳态高约束放电提供科学和工程实验 支持，并将继续为我国下一代聚变装置中国聚变工程实验堆前期预研奠定重要的科学基础。


----------



## JSCh

*New technique leads to creation of elastic high-strength carbon nanotube film*
February 4, 2016 by Bob Yirka report




(Phys.org)—A new technique developed by researchers at East China University of Science and Technology and Shanghai Jiao Tong University has led to the development of a high-strength carbon nanotube film that retains much of the elasticity of native carbon nanotubes. In their paper published in the journal _Nano Letters,_ the team describes their technique and the characteristics of the materials they made.

Ever since researchers discovered that creating sheets made of single layers of carbon atoms grown in a tub shape resulted in a material with exceptional electronic and elastic properties, the search has been on to find a way to produce a material made of them in bulk, in a way that does not cause them to lose some of their exceptional properties. In this new effort the combined team in China has developed a method that allows for creating such a material while retaining most of its elastic and other properties. The result is a material that looks like a thick black plastic trash bag. But looks can be deceiving, the material has been found to be significantly stronger than both Kevlar and carbon fiber.

Prior attempts to make such a material have left a lot to be desired because they failed to keep the nanotubes aligned in the final product. The new approach overcomes that problem by using nitrogen gas to push single layers of carbon nanotubes along a tube surface inside of a 2,100 degree oven. As the material is removed from the oven, it is wound around a drum and then compressed further by running it through rollers. The result is a material that the team tested at a tensile strength of 9.6 gigapascals, which is approximately five times as strong as any other material made of carbon nanotubes. In contrast, carbon fibers have been tested to 7 gigapascals and Kevlar to just 3.7. As if that were not enough, the material was also shown able to elongate approximately 8 percent, which is far more than the 2 percent for carbon fibers.

The team believes the new material would be suitable for use in wearable devices and possibly in artificial muscles and perhaps as a component in protective clothing for soldiers or athletes.
*
More information:* Wei Xu et al. High-Strength Carbon Nanotube Film from Improving Alignment and Densification, _Nano Letters_ (2016). DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b03863

*Abstract*
A new method is reported for preparing carbon nanotube (CNT) films. This method involves the continuous production of a hollow cylindrical CNT assembly and its condensation on a winding drum. The alignment and densification of CNTs in the film are improved by controlling the winding rate and imposition of mechanical rolling, respectively. The prepared film has a strength of 9.6 GPa, which is well above those for all other man-made films and fibers.

*Journal reference:* Nano Letters 

 



© 2016 Phys.org

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese researchers creates material that remembers*
2016-02-05 10:44 CCTV _Editor: Feng Shuang_

Chinese scientists have developed a material that remembers. Actually the polymer with built-in memory can morph into different shapes when heated.

Check out this new plastic polymer created by Chinese researchers. It's designed to have shape memory, which means that it can change shapes when exposed to heat.

The scientists at Zhejiang University say it could lead to a new generation of materials driving innovations in medicine, electronics and other fields.

The approach is being called '4D printing,' as the material's properties shift based on the environment and conditions.

"Ordinary ductile materials cannot be folded at high temperatures, because they will flow and the whole system will be plasticised and melt into liquid. Our material, you can see that it's still solid at high temperatures, even though permanent deformation occurs. So we are showing the material's performance by folding it," said Zhao Qian, associate professor of Zhejiang University.

The team demonstrates using a small sheet of polymer programmed with a sequence of pre-determined shapes. It shifts repeatedly as the water temperature reaches 140 degrees Fahrenheit or 60 degrees Celsius.

And what's really cool -- the shapes look like origami.

"Our material is currently a proof of concept. In terms of its permanent shaping, it is only a paper crane, similar to a toy at the moment. But we want to promote it for practical applications that have more value, like heart stents or transformable weapons," said Zou Weike, doctoral student of Zhejiang University.

The researchers' findings have been published in the journal Science Advances. They hope that by building on this technology, it will lead to incredible developments in shape shifting tools or flexible medical sensors that can adjust to body temperatures.

*Video from reuters:
*

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Study: China’s new policies will lower CO2 emissions faster, without preventing economic growth*
_MIT professor sees coal use peaking within next decade and emissions dropping soon after._

Peter Dizikes | MIT News Office
February 9, 2016
A new study co-authored by an MIT professor shows that China’s new efforts to price carbon could lower the country’s carbon dioxide emissions significantly without impeding economic development over the next three decades.

Based on a unique model that links China’s energy system and economy, the study finds that China’s coal use, a major source of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, should peak some time around the year 2020, while the country’s overall CO2 emissions would peak around 2030, or perhaps sooner. Even so, the reduction in carbon-intensive economic activity would not prevent China from reaching its government’s goal of being a “well-off society” by 2050.

“Using carbon pricing in combination with energy price reforms and renewable energy support, China could reach significant levels of emissions reduction without undermining economic growth,” says Valerie Karplus, an assistant professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and a co-author of the new study.

Details of the study appear in the paper “Carbon emissions in China? How far can new efforts bend the curve?” being published by the journal _Energy Economics_. In addition to Karplus, the other co-authors are Xiliang Zhang, Tianyu Qi, Da Zhang, and Jiankun He, all scholars at the Institute of Energy, Environment, and Economy, at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Da Zhang is now a postdoc at MIT.

*Why spending, not saving, will make China greener*

The impetus for the study comes from a headline-making set of recent policy shifts announced by China, including its toughest-ever set of regulations on local environmental pollution. In November 2013, China pledged to create more sustainable economic growth through a series of measures that included creating markets for CO2 emissions as well as other pollutants and scarce resources, such as water, more broadly.

That set of measures also helped form the basis for an agreement to limit carbon use, which the U.S. and China announced in November 2014. Among other things, China committed to a goal of making nonfossil fuel sources account for 20 percent of its energy use by 2030; in 2015, that figure stood at 11 percent. The U.S. pledged to reduce its total CO2 emissions about 26-28 percent by 2025, in comparison to 2005 levels.

In turn, that bilateral agreement has been widely credited with paving the way for the larger set of carbon-reduction pledges agreed to globally at the U.N. Climate Change Conference held in Paris in late 2015.

The study uses a model of China’s economy and energy output, called C-GEM, developed by scholars at the Tsinghua-MIT China Energy and Climate Project. Karplus served as director of that project from 2011-2015. She joined the Sloan faculty in the fall of 2014 as the Class of 1943 Career Development Professor. She is also a faculty affiliate of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and the MIT Energy Initiative.

The model compares and contrasts two main paths that China’s energy consumption could take: One, which the paper calls the “Continued Effort” scenario, is a business-as-usual trajectory. The other, based on China’s announced reforms and environmental initiatives, is called the “Accelerated Effort” scenario. In the “Continued Effort” scenario, China’s carbon emissions would not level off until around 2040, ten years later than in the “Accelerated Effort” scenario, and at a level 20 percent higher.

The model outlines some additional broad contours of China’s energy future given the more stringent set of policies. Coal would drop sharply as a source of primary energy, or raw fuel, from around 70 percent in 2010 to around 28 percent in 2050.

“Coal today is used with varying degrees of efficiency across the Chinese energy system,” Karplus observes. “The model is capturing the fact that you have a lot of low-cost opportunities to reduce coal, from heavy-industry direct use as well as the electric power sector, from facilities using less energy-efficient technology or processes.”

In all scenarios, the model also simulates that over time, China’s famously high savings rate will decline, as has been observed in many developing economies. As a result, more of China’s GDP will be composed of consumer-driven spending, not state-led investment, which itself will drive reductions in carbon emissions per unit of GDP.

“The consumption share of GDP has a very different carbon intensity, as a bundle of goods, relative to investment goods, so you automatically get a reduction in carbon intensity from that trajectory,” Karplus says.

Think of it this way: At the moment, a larger portion of household earnings in China are tucked away in banks, where they are loaned out and used to fund massive infrastructure projects — highways, dams, power plants — which release huge amounts of CO2. In the future, if China’s households save less, more of the country’s money will be spent on services and everyday goods, which have a smaller aggregate carbon footprint.

*Confidence levels*

The MIT-Tsinghua study’s findings have gained the attention of many policymakers in the energy sphere and have been regarded as an important estimate of China’s potential energy and CO2 emissions trajectories.

John P. Weyant, a professor of management science and engineering, director of the Energy Modeling Forum, and deputy director of the Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency at Stanford University, calls the model “state of the art” and says it “produces policy-relevant insights regarding the implications of the two policy scenarios” in China. He adds that the model contains a “realistic representation of the pathways by which the Chinese and world economy can be expected to adjust to these policy initiatives.”

Karplus readily acknowledges that with any energy and economic modeling of this scale, many uncertainties remain. Still, she thinks it is clear enough that the “Accelerated Effort” scenario for China would produce a significant reduction in China’s emissions.

“You can have some confidence in the relative numbers despite the huge uncertainties, if you look at the two cases,” Karplus asserts. “The value in this exercise is in its ability to look at alternative levels of policy effort and the relative impacts those would have.”

Study: China’s new policies will lower CO2 emissions faster, without preventing economic growth | MIT News


----------



## JSCh

deleted


----------



## JSCh

4 February 2016
*Robot chameleon changes colour to blend into its surroundings*





Take a look at this colourful character: it’s a robot chameleon (see video above).

Guoping Wang of Wuhan University, China, and his colleagues created it to show off their camouflage technology, which could one day allow military vehicles or body armour to blend perfectly into the background.

The chameleon is a 3D-printed model covered in plasmonic displays, which produce colours by exploiting the interactions between nanoscale structures and electric fields. The team made the displays by taking a glass sheet bearing a grid of holes, each 50 nanometres across, and depositing gold on to it. This formed gold domes inside each hole. They then placed the sheet inside a casing filled with an electrolyte gel containing silver ions.

When light hits the gold nanostructures it produces ripples of electrons, called plasmons, that determine its reflective and absorbing properties – in this case, making the glass sheet appear red. Applying an electric field deposits some silver ions on to the gold domes, modifying their properties and producing different colours. Reversing the field strips off these ions and restores the red colour.

The team experimented with different strengths of field and durations to find out which colours they could make. To emulate a chameleon’s skin-changing abilities, they used light sensors to recognise the background colour and apply the appropriate field.

At the moment the sensors are limited to recognising only the primary colours red, green and blue. A more advanced system should be able to detect any colours, says Wang. “This would fully merge the mechanical chameleon into the surroundings.” If these advanced sensors can be miniaturised, the same principle could be used to develop adaptive camouflage systems for use by the military, he says.

_ACS Nano_, DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.5b07472

By *Jacob Aron*

*Robot chameleon changes colour to blend into its surroundings | New Scientist*

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*China Set to Build World’s Biggest Waste-to-Energy Power Plant*

*Designed by a pair of Danish firms, the plant will measure nearly one mile in circumference*

BY NICK MAFI

Posted February 10, 2016

A new power plant designed for China by Danish firms Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects and Gottlieb Paludan Architects features a circular layout, a stark departure from traditional plants.

For some, turning various types of waste into energy sounds like crazy a futuristic concept. Yet, it’s a process that’s been happening for several years. But no where in the world will it happen on such a massive scale than in China. Two Danish firms Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects and Gottlieb Paludan Architects have just won a competition to build the world’s largest waste-to-energy power plant. Located on the mountainous outskirts of Shenzhen, the factory will turn 5,500 tons of waste into energy each day. To put this number into context, that’s roughly one-third of the waste produced daily by the city’s 20 million residents. What’s more, the plant will generate additional power through solar panels installed on the 710,000-square-foot roof.

The factory’s circular design, measuring nearly one mile in circumference, will allow the entire plant to be housed within a single building. The facility is meant to be educational as well as functional, and the architects incorporated a network of elevated walkways within the space; visitors will be able to safely tour the plant and observe each part of the conversion process. The goal is to show guests both the amount of waste produced by the city and the exciting capability of the new technology.

Construction will begin this year, with the plant scheduled to start operating in 2020.

China Set to Build World’s Biggest Waste-to-Energy Power Plant | Architectural Digest

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Public Release: 12-Feb-2016*
* Most precise measurement of reactor Antineutrino spectrum reveals intriguing surprise *
_Daya Bay detects discrepancies with theoretical predictions, provides important reference data for future reactor neutrino experiments_
*
DOE/Brookhaven National Laboratory*

Members of the International Daya Bay Collaboration, who track the production and flavor-shifting behavior of electron antineutrinos generated at a nuclear power complex in China, have obtained the most precise measurement of these subatomic particles' energy spectrum ever recorded. The data generated from the world's largest sample of reactor antineutrinos indicate two intriguing discrepancies with theoretical predictions and provide an important measurement that will shape future reactor neutrino experiments. The results have been published in the journal _Physical Review Letters_.

Studying the behavior of elusive neutrinos holds the potential to unlock many secrets of physics, including details about the history, makeup, and fate of our universe. Neutrinos were among the most abundant particles at the time of the Big Bang, and are still generated abundantly today in the nuclear reactions that power stars and in collisions of cosmic rays with Earth's atmosphere.

They are also emitted as a by-product of power generation in man-made nuclear reactors, giving scientists a powerful way to study them on Earth in a controlled manner. In fact, the study of particles emitted by reactors led to the first detection of neutrinos in the 1950s, a finding once considered impossible due to the extreme inert nature of these particles, which were then only predicted. Since that time reactor experiments, including Daya Bay, have played a crucial role in uncovering the secrets of neutrino oscillation--their tendency to switch among three known flavors: electron, muon, and tau--and other important neutrino properties.

A crucial factor for many of these experiments is knowing how many antineutrinos are emitted in total in these nuclear reactions (the flux), and how many are being produced at particular energies (the energy distribution, or spectrum). In early studies, scientists relied on calculations or other indirect means, such as electron spectrum measurements made on reactor fuels, to estimate these numbers, based on their understanding of the complex fission processes in the reactor core. These methods have rather strong dependence on theoretical models.

The Daya Bay Collaboration now provides the most precise model-independent measurement of the energy spectrum of these elusive particles, and a new measurement of total antineutrino flux. The data were gathered by analyzing more than 300,000 reactor antineutrinos collected over the course of 217 days. The most challenging part of this work was to accurately calibrate the energy response of the detectors. Through dedicated calibration and analysis effort, Daya Bay was able to measure the neutrino energy to an unprecedented precision, better than 1 percent, over a broad energy range of the reactor antineutrinos.



The figure shows the reactor antineutrino energy spectrum measured by Daya Bay (top portion) and the ratio of the measured spectrum to the predicted spectrum (bottom portion). The measurements are shown as horizontal lines with vertical lines representing the range of statistical uncertainty at each data point. The red portion represents the range of theoretical predictions. The data reveal that the measurement has an unexpected deviation from the theoretical prediction around 5 million electron volts (MeV) in the measured energy.

*Credit *Brookhaven National Laboratory

The measured reactor antineutrino spectrum shows a surprising feature: an excess of antineutrinos at an energy of around 5 million electron volts (MeV) compared with theoretical expectations. This represents a deviation of about 10 percent between the experimental measurement and calculations based on the theoretical models--well beyond the uncertainties--leading to a discrepancy of up to four standard deviations. "This unexpected disagreement between our observation and predictions strongly suggested that the current calculations would need some refinement," commented Kam-Biu Luk of the University of California at Berkeley and DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a co-spokesperson of the Daya Bay Collaboration. Two other experiments have shown a similar excess at this energy, though with less precision than the new Daya Bay result.

Such deviation shows the importance of the direct measurement of the reactor antineutrino spectrum, particularly for experiments that use the spectrum to measure neutrino oscillations, and may indicate the need to revisit the models underlying the calculations. "We expect that the spectrum measured by Daya Bay will improve with more data and better understanding of the detector response. These improved measurements will be essential for next-generation reactor neutrino experiments such as JUNO," said Jun Cao of the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) in China, a co-spokesperson of Daya Bay and the deputy spokesperson of JUNO, an experiment being built 200 kilometers away from Daya Bay.

Daya Bay's measurement of antineutrino flux--the total number of antineutrinos emitted across the entire energy range--indicates that the reactors are producing 6 percent fewer antineutrinos overall when compared to some of the model-based predictions. This result is consistent with past measurements. This observed deficit has been named the "Reactor Antineutrino Anomaly." This disagreement could arise from the imperfection of the models. Or, more intriguingly, it could be the result of an oscillation involving a new kind of neutrino, the so-called sterile neutrino--postulated by some theories but yet to be detected. Whether the anomaly exists is still an open question.

*Background on Daya Bay*

The Daya Bay nuclear power complex is located on the southern coast of China, 55 kilometers northeast of Hong Kong. It consists of three nuclear power plants, each with two reactor cores. All six cores are pressurized water reactors with similar design, and each can generate up to 2.9 gigawatt thermal power. Every second, the six reactors emit 3,500 billion billon electron antineutrinos. For this measurement, the Daya Bay experiment used six detectors located at 360 meters to 1.9 kilometers from the reactors. Each detector contains 20 tons of gadolinium-doped liquid scintillator to catch the reactor antineutrinos.

Most precise measurement of reactor Antineutrino spectrum reveals intriguing surprise | EurekAlert! Science News

*Scientific paper:* "Measurement of the Reactor Antineutrino Flux and Spectrum at Daya Bay" Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 061801 (2016) - Measurement of the Reactor Antineutrino Flux and Spectrum at Daya Bay

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## meis

*China Could Have a Meltdown-Proof Nuclear Reactor Next Year

source:*
China Could Have a Meltdown-Proof Nuclear Reactor Next Year

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*DNA rice breakthrough raises 'green revolution' hopes*
February 15, 2016 by Cecil Morella





​Drawing on a massive bank of varieties stored in the Philippines and state-of-the-art Chinese technology, scientists recently completed the DNA sequencing of more than 3,000 types of rice 

Rice-growing techniques learned through thousands of years of trial and error are about to be turbocharged with DNA technology in a breakthrough hailed by scientists as a potential second "green revolution".

Over the next few years farmers are expected to have new genome sequencing technology at their disposal, helping to offset a myriad of problems that threaten to curtail production of the grain that feeds half of humanity.

Drawing on a massive bank of varieties stored in the Philippines and state-of-the-art Chinese technology, scientists recently completed the DNA sequencing of more than 3,000 of the world's most significant types of rice.

With the huge pool of data unlocked, rice breeders will soon be able to produce higher-yielding varieties much more quickly and under increasingly stressful conditions, scientists involved with the project told AFP.

*Read more -> http://phys.org/news/2016-02-dna-rice-breakthrough-green-revolution.html*

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*Proposal for the assessment of new methods in plant breeding*
February 15, 2016





Comparison of four breeding methodologies: Conventional breeding mainly relies on hybridation. Transgenesis uses genes from other species, cisgenesis genes from related species. In Genome editing, DNA can be altered very specifically. is a type of genetic engineering in which DNA is directly inserted, replaced, or removed from a genome using engineered nucleases, the so called "molecular scissors." Credit: Sanwen Huang/ Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences​
CRISPR/Cas9 is a new method for targeted genetic changes. Together with other methods, it is part of the so-called genome editing toolbox. At the moment, genome-editing is mostly discussed in the context of medical applications, but its use is perhaps even more promising for plant breeding. Scientists from China, the United States and Germany, among them Detlef Weigel of the Max-Planck-Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, have now proposed a regulatory framework for genome editing in plants that has been published in the journal _Nature Genetics_.

*Read more -> Proposal for the assessment of new methods in plant breeding*

*More information:* Sanwen Huang et al. A proposed regulatory framework for genome-edited crops, _Nature Genetics_ (2016). DOI: 10.1038/ng.3484

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 16-Feb-2016
* How early is infants' attention affected by surrounding culture? *
_By age 2, infants' attention to objects and events may be shaped by their culture_

*Northwestern University*


Infants from the U.S. and China looked at the same dynamic scenes
Adults from the U.S. focus primarily on objects; those from China focus relatively more on events
Infants' attention in the two cultures showed strong overlap: also reliable differences
Researchers: Results underscore value of conducting cross-cultural research with infants
EVANSTON, Ill. --- Do the cultures in which we live shape how we view the objects and events in the world that surrounds us? Research with adults has suggested that it does. But how early might any such culturally inflected differences emerge in development?

In a new Northwestern University study, researchers address the issue directly, asking how 24-month-old infants from the United States and China deploy their attention to objects and actions in active scenes.

Researchers found that 24-month-old infants from the U.S. and China -- who are on the threshold of learning words for objects and actions -- have a great deal in common when observing active scenes.

However, infants' looking patterns in the two cultures diverged significantly for a brief period.

In the experiment, all infants watched a series of repeated scenes (e.g., a girl petting a dog). Then, infants watched new scenes in which either object was switched (the girl petting a pillow) or the action was switched (e.g., the girl kissing a dog). This was when their attention diverged.

Infants from China preferred looking at the scenes featuring a new action. In contrast, infants from the U.S. showed the opposite pattern, preferring scenes featuring a new object.

This new result provides the earliest evidence for strong overlap in infants' attention to objects and events. But the research also raises the possibility that by 24 months, infants' attention may already be shaped subtly by the attentional patterns characteristic of adults in their cultural communities.

"There is already reason to suspect that infants' attention to objects and events in dynamic scenes might already be influenced by cultural-specific patterns of attention," said the study's lead author Sandra Waxman, the Louis W. Menk Chair in Psychology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern and faculty fellow in the University's Institute for Policy Research. "We know, for example, that infants pay attention carefully to the actions of their parents and to others close to them."

Furthermore, decades of previous research suggest that when observing scenes, adults from the U.S. focus predominantly on objects, while those from China and Japan direct more of their attention to the contexts and events in which those objects are engaged.

According to the researchers, the current results underscore the value of conducting cross-cultural research with infants.

"Clearly, 24-month-old infants from the U.S. and China have a great deal in common when attending to dynamic scenes, but they may have also begun to pick up the attentional strategies characteristic of adults in their respective communities," Waxman said. "The results reported here suggest that by the time they reach their second birthdays, infants may be on their way to becoming 'native lookers.'"

###​
"How early is infants' attention to objects and actions shaped by culture? New evidence from 24-month-olds raised in the U.S. and China" was published in _Frontiers in Psychology_. In addition to Waxman, co-authors include Brock Ferguson, Kathleen Geraghty and Erin Leddon, Northwestern University; and Xiaolan Fu, Jing Liang and Min-Fang Zhao, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.

NORTHWESTERN NEWS: News Home: Northwestern University News

How early is infants' attention affected by surrounding culture? | EurekAlert! Science News

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*Total Shipment Volume of Huawei FTTH Terminals Exceeds 100 Million*





SHENZHEN, China, Feb. 17, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Huawei, a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) company, today announced that its 100 millionth FTTH terminal (an ONT) has rolled off the production line. This makes Huawei the first vendor that has a total shipment volume of 100 million FTTH terminals.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160217/334177

Huawei keeps investing in FTTH technology innovations and launching competitive E2E FTTH solutions. Besides, Huawei also actively participates in the international standardization and has already contributed many drafts. For example, Huawei takes the major positions, such as president, board member, and main editor, in key PON standards organizations, including, ITU-T, IEEE, and BBF. In these positions, Huawei made significant contributions to the standardization of 10G PON, TWDM PON, and WDM PON.

Huawei has been committed to promoting the development of the FTTH industry. In 2007, Huawei released an ONT chip with proprietary intellectual property rights and deployed the world's first commercial large-scale FTTH network in United Arab Emirates. In 2008, Huawei and Verizon (America) jointly carried out the world's first 10G PON test. In 2009, Huawei became the first vendor that deployed over 1 million FTTH terminals. In 2010, Huawei, together with China Telecom, Portugal Telecom, and Etisalat UAE, completed the world's first commercial deployment of 10G PON MDUs. In 2011, Huawei released the industry's first commercial 40G TWDM PON prototype and became the first vendor that delivered more than 10 million ONTs. In 2013, Huawei deployed the industry's first 10G PON ONT first office application (FOA) site for British Telecommunications. In 2014, Huawei released the industry's first intelligent ONT that supports the smart home service and signed a partnership agreement with Shanghai Research Institute of China Telecom in smart home network development. In 2015, Huawei cooperated with China Unicom, Beltelecom in developing an Internet of Things (IoT)-oriented smart home solution. According to an OVUM analysts report, Huawei has secured the top place in FTTH terminal shipment in consecutive seven years.

The FTTH industry has entered a new period of prosperity. New services, such as 4K TV, virtual reality (VR), and holographic imaging, demand increasingly higher bandwidths. The 100 Mbit/s fiber networks are being reconstructed into 1000 Mbit/s networks. Smart home services, including home security, intelligent control, superb entertainment, and online education, will greatly improve user experience. Huawei will continue to innovate and promote the development of the FTTH industry, helping customers achieve business success and enriching people's life through communication.





*Huawei targets 60 commercial LTE-A Pro contracts in 2016 *

BY JUAN PEDRO TOMÁS ON FEBRUARY 17, 2016

LTE, NETWORK INFRASTRUCTURE

*LTE-A Pro technology will ‘explode’ this year, Huawei says*

Chinese ICT solutions provider Huawei expects to reach 60 commercial networks with its LTE-Advanced Pro-based “4.5G” technology by the end of this year, according to the company’s president of wireless network marketing operation Qiu Heng.

At of the end of 2015, 1 gigabit-per-second transmission had been demonstrated by mobile operators in Canada, Norway, Germany, Kuwait, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, China, Hong Kong and Singapore.

“We are seeing that operators across all regions are interested in the deployment of 4.5G solutions,” Heng said, adding more than 20 operators worldwide have demonstrated or tested the commercial 4.5G technology in collaboration with Huawei since 2014. “We have already started negotiations with some mobile operators for the commercial deployments of 4.5 technology. We believe that this technology will explode in 2016 and that the commercialization of 4.5G will be global.”

Commenting on the future deployment of 4.5G technology in China, the executive said China Mobile has shown interest in the TDD-based technology. “Other operators in China are already talking about the evolution of their 4G networks,” Heng added.

Huawei previously said the introduction of 4.5G technology will allow mobile operators to improve the user experience and support the increase of machine-to-machine communications and the “Internet of Things” as well as new mobile Internet applications, such as virtual-reality glasses and drone technology.

“Because it is an evolution from the existing network, operators can reuse equipment to achieve a higher return on investment with 4.5G,” Heng said.

During a presentation, Huawei also unveiled new 4.5G products under the GigaRadio brand name. The portfolio includes a blade remote radio unit and active antenna unit. The Chinese firm said GigaRadio will be deployed commercially on a large scale this year and will help to accelerate the global adoption of 4.5G.

In October 2015, the 3GPP labeled so-called 4.5G technology as LTE-Advanced Pro. Some aspects of the LTE-Advanced Pro standard include small cell dual-connectivity and architecture, carrier aggregation enhancements, interworking with Wi-Fi, licensed assisted access (at 5 GHz), indoor positioning, single cell-point to multi-point and work on latency reduction.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Protein Discovery Helps Fight Disease*
Feb 22, 2016

Shanghai scientists have figured out the structure and regulatory mechanism of a protein family in the human body highly associated with multiple genetic diseases and cancers, which is likely to bring about breakthroughs in medicine.

The discovery, made after years of study by the National Center for Protein Science, Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, a branch of the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was published on Thursday on the website of the UK-based journal Nature.

The MLL family of proteins plays a crucial role in the proliferation, growth and development of cells, and their mutation can trigger the improper operation of cells and cause diseases.

For example, 70 to 80 percent of the incidence of acute lymphoblastic leukemia in childhood and 5 to 10 percent of the incidence of acute myeloid leukemia of adults is due to mutations in a protein in the family, according to Chen Yong, one of the lead scientists.

Similarly, mutations in other members of the protein family are associated with diseases such as congenital heart disease, prostate cancer and breast cancer, he said.

"That's why dozens of labs throughout the world have been dedicated to figuring out the structure of the proteins since the first protein family member MML1 was discovered in 1991," Chen said.

In the research, they found the structural differences of the mutations and how that disrupted the interaction of the protein, said Lei Ming, another lead scientist.

"These findings may provide unprecedented prospects in MLL research and give hints for future drug design for some human diseases," Chen said.

Scientists said the research was the fruit of collaboration among at least six labs, including those involving biochemistry and structural biology, at the National Center for Protein Science, a major facility located at the Shanghai Zhangjiang National Innovation Demonstration Zone, where a new integrated national science center will be constructed.

They also conducted diffraction experiments at the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility, another significant facility in Zhangjiang.

"It's one of the important reasons that we can see the structure clearly," Chen said. (China Daily)

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 22-Feb-2016
* Waterloo vision scientists discover potential treatment for adults with lazy eye*
University of Waterloo





*IMAGE: *Professor Thompson adjusts a transcranial direct current stimulation device on a patient. A new treatment for adults with lazy eye, a condition previously thought to be treatable only in childhood, is... view more 

Credit: UWaterloo/Martin Schwalbe

A new treatment for adults with lazy eye, a condition previously thought to be treatable only in childhood, is one step closer as a result of research from the University of Waterloo in Canada and Sun Yat-sen University in China.

Waterloo vision scientist Ben Thompson with collaborators from China have shown that low voltage electric currents can temporarily improve sight in adult patients with lazy eye, or amblyopia.

"Until fairly recently, the prevailing view was that if adults couldn't develop amblyopia, they couldn't be treated for it," says Thompson. "This was the same for anyone with brain-based vision problems - they're often told there's nothing that can be done about their vision loss."

In a proof-of-concept series of experiments, Thompson and his colleagues exposed patients to twenty minutes of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) applied to the surface of the head, directly over the primary visual cortex.

They found the treatment temporarily increased the response of that part of the brain to visual information from the lazy eye. tDCS also improved patients' ability to see low contrast patterns.

Their results were published this month in _Scientific Reports_, a highly cited _Nature_ publication.

"It's a long held view that adults can't be treated for lazy eye because their brains no longer have the capacity to change," says Thompson. "We demonstrate here that adults do have the capacity, especially when it comes to vision."

Methods such as transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) have recently been shown to increase adult neuroplasticity - the brain's ability to rewire and reorganise itself.

Lazy eye is a loss of vision that originates in the brain. It affects up to three per cent of Canadians and is caused by the presence of unequal images in the two eyes during childhood, typically due to an eye turn or one eye being long sighted.

The unequal input can cause the brain to process information from the weaker eye incorrectly. Unless the brain processing issue is treated, the vision loss remains, even after the problems in the eye are fixed. If left untreated, lazy eye increases a patient's lifetime risk for legal blindness by 50 per cent.

"Amblyopia is an issue here in Canada, but much more so in countries where access to basic vision care for children is challenging," says Thompson.

That said, amblyopia in children is very treatable because their brains are so responsive.

It's a different story for adults whose brains have long passed out of the critical developmental period. Differences in the images seen by each eye that occur in adulthood do not result in amblyopia.

Other research groups have suggested that tDCS might also have beneficial effects in patients with vision loss due to stroke.

Thompson says these initial results demonstrate the proof-of-concept that will allow him and his research group to take the next step towards clinical trials.

"Our ultimate goal is to develop an evidence based treatment that patients can receive right in their eye doctor's office," says Thompson. "We expect there are other primary visual cortex problems that we may be able to address with this method."

###​
Other collaborators include researchers from McGill University, University of Auckland and Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Waterloo vision scientists discover potential treatment for adults with lazy eye | EurekAlert! Science News

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* Shrinking 3D Technology for Comfortable Smart Phone Viewing | Business Wire*
_Using a technique called super multi-view, Chinese researchers have developed a thin display that creates a three-dimensional image without causing viewing discomfort_

February 23, 2016 01:22 PM Eastern Standard Time

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Imagine watching a 3D movie on your smart phone and suddenly getting a headache or even feeling nauseous. Such viewer discomfort is one of the biggest obstacles preventing widespread application of 3D display technology – especially for portable devices whose slim design poses an extra challenge.

Now researchers at the Sun Yan-Sen University, China have developed a new display with comfortable 3D visual effects. The device is based on a “super multi-view technique” which works to reduce viewer discomfort. It also greatly decreases the required number of microdisplays, which makes a compact design possible. The researchers describe their device in a paper in the journal _Optics Express_, from The Optical Society (OSA).

“There are many causes for 3D-viewing discomfort, but the most substantial one is the vergence-accomodation conflict,” said Lilin Liu, author and an associate professor of the State Key Lab of Optoelectronics Materials and Technology, Sun Yat-Sen University, China. She explained that vergence-accomodation conflict is a mismatch between the point at which the eyes converge on an image and the distance to which they focus when viewing 3D images.

Human eyes are separated by about six centimeters, which means that when we look at an object, the two eyes see slightly different images. Our brain directs both eyes to the same object and the distance at which the eyes’ sight lines cross is technically called “vergence distance.” Meanwhile, our brain adjusts the focus of the lens within each eye to make the image sharp and clear on the retina. The distance to which the eye is focused is called “the accommodative distance.” Failure to converge leads to double images, while mis-accommodation results in blurry images.

In natural viewing, human’s vergence and accommodation responses are correlated with each other and adjust simultaneously. In other words, vergence and accommodation distance are almost always the same — that’s why we can always see an object clearly and comfortably.

Conventional 3D displays try to mimic the natural viewing by creating images with varying binocular difference, which simulates vergence changes in the natural 3D landscape. But the accommodative distance remains unchanged at the display distance, resulting in the so-called vergence-accomodation conflict that causes viewer discomfort.

“Conventional 3D displays usually deliver some views of the displayed spatial spot to a single eye pupil. That is why accommodative distance remains fixed on the display screen and cannot adjust simultaneously as vergence distance does, causing vergence-accomodation conflict,” said Liu.

The team’s solution is to project numerous 2D perspective views to viewpoints with intervals smaller than the pupil diameter of the eye. This means the device can deliver at least two different views to a single eye pupil.

“Our proposed scheme overcomes vergence-accomodation conflict by delivering more than two views to a single eye pupil, making the eyes focus on the displayed image naturally. Also, the prototype in our study is 65-millimeter-thin, and the system could become thinner with improvement in structural elements, which provides a demo for comfortable 3D wearable electronics or portable displays,” said Dongdong Teng, co- author of the paper.

The team’s prototype system consists of 11 elementary projecting units. Each projecting unit is constructed by an organic light-emitting diode (OLED) microdisplay, a rectangular projecting lens, two vertical baffles and a group of gating apertures (liquid crystal panel) attached to the projecting lens. By gating different gating apertures in sequence and refreshing the virtual image of the corresponding microdisplay synchronously, the researchers can obtain dense viewpoints on the display screen.

“Creating a dense arrangement of viewpoints on the display screen is the key to comfortable 3D effect,” Liu noted.

To test viewers’ reactions to the prototype system, eight subjects were asked to observe a displayed 3D image of an apple in the lab environment and no headache or discomfort was reported.

Moreover, as the gating aperture array is adhered to the projecting unit array, the size of the prototypestructure is thin, around 65 millimeters, which is promising for applications in portable devices.

Liu said adjustments to the device could make it even thinner, which is a focus of their future work.

“The novelty and the main merit of our super multi-view system lie in the thin structure. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of a ‘super multi-view system’ with thin structure, which makes it suitable for portable electronics such as smart phones and wearable devices,” Liu said.

Paper: Lilin Liu, Zhiyong Pang, and Dongdong Teng, "Super multi-view three-dimensional display technique for portable devices," Opt. Express *24*, 4421-4430 (2016)

*Abstract*
Portable display devices, such as intelligent telephones and panel _PC_s, have become parts of modern people’s daily life. Their mainstream display interfaces are based on two-dimensional (_2D_) images. Although some three-dimensional (_3D_) technologies have been proposed for portable devices, comfortable visual effects are untouched until now. A super multi-view (_SMV_) system with comfortable _3D_ effects, constructed by a group of _OLED_ microdisplay/projecting lens pairs, is proposed in this paper. Through gating different segments of each projecting lens sequentially and refreshing the virtual image of the corresponding microdisplay synchronously, the proposed _SMV_ system greatly decreases the demand on the number of employed microdisplays and at the same time takes a thin optical structure, endowing great potential for portable devices.

© 2016 Optical Society of America​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese Wind Turbine Maker *
*Is Now World's Largest*
Danish firm is second, U.S. is third, in booming market

----------
By Daniel Cusick, ClimateWire on February 23, 2016





©iStock.com​
General Electric Co. has ceded its position as the world’s No. 1 wind turbine manufacturer to a Chinese competitor, according to 2015 market data compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Xinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology Co. Ltd. received orders for 7.8 gigawatts of new wind turbines in 2015, exceeding GE, which dropped to No. 3 globally with 5.9 GW of new commissioned capacity, according to BNEF. Vestas Wind Systems A/S of Denmark attracted 7.3 GW of new orders in 2015, solidifying its No. 2 ranking in the global supply chain.

While Goldwind maintains a North American headquarters in Chicago and has provided turbines to several U.S. wind farms, BNEF said that almost all of the company’s recent growth was in the Chinese market, where wind power developers are riding an unprecedented boom. About 29 GW of new capacity came online in China last year alone (_ClimateWire_, Feb. 2).

David Halligan, CEO of Goldwind Americas, said Goldwind is pleased to be at the forefront of a global wind market that “is growing at an exponential rate.”

“While Goldwind’s anchor is in China, our global aspirations remain strong and we are continuously looking for opportunities across many different geographies,” he said in email.


*Continue reading -> *Chinese Wind Turbine Maker Is Now World's Largest - Scientific American

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Super VOOC in fast lane, fills battery in 15 minutes*
February 25, 2016 by Nancy Owano

 

This week, battery-charging technology carrying a pitch of being especially fast and safe was talked up at the Mobile World Congress. A Chinese smartphone company announced its quick-charge technology, which can deliver low-temperature charging of smartphone batteries.​
Oppo is the company and the new phone-charging technology is called Super VOOC Flash Charge; a presentation at the event showed just how fast charging can be. How fast? Super VOOC Battery tech can fully charge a phone in 15 minutes—it will charge a 2,500mAh battery to 100 percent.

That is pretty impressive as a 15-minute charge appears comfortably short as a painless interruption which one can carry out during any busy day.

(Another important fast-charging player is Qualcomm. They said that in laboratory tests using a 2750mAh battery, a Quick Charge 3.0 enabled device went from 0 percent to 80 percent charge in 35 minutes; Quick Charge is the company's fast charging technology for devices powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon processors.)

_PCMag_ mobile analyst Ajay Kumar made the point too on Tuesday that fast charging is not a new technology; companies like the above-mentioned Qualcomm have their own version of it, but what sets Oppo's VOOC apart is that it is low-voltage. "Most types of fast charge work by pushing out more amps, but VOOC keeps your standard amperage, reducing risk of overheating or battery damage."

The technology works with micro-USB and USB Type-C ports. As Kumar reported, the adapter was designed with military-grade materials and compatibility for micro USB and USB Type-C ports.

How did Oppo pull off this 15-minute feat? Oppo said that "Super VOOC Flash Charge uses a 5V low-voltage pulse-charge algorithm, ensuring a low-temperature charge that's safe for the battery and dynamically regulating the current to charge the phone in the shortest time possible. The all-new algorithm pairs with a customized super battery, as well as a new adapter, cable and connector made using premium, military-grade materials."

Samuel Gibbs of _The Guardian_ talked about the company's technology approach. According to Gibbs, Oppo said the technology was "safer and better for battery longevity because it maintains the voltage at 5V and dynamically adjusts the current to keep the fastest possible charging rate while not damaging the battery."

The circuitry to enable the faster charging is stored within the charger for Oppo's system, said _The Guardian_. "Oppo's system moves a source of heat, which is hazardous to battery health and causes phones to heat up during charging, to the wall."

_PCMag_'s Kumar reported that Oppo has included a customized battery and software with Super VOOC-enabled devices, allowing them to regulate the current to prevent overheating.
When can we expect to see this technology in the real world? _GSMArena_ said that the company hopes to implement it in Oppo smartphones in the near future.

The company said in its press release that it plans to release a device with Super VOOC Flash Charge in the latter part of the year.

If you are not yet familiar with the name Oppo, it is worth recognizing for its place in the phone world. Natasha Lomas reported last month in _TechCrunch_ that "In the game of thrones that is the Android OEM space, Chinese smartphone maker Oppo's star is rising. It said today it sold 50 million smartphones in the full year 2015—a growth rate of 67 per cent, year over year."

*More information:* www.oppo.com/en/about-us/press/oppo-unveils-super-fast-15-minute-flash-charge-and-worlds-first-smartsensor-image-sabilization-tech

© 2016 Tech Xplore


----------



## JSCh

* China's robotic exoskeleton to be put into production*
Source: Xinhua 2016-02-26 18:52:17

CHENGDU, Feb. 26 (Xinhua) -- A China-developed robotic exoskeleton, which can help disabled people to walk again, will be put into production this year, its developer announced Friday.

Chengdu-based Center for Robotics at University of Electronic Science and Technology of China has been developing robotic exoskeleton since 2010, which is a wearable robot that can be clasped on one's waist and legs to help with walking and movement.

The disabled torch bearer Lin Han had worn the robotic exoskeleton at the opening ceremony of the 6th National Special Olympics held in Chengdu last year.

"This new version is more sensitive to instructions thanks to its embedded motion sensors," said Huang Rui from the Center for Robotics.

It can assist those suffer from hemiplegia and limb paralysis with walking, according to Cheng Hong, executive director of the center.

"From mechanical and electric design to software research, all were independently developed by the center," said Cheng. "We hope to see our robotic exoskeleton used as part of medical rehabilitation."


----------



## Pangu

*CNOOC Taps First Ultra-Deepwater Gas Discovery in South China Sea*

BEIJING, Feb 26 (Reuters) - China's CNOOC Ltd said on Friday it had tapped the country's first ultra-deepwater natural gas discovery in the northwestern part of the South China Sea.

The state-owned offshore oil and gas explorer started to drill the Lingshui 18-1-1 exploration well last October in water depths of 1,688 metres (5,538 feet) and a test of the well in December was a success, the company said in a report published on the website of parent company China National Offshore Oil Corp (www.cnooc.com.cn).

An "ultra-deep" well is categorized as one more than 1,500 metres under the sea.

The report didn't give any estimate of gas flows at Lingshui 18-1-1, but said the discovery has been certified by the Ministry of Land & Resources.

It's located next to another deepsea gas find Lingshui 17-2, which has certified proven reserves exceeding 100 billion cubic metres as reported by the state media a year ago.

CNOOC deployed the country's flagship deepwater rig, the "Haiyang Shiyou 981", to drill the well, the report said.

_(Reporting by Chen Aizhu; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)_

- See more at: NEWS Â |Â  CNOOC Taps First Ultra-Deepwater Gas Discovery in South China Sea Â |Â  Rigzone


----------



## JSCh

*China builds underground lab studying "origins of elements"*
Source: Xinhua 2016-03-03 16:02:09

CHENGDU, March 3 (Xinhua) -- The world's deepest subterranean lab in southwest China is building another underground space that will block cosmic rays, helping scientists trace the origin of elements.

Jinping Underground Laboratory, which is 2,400 meters deep in a mountain in Sichuan Province, has begun building a nuclear astrophysics lab, the China Institute of Atomic Energy told Xinhua.

This arm of physics is a frontier science that studies nuclear reactions within stars, the process that creates many elements. Research into this area provides insight into stars' evolution and the origins of elements.

"The lab will offer the world a new top-class platform for conducting precise measurement on nuclear astrophysics," said Liu Weiping, vice dean of the institute.

Researchers hope to use the facility to explore the birth of heavy elements by measuring neutron source reactions, according to Liu.

Scientists say cosmic rays are known to have disrupted previous observations. This new lab will provide a "clean" space for a number of physical and cosmologic experiments, including those concerns with the search for "dark matter."

The facility opened in December 2010 and was expanded in 2014.

*World's deepest lab targets neutrinos - physicsworld.com*
Feb 23, 2016



*Going underground: the China Jinping Underground Laboratory*
An international group of researchers has issued a "letter of intent" for a new neutrino experiment to be built at the China Jinping Underground Laboratory (CJPL). The scientists believe that the proposed Jinping Neutrino Experiment would measure solar and geoneutrinos better than any other facility in the world, thanks to its extremely low level of background radiation.

CJPL is located under a mountain – with about 2400 m of rock cover – in China's south-western Sichuan province. Completed in 2010, it is currently the deepest underground lab in the world, and hosts two dark-matter experiments: CDEX and PandaX. Work began in 2014 to expand CJPL so that it has room for four more experimental chambers – each 12 m wide and 130 m long. The expansion is expected to be complete by the end of this year.

*Deep detector*
The new letter of intent has been authored by scientists at Tsinghua University, along with others elsewhere in China, Germany and the US, and outlines the science that the Jinping Neutrino Experiment would carry out. Costing around 300m yuan (£32m) to design and build, it will feature 4000 tonnes of liquid scintillator or water-based liquid scintillator, and will aim to obtain precise measurements of the electron neutrino fluxes generated by the Sun. Although previous observations have shown that neutrinos oscillate from one flavour to another, John Beacom, a theorist at Ohio State University and a member of the proposal, says that current measurements could be more refined to offer "tremendously exciting" results.

The experiment would also study electron antineutrinos generated in the Earth's mantle and crust, which could be used to measure the amount and distribution of uranium and thorium inside of the Earth. Compared with other geoneutrino detectors, CJPL is located far away from nuclear power plants, which could affect the measurements. Shaomin Chen, a physicist at Tsinghua, says that the researchers will now place a small detector at CJPL to carry out a preliminary study. If all goes well, Chen says they could design and build the detector within the next five years.

A preprint of the letter is available on the _arXiv_ server.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Public Release: 3-Mar-2016*
* The secret to 3-D graphene? Just freeze it *
New study shows how researchers tame the notoriously fickle supermaterial in aerogel form with 3-D printer and ice

University at Buffalo

_





*IMAGE: *3-D graphene created by an international research team led by Unversity at Buffalo engineers. Credit: University at Buffalo._​
BUFFALO, N.Y. - Graphene is a wonder material saddled with great expectations.

Discovered in 2004, it is 1 million times thinner than a human hair, 300 times stronger than steel and it's the best known conductor of heat and electricity. These qualities could, among other things, make computers faster, batteries more powerful and solar panels more efficient.

But the material is tough to manipulate beyond its two-dimensional form.

Recently, scientists poured graphene oxide suspension, a gel-like form of the material, into freezing molds to create 3-D objects. The process works, but only with simple structures that have limited commercial applications.

Another option is to use a 3-D printer. In this scenario, scientists typically mix graphene with a polymer or other thickening agent. This helps keep the structure from falling apart. But when the polymer is removed via thermal process, it damages the delicate structure.

A research team - comprised of engineers from the University at Buffalo, Kansas State University and the Harbin Institute of Technology in China - may have solved that problem.

A study published Feb. 10 in the journal _Small_ describes how the team used a modified 3-D printer and frozen water to create lattice-shaped cubes and a three-dimensional truss with overhangs using graphene oxide. The structures could be an important step toward making graphene commercially viable in electronics, medical diagnostic devices and other industries.

"Graphene is notoriously difficult to manipulate, but the structures we built show that it's possible to control its shape in three-dimensional forms," said Chi Zhou, assistant professor of industrial and systems engineering at UB's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and a corresponding author of the study.

Zhou is a member of the Sustainable Manufacturing and Advanced Robotic Technologies (SMART), a UB Community of Excellence launched in 2015; he also is a member of UB's New York State Center of Excellence in Materials Informatics.

In their experiments, the research team mixed the graphene oxide with water. They then printed the lattice framework on a surface of -25°C. The graphene is sandwiched between the layers of frozen ice, which act as a structural support.

After the process is completed, the lattice is dipped in liquid nitrogen, which helps form even stronger hydrogen bonds. The lattice is then placed in a freeze dryer, where the ice is changed into gas and removed. The end result is a complex, three-dimensional structure made of graphene aerogel that retains its shape at room temperature.

"By keeping the graphene in a cold environment, we were able to ensure that it retained the shape we designed. This is an important step toward making graphene a commercially viable material," said Dong Lin, assistant professor of industrial and manufacturing systems engineering at Kansas State University, and the study's other corresponding author.

The researchers plan to build on their findings by investigating how to create aerogel structures formed of multiple materials.

###​
First authors of the study are Qiangqiang Zhang, a student at Harbin, and Feng Zhang, a student at UB. Contributing authors are Hui Li, a student at Harbin, and Sai Pradeep Medarametla, a student at Kansas State University.

The research team received support from Mark T. Swihart, UB Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, and Jonathan F. Lovell, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at UB. Both Swihart and Lovell are faculty members within UB's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-03/uab-tst030316.php

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* China's major projects to be implemented in coming five years *
Xinhua, March 5, 2016

China will carry out hundreds of programs and projects of scientific, economic and political significance in the upcoming five years, according to the draft 13th five-year plan on economic and social development submitted to the national legislature on Saturday.

Following are some of them.

1. Aero-engine, gas turbine

2. Quantum communication and computer

3. Brain science, brain-like research

4. National cyberspace security

5. Deep space exploration

6. Seed industry

7. Clean, efficient use of coal

8. Integrated information network

9. New materials

10. Laboratories for scientists

11. 10,000 elite entrepreneurs

12. 10,000 overseas talents back to China

13. 1 million professionals every year

14. 1,200 bases to train skilled professionals

15. 800 million mu of high-standard farmland

16. Internet plus modern agriculture

17. Big planes

18. New-generation heavy lift carrier rockets, new satellites

19. Deep-sea exploration, seabed resources utilization

20. New-generation high-speed heavy load railway equipment system

21. Advanced digital-controlled machine tools

22. Industrial, medical and military robots

23. Advanced medical and chemical equipment

24. Artificial intelligence terminals, 5G mobile telecom technology, advanced sensors, wearable devices

25. Application of gene science

26. Commercialization of Beidou and remote sensing satellites

27. 5 million new energy vehicles

28. Optical communication system

29. Internet of Things

30. Big data application

31. International e-commerce

32. 30,000-km high-speed railways covering 80 percent of major cities

33. 30,000-km new expressways

34. Sichuan-Tibet railway

35. Over 50 new civil airports

36. Shipping hubs and smart ports

37. 3,000-km new urban rail transit

38. Postal access for all villages

39. Internet of vehicles, ships

40. Automatic driving system

41. Intelligent electricity system

42. New hydro power plants with an aggregate capacity of 60,000 mw

43. Nuclear power plants with 58,000 mw installed capacity

44. Deep-sea oil and shale oil, gas

45. Expanded oil, uranium storage

46. Water diversion projects

47. Big reservoirs in Tibet and other areas

48. Water-control projects in Xinjiang and other areas

49. Harnessing projects for 244 rivers

50. Urbanization of 100 million people in central and west China

51. Smart cities and sponge cities

52. Tap water covering 80 percent of rural population

53. Longgong-1 deep-sea experimental platform

54. New observant station in Arctic, new scientific base in Antarctic

55. Global maritime monitoring system

56. Ecological restoration of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and other ecologically important areas

57. 5 million km of rural road

58. World-class universities

59. Protection of Chinese ancient books

60. Cultivating professionals capable of telling China story.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Biodegradable Power Generators Could Power Medical Implants - IEEE Spectrum*
By Charles Q. Choi
Posted 4 Mar 2016 | 19:00 GMT





_Photo: Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems/Chinese Academy of Sciences_​
Biodegradable devices that generate energy from the same effect behind most static electricity could help power transient electronic implants that dissolve in the body, researchers say.

Implantable electronic devices now help treat everything from damaged hearts to traumatic brain injuries. For example, pacemakers can help keep hearts beating properly, while brain sensors can monitor patients for potentially dangerous swelling in the brain.

However, when standard electronic implants run out of power, they need to be removed lest they eventually become sites of infection. But their surgical removal can result in potentially dangerous complications. Scientists are developing transient implantable electronics that dissolve once they are no longer needed, but these mostly rely on external sources of power, limiting their applications.

Now researchers have developed a biodegradable power source that harnesses the phenomenon known triboelectricity, the most common cause of static electricity. When two different materials repeatedly touch and then separate, the surface of one material can steal electrons from the surface of the other. This is why rubbing feet on a carpet or a running a comb through hair can build up electric charge. The scientists detailed their findings online in the 4 March edition of the journal _Science Advances_.




At the heart of the new device are two layers of commercially available, inexpensive, biodegradable polymers, such as PLGA and PCL, which are used in medical sutures. One layer is a thin flat film, while the other layer is a sheet coated with rods up to 300 nanometers high. The layers are separated from one another by blocks of biodegradable polymer; they generate electricity when they are pushed together and pulled apart.

In the lab, the researchers found that their biodegradable nanogenerator could achieve a power density of 32.6 milliwatts per square meter. They discovered that it could successfully power a neuron-stimulation device that helps control neuron growth. “Our results open the gate to fully degradable electronic devices,” says study co-author Zhong Lin Wang, a materials scientist at the Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems. “A whole device can be absorbed in body and would not need to be removed through additional surgery.”

The researchers note that they can tune the lifetime of their nanogenerator from hours to years, depending on the needs of the implantable electronics it is designed to power. They suggest that future devices could be powered by the mechanical energy from heartbeats or respiration.

“We provide a potential power source by reclaiming biomechanical energy from the human body,” Wang says.

__________________​*Abstract*
Transient electronics built with degradable organic and inorganic materials is an emerging area and has shown great potential for in vivo sensors and therapeutic devices. However, most of these devices require external power sources to function, which may limit their applications for in vivo cases. We report a biodegradable triboelectric nanogenerator (BD-TENG) for in vivo biomechanical energy harvesting, which can be degraded and resorbed in an animal body after completing its work cycle without any adverse long-term effects. Tunable electrical output capabilities and degradation features were achieved by fabricated BD-TENG using different materials. When applying BD-TENG to power two complementary micrograting electrodes, a DC-pulsed electrical field was generated, and the nerve cell growth was successfully orientated, showing its feasibility for neuron-repairing process. Our work demonstrates the potential of BD-TENG as a power source for transient medical devices.

Biodegradable triboelectric nanogenerator as a life-time designed implantable power source | Science Advances​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*China Headlines: Sky is the limit for China's national strategy *
Source: Xinhua 2016-03-06 17:10:03
by Xinhua writers Yu Fei and Quan Xiaoshu

BEIJING, March 6 (Xinhua) -- For thousands of years thinkers have grappled to understand the origins of the universe. Now, this question has been included, alongside more terrestrial topics such as agriculture, in China's new economic and social development plan.

In the draft outline of the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020), which was presented to the Fourth Session of the 12th National People's Congress for review on Saturday, the evolution of the universe was given pride of place on the scientific research list. It was followed by material structure, the origins of life, and neurology.

"This is the first time China has included the origins of the universe in its medium- and long-term plan," Han Song, a Chinese sci-fi writer, said.

"So, like the ancient philosophers Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu more than 2,000 years ago, modern thinkers are deliberating the ultimate question of existence," Han said.

"Fundamental questions, like this, have the power to influence solutions to some of the most prominent problems faced by society, and the world at large," said Han.

According to the draft, China will launch projects exploring quantum communication, deep space exploration, water saving and irrigation, and pollution control -- areas that have been identified as having far reaching consequences.

With economic downward pressure forecast to continue over the coming five years, China is committed to fostering new development momentum through innovation.

Zhang Xinmin, a researcher with the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and also a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), said that the inclusion of research into the 13th Five-Year Plan shows that the country is beginning to value basic science.

Zhang, who is involved in research into primordial gravitational waves in Ali, southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, said research is the origin of innovation. Without it, innovation on a large scale is unachievable.

Study on universe evolution seems unrelated to solving more pressing issues, such as lifting tens of millions of people out of poverty by 2020.

However, Hugo Award-winning author Liu Cixin, said many problems rely on advances in science and technology.

Currently, about five percent of research investment is channelled to fundamental research. Whereas in the United States and Germany, that figure is 40 percent and 28 percent.

"Since the 13th Five-Year Plan includes basic research, we expect more science facilities will be built. More investment will bring more opportunities," Liu said.

On Dec. 17, 2015, the dark matter particle explorer (DAMPE), the country's first astronomical satellite, was sent to explore the secrets of the universe.

"Although China still lags behind scientifically-advanced countries in some areas, we should not belittle ourselves. We have made great strides in basic science and space science. As long as we are diligent, in the near future we will achieve great success," said Chang Jin, chief scientist with DAMPE and vice director of the CAS Purple Mountain Observatory.

Another three scientific satellites -- one for quantum science experiments, another for microgravity research and space life science, and a hard X-ray telescope that will observe black holes, neutron stars and other phenomena -- will be launched this year.

Wu Ji, director of CAS National Space Science Center, said that since China's first satellite was launched into space 45 years ago, a number of communication, remote sensing and navigation satellites have followed.

"If China wants to be a strong global nation, it should not only care about the immediate interests, but also contribute to humankind. Only that can win China the real respect of the world," Wu said.

According to Wu, the space center has mapped out the space science strategy for the coming 15 years, featuring areas such as the formation and evolution of the universe; extra terrestrial intelligence and extra-solar planets; the formation and evolution of the solar system; solar activity and its impact on the geo-space environment; evolution of the Earth system; physical laws beyond the existing basic physical theory; material movement; and life activity in space.

China will produce another five or six scientific satellites by 2020, which will aid research into black hole, dark matter, quantum physics and space environment, Wu said.

"If you want to innovate, you must have knowledge of the sciences. Space science is inseparable from China's innovation-driven development," said Wu.

Ye Peijian, a CAS academic and a member of the CPPCC National Committee, said China's probe is expected to land on Mars in 2021.

"Exploring the red planet and deep space will mean that China can establish itself as a scientific and technological expert. The knock on effect is that inventions and independent intellectual property rights will surge, and, as a result, China's core competence will increase, pushing development in other industries," said Jia Yang, deputy chief designer of Yutu, China's first moon rover.

"As China continues with its lunar mission, glimpsing farther and farther into deep space, it will play a bigger role in solving key frontier scientific questions," Jia added.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Worlds first internally motorized minimally invasive surgical robotic system*
March 3, 2016



_Animal trials using the NSRS prototype were carried successfully in December 2015. Credit: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University_

An innovative project to develop a novel surgical robotic system (NSRS) with haptic (tactile) feedback and capable of single incision or natural orifice (incision-less) robotic surgery has been initiated by a team led by The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

To minimize surgical trauma and improve the safety of current robotic surgery, an innovative project to develop a novel surgical robotic system (NSRS) with haptic (tactile) feedback and capable of single incision or natural orifice (incision-less) robotic surgery has been initiated by Professor Yeung Chung-Kwong (Prof Yeung), Honorary Clinical Professor, Department of Surgery, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong (HKU). A team of experienced engineers led by Professor Yung Kai-Leung (Prof Yung), Professor and Associate Head of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) was invited to develop the system as an engineering partner since 2012. 

Through applying Prof Yung's expertise in making precision instrument in space, and with important input of expertise in robotic surgery from Prof Yeung, the team has made the breakthrough possible recently. A NSRS with surgical robotic arms that are driven by internal micro-motors and capable of up to 10 degrees of freedom in movement has been developed and successfully utilised in three consecutive animal surgical experiments by Professor Law Wai-Lun (Prof Law), the Anthony and Anne Cheung Professor in Innovative and Minimally Invasive Surgery, Clinical Professor, Director of Surgical Skills Centre, Department of Surgery, and Associate Dean of Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, HKU together with Prof Yeung. This innovative project is funded by NISI (HK) Limited (NISI), a company specializing in non-invasive surgical innovations, and supported by the Innovation and Technology Commission of the Hong Kong SAR Government.

Currently there is only one dominant surgical robotic system on the market. The system is expensive and has many limitations, including the need for multiple incisions, lack of haptic (force or tactile sensation) feedback, and bulkiness. Furthermore, it is not designed for natural orifice (NOTES, or incision-less) robotic surgery. By contrast NSRS, the new robotic system, can be inserted through a single, small incision or even a natural orifice and expanded inside the human body to perform various surgical operations.

Compared with currently available surgical robots, which require multiple (3-6) abdominal incisions, NSRS has fully internally motorized surgical arms which can enter the human body through one tiny incision, or even a natural orifice, for various abdominal or pelvic surgical operations. Since the robotic arms are driven by custom-made micro-motors adjacent to the end-effectors, they can operate with high precision and provide a good sensation of the force applied (haptic feedback). NSRS is the first robotic system in the world with arms having in-vivo motors that are both small enough and able to generate sufficient force to perform various surgical operations inside the human body, paving the way for future non-invasive surgery.

Three consecutive successful animal surgical experiments using the NSRS prototype were carried out at the Surgical Skills Centre, Department of Surgery, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, HKU since December 2015. In the most recent successful experiment conducted on 3 February, 2016, robotic cholecystectomy was successfully completed within one hour in a live pig with NSRS. "It is our belief that by integrating cutting-edge technologies with the surgical robotic platform we can make future robotic surgery much safer and less invasive, thus providing significantly better care for our patients", said Prof Yeung. Prof Law added, "We will continue to test the new robotic system in animal and cadaver models for more complicated procedures, using a single-incision and natural orifice approach. Our objective is to apply this system to various robotic surgeries in human in the near future."

Prof Timothy W. Tong, President of PolyU said, "PolyU is well experienced in making innovative sophisticated instruments for different deep space exploration missions. Our multi-disciplinary approach of innovatively combining materials' properties, design and mechatronics has led to the production of reduced size, light-weight and high precision instruments. The next challenge is the application of these space technologies for civilian purposes." Prof Yung noted, "The development of NSRS is one obvious example of applying space technologies and we are delighted to note that this PolyU engineering innovation will help turn a new page in minimally invasive surgery, thus enhancing the well-being of patients."

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists solved the weather and wind mystery of the capsized cruise ship Oriental Star | EurekAlert! Science News*
Science China Press





_Figure 1 shows fallen trees and radar observations near the shipwreck of Oriental Star. Credit: ©Science China Press_​
The cruise ship Oriental Star, with 454 people on board, capsized on the Yangtze River of China at ~2131 LST(Local Standard Time, LST=UTC+0800) on 1 June 2015, leaving 442 fatalities (Fig.1a and c). A recent study revealed the weather and wind situation when the shipwreck occurred.

The paper was titled "Wind Estimation around the Shipwreck of the 'Oriental Star' based on Field Damage Surveys and Radar Observations", which was published by the _Science Bulletin_ in Vol.61, No. 4, with Dr. Zhiyong Meng of Peking University as the corresponding author. The authors solved the mystery of weather and strong winds near the shipwreck location when the disaster happened based on radar analyses and ground and aerial damage surveys.

From the very beginning of the event, there has been no agreement on what kind of weather the ship encountered. Since the horizontal scale of storms can be as small as several hundreds of meters, and the conventional meteorological observatories are so sparse that no direct wind observations were available within a distance of 13 km from the shipwreck location, and the nearest radar could only detect radial velocity higher than 700 m above ground level, the wind features at that moment can only be estimated from the damages to the trees and structures in help of radar observations.

This study investigated the wind and affecting weather systems around the shipwreck location based on radar analyses and ground and aerial damage surveys. The on-site damage surveys were performed for eight days under the collaboration of China Meteorological Administration, Universities, and Changjiang Maritime Safety Administration. The damages to the structure, trees, and crops were measured and recorded. Two drones were employed in aerial surveys to conduct a carpet monitoring in the severely damaged area especially near the shipwreck location by photograph and video shootings. The authors mentioned that this is the first time that drone was used in weather damage survey in the meteorological history of China.

_



Figure 2 shows the ground and aerial views of a downburst ~ 5 km north of the shipwreck. ©Science China Press_​
The study showed that the ship was located near the apex of a bow echo embedded in a squall line (Fig.1c). Accompanied with the strengthening of strong heavy rainfall (Fig. 1d) and the rear-inflow jet (Fig.1e) of the bow-echo, the wind speed at ~ 700 m AGL ~ 1 km north of the wreck location increased to at least 22 m s-1 at 2127 LST (Fig.1f). Several places with apparent microburst damage were found within 10 km from the wreck location (Fig.2). Within 2 km from the shipwreck, most trees were found to fall southeastwards with curved tree fall patterns at a scale of about 30 m at several isolated places. These fallen trees were likely caused by microburst straight-line wind and/or embedded small vortices, rather than tornadoes. Based on a snapped tree only about 600 m from the shipwreck (Fig. 1b), it is estimated that Oriental Star encountered strong winds of at least 31 m s-1 when it capsized.

###​
This research was funded by National Key Basic Research Program of China (No. 2013CB430100) and National Natural Science Funds for Distinguished Young Scholar (No. 41425018).

See the article: MENG Zhiyong, YAO Dan, BAI Lanqiang, ZHENG Yongguang, XUE Ming, ZHANG Xiaoling, ZHAO Kun. TIAN Fuyou, and WANG Mingjun, 2016: Wind Estimation around the Shipwreck of the "Oriental Star" Based on Field Damage Survey and Radar Observaions, _Science Bulletin_, 2016, Vol 61, No. 4: 330-337

Wind estimation around the shipwreck of Oriental Star based on field damage surveys and radar observations - Springer

Wind estimation around the shipwreck of Oriental Star based on field damage surveys and radar observations

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Science is a major plank in China’s new spending plan | Science | AAAS*

By Kathleen McLaughlin
Mar. 7, 2016 , 4:00 PM

China will invest heavily in S&T over the next 5 years and cut red tape hampering science spending with the hope that innovation will help the country weather its economic slowdown.

In a speech to open the National People’s Congress on 5 March, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang—the country’s top economic official—gave a broad-brush overview of the central government’s draft plan for economic development during the 13th 5-year plan, which runs from 2016 to 2020. Major elements include boosting science spending, which will rise 9.1% this year to 271 billion yuans ($41 billion), reducing bureaucratic barriers for scientists, and improving environmental protection while curbing carbon emissions and other pollutants.

“Innovation is the primary driving force for development and must occupy a central place in China's development strategy,” Li told delegates on the first day of the 2-week congress. Li’s speech, considered a guidepost for the specific policies that will be fleshed out in the next year or two, used the word “innovation” 61 times—nearly double the mentions it received in his work report last year, the state-run Xinhua News Agency pointed out.

The 5-year plan, which serves as a framework for the Chinese Communist Party’s long-term development goals, contains few concrete details on exactly how such measures will be implemented or funded. Instead, it contains a long list of priorities, from building national science centers and space programs to expansion of major infrastructure with thousands of kilometers of new high-speed rail and roadways. China’s new plan promises that by 2020, R&D investment will account for 2.5% of gross domestic product, compared with 2.05% in 2014.

Chinese scientists welcome the budget boost for science, but note that the real impact remains in the as-yet unknown details. “The government always has big plans, but it’s an uncertain time for the economy so we have to watch what happens next. Implementation is crucial,” says Wang Tao, an energy and climate analyst with the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing.

China’s economic growth slowed to 6.9% in 2015, and the government has set a 5-year GDP growth target of 6.5% to 7%. In Li’s outline, technology and infrastructure investments figure prominently in what officials clearly hope is a new growth strategy less reliant on manufacturing and heavy industry.

Themes in the new 5-year plan include the domestic production of gas-turbine engines and planes, and increased focus on neuroscience and genetic research, national cyberspace security, and deep space exploration. Chinese aerospace officials told state media last week they hope to launch a Mars probe by 2020. Big data, high-tech medical devices, and cloud computing also earned mention as priority projects. Li spoke of tax breaks for companies that invest in high-priority endeavors and promised a reduction of bureaucratic hurdles to promote R&D.






“We will implement the strategy of innovation-driven development, see that science and technology become more deeply embedded in the economy, and improve the overall quality and competitiveness of the real economy,” Li said.

The plan spells out some measures for China’s environmental protection and energy production, but it’s unclear how much the measures will differ from what is already underway. By 2020, the government wants to reduce energy consumption by 15% and carbon emissions by 18%. In a news conference yesterday, Xu Shaoshi, the head of the National Development and Reform Commission in Beijing, said China will remove 500 million tons of coal production capacity in the next 3 to 5 years. Meanwhile, nuclear power capacity is slated to double to 58 gigawatts installed by 2020.

China is reorganizing its environment ministry to create separate departments focused on water, air, and soil. Scientists applaud what they view as a concerted government effort to tackle soil pollution. “After so many years of rapid industrialization and urbanization in China, soil pollution is clearly now evident and needs due attention,” says Yong-Guan Zhu, director general of the Institute of Urban Environment in Xiamen. He says that measures should include creation of a national soil surveillance system.

_With reporting by Christina Larson._

DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf4155

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*China develops desert robots to monitor sandstorm*
Xinhua 2016-03-09 13:29

_



_
_Desert robots. (File photo)_​
A team of scientists in northwest China have developed two specialized robots that will record sand and dust levels related to desertification.

The robots, one six-legged and the other wheeled with a loading capacity of 8 kg and 80 kg respectively, can measure wind speed, air pressure, humidity, sand vibration and wind erosion, said Yang Zelin, a member of Ningxia University research team, on Wednesday.

The robots, which are equipped with solar panels, use microwaves to relay data over an area of 25 kilometers. They can run for one hour, said Yang.

Currently desert data is mainly collected from aerological stations, as it was previously difficult to collect on-the-ground information.

"The various sensors installed on the robots are only 50 centimeters from the ground, offering us the much needed in situ data we require," said Yang.

The robots are the result of a collaboration project between Ningxia University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Ningxia, a dry and barren region in northwest China, borders Tengger Desert, China's fourth largest desert, which stretches over 43,000 square kilometers.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*Exploiting earth-moon space: China's ambition after space station*

Source: Xinhua 2016-03-07

BEIJING, March 7 (Xinhua) -- China will manage to exploit the space between earth and the moon for solar power and other resources after it builds a space station in 2020, Lt Gen. Zhang Yulin, said Monday.

The deputy chief of the armament development department of the Central Military Commission said preliminary work on the program had already begun.

"The earth-moon space will be strategically important for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation," said the national lawmaker.

China's military authority is one of the several departments working on the national space program.

Zhang told Xinhua on the sidelines of the ongoing annual legislative session that generating solar power in space will be much more efficient than on earth. Silicon dioxide used in solar panels, is inexhaustible on the moon, while water in the moon's polar regions and on asteroids can be electrolyzed into oxygen and hydrogen to make propellant for spacecraft.

With propellant and solar panels, a solar power plant could be constructed in space between earth and the moon, impossible with current technology as an industrial-scale power plant would weigh over 10,000 tonnes. The International Space Station, the biggest man-made object to be sent into orbit, weighs just over 400 tonnes.

Besides power, the earth-moon space has a lot of other resources, he said, adding that the current manned earth-moon space program could lay the foundation for a manned Mars program and other deep-space exploration.

"The future of China's manned space program, is not a moon landing, which is quite simple, or even the manned Mars program which remains difficult, but continual exploration the earth-moon space with ever developing technology."

A series of space missions is planned to verify key technology for the space station. Around 2020, a medium-sized space station with three modules and weighing 60 tonnes will be put into orbit.

Exploiting earth-moon space: China's ambition after space station - Xinhua | English.news.cn

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Childhood cataracts repaired using stem cells*
_Cells already present in the eye are able to generate a new lens—if we let them._

by Diana Gitig - Mar 9, 2016 7:14 pm UTC

Cataracts—the clouding of the lens in our eyes—are the leading cause of blindness in the world. Though we often associate them with the elderly, they're also a major cause of vision loss in infants, especially in the developing world. In either case, they are dealt with surgically, by removing the entire lens and replacing it with either a transplanted lens or an artificial one.

More than twenty million people undergo this surgery annually, but it often comes with a host of complications, and children in particular usually still need glasses afterward. But now some researchers have shown that it's possible to skip the replacement lens and get stem cells to repair the damage, a procedure that results in fewer complications.

Researchers in China noticed that the eye contains lens epithelial stem/progenitor cells (LECs) that continue to divide, even in forty-year-old adults. Injury can stimulate them to grow into three-dimensional, transparent, light refracting, lens-like structures. Rather than using artificial lenses, these researchers thought, maybe they could get infants to regrow their own new lenses.

First they tried their new procedure in rabbits and baby macaques. Normally, the surgical procedure involves making a large wound and removing most of the LECs with the cataract, as has traditionally been done in order to insert the artificial lens. But if the LECs hold the very key to regenerating a functional lens, this might not be the best way to go about things.

So instead, they made a small wound that preserved the LECs that were already in place while removing only the clouded native lens. By seven weeks, the eyes of the animals that had surgery looked the same as those that hadn’t.

Next they tried their procedure in twelve infants—or, as they helpfully note, twenty-four eyes. Their results in terms of visual acuity six months after surgery were as good as those achieved with the traditional method. But the artificial implants almost always result in complications that further restrict vision—ironically, these problems are due to the abnormal growth of the few residual LECs.

This new, minimally invasive technique reduced the most common complication twenty-fold—only one out of their twelve patients ended up with it, compared to 24 out of 25 control infants who got the traditional procedure at the same time.

Adult cataracts are not the same as the pediatric variety, but since adult LECs have regenerative capacity, perhaps this procedure could be modified to deal with age-related cataracts as well. This first instance of human lens regeneration could well be a step on the path toward using endogenous stem cells to repair other tissues that need regeneration.

_Nature_, 2016. DOI: 10.1038/nature17181

Childhood cataracts repaired using stem cells | Ars Technica

############​*'Stunning' operation regenerates eye's lens - BBC News*
By James Gallagher Health editor, BBC News website

9 March 2016
From the section Health






Image copyright SPL​
*A pioneering procedure to regenerate the eye has successfully treated children with cataracts in China.*

More than half of all cases of blindness are caused by cataracts - the clouding of the eye's lens.

An implanted lens is normally needed to restore sight, but the operation described in Nature activated stem cells in the eye to grow a new one.

Experts describe the breakthrough as one of the finest achievements in regenerative medicine.

The lens sits just behind the pupil and focuses light on to the retina.

About 20 million people are blind because of cataracts, which become more common with age - although some children are born with them.

Conventional treatment uses ultrasound to soften and break up the lens, which is then flushed out.

An artificial intraocular lens must then be implanted back into the eye, but this can result in complications, particularly in children.

The technique developed by scientists at the Sun Yat-sen University and the University of California, San Diego removes the cloudy cataract from inside the lens via a tiny incision.

Crucially it leaves the outer surface - called the lens capsule - intact.

This structure is lined with lens epithelial stem cells, which normally repair damage.

The scientists hoped that preserving them would regenerate the lens.

The team reported that tests on rabbits and monkeys were successful, so the approach was trialled in 12 children.

Within eight months the regenerated lens was back to the same size as normal.

_The study is one of the finest achievements in the field of regenerative medicine until now
Dr Dusko Ilic, King's College London_​
Dr Kang Zhang, one of the researchers, told the BBC News website: "This is the first time an entire lens has been regenerated. The children were operated on in China and they continue to be doing very well with normal vision."

It also showed a dramatically lower complication rate "by almost every measure, supporting the superiority of the treatment".

However, he says larger trials are needed before it should become the standard treatment for patients.

The procedure was tried in children because their lens epithelial stem cells are more youthful and more able to regenerate than in older patients.

Yet the overwhelming majority of cataracts are in the elderly.

Dr Zhang says tests have already started on older pairs of eyes and says the early research "looks very encouraging".

Commenting on the findings, Prof Robin Ali from the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, said the work was "stunning".

He told the BBC News website: "This new approach offers greatly improved prospects for the treatment of paediatric cataracts as it results in regeneration of a normal lens that grows naturally."

He said getting similar results in adults "is likely to be more difficult to achieve" but could "have a major impact".

"It might be superior to the artificial lenses that are currently implanted, as the natural lenses should be able to accommodate looking at different distances more effectively," he added.

Dr Dusko Ilic, a reader in stem cell science at King's College London, said: "The study is one of the finest achievements in the field of regenerative medicine until now.

"It is science at its best."

*Far-reaching*
Dr Zhang believes that targeting stem cells already sitting in the eye could have "great potential" for treating a wide range of diseases from macular degeneration to glaucoma.

A separate study by Osaka University in Japan and Cardiff University, used stem cells to mirror the development of the eye.

They were able to produce a range of specialised eye tissues including those that make the cornea, conjunctiva, lens and retina.

The findings, also published in Nature, showed the lab-grown tissues could restore sight to rabbits with corneal blindness.

One of the researchers, Prof Andrew Quantock, said: "Our work not only holds potential for developing cells for treatment of other areas of the eye, but could set the stage for future human clinical trials of anterior eye transplantation to restore visual function."

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Drone boasting AI unveiled in China*
By Qiu Quanlin in Shenzhen (chinadaily.com.cn) Updated: 2016-03-07 19:03

_


DJI's latest product Phantom 4, which can aviod obstacles and tracks objects, is unveiled in Shenzhen, March 5, 2016. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]_​
DJI Technology, the world's largest consumer drone maker in terms of market share, has unveiled its new product equipped with artificial intelligence to Chinese users on Saturday.

Phantom 4, which can avoid obstacles and track objects in operation, marked the company's further efforts to increase its global market share in the drone industry with smart technologies, said Qiao Yan, chief executive officer of DJI Studio.

Based in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, DJI currently accounts for 70 percent of the global drone market, according to the company.

"Phantom 4 is able to see, think and decide, in accordance with user's habits, flying like a smart genius," Qiao said.

The Phantom 4 was globally unveiled in New York on March 1. The company will later hold a show event in Seoul on Friday.

qiuquanlin@chinadaily.com.cn


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese collaboration for accelerator-driven systems*
11 March 2016

*A strategic cooperation agreement to develop accelerator-driven systems has been signed between China General Nuclear (CGN) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Such systems could be used to transmutate used nuclear fuel or run subcritical nuclear reactors powered by thorium.*
​





The signing of the ADANES agreement (Image: CAS)​
The agreement on Accelerator-Driven Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems (ADANES) was signed in Beijing on 9 March by CGN deputy general manager Zheng Dongshan and CAS deputy secretary general Tan Tieniu following a forum between the two organizations.

CGN said the agreement would be based on "complementary advantages, win-win cooperation and common development" in the research and development of accelerator-driven systems. "By signing this agreement, the two sides will further establish long-term strategic alliances and partnerships to accelerate the development of advanced nuclear energy systems," it said.

The transmutation of long-lived radioactive waste can be carried out in an accelerator-driven system, where neutrons produced by an accelerator are directed at a blanket assembly containing the waste along with fissionable fuel. Following neutron capture, the heavy isotopes in the blanket assembly subsequently fission, producing energy in doing so. Such systems could also be used to generate power from the abundant element thorium.

An accelerator-driven system can only run when neutrons are supplied to it because it burns material which does not have a high enough fission-to-capture ratio for neutrons to maintain a fission chain reaction. Such a reactor, therefore, could be turned off simply by stopping the proton beam, rather than needing to insert control rods to absorb neutrons and make the fuel assembly subcritical. Because they stop when the input current is switched off, accelerator-driven systems are seen as safer than normal fission reactors.

Cooperation between CGN and CAS goes back many years. In September 2006, they signed a framework agreement on scientific and technical cooperation, as well as an agreement on the Daya Bay reactor neutrino experiment project.

_Researched and written
by World Nuclear News_


----------



## JSCh

*Public Release: 11-Mar-2016*
*Chinese scientists realize quantum simulation of the Unruh effect *
Science China Press

_

_
_(a) The NMR quantum simulator consists of 13C, 1H and 19F nuclear spins in chloroform; (b) The experimental pulse sequence for simulating the Unruh effect. ©Science China Press_​
Quantum mechanics and relativity theory are two pillars of modern physics. With their amalgamation, many novel phenomena have been identified. For example, the Unruh effect [1] is one of the most significant outcomes of the quantum field theory. This effect serves as an important tool to investigate phenomena such as thermal emission of particles from black holes and cosmological horizons [2]. It has been 40 years since the discovery of the Unruh effect, however, this effect is too weak to be observed with current technique. There have been a lot of attempts in searching for the observational evidence of the Unruh effect and in general the experimental observation is still of great challenge. To address this issue, quantum simulators [3, 4] may provide a promising approach. Quantum simulation is widely applied for simulating the quantum systems which cannot be efficiently simulated by classical computers or are not directly tractable by the current techniques in the laboratory.

The researchers, led by Prof. Jiangfeng Du from University of Science and Technology of China, reported an experimental simulation of the Unruh effect with an NMR quantum simulator [5]. The experiments were performed on a Bruker Avance III 400MHz spectrometer. The researchers used a sample of 13C, 1H and 19F nuclear spins in chloroform as the NMR quantum simulator, as shown in Figure 1(a). The simulated Unruh effect on the quantum states can be realized by the pulse sequence acting on the sample, as depicted in Figure 1(b). By the quantum simulator, they experimentally demonstrated the behavior of Unruh temperature with acceleration, which agrees nicely with the theoretical prediction, as shown in Figure 2. Furthermore, they investigated the quantum correlations quantified by quantum discord between two fermionic modes as seen by two relatively accelerated observers. It is shown for the first time that the quantum correlations can be created by the Unruh effect from the classically correlated states. This work was recently published in the _Science China-Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy_.

It is interesting that the Unruh effect was in Feynman's blackboard as one of the issues to learn at the time of his death in 1988, while it was also Feynman who conceived the idea of quantum simulation in 1982. This quantum simulation of the Unruh effect will provide a promising window to explore the quantum physics of accelerated systems, which widely appear in black hole physics, cosmology and particle physics.

###​
This research was funded by the National Key Basic Research Program of China (Grant Nos. 2013CB921800 and 2014CB848700) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11227901, 91021005, 11375167, 11374308, 11104262 and 11275183).

[1] W. G. Unruh, Phys. Rev. D 14, 870 (1976).

[2] L. C. B. Crispino, A. Higuchi, and G. E. A. Matsas, Rev. Mod. Phys. 80, 787 (2008).

[3] R. Feynman, Int. J. Theor. Phys. 21, 467 (1982).

[4] S. Lloyd, Science 273, 1073 (1996).

[5] F. Jin, H. Chen, X. Rong, H. Zhou, M. Shi, Q. Zhang, C. Ju, Y. Cai, S. Luo, X. Peng, and J. Du, Experimental simulation of the Unruh effect on an NMR quantum simulator, _Science China-Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy_, 2016, Vol. 59, Issue (3): 630302, DOI: 10.1007/s11433-016-5779-7

Experimental simulation of the Unruh effect on an NMR quantum simulator

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11433-016-5779-7

Chinese scientists realize quantum simulation of the Unruh effect | EurekAlert! Science News


----------



## JSCh

*China Exclusive: Bio-engineered pig corneas help Chinese see anew*
Source: Xinhua 2016-03-12 18:42:12

GUANGZHOU, March 12 (Xinhua) -- Bio-engineered corneas made from pigs' eyes may help millions of Chinese patients to see again, ophthalmologists have said.

A 14-year-old boy regained his sight after receiving a pig cornea transplant on Feb. 25, according to Yuan Jin of Sun Yat-sen University ophthalmology center, in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou.

The boy injured his right eye with a firecracker during New Year celebrations.

"He developed ulcer in his right eye and had lost his sight before the transplant. A week after the transplant, he had regained some vision. In the future his sight may be close to normal," said Yuan.

The cornea is the eye's outermost transparent layer. Every year, more than five million Chinese patients are blinded by cornea disorders or damage. The demand for cornea transplants far exceeds supply, so bio-engineered solutions could restore the eyesight of millions of Chinese,Yuan said.

Research into the use of animal corneas began in 2003 at Ainier Cornea Engineering Company, Shenzhen and the Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an. After success in animal tests, clinical tests were carried out in 2010 on 100 patients in four hospitals in Beijing and Wuhan, with 94 patients regaining some or all of their vision. Pig corneas proved just as successful as human, said Zhang Mingchang, director of ophthalmology at Wuhan Union Hospital.

Forty-seven patients who received the transplant at Wuhan Union Hospital have fully recovered their eyesight, said Zhang. Artificial corneas are not a miracle cure for all disorders though. They cannot help, for example, with severe penetration wounds.

Zhang Bin, director of Ainier Cornea, said initial trials were conducted using tissue from chickens, cows, ducks, geese, monkeys and sheep before pigs were selected. Some corneas may carry viruses and pig tissue was found to have the lowest risk of infection in the recipient. The bio-mechanical properties of human and pig corneas are very similar, he said.

The company gained China Food and Drug Administration approval in April last year for "Acornea," the first such commercial product to be accredited, and it has since gone into mass production.

"It takes 20 days of quite complex processes from removing the tissue from the donor to produce one Acornea," Zhang said.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Beast

JSCh said:


> *China Exclusive: Bio-engineered pig corneas help Chinese see anew*
> Source: Xinhua 2016-03-12 18:42:12
> 
> GUANGZHOU, March 12 (Xinhua) -- Bio-engineered corneas made from pigs' eyes may help millions of Chinese patients to see again, ophthalmologists have said.
> 
> A 14-year-old boy regained his sight after receiving a pig cornea transplant on Feb. 25, according to Yuan Jin of Sun Yat-sen University ophthalmology center, in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou.
> 
> The boy injured his right eye with a firecracker during New Year celebrations.
> 
> "He developed ulcer in his right eye and had lost his sight before the transplant. A week after the transplant, he had regained some vision. In the future his sight may be close to normal," said Yuan.
> 
> The cornea is the eye's outermost transparent layer. Every year, more than five million Chinese patients are blinded by cornea disorders or damage. The demand for cornea transplants far exceeds supply, so bio-engineered solutions could restore the eyesight of millions of Chinese,Yuan said.
> 
> Research into the use of animal corneas began in 2003 at Ainier Cornea Engineering Company, Shenzhen and the Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an. After success in animal tests, clinical tests were carried out in 2010 on 100 patients in four hospitals in Beijing and Wuhan, with 94 patients regaining some or all of their vision. Pig corneas proved just as successful as human, said Zhang Mingchang, director of ophthalmology at Wuhan Union Hospital.
> 
> Forty-seven patients who received the transplant at Wuhan Union Hospital have fully recovered their eyesight, said Zhang. Artificial corneas are not a miracle cure for all disorders though. They cannot help, for example, with severe penetration wounds.
> 
> Zhang Bin, director of Ainier Cornea, said initial trials were conducted using tissue from chickens, cows, ducks, geese, monkeys and sheep before pigs were selected. Some corneas may carry viruses and pig tissue was found to have the lowest risk of infection in the recipient. The bio-mechanical properties of human and pig corneas are very similar, he said.
> 
> The company gained China Food and Drug Administration approval in April last year for "Acornea," the first such commercial product to be accredited, and it has since gone into mass production.
> 
> "It takes 20 days of quite complex processes from removing the tissue from the donor to produce one Acornea," Zhang said.



That will put the Judaism believer and muslim out of that context.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists create two-antibody cocktail that cures Ebola-infected monkeys *
Source: Xinhua | 2016-03-14 02:17:29 | Editor: huaxia

_




_​ 
_This file photo taken on August 31, 2014 showing children walk past a slogan painted on a wall reading "Ebola" in Monrovia. (AFP / DOMINIQUE FAGET)_​
WASHINGTON, March 13 (Xinhua) -- Scientists have created a two-antibody cocktail that was able to cure monkeys infected with the deadly Ebola virus, revealed a new study published this week in the U.S. journal Science Translational Medicine.

The MIL77E cocktail was based on one of the most promising Ebola drugs, a three-antibody cocktail called ZMapp, which cured a number of foreign aid workers in West Africa during the latest and biggest Ebola outbreak.

"The two monoclonal antibodies (mAb) in the MIL77E cocktail are 13C6 and 2G4, which act similarly to the three mAb ZMapp treatment," first author Xiangguo Qiu, a biologist at the Canadian Public Health Agency's National Microbiology Laboratory, told Xinhua.

One reason they used two antibodies, instead of three as in the ZMapp cocktail, is that one antibody named 4G7 from ZMapp "has been hard to produce and the yield is quite low compared to the other two mAbs," said Qiu, who co-developed the treatment with Chinese researchers.

Another reason is "the cost of treatment would be decreased if it worked," she said.

ZMapp was produced by U.S.-based Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc., but two of its three components were originally developed at the National Microbiology Laboratory, and the third at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.

In the new study, Qiu and colleagues produced 13C6 and 2G4 in modified Chinese hamster ovary cells and found that the two-antibody cocktail protected all three monkeys three days after infection with the Ebola virus.

However, a similar cocktail comprised of two ZMapp antibodies, which are produced in tobacco leaves instead of mammalian cells, protected only two of three monkeys.

"This finding is very exciting," Qiu said, given that ZMapp is only effective to Zaire Ebola, one of five species.

"It has the potential to include an additional monoclonal antibody against another Ebola virus strain, providing a broader coverage against outbreak strains," she said.

Currently, there are currently no licensed therapies against the Ebola virus.


----------



## cirr

11-MAR-2016

*Chinese scientists realize quantum simulation of the Unruh effect*

SCIENCE CHINA PRESS




IMAGE: (A) THE NMR QUANTUM SIMULATOR CONSISTS OF 13C, 1H AND 19F NUCLEAR SPINS IN CHLOROFORM; (B) THE EXPERIMENTAL PULSE SEQUENCE FOR SIMULATING THE UNRUH EFFECT.view more 

CREDIT: ©SCIENCE CHINA PRESS

Quantum mechanics and relativity theory are two pillars of modern physics. With their amalgamation, many novel phenomena have been identified. For example, the Unruh effect [1] is one of the most significant outcomes of the quantum field theory. This effect serves as an important tool to investigate phenomena such as thermal emission of particles from black holes and cosmological horizons [2]. It has been 40 years since the discovery of the Unruh effect, however, this effect is too weak to be observed with current technique. There have been a lot of attempts in searching for the observational evidence of the Unruh effect and in general the experimental observation is still of great challenge. To address this issue, quantum simulators [3, 4] may provide a promising approach. Quantum simulation is widely applied for simulating the quantum systems which cannot be efficiently simulated by classical computers or are not directly tractable by the current techniques in the laboratory.

The researchers, led by Prof. Jiangfeng Du from University of Science and Technology of China, reported an experimental simulation of the Unruh effect with an NMR quantum simulator [5]. The experiments were performed on a Bruker Avance III 400MHz spectrometer. The researchers used a sample of 13C, 1H and 19F nuclear spins in chloroform as the NMR quantum simulator, as shown in Figure 1(a). The simulated Unruh effect on the quantum states can be realized by the pulse sequence acting on the sample, as depicted in Figure 1(b). By the quantum simulator, they experimentally demonstrated the behavior of Unruh temperature with acceleration, which agrees nicely with the theoretical prediction, as shown in Figure 2. Furthermore, they investigated the quantum correlations quantified by quantum discord between two fermionic modes as seen by two relatively accelerated observers. It is shown for the first time that the quantum correlations can be created by the Unruh effect from the classically correlated states. This work was recently published in the _Science China-Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy_.

It is interesting that the Unruh effect was in Feynman's blackboard as one of the issues to learn at the time of his death in 1988, while it was also Feynman who conceived the idea of quantum simulation in 1982. This quantum simulation of the Unruh effect will provide a promising window to explore the quantum physics of accelerated systems, which widely appear in black hole physics, cosmology and particle physics.

Chinese scientists realize quantum simulation of the Unruh effect | EurekAlert! Science News


----------



## JSCh

*Chemoelectronics: Nanoparticle Diodes and Devices That Work When Wet*
By Dexter Johnson
Posted 14 Mar 2016 | 17:29 GMT





Photo: UNIST/Nature Nanotechnology​
Whether they’re for sensors in artificial skin that demands flexibility or for wearable electronics where the circuits must withstand our sweat, silicon-based chips aren’t always up to the task.

Now, an international research team has developed a way to fabricate flexible, water-loving logic circuits and sensors without the need of semiconductors. Instead, what the researchers have done is coat gold nanoparticles with charged organic molecules to create a system that they’ve dubbed a “chemoelectronic circuit”.

The team—made up of scientists from the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology in Beijing, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, United States-based comapny NuMat Technologies, and Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) in South Korea—described the chemoelectronic components in the journal _Nature Nanotechnology._

_Con't-> Chemoelectronics: Nanoparticle Diodes and Devices That Work When Wet - IEEE Spectrum_


----------



## JSCh

*Magnetic nanoparticles show promise in biomedical applications -- ScienceDaily*
Date: March 15, 2016





_Schematic of magnetic nanoparticle based drug delivery system: drug-loaded IONPs are guided in vivo to the targeted tumour site using a high-gradient magnetic field. Credit: Copyright Science and Technology of Advanced Materials_​
Recent developments and research related to iron oxide nanoparticles confirm their potential in biomedical applications -- such as targeted drug delivery -- and the necessity for further studies.

Iron oxides are widespread in nature and can be readily synthesized in the laboratory. Among them, hematite, magnetite and maghemite nanoparticles have particularly promising properties for biomedical applications.

Researchers in China and Korea reviewed recent studies on the preparation, structure and magnetic properties of iron oxide nanoparticles (IONPs) and their corresponding applications. The review, published in the journal Science and Technology of Advanced Materials, emphasized that the size, size distribution (the relative proportions of different-sized particles in a given sample), shape and magnetic properties of IONPs affect the location and mobility of IONPs in the human body. However, having complete control over the shape and size distribution of magnetic IONPs remains a challenge.

For example, magnetic IONPs are promising for carrying cancer drugs that target specific tissues. For this to happen, they are coated with a biocompatible shell that carries a specific drug. If this "functionalized" magnetic IONP is too large, it may be cleared from the blood stream. Thus, it is very important to be able to control the size of these particles. Researchers found that IONPs with diameters ranging from 10 to 100 nanometres are optimal for intravenous injection and can remain in the blood stream for the longest period of time.

The surface charge of IONPs is also important for their stability and how they interact with tissues. For example, breast cells uptake positively charged IONPs better than negatively charged ones. At the same time, positively charged IONPs are more rapidly cleared from the circulation. Negatively charged and neutral IONPs tend to remain longer in the circulation. The surface charge of IONPs can be controlled by using an appropriately charged functionalized material as a shell.

Other applications that can benefit from improving the functionality of magnetic IONPs include magnetic resonance imaging, magnetic hyperthermia and thermoablation (killing selected cancer cells with heat), and biosensing (detecting molecular interactions for disease diagnosis).

Further research is needed to evaluate the toxicity of both bare and functionalized IONPs.

The team's next focus will be on fabricating recyclable magnetic IONP catalysts and designing multifunctional biomedical applications, involving magnetic IONPs, that can play a dual role in diagnosing and treating disease, says Professor Wei Wu from China's Wuhan University.


*Story Source:*
The above post is reprinted from materials provided by *National Institute for Materials Science*. _Note: Materials may be edited for content and length._​
*Journal Reference*:
Wei Wu, Zhaohui Wu, Taekyung Yu, Changzhong Jiang, Woo-Sik Kim. *Recent progress on magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles: synthesis, surface functional strategies and biomedical applications*. _Science and Technology of Advanced Materials_, 2016; 16 (2): 023501 DOI: 10.1088/1468-6996/16/2/023501​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Archaeologists Uncover Another Branch of the Silk Road - Scientific American*
_New evidence suggests the ancient trade route ventured through the heights of Tibet_

By Jane Qiu on April 1, 2016





SOURCE: “EARLIEST TEA AS EVIDENCE FOR ONE BRANCH OF THE SILK ROAD ACROSS THE TIBETAN PLATEAU,” BY HOUYUAN LU ET AL., IN _SCIENTIFIC REPORTS_, VOL. 6, ARTICLE NO. 18955; JANUARY 7, 2016; _Map by Mapping Specialists_​
Famous for facilitating an incredible exchange of culture and goods between the East and the West, the ancient Silk Road is thought to have meandered across long horizontal distances in mountain foothills and the lowlands of the Gobi Desert. But new archaeological evidence hidden in a lofty tomb reveals that it also ventured into the high altitudes of Tibet—a previously unknown arm of the trade route.

Discovered in 2005 by monks, the 1,800-year-old tomb sits 4.3 kilometers above sea level in the Ngari district of Tibet. When excavations began in 2012, the research team examining the site was surprised to find a large number of quintessential Chinese goods inside. The haul lends itself to the idea that merchants were traveling from China to Tibet along a branch of the Silk Road that had been lost to history.

“The findings are astonishing,” says Houyuan Lu, an archaeobotanist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Geology and Geophysics in Beijing. Among other artifacts, archaeologists unearthed exquisite pieces of silk with woven Chinese characters _wang hou_ (meaning “king” and “princes”), a mask made of pure gold, and ceramic and bronze vessels.

They also were taken aback by what looked like tea buds. The earliest documentation of tea in Tibet dates to the seventh century A.D., but these buds would be 400 to 500 years older. To confirm the identification, Lu and his colleagues analyzed the chemical components of the samples and detected ample amounts of caffeine and theanine, a type of amino acid abundant in tea. Moreover, the chemical fingerprints of the tea residues were similar to those of tea found in the tomb of a Chinese emperor of the Han Dynasty dated to 2,100 years ago, and both could be traced to tea varieties grown in Yunnan in southern China. “This strongly suggests that the tea [found in the Tibetan tomb] came from China,” Lu says. The findings were recently published in _Scientific Reports_.

Such early contacts between Tibet and China “point to a high-altitude component of the Silk Road in Tibet that has been largely neglected,” says Martin Jones, an archaeobotanist at the University of Cambridge. The evidence contributes to the emerging picture that the Silk Road—which the Ottoman Empire closed off in the 15th century—was a highly three-dimensional network that not only traversed vast linear distances but also scaled tall mountains.

Other studies, too, have documented signs of trade along mountain trails in Asia from around 3000 B.C.—routes now known as the Inner Asia Mountain Corridors. “This suggests that mountains are not barriers,” says Rowan Flad, an archaeologist at Harvard University. “They can be effective conduits for the exchange of cultures, ideas and technologies.”

This article was originally published with the title "Silk Road Heads for the Hills"


----------



## JSCh

*Reactor vessel delivered for China's first HTR*
15 March 2016

*The reactor pressure vessel for the first of two demonstration HTR-PM high-temperature gas-cooled reactors under construction at Shidaowan in China's Shandong province has been delivered to the construction site.*






_The vessel arrives at Shidaowan (Image: China Huaneng)_​
The component - about 25 meters in height and weighing about 700 tonnes - was manufactured by Shanghai Electric Nuclear Power Equipment. It successfully completed factory acceptance on 29 February and was dispatched from the manufacturing plant on 2 March. The pressure vessel arrived at the Shidaowan site on 10 March, plant owner China Huaneng Group announced the following day.

The company said it sent the project leader and supervision staff to supervise the entire manufacturing process of the reactor vessel, which it claims is the world's largest and heaviest.

Work began on two demonstration HTR-PM units at China Huaneng's Shidaowan site in December 2012. China Huaneng is the lead organization in the consortium to build the demonstration units together with China Nuclear Engineering Corporation (CNEC) and Tsinghua University's Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology, which is the research and development leader. Chinergy, a joint venture of Tsinghua and CNEC, is the main contractor for the nuclear island.

The demonstration plant's twin HTR-PM units will drive a single 210 MWe turbine. It is expected to start commercial operation in late 2017. An earlier proposal was for 18 further 210 MWe units - giving a total capacity of 3800 MWe - at the Shidaowan site, near Rongcheng in Weihai city, but this has been dropped.

A proposal to construct two 600 MWe HTR plants - each featuring three twin reactor and turbine units - at Ruijin city in China's Jiangxi province passed a preliminary feasibility review in early 2015. The design of the Ruijin HTRs is based on the smaller Shidaowan demonstration HTR-PM. Construction of the Ruijin reactors is expected to start next year, with grid connection in 2021.

_Researched and written
by World Nuclear News_


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists modulate cholesterol metabolism to potentiate T-cell antitumor immunity*
March 16, 2016

_




Scanning electron micrograph of human T lymphocyte or T cell. Credit: NIAID/NIH_​
As key players in the immune system, T cells provide tumor surveillance and have direct antitumor effects. However, tumors can escape T-cell attack through various mechanisms in the tumor microenvironment. Reactivating the antitumor effects of T cells has shown great clinical benefits in treating various cancers. The current T cell-based cancer immunotherapies are, nevertheless, only effective in a limited group of patients. New cancer immunotherapies are needed, therefore, to benefit more patients.

In their new study, Prof. XU Chenqi's group and Prof. LI Boliang's group with the Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology (SIBCB) of the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, found that inhibiting cholesterol esterification can potentiate the antitumor activity of CD8+ T cells (also known as killer T cells).

This new way of improving T-cell function might be used as a complement to current cancer immunotherapies, such as immune checkpoint blockade.

Their research, entitled "Potentiating the antitumour response of CD8+ T cells by modulating cholesterol metabolism," was published in _Nature_ on March 17.

The researchers investigated T-cell antitumor immunity from a new perspective. They believe that modulating T-cell metabolism can make killer T cells more "metabolically fit" to fight tumor cells. As a key component of membrane lipids, cholesterol is important for T-cell signaling and function.

Scientists found that inhibiting the cholesterol esterification enzyme ACAT1 can increase the plasma membrane cholesterol level and therefore promote the T-cell signaling and killing process. A small molecule inhibitor of ACAT1, avasimibe, was used to treat cancer in mouse tumor models and showed good antitumor effect. A combination of avasimibe and anti-PD-1 antibody, a checkpoint blockade drug, showed even better antitumor effect.

This study opens a new field of cancer immunotherapy and identifies ACAT1 as a promising drug target. It is worth mentioning that avasimibe was tested in clinical trials to treat atherosclerosis and had a good human safety profile. Therefore, avasimibe could be a good drug candidate for cancer immunotherapy.

*More information:* _Nature_, DOI: 10.1038/nature17412
*
Journal reference:* Nature

*Provided by:* Chinese Academy of Sciences


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists Fabricate New Type of Flexible Sensing Device for Application in Electronic Skins and Health Monitoring*
Mar 17, 2016

Electronic skin (e-skin) which can mimic pressure, humidity, and temperature sensing capabilities of human skin has obtained great attention due to its superior abilities to detect slight pressure changes. It has potential application in human health monitoring, medical diagnostics, tactile sensor, artificial intelligence, and so on. Tactile sensor, which can act as transducers to convert the changes in external force to an electrical signal or other recognized signal, is a fundamental part of e-skin. So, design of tactile sensors with ultra-sensitivity, rapid response speed and long-term stability is a key procedure to fulfill high performance electronic skins. 

Recently, Prof. SHEN Guozhen and his group (from Institute of Semiconductors) have fabricated a new type of graphene based flexible tactile sensor which achieves a similar function of human skin. The sensor can exhibit high sensitivity (15.6 kPa-1), low detection limit (1.2 Pa) which enabled to detect a feather or a rice grain. The excellent long-term stability under 100,000 cycles and rapid response time of 5 ms at 50 Hz are particularly captivating. 

This flexible tactile sensor has been used in the medical field to monitor the human physiological signal in real-time, such as pulse and voice recognition through the slight pressure changes of blood flow and the muscle movement during speech. 

This study preliminary realized voice recognition and different human physiological states monitoring which have the great potential application in voice auxiliary output system, human health assessment and early diagnosis of the disease. Besides, using the simple and versatile procedures, a framework to make integrated sensor array platforms easily can be used as highly sensitive electronic skins for mapping spatial pressure distribution. 

This work provides a new idea for electronic skin and wearable health monitoring systems. After further research and improvement, the flexible multidimensional tactile sensor array not only have a great flexibility like human skin, but also have the functional to get the 3D force information. 

The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the corresponding paper entitled “An ultra-sensitive and rapid response speed graphene pressure sensors for electronic skin and health monitoring” was published in Nano Energy.

_



_
_Device structure and applications in electronic skins and health monitoring. (Image by Prof. SHEN Guozhen et al.)_​


----------



## bobsm

*3D printing technology guides heart surgery for Chinese baby*
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2016-03-17 16:05

CHANGCHUN - Doctors have performed a successful surgery using a 3D-printed heart model on a nine-month-old baby suffering from a severe congenital heart defect (CHD) in Northeast China's Jilin province.

It was the first open heart surgery performed with the help of 3D printing technology in the province. The operation took place on March 11, and the infant has already been transferred to a general ward and is recovering.

The boy weighed 5.6 kilograms before surgery. He experienced shortness of breath after birth and was diagnosed with CHD.

"The defect was very rare and complicated," said Zhang Xueqin, the baby's surgeon and director of the pediatric cardiac surgery center at the People's Hospital of Jilin.

The tiny patient suffered from total pulmonary venous anomalous drainage, which means all four of his pulmonary veins were malpositioned. He also had an atrial septal defect, causing blood to flow between the upper chambers of the heart.

"He was taken to the hospital and was critically ill with heart failure and severe pneumonia," Zhang said.

Because the boy is so young and small, it was difficult to develop the best surgery plan using just an ultrasound examination, he said.

If treatment had been delayed, the baby's chance of dying before his first birthday would have been as high as 80 percent, he added.

To save the child, Zhang and his team turned to 3D printing. A full-sized heart replica modeled the boy's cardiac structure and helped the doctors plan the operation.

"With the model, we were able to know precisely where and how we should cut, and how big the incision should be," said Zhang. "And with such a thorough plan, we spent only half the time we had expected to complete the surgery."

China's first cardiac surgery using 3D technology is believed to have been on July 21, 2015, on a nine-month-old boy with CHD in East China's Jiangsu province.

The technology will hopefully be more widely used in medicine in the future, said Zhang.

3D printing technology guides heart surgery for Chinese baby - China - Chinadaily.com.cn


----------



## JSCh

*Want to live to see 200? Chinese team come up with ‘super diet pill’ formula they believe will double people’s lifespans*
_Scientists in Shanghai conduct experiments on roundworms that make them live three times longer, say same genes they manipulated also exist in humans_

PUBLISHED : Thursday, 17 March, 2016, 8:32am
UPDATED : Thursday, 17 March, 2016, 2:37pm
Stephen Chen
Ever wanted to see your great-great-great-great-great-great grandchildren? Fancy still being around in 150 years to see what technological marvels the world conjures up? Don’t like the idea of being cryogenically frozen?

While doubling your natural lifespan by popping pills may sound like science-fiction to most people, a team of Chinese researchers believe this soon be possible.

They claim to have found a formula for a “super diet pill”that can apparently break some of the fundamental laws of nature, according to their paper in the latest issue of the journal _Cell Metabolism_.

The relationship between food and health is well-documented. Moreover, scientists have suspected for many decades that restricting the diet - specifically, the calorific intake - of certain species of animal enables them to live longer.

_



_
_‘Eat free and live long - all you need is the right pill,’ says Professor Han Jingdong, who works at the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences. Credit: Handout_​
But the exact reason why this works - and how far it can be taken - has left most scientists scratching their heads.

Pushing the envelope even further, a research team in East China led by Professor Han Jingdong at the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, which operates under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has come up with a new theory based on their experiments with roundworms or nematodes.

Han’s team identified three groups of genes, each numbering over a hundred, that affect how the worms age when their diets are restricted.

By changing how the genes were expressed in cells in all three gene groups simultaneously, the team was able to increase the average lifespan of their wriggling subjects from under 20 days to over 50 days, they said.

The “diet pills” for humans which the team hopes to see developed one day would be filled with chemical compounds that manipulate the expression of these gene groups in a similar way.

“The same genes also exist in humans,” Han said.


_

_
_Scientists were able to treble the lifespan of worms by manipulating three groups of genes, a discovery they said paves the way for the development of a drug that could at least double the lifespan of humans. Credit: Chinese Academy of Sciences_​
“We are now testing on mice a drug which can hit the three groups of genes in one shot. This could [one day] allow us to live more than two hundred years,” she added.

Yet growing doubt has been cast in recent years on whether a leaner diet can really influence a person’s longevity.

Two separate studies published last year on Rhesus monkeys, which are genetically very close to humans, produced contradictory results after the effects of feeding them restricted-calorie diets were monitored over a long period.

Han said this confusion was partly caused by the different kinds of food the monkeys were given, and partly due to a lack of understanding about the underlying mechanism behind how the ageing process can be retarded.


_

_
_In 2013, scientists from the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in the United States used genetic mutations of worms to quintuple their lifespan. Credit: Buck Institute_​
Their study also showed that regular fasting, which is practised by Muslims and various cultures around the world, does not always lead to longer life.

The team found that the three groups of genes play different roles in how the body functions. The group known as TOR, for example, helps control cell life and ageing by regulating the level of lipids - for example, cholesterol - in the blood and organs.

If TOR - or any of the other two groups - remain inactive, a person’s longevity would not be influenced by how much they eat, the team found. In people, all three groups are usually inactive.

Han said most scientists do not encourage healthy people to diet because of the risk of harmful side effects ranging from malnutrition to organ damage, or stunted growth in children.

It can also be miserable to go on a strict diet as the human body has evolved over millions of years of evolution and foraging for food to favour a high-calorie diet. Many studies show that people put on more weight after they finish their diet than they measured before they started it.

_



_
_However, longevity studies on Rhesus monkeys - similar to the one pictured here at Kam Shan Country Park in Hong Kong - have proven contradictory. Han said this is partly because of the different diets the test subjects were fed. Photo: SCMP Pictures_​
One of the intriguing aspects of Han’s recipe for a special diet pill is that it promises to deliver the nutrition our bodies need, as well as the restrictions required to live longer, without any of the dangerous side effects.

Referring to the worms as a case in point, Han said that even those which were deliberately overfed the specially constructed diet did not die any earlier than regular worms.

“Eat free and live long - all you need is the right pill,” she said.

Well, may not all. The team admitted there are many factors apart from diet that contribute to the ageing process, meaning that more research must be undertaken.

Han said it could be “many years” before a tailored long-life drug hits shelves in China or elsewhere.

However, previous experiments by other scientists in the United States have also proven it possible to make animals live longer, which lends credibility to the argument the same could be done for humans.

In 2013, scientists from the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, which is based in California, used genetic mutations of worms to quintuple their lifespan.

Worms live naturally for one to nine years, depending on the species, but some nightcrawlers have reportedly lived for up to 20 years.

Want to live to see 200? Chinese team come up with ‘super diet pill’ formula they believe will double people’s lifespans | South China Morning Post

#####​_The article from SCMP above did not mention this, but Professor Han and her research is feature in the latest issue of Nature._


Nature | Research Highlights

Longevity
*Genetic switches for long life*

Nature 531, 279 (17 March 2016) doi:10.1038/531279e​Published online
16 March 2016 ​Researchers have homed in on the genetic control points that allow nematodes to live longer when they are on a low-calorie diet.

A team led by Jing-Dong Han of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai analysed gene-expression changes over time in the nematode _Caenorhabditis elegans_. The worms were subjected either…​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Public Release: 16-Mar-2016*
*Lasers help speed up the detection of bacterial growth in packaged food | EurekAlert! Science News*
_New technique enables fast, accurate and noninvasive measurement of bacteria levels_

*The Optical Society*

WASHINGTON -- It's important to know how microorganisms -- particularly pathogenic microbes -- grow under various conditions. Certain bacteria can cause food poisoning when eaten and bacterial growth in medical blood supplies, while rare, might necessitate discarding the blood.

Now a group of researchers from Zhejiang Normal University in China and Umeå University in Sweden report a fast, accurate, and noninvasive technique for monitoring bacterial growth. They report the results in _Applied Optics_, a journal of The Optical Society (OSA).

Microorganism growth is driven by many factors, which make it far from easy to accurately estimate the amount of bacteria within food containers or blood samples at any given time.

To avoid the risk that any particular packaged food item will go bad and cause illness, it's given an unnecessarily short shelf life. In short, a better understanding of the growth process of microorganisms could reduce food waste and prevent people from being sickened by food poisoning -- or both.

Within the medical realm, it's critical to be able to assess the quality of blood samples quickly and accurately. Without this ability, samples might need to be discarded or, alternatively, result in or worsen illnesses. Although bacterial blood contamination is rare, it does occur and has led to deaths. A rapid screening method could mean that a larger percentage of blood could be directly tested for bacteria.

"Microorganism growth is always associated with the production of carbon dioxide (CO2)," said Jie Shao, associate professor at the Institute of Information Optics, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, China. "By assessing the level of CO2 within a given closed compartment -- bottle or bag -- it's possible to assess the microbial growth."

Several detection techniques are currently capable of rapid and accurate measurements of gas compositions. Those based on optical spectrometry are most appealing because they're noninvasive, boast high sensitivity, provide instant responses, and are potentially useful for assessment of bacterial growth.

"A technique referred to as 'tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy' (TDLAS) is particularly suitable because it combines all of these properties with an ease of use and low cost," Shao said.

So the group decided to develop an easy-to-use instrument based on TDLAS to assess bacterial growth of various types of samples under a variety of conditions.

TDLAS is by far the most common laser-based absorption technique for quantitative assessments of species within a gas phase. It can be used to measure the concentration of specific gaseous species -- carbon monoxide, CO2, water, or methane, to name a handful -- within gaseous mixtures by using absorption spectrometry based on tunable diode lasers.

"One major advantage TDLAS offers is its ability to achieve very low detection limits, on the order of parts per billion," Shao said. "Apart from concentration, it's also possible to determine other properties of the gas under observation -- temperature, pressure, velocity and mass flux."

The group's basic setup simply involves a tunable diode laser as the light source, beam shaping optics, a sample to be investigated, receiving optics, and one or more detectors.

"The emission wavelength of the laser is tuned over a characteristic absorption line transition -- of the species within the gas being assessed," Shao explained. "This causes a reduction of the measured signal intensity, which we can use to determine the gas concentration."

When the wavelength is rapidly tuned across the transition in a specific manner, it can be combined with a modulation technique called "wavelength modulation" (WM), which gives the TDLAS technique an enhanced sensitivity. It's referred to as "WM-TDLAS."

By applying the technique to transparent containers of organic substances such as food items or medical samples, bacterial growth can be quickly evaluated. "Although we anticipated that the WM-TDLAS technique would be suitable for assessing bacterial growth, we didn't expect this level of accuracy," Shao noted.

In contrast with conventional and more invasive techniques that require contact with the tested items, the WM-TDLAS method is truly noninvasive, making it ideal for monitoring the status of food and medical supplies, or as a tool to determine under which environmental conditions bacterial growth is expected to be severe. "It can provide real-time analysis," Shao said.

Next, the researchers plan to enhance the technique to "allow for assessments of microbial growth in a large variety of samples -- expanding beyond food items and medical supplies," Shao added.

###​
Paper: Jie Shao, Jindong Xiang, Ove Axner, and Chaofu Ying, "Wavelength-modulated tunable diode-laser absorption spectrometry for real-time monitoring of microbial growth," _Appl. Opt._ 55, 2339-2345 (2016).


----------



## JSCh

* S China lab sterilizes mosquitos to fight dengue, Zika*
Source: Xinhua 2016-03-17 17:49:35

GUANGZHOU, March 17 (Xinhua) -- A lab in China is aiming to sterilize mosquitos to cut off transmission of dengue and Zika virus after pesticides and medication have proved to have limited effects.

The lab at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province, is rearing male mosquitos with a naturally occurring bacterium, called wolbachia, that sterilizes females to reduce the mosquito population and transmission of mosquito-borne diseases.

The largest of its kind, the lab covers an area of over 3,500 square meters and is divided into four sections, each capable of raising 5 million wolbachia-carrying male mosquitos.

The mosquitos hatch in cages designed to allow only males, which are usually a bit smaller, to filter through and be released.

Researchers at the lab said the filtering process is currently done manually, but they are working toward a more efficient automated filtering process.

These grown male mosquitoes are then released at a ratio of five sterile males to each non-sterile male in the wild, giving females an 80-percent chance of mating with them and becoming sterilized.

"Since female mosquitos only mate once in their lives, we want them to mate with our (wolbachia-carrying) males so the larvae they produce will not hatch," said Xi Zhiyong, who leads the lab's research on the Sterile Insect Technique project.

Last year, around 6.5 million male mosquitos were released at experiment sites, resulting in a nearly 100-percent elimination rate of mosquito larvae.

The research team hopes to see the technique gain widespread use in two to three years as an alternative to pesticides, which also hurt beneficial insects such as butterflies and bees and have decreased in effectiveness as mosquitos begin to develop antibodies.


----------



## bobsm

*China plays increasing role in global innovation: WIPO*
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2016-03-18 01:39

BEIJING -- China has continued to perform strongly in international patent and trademark filing against the backdrop of a moderate worldwide intellectual property (IP) filing growth, according to the latest figures released by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

The WIPO issued a report analyzing the amount and sources of global IP applications in 2015, including patents, trademarks and industrial designs, in Geneva on Wednesday.

"Global IP applications provide a good indication of the incidence and location of innovation," said Francis Gurry, Director General of WIPO at the press conference in Geneva.

"We see through this indicator that, while the United States of America maintains its premier position, the geography of innovation continues to shift and to evolve, with Asia, and in particular Japan, China and the Republic of Korea, forming the predominant geographical cluster," Gurry added.

International patent applications filed under WIPO's Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) were up by 1.7 percent to 218,000 in 2015, the slowest growth in five years, with the United States extending its long-standing position as the top source.

China's PCT applications exceeded 29,800 in 2015, an increase of 16.8 percent, ranking third for the third year behind the United States and Japan.

The three top filing companies were China's Huawei Technologies, followed by based Qualcomm and China's ZTE Corp. Huawei topped the list since 2013.

"China has played an increasing role in global innovation with its improved innovation ability and awareness of IP," Chen Hongbing, Director of WIPO Office in China, told Xinhua.

The report revealed that, with over 2,400 applications last year, China made the most filings for international trademark applications under the Madrid System since it became a member of the system in 1989. The country was in seventh place among all filers.

"We can see that Chinese enterprises are picking up their pace in doing business overseas. They are building international brands to improve competitive standing in the global market," said Chen.

Chen attributed the achievements to pursuit of an innovation-driven economy. "Reform of scientific and technological systems, increasing investment in research and development and strengthened IP protection have driven progress."

The WIPO expects China's technology, products and services to benefit the world through the Belt and Road and international production capacity cooperation, and is willing to use their innovation resources to better serve China's economic growth, Chen said.

Chen suggested China speed up the process of becoming a member of Hague System that governs the international registration of industrial design.

"China, as a major manufacturing nation, should better use industrial design as an IP tool to help its manufacturers winning competitive advantages in the global market," Chen said.


China plays increasing role in global innovation: WIPO - China - Chinadaily.com.cn

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## bobsm

*Pwn2Own 2016: Chinese Researcher Hacks Google Chrome within 11 minutes*

Mar 17, 2016, 09:12 ET from Qihoo 360

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 17, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- 360Vulcan Team from Qihoo 360 hacked Google Chrome, the browser with the least vulnerabilities, and obtained the highest system privilege. It's the first time a Chinese security team has hacked Google Chrome at the Pwn2Own contest.

360Vulcan Team also hacked Adobe Flash Player based on Edge browser, obtaining the highest system privilege, which won the team a USD 80,000 cash prize and a total score of 13 points.

Hackers win in the battle of man vs. machine

Google Chrome is a browser built for security and simplicity, which represents the highest level of security defense in Google. Besides world-renowned Google Project Zero, Google also uses thousands of servers for vulnerability tests with deep mining technology and computing capacity that can compete with AlphGo, the program that defeated Lee Sedol, a top-ranked Go player, in the battle of man vs. machine. Thus Google Chrome is regarded as the browser with the least vulnerabilities.

Meanwhile, Chrome is equipped with the only sandbox which can detect and block attacks over Windows kernel. Once the sandbox is locked, the attacker will no long have the access to outside resources. Chrome has therefore been regarded as the ultimate challenge at the Pwn2Own competition in recent years.

The latest version of Google Chrome has been fundamentally improved in terms of security level. It's almost viewed as mission impossible for security researchers to exploit vulnerability for system privilege.

360Vulcan Team, in together with 360 Mobile Safe Team, hacked Chrome exploiting four vulnerabilities, which can make Chrome more secure as well as improve the overall defense level of the browser.

Chinese Security Team in Global Arena

Qihoo 360 is not new to Pwn2Own. At the contest in 2015, 360Vulcan Team successfully hacked tightly protected IE 11 running on the Windows 8.1 operating system in 17 seconds, and became the first Asian team to successfully claim IE browser in the contest's nine-year history. For two years, 360Vulcan Team has chosen to compete in the most challenging categories, which can show the remarkable expertise of Chinese security researchers.

360Vulcan Team is a security research team from the 360 Internet Security Innovation Center, focuses on security vulnerabilities mining and helping vendors to patch vulnerabilities. "XP Shield" and "IE Shield", the vulnerability defense product from 360 Safeguard, were supported by 360Vulcan Team on the core technology.

In 2015, security teams in Qihoo 360 received over 100 official acknowledgements from Google, Microsoft, Apple and Adobe for the vulnerabilities submitted, second only to Google Project Zero, which won the fame of "Most Capable Security Team in the East". Those vulnerabilities, once sold to the black market, can earn millions of dollars. However, the team prefers to submit vulnerabilities to related vendors.

According to Zheng Wenbing, head of 360Vulcan Team, "Live Long and PWN, a motto of our team, stands for our consistent pursuit to challenge limits and impossibilities. In the battle of man vs. machine, we hope to make the Internet more secure."

Pwn2Own 2016: Chinese Researcher Hacks Google Chrome within 11 minutes


----------



## qaisraani

khanboy007 said:


> wow thats really cool, but im just curious to know whether you guys have a wind testing facility for buildings, like to check how much drag in a building design its like a wind tunnel test for buildings.im fascinated by wind tunnels of all sorts thats y im asking  . it mostly requires wind engineers so do u guys have that i'd love to know... thanks in advance and best of luck for China's flourishing future


nbmn ,

cryogenic technologies among scientists in China. A seminar he gave in 2007 at Tsinghua University in Beijing drew few attendees, he says, and even fewer really understood what I was talking about. Just four years later, in 2011, Zhao gave another seminar on ultralow-temperature physics in Beijing. That time, he says, half the audience was in the corridor. The situation has changed completely. Ding agrees: The driving force behind SECUF, he says, is a growing demand by scientists.


----------



## JSCh

*What China’s latest five-year plan means for science*
_Oceanography, brain science and stem cells among research fields that look set to grow._

David Cyranoski
18 March 2016
From a slowing economy to geopolitical tensions in the South China Sea, it is a testing time for China’s ruling Communist party. But its science aspirations seem unbridled. On 16 March, China approved its 13th Five-Year Plan. A draft version, as well as statements by key politicians, make it clear that innovation through science and technology is a priority. China also intends for its research expenditure to rise to 2.5% of gross domestic product by 2020, from less than 2.2% over the past five years. Reductions in energy use and the development of low-carbon energy sources feature in the latest five-year plan. Forsome of the other themes that are set to shape Chinese research over the next five years, _Nature_ spoke to a range of scientists.

*The ocean deep*
*Brain science*
*Conservation*
*Stem-cells*
*Pollution*
Continue reading -> What China’s latest five-year plan means for science : Nature News & Comment


----------



## bobsm

*Second Chinese team reports gene editing in human embryos*

Study used CRISPR technology to introduce HIV-resistance mutation into embryos.

Ewen Callaway
08 April 2016
Article toolsRights & Permissions

Yorgos Nikas/SPL
Early-stage human embryos have been edited by scientists.
Researchers in China have reported editing the genes of human embryos to try to make them resistant to HIV infection. Their paper1 — which used CRISPR-editing tools in non-viable embryos that were destroyed after three days — is only the second published claim of gene editing in human embryos.

Where in the world could the first CRISPR baby be born?

In April 2015, a different China-based team announced that they had modified a gene linked to a blood disease in human embryos (which were also not viable, and so could not have resulted in a live birth)2. That report — a world first — fuelled global deliberations over the ethics of modifying embryos and human reproductive cells, and led to calls for a moratorium on even such proof-of-principle research.

At the time, rumours swirled that other teams had conducted similar experiments. Sources in China told Nature’s news team that a handful of papers had been submitted for publication. The latest paper, which appeared in the Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics on 6 April, might be one of these. Nature’s news team has asked the paper’s corresponding author, stem-cell scientist Yong Fan, for comment, but had not heard from him by the time of this report.

HIV resistance
In the paper, Fan, who works at Guangzhou Medical University in China, and his team say that they collected a total of 213 fertilized human eggs between April and September 2014. The fertilized eggs, donated by 87 patients, were unsuitable for implantation as part of in vitro fertility therapy, because they contained an extra set of chromosomes.

Fan’s team used CRISPR–Cas9 genome editing to introduce into some of the embryos a mutation that cripples an immune-cell gene called CCR5. Some humans naturally carry this mutation (known as CCR5Δ32) and they are resistant to HIV, because the mutation alters the CCR5 protein in a way that prevents the virus from entering the T cells it tries to infect.


CRISPR: gene editing is just the beginning
Genetic analysis showed that 4 of 26 human embryos targeted were successfully modified. But not all the embryos’ chromosomes harboured the CCR5Δ32 mutation — some contained unmodified CCR5, whereas others had acquired different mutations.

George Daley, a stem-cell biologist at Children’s Hospital Boston in Massachusetts, says that the paper’s main advance is the use of CRISPR to introduce a precise genetic modification successfully. “This paper doesn’t look like it offers much more than anecdotal evidence that it works in human embryos, which we already knew,” he says. “It’s certainly a long way from realizing the intended potential” — a human embryo with all its copies of CCR5 inactivated.

“It just emphasizes that there are still a lot of technical difficulties to doing precision editing in human embryo cells,” says Xiao-Jiang Li, a neuroscientist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He thinks that researchers should work out these kinks in non-human primates, for example, before continuing to modify the genomes of human embryos using techniques such as CRISPR.

Ethics of experiments
Tetsuya Ishii, a bioethicist at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan, sees no problem with how the experiments were conducted — a local ethics committee approved them, and the egg donors gave their informed consent — but he questions their necessity. “Introducing CCR5Δ32 and trying repair, even in non-viable embryos, is just playing with human embryos,” Ishii says.


Don’t edit the human germ line
Fan's team writes in the paper that proof-of-principle experiments for human-embryo editing such as theirs are important to conduct while the ethical and legal issues of germline modification are being hashed out. “We believe that any attempt to generate genetically modified humans through the modification of early embryos needs to be strictly prohibited until we can resolve both ethical and scientific issues,” they write.

Daley sees a stark contrast between Fan’s work and research approved in February by UK fertility regulators that will allow CRISPR genome editing of human embryos. Those experiments, led by developmental biologist Kathy Niakan at the Francis Crick Institute in London, will inactivate genes involved in very early embryo development, in hopes of understanding why some pregnancies terminate. (The work will be done in viable embryos, but the researchers' licence requires that experiments be stopped within 14 days.)

Earlier this year, developmental biologist Robin Lovell-Badge, also at the Francis Crick Institute, told Nature that he thought that the carefully considered UK approval might embolden other researchers who are interested in pursuing embryo-editing research. “If they've been doing it in China, we may see several manuscripts begin to appear,” he said.

Whereas Niakan's work is answering questions intrinsic to embryology, Fan's work is establishing proof of principle for what would need to be done to generate an individual with resistance to HIV, Daley adds. “That means the science is going forward before there’s been the general consensus after deliberation that such an approach is medically warranted," he says.


Second Chinese team reports gene editing in human embryos : Nature News & Comment

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## bobsm

*Chinese scientists succeed in micro-g 3D printing test*
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2016-04-13 23:04

BEIJING -- Chinese scientists have successfully tested 3D printing at microgravity, the Technology and Engineering Center for Space Utilization (CSU) announced Wednesday.

The CSU team has conducted 93 parabolic test flights in France, and printed out the designed specimen with Chinese-developed equipment and processes. 

The parabolic test flights, which created a microgravity environment that lasts about 22 seconds, were facilitated by the Space Administration of Germany. 

Wang Gong, technical chief of the team, said 3D printing in an environment such as this would be advantageous to space probe technology as it would enable supplies to be printed during space missions. 

At present, supplies must be sent to space stations via carrier rockets or cargo spacecraft, which is both costly and time-consuming, Wang added. 

Earth-bound 3D printing technology, materials, equipment and operations need to be adapted to work in space, Wang said. 

The experiment team has tested five materials, including fiber reinforced polymer, which has not been tested by NASA, Wang said. 

The data obtained will be important to the future of space-bound 3D printing.


Chinese scientists succeed in micro-g 3D printing test - China - Chinadaily.com.cn


----------



## JSCh

*Media Releases*

2016.04.12
*PolyU Develops Perovskite-Silicon Tandem Solar Cells with the World's Highest Power Conversion Efficiency*

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has successfully developed perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells with the world's highest power conversion efficiency of 25.5% recently. Perovskite solar cells first appeared in 2009 with an efficiency of just 3.8%. With the outstanding photovoltaic properties, perovskite solar cell has become a subject of vigorous research for sustainable power generation, with researchers around the world finding new ways to increase its energy conversion efficiency. It has currently established itself as one of the most promising solar cell materials. The research team in the Department of Electronic and Information Engineering led by Professor Charles Chee Surya, Clarea Au Endowed Professor in Energy, has recently made this world record with innovative means to enhance energy conversion efficiency. With this innovation, it is estimated that solar energy can be generated at cost of HK$2.73/W, compared with HK$3.9/W at present generated by existing silicon solar cells available in the market.

As there are different wavelengths for solar energy, a combination of different materials for making solar cells would work best for energy absorption. For example, methylammonium lead tri-halide perovskite and silicon solar cells can form a complementary pair. With the perovskite solar cell functioning as a top layer, it can harvest the short wavelength photons while the bottom layer coated with silicon is designed to absorb the long wavelength photons. PolyU's research team maximizes efficiency by making use of this feature with three innovative approaches. Firstly, the team discovers a chemical process - low-temperature annealing process in dry oxygen to reduce the impact made by perovskite defects. Secondly, the team fabricates a tri-layer of molybdenum trioxide / gold / molybdenum trioxide with optimized thickness of each layer, making it highly transparent for light to go into the bottom silicon layer under perovskite layer. Finally, by mimicking the surface morphology of the rose petals, a haze film, developed by Dr Zijian Zheng of PolyU Institute of Textiles and Clothing, has been applied as the top layer of the solar panel to trap more light. All three innovative approaches help enhance energy conversion efficiency. Professor Shen Hui of Sun Yat-sen University and Shun De SYSU Institute for Solar Energy, who excelled in the fabrication high-efficiency silicon cells, was responsible for the design and fabrication of the bottom silicon cell.

PolyU research team will continue to improve the power conversion efficiency as well as the performance of large-scale fabrication of perovskite-silicon solar cells.

https://www.polyu.edu.hk/web/en/media/media_releases/index_id_6208.html


----------



## bobsm

*Global industry body says China at the forefront of 5G tech*
By Fan Feifei (China Daily)
Updated: 2016-04-15 07:37

China has always been at the forefront of new technologies, especially now in 5G telecom technologies research and development, according to Mats Granryd, the newly installed director-general of the Global System for Mobile Communications Association.

Granryd said the organization is making great effort to provide guidance and regulation on 5G rollout worldwide.

The global industry body unites nearly 800 mobile operators with more than 250 companies in the mobile ecosystem, including handset and device makers, software companies and internet companies, as well as organizations in adjacent-industry sectors.

It also hosts industry-leading events such as the Mobile World Congress, the world's largest exhibition dedicated to the mobile telecom industry.

Granryd, who spent 15 years in a variety of roles at Sweden telecom giant Ericsson and was CEO of Tele2, one of Europe's fastest-growing telecom operators, said the telecom industry in China is developing rapidly, not only in scale, but also in innovative ways of using new technologies.

He is confident that "in a few years", 5G will be employed widely in China.

"Some operators in Asia, Europe and the United States are claiming they will launch 5G as early as 2018, which is two years before it will be fully standardized.

"China's major operators are all working on 5G and will be early adopters of the technology," said Granryd, adding that 5G's fast development in China is making a growing contribution to promoting the technology worldwide.

"In working with our members and considering how we are going to treat 5G from a government perspective, it's important for us to follow global standards and regulations," he said

China is currently working hard at gaining an edge over international competitors in 5G research and development.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has said the experimental stage of 5G will last three years from 2016 to 2018, before being fully commercialized in 2020.

The country's main telecom carriers have already accelerated their efforts at developing 5G technology.

China Mobile Communications Corp, the country's largest carrier, set up a 5G innovation center in February, and will launch a 5G laboratory.

It also plans to finish the testing of 5G technologies and products in 2017 and conduct trial operations in 2018, with commercial use by 2020.

Fu Liang, a telecom expert, said: "5G development in China is generally keeping pace with the world, and China's technology companies, such as Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and ZTE Corp, have a right to a say in formulating the standard of 5G globally and take a lead in promoting its commercial use."


http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/tech/2016-04/15/content_24557098.htm

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*“The end product is what matters”*
_Detlef Weigel, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, explains why genome editing offers a targeted way of breeding better crops_
April 12, 2016

Greater resistance to pests, less sensitivity to drought, higher yields – this is just a small selection of the requirements that crops will have to fulfil in future. Humanity needs new crops that can withstand the changes arising from global warming and can meet the growing demand for food. With the help of a new method called genome editing, scientists are seeking to develop new crop varieties more efficiently than before. If no foreign genes are inserted into these plants they cannot be distinguished from plants that have been bred using traditional methods. For this reason, Detlef Weigel from the Tübingen-based Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, together with colleagues from the USA and China, is asking for genome-edited plant varieties of this kind not to be classified as genetically modified plants.

*Mr Weigel, how are new varieties bred from crops today? *
Detlef Weigel: It is important to realize that traditional breeding also aims to alter the DNA of the plants. For example, if you would like to obtain a new plant that can withstand drought and produce high yields, you can cross existing varieties which are resistant to drought or produce particularly high yields. The genes for these traits are newly mixed in the descendants’ DNA and some plants receive the genes for both traits. Chemical substances or radiation can also be used to generate mutations somewhere in the genetic code. Plants with new traits can also arise in this way. However, it is very time-consuming and complicated to seek out plants with the desired traits from thousands of mutants.

*What is the difference between genome-edited and genetically modified plants? *
With traditional genetic engineering, genes are often introduced into a plant’s DNA that do not arise naturally in the species, for example genes for resistance to a herbicide. Different processes exist for this: for example, the genes can be ‘shot’ into the plant cells using a kind of ‘gene gun’. With genome editing, we cut the DNA with a protein at a predefined location. The genome editing method known as CRISPR/Cas9 has become the most common method. We can then modify the DNA at the interface or insert new sections. So genome editing should be viewed as a variant of mutation breeding, with the difference that the generation of particular mutations is targeted.

The major advantage here is that these modifications can be obtained in the same way as they are made in traditional breeding and crossing experiments. For example, individual letters of the genetic code can be exchanged. This corresponds to a modification which can also arise through natural mutation. Short sections of DNA can also be inserted and, in this way, genes from a species can be replaced with genes from its other varieties or from closely related species – something that is also done in traditional cross-breeding.

*The criticism regarding genetically modified plants is aroused by the aforementioned ‘foreign genes’ in particular. Do genome-edited plants also contain such foreign DNA?*
The genetic information for the cutting protein is usually inserted into the plant’s DNA so that it can be formed in the plant cells. This gene does not arise naturally in plants and is, therefore, foreign DNA. Following the successful modification of the genome, however, it can be completely removed. Using the analysis methods available today, it is possible to ensure that a genome-edited plant no longer contains any foreign DNA. Genome editing can also be used to insert completely foreign genes into the genome – as is the case in traditional genetic engineering. However, this kind of genome editing should be subject to different regulations than the kind that is used to make minor modifications.

*Is it possible to distinguish at all between genome-edited and traditionally bred plants? *
If no foreign genes are inserted, then, no, it is not possible. A plant that has been modified using genome editing does not differ in any way from a plant whose genome was altered through breeding. At the end of the process, there is nothing to indicate how the new variety arose.

*So genome-edited plants should not be treated like genetically modified plants if they do not contain any foreign DNA? *
Exactly! This is why we are asking for them to be classified like traditionally bred plants. In our view, how a plant variety came into being does not make any difference; the end product alone is what matters. In my view, it does not make any sense to classify plants as different if it is not possible to say how they came into being.

*Is this possible from a legal point of view or would it require a change in the law? *
The German Genetic Engineering Act states that the descendants of a genetically-modified plant must also be classified as genetically modified. So the fact that genome-edited plants temporarily contained the gene for the cutting protein would make them and their descendents genetically modified plants forever – despite the fact that the foreign gene was removed without trace. This was certainly not the intention of the legislator as genome engineering did not yet exist when the Genetic Engineering Act was passed. So we suggest that the Genetic Engineering Act should not be applied to genome-edited plants.

Interview: Harald Rösch

“The end product is what matters” | Max Planck Society


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 14-Apr-2016
* A simple and efficient 3-D fabrication technique for bio-inspired hierarchical structures *
_Chinese scientists developed a facile approach for the rapid and maskless fabrication of bio-inspired hierarchical structures using multi-beam laser interference, demonstrating its potential in large-area, low-cost and high-volume 3-D fabrication_

The Optical Society






This is a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) image of a moth eye.
Credit: Zuobin Wang/Changchun University of Science and Technology, China​
WASHINGTON -- Nature is no doubt the world's best biological engineer, whose simple, exquisite but powerful designs have inspired scientists and engineers to tackle the challenges of technologies for centuries. Scientists recently mimicked the surface structure of a moth's eye, a unique structure with an antireflective property, to develop a highly light-absorbent graphene material. This is breakthrough in solar cell technology. Rice leaves and butterfly wings also have unique self-cleaning surface characteristics, which inspire scientists to develop novel materials resistant to biofouling. The bio-inspired periodic multi-scale structures, called hierarchical structures, have recently caught broad attention among scientists in various applications such as solar cells, Light-emitting diodes (LEDs), biomaterials and anti-bacterial surfaces.

Although a number of techniques for fabricating bio-inspired hierarchical structures already exist, most conventional methods either involve complicated processes or are highly time-consuming and low cost-efficiency for industrial applications. Now, a team of researchers from Changchun University of Science and Technology, China, have developed a novel method for the rapid and maskless fabrication of bio-inspired hierarchical structures, using a technique called laser interference lithography.

Specifically, the researchers use the interference pattern of three-and four-beam lasers to fabricate ordered multi-scale surface structures on silicon substrates, with the pattern of hierarchical structures controllable by adjusting the parameters of incident light. In accordance with the theoretical and computer analysis, the researchers have experimentally demonstrated the novel technique's potential in large-area, low-cost and high-volume 3D fabrication of micro and nanostructures. This week in the journal _Applied Optics_, from The Optical Society (OSA), the researchers describe the work.

"We presented a flexible and direct method for fabricating ordered multi-scale 3D structures using three- and four-beam interference lithography," said Zuobin Wang, the primary author and a professor of International Research Centre for Nano Handling and Manufacturing of China at the Changchun University of Science and Technology, China. "Compared with other patterning technologies, our method is simple and efficient in terms of obtaining bio-inspired hierarchical structures."

Wang mentioned that for certain complicated surface structures, conventional techniques such as electron beam lithography may take several hours or a day to fabricate the pattern, while the laser interference approach only takes several minutes to generate the structure, which makes the technique suitable for high-volume industrial production.

"Laser interference lithography is a maskless patterning technique that uses the interference patterns generated from two or several coherent laser beams to fabricate micro and nanometer periodic patterns over large areas," Wang said. Different from conventional patterning techniques like electron beam lithography, the laser interference technique enables fabricating the entire substrate surface with one single exposure or one-step lithography.

For example, in Wang's experiment, the one-dimension multi-scale structure, that is, one-dimension oriented arrangement with the sinusoidal grooves covered with periodic line-like structures was fabricated by exposing the silicon substrate to three or four interfered beams for one time. The resultant surface pattern, though arranged in one direction, has three-dimension spatial structure. To obtain more complicated structures such as two-dimension oriented multi-scale structures, the researchers simply rotated the substrate by 90 degrees in the plane and applied second laser exposure to the surface.

"Laser interference lithography is capable of fabricating homogeneous micro and nanometer structured patterns over areas more than one square meter, which is either impossible or highly time or cost consuming for conventional techniques," Wang said. These features make laser interference lithography superior to other techniques in terms of efficiency and high-volume production.

According to Wang, their experimental process is simple: a high power laser beam was split into three or four equal beams, which then were directed by mirrors to generate interference patterns to fabricate the surface structures. The laser parameters such as incident angle and azimuthal angle of each beam were adjusted by beam splitters and mirror positions. Other optical devices such as quarter-wave plates and polarizers were used to select the polarization mode and control the energy of laser beams.

"The laser beam parameters are selected according to the desired surface structure and corresponding interference energy distribution calculated from theoretical simulation. In other words, the shapes or patterns of hierarchical structures in our method are controllable by adjusting the parameters of each incident beams," Wang noted.

According to Wang, the proposed technique could be used to fabricate optical or medical devices such as solar cells, antireflective coatings, self-cleaning and antibacterial surfaces and long-life artificial hip joints.

The researchers' next step is to develop functional surface structures with controllable wettability, adhesion and reflectivity properties for optical, medical and mechanical applications.

A simple and efficient 3-D fabrication technique for bio-inspired hierarchical structures | EurekAlert! Science News


----------



## bobsm

*Tracheal surgery using 4D-printing technology successful in China*
(Xinhua) 11:10, April 16, 2016

XI'AN, April 16 -- Doctors from northwest China's Shaanxi Province recently performed a successful and rare tracheal surgery using 4D printing technology on a woman suffering from breathing problem.

According to a press conference held in provincial capital Xi'an on Friday, doctors with Tangdu Hospital inserted a 4D-printed tracheal stent, a tubular support, outside a female patient's collapsed windpipe to keep the airway open.

The 46-year-old female patient had a severe form of tracheobronchomalacia, which causes the windpipe to regularly collapse, preventing normal breathing.

"Her collapsed trachea is inside the thorax and is 6-centimeters long. It is very risky to cut it directly. Placing a stent inside the windpipe is also impossible because the narrowest section is only three millimeters wide," said Li Xiaofei, director with Tangdu's department of thoracic surgery.

The hospital worked with several other institutions, including 3D printing research center with the Fourth Military Medical University, to produce the stent made of a biomaterial called polycaprolactone, which dissolves over time.

"4D printing technology is new," said Cao Tiesheng, director with the center. "It involves 3D printing items that are designed to change over time."

Cao pointed out that for this operation, doctors set the dissolving time of the printed stent beforehand. It will be gradually absorbed by the patient in two or three years. "The patient does not need to undergo another operation to remove the stent."

The patient has recovered and will be discharged from the hospital soon.

"The long-term effects will be observed. But this successful operation will bring changes to other operations," said Li Xiaofei.


http://en.people.cn/n3/2016/0416/c202936-9045468.html


----------



## JSCh

*Water: now we see it, see more*
APR, 16 2016

*Peking University, Apr. 15, 2016:* The mystery of water mainly arises from the intermolecular hydrogen-bonding interaction. It is well known that hydrogen bonds have a strong classic component coming from electrostatics. However, its quantum component can be exceptionally prominent due to the zero-point motion of light hydrogen nuclei (proton), which is a natural result of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Therefore, the assessment of nuclear quantum effects has been a key issue for understanding the structure, dynamics, and macroscopic properties of water. Despite enormous scientific efforts in past decades, it still remains an open question to what extent the quantum motion of the hydrogen nuclei can affect the hydrogen bond.

Now, the teams led by Prof. Jiang Ying and Prof. Wang Enge of International Center for Quantum Materials (ICQM) of Peking University provide a smoking gun for this important question. As published in Science on Apr. 15, 2016 (Science DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf2042), the researchers unravel quantitatively, for the first time, the quantum component of a single hydrogen bond at a water-solid interface, through a combined study using a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) and density functional theory (DFT) calculations.

"The main difficulty of extracting the quantum component of hydrogen bond lies in that the quantum states of hydrogen nuclei are extremely sensitive to the coupling with local environments, leading to significant broadening and averaging effects when conventional spectroscopic or diffraction techniques are used," says Jiang. Therefore, the ability to probe water with single bond precision is crucial.

To this end, the researchers succeeded to push the limit of vibrational spectroscopy of water down to the single-bond level using a novel technique called tip-enhanced inelastic electron tunneling spectroscopy (IETS) based on STM, which combines sub-ångström spatial resolution and single-bond vibrational sensitivity. The signal-to-noise ratios of the tip-enhanced IETS are enhanced by orders of magnitude over the conventional STM-IETS, which was pioneered by Prof. Wilson Ho's group of UC Irvine 18 years ago.

"The conventional IETS signals of water are extraordinarily weak since the frontier orbitals of water are located far away from the Fermi level. The key to defeat this limitation is gating the frontier orbitals of water towards the Fermi level with a chlorine-terminated STM tip to resonantly enhance the electron-vibration coupling," explains Jiang. With such a tip-enhanced IETS, the hydrogen-bonding strength can be determined with unprecedentedly high accuracy from the redshift in the O-H stretching frequency of water.

By conducting isotopic substitution experiments (replacing hydrogen atom with heavier deuterium atom), the researchers could extract the quantum component of the hydrogen bond, which accounts for up to 14% of the bond strength. Surprisingly, the quantum contribution is much greater than the thermal energy contribution, even at room temperature. In-depth investigation combined with ab initio path integral molecular dynamics (PIMD) simulations reveal that the anharmonic quantum fluctuations of hydrogen nuclei weaken the weak hydrogen bonds and strengthen the strong ones. However, this trend can be completely reversed when the hydrogen bond is strongly coupled to the polar atomic sites of the surface.

"This joint experimental and theoretical work yields a cohesive picture for the nuclear quantum effects of hydrogen bonds," adds Wang, "Those findings may completely renovate our understanding of water and provide answers to many weirdness of water from a quantum mechanical view. It would be very interesting to further explore the quantum effects on the cooperativity of correlated H-bonds beyond the single hydrogen bond."

This work received supports from Ministry of Science and Technology of China, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Ministry of Education of China, National Program for Support of Eminent Professionals, and Collaborative Innovation Center of Quantum Matter, China.




Figure caption: Left is the schematic of STM experimental setup. The hydrogen atoms of water show prominent zero-point motion thanks to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Right is the tip-enhanced IETS of a single water molecule, in which stretching, bending and rotational modes are identified. Those vibrational modes can be used as sensitive probes to sense the influence of quantum motion of hydrogen nuclei on the hydrogen bond. (Design: Liang Mingcheng)

*Edited by:* Zhang Jiang
*Source:* School of Physics

Water: now we see it, see more_Peking University

#####​*Article link: *Nuclear quantum effects of hydrogen bonds probed by tip-enhanced inelastic electron tunneling | Science

*Quantum effects in single hydrogen bonds*
Hydrogen bonds are a combination of electrostatics with a nuclear quantum contribution arising from the light mass of hydrogen nuclei. However, the quantum states of hydrogen nuclei are extremely sensitive to coupling with local environments, and these effects are broadened and averaged with conventional spectroscopic or diffraction techniques. Guo _et al._ show that quantum effects change the strength of individual hydrogen bonds in water layers adsorbed on a salt surface. These effects are revealed in inelastic tunneling spectra obtained with a chlorine-terminated scanning tunneling microscope tip.

_Science_, this issue p. 321​


----------



## bobsm

*Xinhua Insight: Chinese scientists develop mammal embryos in space for first time*
2016-04-17 12:58:39 GMT2016-04-17 20:58:39(Beijing Time) Xinhua English

BEIJING, April 17, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Duan Enkui, researcher of the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and also the leader of the project, introduces the development of the mammal embryos in space in Ulanqab City, north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, April 17, 2016. Over 6,000 early-stage mouse embryos carried by China's retrievable scientific research satellite have developed in space, making it the world's first-ever successful test on mammal embryo development. (Xinhua/Wang Quanchao)

BEIJING， April 17 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists on Sunday said they have successfully developed early-stage mouse embryos in space for the first time on a retrievable microgravity satellite set to return to Earth sometime next week.

The SJ-10 research probe， launched on April 6， carried over 6，000 mouse embryos in a self-sufficient chamber the size of a microwave oven， according to Duan Enkui， a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
Among them， 600 embryos were put under a high-resolution camera， which took pictures every four hours for four days and sent them back to Earth.

The pictures showed that the embryos developed from the 2-cell stage, an early-on embryonic cleavage stage, to blastocyst, the stage where noticeable cell differentiation occurs, around 72 hours after SJ-10's launch, Duan said. The timing was largely in line with mbryonic development on Earth, he added.

The rest of the embryos loaded on the satellite were injected with fixatives at 72 hours after the launch for studies on the effects of space environment on embryonic development， according to Duan.

*This is the first reported successful development in mammalian embryos in space in human history.*

Scientists will compare the retrieved embryos with samples on Earth and perform further analyses on the profiles of early embryo development in space， once SJ-10 returns home.

SJ-10 is expected to land in a designated spot in Siziwang Banner in Inner Mongolia sometime next week. Earlier reports said the probe as a whole had a designed life of just 15 days.

The bullet-shaped probe is said to be housing a total of 19 experiments involving microgravity fluid physics， microgravity combustion， space material， space radiation effects， microgravity biological effects and space bio-technology.

These include one studying how space radiation affects the genetic stability of fruit flies and rat cells， and a combustion experiment which will test how materials used in spacecraft burn in space to find ways of making safer capsules for future manned missions.

An experiment being run in partnership between the National Space Science Center under the CAS and the European Space Agency will investigate the behavior of crude oil under high pressure， and also on board is equipment to test coal combustion and pollutant formation under microgravity.

The former experiment is aimed at improving scientists' understanding of oil reservoirs buried deep underground， while the latter is expected to help enhance energy efficiency and cut emissions on Earth.

In a separate development， retrievers for the SJ-10 satellite on Sunday said they will deploy four helicopters to aid ground vehicles in the search for the satellite after its landing next week


http://english.sina.com/news/2016-04-17/doc-ifxrizpp1534441.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*China's bird flu warrior gets global award*
Updated: 2016-04-15 07:42
By Liu Zhihua(China Daily)

 



Chen Hualan wins the 2016 L'Oreal-UNESCO for Women in Science International Awards for her research of the bird flu virus. [Photo provided to China Daily]​
Chinese women scientists have started to make their mark on the world stage more consistently.

For the second year in a row, a scientist from the Chinese mainland has won the L'Oreal-UNESCO for Women in Science International Award this year.

Chen Hualan, the head of Harbin Veterinary Research Institute, an affiliate of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, received the award in Paris on March 24.

Created in 1998, the awards program－jointly funded by the French cosmetics maker and the United Nations' agency－identifies and supports female scientists globally.

Chen, 47, is the second Chinese scientist to win the award－after chemist Xie Yi in 2015－due to her outstanding research of the virus that causes avian influenza or bird flu.

Her work led to the development of an effective vaccine. In 2013, she had played a major role in China's action against the bird flu strain H7N9.

That year, Chen and her team from the Harbin institute in the country's northeast found out the routes of H7N9 transmission from birds or other animals to humans, lending crucial support to overall government efforts to control the spread of the disease.

Within 48 hours of the first cases being reported in Shanghai and Anhui province in the country's east, Chen and her team collected hundreds of soil, water and poultry samples from the affected areas.

Tests revealed the presence of H7N9 in some 20 samples gathered from live poultry in a Shanghai market.






[Photo provided to China Daily]​
Thanks to their findings, authorities managed to quickly shut down poultry markets in cities where the cases were reported.

Chen's contributions in quelling the outbreak in China, as well as her general studies of the bird flu virus, including experiments creating virus hybrids to illustrate the threats posed by new strains, put her on Nature magazine's list of "10 people who mattered" in 2013.

Chen says that it wasn't until she became a PhD scholar in 1994 and began working on influenza that she understood her life's goal.

"I realized that through my research I could help solve major problems and make a difference," she says.

The highly pathogenic avian influenza virus can result in large-scale killing of poultry, but it was earlier thought that vaccines would be ineffective on poultry.

When Chen was a PhD student, she generated several vaccines using both traditional and modern methods, and found that the vaccines could provide protection against bird flu.

The experience also told her that perceptions aren't always correct and that's the point of science－to dig.

In China, it is even more important to develop vaccines against avian influenza, Chen says. The country has a tradition of raising ducks and raises about 75 percent of the world's free-range duck population. The ducks here come in contact with wild birds－a situation that poses a challenge to the country's efforts to prevent and control the flu.

In 2009, Chen and her team started to work on vaccines against influenza in waterfowl. Three years later, they succeeded.

Talking about issues of gender, she jokes that women in science also have to balance work and home while men don't usually have to worry about the laundry or child care.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Indigenous snake-shaped robot ready to dive for underwater pipelines *
2016-04-18 11:36

(ECNS) -- A home-grown snake-shaped robot is ready to check on submarine oil and gas pipelines this year after a world-class performance in practical tests.

The robot was produced by the No.35 research institute of the Third Academy of the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC), one of the nation's largest defense contractors.

The robot can crawl through eight-inch pipelines to precisely detect and locate potential problems, such as erosion or leaks both inside and outside the pipelines.

The submarine oil and gas pipeline inspection services in China have long been monopolized by overseas providers, who charge high fees while offering incomplete data, according to experts.

The robot has broken up the technical monopoly and will be put into use on offshore oil lines this year.

Robots compatible for 10-, 12- and 14-inch underwater pipelines are also being researched, it was added.

Song Yubin, director of the industrial development department of the institute, said China will form a comprehensive home-grown oil and gas pipeline inspection service in the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020).

#####​Pictures from another report of the testing:












​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

April 18, 2016
*Stanford researchers create super stretchy, self-healing material that could lead to artificial muscle*






A new, extremely stretchable polymer film created by Stanford researchers can repair itself when punctured, a feature that is important in a material that has potential applications in artificial muscle. (Image credit: Bao Research Group)​
_Researchers show how jolting this material with an electrical field causes it to twitch or pulse in a muscle-like fashion. This polymer can also stretch to 100 times its original length, and even repair itself if punctured._

*By Carrie Kirby and Tom Abate*

If there’s such a thing as an experiment that goes too well, a recent effort in the lab of Stanford chemical engineering Professor Zhenan Bao might fit the bill.

One of her team members, Cheng-Hui Li, wanted to test the stretchiness of a rubberlike type of plastic known as an elastomer that he had just synthesized. Such materials can normally be stretched two or three times their original length and spring back to original size. One common stress test involves stretching an elastomer beyond this point until it snaps.

But Li, a visiting scholar from China, hit a snag: The clamping machine typically used to measure elasticity could only stretch about 45 inches. To find the breaking point of their one-inch sample, Li and another lab member had to hold opposing ends in their hands, standing further and further apart, eventually stretching a 1-inch polymer film to more than 100 inches.

Bao was stunned.

“I said, ‘How can that be possible? Are you sure?'” she recalled.

Today in _Nature Chemistry,_ the researchers explain how they made this super-stretchy substance. They also showed that they could make this new elastomer twitch by exposing it to an electric field, causing it to expand and contract, making it potentially useful as an artificial muscle.

*A flexible fishnet*
Artificial muscles currently have applications in some consumer technology and robotics, but they have shortcomings compared to a real bicep, Bao said. Small holes or defects in the materials currently used to make artificial muscle can rob them of their resilience. Nor are they able to self-repair if punctured or scratched.

But this new material, in addition to being extraordinarily stretchy, has remarkable self-healing characteristics. Damaged polymers typically require a solvent or heat treatment to restore their properties, but the new material showed a remarkable ability to heal itself at room temperature, even if the damaged pieces are aged for days. Indeed, researchers found that it could self-repair at temperatures as low as negative 4 degrees Fahrenheit (-20 C), or about as cold as a commercial walk-in freezer.

The team attributes the extreme stretching and self-healing ability of their new material to some critical improvements to a type of chemical bonding process known as crosslinking. This process, which involves connecting linear chains of linked molecules in a sort of fishnet pattern, has previously yielded a tenfold stretch in polymers.

First they designed special organic molecules to attach to the short polymer strands in their crosslink to create a series of structure called ligands. These ligands joined together to form longer polymer chains – spring-like coils with inherent stretchiness.

Then they added to the material metal ions, which have a chemical affinity for the ligands. When this combined material is strained, the knots loosen and allow the ligands to separate. But when relaxed, the affinity between the metal ions and the ligands pulls the fishnet taut. The result is a strong, stretchable and self-repairing elastomer.

“Basically the polymers become linked together like a big net through the metal ions and the ligands,” Bao explained. “Each metal ion binds to at least two ligands, so if one ligand breaks away on one side, the metal ion may still be connected to a ligand on the other side. And when the stress is released, the ion can readily reconnect with another ligand if it is close enough.”

*Advancing artificial muscle and skin*
The team found that they could tune the polymer to be stretchier or heal faster by varying the amount or type of metal ion included. The version that exceeded the measuring machine’s limits, for example, was created by decreasing the ratio of iron atoms to the polymers and organic molecules in the material.

The researchers also showed that this new polymer with the metal additives would twitch in response to an electric field. They have to do more work to increase the degree to which the material expands and contracts and control it more precisely. But this observation opens the door to promising applications. (View video.)

In addition to its long-term potential for use as artificial muscle, this research dovetails with Bao’s efforts to create artificial skin that might be used to restore some sensory capabilities to people with prosthetic limbs. In previous studies her team has created flexible but fragile polymers, studded with pressure sensors to detect the difference between a handshake and a butterfly landing. This new, durable material could form part of the physical structure of a fully developed artificial skin.

“Artificial skin is not just made of one material,” said Franziska Lissel, a postdoctoral fellow in Bao’s lab and member of the research team. “We want to create a very complex system.”

Even before artificial muscle and artificial skin become practical, this work in the development of strong, flexible, electronically active polymers could spawn a new generation of wearable electronics, or medical implants that would last a long time without being repaired or replaced.

This latest discovery is the result of two years of collaboration, overseen by Bao, involving visiting scholar Cheng-Hui Li, a Chinese organo-metallic chemist who designed the metal ligand bonding scheme; polymer chemist Chao Wang, now an assistant professor of chemistry at the University of California, Riverside, who had made previous iterations of self-healing elastomers; and artificial muscle expert Christoph Keplinger, now an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Other contributors to the study, “A highly stretchable autonomous self-healing elastomer,” include Jing-Lin Zuo, Lihua Jin, Yang Sun, Peng Zheng, Yi Cao, Christian Linder and Xiao-Zeng You.

_The work at Stanford was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Samsung Electronics and the Major State Basic Research Development Program of China._

Stanford researchers' stretchy material has muscular future | Stanford News

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## bobsm

*Chinese scientists figure out Zika virus NS1 protein structure*
(CRI)Updated: 2016-04-20 10:11





This photo shows that the distribution of Zika virus NS1 protein's electric charges is entirely different from other members of the favivirus genus. [Photo/Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences]


Chinese scientists say they have worked out the structure of the Zika virus NS1 protein.

The discovery could help researchers develop a vaccine for the virus which is transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito.

Associate research fellow from the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shi Yi, says the protein, which also exists in other viruses of the flavivirus genus, has two functions.

"First, it can help eliminate the virus from human body. Second, it can be used as a target for vaccines to locate the virus, because some antibodies will be generated by its stimulation resulting in some autoimmune diseases."

According to Shi Yi, they have not only worked out the protein's molecular structure, but also how it interacts with the host during the infection process.

Shi Yi added that this kind of research can help global prevention of the Zika virus, but said more research was needed.

"The main objective of our research is to inform people that there is a Zika virus NS1 protein that can be used as an important virus locator in the future. We can use the NS1 protein to develop vaccines and provide relevant diagnosis."

Zika virus outbreaks in over 30 countries have been blamed for a steep increase in the birth of babies with abnormally small heads, or microcephaly, as well as cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a kind of muscle weakness disease.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-04/20/content_24688830.htm

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Cheap, efficient and flexible solar cells: New world record for fullerene-free polymer solar cells -- ScienceDaily*

Date: April 19, 2016
Source: Linköping University

Summary:
Polymer solar cells can be even cheaper and more reliable thanks to a new breakthrough. This work is about avoiding costly and unstable fullerenes.​





Polymer solar cells manufactured using low-cost roll-to-roll printing technology, demonstrated here by professors Olle Inganäs (right) and Shimelis Admassie.
_Credit: Stefan Jerrevång/Linkoping university_​
Polymer solar cells can be even cheaper and more reliable thanks to a breakthrough by scientists at Linköping University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). This work is about avoiding costly and unstable fullerenes.

Polymer solar cells have in recent years emerged as a low cost alternative to silicon solar cells. In order to obtain high efficiency, fullerenes are usually required in polymer solar cells to separate charge carriers. However, fullerenes are unstable under illumination, and form large crystals at high temperatures.

Now, a team of chemists led by Professor Jianhui Hou at the CAS set a new world record for fullerene-free polymer solar cells by developing a unique combination of a polymer called PBDB-T and a small molecule called ITIC. With this combination, the sun's energy is converted with an efficiency of 11%, a value that strikes most solar cells with fullerenes, and all without fullerenes.

Feng Gao, together with his colleagues Olle Inganäs and Deping Qian at Linköping University, have characterized the loss spectroscopy of photovoltage (Voc), a key figure for solar cells, and proposed approaches to further improving the device performance.

The two research groups are now presenting their results in the high-profile journal _Advanced Materials_.

-We have demonstrated that it is possible to achieve a high efficiency without using fullerene, and that such solar cells are also highly stable to heat. Because solar cells are working under constant solar radiation, good thermal stability is very important, said Feng Gao, a physicist at the Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology, Linköping University.

-The combination of high efficiency and good thermal stability suggest that polymer solar cells, which can be easily manufactured using low-cost roll-to-roll printing technology, now come a step closer to commercialization, said Feng Gao.


*Story Source:*

The above post is reprinted from materials provided by *Linköping University*. _Note: Materials may be edited for content and length._

*Journal Reference*:

Wenchao Zhao, Deping Qian, Shaoqing Zhang, Sunsun Li, Olle Inganäs, Feng Gao, Jianhui Hou. *Fullerene-Free Polymer Solar Cells with over 11% Efficiency and Excellent Thermal Stability*. _Advanced Materials_, 2016; DOI: 10.1002/adma.201600281

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## bobsm

*Is Chinese 100-Petaflopper Around the Corner?*

April 14, 2016
Tiffany Trader

A little over one year ago, export blocks put in place by the US government threatened to derail China’s plans to upgrade its Tianhe-2 supercomputer, the world’s fastest since June 2013, to its originally planned capacity of 100 petaflops. At the time, many in the industry anticipated that the efforts to block China’s supercomputing capability by banning access to US technology from Intel and other hardware vendors would backfire.

Indeed, China was sufficiently incentivized to redouble efforts on its homegrown supercomputing program and it had the cash from the squashed Intel deal to do it. Less than six months after news of the blacklist came out, China revealed plans to build not one, but two 100-petaflops supercomputers using a variety of native chip, accelerator and interconnect technologies. The stalled Tianhe-2 upgrade was back on the table — supposedly slated for late-2016.

VR World, the same publication that broke the blacklisting story last year, is now reporting that China is on track to “debut” that fully-realized Tianhe-2 supercomputer in June at the 2016 International Supercomputing Conference in Frankfurt, Germany. If the system is early, it wouldn’t be the first time China exceeded expectations — the country launched its 33-petaflops (LINPACK) Tianhe-2 two years early.

From the VR World report:

“The new Tianhe-2 represents a hybrid design, featuring two new additions, as the old Xeon Phi cards are being phased out. Phytium Technologies recently delivered their “Mars” processors in the form of PCI Express cards that replaced the Xeon Phi cards, and motherboards to upgrade the system. Given that there are 48,000 add-in boards installed, the new 64-core design enables the system to reach its original performance targets. With the three million new ARM cores inside the Tianhe-2, its estimated Rpeak performance in the Linpack benchmark should exceed 100 PFLOPS.”

Phytium Technologies*, the progenitor of the “Mars” ARM-based processors, was founded in August 2012. Although the planned target for Tianhe-2 was 100 petaflops peak and around 80 petaflops LINPACK, VRWorld reports that there is another planned iteration (using original Xeon CPUs plus homegrown ShenWei processors and Phytium accelerator cards) sufficient to boost the machine’s top speed 2-3X further.

Tienhe-2 was built by China’s National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) in collaboration with the Chinese IT firm Inspur, using 32,000 Intel Xeon E5-2692 v2 processors and 48,000 Intel Xeon Phi 31S1P coprocessors. The machine has led the TOP500 list since June 2013 with a performance of 33.86 petaflops on the LINPACK benchmark.

China’s processor developments are sponsored by the State High-Tech Development Plan, known as the 863 Program, which is funded and administered by the Chinese government to stimulate the development of advanced technologies for the purpose of strengthening China’s homegrown industries and reducing or eliminating dependence on foreign interests.


http://www.hpcwire.com/2016/04/14/chinese-100-petaflopper-coming-sooner-expected/


*Phytium Technology is an upstart Chinese chip maker

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## bobsm

*WATCH OUT INTEL AND SAMSUNG: TSMC IS GEARING UP FOR 7NM PROCESSING WITH TRIAL PRODUCTION*
By Kevin Parrish — April 20, 2016
1



Peellden/Wikimedia

The race to shrink technology and build faster, more energy-efficient components is heating up, as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC) is pushing to beat Samsung and Intel in the 7-nanometer (nm) process technology race by launching trial production during the first half of 2017. The company originally revealed its plans in chairman Morris Chang’s report provided to shareholders on April 14.

In last week’s investors meeting, TSMC Co-CEO Mark Liu added to Chang’s report, stating that the company will likely move its 7nm process technology to volume production during the first half of 2018. He said that over twenty customers are currently “engaged” with the company regarding the new process technology, and that fifteen customer tape-outs are scheduled to take place in 2017.

“N7 is a further extension of N10 technology, with more than 60 percent in logic density gain and 30-percent to 40-percent reduction in power consumption,” Liu told investors. That is, compared to 10nm process technology, 7nm will produce chips with less power consumption and more processing capability on the same sized chip. According to Liu, TSMC’s new 7nm processing will be dedicated tomobile and “high-performance computing” applications.

What’s great about this new technology is that it uses nearly all of the same equipment (95-percent) that’s used in the 10nm processing, meaning the company doesn’t have to spend loads of money updating its foundries with tons of new equipment. This should give TSMC a competitive edge in that component manufacturing contracts with customers could be hard to beat on a pricing level.

During the meeting, Liu also talked about the company’s 10nm process technology, which will mainly target mobile applications. A number of customer tape-outs are already on-hand since the first quarter of 2016, and more will likely roll in over the next several quarters. Liu doesn’t expect a “sizable demand” for 10nm processing until the second quarter of 2017.

As a refresher, a “tape-out” is the final design of a printed circuit board or an integrated circuit. At one time, these designs were delivered to the manufacturing foundry as data stored on magnetic tape. The term also refers back to a time when printed circuit boards were mapped out by manually placing black line tape down on mylar sheets in an enlarged layout to create a photomask.

In addition to the 7nm news, TSMC recently reported its first quarter results, stating that shipments related to its 16nm and 20nm process technologies accounted for 23 percent of its wafer revenues while its 28nm business accounted for 30 percent of its wafer revenues. Another 53 percent of those wafer revenues were based on “advanced technologies.” Overall, business seemed unaffected in terms of revenue despite the earthquake in February causing a slight delay in wafer shipments.

Although Liu did not reveal during the meeting what companies have already jumped on the 7nm process bandwagon, ARM announced a multi-year agreementlast month to collaborate with TSMC on 7nm FinFET process technology to create high-performance, low-power processors. FinFET is short for Fin Field Effect Transistor, which is a 3D transistor that resembles a fin and is used in current processors due to the technology’s superior scalability. The two companies previously collaborated on chips based on 10nm and 16nm FinFET processing.



http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/tsmc-7nm-2017/

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Innovative protective suit for firefighters unveiled*
By Kong Defang (People's Daily Online) 13:25, April 21, 2016







The new protective suit for firefighters. (Photo/Beijing Daily)​
China will soon equip firefighters with a new type of protective suit, which will be multifunctional, safe and comfortable. A reporter from Beijing Daily saw the newly developed suit in the Haidian firefighting division of Beijing on April 20.

According to an official with Beijing's fire department, advanced technologies from Chinese space suits are being applied to the design of the new firefighting suit. No wonder the new suit is so impressive!

The helmet, which resembles Iron Man's helmet, boasts various functions including a built-in phone, information collection and temperature monitoring. Under the face shield is a respirator, and the red triangle on top of the helmet functions as both a headlamp and camera. When the firefighter enters the scene of a fire, the helmet's information collection system transfers what the firefighter is seeing to the remote control station. 

The helmet is also equipped with an alarm. If the firefighter is still for 20 seconds, the helmet begins to flash red and blue lights and buzz loudly. Because the suit has a location function, backup firefighters are then able to find and rescue their endangered comrade. 

The new suit also has an automatic cooling system. A tester wore the suit in a high-temperature cabin for 30 minutes and still felt comfortable. In addition, the new suit can monitor the wearer's motion, pulse and other vital signs. As soon as it enters an extreme environment , the suit goes into action to protect and assist its wearer.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists discover how brain knows it's turning *
Source: Xinhua | 2016-04-22 03:54:19 | Editor: huaxia

WASHINGTON, April 21 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers looking at macaques said Thursday they have solved the long-standing puzzle over how our brains perceive we're moving in a curvilinear trajectory, such as making turns while driving.

In daily life, our complex motion trajectories typically contain two independent components: straight-line movement and rotation.

Correspondingly, our inner ears have evolved two sets of special sensory organs: the sphere-like otoliths detect linear motion, while the semi-circular canals detect rotational movement.

Information collected by these organs is then sent to the central nervous system in the brain, where two distinct sets of neurons help us sense linear and rotational movement, but the new study identified a third set of neurons in the macaque sensory cortex that respond optimally to curved motion.

"It's a very interesting question as to why our brain evolved this way," said corresponding author Yong Gu, a neuroscientist at the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

"We don't have to have these curved motion neurons in the sensory area of the brain... Our hunch is that representation of curved motion in sensory cortex helps animals rapidly detect this type of movement, and save the working load of the decision centers for other important neural computations."

Gu and lab member Zhixian Cheng made their discovery by placing macaques in moving platforms and attaching brain electrodes to individual neurons to measure how often and when they fired.

"People have known that linear and rotational motion converged in the sensory cortex, and we found that certain neurons fire more spikes when the linear or rotational information are available at the same time for these neurons," Gu said.

"This might have been expected, but we now propose that these neurons could represent curvilinear motion."

Further research showed that neurons that perceive curved motion are widely distributed in the sensory cortex.

The findings were published in the U.S. journal Cell Reports.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## bobsm

*Chinese scientists modify gene to make humans immune to HIV*
By Cheng Yingqi in Beijing and Xu Jingxi in Guangzhou (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2016-04-22 16:21


In a major breakthrough that has the potential to revolutionize the whole fight against HIV/AIDS, Chinese scientists recently modified a gene in embryos in an attempt to make humans immune to HIV virus.

Researchers from the Guangzhou Medical University used a gene editing technique named CRISPR/Cas to replace the CCR5 gene in 26 human embryos with an HIV-resistant mutation. Only four embryos were successfully edited, while the other 22 cases failed to produce the desired results.

The research was reported in the Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics.

"In this study, we demonstrated that the HIV-resistant mutation could be introduced into early human embryos through the CRISPR system," said Fan Yong, a researcher of the Guangzhou Medical University and an author of the paper.

The CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technique, better known as the molecular Swiss army knife, is a technology developed by US scientist Jennifer Doudna and French scientist Emmanuelle Charpentier in 2012.

Since then, scientists from across the globe have been using the technology to edit animals' gene in the laboratory.

Huang Junjiu, a biologist at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, was the first to apply the technique to humans. He reported his experiment on 71 human embryos in Nature magazine in April 2015.


More @ http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-04/22/content_24766024.htm

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

April 22, 2016
*Huazhong University of Science and Technology Crowned the ASC16 Champion | HPCwire*

*Sponsored Content by Inspur *

ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge 2016 (ASC16) concluded in Wuhan on April 22. The co-host Huazhong University of Science and Technology won the championship and the e Prize with its extraordinary performance. Shanghai Jiaotong University was runner-up, and Zhejiang University won the Highest Computing Award. In addition, Nanyang Technological University, Beihang University, National University of Defense Technology and Sun Yat-sen University won the Application Innovation Awards. The most popular team prize was won by Hong Kong Baptist University and Nanyang Technological University.

ASC16 is the largest supercomputing contest in the world, participated by 175 university teams from six continents. After preliminary matches, 16 teams were selected to attend the finals held in Wuhan, China this week. The finals required participating teams to design their own supercomputing system within the constraint of 3000 watt and apply it to various frontier scientific and engineering projects, such as optimized benchmark test, ocean simulation, material science, life genes and in-depth learning.

In the e Price challenge, team Huazhong University of Technology designed a outstanding indepth neural network optimization solution addressing the in-depth learning DNN intelligent voice recognition, which achieved highly precise training model for around 600,000 voice data involving English, Chinese Mandarin and Sichuan Dialect, improving the computing performance by 108 times the highest.

Team Zhejiang University used highly optimized isomer accelerating supercomputing system to run the internationally accepted HPL benchmark test, and made the new world record with a floating point computing speed at 12.03 trillion times per second.

Jack Dongarra, Chair of ASC Expert Committee, one of the sponsor of Top500 list in the world, and professor of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and University of Tennessee said in the interview: “So many students gathered together in the contest. The energy inspired is truly meaningful to the development of supercomputers. The contest will influence the students’ future and guide their career development. This type of contest is fantastic.”

Hu Leijun, Vice President of Inspur Group, the sponsoring organization of the contest, believed that the computing capability had become a new production element along with the rapid development in information technology, bringing more changes to the society, production and life. With this trend, supercomputers were no longer a cost, but an investment. Its development would become one of the important element symbolizing the overall strength of a country.

Chen Jianguo, Vice Chancellor of the host Huazhong University of Science and Technology commented that ASC16 closely followed the latest development of information technology and linked the technological innovation with practical needs in social life. Its commitment to the education of young students in supercomputers would help to cultivate a group of high-quality supercomputing talents with international visions.

ASC16 was co-organized by ASC Community, Inspur and Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Initiated by China, ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge aims at promoting exchanges and cultivation of young supercomputing talents among countries and regions, improving the application and R&D in supercomputing and promoting technological and industrial innovation through supercomputing.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*A Pinch of Salt Completes the Recipe for 2-D Materials in Supercapacitors*
By Dexter Johnson
Posted 22 Apr 2016 | 20:00 GMT

In joint research involving Drexel University in Philadelphia, and Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) and Tsinghua University, both in China, scientists have found a way to formulate two-dimensional materials that are purer and have surface areas much closer to their theoretical maximum. The expected benefit: supercapacitors that store energy far better than ever. How did they do it? It turns out that they just needed to add a pinch of salt to coax the best out of them.

In research described in the journal _Nature Communications_, the international team used the surface of salt crystals to serve as growth templates for transitional metal oxides. That new ingredient, say the researchers, makes the final product bake up bigger and better.



_*Continue -> *_A Pinch of Salt Completes the Recipe for 2-D Materials in Supercapacitors - IEEE Spectrum

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## SBUS-CXK

Kolaps said:


> Like Taiwan....
> 
> I feel mainland China research projects are following the trend in the West (to help Westerners), rather than for helping the local people to improve their living standard.


Basic salary to 1400 RMB in Tibet. About 14000 rupees. All in all, life is improving. The middle class has grown. This is China.


----------



## bobsm

*Chinese Scientists Discover How Brain Knows it's Turning*
*Apr 22, 2016*

*





Photo provided by Xinqiao Hospital of Third Military Medical University in southwest China's Chongqing on Aug. 5, 2015 shows a 3D image of white matter of brain by 3.0 tesla (3.0T) MRI. (Xinhua)

Chinese researchers looking at macaques said Thursday they have solved the long-standing puzzle over how our brains perceive we're moving in a curvilinear trajectory, such as making turns while driving.

In daily life, our complex motion trajectories typically contain two independent components: straight-line movement and rotation.

Correspondingly, our inner ears have evolved two sets of special sensory organs: the sphere-like otoliths detect linear motion, while the semi-circular canals detect rotational movement.

Information collected by these organs is then sent to the central nervous system in the brain, where two distinct sets of neurons help us sense linear and rotational movement, but the new study identified a third set of neurons in the macaque sensory cortex that respond optimally to curved motion.

"It's a very interesting question as to why our brain evolved this way," said corresponding author Yong Gu, a neuroscientist at the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

"We don't have to have these curved motion neurons in the sensory area of the brain... Our hunch is that representation of curved motion in sensory cortex helps animals rapidly detect this type of movement, and save the working load of the decision centers for other important neural computations."

Gu and lab member Zhixian Cheng made their discovery by placing macaques in moving platforms and attaching brain electrodes to individual neurons to measure how often and when they fired.

"People have known that linear and rotational motion converged in the sensory cortex, and we found that certain neurons fire more spikes when the linear or rotational information are available at the same time for these neurons," Gu said.

"This might have been expected, but we now propose that these neurons could represent curvilinear motion."

Further research showed that neurons that perceive curved motion are widely distributed in the sensory cortex.

The findings were published in the U.S. journal Cell Reports. (Xinhua)


http://english.cas.cn/newsroom/news/201604/t20160422_162249.shtml

*

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## bobsm

*Scientists are developing graphene solar panels that generate energy when it rains*
Non-stop renewables.

DAVID NIELD 8 APR 2016

Solar power is making huge strides as a reliable, renewable energy source, but there's still a lot of untapped potential in terms of the efficiency of photovoltaic cells and what happens at night and during inclement weather. Now a solution has been put forward in the form of producing energy from raindrops.

Key to the new process is graphene: a 'wonder' material we've heard plenty about before. Because raindrops are not made up of pure water, and contain various salts that split up into positive and negative ions, a team from the Ocean University of China in Qingdao thinks we can harness power via a simple chemical reaction. Specifically, they want to use graphene sheets to separate the positively charged ions in rain (including sodium, calcium, and ammonium) and in turn generate electricity.

Early tests, using slightly salty water to simulate rain, have been promising: the researchers were able to generate hundreds of microvolts and achieve a respectable 6.53 percent solar-to-electric conversion efficiency from their customised solar panel. 

For the experiment, the team used an inexpensive, thin-film solar cell called a dye-sensitised solar cell. After adding a layer of graphene to the cell, it was put on a transparent backing of indium tin oxide and plastic. The resulting 'all-weather' solar cell concept was then equipped to produce power from both sunshine and the rain substitute.

What's happening here is that the positively charged ions are binding to the ultra-thin layer of graphene and forming a double layer (technically referred to as a pseudocapacitor) with the electrons already present. The potential energy difference between the two layers is strong enough to generate an electric current.

The experiment is still just in the 'proof of concept' phase, so there's work to be done, but the researchers hope their findings can "guide the design" of future all-weather solar cells and contribute to the growing influence of renewable energy.

They're now working on adjusting the technology to handle the variety of ions found in real raindrops and figuring how to generate enough electricity from the typically low concentrations they come in.

It's not the first time graphene has been used to boost solar energy technologies: earlier this year, a team from the UK was able to create a graphene-based material that's very effective at absorbing ambient heat and light, and which could eventually lead to solar panels that can work with the diffuse sunlight that finds its way indoors. 

If these scientists get their way, in the future, photovoltaic cells may not be hampered by a lack of direct sunshine at all.

The study has been published in the journal Angewandte Chemie.

http://www.sciencealert.com/how-graphene-could-help-solar-panels-produce-energy-when-it-s-raining

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*China’s S & T talents reach 81m *
Updated: Apr 24,2016 10:45 AM Xinhua

Personnel involved in scientific research and technology development in China had reached 81.14 million, the world’s largest, by the end of 2014, said a research report.

The report on China’s science and technology human resource in 2014, issued by China Association for Science and Technology, said the statistics cover people who have obtained a natural science diploma above junior college level and those who do S & T related jobs despite lack of a diploma.

By the end of 2014, 76.21 million people belonged to the first category, and 4.93 million the second category, according to the report.

The S & T human resource is profiled as aged 33.73 in average and having 36.6 percent as women. A majority, 68.3 percent, of them either have a degree or work in the field of engineering, followed by medicine, science and agriculture.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese security scanners detect TATP*
2016-04-23 07:46 Xinhua

A Chinese company is ready to market new security scanners which can detect triacetone triperoxide (TATP), the explosive used by terrorists in the Paris attacks.

An article published in the Journal of Analytical Chemistry on March 31 said the scanner can detect the explosives including TATP and hexamethylene triperoxide diamine (HMTD), commonly used in suicide bombings but undetectable by conventional security scanners.

Dalian Ruptech Co. Ltd. bought the patent for 20 million yuan (3 million U.S. dollars) from the developer -- Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and plans to manufacture 800 to 1,000 scanners each year.

The explosives TATP and HMTD were used in both the Belgium bombings in March and the Paris attacks in 2015. The explosives can be simply synthesized, and materials for making them are easily obtained. Since the explosives contain no nitro groups, they are difficult to detected using current security scanners.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

* China exports nuclear fusion heating facility to France *



New China TV

*Published on Apr 25, 2016*
A research team in central China's Anhui Province has produced its first set of ICRF antenna, a crucial auxiliary heating facility for nuclear fusion reactors.

The institute under China's Academy of Sciences delivered the antenna to France's WEST nuclear research team on Monday.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

* China produces key component for nuclear fusion facility *
Updated: Apr 26,2016 8:42 AM Xinhua






Photo taken on April 25, 2016 shows the ion cyclotron resonant heating (ICRH) antenna, a key part of nuclear fusion facility, at the Chinese Academy of Sciences institute of plasma physics (ASIPP) in Hefei, capital of East China’s Anhui province.[Photo/Xinhua]​
HEFEI — A world-class ion cyclotron resonant heating (ICRH) antenna, a key part of nuclear fusion facility, was delivered to a French institute in Anhui province on April 25.

The antenna was manufactured by the Chinese Academy of Sciences institute of plasma physics (ASIPP), and delivered to the Institute for Magnetic Fusion Research (IRFM) under French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA).

The antenna, which has reached French nuclear power standard, will be used to heat plasma for the IRFM Wolfram Environment in Steady-state Tokamak (WEST), said Song Yuntao, deputy director of ASIPP.

The antenna is a collaborative design and a Chinese production, said Gabriele Fioni, director of the department of international relations of CEA.
​





Guests view the ion cyclotron resonant heating (ICRH) antenna, a key part of nuclear fusion facility, at the Chinese Academy of Sciences institute of plasma physics (ASIPP) in Hefei, capital of East China’s Anhui province, April 25, 2016.[Photo/Xinhua]
​
The cooperation on fusion between ASIPP and IRFM began in the 1980s. The two sides signed a contract in 2013 to establish a joint laboratory and will produce two more antennas for the WEST project.

Founded in 1978 in Hefei City, ASIPP has been focused on the research of controlled thermonuclear fusion energy. The institute has mastered advanced technology in high temperature plasma physical experiments and nuclear fusion project, according to institute director Wan Baonian.

Nuclear fusion is considered a clean and safe source of power and is being widely pursued by researchers around the world.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

_The following is news from april, last year._


*IAEA safety review for Chinese small reactor*
21 April 2015

*China's ACP100 multi-purpose small modular reactor (SMR) design is to undergo a safety review following the recent signing of an agreement between China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).*

CNNC announced today that it had signed an agreement with the IAEA on 16 April for the *IAEA to undertake a Generic Reactor Safety Review (GRSR) of the ACP100.*

The GRSR process reviews the completely- or partially-developed safety cases of new reactor designs that are not yet in the licensing stage. It involves an international team of experts evaluating design safety case claims against selected and applicable IAEA safety standards.

*The review is scheduled to begin in July and is expected to take seven months to complete*, CNNC said. During this time, the IAEA will examine the reactor's safety, prepare environmental analysis reports and look at other aspects of the design, the company said.

The ACP100 is a 'key project' of China's 12th Five-Year Plan. The preliminary design of the reactor was completed in 2014, ready for construction to start in 2015, with operation following in 2017. However, the design still awaits approval from the National Development and Reform Commission.

The design incorporates passive safety features and will be installed underground. Its 310 MWt pressurized water reactor produces about 100 to 150 MWe, and power plants comprising two to eight of these are envisaged, with 60-year design life and 24-month refueling. The reactor can also be used for desalination, as well as industrial and district heat applications. The design could also be used on a floating nuclear power plant.

A demonstration plant featuring two ACP100 reactors is planned for Putian in China's Fujian Province.

CNNC's larger ACP1000 reactor design successfully passed an IAEA generic reactor safety review last December. It was the first Chinese-designed reactor to have undergone review by the IAEA.

_Researched and written
by World Nuclear News_

***#####***

*我自主设计小堆ACP100通过安全审查 小堆发展迎里程碑*
*China independently designed small reactors ACP100 passed safety review, welcome developmental milestone*

发表时间：2016-04-26 08:50 来源：科技日报 
Published: 2016-04-26 08:50 Source: Science and Technology Daily​
　　世界小堆发展迎来重要里程碑。记者25日从中核集团获悉，国际原子能机构（IAEA）近日向其提交了ACP100通用反应堆安全审查终版报告， 中核集团自主设计、自主研发的多用途模块化小型反应堆ACP100成为世界首个通过IAEA安全审查的小堆技术。这也是继ACP1000之后，中核集团又 一个通过IAEA反应堆通用设计审查的自主三代核电技术。

我自主设计小堆ACP100通过安全审查 小堆发展迎重要里程碑 -- 最新报道 -- 中国科技网

Translation:

World small reactor development has ushered in an important milestone. Our reporter on the 25th learned from China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), that International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has recently submitted to them the final version of ACP100 common reactor safety review report. *CNNC independently design, self-developed multi-purpose modular small reactor ACP100 has become the world's first small reactor technology to pass safety review by the IAEA .*

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*The search for smarter energy and water strategies*
April 25, 2016
By: Wallace Ravven







Ashok Gadgil and postdoctoral researcher Chinmayee Subban are refining an affordable water treatment technology to produce fresh drinking water from brackish water, one of many projects supported by CERC-WET. Photo: Peg Skorpinski​
As the changing climate disrupts familiar weather patterns, many countries face a dual threat: swamping along the coasts, but also unexpected shrinking freshwater supplies in many regions.

“Water has never been evenly distributed around the world, but droughts and an alarming decrease in groundwater create potentially catastrophic conditions,” says Ashok Gadgil, Deputy for Science and Technology for the Energy Technologies Area at LBNL and professor of environmental engineering at UC Berkeley.

Gadgil is the principal investigator on the U.S. side of a new $64 million collaboration between China and the United States to develop strategies and technologies to conserve water in energy production and use.

“Energy and water are coupled,” he says. “We require energy to transport water and to desalinate water. At the same time, we require great volumes of water to produce energy, whether for hydroelectric power or cooling of thermal power plants.

“The challenges of meeting energy and water needs on the societal scale are two of the most critical problems of this century for both developing and industrial societies.”

The Clean Energy Research Center for Water Energy Technologies (CERC-WET) brings the expertise of American and Chinese scientists, engineers, climate modelers and planners to take on the challenge. Researchers from both countries will be able to demonstrate new technologies on test beds in China, Gadgil says.

“Let’s say we develop the technology for running gas turbines using less water — say a huge gas turbine that requires a test rig the size of California Hall at UC Berkeley. We could run tests for the pilot turbine at a Chinese research institute. The Chinese are hungry for this. They need to build new plants no matter what. With a new turbine technology demonstrated in China, the Chinese will be publishing the results. That gets the new technology a much more credible entry into the Chinese market.”







About 140 million people worldwide are affected by arsenic contamination in drinking water. Gadgil and his lab developed an inexpensive arsenic remediation technology, now being introduced in India and Bangladesh. Gadgil, PhD student Siva Bandaru and project scientist Susan Amrose discuss arsenic removal chemistry at a rural high school in India where they were setting up a field experiment.​
Gadgil has learned first-hand — and many times — how institutional buy-in boosts the chances for adoption of even the simplest new technologies. After receiving a masters degree in physics from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, and his physics Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, he spent five years back in India working for a non-profit. His work focused on energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies and policies for the energy-strapped India.

In the early 1990s, only about a third of India’s 130 million households were electrified, and most of these households were so poor that the government subsidized their basic electricity use. Many families had only an incandescent bulb hanging on a wire.

Gadgil argued that the electric utility should rent highly efficient, but relatively costly Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs) to these households. The utility could borrow money at four percent a year to buy the CFLs, while individuals would likely be charged as much as ten percent interest per month by moneylenders.

Even with the added rental cost, he concluded that the bulbs’ efficiency would cut net household electric bills. He and his colleagues tested and proved the benefit of utility-sponsored energy-efficiency lighting programs in a few developing countries starting with Mexico.

Today, more than 100 million poor households in more than 20 developing countries deploy such programs, saving energy and saving about $ 5 billion per year on electric bills.

“Every time there is a wicked problem, we should look for what are the wrong-headed incentives that keep it in place. It’s not like you can simply give someone a new light bulb. You need to understand the feedback loops that are often complex and interacting that allow a wicked problem to persist. You need to find a way to cut the Gordian knot.”

In the 1990s, Gadgil developed an inexpensive water disinfection process for rural areas of developing countries. The invention earned him Discover magazine’s 1996 Discover Award for the most significant environmental invention of the year. Now it serves more than five million people daily, and Gadgil estimates that it saves about 1,000 children annually from diarrheal deaths.

More recently, he and his students devised a clean-burning stove for use in rural Africa. The stove uses only about half as much wood as traditional wood stoves, saving families time and money, and reducing exposure to toxic fumes. More than 45,000 of these stoves are now in use in Darfur, Sudan.

The CERC-WET effort, of course, aims to develop much larger-scale technologies. But whether it’s needed for billions of light bulbs or thousands of factories, Gadgil says, energy must be produced more efficiently and the water used for societal purposes must be conserved, reused and recycled using less energy.

“There’s no doubt that this is a challenge of international scope, and it’s no overstatement to say that addressing it is essential for a prosperous and sustainable future.”
_________
_The Department of Energy recently selected UC Berkeley to lead a multi-million dollar US-China research consortium focused on the energy-water nexus. The US-China Clean Energy Research Center for Water-Energy Technologies (CERC-WET) focuses on new technologies to reduce industrial water use, yield hydroelectric power and treat water more efficiently. At the center of this $64M effort is DOE funding to Berkeley and its partners, and Chinese government funding to research institutions in that country. A similar effort already exists at Berkeley Lab focused on enhancing the energy efficiency of buildings._

The search for smarter energy and water strategies | Research UC Berkeley


----------



## JSCh

*China's first heavy-ion medical accelerator ready for clinical trials*
By Shan Juan (chinadaily.com.cn) Updated: 2016-04-26 11:12






The heavy-ion medical accelerator in Gansu. [Photo/IC]​
An advanced piece of medical equipment that is used in cutting-edge cancer treatments has been developed in China, making it the fourth country in the world to possess such technology.

The heavy-ion medical accelerator generates particles for a type of radiotherapy that aims to cure malignant tumors by bombarding them with high-energy charged heavy-ion beams.

Currently, only Japan, Germany and the United States have the capacity to produce such medical accelerators.

Developed by the Modern Physics Institute of the Chinese Academy of Science and a subsidiary company in northwest Gansu province, the new accelerator is now undergoing quality assessment tests and will have to pass a clinical trial before it is approved by the drug authority, according to Xiao Guoqing, the institute director.

"It's a great milestone as it marks an end of China's long term dependence on imported large-scale radiotherapy equipment," he said.

According to Xiao, the accelerator is the result of six decades of related research, with development on the technology itself starting in 2012.

About 30 patients will be recruited in Gansu for the clinical trials and "if everything runs smoothly it's expected to formally receive patients by the end of the year," said Ye Yancheng, head of the Wuwei Cancer Hospital, which is one of three hospitals conducting the trials.

The public hospital in Wuwei, a small city about three hours' drive from Lanzhou, bought the first machine under a joint development and technology transfer contract with the developer for a price of 550 million yuan ($84 million). Local governments and several other private companies have also contributed to the investment.

A 1,600-bed subsidiary hospital called Gansu Heavy Ion Cancer Center is now under construction, where the accelerator will be placed and receive at least 2,000 patients each year, Ye said.

"Cancer patients from abroad are welcome as well," he said.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## bobsm

*China develops graphene electronic paper*
Updated: 2016-04-27 21:27
(Xinhua)

GUANGZHOU -- China has developed a new electronic paper, a huge breakthrough that will catapult the material to a new level. 

The new material has been heralded as "the world's first graphene electronic paper," by Chen Yu, general manager of Guangzhou OED Technologies, which developed it in partnership with a company in Chongqing. 

Graphene is the world's strongest and lightest known material; a single layer of graphene is only 0.335 nanometers thick, and it can conduct heat and electricity. 

The material can be used to create hard or flexible graphene displays, used in electronic products such as e-readers and wearable smart devices. 

Compared with traditional e-papers, graphene e-paper is more pliable and has more intensity and its high-light transmittance means optical displays will be much brighter. 

In addition, graphene is derived from carbon, meaning production costs will be much lower than for traditional e-papers, which use the rare, expensive metal indium. 

E-papers have been produced on a commercial scale since 2014. Compared with liquid crystal displays, e-papers are thinner, bendable and energy efficient, meaning products are more portable. 

The team's graphene e-paper will be put into production within a year.

http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-04/27/content_24909192.htm

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

* Reflecting on success *
Source:Xinhua Published: 2016-4-28 1:03:01



Engineers at the Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences surround their newly developed silicon carbide mirror, which has a diameter of 4.03 meters. The larger the mirror, the higher the resolution and the greater the light-gathering power of the telescope or satellite in which it is used. Photo: Xinhua

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*China develops advanced PET scan technology*
(People's Daily Online) 14:25, April 28, 2016






China has developed the world's first clinical all-digital positron emission tomography (PET) scan which helps significantly with the early detection of cancer.(People.cn/Photo)​
It was announced on Wednesday that Chinese scientists have developed the world's first clinical all-digital positron emission tomography (PET) scan, which is used for checking the whole human body, and also helps significantly with the early detection of cancer.

Developed by Huazhong University of Science and Technology, the new PET represents today's cutting-edge medical imaging technology. In addition to cancer prevention, the new technology will be used to diagnose cardiovascular and neurological diseases.

The all-digital PET has been granted 81 patents at home and abroad, and will be put into clinical application soon, said professor Xie Qingguo, who led the research for the project.

The machine consists of more than 300 modules that take just five minutes to scan an entire body. The resolution of its scans reaches 2.2 millimeters, which is twice as good as the capability of current imported models.






China has developed the world's first clinical all-digital positron emission tomography (PET) scan which helps significantly with the early detection of cancer.(People.cn/Photo)​

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*China Delivers First Home-design Mega Component to Its "Manmade Sun" ITER*
By Xi Zhu (People's Daily Online) 06:50, April 29, 2016




The first major transformer of the Pulsed Power Electrical Network (PPEN) has been shipped by China from the Tianjin port on April 17, according to China International Nuclear Fusion Energy Execution Center on April 27, 2016. The mega component is expected to arrive in France in this June.

As a member of International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project, China has been responsible for the design and manufacture of the first major transformer of PPEN for ITER. The 400 KV transformer has a capacity of 300 MVA, weighing 278 tonnes. It is 13.4 meters in length, 4 meters in width and 4.7 meters in height.

ITER is an international nuclear fusion research and engineering megaproject. It is the world's largest magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment in the Cadarache facility, south of France. China joined the project in 2013. ITER’s other partners include U.S., India, Japan, the European Union, and the Republic of Korea.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 28-Apr-2016
* Fiber optic biosensor-integrated microfluidic chip to detect glucose levels *
_By integrating microfluidic chips with fiber optic biosensors, researchers in China are creating ultrasensitive lab-on-a-chip devices to detect glucose levels_

The Optical Society






Fiber optic biosensor-integrated microfluidic chip detects glucose levels from droplets of sweat.
*Credit: *Dr. A. P. Zhang and team, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University​
WASHINGTON - Insulin deficiency and hyperglycemia are two well-known culprits behind diabetes, both of which are reflected in blood glucose concentrations. Now, researchers are working to create ultrasensitive lab-on-a-chip devices to quickly measure glucose concentrations with the goal of developing device for early diagnosis and prevent of diabetes

A team of researchers from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Zhejiang University in China report integrating fiber optic glucose sensors into a microfluidic chip to create portable, high-performance, low-cost devices for measuring glucose levels. In a paper published this week in the journal _Biomedical Optics Express_, from The Optical Society (OSA).



*Con't reading -> *Fiber optic biosensor-integrated microfluidic chip to detect glucose levels | EurekAlert! Science News

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## bobsm

*Shenzhen's jetpack company takes off with 200orders*
By Chai Hua in Shenzhen, Guangdong (China Daily)Updated: 2016-04-27 07:29






A Martin Jetpack, the world's first practical and commercial jetpack, which is developed by KuangChiScience, an innovative high-tech startup in Shenzhen, Guangdong province.[Provided to China Daily]

Shenzhen, the innovative city in southern China's Guangdong province, has received resultsfrom its enormous investment in some of the most cutting-edge technologies in the world.

KuangChi Science Ltd, an innovative high-tech startup in the city, has received 200 orders forits Martin Jetpack, the world's first practical and commercial jetpack, at the price of 2 millionyuan ($308,640) each.

"Our buyers are from all over the world," said Zhang Yangyang, CEO of the company. "Forexample, a rescue team in Dubai ordered about 30 units because the jetpack is easier tooperate than helicopters in a city full of skyscrapers."

The jetpack is powered by a gasoline engine driving twin ducted fans, which producesufficient thrust to lift the aircraft and a pilot, and to enable sustained flight. It can operateclose to or between buildings, near trees and in confined spaces that other aircraft are unableto access.

The jetpack can carry commercial payloads of up to 120 kilograms with a maximum flyingtime of 45 minutes at a speed of up to 80 km per hour.

The innovative aircraft is mainly produced in New Zealand, but Zhang told China Daily theywill transfer the entire manufacturing process to China in the future.

The startup was established by five students who came back to China after studying abroad,said Zhang.

"In the beginning, almost everyone was very skeptical of the concept of the personal jetpack,"Zhang said.

"It was Shenzhen's recognition that makes our technological development and researchpossible," Zhang added.

The team was brought into Shenzhen through "peacock campaign", a plan the ShenzhenScience and Technology Innovation Commission launched to attract tech talent.

The plan has played a key role in gearing up the city to develop into a key zone for innovationand the development of modern services in the region.

Since 2011, the commission has lured 64 "peacock" teams to the city, most of which havenow grown into striking high-tech enterprises such as DJI Innovation Technology Co,KuangChi, Royole and BGI. These teams received government's financial support of tens ofmillions yuan each.

In addition, the plan is only one of the investments the city has made in promoting innovativeand emerging industries. The city's R&D investment accounted for 4 percent of its GDP lastyear, which is about the same as of South Korea.

Shenzhen Mayor Xu Qin said the investment was important for the city's long-term economicdevelopment.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/tech/2016-04/27/content_24877981.htm

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

http://www.hpcwire.com/2016/05/02/china-focuses-exascale-goals/

*China Sets Ambitious Goal to Reach Exascale by 2020*
Tiffany Trader




At the 12th HPC Connections Workshop in Wuhan, China, Beihang University Professor Depei Qian disclosed new information regarding HPC development in China and exascale plans that are shaping up under China’s 13th five-year plan (2016-2020). Since 1996 Professor Professor Qian has served on the expert committee for the National High-tech Research & Development Program (the 863 program). Currently, he is the chief scientist of the 863 key project on high productivity computer and application service environment.

Professor Qian acknowledged that despite export restrictions on processor and software technology imposed by the US, work continues on two 100 petaflops (peak) systems: the next iteration of Tianhe-2, installed at the National Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou, and the upcoming Sunway system coming to the Jiangnan Institute of Computer Technology in Wuxi, China, near Shanghai. The official line is that these systems will be ready “by the end of the year,” but there have been rumblings that one or both of these systems will be introduced during the ISC’16 event in June.

In a Tuesday session at ISC, Professor Dr. Guangwen Yang, the director of the National Supercomputer Center at Wuxi, China, is slated to deliver talk titled “The New Sunway Supercomputer System at Wuxi.” Dr. Yang will describe the hardware and software elements that make up the system and some of the applications that will be deployed on it. A notice for that talk mentions that the system will be formally announced this summer.

China has been known to play its cards close to the vest before and launched its current supercomputing star, Tianhe-2, two years ahead of schedule. With a theoretical peak speed of 54.9 petaflops and a LINPACK rating of 33.86 petaflops, Tienhe-2 (the name means “Milky Way”) has been the world’s fastest number-cruncher since it debuted on the June 2013 TOP500 list.

Both systems were developed under the auspices of China’s 12th five-year plan (2011 to 2015). Also under this program, China has been exploring new operation models and mechanism for CNGrid (China’s national HPC environment) and developing cloud-like application villages over CNGrid to promote applications.

The implementation scheme of the second phase of Tienhe-2 was evaluated and approved in July 2014. The original plan was to use next-generation Intel Xeon Phi (Knights Landing) processors for the upgrade path but due to export blocks put in place by the US, China was stimulated to accelerate its native chip development efforts. The new plan relies on Chinese made processors. “The development of the new FeiTeng processor is underway and we are waiting for the processor to upgrade the Tianhe-2 system,” said Professor Quin.

The second 100 petaflops system will use the next-generation Chinese-made ShenWei chips and will be implemented together with a general purpose cluster system of 1 petaflops performance. This configuration is designed to meet a wide variety of application requirements.

*CNGrid*

The CNGrid service environment is a major resource of computing and storage across China. Currently, this environment is enabled by the CNGrid Suite, a software package used for the operation of the environment, Qian noted. There are 14 nodes altogether, more than 8 petaflops aggregated computing power and more than 15 petabytes of storage. The organizers have deployed more than 400 software applications and tools and also use this environment to support more than 1,000 projects.

Domain-oriented application villages are being established on top of CNGrid to provide services to the users. There are three current application villages under development: industrial product design and optimization, new drug discovery and digital media.

China has also deployed a number of parallel software development efforts to support fusion simulation, CFD for aircraft design, drug discovery, rendering for digital media, structural mechanics for large machinery, and simulation for electro-magnetic environment. The level of parallelism required is more than 300,000 cores with an efficiency of more than 30 percent.

*Challenges*




Professor Qian provided an overview of China’s main weaknesses, the most significant being a gap in kernel technologies and the lack of a suitable accelerator for the Tienhe-2 upgrade on account of the US embargo. “Currently there is no available accelerator to upgrade the system and it’s a major issue from the point of view of the Chinese government,” he said. “We had to change our plan and rely on our own processors. We are in urgent need for the system software, for the domestic processor, for the tool software and also the application software. Without an ecosystem around the domestic processors, we will not succeed in this respect.”

Also noted were a weakness in novel devices — memory storage and network as well as large-scale parallel algorithms and programs, system software, commercial software. “This is a very special phenomenon in China,” said Qian. “Currently China relies on the imported commercial application software, that software is very expensive and also limited in parallelism and limited by regulations. The center in Guangzhou cannot freely purchase system software from the vendor.” The third weakness is one shared by many countries: a talent shortage. “We don’t have enough people to work in HPC because either they only know the IT side or the domain side. We need more talented people that are also cross-disciplinary,” stated Qian.

*13th Five-Year Plan Targets Exascale*

After updating the continued supercomputing progress being made under the 12th five-year plan, Qian walked through brand-new elements of China’s 13th five-year plan, which puts into motion one of the most ambitious exascale programs in the world. If successful the program will stand up an exaflops supercomputer by the end of 2020 within a 35 MW power limit.

China is in the midst of overhauling its national research system and restructuring 100 programs into five tracks: Basic research program; mega-research program; key research and development program; enterprise-oriented research program; research centers and talents program.

The new track that is being focused on in the session is the third one – the key research and development program. A proposal for the track-3 key project on HPC was submitted in September 2015 and launched on February 2016.

The major pillars for the key project are developing exascale computers, promoting computer industry by technology transfer and a China-controlled HPC technology set. The major tasks are next-generation supercomputing development, CNGrid upgrading and transformation, and domain HPC applications development. A robust supercomputing program is seen as a critical for addressing grand challenge problems spanning the environment, energy, climate, medicine, industry and science.






According to Professor Qian, the number one priority task is the development of an exascale supercomputer, based on a multi-objective optimized architecture that balances performance, energy consumption programmability, reliability and cost.

To achieve this goal, China is funding research into novel high performance interconnects with 3-D chip packaging, silicon photonics and on-chip networks. Programming models for heterogeneous computers will emphasize ease in writing programs and exploitation of performance of the heterogeneous architectures.

The program includes the development of prototype systems for verification of the exascale computer technologies. The computer scientists will explore possible exascale computer architectures, interconnects which can support more than 10,000 nodes, and energy efficiency technologies, as power demand is known to be one of the biggest obstacles toward exascale.

The exascale prototype will be about 512 nodes, offering 5-10 teraflops-per-node, 10-20 Gflops/watt, point to point bandwidth greater than 200 Gbps. MPI latency should be less than 1.5 us, said Qian. Development will also include system software and three typical applications that will be used to verify effectiveness.

From there, work will begin on an efficient computing node and a scheme for high-performance processor/accelerator design.






“Based on those key technology developments, we will finally build the exascale system,” said Qian. “Our goal is not so ambitious – it is to have exaflops in peak. We are looking for a LINPACK efficiency of greater than 60 percent. Memory is rather limited, about 10 petabytes, with exabyte levels of storage.

“We don’t think we can reach the 20 megawatts system goal in less than five years so our goal is about 35 megawatts for the system; that means 30 Gflops/watt energy efficiency. The expected interconnect performance is greater than 500 Gbps.”






The final goal of the exascale program is technology transfer. Qian said that China will work to field high-end domain-oriented servers based on exascale system technologies. These servers will take advantage of the advances at the node, the interconnect, scalable I/O, storage, energy savings, reliability and application software.

The professor also spoke at length about China’s software strategies.”We cannot distinguish key technologies from applications, so there will be a joint effort in this direction.” Demo applications span a numerical nuclear reactor, a numerical aircraft, a numerical earth and a numerical engine.

The plan is to transfer some of the software into products to be adopted by a minimum of 50 users. To support this effort, China will establish three national-level research and development centers for HPC application software.

The professor emphasized that China’s “self-control” strategy to eliminate dependence on foreign tech doesn’t just refer to the processor and other hardware. “One of the efforts reflected in our plan is to develop parallel algorithms and parallel libraries for the system to improve the capability of developing modern-scale systems,” he said.

The final new element of China’s renovated program is the development of a platform for education that will provide computing resources and service to undergraduate and graduate students.

A call for proposals for the new key project was issued on February 19, 2016. The proposals will be reviewed over the next two months and then the selected projects will be announced.


----------



## JSCh

*Research shows DNA dating back 45,000 years ago*
By Cheng Yingqi (chinadaily.com.cn) Updated: 2016-05-02 23:06



​Interspecies sex between ancient humans and Neanderthals – a relative of our ancestors who had smaller figure and low, flat, elongated skulls like dwarfs in the in The Lord of the Rings – had given 1.6 to 1.8 percent Neanderthals' gene to every one in Europe and Asia nowadays.

An International research team led by Fu Qiaomei from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences shows the reason that we did not inherit the dwarfs' figure is because their gene was eliminated by the process of natural selection.

The research drew the conclusion after analyzing genome-wide data from 51 Eurasians lived 45,000 to 7,000 years ago. Their findings were published as in Nature on Monday.

"Before our research, it was believed that the decrease in the proportion of Neanderthal ancestry in Eurasians was the result of interspecies sex with other human groups that diluted the Neanderthal's gene," said Fu.

"However, our research finds that the Neanderthal's gene decreased fast and steadily from between 37,000 and 14,000 years ago, in a period that there was not major admixture of other population outside of Europe."

Over this period of time, the proportion of Neanderthals ancestry in Eurasians decreased from six percent to around two percent within descents of a single founding population.

"This suggests that the Neanderthal's gene was eliminated in the evolution," Fu said.

Moreover, the influence of Neanderthal's origin in modern human is more muted in major functional gene fragments than in other genome parts, which points to the same conclusion.




"The Neanderthals might have had more inferior genes that their part did not manage to survive," Fu said.

An earlier research published by Nature in December 2013 found that the A gene that increases the risks for Type 2 diabetes was inherited from the Neanderthals.

Other studies suggested that modern Europeans and Asians have taken over the Neanderthals' fair skin and a number of their diseases such as lupus and Crohn's Disease.

David Reich, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and co-senior author of the paper, said, "This study raises by about tenfold the number of ice aged hunter-gatherers for which there is ancient DNA, and in so doing, it makes it possible to track genetic change over time."

"It's a great privilege to be able to work on these samples; it's like being an art historian given full access to the treasures of the Louvre."

Co-senior author Svante Pääbo said, "Prior to this work, we had a static view of the first 30,000 years of modern human history in Europe. Now we can begin to see how people moved around and mixed with one another during this period."

The second major surprise came when the researchers found another previously unknown population turnover: the Europeans started to show a genetic relationship to present-day Near Easterners during the first major warming period 14,000 years ago, some 6,000 years earlier than the agriculture established connection between the two parts of world.

The authors speculate that it could be the warming weather rather than development of agriculture - as it was previously believed - that drove early Near East residents to Europe and led to the gene fusion.

Fu, from Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said,"The goal of our research is to figure out what happened to the human ancestors during the last ice age and its influence to modern people."

The research, as Fu said, is the largest-scale ancient DNA research on ancient humans living 45,000 to 10,000 years ago.

"Previous researches usually include genome-wide data on only one or two Upper Paleolithic individuals. But this research managed to collect valid genome-wide data from 51 individuals from a more than 100 sample bases."

#####​The genetic history of Ice Age Europe : Nature : Nature Publishing Group

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

http://phys.org/news/2016-05-technology-metre-aperture-spherical-telescope.html


*The technology behind the Five hundred metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST)*
*May 5, 2016*



The 500 metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) under construction. Credit: NAOC

The National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) has teamed up with CSIRO engineers in the development of the world's largest single dish telescope – the Five hundred metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST).

With a diameter of half a kilometre wide, FAST will dwarf the current largest single-dish telescope, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. It will also be one of the most sensitive, able to receive weaker and more distant radio signals, helping to explore the nature, origins and evolution of the universe.

The telescope's 19-beam receiver, a key component, is being designed and built in Australia by CSIRO engineers.

CSIRO Chief Executive Dr Larry Marshall said the project was a great example of Australia's innovative technology being delivered on the world stage.

"Global collaboration is an integral part of CSIRO's Strategy 2020, as it maps out our desire to deliver science, technology and innovation to new customers and markets, while also delivering benefit back to Australia," Dr Marshall said.

"This is a really exciting project and builds on 40 years of CSIRO collaboration with Chinese industry and research organisations."

Most radio telescopes use receivers that can only see one piece of sky at a time, but CSIRO has designed receivers with many separate, simultaneous beams, making it practical for FAST to search a large portion of the sky for faint and hidden galaxies.




A section of the 500 metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST). Credit: NAOC
"The powerful receiver we've created for FAST is the result of our long history developing cutting-edge astronomy technology to receive and amplify radio waves from space," Acting Director CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science, Dr Douglas Bock said.

"Extending our technology and collaboration to China and working on what will become the world's largest radio telescope really cements our position as a global R&D leader in this space."

Professor Rendong Nan from NAOC said the state-of-the-art instrument would help astronomers to expand their understanding of the universe.

"FAST will make it possible for us to look for a range of extremely interesting and exotic objects, like detecting thousands of new pulsars in our galaxy, and possibly the first radio pulsar in other galaxies," he said.



Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-05-technology-metre-aperture-spherical-telescope.html#jCp

So, it appears that FAST is an international collaboration, with scientists and institutions from Australia involved. I also some months back posted news, that some of the critical suppliers were from Germany for the project.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Monash signs MOU with Chinese Academy of Science, Monash University*
Friday, 22 April 2016

Academics from Australia and China this morning gathered at Monash University’s Clayton campus to formally sign an agreement heralding a historic partnership between Monash University and the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS).




(L-R) Professor Suojiang Zhang, Director General of IPE,Chinese Academy of Science and Professor Cristina Varsavsky, Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Science, Monash University ​
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) will see the creation of the China Australia Centre for Ionic Liquids (CACIL) and involves an enhanced exchange of staff, students and resources between the two institutions.

This partnership with Cas's Institute for Process Engineering builds on the international reputation of the Monash Ionic Liquids Group (MILG) which has been developing ionic materials and their applications for over fifteen years. MILG Lead Scientist, Professor Doug Macfarlane from the School of Chemistry, highlighted the formation of the Joint Centre as a new era in closer collaboration.

“This historic partnership represents the world’s largest collaboration in this area, offering a very broad scope of expertise and resources to support new ideas and initiatives,” Professor Macfarlane said.

Having already made massive strides in the field of ionic liquids, the partnership boosts Monash’s exposure to the immense opportunities in Chinese industry in fields such as energy storage.

“The Centre will cement relationships between our two organisations and support exchange of research students and young researchers between the laboratories, expanding their experience and access to facilities, as well as encouraging industry engagement, particularly in China,” Professor Bart Follink, Head of School of Chemistry, said.
*
What are ionic liquids?*
Ionic liquids are a family of ionic solvents (salts that are liquid at or around room temperature) that have extensive applications in sustainable chemistry and energy generation and storage. Potential areas of use include advanced battery technology for electric vehicles, dissolving materials for use in biofuel synthesis and stabilising therapeutic proteins for medicinal use.

For more information, please visit Monash Ionic Liquids Group.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Ink with carbon nanodots luminesces via three different mechanisms*
May 5, 2016

Banknotes, documents, branded products, and sensitive goods like pharmaceuticals or technical components are often marked to distinguish them from imitations. However, some counterfeiters have learned to copy conventional fluorescent tags. In the journal _Angewandte Chemie_, Chinese scientists have now introduced a new, exceptional anti-counterfeit ink made with carbon nanodots. Their ingenious composite material emits three different types of luminescence.


*Continue ->*
http://phys.org/news/2016-05-ink-carbon-nanodots-luminesces-mechanisms.html​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Wednesday, May 4, 2016, 11:07
*Tianjin institute exports 3-D printers to South America*






Two engineers at the Tianjin Jinhang Physics Research Institute under China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp conduct test on a 3-D printer. (Provided To China Daily)​
A State-owned space institute has sold its 3-D printers to Argentina, marking China's first 3-D printer exports to South America, said a senior engineer at the institute.

Tang Xiaoyu, who heads the 3-D printer development at the Tianjin Jinhang Physics Research Institute under China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp, told China Daily that a consumer electronics wholesaler in Argentina has placed orders for 1,000 3-D printers developed by the institute and the first batch of 100 were delivered to the buyer in December.

"The client would sell our products to retailers in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay," Tang said. He did not reveal the contract's value and his products' prices.

During the mid-March CeBIT, the largest and most internationally represented information technology and electronics expo held in Hanover, Germany, companies from more than 20 nations, including the United States, Egypt, Iran and Japan, expressed interest or intent to buy the institute's 3-D printers.

"We brought four sets of 3-D printers to the CeBIT 2016 and all of them were sold at the expo. A buyer from Germany placed an order for 20 of our products at the event while two retailers from France and the Netherlands respectively are in talks with us on their procurement contract after they saw our 3-D printer at CeBIT," Tang said.

Tianjin Jinhang specializes in laser-related equipment and has produced many types of optoelectronic instruments for China's carrier rockets and spacecraft.

He said the institute has developed seven types of desktop 3-D printers.

Most of their users in China are schools and research organizations while some State-owned aircraft and space enterprises also use its products.

"The core part of a high-end 3-D printer is the laser, which is our specialty. Therefore, we are good at developing 3-D printers and we have full intellectual property rights of our products, which is why many foreign clients favor our products rather than those made by some Chinese private firms despite their lower prices," the engineer said.

Domestically, there are more than 200 retailers selling the institute's 3-D printers, according to Tang.

He said the institute expects a total revenue of about 100 million yuan (US$15.4 million) from its 3-D printers within the coming five years.

According to the Shenzhen-based consulting firm Qianzhan Industry Research Institute, the market value of 3-D printer industry in China will reach 10 billion yuan by the end of this year while International Data Corp, a US-based market research, analysis and advisory company, expects nearly 160,000 made-in-China 3-D printers would be sold this year, more than doubling last year's sales of 77,000 units.


----------



## JSCh

* Chinese company to develop human organ delivery drone*
Source: Xinhua 2016-05-05 21:34:53

GUANGZHOU, May 5 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Aerial technology company EHang Holdings Limited on Thursday announced a collaboration with U.S. company Lung Biotechnology to develop and purchase 1,000 drones to automate organ transplant delivery.

They will develop a modified version of EHang's 184, the world's first autonomous drone capable of carrying humans, to optimize it for organ delivery. The companies have agreed to work together over the next 15 years under a program named the Manufactured Organ Transport Helicopter (MOTH) system.

The collaboration could revolutionize the way organs are transported in the United States, with the potential to save tens of thousands of lives, according to EHang.

Lung Biotechnology specializes in producing artificial lungs and other organs for transplant.

It plans to station MOTH rotorcraft outside its organ production facilities and use preprogrammed flight plans to hospitals and re-charging pads within the MOTH radius, allowing organs to be delivered within their viability windows.

The 184 is an autonomous drone that can carry a passenger more than 10 miles through the air at speeds of up to 65 miles per hour when a destination is entered into a mobile app.

It is perfectly suited for many medical emergency transportation services, according to Ehang.

Ehang is a leading aerial technology company headquartered in the south China city of Guangzhou. It unveiled the world's first autonomous aerial vehicle at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2016 earlier this year in Las Vegas.

*Photo of Ehang 184*

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Asian primates hit hard by ancient climate change *
_Fossil finds may explain why humans evolved in Africa, not Asia_

By Bruce Bower
2:00pm, May 5, 2016

Fossil discoveries in southern China point to an evolutionary crossroads around 34 million years ago that resulted in humans evolving in Africa rather than Asia, scientists say.

A sharply cooler and drier climate at that time, combined with upheavals of landmasses that forged the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau, destroyed many tropical forests in Asia. That sent surviving primates scurrying south, say paleontologist Xijun Ni of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and his colleagues. New Chinese finds provide the first fossil evidence that the forerunners of monkeys, apes and humans, also known as anthropoids, were then largely replaced in Asia by creatures related to modern lemurs, lorises and tarsiers, the researchers conclude in the May 6 _Science_.



_*Continue Reading -> *_*Asian primates hit hard by ancient climate change | Science News*

*Journal Reference*:
Xijun Ni, Qiang Li, Lüzhou Li, K. Christopher Beard. *Oligocene primates from China reveal divergence between African and Asian primate evolution*. _Science_, 2016 DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf2107​


----------



## JSCh

* Large-scale Chinese reactor design passes IAEA safety review*
05 May 2016

*China's CAP1400 reactor design has successfully passed the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA's) Generic Reactor Safety Review (GRSR), the Shanghai Nuclear Engineering Research and Design Institute (SNERDI) announced today.*







_An artist's impression of how a plant based on the CAP1400 could appear (Image: SNPTC)_​
The GRSR process reviews the completely- or partially-developed safety cases of new reactor designs that are not yet in the licensing stage. It involves an international team of experts evaluating design safety case claims against selected and applicable IAEA safety standards. The review is not a clearance process but a review of the quality of the safety documents identifying strengths, weaknesses and gaps.

SNERDI - a subsidiary of the State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation (SNPTC) - signed an agreement with the IAEA last July for a GRSR review of the CAP1400 design.

The company has now announced that the design successfully completed the GRSR review, with the IAEA submitting its final GRSR evaluation report on 27 April.

The CAP1400 is an enlarged version of the AP1000 pressurized water reactor developed from the Westinghouse original by SNPTC with consulting input from the Toshiba-owned company. As one of China's 16 strategic projects under its National Science and Technology Development Plan, the CAP1400 is intended to be deployed in large numbers across the country. The reactor design may also be exported.

In a statement, SNERDI said: "The successful completion of the IAEA Generic Reactor Safety Review marks further recognition of the CAP1400 by the international authority, laying a solid foundation for the CAP1400 to participate in international competition at a higher level."

International use of the CAP1400 is still dependent on meeting country-specific standards and requirements, but passing the IAEA safety review will make this process easier.

In September 2014, the Chinese nuclear regulator approved the preliminary safety analysis report of the CAP1400 reactor design following a 17-month review. The National Nuclear Safety Administration's safety review involved more than 260 experts, 30 meetings to discuss it and responding to more than 5000 questions, according to SNPTC. As a result of the review, more than 1000 work orders were drawn up.

Site preparation is already underway for two demonstration CAP1400 units at Huaneng Group's Shidaowan site in Shandong province. The pouring of first concrete is expected to take place soon.

_Researched and written
by World Nuclear News_

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Building compact particle accelerators: Bunching electrons can get more done*
_Researchers propose a new method to improve beam quality in plasma wakefield accelerators by getting the electrons to travel at the same speed_

Date: May 10, 2016
Source: American Institute of Physics






Researchers propose a new method to improve plasma wakefield accelerators by compressing the electron beam. Simulations show two-dimensional electron density distribution for the injector stage (A), compressor stage (B) and accelerator stage (C), where the target e-beam is circled by a dashed circle (in red).
_Credit: Jiansheng Liu/Chinese Academy of Sciences_​
In the world of particle accelerators, laser wakefield devices are the small, but mighty upstarts. The machines can accelerate electrons to near the speed of light using a fraction of the distance required by conventional particle accelerators. However, the electrons are not all uniformly accelerated and beams with a mix of faster (higher energy) and slower (lower energy) particles are less practical.

Now a team of researchers from China, South Korea and the U.S. has proposed a new way to minimize the energy spread of electrons in laser wakefield accelerators. They publish their method in the journal _Physics of Plasmas_, from AIP Publishing.



*Full Story -> *Building compact particle accelerators: Bunching electrons can get more done: Researchers propose a new method to improve beam quality in plasma wakefield accelerators by getting the electrons to travel at the same speed -- ScienceDaily 

*Journal Reference*:
Zhijun Zhang, Wentao Li, Jiansheng Liu, Wentao Wang, Changhai Yu, Ye Tian, Kazuhisa Nakajima, Aihua Deng, Rong Qi, Cheng Wang, Zhiyong Qin, Ming Fang, Jiaqi Liu, Changquan Xia, Ruxin Li and Zhizhan Xu. *Energy spread minimization in a cascaded laser wakefield accelerator via velocity bunching*. _Physics of Plasmas_, 2016 DOI: 10.1063/1.4947536​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Manned submersible’s mother ship arrives in Sanya *
Updated: May 11,2016 11:44 AM english.gov.cn






The Tansuo-1 research vessel lies at anchor in Sanya port, May 10, 2016.[Photo/Xinhua]​
Modifications for China’s first manned submersible capable of reaching 4,500 meters and its mother ship, Tansuo-1, were completed on May 5 before arriving at Sanya in South China’s Hainan province on May 8. With a length of 94.45 meters and width of 17.9 meters, the Tansuo-1 has a full-load displacement of 6,250 tons. As the mother ship of the manned submersible, Tansuo-1 will be on sea trials and deep-sea operation of a manned and unmanned submersible capable of diving to depths of 10,000 meters.





The Tansuo-1 research vessel comes equipped with an A-shaped frame with a lifting capacity of 150 tons.[Photo/Xinhua]





The Tansuo-1’s 13,000-meter cable will be used for expedition missions, including geological sampling.[Photo/Xinhua]





The manned submersible will be stored in this area. [Photo/Xinhua]





A staffer operates the Tansuo-1 research vessel on May 10, 2016.[Photo/Xinhua]






Published on May 10, 2016
The mother ship for China's new deep-sea submersible arrived in the southern Chinese port of Sanya on Tuesday.

The 94-meter "Tansuo-1" was delivered to its owner, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, or CAS, a day earlier.

It has a full-load displacement of 6,250 tonnes, and has an range of 10,000 nautical miles.

It's equipped with 10 permanent research labs and two removable labs.

The ship will serve as the mother ship for a new submersible currently under development and for future CAS expeditions of sea floor trenches.

It will conduct off-shore tests in waters near Sanya.

If all goes well, the ship will sail on to the Mariana Trench in June for a research mission.

The new manned submersible that can reach a depth of 4,500 meters is likely to go through off-shore testing in the first half of next year.

China's current manned submersible "Jiaolong" reached a depth of 7,062 meters in the Mariana Trench in June 2012.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## bobsm

*Chinese team cracks Zika secret*

By Zhao Xinying/Cheng Yingqi (China Daily)
Updated: 2016-05-12 07:08

*Research shows a link between the virus, poor brain development*





Researcher Xu Zhiheng explains findings of a Chinese team studying the Zika virus in Beijing on Wednesday. [Photo by Zou Hong/China Daily]


A research finding by Chinese scientists that was published in a leading academic journal identified a direct link between the Zika virus and microcephaly－a disorder in which the head is small due to a defect in brain development.

The research was a collaboration between Xu Zhiheng, principal investigator at the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Qin Chengfeng, a professor of virology at the Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology under the Academy of Military Medical Sciences.

The authors published their findings on Wednesday in Cell Stem Cell, a monthly journal that focuses on important findings in stem cell research. They showed that mouse fetuses injected with the Asian Zika virus that were carried to term displayed characteristic features of microcephaly.

As expected, the virus infected neural progenitor cells, and the brains revealed genetic signs of viral entry, altered immune response and cell death. The authors said that's direct evidence that Zika infection causes microcephaly in a mammal.

The Zika virus has broken out in South America and been spreading around the world since 2015－including China.

"Zika is not a newly discovered virus, but its breakout in 2015 attracted more attention than ever before because more than 6,000 babies born in Brazil from March 2015 to March 2016 were diagnosed with microcephaly. Most of these babies' mothers were infected by the Zika virus," Qin said.

Until now, no direct connection between Zika and microcephaly has been found. According to Xu, mutations of about 30 human genes could cause microcephaly.

Recently, a research team of scientists from the United States and Brazil published a finding in Nature, showing that the Brazilian Zika virus strain could lead to birth defects.

But the Chinese research went further, Xu said. The most surprising finding was that it was mostly neural progenitor cells that became infected at the beginning, and mostly neurons infected at a later stage, five days after injection, when the presence of Zika virus increases several hundredfold.

"However, almost all cell deaths were found in neurons other than neural progenitor cells," Xu said. "This indicates that neurons, not neural progenitor cells, are prone to induced cell death by the Zika virus."

Xu said he hoped the finding would lay a good foundation for further research and control of the virus. The animal model, together with the global data sets of infected brains, "will provide valuable resources for further investigation", he said.

*Symptoms generally mild*

Zika is a virus that is primarily spread by mosquito bites. In general, the symptoms known to be caused by the virus tend to be mild. They include fever, rash, pain in the joints and pink eye. Symptoms usually occur two to seven days after infection. Many people who are infected do not show any symptoms, and those who do can be treated easily. Zika was first found in Africa and spread to Asia and Latin America. The virus is spreading rapidly in Latin America, while Thailand and the Philippines are the most Zika-infected countries in Asia.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-05/12/content_25224690.htm

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*First deep-sea research institute opens in Sanya *
By Shan Jie Source:Global Times Published: 2016-5-12 0:48:01

China's first deep-sea research institute has opened in Sanya, South China's Hainan Province, which experts said will be meaningful for resource exploitation and improvements to naval technology.

The Institute of Deep-Sea Science and Engineering (IDSSE) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) passed an acceptance inspection and began official operations on Tuesday, the China News Agency reported Wednesday.

The IDSSE is the first scientific research base for study of the deep seas and is also China's first public platform for deep-sea research and technological experiments, media reported.

"The deep sea has a wealth of resources including mineral, biotic and petroleum resources, and there are more than 40 billion tons of petroleum in the South China Sea alone. Therefore, it is necessary to enhance scientific research capabilities there," Gao Shu, director of the School of Geographic and Oceanographic Sciences at Nanjing University, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

Since 2012, Chinese scientists with the CAS have participated in several research projects related to the South China Sea, including scientific voyages in the area, according to the CAS website.

"China is a big country both in land and in sea, but in the past China has put emphasis on development on land, so [the opening of] the institute shows that the exploitation of ocean resources in China has arrived at a new stage," said Wang Xiaopeng, an expert on maritime and border studies at the CAS.

Wang added that scientific research on the use of marine resources has been a hot topic in many countries since the release of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in 1982, which reallocated many global ocean resources.

Deep-sea research will also have military uses, as studies on complex marine environments can help improve naval technology, which is usually the most advanced military technology in a country, Gao added.

The mother ship for a new deep-sea submersible was delivered to the CAS in Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province on May 5. The 94-meter Tansuo 1 has a fully loaded displacement of 6,250 tons, and the submersible can reach a depth of 4,500 meters. It is expected to dive to the Mariana Trench for a research mission in the near future, according to the Xinhua News Agency.


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 11-May-2016
* Fetal mice with Zika infection get microcephaly *
Cell Press

Mouse fetuses injected with the Asian Zika virus strain and carried to term within their pregnant mothers display the characteristic features of microcephaly, researchers in China report May 11 in _Cell Stem Cell_. As expected, the virus infected the neural progenitor cells, and infected brains reveal expression of genes related to viral entry, altered immune response, and cell death. The authors say this is direct evidence that Zika infection causes microcephaly in a mammalian animal model.

The research was a collaborative effort between Zhiheng Xu at the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Cheng-Feng Qin at the Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology.


*Full Story -> *Fetal mice with Zika infection get microcephaly | EurekAlert! Science News


----------



## JSCh

* China builds largest metal 3D printing equipment *
New China TV

*Published on May 9, 2016*
China has built a new metal 3D printing equipment, which is recognized as the largest such facility in the world.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

​China's first mid-long range emergency supplies transporting drone successfully completed its maiden flight on Tuesday.

The fixed-wing drone can carry 15 kilograms of goods on flight of up to 80 kilometers and make accurate delivery within a range of 15 meters, marking a breakthrough in terms of mileage, load, and short distance of take-off and landing compared with other drones available at the moment.


----------



## JSCh

*Consumer-friendly smart camera will follow you around and record your life*
(People's Daily Online) 14:43, May 13, 2016




Nowadays, people all over the world employ selfie sticks to document exciting moments in their lives. But now there’s a new tool in town!

Hover Camera, developed by Beijing startup Zero Zero Robotics, has attracted media coverage after launching its product display in the U.S. The camera resembles a computer hard drive and is portable because its wings can fold up.

Hover Camera can independently follow a moving subject and knows how to avoid other objects. As the name suggests, the new product is being used mainly for aerial photography and videography, but one thing that differentiates it from other drones is the fact that its propellers are fully enclosed by a strong carbon fiber frame, making it much safer than other models on the market.

The functions of Hover Camera are very impressive. There's the 360 Pano mode, along with face tracking and body tracking. The device utilizes a Snapdragon 801 processor and only weighs 240 grams. The main camera in the front takes 13-megapixel stills as well as 4K video, and it comes with a dual-tone flash. Since it's only on a single-axis gimbal, it offers electronic image stabilization. There's also a downward-facing 3-megapixel camera and sonar underneath to help stabilize the drone itself.

It will cost around $600 when it goes on sale this summer.






Wang Mengqiu, founder and CEO of Zero Zero Robotics, was born in Hangzhou in 1982. He has a PhD from Stanford University and has worked for Facebook, Alibaba and Twitter.​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*中國造出世界最大起重船：重達14萬噸(圖)*
*China create the world's largest crane vessel: weighing 140,000 tons.*

更新時間: 2016/5/14 9:46:00
Updated: 2016/5/14 9:46:00​



　　
5月13日，振華重工自主建造的世界最大12000噸起重船在上海長興島基地交付，並在現場命名為“振華30號”。
May 13, Zhenhua Heavy Industry independently-constructed the world's largest crane ship delivered in Shanghai Changxing base, and named "Zhenhua 30" on the spot.




“振華30號”




2000噸起重船的問世，對當今世界打撈行業可謂恰逢其時。​




Actual photo of Zhen Hua 30 lifting 13,200MT, a world record set in a lifting test that occurred in Houston, Texas on 26 January 2016.​
The company that receive the new vessel is reported to be contracted for salvaging vessel MV Sewol, a Korean vehicle-passenger ferry that sunk off the coast of Korea on April 16, 2014 that killed 295 passengers, mostly student.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_MV_Sewol

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## cirr

*SMIC Again Boosts 2016 Capex to $2.5 Billion*

Patterson

5/13/2016 10:21 AM EDT

TAIPEI—Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC), China’s largest foundry, today said it will increase its capital expenditure budget for 2016 to $2.5 billion on expectations that strong demand will continue for another four years.

Three months ago, SMIC boosted 2016 capex to $2.1 billion from $1.57 billion last year to capture more business in China, the world’s fastest growing chip market.

Reiterating its expectations for a 20% increase in its 2016 sales from $2.24 billion in 2015, SMIC forecast that it is targeting annual sales growth of 20% for the next three to four years.

“We are embarking on a new phase of growth,” SMIC CEO Tzu-Yin Chiu said on a conference call to announce the company’s first-quarter 2016 results. “We remain constrained by the pace of capacity growth.”

(Source: SMIC)

The company is uncharacteristically bullish as growth in the global semiconductor industry this year slumps amid an inventory glut. SMIC said its first-quarter sales revenue reached a record high of $634.3 million as its fabs continued to run at full utilization.

While its largest competitors such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) and Samsung are selling leading-edge 16nm and 14nm products to companies such as Apple and Qualcomm, SMIC has been making gross margins of about 25% by selling chips made with 28nm and 40nm as its most advanced process technology.

In April, TSMC reiterated its forecast for its 2016 capex to be within a range of $9 billion to $10 billion as it aims for a bigger share of finer geometry chips.

SMIC plans to use its increased capex budget primarily to ramp up 40nm in a new Beijing fab this year while preparing to boost 28nm output starting next year.

“Twenty-eight nanometer demand is strong,” Chiu said. “Forty nanometer demand is much stronger.”

By the fourth quarter of this year, SMIC expects sales of products made with 40nm and finer process technology to more than double from a year ago. The company’s plan to increase 40nm production this year will result in 28nm revenue falling within a range of 5% to 8% of total sales, contrary to its earlier forecast this year for 28nm to account for a “double-digit” portion of company revenue by the end of the fourth quarter.

Currently, SMIC said it has one major customer producing “high volumes” of 28nm chips and an additional four customers that are preparing to launch 28nm products.

New business

SMIC is ramping up 40nm to help an unidentified customer launch a new product during the second half of this year. Some of the key drivers for 40nm demand are WiFi, digital TV, set-top boxes and radio-frequency applications, the company said.

During the first quarter, China was SMIC’s largest source of sales revenue by geography. China’s portion of SMIC sales rose to 47.2% in the first quarter from 45% in the fourth quarter last year.

—Alan Patterson covers the semiconductor industry for EE Times. He is based in Taiwan.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*05.13.2016 13:51*
*China Plans World's Largest Particle Collider to Unlock Universe's Mysteries*
_Supporters say the billion dollar facility will help improve understanding of the origins of matter, but critics warn it could be more expensive than planned_

*By staff reporters Zhang Yan and Yu Dawei*

(Beijing) – China plans to invest US$ 6 billion to build the world's largest particle collider to get a foot in the door of experimental physics dominated by European and American research labs, but some scientists warn it could be a wasteful undertaking.

The blueprint for what scientists call a super collider, an underground facility to smash subatomic particles at high speeds, was drafted in 2014 by scientists at the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) in Beijing. The project, dubbed the "Higgs Factory," aims to build a facility capable of generating millions of Higgs boson particles, which physicists say form the building blocks of the universe.

Scientists at IHEP have completed the design for an underground ring with a circumference of 50 to 100 kilometers that can smash together electrons and positrons, state media reported in October. If built, it would be at least twice the size of the world's largest particle accelerator, a 27-kilometer circular tunnel beneath the Swiss-French border.

The plan is yet to be approved by the central government, but scientists are optimistic that research needed to build the facility can start in late 2016. Construction of the first phase of this Circular Electron Positron Collider is expected to begin in 2021 near Qinhuangdao, a port city in the northern province of Hebei, scientists said.

The second phase of the project, which will upgrade the facility to a proton–proton collider, is set to start by 2040.

The lab could help the country "leap to a leadership position in an important frontier in basic science," wrote David Gross, an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate, in a commentary in the Wall Street Journal in September.

The project "would transport physics into a previously inaccessible high-energy realm," wrote Harvard professor Shing-Tung Yau and science journalist Steve Nadis in their book, From the Great Wall to the Great Collider, published in April.

But the plan has hit a snag, with several scientists warning the project might be an unrealistic and wasteful endeavor. The government has also been cautious. It has not given any feedback on IHEP's proposal so far, sources close to the project said.

*Doubtful Leap *

The discovery of the Higgs boson particle in 2012 was seen by experts as one of the biggest scientific breakthroughs in human history, changing the way we understand our universe, how it originated and its future.

It was found by a team of scientists experimenting at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) by crashing high-energy proton beams at velocities near the speed of light. This research facility, operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is known as CERN.

However, the accelerator may not be able to generate large quantities of Higgs boson particles to support further studies, said IHEP director Wang Yifang in a 2015 interview with state-run newspaper China Daily.

The "LHC is hitting its limits in terms of energy levels (needed to smash particles)," said Wang. "It seems that it is not possible to escalate the energy (level) dramatically at the existing facility."

CERN said in October that it was working on improving its facilities by 2025.

China's particle accelerator promises to go a step further in unlocking the mysteries of the universe. It will operate at about seven times the energy level of the LHC, said Wang, and will be able to generate large quantities of Higgs boson particles to try to recreate the conditions that followed the Big Bang, one theory that explains the origins of the universe and matter.

Critics, however, doubt this plan. Some theories have proved that the study of particles using high energy collision experiments has almost reached its limits, said Cao Zexian, a physicist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. "Nobody can be sure that high energy colliders can make new discoveries," and that is why no other country has proposed the construction of a new collider, he said.

Wang says there are several areas in the field of high energy physics that still need to be explored. Countries like the United States are hesitating to build new facilities due to cost concerns amid an economic slowdown, he said.

In the 1980s, the United States started to build what was called a Superconducting Super Collider with a ring circumference of 87.1 kilometers, but the project in the state of Texas was called off in 1993 due to rising costs.

Although many physicists say they want a bigger facility for further research, sluggish economic growth in the United States and debt woes in Europe are preventing governments from investing large sums to develop the field of high energy physics, Michael Riordan, professor of physics at University of California, Santa Cruz, said.

IHFP operates a 220 meter electron-positron collider in Beijing, the largest one in the country, built in 1990.

Chinese authorities may be waiting for more research to show that high energy physics is a promising field of research to invest in. In December 2015, scientists at CERN said the LHC might have discovered a new particle, which cannot be defined using existing laws of physics.

Researchers are expected to publish detailed findings about the new particle by the end of the year, said Xu Cenke, professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and their findings will serve as an important reference when Chinese authorities decide whether to go ahead with plans to build a domestic lab.

*Weighing the Benefits *

The research needed to build the collider will improve technology used in several industries, Wang aid. Some areas that can benefit are cryocooler technology, a cooling technique that can be used to preserve human cells and organs, designing precision machines used on assembly lines and discovering new material to build semiconductors for computer chips, he said.

"Every dollar we spend on the collider will help improve the country's technology capacity," said Wang. Most of the components needed to build the facility will be made domestically by local scientists, he said.

But Cao from the Chinese Academy of Sciences said key components and technologies needed for the project will have to be imported because the country's high-tech research and precision machine development capabilities still lag behind those of developed countries. Most of the money will be spent on buying imported equipment and parts, he said.

Some experts worry that the costs could rise way above the estimated budget. When the LHC was completed, the final bill stood at US$ 9 billion, more than three times the initial budget of US$ 2.6 billion. It also costs more than US$ 1 billion every year to operate and maintain the facility.

Opponents of the projects argued that instead of building a larger collider, the money should be spent on developing other fields of research with a more immediate social impact.

"It is hard to say whether it is right or wrong to invest so much to build a collider," said Cao. "But before that, we can try to improve our computer chips and the tips of ballpoint pens."

(Rewritten by Han Wei)

http://english.caixin.com/2016-05-13/100943237.html

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* World's largest floating single crane ship delivered in Shanghai *
New China TV

*Published on May 16, 2016*
The world's largest floating single crane ship has been delivered in east China's Shanghai.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Mirror-image enzyme copies looking-glass DNA*
_Synthetic polymerase is a small step along the way to mirrored life forms._

Mark Peplow
16 May 2016




​Zixuan Li, Xin Tao, Ting F. Zhu​The DNA in our cells twists like a right-handed screw (pictured, bottom); a mirror-image polymerase enzyme is needed to copy left-handed DNA (pictured, top).​
*Researchers at Tsinghua University in Beijing have created a mirror-image version of a protein that performs two of the most fundamental processes of life: copying DNA and transcribing it into RNA.*

*The work is a “small step” along the way to making mirror-image life forms, says molecular biologist Jack Szostak of Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. “It’s a terrific milestone,” adds his Harvard colleague George Church, who hopes one day to create an entire mirror-image cell.*

Many organic molecules are ‘chiral’: that is, they can exist in mirror-image forms that cannot be superimposed, like a right-handed and left-handed glove. But life almost always employs one version: cells use left-handed amino acids, and have DNA that twists like a right-handed screw, for instance.

In principle, looking-glass versions of these molecules should work together in the same way as normal ones — but they might be resistant to attack by conventional viruses or enzymes that have not evolved in a looking-glass world.

That makes mirror-image biochemistry a potentially lucrative business. One company that hopes so is Noxxon Pharma in Berlin. It uses laborious chemical synthesis to make mirror-image forms of short strands of DNA or RNA called aptamers, which bind to therapeutic targets such as proteins in the body to block their activity. The firm has several mirror-aptamer candidates in human trials for diseases including cancer; the idea is that their efficacy might be improved because they aren’t degraded by the body’s enzymes. A process to replicate mirror-image DNA could offer a much easier route to making the aptamers, says Sven Klussmann, Noxxon Pharma’s chief scientific officer.

*Through the looking-glass*
Researchers have been making chunks of mirror-DNA for decades, so the Tsinghua team could order much of what they needed for their looking-glass DNA replication attempt from a chemical supplier: a mirror-DNA strand to be copied, mirror-DNA building blocks and a shorter mirror ‘primer’ strand that could pick up these building blocks in the right order.

The difficult task was to make the mirror-image enzyme that coordinates the copying process, called DNA polymerase. That would need to be synthesized from right-handed amino acids, but commonly used polymerase enzymes have more than 600 amino acids — meaning that they are too big for current synthetic methods.

So the Tsinghua team turned to the smallest known polymerase: African swine fever virus polymerase X, which contains just 174 amino acids. Unfortunately, it is also spectacularly slow — probably because of its small size, says synthetic biologist Ting Zhu, a former graduate student of Szostak’s who helped to lead the work. The team made a mirror version of the enzyme and found that, like its natural equivalent, it could extend a mirror-primer consisting of 12 nucleotides (DNA building blocks) to an 18-nucleotide mirror-DNA strand in about four hours; and to a 56-nucleotide strand in 36 hours.

When the normal and mirror-image versions of these systems were mixed together in the same test tube, both replication processes worked independently without interference. The mirror-image polymerase could also transcribe mirror-DNA into mirror-RNA, again at a glacial pace. The work is published in _Nature Chemistry_.

Klussmann says that Noxxon Pharma is interested in pursuing a similar approach with a more efficient enzyme. Indeed, Zhu and his colleagues next hope to build a mirror-image of a more efficient polymerase known as Dpo4, which is built of 352 amino acids.

*Life, backwards*
In their research paper, the Tsinghua researchers also present their work as an effort to investigate why life’s chirality is the way it is. This remains mysterious: it may simply be down to chance, or it could have been triggered by a fundamental asymmetry in nature.

But Steven Benner, at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Alachua, Florida, says it’s unlikely that creating a mirror form of biochemical life could shed any light on this question. Almost every physical process behaves identically when viewed in a mirror. The only known exceptions — called ‘parity violations’ — lie in the realm of subatomic physics. Such tiny differences would never show up in these biochemical experiments, says Benner. (He is also interested in making DNA that can avoid unwanted degradation by natural enzymes or viruses, but rather than using mirror-DNA, he has created artificial DNA with non-natural building blocks.)

Church’s ultimate goal, to make a mirror-image cell, faces enormous challenges. In nature, RNA is translated into proteins by the ribosome, a complex molecular machine. “Reconstructing a mirror-image of the ribosome would be a daunting task,” says Zhu. Instead, Church is trying to mutate a normal ribosome so that it can handle mirror-RNA.

Church says that it is anyone’s guess as to which approach might pay off. But he notes that a growing number of researchers are working on looking-glass versions of biochemical processes. “For a while it was a non-field,” says Church. “But now it seems very vibrant.”

Nature
doi:10.1038/nature.2016.19918

*References*
Wang, Z., Xu, W., Liu, L. & Zhu, T. F. Nature Chem. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nchem.2517 (2016).​

Mirror-image enzyme copies looking-glass DNA : Nature News & Comment

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Top research sites featured at Science Week*
By Cheng Yingqi (China Daily) Updated: 2016-05-16 08:38







Two children maneuver a toy rabbit and a toy turtle, both controlled by brain wave devices, during a race in Beijing on Saturday at the 2016 Science and Technology Week.Wang Zhuangfei / China Daily
​ 


Displays covering 12 of China's biggest scientific facilities are being shown for the first time at this year's Science and Technology Week, which opened in Beijing on Saturday.

"We will display models, pictures and videos of 12 major large-scale science facilities, and the public will have a chance to talk to scientists who are using these large-scale science facilities to make breakthroughs," said Bao Xianhua, deputy director of the department of politics, regulation and supervision at the Ministry of Science and Technology.

The displays are held in the Cultural Palace of Nationalities in Beijing.

China started to construct a number of large-scale science facilities in the past two decades, such as the 500-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope in Pingtang, Guizhou province, which will be the world's largest single-dish telescope. Others include the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopy Telescope in Xinglong, Hebei province, which is expected to conduct a 5-year spectroscopic survey of 10 million Milky Way stars.

"The large-scale science facilities are an essential part of China's fundamental research, and are the foundation for technological innovation. As a result, it is necessary to let the public learn more about scientific frontiers by displaying these facilities," said Chang Jin, chief scientist of China's Dark Matter Particle Explorer satellite, which was launched in December to detect dark matter in space.

"Moreover, large-scale science facilities are very expensive. So we should explain to the public how we work with them through this face-to-face communication," he said.

Although the facilities' research - from subatomic particles to galaxies - may seem difficult for the public to understand, Chen Xuelei, a researcher at the National Astronomical Observatories affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is confident of grabbing people's interest.

The week has been held 15 times since 2001, attracting more than 1.2 billion visitors.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 12-May-2016
* Binocular vision-based UAVs autonomous aerial refueling platform -- pilots are no longer needed *
Science China Press





Architecture of binocular vision-based UAVs autonomous aerial refueling platform. ©Science China Press





The left frames captured on-board and the reprojection result on the corresponding right frame. (a) and (c) the feature extraction results on images captured with left camera; (b) and (d) relative projection result on images captured with right camera. ©Science China Press​
*VIDEO: *A binocular vision-based UAVs autonomous aerial refueling platform. Binocular vision-based UAVs autonomous aerial refueling platform -- pilots are no longer needed | EurekAlert! Science News

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are invaluable in today's military and civilian initiatives. However, most unmanned systems are being designed to execute the long-running mission. Thus, it is necessary for UAVs returning to the base for refueling. Under this circumstance, autonomous aerial refueling (AAR) becomes an important capability for the future employment of UAVs. Vision based sensor and navigation system are widely used in AAR, while experiments are done for both probe-and-drogue refueling system and boom approach.

Researchers developed a platform aiming to realize the real-time simulation of AAR in air. An octocoptor serving as tanker UAV and a hexacoptor serving as receiver UAV in the platform. When the receiver arrives at the visual field of the cameras on the tanker (about 5 meters), the binocular vision system will operate to capture the maker on the receiver. The on-board next unit computing (NUC) processes the images and estimates the pose of the receiver. Then the visual information obtained from the vision system is transferred to the flight controller and boom controller to control the flight of the UAVs and the movement of the boom towards receptacle. Figure 1 shows the configuration of our binocular vision-based UAVs autonomous aerial refueling platform.

The binocular vision system consists of two primary procedures: feature extraction and pose estimation. The pixel coordinates of red markers painted on the receiver UAV are generated after feature extraction. The generated pixel coordinates are utilized in the pose estimation process. Pose estimation procedure is exploited to calculate the relation matrix between the binocular vision system and marker coordination system.

To verify the effectiveness of vision algorithm of the boom approach in AAR, researchers developed a mimical refueling boom system. After achieving the frame sequences of the marker on the receiver, the next unit computing (NUC) mounted onboard will conduct pose and position estimation. An arm microcontroller obtains the results, and figures out the control level to control steering engines. Refueling boom will point at the receptacle in the resolved pose and position, and implement connect in air. Figure 2 shows the experimental results of binocular algorithm

A series of out-door flight tests are conducted in various environments to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of this developed platform, strong and poor light conditions included. Considering the safety and easy observation, the flight height of the UAVs is about 10 meters. The experimental results verified the feasibility and effectiveness of the UAVs boom approach AAR platform.

###​
This research was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61425008, 61333004 and 61273054), and Aeronautical Foundation of China (Grant No. 2015ZA51013).

See the article: Duan H B, Li H, Luo Q N, Zhang C, Li C, Li P and Deng Y M. "A Binocular Vision-based UAVs Autonomous Aerial Refueling Platform". _SCIENCE CHINA Information Sciences_ http://link.springer.com/article/10.

​Binocular vision-based UAVs autonomous aerial refueling platform -- pilots are no longer needed | EurekAlert! Science News

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Fossils prove complex life emerged 1.56 billion years ago *
2016-05-18 13:18 Ecns.cn Editor:Yao Lan

Zhu Maoyan, a member of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, talks about the multicellular organism fossil, May 18, 2016. The fossils were unearthed in the 1.56 billion-year-old Gaoyuzhuang Formation in North China’s Hebei province and considered to be the oldest multicellular organism fossil ever found in the world. According to Zhu, these fossils are “compelling evidence for the early evolution of organisms large enough to be visible with the naked eye. This totally renews current knowledge on the early history of life.” (Photo provided by Zhu Maoyan)








​
*Life forms 'went large' a billion years ago - BBC News*
By Paul Rincon Science editor, BBC News website 
17 May 2016 





Image copyright Maoyan Zhu ​
Life was already organising itself into large communities of cells more than a billion years ago, according to evidence from China.

The centimetre-scale life forms were preserved in mudstones from the Yanshan area in the country's north and are dated to 1.56 billion years ago.

Fossils big enough to be seen by the naked eye became common between 635 and 541 million years ago.

But the latest specimens are more than twice that age.

The findings by a Chinese-American team of researchers appear in the journal Nature Communications.

The mysterious organisms from the Gaoyuzhuang rock formation appear to belong to the branch of life known as the eukaryotes, which today includes everything from single-celled amoebae to plants, fungi and animals.

The sea-dwelling life forms probably lived on the shelf areas of ancient oceans and bear a superficial resemblance to algae. They also appear to have used photosynthesis, the process by which plants, some bacteria and other simple organisms convert sunlight into chemical energy.

Prof Andrew Knoll, from Harvard University, a co-author of the paper, said the organism represented by the Chinese fossils was "large but I doubt that it was complicated - an important distinction".

He told me: "You're a good example of a complex multi-cellular organism because you have 250 cell types, dozens of tissues, different organ systems.

"On the other hand if you go to the beach you will find seaweeds that consist of a sheet of cells that are almost all identical. Most of them can either photosynthesise or be used for reproduction."

The team, including Prof Knoll and Shixing Zhu from the China Geological Survey in Tianjin, found that life in this ancient period had already developed a variety of forms.

Of 53 separate specimens, 26 (49%) were linear in shape, 16 (30%) were wedge-shaped, eight (15%) were tongue-shaped and three (6%) were oblong-shaped.

The marine organisms measured up to 30cm in length and up to 8cm wide. Some of the specimens revealed fine structure: a closely-packed arrangement of individual cells measuring about 10 micrometres long - which is the same as the width of cotton fibre.

*Go big or go home*
Examples of multi-cellular life dating back more than a billion-and-a-half years have been described before. They include _Horodyskia_, which was shaped like a strings of beads, and _Grypania_, a coiled, ribbon-like organism.

But the diversity of forms and the size of the fossils from Yanshan mark them out.

The researchers say the fossils are unlikely to be of agglomerations of bacteria known as microbial mats, and instead are probably early examples of eukaryotic organisms.

If so, the organisms suggest multi-cellularity was a feature of marine life a billion years before the so-called Cambrian explosion, a rapid evolutionary event that began 542 million years ago and resulted in the divergence of major animal groups.

Some scientists partly attribute this evolutionary flowering to a rise in oxygen levels, although the causes are the matter of continuing debate.

The findings also suggest that the preceding era, characterised by lower oxygen levels and sometimes referred to as the "boring billion", may have been misjudged.

Prof Knoll told BBC News: "It looks like the leap from single cells to simple multi-cellularity is easy - in relative terms. It was done many times (over the course of evolution) and this really cements the case that it was done early in the history of eukaryotes.

"There are a couple of cases where we know the genomes of both unicellular (single-celled) organisms and their closest multi-cellular relatives. When the jump is from a single cell to simple multi-cellularity, there's very little difference in the gene content of the organism. That's a small leap forward.

"The difference when you go from simple multi-cellularity to complex multi-cellularity, however, is large. The tree of life suggests that has happened only rarely."

However, the team was not able to link the fossils with any other known group of eukaryotes - living or extinct.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## bobsm

*ARM Tapes Out Next-Gen 64-Bit Artemis Mobile Chip On 10nm TSMC FinFET Process*
*
ARM's Artemis 10nm FinFET Test Chip*
ARM has been working closely with TSMC – the Taiwanese Semiconductor Manufacturing Company – for a number of years now. Over the last six years or so especially, ARM and TSMC have collaborated to ensure that the latter’s cutting-edge process technologies work well the former’s processor IP. So, with every generation since 2010, the companies have built ARM’s most advanced processor cores on TSMC’s most advanced emerging process nodes.

The collaboration successfully began with a test chip produced at 28nm, but today ARM is announcing the successful tape-out of a test chip featuring next-generation, premium 64-Bit ARM v8-A mobile processor cores, codenamed Artemis, and manufactured using TSMC’s upcoming 10nm FinFET process technology.

image: http://hothardware.com/ContentImages/Article/2465/content/small_10nm-arm-chip-plots.jpg




The device produced through the collaboration is a relatively simple silicon qualification test chip structure (in comparison to an actual commercial product), which gives ARM the ability to assess what the process can do with an advanced core and also provide feedback to the foundry on things like the device performance, metal stacks, and design rules. Doing this allows the company to do performance and power analysis benchmark testing and validation on 10nm FinFET silicon, before finalized designs are put into production.




_ARM Artemis Test Chip Block Diagram_
The test chip features what ARM calls an Artemis cluster. It’s essentially a quad-core processor with power management IP, a single-shader Mali graphics core, AMBA AXI interconnect, and test ROMs connected to a second cluster by an asynchronous bridge that features the memory subsystem, which is stacked with a Cortex M core that handles control logic, some timers, SRAM, and external IO.





The slide above compares a fully optimized A72-based SoC produced at 16nm to an early test sample of the Artemis test chip produced with the 10nm FinFET process, and the frequencies weren’t that far off -- the delta is only around 10 - 12%. Power characteristics, however, show much improvement. Leakage was down around 10%, but dynamic power dropped by approximately 50%. ARM and TSMC expect to tweak and turn the knobs to further improve frequency scaling and performance and ultimately settle in at about a 30% power improvement, but with increased overall performance.








Compared to 16nm FinFET+, at nominal voltage, the 10nm test chip offered a 12% performance improvement in a similar power envelope. In overdrive mode (Vod, the second annotated bullet) the test chip offered an approximate 11% performance improvement with similar power. And in super-overdrive mode (Vsod), the Artemis test chip offered similar performance, but at 30% lower power.

The 10nm FinFET Artemis test chip actually taped out all the way back in late December 2015. And ARM got working silicon back for testing and qualification a few weeks back. SoCs for premium mobile devices next-generation cores produced on the 10nm process node are expected to arrive later in the second half of this year.

http://hothardware.com/reviews/arm-tapes-out-next-gen-mobile-artemis-tsmc-10nm-test-chip

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## bobsm

*Beyond Hyperloop: Chinese scientists board ‘vacuum train’ for possible military projects*

PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 18 May, 2016, 12:09pm
UPDATED : Wednesday, 18 May, 2016, 11:56pm







Stephen Chen

China’s scientists are looking to develop military applications for experimental technology behind an ultra high-speed “vacuum” transport system, according to a researcher involved in one of the projects.

The technology under development would involve loading passengers into pods and projecting them through vacuum tubes at high speeds.

The researcher said some of the work being done in China and the US was funded by the military as the technology might have defence applications.

A US team developing the technology carried out a test in the Nevada desert earlier this month.

A basic prototype “hyperloop” vehicle was fired along an open-air track and reached 187 km/h just 1.1 seconds after launch.

The American inventor and entrepreneur Elon Musk pitched the idea three years ago to develop the technology. His aim is to reach 1,000 km/h, which would allow people to travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles in about 30 minutes.

One centre researching the technology in China is State Key Laboratory of Traction Power at Southwest Jiaotong University in Chengdu (成都) in Sichuan (四川) province.

One of the team, Professor Zhao Chunfa, said he was not impressed with the trial in the US.

“On a straight rail several kilometres long we can accelerate to over 1,000km/h without much difficulty using existing technology,” he said.

Zhao is a senior scientist developing a high-speed train operating in a vacuum. It will use magnetic levitation, or “maglev” technology, to raise the vehicle above a track and reduce friction.

Construction of an experimental track is at the planning stage, according to the website of the Superconductivity and New Energy Research and Development Centre at the university.

Numerous research teams are developing the technology in China and some of the projects have not been disclosed to the public due to their military sensitivity, according to Zhao. “The situation is similar in the US. A major drive for the research comes from military demand,” Zhao said.

The PLA is interested in vacuum train technology for several reasons, according to Zhao. Launching a missile from a vacuum tube, for instance, could reduce its fuel consumption by 60 per cent to 70 per cent, he said. That meant a missile could fly much further or carry more warheads.

Zhao said vacuum train technology could also be used to launch fighter jets on aircraft carriers.

Some research teams were also conducting experiments to send small military satellites into orbit from a vacuum tube, he said.

Another area under intensive research is to combine the vacuum tube with a railgun.

A railgun uses electromagnetic forces to destroy a target with high energy particles and vacuum train technology may make it easier to accelerate projectiles to extremely high speeds, according to a Chinese researcher in the field.







China and the US are taking different approaches to develop the technology, according to Zhao.

Most Chinese researchers used maglev systems to lift the vehicle into the air to avoid physical contact with the rail, which would generate enormous friction and heat at high speed.

The maglev approach is less popular in the US, according to Zhao.

The hyperloop capsules proposed by Musk levitate on pressurised air generated by compressors under the vehicles. The capsules were driven forward by powerful magnetic fields generated by linear induction motors along the track, he said.

Maglev technology was more expensive, while pressurised air was more difficult to control, but both technologies needed to overcome a long list of challenges before finding an application in the real world, Zhao said.

For instance, a lot of heat would be generated by the vacuum train during high-speed travel, but the energy would have no way to dissipate in a vacuum.

“Imagine sitting in an oven flying at 1,000km/h, but no wind. It won’t be very comfortable,” Zhao said.

“But what we think is impossible today may be feasible in 20 or 30 years’ time. China is neck and neck with the US in this race.

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/poli...perloop-chinese-scientists-board-vacuum-train

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Scientist finds possible cure for baldness through genetic repair*
(Chinadaily.com.cn) 08:15, May 20, 2016






Han Chunyu (sitting) introduces his scientific finding to journalists from China Youth Daily. [Photo/Weibo]​
A Chinese scientist has discovered a genome-editing technique that has the potential to help bald men regain their hair.

"With this technique, middle-aged men with bald heads can probably regain their hair through genetic repair," Han Chunyu, an associate professor from Hebei University of Science and Technology in north China's Hebei province, told China Youth Daily.

"Although the science is currently futuristic," he added.

The technique that the 42-year-old has found has been named NgAgo, a DNA-guided genome editing, which is an unusual finding in comparison with the mainstream RNA-guided genome editing.

Besides the discussions about Han's finding at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, experts said *the finding's potential, which has received attention all across the world after being published in Nature Biotechnology on May 2, is expected to surpass the CRISPR-Cas9 technology, which is recognized as a favorite for the upcoming Nobel Prize.*

CRISPR-Cas9 technology, the trendiest technology nowadays, helped its discoverers win the Breakthrough Prize in Life Science- a deluxe Nobel Prize-in 2015. And in 2015 the team won the Citation Laureates, a list of candidates considered likely to win the Nobel Prize in their respective fields.

Instead of CRISPR-Cas9 technology, Han's NgAgo finding reportedly has more advantages, and one of them is that it does not cause cancer unlike CRISPR-Cas9 technology that could cause the disease.

"Han's finding breaks the patent monopoly of foreign genome editing technique, and shows its own advantages," said Li Wei, a researcher at Institute of Zoology at Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The revolutionary finding was hard won by Han's five-member team at a laboratory in Hebei University of Science and Technology.

To cut costs he and his team had to use discarded beverage bottles in the laboratory and struggled under a debt of more than 300,000 yuan ($45,870).

"The most important quality of a scientist nowadays is the profitless craze for science," Han said about the finding that took him and his team years of hard work.

Genome editing technique has been selected as one of the 10 ground-breaking techniques in 2016 by MIT Technology Review.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*IEE Develops China's First 24 T All-superconducting Magnet | Chinese Academy of Sciences*
May 19, 2016

A 24 T all-superconducting magnet operating at 4.2 K, consisting of a 9 T YBCO high temperature superconducting (HTS) insert coil and 15 T low temperature superconducting (LTS) coils, has been developed by Prof. WANG Qiuliang’s Group at the Institute of Electrical Engineering of Chinese Academy of Sciences, which makes China the fourth country in the world achieve a center field above 24 T in the all-superconducting magnet, and the other three are United States, Japan, and Korea.

Compared with BSCCO HTS insert coils, REBCO coils have higher upper critical field, critical current and operating stability, which means that the REBCO coils can obtain a center magnetic field above 24 T. At present, only three groups in the world could meet the goal, namely National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in United States, High Field Laboratory for Superconducting Materials in Tohoku University at Japan, and SUNAM Co. Ltd in Korea.

Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Prof. WANG’s group adopted the grading coil design method to increase the safety margins of the magnet, and also manufactured superconducting joint with excellent performance with specially designed devices. The YBCO insert coil can generate a center magnetic field of 1.62 T at 77 K with an operating current of 32 A, and at generate 9 T central magnetic field under 15 T background LTS coils at 4.2 K, at an operating current of 167 A. The maximum magnetic field obtained is 24.3 T.

The achievement of a 24 T all-superconducting magnet represents that China takes a leading position in construction of all-superconducting magnet with extremely-high field, and has accumulated sophisticated experiences and techniques in the field of high field superconducting magnets. It supplies good references to manufacture Ghz Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) magnets and large-scale scientific facilities with extremely-high magnetic field in the near future.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

* Xinhua Insight: Homegrown technology shines at Beijing tech expo*
Source: Xinhua 2016-05-21 14:45:41

BEIJING, May 21 (Xinhua) -- Private cars and public buses may no longer have to battle for precious road space in congested cities, thanks to one Chinese company.

A model of a Transit Elevated Bus (TEB) debuted at the 19th China Beijing International High-Tech Expo this week, one of many homegrown inventions on display. The passenger compartment of this futuristic public bus rises far above other vehicles on the road, allowing cars to pass underneath.

TEB is a purely domestic invention, said Song Youzhou, TEB's chief engineer, and it has already attracted interest from governments in France, Brazil, India and Indonesia looking to incorporate the vehicles into public transit systems.

Chinese companies and research institutions are reasserting their growing might in cutting-edge technology at the expo.

The expo has been held each year in Beijing since 1998. It was initially designed to expose China to advanced technology from around the world.

In its early years, foreign companies were the stars of the show.

"Foreign companies' booths got the best locations inside the hall, with all the special effects -- the lights and things to draw the attention of attendees," said Wang Ping, a Chinese journalist who has been covering the expo since 1999. "At that time, Chinese companies' booths were modest at best."

Yet that has changed over the years, as China ramps up spending in research and development and views indigenous innovation as a crucial source of sustainable growth.

Research spending has risen to 2.1 percent of GDP, with annual R&D expenditures growing more than 20 percent over the past two decades. However, the number still lags behind the 2.8 percent typically found in advanced economies such as the United States, Germany and Japan.

China aims to elevate its R&D spending as a share of GDP to 2.8 percent by 2030. The target is part of a broader plan to catapult the country into the ranks of the world's leading innovative economies, with many of its industries climbing to the upper end of the global value chain, according to a master plan on boosting innovation-based growth released Thursday by China's cabinet.

According to a study of the top 1,000 companies in terms of research spending by Strategy&, the consulting arm of accounting firm PwC, research spending has been growing faster in China than any other major economy since 2007.

That kind of aggressive R&D input has spawned many homegrown innovations worthy of the spotlight at expos such as CHITEC.

Domestic companies and research institutions now hold a commanding presence at CHITEC.

Some participating companies have been quite frank about not having the best technology compared to their global peers. Yet their focus is on looking for a market for their "good enough" technology to help businesses move up the industrial chain.

Pressured by rising labor costs and increasingly harsh environmental penalties, Chinese companies have been forced to strive for greener and more efficient production.

China's labor costs rose 183 percent between 2005 and 2013, the highest among major upper-middle-income countries such as Brazil, Turkey, Thailand and South Africa, data compiled by China International Capital Corporation (CICC) showed.

Meanwhile, growing environmental constraints and China's commitment to cutting emissions mean companies will have to foot the bill for technology upgrades and cleaner, pricier alternative energy.

An increasingly choosy consumer class at home also adds to the urgency for Chinese companies to upgrade in order to stay relevant.

A study of domestic firms by CICC found that companies in sectors such as computers, electronics, machinery and equipment reported the most aggressive research spending among all firms listed.

Such spending is positively correlated with a company's earnings, the CICC said, based on analysis of the financial reports of listed companies.

If Huawei were a public company, its research spending of 6.6 billion U.S. dollars in 2014 would have been the world's 16th largest, above peers Cisco, ranked 18th at 6.3 billion, and Apple, ranked 19th at 6 billion, according to data compiled by Strategy& and CICC.

China's booming cross-border merger and acquisition activities are also increasingly driven by the need to adopt cutting edge technology to sharpen global competitiveness.

Cross-border deals in China hit 60 billion dollars last year and surpassed 90 billion in the first quarter of this year, according to financial research firm Factset. The increase was mostly driven by technology deals, which registered an annual compounded growth rate of 45 percent over the past five years and whose share of China's total cross-border deals more than doubled to 30 percent in the same period.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

* Breakthrough on gas separation technologies*
Source: Xinhua 2016-05-21 18:46:21

HANGZHOU, May 21 (Xinhua) -- Scientists from China, Ireland and the United States have used a new process to separate ethylene from a gas mixture at much lower cost.

Ethylene, a major raw material for plastic, rubber and paint production, must be separated from acetylene, a byproduct, in order to manufacture these products.

The new separation process is considered a breakthrough, as the amount of acetylene absorbed is 5.7 times as much as the current technique, Professor Xing Huabin, a member of the research team from Zhejiang University, said Friday.

Xing said the technique will help companies separate purer ethylene while lowering costs because of the new energy-saving separation process.

The research, jointly conducted by Zhejiang University, University of Limerick of Ireland and other institutions from the United States, the Netherlands and Saudi Arabia, was published in the journal Science on Thursday.

Referees of the journal said the work has set a new "benchmark" for separation of the two chemicals, calling the purification capacity "exceptional."

+++++###+++++​
*Right size + Right chemistry = Right stuff for plastics manufacturing | EurekAlert! Science News*

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)







Ethylene (on left in gray) is usually contaminated with acetylene (blue), which can ruin the process that creates the polyethylene used in most plastic. SIFSIX metal-organic frameworks (center) can capture the acetylene efficiently, leaving pure ethylene (right).
Credit: Zhou / NIST​
Plastic manufacturing is an energy-intensive process. Now, research performed in part at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has revealed a way to reduce the energy demand in one key step of plastic manufacturing by using a class of materials that can filter impurities more efficiently than the conventional manufacturing process.

The findings, published in the journal _Science_, show that materials called metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) can effectively remove the contaminant acetylene from ethylene, the material from which much of the world's plastic is made. The research suggests that filtering out acetylene using MOFs would produce ethylene at the high purity that industry demands while sidestepping the current need to convert acetylene to ethylene via a costly catalytic process.

The chemical name for the plastic you see every day - from water bottles and grocery bags to household appliances - is polyethylene, a pliable material made by stringing together long chains of a simpler molecule called ethylene. Worldwide demand for plastic makes ethylene the most widely produced organic compound in the world, with well over 100 million tons of it manufactured each year, largely by refining crude oil.

Newly made ethylene is not pure enough to become plastic because the refinement process also creates a substantial amount of acetylene, which can ruin the catalysts that enable ethylene molecules to be strung together. The conventional industrial solution is to convert this undesirable acetylene into ethylene as well, but this step requires the use of palladium, an expensive and rare metal, as a catalyst and consumes a significant amount of energy.

The research team, which includes scientists from the NIST Center for Neutron Research (NCNR) and five universities from around the world, found that a family of MOF materials called SIFSIX, discovered in the 1990s, might provide a better alternative for removing the acetylene. MOFs are porous crystals that under a microscope look a bit like a building under construction - lots of girders with space in between. The SIFSIX group gets its name from some of its girders, which are formed from silicon (Si) and six atoms of fluorine (F6).

The team found that when they passed ethylene through the MOFs, the fluorine attracted and captured most of the acetylene contaminant, letting the now-purified ethylene to pass unhindered. Varying the size of the pores by changing the length of the girders allowed the MOFs to filter ethylene-containing acetylene in concentrations of anywhere from 1 percent to 50 percent, which are typical in industry.

The SIFSIX MOFs set records among adsorbent materials for both selectivity (the ability to attract the acetylene only while allowing the ethylene to pass) and adsorption capacity. According to the research team, the results show that the SIFSIX group offers a viable alternative to standard industrial practice.

"They reduced the amount of acetylene in ethylene down to less than 2 parts per million (ppm), which is lower than the 5 ppm that polyethylene manufacturing requires," said NIST materials scientist Wei Zhou. "SIFSIX MOFs are easy to produce, safe to use, and can be reused over and over again. They also have the advantage of being stable, which is not true of all MOFs."

###​
The MOFs were created and investigated in great detail by researchers based at China's Zhejiang University (by Huabin Xing), Ireland's University of Limerick, (Michael Zaworotko) and the University of Texas - San Antonio in the U.S. UT-San Antonio's Banglin Chen sensed the significance of SIFSIX MOFs for this application, and organized and led the team. The NIST portion of the work, which involved computer modeling of the MOFs and neutron diffraction experiments, clarified the mechanism by which the SIFSIX MOFs captured the acetylene. Scientists from the Netherlands' University of Amsterdam and Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah University of Science and Technology also contributed.

###​*Journal Reference: *"Pore chemistry and size control in hybrid porous materials for acetylene capture from ethylene" _Science_, DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf2458​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## bobsm

*China to roll out mature 5G standards by 2020*
(Xinhua)Updated: 2016-05-21 08:50






ZTE's stand at a technology expo in Beijing, Sept 22, 2015. [Photo/VCG]

NANJING - China is developing 5G technology and expects to debut mature 5G standards by 2020, according to a senior mobile communications expert.

"China has always attached great importance to participating in the formulation ofinternational standards, and will hopefully play a leading and central role in making 5Gstandards," You Xiaohu, head of the Nanjing-based National Mobile CommunicationsResearch Laboratory, told Xinhua on Thursday.

China started research on 5G technology in 2013, and will probably complete a first version of its 5G standards by 2018, You said, adding the standards will become more mature overtime.

5G technology will raise network speeds by 1,000 times and bring virtual reality, holographic images and other new experiences to people's lives, You said.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/tech/2016-05/21/content_25399432.htm

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*China's Science Revolution*
by Rebecca Morelle
23 May 2016






China is super-sizing science. ​
From building the biggest experiments the world has ever seen to rolling out the latest medical advances on a massive scale and pushing the boundaries of exploration from the deepest ocean to outer space - China’s scientific ambitions are immense.

Just a few decades ago the nation barely featured in the world science rankings. Now, in terms of research spending and the number of scientific papers published, it stands only behind the US.

But despite this rapid progress, China faces a number of challenges.

Here are five key science projects that illustrate its enormous strengths, as well as some of its weaknesses, and may help answer the question whether China can become a global leader in research.

*Full story here ->* BBC News - China’s Science Revolution

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists resolve supramolecular structure in photosynthesis*
(People's Daily Online) 14:01, May 23, 2016
​ 





Research team members Liu Zhenfeng, Li Mei and Zhang Xinzheng (from left to right) hold the sample of the super membrane protein in the sample preparation lab of the Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences on May 20. (Photo/Xinhua)​
A research team from the Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has made a breakthrough in the study of photosynthesis. They are the first to resolve the high-resolution, three-dimensional structure of the super complex in the photosynthesis of spinach. The study has been published in the latest issue of the journal Nature.

This new finding will shine light on many problems relating to energy, food and the environment. In recent years, structural biological research on the photosynthesis of cyanobacteria, algae and other advanced plants has made a great deal of progress. However, structural research on the photosystem II protein complex has lagged behind. The super complex structure was also one of the biggest remaining unknowns in photosynthesis research.

After years of effort, the research team managed to solve the three-dimensional structure by using single-particle, cryo-electronic microscopy technology.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*China-made heavy-duty transporter comes off the assembly line*
(People's Daily Online) 14:12, May 24, 2016






A 1,000-ton transporter comes off the assembly line in Hubei on May 22.(Photo/people.cn)​
A 1,000-ton transporter, which is 23 meters long, 10 meters wide, and features 32 wheel suspensions and 128 tires, came off the assembly line in Hubei on May 22. The production of this new transporter is a testament to China’s mastery of the advanced technology required for producing heavy platform trucks.

The producer, Hubei Sanjiang Space Wanshan Special Vehicle Company, has delivered over 320 heavy-duty transporters to 28 countries and regions in the past 10 years, with carrying capacity ranging from 35 tons to 900 tons. These transporters have been used for bridge construction, shipbuilding and repair, equipment manufacturing, aerospace aviation and more.

The heavy-duty transporter is currently the world’s largest platform truck. The total number of such transporters in the world is less than five. Only Germany and China are able to produce them.

The transporter will be delivered to its client at the end of May. It will be used for shipbuilding.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Flexible lithium-air batteries could power next-generation wearable electronics*
By Ella Xiong
May. 24, 2016 , 11:30 AM

If you buy what the tech literati is selling these days, glucose-sensing armbands, heart-monitoring patches, and other wearable electronics will be the next wave of consumer electronic devices. But inventing these devices is only half the battle. Researchers must also come up with flexible, stretchable batteries to power them. Battery researchers have taken a few stabs at it. But most such batteries to date don’t produce much juice.

Now, researchers have engineered a next-generation battery technology, known as lithium-air batteries, into flexible and bendable cablelike cells. The new devices still have a ways to go before they’re ready for market. But someday flexible lithium-air batteries could power everything from clothing packed with light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to roll-up tablets and prosthetic hands.


*Full Story ->* Flexible lithium-air batteries could power next-generation wearable electronics | Science | AAAS

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## bobsm

*AIAA awards Chinese scientist its top prize*
*
Updated: 2016-05-26 11:42*
*By Jin Dan(chinadaily.com.cn)*





Jiang Zonglin introduces the R&D of shockwave hypersonic wind tunnel to the media press in 2012. [Photo/Chinanews.com]

A world-leading aerospace society has awarded its top prize on ground testing to a Chinese scientist for the first time, demonstrating China's great strides in the field, academic journal Acta Aerodynamica Sinica reported recently.

The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) presented the Ground Testing Award 2016 to Jiang Zonglin, a scientist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who led China's R&D in the JF12 shockwave hypersonic wind tunnel.

Jiang was the first Asian scholar to get the Ground Testing Award, first established in 1975.

The Award is presented to the individual with outstanding achievements in flight simulation, space simulation, propulsion testing, aerodynamic testing, or other ground testing associated with aeronautics and astronautics, according to AIAA’s website.

Jiang was awarded for "skillful leadership in conceiving, developing and successful commissioning of the world's largest shock tunnel capable of true hypersonic flight simulation".

In May 2012, China opened the JF12 shockwave hypersonic wind tunnel. Known internationally as the "Hyper Dragon", JF12 is the largest of its kind in the world that can replicate flying conditions between Mach 5 and Mach 9.

The wind tunnel overcame the scientific hurdle that has thwarted global scientists and engineers for about six decades. According to Chinese Academy of Sciences, JF12 is a 265-metre long tunnel that can replicate flying conditions at an altitude of 25 to 50 km.

As wind tunnel is the basic research that decides how advanced aircraft may be developed, Jiang's achievement is a new scientific breakthrough in China's aeronautics and astronautics industry, the academic journal said.

Created in 1963 by the merger of the two great aerospace societies of the day, the American Rocket Society and the Institute of the Aerospace Sciences(AIAA) is the world's largest technical society dedicated to the global aerospace profession.

The Ground Testing Award is presented annually at the AIAA Aviation and Aeronautics Forum with the nomination deadline by October 1 of the previous year.







Panorama of JF12 shockwave hypersonic wind tunnel at Chinese national key laboratory Qian Xuesen Engineering Science Experiment Base in Huairou district, Beijing, July 26, 2013. [Photo/Chinanews.com]

http://europe.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-05/26/content_25476137.htm

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## bobsm

*Annual output of China's satellite industry tops 200 billion yuan*

2016-05-27 09:32
XinhuaEditor: Mo Hong'e


The annual output value of the Chinese satellite industry has exceeded 200 billion yuan (30 billion U.S.dollars), according to China's top aerospace administration on Thursday.

Satellite technology has been widely used in various domains in China, covering agriculture and forestry, water conservancy, housing construction, environmental protection and disaster relief, among others, said Tian Yulong, chief engineer of State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.

China has been making steady progress on commercial remote sensing satellites and will complete the building of a national aerospace infrastructure system for civil use in the next five years, Tian said.

China will launch nearly 100 new satellites for remote sensing, communication, broadcasting and navigation from 2016 to 2020, Tian said.

The aerospace administration is actively attracting private capital to invest in fields such as aerospace, satellite applications and data services, he said.

Tian also said China has signed more than 100 cooperative agreements with more than 30 countries on aerospace technology, and exported production overseas.


http://www.ecns.cn/business/2016/05-27/212206.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## cirr

*China plans 5 new space science satellites*

Xinhua | June 1, 2016, Wednesday |




ONLINE EDITION

China will put into space five new satellites within about five years as part of the country's fast-expanding space science program, a science chief said on Wednesday.

The five satellites, including a Sino-European joint mission known as SMILE, will focus on observation of solar activities and their impact on the Earth environment and space weather, analysis of water recycling and probing of black holes, according to Wu Ji, director of the National Space Science Center under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

They should make major breakthroughs in these fields, Wu said.

Of the five satellites, *SMILE*, or "Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer," is set to blast off in 2021. The satellite is designed to study the effects of the sun on the Earth's environment and space weather by creating images of the interactions between solar winds and the Earth's magnetosphere with X-ray and ultraviolet technology.

*MIT*, the Magnetosphere-Ionosphere-Thermosphere coupling exploration, aims at investigating the origin of upflow ions and their acceleration mechanism and discover the key mechanism for the magnetosphere, ionosphere and thermosphere coupling.

And *WCOM*, the Water Cycle Observation Mission, is a bid to better understand the Earth's water cycle by simultaneous and fast measurement of key parameters such as soil moisture, ocean salinity and ocean surface evaporation.

The other two satellites are the Advanced Space-borne Solar Observatory (*ASO-S*) and the *Einstein-Probe*. The former will help scientists understand the causality among magnetic fields, flares and coronal mass ejections, while the latter is tasked with discovering quiescent black holes over all astrophysical mass ranges and other compact objects via high-energy transients.

The ASO-S is China's first solar exploration satellite, ending the nation's history of depending on foreign solar observation data.

Although the missions sound remote from ordinary people, Wu Ji insisted they are of imperative importance for space science and improving lives.

"All these projects were selected according to their scientific significance by judging committees led by scientists in an effort to give a vent for their innovation potential," Wu said.

http://www.shanghaidaily.com/nation/China-plans-5-new-space-science-satellites/shdaily.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## bobsm

*Chinese scientists develop portable device to detect Ebola quickly*
(chinadaily.com.cn)Updated: 2016-06-01 16:48






The Ebola-testing devices developed by scientists from a Chinese university. [Photo/nwpu.edu.cn]



A team of scientists from a Chinese university have developed a palm-sized instrument that can detect the Ebola virus more quickly than traditional way and track down the virus load in body fluid.

In the traditional method, doctors or scientists have to use a method called reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) in specialized laboratories to detect the virus. The process could take as long as a whole day to find the result.



Detection and treatment are delayed due to the time-consuming testing process, as is the real-time monitoring of viral loads in body fluid, which can harbor the virus even though it is no longer detectable in blood.

Pavel Neuzil, a professor from the Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi'an, Shaaxi province, and his colleagues have developed and tested a cell phone-sized device that can simultaneously perform four RT-PCRs.

The new process takes less than 37 minutes, and the amount of blood required is minute and just a finger prick is enough.

The device can detect the Ebola RNA and provide information about how many RNA copies each sample has. It can also help healthcare workers track patients' viral loads in semen, breast milk and eye fluids.

It measures 100 mm by 60 mm by 33 mm, and weighs 80 grams. Such a small and efficient device is especially helpful in remote locations.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-06/01/content_25577650.htm

Reactions: Like Like:
8


----------



## ahojunk

bobsm said:


> *Chinese scientists develop portable device to detect Ebola quickly*
> (chinadaily.com.cn)Updated: 2016-06-01 16:48
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The Ebola-testing devices developed by scientists from a Chinese university. [Photo/nwpu.edu.cn]
> 
> 
> 
> A team of scientists from a Chinese university have developed a palm-sized instrument that can detect the Ebola virus more quickly than traditional way and track down the virus load in body fluid.
> 
> In the traditional method, doctors or scientists have to use a method called reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) in specialized laboratories to detect the virus. The process could take as long as a whole day to find the result.
> 
> 
> 
> Detection and treatment are delayed due to the time-consuming testing process, as is the real-time monitoring of viral loads in body fluid, which can harbor the virus even though it is no longer detectable in blood.
> 
> Pavel Neuzil, a professor from the Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi'an, Shaaxi province, and his colleagues have developed and tested a cell phone-sized device that can simultaneously perform four RT-PCRs.
> 
> The new process takes less than 37 minutes, and the amount of blood required is minute and just a finger prick is enough.
> 
> The device can detect the Ebola RNA and provide information about how many RNA copies each sample has. It can also help healthcare workers track patients' viral loads in semen, breast milk and eye fluids.
> 
> It measures 100 mm by 60 mm by 33 mm, and weighs 80 grams. Such a small and efficient device is especially helpful in remote locations.
> 
> http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-06/01/content_25577650.htm


.
I can't help but notice that no western pharmaceutical companies are interested in developing medicine, etc for Ebola.

The reason is simple - there is just no money to be made in this area.

Therefore, we have to give more praise to Pavel Neuzil and his team from the Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi'an, Shaaxi province.

They thoroughly deserve it.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## TaiShang

*FAST telescope getting tourist viewing platform*
Xinhua, June 7, 2016

Tourists will have a vantage point on the vast dish of the world's largest telescope from an observation deck being developed near the awesome structure in southwest China's Guizhou province.

When complete in September, the Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or "FAST," will measure 500 meters in diameter, dwarfing Puerto Rico's Arecibo Observatory, which is 300 meters in diameter.

Tourist facilities with a budget of 480 million yuan (about 73.3 million U.S. dollars) are being built for science fans to observe FAST, said project manager Qian Yiquan.

With the telescope requiring radio silence in a five-kilometer radius, the observation deck is at the top of a mountain nearby.

The deck, parking lots, and a road wending its way to the remote location will be finished by September, Qian said.

Construction of FAST started in March 2011, with an investment of 1.2 billion yuan. The telescope will be used to detect and collect signals and data from the universe.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

* China Exclusive: Chinese scientists change sheep color by gene editing*
Source: Xinhua 2016-06-06 23:50:30

URUMQI, June 6 (Xinhua) -- Consumers may be about to get more options for the color natural wool products as Chinese scientists have used gene editing to alter the coat colors of sheep.

The researchers in Urumqi, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, have bred five sheep with different colors with the technique, known as CRISPR-Cas9.

At the Xinjiang Academy of Zootechnical Science, the sheep are eye-catching: Two of them carry black and white fur like cows, two of them are black with white spots like spotty dogs, while the other is brown and white like unstirred cappuccino.

"The lambs, born in March, have become our lovely pets," said Liu Mingjun, head of the research team.

According to Liu, this is the first time that scientists have altered the coat colors of large animals via CRISPR-Cas9. Previous experiments on color alteration have been limited to mice.

With CRISPR-Cas9, consumers may purchase more wool products of various colors with no dye needed, and pet keepers can also order their pets with customized fur coloring, he said.

Liu's team selected ASIP, a key gene affecting the color of sheep fleece, to edit for the desired colors.

CRISPR, short for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, was chosen as the 2015 Breakthrough of the Year by the U.S. journal Science as it acts as a type of molecular scissors able to selectively trim away unwanted genome parts and replace them with new DNA stretches. Cas9 is a specific kind of CRISPR-associated protein, with which genetic patterns can be altered by genome modification.

"The application to large animals indicates more strains of animals, not limited to livestock, will be developed via the approach, with different patterns not limited to coat colors," according to Liu.

"Compared with traditional gene mutation approaches in which researchers take decades to breed a new strain, gene editing is more much effective," he said.

His team last year designed 38 sheep that outperformed ordinary ones in muscle and wool growth. These sheep will be further studied for genetic stability during reproduction this fall.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists discover new anti-HBV gene*
(People's Daily Online) 13:47, June 08, 2016






(File Photo)​
Chinese scientists with the Academy of Military Sciences have found "integration factor complex" gene INTS10, which can activate the body's innate immune function and suppress replication of the hepatitis B virus (HBV). 

The finding reveals for the first time the role that the gene plays in inhibiting the infection of pathogenic microorganisms. It also contributes to a better understanding of the molecular mechanism of chronic HBV infection and provides a theoretical basis for effective treatment and prevention.

The research was conducted by a team led by Zhou Gangqiao, a professor at the Academy of Military Sciences, the PLA's medical research institute. 

Zhou led his team to collect more than 10,000 cases of full genetic component-type data, among which they compared the genetic differences between 1,251 cases of chronic HBV infection to 1,057 cases of naturally cleared HBV infection. 

Later, from a total of 3,905 cases of infection and 3,356 individuals, the team conducted large-scale identification and validation of the genetic differences, finally coming across a new gene located at chromosome 8p21.3.

Further studies show that the INTS10 gene is capable of suppressing HBV replication. 

Currently, around 120 million people in China are carriers of HBV.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*Rust under pressure could explain deep Earth anomalies*
Wednesday, June 08, 2016

*Washington, DC*— Using laboratory techniques to mimic the conditions found deep inside the Earth, a team of Carnegie scientists led by Ho-Kwang “Dave” Mao has identified a form of iron oxide that they believe could explain seismic and geothermal signatures in the deep mantle. Their work is published in _Nature_.

Iron and oxygen are two of the most geochemically important elements on Earth. The core is rich in iron and the atmosphere is rich in oxygen, and between them is the entire range of pressures and temperatures on the planet.

*Full story -> *Rust under pressure could explain deep Earth anomalies | Carnegie Institution for Science

*Article link -> *FeO2 and FeOOH under deep lower-mantle conditions and Earth's oxygen–hydrogen cycles, _Nature_, nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/nature18018

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

June 16, 2016
*China’s environmental conservation efforts are making a positive impact, Stanford scientists say*
_A series of ambitious environmental policies that invest in natural capital are improving services provided by China's ecosystems, such as flood control and sand storm mitigation, according to research conducted by an international team of scientists._

By Bjorn Carey

China gets a bad rap on its environmental stewardship, in large part due to the environmental damage and atmospheric pollution that result from the country’s rapid economic and infrastructure growth. But a new decade-long report, involving the work of 3,000 scientists, reveals that China’s environmental policies are making clear positive impacts.





Stanford biologist Gretchen Daily is senior author of a study of how China has increased the value of its ecosystems in part by carefully managing select agricultural activities. Here, a farmer works in a field surrounded by the steeply sloped karst mountains near Yangshuo. (Image credit: Stacie Wolny)​
“China has gone further than any other country, as strange as that sounds given all the devastation that we read about on the environment front there,” said Gretchen Daily, the Bing Professor of Environmental Science at Stanford and senior author on the study. “In the face of deepening environmental crisis, China has become very ambitious and innovative in its new conservation science and policies and has implemented them on a breathtaking scale.”

The efforts are guided in part by software developed by the research team, which identifies which environmental areas should be protected or restored to provide the greatest benefit. Through this work, China has eagerly incorporated science and funded some of the most far-reaching efforts in the world, which could serve as a model for other countries, according to the study’s authors.

Daily and an international team of researchers report the results of the China ecosystem assessment, which was launched by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection, in the June 17 issue of _Science_.

*Policy born from environmental crisis*
Officials in China began considering significant environmental reform following a series of natural disasters in the late 1990s that were exacerbated by human activities. In particular, in 1998, massive deforestation and erosion contributed to devastating flooding along the Yangtze River. Thousands of people were killed, and more than 13 million people were left homeless following $36 billion in property damage.

That this occurred just a year after a historic drought signaled to officials in the country that steps needed to be taken to protect and restore China’s natural capital. By 2000, China developed the Natural Forest Conservation Program and the Sloping Land Conversion Program, $50 billion projects aimed at reducing natural disaster risks by restoring forest and grassland, while also improving life conditions for 120 million poverty-stricken farmers.

Such investments can have big payoffs, said Steve Polasky, Fesler-Lampert Professor of Ecological/Environmental Economics at the University of Minnesota and a co-author of the study. “Restoring forests and grasslands can reduce flooding and sandstorms, which has large benefits for the people downstream and downwind,” he said.

The new report used InVEST, a software suite designed by The Natural Capital Project for evaluating economic and environmental tradeoffs, to assess these efforts from 2000-2010 by analyzing data from satellites, soil samples, biodiversity surveys, meteorology, hydrological studies and other types of field surveys.

The researchers found that the conservation policies improved key ecosystem services such as soil retention, water supply, carbon sequestration and sand storm prevention on a country-wide scale.

“The hope is that this can bring about a transformation in the way people think of and account for the values of nature,” said Daily, who is a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and co-director of the Natural Capital Project.

*A worldwide approach for environmental accounting*
Much of China’s success in these areas can be traced to how officials incorporate assessments of the state of ecosystems and their economic values to society into decision-making processes. This approach, Daily said, is applicable anywhere on planet Earth.

For instance, forests, wetlands and other heavily vegetated places play a key role in regulating the flow of water and its quality, but these are under constant threat of conversion to farming or settlement.

“China is using science to identify and define the priority areas for protection or restoration in order to improve water security in a way that anybody could apply,” she said.

Likewise, sand storms are a significant problem in eastern cities and are the result of deforestation and dry conditions. The researchers identify the areas that should be restored to mitigate storms, and which forested areas are at future risk of contributing to sand storms, and should thus be protected.

The science can inform society’s choices, Daily said, but it can’t make the final call. Research can quantify the benefits a particular area can provide if it were used to grow food or reforested to prevent floods, but ultimately it will be up to policymakers to decide, both for that region and where the decision falls within a set of national priorities.

There are still areas where China needs improvement. Although the country has the highest rate of reforestation in the world, many of the newly planted trees are not native to the regions. These plantings are a pragmatic short-term answer to rebuilding forests efficiently, quickly and inexpensively, Daily said, but don’t fare as well in the long term. This provides a basic infrastructure for wildlife, but biodiversity continues to worsen, and will do so until there is a more natural landscape.

The assessment didn’t examine other significant challenges, such as air quality and increasing greenhouse gas emissions. These will require interventions beyond ecosystem restoration alone.

“To realize the dream of becoming the ecological civilization of the 21st century, China needs more innovation in approaches to securing both nature and human well-being,” Daily said. “This is humanity’s grand challenge – and while China is only in the first phases of transformation, its efforts are inspiring adaptation and adoption of their approaches in other countries worldwide.”

The study, titled “Improvements in ecosystem services from investments in natural capital,” is published in the June 17 issue of _Science_.

China's environmental conservation efforts are making a positive impact, Stanford scientists say | Stanford News

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

Refer to the same _Science_ research article of the Stanford News above, but from Michigan State.


*Published: June 16, 2016 *
*China’s environmental investments show people and nature can win*
Contact(s): Sue Nichols

China’s massive investment to mitigate the ecosystem bust that has come in the wake of the nation’s economic boom is paying off. An international group of scientists finds both humans and nature can thrive – with careful attention.

The group, including scientists who have done research at Michigan State University, report on China’s first systematic national accounting of how the nation’s food production, carbon sequestration, soil and water retention, sandstorm prevention, flood mitigation and biodiversity are doing, and what trends have emerged.

The work, which spans from 2000-2010, appears in this week’s edition of Science Magazine.

“To achieve global environmental sustainability and enhance human well-being, effective government policies can play crucial roles,” said co-author Jianguo “Jack” Liu, Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability and director of MSU’s Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability.

The paper notes that China’s effort to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty since the 1970s came at a high cost of environmental degradation, including deforestation and erosion that resulted in devastating flooding. The National Forest Conservation Program and the Sloping Land Conversion Program, which started around 2000, paid farmers and households in critical areas to restore forest and grassland – delivering alleviation of poverty in addition to environmental benefits.

In roughly the first decade, the programs cost $50 billion.

The researchers examined a staggering amount of data from all of mainland China – satellite images, field studies, historical records and more.

They found that food production and carbon sequestration were the ecosystem services that increased the most, while the conservation programs directly contributed most dramatically to carbon sequestration, soil and water retention and sand fixation. They found varying gains and losses depending on what part of the country they looked at. Sometimes, there were tradeoffs – such as food production and soil retention.

The paper notes that continuing to improve understanding of how people benefit when conservation programs succeed is important to future success.

Liu noted that sustainability science continues to demand the holistic approach applied to the CEA, and the increasing use of an integrated framework of telecoupling, which examines socioeconomic and environmental interactions across distance to better understand far-reaching consequences.

“It is hopeful that the experiences from increasing China’s ecosystem services can help address China’s enormous environmental challenges such as air pollution, water pollution, and resource shortages,” he said.

Besides Liu, “Improvements in Ecosystem Services from Investments in Natural Capital” was written by Zhiyun Ouyang, Hua Zheng, Yi Xiao, Stephen Polasky, Weihua Xu, Qiao Wang, Lu Zhang, Yang Xiao, Enming Rao, Ling Jiang, Fei Lu, Xiaoke Wang, Guangbin Yang, Shihan Gong, Bingfang Wu, Yuan Zeng, Wu Yang and Gretchen Daily.



China's environmental investments show people and nature can win | MSUToday | Michigan State University

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

* China Focus: Growing R&D investment makes innovation more than slogan*
Source: Xinhua 2016-06-17 15:56:45

BEIJING, June 17 (Xinhua)-- Innovation is more than just slogan in China as the central government and firms place more emphasis on research and development (R&D) despite downward economic pressures.

The Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) published a development plan for the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-2020) on Tuesday, which said it would elevate investment in basic research to the same level as big-spending countries by 2020.

The targets are in line with national science and technology development goals. China wants to become one of the most innovative countries by 2020 and a leading innovator by 2030 before realizing the objective of becoming a world S&T power by the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China in 2049.

Spending on basic research rose to 67.1 billion yuan (about 10 billion U.S. dollars) in 2015, but gaps still exist in terms of original research, world-leading scientists and the overall innovation environment, according to Gao Wen, deputy head with NSFC.

Investing in innovation is not only high on the governments' agenda, but also a priority of enterprises, which believe innovation can help them get more bang for the buck in the long run.

An annual global survey by accountancy firm KPMG showed that increased spending on R&D is a primary issue for China's manufacturing executives.

The report surveyed 360 senior executives, including 36 from China, across six industries -- aerospace and defence, automotive, conglomerates, medical devices, engineering, and industrial products and metals.

More than 62 percent of China's executives plan to spend more than 6 percent of revenue on R&D over the next two years while less than half of global respondents had planned to do the same, according to the survey.

Huawei is one of the most enthusiastic R&D investors. It spent over 9 billion U.S.dollars, about 15 percent of its revenue, to develop products and services last year.

Huawei will continue to increase investment in this regard, spending up to 30 percent of its income, according to Xu Wenwei, a senior manager with the firm said on Tuesday, during an event to mark Huawei Innovation Day in Europe.

However, more money spent does not guarantee more value created. Supportive and accompanying reform policies must support talent to really make full use of the budget.

The State Council, China's cabinet, earlier this month simplified budgeting for research projects, increased incentives for researchers, relaxed the management of equipment purchases, and rolled out preferential land use regulations for research and development institutions.

The huge pool of funds demands stricter and more detailed project management, said Gao, adding that the government will set up credit review and accountability mechanisms to ensure the R&D funds are put to proper use.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Two catalysts efficiently turn plastic trash into diesel*
_Recycling plastic can be difficult, but maybe we could squeeze something else out._
by Scott K. Johnson - Jun 19, 2016 4:00 pm UTC

Plastics are great. They can take any shape and serve an endless variety of roles. _But..._ the beginning and end of a plastic’s life are problematic. While some plastics are made from renewable agricultural products, most are derived from petroleum. Plastics are not as easy to recycle as we'd like, and a huge percentage ends up in landfills (or the ocean), where they can be virtually immortal.

The easy way to recycle plastic is to just rip it up, melt it down, and pour a new mold. But that only works when the plastic is all the same chemical type, which is a level of purity you rarely find in a recycling bin. Without separating plastics precisely into different types, you get a mixture that is much less useful than pure plastics. We’re limited in what we can make out of it. Other methods for recycling plastics require serious energy input, like high pressure and temperatures over 400°C. That can produce a variety of hydrocarbon compounds, but they can be difficult to work with.

Recently, a team led by Xiangqing Jia of the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry decided to try some chemical tricks to turn some of these plastics into something useful, even if it’s not more plastic. They worked with polyethylene, which makes up the majority of the plastic we use. Polyethylenes are essentially long chains made of repeating links of carbon, with hydrogen hanging off the side. The challenge is to break that resilient chain into shorter pieces so we can use the pieces to make other compounds.


*Full story ->* Two catalysts efficiently turn plastic trash into diesel | Ars Technica

_Science Advances_, 2016. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1501591

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## bobsm

*Ten institutions that dominated science in 2015*

20 April 2016

*The top 10 institutions in the Nature Index are the largest contributors to papers published in 68 leading journals in 2015.*

Full list of institutions
2016 tables
How the Nature Index works

*1. Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), China*

Weighted fractional count (WFC): 1357.82

Established in 1949 in Beijing, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) is the world’s largest scientific organisation, comprising 114 institutes and 48,500 researchers. In 2015 its scientists made the largest contribution to high-quality research included in the index, a contribution that’s grown by a compound annual growth rate of 6.8% since 2012. Last year, one of the oldest CAS research centres, the Institute of Chemistry, founded in 1956, was also one of the largest contributing departments to the institute’s weighted fractional count. Lei Jiang, from the Institute of Chemistry, says: “Chemistry and materials science are currently strong in China because they were relatively easy subjects to start researching back in the 1980s. They didn’t need expensive equipment. If you look at nanoscience as an example, around half of the top scientists in global nanoscience are Chinese scientists who were educated during this period.”

2. Harvard University, United States

WFC: 772.33

As the second most prolific institution in the Index, and the most prolific university, Harvard University owes two-thirds of its research output to contributions made in the life sciences. Recognising the growth of interdisciplinary research areas such as translational medicine in the life sciences, Harvard has responded by developing an integrated PhD programme that facilitates cross-disciplinary academic and research collaboration. The Harvard Medical School (HMS), established in 1782, is one of the discipline’s high-fliers. Since the 1930s, fifteen researchers from HMS have shared in nine Nobel Prizes. For the most recent of them, in 2009, Jack Szostak discovered how telomeres cap the ends of chromosomes and protect them from degradation, opening up new lines of enquiry into ageing and cancer research. While last year, a popular piece of research from Harvard’s sleep medicine department highlighted the negative effects of light-emitting e-readers on sleep quality.

3. French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), France

WFC: 699.45

The French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) is the largest fundamental research organisation in Europe, comprising ten institutions with more than 32,000 researchers, engineers and technicians. The physical sciences made up more than a third of the contributions to the Index in 2015. In recent years the CNRS has become a key player in planetary science. CNRS engineers have been remotely operating and maintaining instruments on board NASA’s Curiosity Rover, which has been exploring Mars since 2012. The mission lead to the confirmation late last year that liquid water currently flows on the planet. This year CNRS researcher Franck Montmessin is leading the European Space Agency’s mission ExoMars 2016 to investigate the planet’s atmosphere and find evidence of past life beneath its surface.

4. Max Planck Society, Germany

WFC: 655.67

Ranked fourth in the Nature Index, the Max Planck Society has the physical sciences to thank for its high position. Since 1914, physics researchers at Max Planck, a government-funded association of research institute, have won nine Nobel Prizes. The society is named after the quantum theorist, Max Planck, the institute’s second Nobel recipient in 1918, four years after Max von Laue won for his pioneering work in X-ray crystallography. During the Second World War, Laue’s gold medal was dissolved in acid to prevent discovery by the Nazis, and then recast by the Nobel Society after the war. Today, two institutes stand out in terms of research output in the index: the polymer and solid state research units. Last year, nanochemistry scientists focusing on solid-state research published a paper in Advanced Materials that explored moisture-sensitive technology and its potential use in touchless screens.

5. Stanford University, United States

WFC: 530.83

When Stanford University opened its doors to students in 1891, it became one of America’s first non-sectarian, co-educational private colleges. Stanford’s first president, David Starr Jordan, said: “Work in applied science is to be carried out side-by-side with the pure sciences and humanities, and to be equally fostered.” This attitude remains true today as research output is equally balanced between all the disciplines. The university is also credited for its entrepreneurial spirit. During the 1950s, the University leased land to a new industrial park that went on to become Silicon Valley. To this day, Stanford researchers continue this legacy of real-world influence. Howard Rose, a Stanford residential fellow and CEO of Deep Stream VR, is currently developing a virtual reality app called Cool! that is designed to immerse patients in a world that enables them to manage chronic pain without drugs.

more @ http://www.natureindex.com/news-blo...ifteen?utm_source=taboola&utm_medium=referral

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

* June 19, 2016 *
*China Debuts 93-Petaflops ‘Sunway’ with Homegrown Processors*
Tiffany Trader 

You may have heard the rumors, but now it’s official: China has built and deployed a 93 petaflops LINPACK (125 petaflops peak) Chinese-made supercomputer at its Wuxi Supercomputer Center, near Shanghai. A few days ago _HPCwire_ received an advance copy of a report on the new system prepared by TOP500 author Jack Dongarra detailing the feeds and speeds and proffering perspective on its strengths and weaknesses.

Originally, Tianhe-2 was on deck to be China’s first 100-petaflopper based on a planned infusion of Intel Xeon Knights Landing CPUs. There was chatter that China could even be standing up two 100-petafloppers in time for the ISC TOP500 list publication, but the US embargo regulations restricting the sale of US processor technology into China pushed back the timeline. It was this trade restriction that spurred China to refocus efforts on its native chip technology. At the 12th Asian Connections workshop in Wuhan, China, in April, Beihang University Professor Depei Qian, who is helping steer the nation’s supercomputing roadmap as part of the 863 project, stressed the need for “self-controllable HPC technologies” on account of a “lesson learnt from the embargo regulation.”

During ISC 2016 this week, we expect more details on the fully-realized Tianhe-2 to be revealed as well as an update on the nation’s exascale plans now that Tianhe-3 has been named as the targeted first exascale system. (Recall that China has announced it will stand up an exaflops (peak) machine by 2020.)






Sunway TaihuLight System computer room​
*Full story -> http://www.hpcwire.com/2016/06/19/china-125-petaflops-sunway/*

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*China's new radar system can penetrate walls and provide scanning imagery of objects inside houses*
(People's Daily Online) 14:33, June 20, 2016






Terahertz imaging. (File photo)​
China has completed research and development of a new radar system, which can penetrate walls and provide scanning imagery of objects inside houses.

According to a report on the website of the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense on June 15, China Electronic Technology Corporation (CETC) has completed the prototype R&D of China’s first all-solid-state Terahertz imaging radar system, with all the major indexes meeting the expected effects aimed for. The achievement means that CETC’s Terahertz imaging radar technology is advanced at a world-wide level.

Terahertz technology has been a research hotspot in recent years. Terahertz signals carry high frequencies, have short wave lengths, high temporal-frequency spectrum signal to noise ratio and low transmission loss in dense smoke-filled or dusty environments. It can go through walls and scan objects inside of houses, which is an ideal technology for the environment of battlefields.

In urban combat and anti-terrorist combat in the future, the Terahertz imaging radar system can provide three-dimensional stereoscopic imaging of objects behind walls; detect hidden weapons and militants under disguise and show tanks, artillery and other equipment even hidden by smoke. 

With the joint efforts of several research institutes under CETC, the R&D of this new radar system only took over two years to achieve major research progress. Now, they have completed the broadband Terahertz one-dimensional range profile and ISAR imaging experiment and acquired the first ISAR image with resolution, image side lobes, electrical levels and other indexes meeting the expected effect.

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## JSCh

*Single-molecule switch flipped on and off by light*
17 June 2016
Tim Wogan







© Science/AAAS​
Researchers have produced a photoswitch comprising just one photosensitive molecule whose electrical conductivity can be turned on and off by light.1 The device may, with further development, have potential in solar energy harvesting and light-sensing applications. It may also be useful in biomedical electronics and optical logic, in which light replaces electrical signals to transmit information.

In the ongoing quest to miniaturise electronics, one ambitious frontier – molecular electronics – involves constructing electronic circuits and devices from individual molecules. Several groups have investigated single-molecule switches. Diarylethenes can exist in either a closed form in which they conduct electricity or an open form in which they are insulators. The free molecule opens when it absorbs a visible photon and closes on absorption of UV. In principle, this allows for a light-sensitive switch.

In 2003, however, researchers at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands who mounted single molecules of diarylethene between gold electrodes found that, even though the switches could be turned off by visible light, they could not then be turned back on by ultraviolet.2 Conversely, researchers using carbon nanotube or graphene electrodes have subsequently reported that the switches become stuck in the 'on' position.3 The problems have been attributed to interactions between the electrodes and the molecules that stabilize one state, preventing the molecule switching.

Using another group’s theoretical analysis, researchers led by Xuefeng Guo of Peking University in Beijing – who carried out the previous work on graphene and nanotube electrodes – calculated that inserting three methylene groups between each graphene electrode and the diarylethene molecule would reduce the interaction between the electronic clouds just enough that, though the molecule would be stable in either configuration, it could still be switched by light. They used a combination of chemical vapour deposition, electron beam lithography and other techniques to fabricate 46 such devices. 'All the devices showed reversible switching properties,' says Guo. They were stable for over a year and could consistently be switched on and off more than 100 times. The researchers are now investigating the switchable quantum effects in detail. 'We're also interested to see whether we can combine several different molecules to do multi-level switching, for example,' says Guo's colleague Hongqi Xu.

'In many cases, molecular junctions have lives of minutes, hours, or in fortunate cases days, but no more,' says Ioan Bâldea of the University of Heidelberg, Germany, who was not involved in the work. 'The fact that here they have switches stable over a year is fantastic! I can't say in which field there will be the strongest impact, but I'm certain there will be an impact.’


Single-molecule switch flipped on and off by light | Chemistry World

Covalently bonded single-molecule junctions with stable and reversible photoswitched conductivity | Science

*Stable molecular switches*
Many single-molecule current switches have been reported, but most show poor stability because of weak contacts to metal electrodes. Jia _et al._ covalently bonded a diarylethene molecule to graphene electrodes and achieved stable photoswitching at room temperature (see the Perspective by Frisbie). The incorporation of short bridging alkyl chains between the molecule and graphene decoupled their pielectron systems and allowed fast conversion of the open and closed ring states.

_Science_, this issue p. 1443; see also p. 1394​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Science stars of China*
From ancient DNA to neutrinos and neuroscience, top researchers in China are making big impacts — and raising their country’s standing in science.

20 June 2016




​WU JI: Upward bound | NANCY IP: Making connections | NIENG YAN: Crystal connoisseur | CAIXIA GAO: Crop engineer | CUI WEICHENG: Deep diver | WANG YIFANG: Particle power | QIAOMEI FU: Genome historian | QIN WEIJIA: Polar explorer | CHEN JINING: Pollution patrol | CHAOYANG LU: Quantum wizard



_*Continue -> *_Science stars of China : Nature News & Comment

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*New 'shape-adaptive' device turns body motion into power source (w/ videos)*
June 20, 2016 by Bob Yirka

(Tech Xplore)—A combined team of researchers with members from several institutions in China and the Georgia Institute of Technology, has developed a flexible nanogenerator that harnesses the energy from moving body parts and uses it to run electronic devices. In their paper published in the journal _Science Advances_, the team describes their new device, how they made it bendable, and the ways they believe it might be used.

The first triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) was developed at Georgian Tech back in 2012, and since that time teams across the world have been hard at work attempting to create consumer devices that will be both useful and inexpensive. If a team succeeds, we might soon seen devices that are affixed to our skin or clothes, powered by nothing more than our movements. Such devices work by using the normal motion of the human body, such as a foot tapping, to cause two different types of material in the device to rub together, or more recently, when they are pressed together, so as to prevent erosion of material. Up till now, most such devices have been rigid. In this new effort, the researchers claim they have developed a flexible TENG that is also stretchable.


_*Full Story ->*_ New 'shape-adaptive' device turns body motion into power source (w/ videos)

*More information:* F. Yi et al. A highly shape-adaptive, stretchable design based on conductive liquid for energy harvesting and self-powered biomechanical monitoring, _Science Advances_ (2016). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1501624

*Abstract* 
The rapid growth of deformable and stretchable electronics calls for a deformable and stretchable power source. We report a scalable approach for energy harvesters and self-powered sensors that can be highly deformable and stretchable. With conductive liquid contained in a polymer cover, a shape-adaptive triboelectric nanogenerator (saTENG) unit can effectively harvest energy in various working modes. The saTENG can maintain its performance under a strain of as large as 300%. The saTENG is so flexible that it can be conformed to any three-dimensional and curvilinear surface. We demonstrate applications of the saTENG as a wearable power source and self-powered sensor to monitor biomechanical motion. A bracelet-like saTENG worn on the wrist can light up more than 80 light-emitting diodes. Owing to the highly scalable manufacturing process, the saTENG can be easily applied for large-area energy harvesting. In addition, the saTENG can be extended to extract energy from mechanical motion using flowing water as the electrode. This approach provides a new prospect for deformable and stretchable power sources, as well as self-powered sensors, and has potential applications in various areas such as robotics, biomechanics, physiology, kinesiology, and entertainment.​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*Nature magazine gives nod to 10 star scientists from China*
*
Updated: 2016-06-21 10:23*

*(Xinhua)*





Screenshot of the cover of _Nature_'s feature _Science stars of China_


LONDON -- Ten of China's leading scientists who have made significant impacts in fields ranging from neuroscience and neutrinos to space science and structural biology were highlighted in Nature magazine's online edition on Monday.

The list includes Wang Yifang, director of the Beijing-based Institute of High Energy Physics, who hopes to build a 50 to 100-km circular particle collider to succeed the 27-km-circumference Large Hadron Collider (LHC) of the CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research).

Wang's plan consists of two machines: the first will explore the Higgs particle starting in around 2028, while the next one will occupy the same tunnel and smash particles together with up to seven times the energy of the LHC. This is a bold proposal and will need a huge amount of investment from the government. Wang has proved he could get major projects off the ground and bring in international support, Nature quoted Brian Foster, a physicist at the University of Oxford, as saying.

Also featured were Wu Ji, director-general of China's National Space Science Center, whose basic-space-science missions are putting scientific discovery at the core of China's space program.

The journal listed Lu Chaoyang, deemed a rising star in China's push to master quantum-information technology. Lu is noted for his work with "entanglement," in which the quantum states of different particles are linked regardless of how far apart they are. His goal is to advance quantum entanglement enough to use it for computations.

Four biologists are included in the list: Gao Caixia, whose lab became the first to use the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technique in crops, specifically wheat and rice; structural biologist Yan Nieng who is featured for her work on determining the structures of proteins that are embedded in cells' plasma membranes; Nancy Ip whose leadership and research on basic neural biology and translational research for brain health are bolstering science and biotechnology in China; geneticist Fu Qiaomei whose work could redraft the history of Asia's first anatomically modern humans.

The collection also includes China's Minister of Environmental Protection Chen Jining, who has ramped up the government's efforts to ensure that local officials and companies are following the rules on pollution and industrial development, according to Nature. Qin Weijia, executive deputy director of the Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration, is featured for helping to uncover the history of the Antarctic ice sheets.

Cui Weicheng is another featured Chinese scientist. Currently at Shanghai Ocean University, Cui is aiming to reach the deepest place on Earth - the Challenger Deep valley at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, 11,000 meters down. To achieve this goal, he is leading an effort to build a more pressure-resistant, three-person submersible called Rainbow Fish, which is scheduled to be completed in 2020.

"These ten individuals highlight the breadth and promise of innovation in China as the country continues its strong push to become a leader in science," said Richard Monastersky, features editor for Nature.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## bobsm

*Chinese scientists lead research to finish totally new human brain mapping*
(People's Daily Online) 15:32, June 21, 2016






After six years of efforts, Chinese scientists have finished mapping the human brain in collaborative effort with foreign experts, which is totally new and will provide an indispensable tool for the study of the relationship between the brain and behavior.

Human Brain mapping is the cornerstone of understanding of brain structure and function. The most widely used human brain mapping is Brodmann's map which was made 100 years ago and is based on a single person's body tissue using cytoarchitecture.

Although in recent years, scientists have used magnetic resonance imaging technology to map the human brain, yet the map is divided roughly and difficult to correspond with the function of the brain.

The scientists from the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS) have broken the 100-year-old bottlenecks of traditional mapping of the human brain and have proposed new ideas and methods, including use of brain structure and information regarding function connections to map the human brain. The totally new mapping includes 246 sub-regions, four to five times as detailed as Brodamann’s mapping and it firstly maps the connection of the whole human brain of a living body in a macroscopic manner.

Fan Lingzhong, associate professor of the CAS, said the mapping can provide the connection mode of every sub-region and structure, which will become an indispensable tool for the study of the relationship between the brain and behavior, and for finding new ways to understand the structure and function of the human brain. This has important implications for the design of digital brains inside smart systems.

It will also help to locate areas damaged by strokes and epileptic foci, and in the precise removal of glimoas during neurosurgical operations.


http://en.people.cn/n3/2016/0621/c90000-9075393.html

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## yusheng

*Polysynthetic twinned TiAl single crystals for high-temperature applications*

Guang Chen1, n1
Yingbo Peng1, n1
Gong Zheng1, n1
Zhixiang Qi1, n1
Minzhi Wang1,
Huichen Yu2,
Chengli Dong2,
C. T. Liu3,

Affiliations
Contributions
Corresponding authors
Journal name:
Nature Materials
Year published:
(2016)
DOI:
doi:10.1038/nmat4677
Received
09 July 2015
Accepted
24 May 2016
Published online
20 June 2016
*Article tools*

Citation
Reprints
Rights & permissions
Article metrics
*Abstract*

Abstract•
References•
Author information•
Supplementary information
TiAl alloys are lightweight, show decent corrosion resistance and have good mechanical properties at elevated temperatures, making them appealing for high-temperature applications. However, polysynthetic twinned TiAl single crystals fabricated by crystal-seeding methods face substantial challenges, and their service temperatures cannot be raised further. Here we report that Ti–45Al–8Nb single crystals with controlled lamellar orientations can be fabricated by directional solidification without the use of complex seeding methods. Samples with 0° lamellar orientation exhibit an average room temperature tensile ductility of 6.9% and a yield strength of 708 MPa, with a failure strength of 978 MPa due to the formation of extensive nanotwins during plastic deformation. At 900 °C yield strength remains high at 637 MPa, with 8.1% ductility and superior creep resistance. Thus, this TiAl single-crystal alloy could provide expanded opportunities for higher-temperature applications, such as in aeronautics and aerospace.

*Subject terms:*

Aerospace engineering•
Metals and alloys
*At a glance*
*Figures*




Figure 1: Optical micrographs of directionally solidified Ti–45Al–8Nb PST single crystals at different withdrawal rates.
*a*, Longitudinal section of an ingot at a withdrawal rate lower than _V_c, showing a PST single crystal with a lamellar orientation aligned parallel to the growth direction. *b*, Longitudinal section of an ingot at a withdrawal rate higher than _V_c, showing a PST single crystal with a lamellar orientation aligned at 45° to the growth direction. *c*, Magnified lamellar microstructure in the area marked in *a*, showing more clearly the parallel lamellar microstructure. *d*, Magnified area marked in *b*.





Figure 2: Lamellar microstructure of a Ti–45Al–8Nb well-aligned PST single crystal before and after tensile test at ambient temperature.
*a*, Bright-field TEM image of a tensile specimen showing the original α2/γ lamellar structure before the test. *b*, After the tensile deformation, the bright-field TEM image reveals the ultrafine twinning and lamellar structure, with the selected area electron diffraction pattern (inset). *c*, A high-resolution (HR) TEM image of the deformed specimen showing multiple-twinned structures containing three twin boundaries γA/γB, γB/γC and γC/γD.





Figure 3: Mechanical properties of Ti–45Al–8Nb PST single crystals as a function of temperature and the microstructure after tension.
*a*, Mechanical properties as a function of temperature. The well-aligned PST single crystal maintains a high yield strength of 637 MPa at 900 °C; a temperature much higher than the 650–750 °C reported for polycrystalline alloys4 (see the pink-colour region in the figure). *b*,*c*, The true stress–strain curve and the work hardening rate obtained at ambient temperature (*b*) and 900 °C (*c*). *d*, TEM microstructure of well-aligned PST single crystals after tension tested at 900 °C. Twins and dislocations appear simultaneously after the elevated-temperature deformation.





Figure 4: Creep properties of well-aligned Ti–45Al–8Nb PST single crystals with the 0° lamellar orientation and the commercial Ti–48Al–2Cr–2Nb polycrystalline alloy at different stresses at 900 °C in air.
*a*, Creep strain–lifetime curves. The red lines are for the Ti–45Al–8Nb PST single crystals and the blue lines for the 4822 alloys. The inset is the creep strain–lifetime curves of the 4822 commercial alloy under stresses of 150 and 210 MPa. *b*, Comparison of the minimum creep rates of the single and polycrystalline materials.

http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nmat4677.html


*中国发动机材料重大突破 寿命优于美国1-2个数量级*
*新华报业网报道，南京理工大学材料评价与设计教育部工程研究中心陈光教授团队在国家973计划等资助下，经长期研究，在新型航空航天材料钛铝合金方面取得重大跨越性突破。相关成果Polysynthetic twinned TiAl single crystals for high-temperature applications(高温PST钛铝单晶)于2016年6月20日在线发表于Nature Materials(《自然材料》)。 航空航天技术是一个国家科技、工业和国防实力的重要体现。航空发动机被誉为飞机的心脏，叶片则是航空发动机中最关键的核心部件，其承温能力直接决定着发动机的性能，尤其是推重比。

美国GE公司采用Ti-48Al-2Cr-2Nb(以下简称4822)合金替代原来的镍基高温合金制造了GEnx发动机最后两级低压涡轮叶片，使单台发动机减重约200磅，节油20%，氮化物(NOx)排放量减少80%，噪音显著降低，用于波音787飞机，2007年试飞成功，2009年正式投入商业运营，成为当时航空与材料领域轰动性的进展。

陈光教授团队的研究成果在材料性能上实现了新的大幅度跨越，所制备的PST TiAl单晶室温拉伸塑性和屈服强度分别高达6.9%和708MPa，抗拉强度高达978MPa，实现了高强高塑的优异结合。更为重要的是，该合金在900℃时的拉伸屈服强度为637MPa，并具有优异的抗蠕变性能，其最小蠕变速率和持久寿命均优于已经成功应用于GEnx发动机的4822合金1~2个数量级，有望将目前TiAl合金的使用温度从650~750℃提高到900℃以上。
*

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*China unveils first embedded neural network processing unit*
(People's Daily Online) 14:22, June 22, 2016
​ 





(Photo: guancha.cn)​
China has launched mass production of the country’s newly-unveiled first ever embedded neural network processing unit (NPU), marking one more major breakthrough in the country’s NPU research and development.

The VC0758 NPU, developed by China’s leading video technology supplier Vimicro is based on a data driven parallel computing model, which can greatly improve the smart chip’s computational ability at a lower power consumption rate, said Zhang Yundong, executive director of the Vimicro State Key Laboratory on digital multimedia chip technology.

Vimicro on Monday announced that it has realized mass production of the VC0758 NPU after five years of research, suggesting that China is now one of the countries with the most advanced artificial intellectual technology in deep learning based on a data driven parallel computing model, according China National Radio (CNR).

Zhang added that the chip is especially skilled in processing multimedia data such as videos and images. Its capabilities will especially be brought into full play when it is used for embedded computer vision applications, CNR reported.

The CNR noted that the smart chip will give a major boost to improvement for China’s video surveillance industry and can help the country to establish a leading position in the world.

According to China Central Television, the VC0758 will be widely employed in drone, intelligent drive assistance systems or in the field of robot vision.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*China’s bid to be a DNA superpower*
_First China conquered DNA sequencing. Now it wants to dominate precision medicine too._

David Cyranoski
22 June 2016
Six years ago, China became the global leader in DNA sequencing — and it was all down to one company, BGI. The Shenzen-based firm had just purchased 128 of the world's fastest sequencing machines and was said to have more than half the world's capacity for decoding DNA. It was assembling an army of upstart young bioinformaticians, collaborating with leading researchers worldwide and publishing the sequences of creatures ranging from ancient humans to the giant panda. The firm was quickly gaining a reputation as a brute-force genome factory — more brawn than brains, said some.


*Continue ->* China’s bid to be a DNA superpower : Nature News & Comment

Part of Nature's current issue special,

Science in China : Nature News & Comment​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Jiao Tong University - Experimental Observations Reveal the Mystery of Majorana Fermions*
June 23, 2016 Author:




About three quarters of a century ago, Ettore Majorana introduced the novel elusive particles into theoretical physics, what are now known as "Marjorana fermions", unlike electrons and positrons, which constitute their own antiparticles. The monumental significance of this development required many intervening decades to fully appreciate, and despite being an "old" idea Majorana fermion remain central to diverse problems across modern physics, not only in neutrino physics, super-symmetry and dark matter, but also on some exotic states of condensed matter.

The observation of Majorana fermions in condensed matter would certainly constitute a landmark achievement from a fundamental physics standpoint, both because it could mean the first realization of Ettore Majoranna's theoretical discovery and, for more importantly, because of the non-Abelian statistics that they harbor. Moreover, success in this search might ultimately prove essential to overcoming one of the grand challenges in the field-the synthesis of a scalable quantum computer.

In 2008, Fu and Kane provided a groundbreaking development by theoretically predicting that Majorana bound states can appear at the interface between topological insulators (TIs) and superconductors. Topological superconductors (TSCs) become a research focus soon after they were theoretically expected to host Majorana fermions. So far, however, no TSC materials have been found in nature although there are some possible candidates. The theoretical work proposed that a topological insulator surface should show topological superconductivity when it is covered by a normal superconductor, i.e., a SC/TI heterostructure. In practice, however, it is difficult to grow a SC on a TI surface due to the poor thermo-stability of the TI materials and the chemical reaction at the interface. In 2012, Prof. Jinfeng Jia's group of Shanghai Jiao Tong University published a paper in Science (Science 336, 52-55 (2012)) which reported the first successful fabrication of a TI/SC heterostructure instead of the SC/TI heterosctructure. The coexistence of superconductivity and topological surface states was realized on the surface of the Bi2Se3/NbSe2 heterosctructure for the first time.

In 2014, Prof. Jinfeng Jia's group continued their intense search to provide experimental evidence of topological superconductivity in their special heterostructure, and published a paper in Physical Review Letters (Vol. 112, Page 217001) with their coworkers.In this work, a topological insulator/superconductor (TI/SC) heterosctructure, Bi2Te3/NbSe2, was investigated by using ultra-low-temperature and high-magnetic-field scanning tunneling spectroscope, resulting in a series of research achievement. It is the first time in experiments that the TI/SC heterostructure was demonstrated to be an artificial TSC. It is also the first time that quantum magnetic vortices and Andreev bound states were directly observed on a proximity-effect induced TSC, which lays the foundation for the search of Majorana fermions in condensed matter physics.

In 2015, the signatures of Majorana fermions were observed by systematically investigating the spatial profile of the Majorana mode and the bound quasiparticle states within a vortex in Bi2Te3/NbSe2. While the zero bias peak in local conductance splits right off the vortex center in conventional superconductors, it splits off at a finite distance ∼20 nm away from the vortex center in Bi2Te3. This unusual splitting behavior suggested its origin of the Majorana fermion zero mode. This work provides self-consistent evidences of Majorana fermions and was published in PRL, the coauthors include Prof. Fuchun Zhang and ZhuAn Xu of Zhejiang University, Q.H Wang of Nanjing University, Y. Liu of Pennsylvania State University and Q.K. Xue of Tsinghua University.




Most recently, on the basis of the above work, Professor Jia's research group made an important and historic step forward in searching Majorana fermions in the TI/SC heterostructures, together with other people in Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Micro-structure, including ZhuAn Xu’s group in Zhejiang University, Shaochun Li's group in Nanjing University; and Liang Fu at MIT. They announced that they have firstly observed the tracks of the mysterious majoronna particle in the vortex. The vortex center in a topological insulator / superconductor heterojunction surface is carefully measured by spin polarized scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy. The specific spin polarized current which caused by the Marjorana particle has been clearly observed. The experimental data are strongly supported by the theoretical calculations. This work gives a definite evidence for the existence of Majorana fermions. For the first time, spin properties of Majorana particles are observed. They also provide an effective way to control the existence of Majorana particles by means of interaction. They lifted the veil of mysterious Majorana fermions, generate the possibility for the further research and application of the Majorana fermions. Their research work has been published in PRL online. As commented by a referee of the PRL, the experiment results are clear and convincing. They also provide a direct approach for observing the mysterious Majorana fermions.

Reviewed by: Liu Yiting

#####​
Majorana Zero Mode Detected with Spin Selective Andreev Reflection in the Vortex of a Topological Superconductor, _Phys. Rev. Lett._ (2016). DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.257003​#####





* Chinese scientists find the existence of the Majorana fermion particle *
CCTV News

Published on Jun 22, 2016
A major discovery in theoretical physics has been revealed in Shanghai’s Jiaotong University. Evidence has surfaced that proves beyond reasonable doubt the existence of the particle, Majorana fermions. CCTV’s Shi Wenjing has more.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Bird wings trapped in amber are a fossil first from the age of dinosaurs*
_Preserved feathers and tissue provide a picture of hatchlings from the Cretaceous. _

Rachel Becker
28 June 2016

Two tiny wings locked in amber 99 million years ago suggest that in the middle of the Cretaceous period — when dinosaurs still walked the planet — bird feathers already looked a lot like they do today.

A team of researchers led by Lida Xing, a palaeontologist at the China University of Geosciences in Beijing, recovered a first for the time period: a few cubic centimetres of amber from northeastern Myanmar that contained the partial remains of two bird wings. The specimens include bone, feathers and skin, according to a study published on 28 June in _Nature Communications

*Full Story -> *_Bird wings trapped in amber are a fossil first from the age of dinosaurs : Nature News & Comment

_#####_​
Mummified precocial bird wings in mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber : Nature Communications : Nature Publishing Group

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Household fuels exceed power plants, cars as smog source in Beijing – Princeton Engineering*

Posted Jun 27, 2016
By John Sullivan

Beijing and surrounding areas of China often suffer from choking smog. The Chinese government has made commitments to improve air quality and has achieved notable results in reducing emissions from the power and transportation sectors. However, new research indicates that the government could dramatically improve air quality with more attention to an overlooked source of outdoor pollution — residential cooking and heating.

"Coal and other dirty solid fuels are frequently used in homes for cooking and heating," said Denise Mauzerall, a researcher who led the study and professor of civil and environmental engineering and public and international affairs at Princeton University. "Because these emissions are essentially uncontrolled they emit a disproportionately large amount of air pollutants which contribute substantially to smog in Beijing and surrounding regions."




Households account for about 18 percent of total energy use in the Beijing region but produce 50 percent of black carbon emissions and 69 percent of organic carbon emissions, according to a research team from institutions including Princeton, the University of California Berkeley, Peking University and Tsinghua University. In the Beijing area, households contribute more pollutants in the form of small soot particles (which are particularly hazardous to human health) than the transportation sector and power plants combined; in the winter heating season, households also contribute more small particles than do industrial sources.

The researchers said the high levels of air pollutant emissions are due to the use of coal and other dirty fuels in small stoves and heaters that lack the pollution controls in place in power plants, vehicles and at some factories.

The "use of solid fuels (coal and biomass) for heating and cooking in households contributes directly to exposures in and around residences and is a major source of ill health in China," the researchers wrote in an article published online June 27 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers said illness caused by air pollution was a leading cause of premature death in China, ranking between high blood pressure and smoking as risk factors.

The researchers used a sophisticated air pollution model to evaluate the benefits of reducing residential emissions on air pollution levels in Beijing and the surrounding region in the winter of 2010. The region in the study, which has a population of 104 million people, and frequently has air pollution levels more than six times higher than what the World Health Organization considers a safe limit, included Beijing and the surrounding Tianjin and Hebei provinces. The researchers ran computer model simulations in which they removed a varying amount of residential emissions in Beijing alone as well as the entire Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) region and found that reducing residential emissions resulted in corresponding drops in outdoor pollution levels.

"The residential sector has been relatively overlooked in ambient air pollution control strategies," Mauzerall said. "Our analysis indicates that air quality in the Beijing region would substantially benefit from reducing residential sector emissions from within Beijing and from surrounding provinces. Air pollution levels in Beijing would greatly benefit from a regional strategy to reduce emissions from dirty cook stoves."

The researchers concluded from their study that eliminating household emissions alone would reduce levels of small particulate pollution in the air over Beijing in winter by about 22 percent, but that eliminating household emissions in all three provinces that include Beijing would nearly double the reduction in particulate levels in the city itself.

"Reducing residential emissions from the entire region, including the surrounding rural areas, has the potential to greatly improve air quality within Beijing and its suburbs," Mauzerall said.

The researchers said the government can take additional steps both in the near term and the future to reduce emissions. Natural gas, liquid petroleum gas, cleaner solid-fuel stoves and electricity can presently reduce emissions. In the long-term electricity from renewable energy sources would virtually eliminate the emissions of air pollutants and the greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.

Besides Mauzerall, the paper's authors include: Jun Liu, Qi Chen, Yu Song, Xinghua Qiu, and Shiqiu Zhang of the College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Peking University; Qiang Zhang of Tsinghua University; Wei Peng of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University; Zbigniew Klimont of the Institute for Applied Systems Analysis; Weili Lin of the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences; Kirk Smith, the school of public health, University of California, Berkeley.

The work appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science and was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation Committee of China, the European Seventh Framework Programme Project PURGE, the Collaborative Innovation Center for Regional Environmental Quality, and the Council for International Teaching and Research at Princeton.

-------------------​
Liu J, Mauzerall DL, Chen Q, Zhang Q, Song Y, Peng W, Klimont Z, Qiu X, Zhang S, Hu M, Smith KR, Zhu T, 2016, Air pollutant emissions from Chinese households: A major and underappreciated ambient pollution source, Proc Nat Acad of Sci, www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/ 10.1073/pnas.1604537113 (in press)

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

* Cold spring discovered in S. China Sea*
People's Daily Online, June 28, 2016






The unmanned remotely operated vehicle "Haima". [Photo / Guangzhou Daily]​
China has unveiled its latest discovery of a cold spring in the South China Sea, gesturing a major step forward in flammable ice exploitation in the region.

The cold spring, coded as Haima or sea horse, is located in the southern waters of the Pearl River basin. Covering an area of 618 square kilometers, it is about 1,350 to 1,430 meters' deep and various kinds of cold spring activities could be detected throughout 350 square kilometers of the total area, according to the preliminary discovery results made public on Saturday in Guangzhou City of southern China’s Guangdong Province, the Guangzhou Daily reported.

The China Geology Survey (CGS) under the Ministry of Land and Resources said it began to detect cold springs on the northern continental slope of the South China Sea in 1999. The Haima cold spring was detected in March 2015 by the unmanned remotely operated vehicle "Haima" during its first mission conducting an oceanic geological survey.

According to the CGS, the Haima cold spring is full of natural gas hydrates on the shallow strata. There are also many authigenic carbonates exposed on its surface due to large quantities of methane gas leakage. Different kinds of organism groups co-exist in the cold spring, especially sea mussels which grow on the carbonates.

Methane gas could be detected at the cold springs, which suggests possible storage of natural gas hydrates, including flammable ice, the Guangzhou Daily reported.

The Haima cold spring discovery has proved the rich storage of natural gas hydrates within China's territorial waters, the newspaper noted, adding that an engineering technological center has been launched in Guangzhou, aiming to further promote China’s detection and exploitation abilities of natural gas hydrates in China's sea area.

------------------xxx------------------​*Researchers Find Effects of Ensembles on Methane Hydrate Nucleation Kinetics*
Jun 28, 2016

Methane hydrate is a crystalline compound made from space-filling cages of water molecules that accommodate methane. It exists in much of the sediments that cover the oceanic floor as well as in permafrost. Research on methane hydrate nucleation kinetics is important for hydrate recovery and storage, developing kinetic hydrate inhibitors, and designing oil-gas transportation pipelines.

Post-doctor ZHANG Zhengcai, and his supervisor Prof. GUO Guangjun, Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences(IGGCAS), together with their co-workers, have undertake molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the nucleation kinetics of methane hydrate.

_*Continue -> *_Researchers Find Effects of Ensembles on Methane Hydrate Nucleation Kinetics | Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*640,000-year-old cave stalagmites in China help scientists understand how last seven ice ages ended*
Dating stalagmites and measuring oxygen isotope levels allows researchers a clearer picture of past climate.

By Léa Surugue
June 29, 2016 18:00 BST
A detailed analysis of stalagmites in the Chinese cave of Sanbao has revealed that cyclical changes in the level of solar radiation reaching the Earth may have contributed to the end of the seven most recent ice ages. The stalagmites also provided the most detailed and accurate record to date of variations in the Asian Monsoon.

Scientists generally use uranium/thorium dating to determine the age of calcium carbonate materials such as stalagmites. In this study published in Nature, the researchers used this method to date the stalagmites in the cave. They managed to date them back to 640,000 years ago – pushing back the limits of how far it is possible to go back in time with uranium/thorium dating.

The researchers also measured oxygen isotope levels to determine past characteristics of the climate, such as temperature and monsoon strength.

Combined with the uranium/thorium dating, this stalagmite data enabled them to precisely date when different climatic events occurred over hundreds of thousands of years, and to investigate whether cyclical changes in the level of solar radiation had anything to do with it.

*Monsoon strength and ice age*
The scientists used four stalagmites that they collected 1.5km (just under a mile) from the cave mouth, and dated their formation with the uranium/thorium dating technique. They also used the stalagmites to construct a record of composite oxygen levels starting from 640,000 years ago.

Over this long period of time, the gradual shift in the orientation of Earth's axis of rotation – a process known as precession – caused changes in solar radiation. This new record suggests that precession led to the end of ice ages as well as the reduction of rainfall during Monsoon season recorded by the stalagmites.

"Insolation changes caused by the Earth's precession drove the terminations of each of the last seven ice ages as well as the millennia-long intervals of reduced monsoon rainfall associated with each of the terminations", the scientists have said.

Another interesting finding is that oxygen isotope record they have come up with also indicates that the end of each ice age were separated by four or five precession cycles, each lasting around 20,000. This supports the commonly accepted idea that ice age cycles are separated by 100,000 years.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/stalagmites-china-tell-story-asian-monsoon-end-ice-ages-1568114

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*China expanding capacity of dark matter detector*
(Xinhua) 08:52, June 30, 2016
​ 



XICHANG, June 29, 2016 (Xinhua) -- An experimenter of Dark Matter Experiment "PandaX", which means Particle and Astrophysical Xenon Detector, checks facilities in the Jinping Underground Laboratory, located at 2,400 meters under the surface of Jinping Hydropower Station, in southwest China's Sichuan Province, June 28, 2016. PandaX is designed to build and operate a ton-scale liquid xenon experiment to detect the dark matter, invisible material that scientists say makes up most of the universe's mass. The PandaX program, headed by China's Shanghai Jiao Tong University, was conducted in the Jinping lab, one of the world's deepest underground labs opened in December 2010. The Jinping lab provides a "clean" space for scientists to pursue the dark matter. Researchers said the extreme depth helps block most cosmic rays that mess with the observation. (Xinhua/Xue Yubin)​ 

CHENGDU, June 29 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists are expanding the capacity of an underground facility designed to detect elusive dark matter particles.

Scientists are still searching for evidence to prove the existence of the hypothetical dark matter, an invisible substance thought to account for over a quarter of the universe's mass-energy balance.

The Jinping Underground Laboratory, which is 2,400 meters under a mountain in Sichuan Province, started operating in December 2010. It has a store of xenon, one of the few materials that interact with dark matter, and the cosmic rays that commonly interfere with attempts to observe dark matter generally cannot penetrate to such a depth underground.

Xiao Mengjiao, a researcher at the laboratory, said he and his colleagues have started the second phase of their experiment.

The lab now stores 300 kilograms of xenon, an expansion from the54 kilograms in the first phase.

"In the future, the quantity of xenon will reach a number of tons, but it will depend on when the research funding arrives," Xiao said.

The second phase, which will last about a year, "will take us further on our way to find dark matter signals," he added.

Analysis of data collected during a trial run of the second phase from November to December is complete, according to the scientist. "The results are a significant step forward from the first phase, because we are able to focus on areas where dark matter is most likely to be observed," he said.

"We have reason to believe we are on the verge of finding dark matter."

But the researchers may need to keep up their current pace if China is to win the race in this field.

"International competition in the hunt for dark matter has gotten quite fierce, and many are building larger detection equipment and adopting more cutting-edge technology," Xiao said.

According to Liu Jiang, another lab researcher, "Dark matter is like the smog in the universe and the Earth is like a car that rides through the smog. It is the detectors' responsibility to record the 'sound' of collision between the car and the smog."

Reactions: Like Like:
8


----------



## ahojunk

One of the scientist looks like a foreigner. This is good as it shows collaboration with other scientists.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## bobsm

*Chinese-developed live stream platform gets very popular in US*
(People's Daily Online) 10:59, July 01, 2016







Top downloads of "all categories" and "photography and videos" of App Store on June 29.

Amid the competition among live stream platforms including Facebook Live and Twitter'sPeriscope, Live.ly, the newly released live streaming app from Musical.ly, has achievedoutstanding performance and secured the top slot in the APP Store.

But you would have never thought the app was developed by a Shanghai-headquarteredChinese team with only 50 staff members.

Launched in April 2014, Musical.ly garnered a steady increase in downloads in a year. Butafter April 2015 when some improvements facilitating the share by users were made,downloads began to skyrocket and all the way to shoot to the top of the APP Store's twoapplications "all categories" and "photography and video" on July 6.

Musical.ly launched its Live.ly on June 17 and the live stream app was ranked the secondand the third place in "photography and video" and "all categories" respectively only innine days

Musical.ly makes it easy and fun to create amazing 15-second videos and impress yourfriends. Simply select a sound and start lip syncing! Anyone can be an awesome singerwith musical.ly!

On June 27, at the TechCrunch Shanghai 2016, the must-attend conference for thetechnology and Internet industry in China, Luyu Yang, co-founder of Musical.ly saidMusical.ly has about 100 million users in Europe and the United States, and more than 10million daily active users, 50 percent from Europe and 40 percent from the United Stated,but almost no from China.

When asked why Mysical.ly did not put Chinese market in the priority, Luyu Yang saidfirst of all because the team has only more than 10 people and their strength does notmatch their ambition, and partly because European and American popular culture havefeatured personality and labels, expanding global market should start from these marketswith strong culture. "The reason why we are growing fast in Southeast Asia and SouthAmerica is greatly related with the fact that we chose the US as the starting point," addedLuyu Yang






Musical.ly App.

Different from Facebook and Twitter, users of Musical.ly are between 13 years old and 20years old. In addition, the current product meets the needs of users who cannot experienceon social network sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Musical.ly received $ 16.6 million financing in August 2015. In May this year, TechCrunchreported that a new round of financing totaling approximately $ 100 million is underwayand valuation of Musical.ly in this round of financing is estimated to reach about $ 500million.

http://en.people.cn/n3/2016/0701/c90000-9080282.html

Reactions: Like Like:
8


----------



## cirr

Science & Technology Award 2016

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr



Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr



Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## bobsm

*3-D printed spine successfully implanted in man's body in Beijing*
(People's Daily Online) 15:19, July 04, 2016





(File Photo)
Mr. Yuan suffered from a malignant tumor of the spine, chordoma, which eroded five sections of his spine. From a medical point of view, the only possible cure consisted of removing the tumor through surgery. However, the removal of the tumor would also mean removal of part of the spine.　　

Recently, Yuan underwent a successful surgery to have 3-D printed thoracic and lumbar segments of the spine implanted by Professor Liu Zhongjun of the Peking University Third Hospital. The length of the segments totaled 19 centimeters and replaced the parts of Yuan’s spine that had to be removed.

Six hours after the surgery began, Yuan was taken out of the operating room. Doctors observed only a small amount of bleeding, and Yuan’s vital signs were stable.

"We can use metal 3-D printing technology to create a piece of artificial spine similar to the real one that was removed," Liu said. Fitted with such an excellent copy of the original anatomy, patients are more likely to eventually work and live like ordinary people.

Yuan is just one of many potential patients for this treatment in China. According to reports, the 3-D printing of human body parts for the purpose of implantation has gained approval from the China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA). This means that more patients are expected to receive treatment in the form of this advanced technology.

http://en.people.cn/n3/2016/0704/c98649-9081270.html

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## JSCh

* New Zealand-China joint venture technology to slash Beijing subway energy use*
Source: Xinhua 2016-07-05 19:12:00

WELLINGTON, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Energy use by Beijing's subway system could be cut by up to 40 percent using ground-breaking technology employed by a New Zealand-China joint venture.

Wellington-based Victoria University said Tuesday that research developed by its Robinson Research Institute was part of the new multi-million-dollar joint venture deal with Milestone Science and Technology Ltd., based in Jiangsu province.

The joint venture would see the see the formation of three new companies to build new subway technology, as well portable compact magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) systems to improve medical services in remote areas of China, said a statement from the university.

Two of the companies would be based in the Jiangsu Zhongguancun Science and Technology Industrial Park as part of a superconductivity innovation center.

The third, alongside the Robinson institute near Wellington, would contract research and development from Robinson and other parts of Victoria University, and develop and manufacture HTS (high temperature superconducting) products that would be marketed by the China companies.

One of the China companies would develop the HTS flywheel, initially for Beijing's subway system, one of the city's biggest energy users, Robinson principal engineer Dr Rod Badcock said in the statement.

"The HTS flywheel is effectively an energy storage device. When trains slow down to stop at stations the flywheel will store the train's kinetic energy and can later supply it back to them to help with take-off," said Badcock.

"Currently, a great deal of energy is expended in braking and accelerating trains. With the HTS flywheel to capture and reuse this energy, the savings are estimated to be as high as 40 percent of the energy used by the Beijing subway system," he said.

"Energy storage not only represents the potential for energy saving in subway systems but also in supporting renewable energy generation. The same technology can be used to store energy generated by solar or wind, so in periods of low-energy production a store can be tapped into as needed."

The second China company would focus on the podMRI, a portable compact MRI system, which represented a significant advance for about 5,000 regional hospitals in China, Robinson director Professor Bob Buckley said in the statement.

"For many, there are barriers to moving from a low-field MRI, which is relatively low resolution but easy to install, to a high-performance high-field MRI, which can run to millions of dollars and require substantial support for installation and maintenance," he said.

"The advantage of the podMRI technology is it is low-cost, lightweight, easy to install and cost-effective to maintain, but with a substantial increase in resolution compared with existing low-cost systems."

Potential sales of the two technologies could run into tens of millions of dollars, Buckley said.

Milestone chairman Mi Wang said he saw substantial market opportunities in the podMRI.

Robinson was "one of the few places with the experience to design and build the high-speed HTS rotors needed for the subway flywheels my company is developing," Wang said.

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## JSCh

*Earth-size telescope tracks the aftermath of a star being swallowed by a supermassive black hole *
Last Updated on Tuesday, 05 July 2016 12:28
Published on Wednesday, 06 July 2016 06:01

Radio astronomers have used a radio telescope network the size of the Earth to zoom in on a unique phenomenon in a distant galaxy: a jet activated by a star being consumed by a supermassive black hole. The record-sharp observations reveal a compact and surprisingly slowly moving source of radio waves, with details published in a paper in the journal _Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society_. The results will also be presented at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science in Athens, Greece, on Friday 8 July 2016.



​This artist’s impression shows the remains of a star that came too close to a supermassive black hole. Extremely sharp observations of the event Swift J1644+57 with the radio telescope network EVN (European VLBI Network) have revealed a remarkably compact jet, shown here in yellow. Image credit: ESA/S. Komossa/Beabudai Design. 

The international team, led by Jun Yang (Onsala Space Observatory, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden), studied the new-born jet in a source known as Swift J1644+57 with the European VLBI Network (EVN), an Earth-size radio telescope array.

When a star moves close to a supermassive black hole it can be disrupted violently. About half of the gas in the star is drawn towards the black hole and forms a disc around it. During this process, large amounts of gravitational energy are converted into electromagnetic radiation, creating a bright source visible at many different wavelengths.

One dramatic consequence is that some of the star's material, stripped from the star and collected around the black hole, can be ejected in extremely narrow beams of particles at speeds approaching the speed of light. These so-called relativistic jets produce strong emission at radio wavelengths.

The first known tidal disruption event that formed a relativistic jet was discovered in 2011 by the NASA satellite Swift. Initially identified by a bright flare in X-rays, the event was given the name Swift J1644+57. The source was traced to a distant galaxy, so far away that its light took around 3.9 billion years to reach Earth.

Jun Yang and his colleagues used the technique of very long baseline interferometry (VLBI), where a network of detectors separated by thousands of kilometres are combined into a single observatory, to make extremely high-precision measurements of the jet from Swift J1644+57.



​Three years of extremely precise EVN measurements of the jet from Swift J1644+5734 show a very compact source with no signs of motion. Lower panel: false colour contour image of the jet (the ellipse in the lower left corner shows the size of an unresolved source). Upper panel: position measurement with dates. One microarcsecond is one 3 600 000 000th part of a degree. Image credit: EVN/JIVE/J. Yang. 

"Using the EVN telescope network we were able to measure the jet's position to a precision of 10 microarcseconds. That corresponds to the angular extent of a 2-Euro coin on the Moon as seen from Earth. These are some of the sharpest measurements ever made by radio telescopes", says Jun Yang.

Thanks to the amazing precision possible with the network of radio telescopes, the scientists were able to search for signs of motion in the jet, despite its huge distance.

"We looked for motion close to the light speed in the jet, so-called superluminal motion. Over our three years of observations such movement should have been clearly detectable. But our images reveal instead very compact and steady emission - there is no apparent motion", continues Jun Yang.

The results give important insights into what happens when a star is destroyed by a supermassive black hole, but also how newly launched jets behave in a pristine environment. Zsolt Paragi, Head of User Support at the Joint Institute for VLBI ERIC (JIVE) in Dwingeloo, Netherlands, and member of the team, explains why the jet appears to be so compact and stationary.

"Newly formed relativistic ejecta decelerate quickly as they interact with the interstellar medium in the galaxy. Besides, earlier studies suggest we may be seeing the jet at a very small angle. That could contribute to the apparent compactness", he says.

The record-sharp and extremely sensitive observations would not have been possible without the full power of the many radio telescopes of different sizes which together make up the EVN, explains Tao An from the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, P.R. China.

"While the largest radio telescopes in the network contribute to the great sensitivity, the larger field of view provided by telescopes like the 25-m radio telescopes in Sheshan and Nanshan (China), and in Onsala (Sweden) played a crucial role in the investigation, allowing us to simultaneously observe Swift J1644+57 and a faint reference source," he says.

Swift J1644+57 is one of the first tidal disruption events to be studied in detail, and it won't be the last.

"Observations with the next generation of radio telescopes will tell us more about what actually happens when a star is eaten by a black hole - and how powerful jets form and evolve right next to black holes", explains Stefanie Komossa, astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany.

"In the future, new, giant radio telescopes like FAST (Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope) and SKA (Square Kilometre Array) will allow us to make even more detailed observations of these extreme and exciting events," concludes Jun Yang.

*Further information
*
The results are published in a "No apparent superluminal motion in the first-known jetted tidal disruption event Swift J1644+5734", J. Yang, Z. Paragi, A.J. van der Horst, L.I. Gurvits, R.M. Campbell, D. Giannios, T. An & S. Komossa, 2016, MNRAS Letters, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/mnrasl/slw107.​
Earth-size telescope tracks the aftermath of a star being swallowed by a supermassive black hole | Royal Astronomical Society

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

* A Chinese robot to solve city parking misery *
*Reuters*

*Published on Jul 6, 2016*
A laser-guided smart robot is being developed in China that parks a car in under two minutes. As Stephanie McIntyre reports, it can squeeze into even the smallest and most awkward spaces with no need for a driver.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## ahojunk

JSCh said:


> * A Chinese robot to solve city parking misery *
> *Reuters*
> 
> *Published on Jul 6, 2016*
> A laser-guided smart robot is being developed in China that parks a car in under two minutes. As Stephanie McIntyre reports, it can squeeze into even the smallest and most awkward spaces with no need for a driver.


.
This news was first reported about 2.5 years ago.
It was first published by Reuters on 15 Nov 2013.
Nonetheless, it is still good as a refresher.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Researches show groundwater reserves on Qinghai-Tibet Plateau increasing*
2016-07-08 11:58:07 | From:China Tibet Online




Researches show that groundwater reserves on Qinghai-Tibet Plateau are on the rise, Xinhua reported.

These results have important implications for restoration of plateau ecology and global climate change research.

Wang Hansheng, researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Geodesy and Geophysics, was involved in the research and said that, in recent years scientific researchers used satellite gravity observation methods to capture gravitational signals reflected by changes in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau groundwater. And, according to the gravitational signals, researchers calculated changes in groundwater reserves.

Through many years of data analysis, they have recently revealed the changing trends in groundwater reserves for Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and its surrounding areas from 2003 to 2009.

Scientists first discovered rising trends in groundwater at the river basins of Jinsha, Nujiang, and Lancang, the sources of Yangtze and Yellow rivers, Qaidam Basin, Qiangtang Nature Reserve and others. The total annual increase is about 18.6 billion plus or minus 4.8 billion cubic meters.

Understanding changes in groundwater reserves on Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is of great value to plateau ecological restoration, agricultural development, prevention of geological disasters, engineering design and geothermal development. It is also important for the hydrological cycle and global climate change research.

This research was jointly completed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Geodesy and Geophysics, the Swedish Land Survey and the Department of Earth Sciences in the University of Hong Kong. Research results have already been published in the “_Earth and Planetary Science Letters_” magazine.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

* China readies next-gen radio heliograph for solar activities monitoring*
Source: Xinhua 2016-07-07 22:22:20

BEIJING, July 7 (Xinhua) -- China has completed its work on its next-generation solar radio heliograph, which will be used to study solar activities such as flares and coronal mass ejections, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) announced Thursday.

The Chinese Spectral Radioheliograph (CSRH), built at Ming'antu, a radio quiet region in China's Inner Mongolia, consists of 100 antennas with different frequency spectra covering an area of 10 square kilometers. It can monitor solar activities on a wide imaging resolution spectrum.

The project was initiated in 2009 and has been funded by the Ministry of Finance.

Wang Enge, vice president of CAS, invited scientists from abroad to join in the CSRH project, saying it will enable China to better forecast solar activity and monitor space weather conditions.

On Sunday, work was completed on the world's largest radio telescope, the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope in Guizhou Province.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Unmanned ships deemed helpful in survey and patrol of South China Sea*
(People's Daily Online) 14:05, July 08, 2016






(Jinghai 1 unmanned ship on display. Photo: Xinhua)​
More unmanned Chinese ships are expected to be deployed to domestic and international waters including the South China Sea and the Antarctic for oceanic survey and patrol missions, state media has reported.

Founded in 2010, the Research Institute of Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USV) Engineering at Shanghai University, which is also China's first USV development institute, has been providing a series of independently designed unmanned ships coded “Jinghai,” Xinhua News Agency reported.

In 2013, _Jinghai 1_ helped to conduct an oceanic and geological survey of Xisha and Nansha Islands in the South China Sea, while _Jinghai 2_ traveled with Chinese icebreaker _Xuelong_ to Antarctica in 2014 to help with underwater detection and mapping, according to Xinhua. Research and development of _Jinghai 7_ is currently underway.

Additional unmanned ships could shoulder more responsibilities in the near future, including surveying and mapping coastal areas, maritime search and rescue, offshore patrol, anti-smuggling and sea route protection. Experts also noted that the ships could participate in more missions near ports and oil drilling rigs, according to Xinhua.

Apart from Shanghai University, several other universities and institutes under China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have also joined the USV research and development process, Xinhua noted.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

* China Focus: Chinese hospitals using swallowable robots for medical examinations*
Source: Xinhua 2016-07-11 20:08:00

WUHAN, July 11 (Xinhua) -- New pill-sized robots that patients swallow to perform endoscopies, or examinations of the digestive tract, have been put into use in more than 100 Chinese hospitals.

The robot, created by a Chinese joint venture company based in Silicon Valley, contains a magnetic positioning chip, a probe and a light.

As an alternative to a conventional endoscopy in which a probe is passed over the tongue and down the throat, the new technology provides a 360-degree examination of the patient's stomach in about 15 minutes, without causing discomfort.

"The inspection results are as good as a traditional gastroscopy, but the capsule robot is easier to control and cleaner, removing the risk of cross-infection," said Xie Xiaoping, a doctor at the endoscopy center of Wuhan Union Hospital.

China has a high rate of digestive tract disease. There have been about 400,000 new cases of stomach cancer in China in each of the past five years, accounting for 42 percent of fatalities from such cancer worldwide.

Success in treating the disease lies largely in how early it can be detected. But the discomfort associated with conventional endoscopies makes many people reluctant to have them, reducing early detection of stomach diseases, according to Xie.

A patient surnamed Li from Wuhan has suffered stomach problems for years, but fear of endoscopy prevented her from going to hospital. She recently had an examination via the capsule robot in Xie's hospital.

Xie said hundreds of patients like Li have had the inspection without any pain. They must fast for eight hours before the examination, and the capsule is excreted from the body afterwards.

Historically, capsule endoscopy products used in Chinese hospitals have all been imported, resulting in very high examination fees. Domestic products have greatly reduced the cost of an examination to about 3,000 to 5,000 yuan (450-750 U.S. dollars).

"Though the product is small, there are over 300 components and more than 100 patented items in each capsule," said Xun Dandan, a researcher with ANKON Technologies, the robot's developer.

Xun expects the cost of examinations with the capsules will drop over time.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Desert Moss Found to be Expert of Water Collection for Survival*
Jul 12, 2016






different appearance of dry and wet moss shoots (Image by XIEG) 





moss crusts in Gurbantunggut Dersert (Image by XIEG)​
Almost nothing in the world is a better survivor in the desert than moss. It was one of the first living things out of the relatively safe and comfortable oceans to the barren and exposed earth planet millions of years ago.

But how? How does this species manage to survive with so little water, especially in the vast and bleak desert where moisture is hardly available? This has been a mystery that puzzled scientists for ages.

But now we may find the answer for this, thanks to the effort of a group of international scientists from China and the United States. The scientists took _Syntrichia caninervis_ as their research subject and finally uncover the secret of desert moss’ water collection and transportation system.

After studying the plant for four years, researchers from Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Utah State University, and Brigham Young University discovered that _Syntrichia caninervis_ uses highly specialized leaves, instead of its roots, to collect water from dew, fog, snow and rain with incredible efficiency.

“For the first time, scientists have examined in detail how this moss (_Syntrichia caninervis_) pulls water right from the air using its awns. These tricks may one day help engineers design better equipment to collect water in arid locales,” reviewed the _Science Magazine_ in their newly publication.

_Syntrichia caninervis_, is a tiny, delicate desert moss whose leaves are capped with spindly white hairs called "awns." These plants have a water collection system so effective it can suck water vapor straight from the air, rather than absorbing it from the ground via roots.

When the air is misty, foggy or even humid, trapped dewdrops move up grooves in the moss leaves by capillary action. The tiny drops form a bigger drop to be absorbed and stored by the plant. When it rains, moss awns will help reduce splash and capture raindrops by the same mechanism.

“Using these different structures, this plant might get a drink every day, where other desert vegetation gets water maybe once a week,” said Tad T. Truscott, leading researcher of this study. 

The findings were published in the journal _Nature Plants_ on Jun. 6. For more details, please refer to http://www.nature.com/articles/nplants201676.




Morphology of S. caninervis and the associated awns. a,b, Biological soil crusts formed by S. caninervis in the Gurbantünggüt Desert, China (a) and the Great Basin, USA (b). c, Photograph of a dry moss shoot. d, Photograph of a rehydrated moss shoot. e–g, SEM photographs of the surface of a moss awn, including highly magnified views. h, A tilted high-magnification photograph of a surface moss awn, where micro- and nanogrooves are marked by yellow and green triangles, respectively. i, Local cross-section of the moss awn from a cutting plane marked by a red dashed line in h. j, Magnified view of the area enclosed by the blue box in i. (Image by XIEG) 

Desert Moss Found to be Expert of Water Collection for Survival---Chinese Academy of Sciences

*----------------------*
​
Video: This desert moss can water itself with fog | Science | AAAS

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## JSCh

*How China is rewriting the book on human origins*
_Fossil finds in China are challenging ideas about the evolution of modern humans and our closest relatives._
Jane Qiu, 12 July 2016

*
Link -> *How China is rewriting the book on human origins : Nature News & Comment

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

* Ancient China's 88 major sci&tech achievements selected*
Source: Xinhua 2016-07-14 20:50:15

BEIJING, July 14 (Xinhua) -- Ancient Chinese civilization not only invented papermaking and the compass, but also the decimal system, rockets and variolation, China's top science academy said Thursday.

Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) on Thursday published a list of 88 major scientific and technological achievements in ancient China, which are separated into three categories: engineering, scientific findings and technology.

Pinhole imaging and linear equations are among major scientific findings; rice and wheat cultivation, the crossbow and stirrup are listed under technological achievements, with the Dujiangyan irrigation system and the Great Wall among major engineering feats.

Zhang Baichun, head of the Institute for the History of Natural Sciences at the CAS, said the selection criteria focused on originality, and the significance to world civilization.

Foreign experts were invited to share their opinions, Zhang added.

Ancient Chinese civilization made great achievements in science and technology, and is famous for the "Four Great Inventions": papermaking, gunpowder, the compass and printing.

The book is published by China Science and Technology Publishing House.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

* IAEA completes review of China-developed DCS FirmSys*
Source: Xinhua 2016-07-13 18:57:39

BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- China's Digital Control System (DCS) FirmSys has passed a review by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the country's state-owned assets watchdog said on Wednesday.

This will help China's manufacturing industry expand its influence and boost its global presence, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council said on its website.

DCS, which can control the operation of over 260 systems and nearly 10,000 pieces of equipment, is vital to nuclear power plants, ensuring safety, reliability and stability.

Following the United States, France and Japan, China is the fourth country with its own DCS.

DCS FirmSys, cheaper than its foreign counterparts, has been widely used in China's nuclear power plants, and is expected to be used in aviation and shipbuilding in the future.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Novel algorithm predicts drug combinations to treat drug resistant fungal infections*
July 14, 2016 

Scientists have created an algorithm that can identify drug combinations to treat fungal infections that have become resistant to current drug treatments. This new study, published in _PLOS Computational Biology_, represents a strategy for treating complex diseases and finding new uses for existing drugs. 


*Link -> http://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-07-algorithm-drug-combinations-resistant-fungal.html*

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

* China-U.S. joint team discovers new green battery catalyst*
Source: Xinhua 2016-07-13 19:27:44

TIANJIN, July 13 (Xinhua) -- A China-U.S. joint research team has found a new catalyst to make magnesium-air battery, a green energy source, cheaper and last longer.

The team, led by Wang Weichao at Nankai University, China, and Yao Yan at Houston University, America, found that manganese-based mullite, a component of porcelain, can serve as a new catalyst for producing electricity in metal-air batteries.

The substance, used in metal-air batteries for the first time, is more available and stable compared with traditional catalysts, according to the researchers.

Their findings were published on academic magazine Nano Energy's website, late last month.

Metal-air batteries create electricity through a reaction (ORR) between metal and oxygen, both of which are abundant. It is the catalyst used in ORR that limits metal-air battery development and its application in electric cars.

Traditional ORR catalysts are either too expensive or too complicated to produce. "Platinum, a commonly used catalyst, costs 200 yuan (30 U.S. dollars) per gram. But for mullite, it is affordable, even by the tonne," Yao said.

"Mullite is also more stable, so it can be used repeatedly, meaning the battery will last longer. We expect more applications of this material in electrochemistry," Yao said.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Researchers demonstrate room-temperature ferroelectric states in ultra-thin films of tin and tellurium*
July 15, 2016 by Denis Paiste

Just as magnetic materials have opposing North and South poles, ferroelectric materials have opposing positive charges and negative charges that exhibit measurable differences in electric potential. Researchers at MIT and colleagues in China recently demonstrated this ferroelectric behavior along the edges of atomically thin tin-tellurium film at room temperature.

Measurements showed the energy gap, or bandgap, of this ultra-thin (2-D) film to be about eight times higher than the bandgap in bulk (3-D) tin-tellurium, with an on/off ratio as high as 3,000, they report July 15 in the journal _Science_. Their findings hold promise for making random access memory (RAM) devices from this special semiconductor material, which is known as a topological crystalline insulator.


*Full story -> http://phys.org/news/2016-07-room-temperature-ferroelectric-states-ultra-thin-tin.html*
*http://phys.org/news/2016-07-room-temperature-ferroelectric-states-ultra-thin-tin.html*
*More information:* K. Chang et al. Discovery of robust in-plane ferroelectricity in atomic-thick SnTe, _Science_ (2016). DOI: 10.1126/science.aad8609





​*Thinning a ferroelectric makes it better*
As a ferroelectric material becomes thinner, the temperature below which it develops its permanent electrical polarization usually decreases. Chang _et al._ fabricated high-quality thin films of SnTe that, in contrast to this conventional wisdom, had a considerably higher transition temperature than that of the material in bulk (see the Perspective by Kooi and Noheda). This was true even for single-unit cell films, whereas only slightly thicker films became ferroelectric above room temperature. This finding may enable the miniaturization of ferroelectric devices.

_Science_, this issue p. 274; see also p. 221​

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

18 July 2016
*New Technique Developed for Effective Dye Removal and Low-Cost Water Purification*

_Chinese scientists developed a novel and versatile approach for synthesizing silver-based hybrid nano-particles using laser-induced fabrication, demonstrating the nano-composite’s potential as high-performance adsorbent for dye removal and low-cost water purification_

WASHINGTON — Organic compounds in wastewater, such as dyes and pigments in industry effluents, are toxic or have lethal effect on aquatic living and humans. Increasing evidence has shown that the organic contaminants discharged from electroplating, textile production, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals are the main reasons for the higher morbidity rates of kidney, liver, and bladder cancers, etc. Organic contaminants, especially methyl blue and methyl orange, are stable to light, heat or oxidizing agents and very difficult to remove by conventional chemical or biological wastewater treatment techniques. Recently scientists have developed some new strategies with good dye-removal performance; however, a subsequent adsorbent purification procedure is unavoidable after water treatment, which are often complicated and not suitable for practical water treatment.



_*Link -> *_New Technique Developed for Effective Dye Removal and Low-Cost Water Purification | News Releases | The Optical Society

*Paper: *Hua Zhang, Ming Chen, Dameng Wang, Linlin Xu, and Xiangdong Liu, "Laser induced fabrication of mono-dispersed Ag2S@Ag nano-particles and their superior adsorption performance for dye removal," Opt. Mater. Express 6, 2573-2583 (2016). *DOI: *10.1364/OME.6.002573

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists to pioneer first human CRISPR trial*
Gene-editing technique to treat lung cancer is due to be tested in people in August.

David Cyranoski
21 July 2016






STEVE GSCHMEISSNER/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY 
Genes in immune cells will be edited in an effort to turbocharge their attack on tumours.​
Chinese scientists are on the verge of being first in the world to inject people with cells modified using the CRISPR–Cas9 gene-editing technique.

A team led by Lu You, an oncologist at Sichuan University’s West China Hospital in Chengdu, plans to start testing such cells in people with lung cancer next month. The clinical trial received ethical approval from the hospital's review board on 6 July.



*Link -> *Chinese scientists to pioneer first human CRISPR trial : Nature News & Comment

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## JSCh

PandaX Dark Matter Experiment | a dark matter experiment at China Jin-Ping underground lab

*NEWS*

July 22, 2016 – Prof. Xiangdong Ji, spokes person of the PandaX project located in the China JinPing underground Laboratory (CJPL), announced the first dark matter search results from the PandaX-II 500 kg liquid xenon detector in the 2016 conference on the Identification of Dark Matter at Sheffield, UK in the evening of July 21, 2016 (Beijing Time), stating that no trace of dark matter was observed within the exposure of 33,000 kg·day, providing further constraints on the possible candidates of dark matter. The sensitivity of the detection has reach the best level around the world.  Link to the slides 

-----#####------​
*China provides further constraints on possible candidates of dark matter*

The world's most sensitive liquid xenon detector in China has provided further constraints on the possible candidates of dark matter. 

At the 11th Identification of Dark Matter conference (IDM2016) in Britain on Thursday, China announced the first dark-matter search results from the PandaX-II 500-kg liquid xenon detector, saying that no trace of dark matter was observed within the exposure of 33,000 kg·day, providing further constraints on possible candidates of dark matter, according to the website of China's PandaX Dark Matter Experiment. 

"Current experiment data showed strong ability of the detector, which has the lowest background radiation in the world. The experiment results are clean with little noise. Under such a condition and with our exposure amount, we didn't see any signs of dark matter," said Professor Ji Xiangdong, who announced the results at the IDM2016 as spokesman of the PandaX project. 

A bigger detector is like a tighter net, having more chance to discover dark matter, according to Liu Jianglai, a professor of Shanghai Jiaotong University. 

"We don't know the intensity generated from interaction between dark matter and ordinary matters, so when we make the net tighter, we can better screen section of the interaction. And when we make the net tight enough to be smaller than the section, we can find the dark matter," Liu said. 

The PandaX experiment is located at the China Jinping Underground Laboratory (CJPL), which is in the middle of a 18-km tunnel under 2,400 meters of rock overburden in southwestern Sichuan Province. As one of the deepest underground labs in the world; the CJPL has an extremely low flux of muon rate, which makes the lab ideal for a sensitive dark matter detection, according to the website of the project.

Dark matter is thought to account for about 27 percent of the mass and energy in the observable universe. The name refers to the fact that it does not emit or interact with electromagnetic radiation, such as light, and is thus invisible to the entire electromagnetic spectrum.

http://newscontent.cctv.com/NewJsp/news.jsp?fileId=366879

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## bobsm

*Chinese scientists develop new metal 3D printing technology*
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2016-07-25 15:26

WUHAN - Researchers with Huazhong University of Science and Technology in central China's Hubei Province have successfully manufactured metal parts and molds using new 3D printing technology, sources with the university announced on Friday. The new metal 3D printing technology addresses existing problems in traditional metal 3D printing methods, said Zhang Hai'ou, leader of the 3D printing technology research team at the university.

These problems, such as flowing, dropping or crumbling of fused materials due to gravity, cracking, stress and rapid heating and cooling can severely affect modeling performance and accuracy, according to Zhang.

After over a decade of research, Zhang and other researchers have independently developed the new method of metal 3D printing, called "intelligent micro casting and forging." The method combines metal casting and forging technology and significantly improves the strength and ductility of metal molds to expand their life and reliability.

The invention has also reduced the costs for forging equipment and raw materials through a computer-controlled modeling process, Zhang said.

The technology has been awarded both national and international patents. It can be applied in the aerospace, medical, and auto industries, among others.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-07/25/content_26213835.htm

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## bobsm

*DNA technique heralds future advances in disease detection*
By Zhou Wenting (China Daily)
Updated: 2016-07-25 08:09

Scientists in Shanghai have come up with a way to obtain accurate test results from microscopic DNA samples, paving the way for breakthroughs in the detection of cancer and venereal disease.

Their technique, called LcnPCR, developed during more than 10 years of research at the Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, a branch of the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

It has been included in Methods in Molecular Biology, a textbook "for everybody in the molecular biology field around the world", said Wang Xuecai, deputy director of the institute.

The new procedure improves upon a previous method known as polymerase chain reaction, which is the current standard used in almost every hospital and life-science laboratory worldwide.

Groundbreaking for its time, PCR was the first technique that made it possible to get an accurate test result or diagnosis from a very small DNA sample.

Its inventor, US biochemist Kary Mullis, jointly won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for it in 1993.

However, PCR has drawbacks－the technique is prone to error, and any mistakes that do appear are then copied across each iteration of the DNA sequence.

LcnPCR, on the other hand, assures a higher degree of accuracy and sensitivity, which will benefit everyone from forensic investigators to inspection and quarantine teams at airport customs, according to Hong Guofan, the lead researcher.

Researchers used the new technique to detect HPV, a virus that can cause cervical cancer but is notoriously difficult to accurately diagnose, and found that LcnPCR improved the detection rate.

"The wrong diagnosis may lead to excessive medical treatment and a heavy emotional impact on some patients, while it would lead to delayed treatment for others," said Zhou Tianjun, another researcher on the team.

The institute has now signed a licensing agreement worth 10 million yuan ($1.5 million) with Shenzhen-based biotech consulting firm Zhongrui International for the exclusive use of the technique.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-07/25/content_26205160.htm

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## JSCh

*25 July 2016*
*Graphene partnership could deliver lighter planes *

*Newsfacts:*

The strength, thinness and conductivity of graphene are of great potential to aviation
Long-term partnership could attract UK aviation firms
A major Chinese investment in graphene research plans to deliver lighter, better performing aircraft and high-speed trains.

Beijing Institute of Aeronautical Materials (BIAM) and the National Graphene Institute (NGI) at The University of Manchester will carry out a five-year collaborative research project.

Research will focus on composites with enhanced performance in the field of mechanical, electric conductive and thermal conductive behaviour, as well as the compatibility of graphene and the matrix materials. In aerospace this might lead to applications of graphene in different materials and components, with weight saving accompanied by better performance.

As well as aircraft, the research could have an impact on high-speed trains and industrial equipment to replace traditional materials.

The deal was announced today on the opening morning of the European Science Open Forum in Manchester by Prof Robert Young, who leads the research project at The University of Manchester.

Speaking at a session called ’_Science and Aviation’_, organised in partnership with Manchester Airport and Hainan Airlines, Professor Young outlined how graphene could revolutionise the planes and trains of the future.

The announcement is being delivered in parallel to a senior delegation from Manchester – including one of the Nobel-prize winning scientists who isolated graphene – being in Beijing to promote the city and as world-leading destination for inward investment and tourism.

Graphene has been included in the latest Chinese five-year plan and the country is starting to develop their domestic civil aerospace industry and expect to improve their expertise on materials.

The project, which will run until 2020, will involve joint research on graphene projects, strengthening of the ties in graphene technology and the exchange of personnel between Beijing and Manchester.

The partnership is an extension of a project started last year, which is looking at creating graphene composites with metals such as aluminium. The success of the partnership led to this much wider, extended project.

It is also expected that other UK companies, particularly in aerospace, may become directly involved as the projects progress.

This partnership with the Beijing Institute of Aeronautical Materials will further strengthen ties between Manchester and China. It is another vote of confidence in Manchester
Sir Richard Leese​
Dr Shaojiu Yan, the principal investigator of graphene projects from BIAM, said: ”The relationship between BIAM and The University of Manchester warms up quickly.”

“We had a very good communication on the first collaborative project. Now a long term partnership would benefit us to broaden the research area on graphene materials, to enhance the collaborative research, as well as to exchange experience and expertise on graphene.”

Professor Young said: “BIAM have a rapidly developing research programme on graphene composites and we are looking forward to pooling our expertise with them to facilitate the use of these materials in aerospace applications”.

Sir Richard Leese, leader of Manchester City Council, said: "It is firmly established that Manchester has many distinctive strengths which make the city - and help make the North of England as a whole - competitive on the international stage.

"This partnership with the Beijing Institute of Aeronautical Materials will not only go a long way towards finding hugely significant commercial applications for graphene research, it will further strengthen ties between Manchester and China - ties which are ever more important as China emerges as a key player in the global economy. It is another vote of confidence in Manchester.”

http://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/graphene-partnership-could-deliver-lighter-planes





* How can graphene be used in planes? *



The University of Manchester – The home of graphene

*Published on Sep 11, 2015*
In this video we look at how graphene can be used in aviation. There are many benefits and possibilities that graphene holds for planes both in the long and short term, such as improving the plastic that holds together the carbon fibre within the wings. This may help stop water entering the wings, which adds weight to the aircraft. It could also be used to measure strain in the wings to work out there is any damage. 

Replacing the copper wiring and copper heating coils could also reduce the weight in wings which could overall prevent ice being built up on the wings. Ultimately replacing the carbon fibre in the wings is the ultimate goal, however this may be a very long term project that may be at least 20 years away. 

Narrated by Professor Ian Kinloch, a lecturer in Materials Science School of Materials. His research focuses on Polymeric and carbon (graphene and nanotubes) and related nano materials.

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## bobsm

*Chinese mega-telescope obtains data on 7 million stars*
Source: Xinhua 2016-07-26 20:21:18 








NANJING, July 26 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese telescope has collected data on over 7 million stars, exceeding the sum of all existing spectroscopic data on stars and making it the world's largest database in the field.

The Guo Shoujing telescope, named after a 13th-century Chinese astronomer, is operated by the National Astronomical Observatories under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which recently released the findings.

The telescope has been in use since 2012. It is the world's first large-area telescope that can observe the spectra of 4,000 stars at a time.

The spectra of stars can relay key information, such as a star's state of motion, temperature, mass, and chemical composition, according to Hou Yonghui, an astronomical researcher with the CAS.

"Data are paramount for astronomical studies," said Liu Chao, a fellow researcher with the national observatories. The data gathered by the Guo Shoujing telescope have led to a number of scientific discoveries.

In 2014, scientists used the telescope to discover a hypervelocity star, which are stars that can travel at high speeds to escape the gravity of a galaxy.

Dozens of hypervelocity stars are expected to be discovered after the recent data release, according to astronomers. ' The telescope also provides data for measuring the mass of "dark matter," a critical concept in the theoretical study of the universe.

With a larger database thanks to the telescope, measurements of the mass of "dark matter" could become more accurate, according to researchers.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-07/26/c_135542003.htm

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 26-Jul-2016
*Making terahertz lasers more powerful *
_Researchers in China nearly double the continuous output power of a type of terahertz laser, opening up applications in spectroscopy, imaging, remote sensing and more_

American Institute of Physics



This is a scanning electron microscope image of the terahertz quantum cascade laser. Credit: Wang, et al/AIP Advances​
WASHINGTON, D.C., July 26, 2016 -- Researchers have nearly doubled the continuous output power of a type of laser, called a terahertz quantum cascade laser, with potential applications in medical imaging, airport security and more. Increasing the continuous output power of these lasers is an important step toward increasing the range of practical applications. The researchers report their results in the journal _AIP Advances_, from AIP Publishing.

Terahertz radiation sits between microwaves and infrared light on the electromagnetic spectrum. It is relatively low-energy and can penetrate materials such as clothing, wood, plastic and ceramics. The unique qualitites of terahertz radiation make it an attractive candidiate for imaging, but the ability to produce and control terahertz waves has lagged behind technology for radio, microwave and visible light.

Recently, scientists have made rapid progress on a technology to produce terahertz light called a quantum cascade laser or QCL. Quantum cascade lasers are made from thin layers of material. The thin layers give the laser the valuble property of tunability, meaning the laser can be designed to emit at a chosen wavelength. The output power of terahertz QCLs is also relatively high compared to other terahertz sources, said Xuemin Wang, a researcher in the China Academy of Engineering Physics and first author on the new paper.

Wang and his colleagues' work focuses on even further increasing the output power of terahertz quantum cascade lasers, especially in the mode in which the laser output power is continuous. "In engineering, biomechanics and medical science, the applications require continuous wave mode," Wang said.

By optimizing the material growth and manufacturing process for terahertz QCLs, Wang and his team made a laser with a record output power of up to 230 milliwatts in continuous wave mode. The previous record was 138 milliwatts.

Wang said the new 230 milliwatt laser could be used in air, a challenge for lower-powered lasers since particles in the air can scatter or absorb the laser light before it reaches its target.

The increase demonstrates that the team's method of precisely controlling the growth of the laser's layers can increase output power, Wang said, and he is hopeful that future improvements could bring the continuous power above 1 watt. The 1 watt level has been reached in terahertz QCLs in pulsed wave mode.

Wang said he thinks scientists and engineers could use the new laser as a flexible source of terahertz radiation for spectroscopy, medicial imaging, remote sensing and other applications.

###​
The article, "High-power terahertz quantum cascade lasers with ~0.23 W in continuous wave mode," is authored by Xuemin Wang, Changle Shen, Tao Jiang, Zhiqiang Zhan, Qinghua Deng, Weihua Li, Weidong Wu, Ning Yang, Weidong Chu and Suqing Duan. It will be published in the journal _AIP Advances_ on July 26, 2016 (DOI: 10.1063/1.4959195). After that date, it can be accessed at: http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/adva/6/7/10.1063/1.4959195


Making terahertz lasers more powerful | EurekAlert! Science News

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## Han Patriot

JSCh said:


> Public Release: 26-Jul-2016
> *Making terahertz lasers more powerful *
> _Researchers in China nearly double the continuous output power of a type of terahertz laser, opening up applications in spectroscopy, imaging, remote sensing and more_
> 
> American Institute of Physics
> 
> ​This is a scanning electron microscope image of the terahertz quantum cascade laser. Credit: Wang, et al/AIP Advances​
> WASHINGTON, D.C., July 26, 2016 -- Researchers have nearly doubled the continuous output power of a type of laser, called a terahertz quantum cascade laser, with potential applications in medical imaging, airport security and more. Increasing the continuous output power of these lasers is an important step toward increasing the range of practical applications. The researchers report their results in the journal _AIP Advances_, from AIP Publishing.
> 
> Terahertz radiation sits between microwaves and infrared light on the electromagnetic spectrum. It is relatively low-energy and can penetrate materials such as clothing, wood, plastic and ceramics. The unique qualitites of terahertz radiation make it an attractive candidiate for imaging, but the ability to produce and control terahertz waves has lagged behind technology for radio, microwave and visible light.
> 
> Recently, scientists have made rapid progress on a technology to produce terahertz light called a quantum cascade laser or QCL. Quantum cascade lasers are made from thin layers of material. The thin layers give the laser the valuble property of tunability, meaning the laser can be designed to emit at a chosen wavelength. The output power of terahertz QCLs is also relatively high compared to other terahertz sources, said Xuemin Wang, a researcher in the China Academy of Engineering Physics and first author on the new paper.
> 
> Wang and his colleagues' work focuses on even further increasing the output power of terahertz quantum cascade lasers, especially in the mode in which the laser output power is continuous. "In engineering, biomechanics and medical science, the applications require continuous wave mode," Wang said.
> 
> By optimizing the material growth and manufacturing process for terahertz QCLs, Wang and his team made a laser with a record output power of up to 230 milliwatts in continuous wave mode. The previous record was 138 milliwatts.
> 
> Wang said the new 230 milliwatt laser could be used in air, a challenge for lower-powered lasers since particles in the air can scatter or absorb the laser light before it reaches its target.
> 
> The increase demonstrates that the team's method of precisely controlling the growth of the laser's layers can increase output power, Wang said, and he is hopeful that future improvements could bring the continuous power above 1 watt. The 1 watt level has been reached in terahertz QCLs in pulsed wave mode.
> 
> Wang said he thinks scientists and engineers could use the new laser as a flexible source of terahertz radiation for spectroscopy, medicial imaging, remote sensing and other applications.
> 
> ###​
> The article, "High-power terahertz quantum cascade lasers with ~0.23 W in continuous wave mode," is authored by Xuemin Wang, Changle Shen, Tao Jiang, Zhiqiang Zhan, Qinghua Deng, Weihua Li, Weidong Wu, Ning Yang, Weidong Chu and Suqing Duan. It will be published in the journal _AIP Advances_ on July 26, 2016 (DOI: 10.1063/1.4959195). After that date, it can be accessed at: http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/adva/6/7/10.1063/1.4959195
> 
> 
> Making terahertz lasers more powerful | EurekAlert! Science News


Amazing. You guys should read this book called
*History of Modern Optics and Optoelectronics Development in China.*

They were real pioneers in developing laser crystals in the 60s, 70s during the cultural revolution, under hunger. Without their foundation, we wouldn't have been able to create all these advances.
*

*

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Baidu's artificial intelligence advance makes music by looking at pictures*
July 25, 2016 by Nancy Owano

(Tech Xplore)—Suddenly a prediction made back in April carries special resonance. Zen Soo, technology reporter at the _South China Morning Post_, was referring to a Microsoft executive saying China will lead the world in producing artificially intelligent hardware as the tech industry continues to find breakthroughs in this field.

The Microsoft person speaking was Harry Shum, executive vice-president of technology and research in Microsoft. He cited examples of Chinese internet companies playing an important role in advancing artificial intelligence—like Baidu.

Baidu this month is proving to be pretty impressive in the field. Roger Decierdo in _Yibada_ wrote Friday that Baidu has figured out how to create music just by looking at art. "Chinese Internet giant Baidu unveiled a new artificial intelligence program that reportedly can create music based on the art it sees."



*Full Story -> https://techxplore.com/news/2016-07-baidu-artificial-intelligence-advance-music.html*

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## cirr

*Researchers one step more closer to Cold Fussion Power – Vancouver Technology Time*

Research on magnetic fusion energy shows that plasma can be contained using magnetic fields. The plasma is heated to a temperature much hotter than the sun’s core, which leads to the fusion of ions and the release of excess energy that can be transformed into electricity , according to new experimental results achieved by the first U.S.-China fusion research team.

*The team is led by Dr. Xianzu Gong of ASIPP and Dr. Andrea Garofalo of General Atomics (GA) in San Diego*

Using both China’s EAST facility and the DIII-D National Fusion Facility, operated by GA for the U.S. Department of Energy, the team has investigated the “high-bootstrap current” scenario, which enhances self-generated (“bootstrap”) electrical current to find an optimal tokamak configuration for fusion energy production.

Magnetic fusion energy research uses magnetic fields to confine plasma (ionized gas) heated to temperatures hotter than the Sun’s core. This enables the ions to fuse and release excess energy that can be turned into electricity, harnessing the Sun’s power on Earth. The most developed configuration is the tokamak, and the team’s work helps prepare for the 500-megawatt ITER fusion research facility that is currently being built in France by a consortium of 35 nations, including China and the U.S.

This joint U.S.-China experiment directly demonstrates the stabilizing effect of reducing the plasma-wall distance in tokamaks with high plasma pressure and large bootstrap current fraction, according to Dr. Gong, who said, “I think, in simple terms, these experiments may provide better physics and operation foundation for ITER plasmas.”
The focus was on resolving the “kink mode” instability, a wobbling effect that reduces performance, by moving the plasma closer to the vessel’s wall, Dr. Garofalo explained . Operating closer to the wall suppresses the kink mode and enables higher pressure inside the tokamak, the toroidal or doughnut-shaped steel-lined fusion device. This gives rise to “pressure-driven” plasma flows that maintain the confinement quality even with lower external injection of velocity.

“This is unlike any other regime,” said Dr. Garofalo. “It’s very risky to move the plasma that close to the wall. The chief operator said ‘You can’t do that anymore, you’re going to damage the machine,’ so it was a struggle to prove our theory was correct.”

The gambit paid off. Moving the plasma closer to the wall removed the kink mode and enabled higher plasma pressure, which, in turn, makes the plasma less dependent on externally injected flow. This is important because in a tokamak reactor, such as ITER, it is very difficult and expensive to drive a rapid plasma flow with external means.

The team performed the most recent bootstrap exploration in DIII-D, following-up work on the record-setting milestone achieved at China’s EAST tokamak, where GA scientists have also been collaborating. An ASIPP scientist Dr. Qilong Ren will deliver the invited talk on the topic of Magnetic Confinement-Experiments.

While fusion has been in the public domain since the 1950s and its advances have been achieved by teams around the world, this U.S.-China team is setting new milestones in global cooperation. For realization of magnetic fusion energy, global cooperation is needed, said Dr. Gong of ASIPP, who cited the EAST/DIII-D partnership as “an efficient and effective new model” for international science collaborations that benefits both partners and the field of study.

“We have made a very good start of international collaboration in fusion research between China and the U.S., and we are very proud to be a pioneer in this field,” said Dr. Gong.

*Tokamak confinement is an advanced configuration for this process. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is an international project which aims to design and construct an experimental fusion energy reactor based on the tokamak concept*

“ITER is based on the ‘tokamak’ concept of magnetic confinement, in which the plasma is contained in a doughnut-shaped vacuum vessel. Strong magnetic fields are used to keep the plasma away from the walls; these are produced by superconducting coils surrounding the vessel, and by an electrical current driven through the plasma,” says the ITER website.

A team of American and Chinese researchers are currently helping in the development of a facility for the 500-megawatt ITER fusion research in France. The facility is a joint project of 35 nations, including the United States and China.

The plasma found in the confined areas are dubbed as magnetic islands. These ‘islands’ do not have a temperature incline, which leads to turbulence. If the turbulence rises outside the magnetic islands where there is a temperature gradient, the turbulence eventually moves into the islands. The turbulence’s intensity is the determining factor of the magnetic island’s confinement state. Improving the confinement state of these magnetic islands holds the key to the future of fusion plasma.

*Scientists in the joint project found a new confinement state that could lead to the improvement of fusion reactor plasma and eventually pave the way to fusion energy research in the future*

Led by Andrea Garofalo of General Atomics in San Diego and Xianzu Gong of the Institute of Plasma Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the team investigated a scenario called the “high-bootstrap current” which improves self-generated electrical current. This scenario aims to determine the ideal tokamak setting for the production of fusion energy.

Reducing the distance of plasma from the tokamak wall using large bootstrap current fraction and high plasma pressure showed a stabilizing effect. Moving the plasma closer to the wall made high pressure inside the tokamak possible. This operation resulted in the stable flow of pressure-driven plasma in a confined state even with reduced outside injected flow.

“This is unlike any other regime. It’s very risky to move the plasma that close to the wall. The chief operator said ‘You can’t do that anymore, you’re going to damage the machine,’ so it was a struggle to prove our theory was correct,” said Garofalo.

The results of the experiment will be beneficial in the improvement of a tokamak reactor capable of generating fusion energy.

Meet “Super H mode,” a newly discovered state of tokamak plasma that could sharply boost the performance of future fusion reactors. This new state raises the pressure at the edge of the plasma beyond what previously had been thought possible, creating the potential to increase the power production of the superhot core of the plasma.

Discovery of this mode has led to a new line of research within plasma physics that aims to define a path to higher power. The route could prove particularly promising for ITER, the international experiment under construction in France to demonstrate the feasibility of fusion energy.

Researchers led by Wayne Solomon of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) accessed the new state on the DIII-D National Fusion Facility that General Atomics operates for DOE in San Diego. Motivating their findings were theoretical predictions of a plasma state beyond H-mode, the current regime for high-level plasma performance.

Philip Snyder, director of Theory and Computational Science for General Atomics’ Energy and Advanced Concepts Group, developed the predictions. His surprising discovery was that a model called EPED predicted more than one type of edge region in tokamak plasmas, with the previously unknown Super H-mode among them.

Such regions are called “pedestals” because they serve as ledges in H-mode plasmas from which the pressure drops off sharply. The higher and wider the pedestal the greater the density and pressure, which together act like thermoses to contain the man-made plasma at more than 100 million degrees C. “It’s an important way that we can reach fusion conditions efficiently,” said Snyder, whose model predicted a new pedestal height that corresponds to the super H-mode.

Verification of this prediction is what the researchers found. Their experiments reached the higher Super H-mode regime by steadily increasing density in a quiescent state that naturally avoids pedestal collapses. The results caused the plasma to follow a narrow path to the Super H-mode, the physics equivalent of steering a boat through rocky shores.

http://www.albanydailystar.com/scie...ion-power-vancouver-technology-time-9681.html

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*High-efficiency color holograms created using a metasurface made of nanoblocks*
July 29, 2016 by Lisa Zyga



Color holographic image made by shining laser light on a metasurface. Credit: Wang et al. ©2016 American Chemical Society

(Phys.org)—By carefully arranging many nanoblocks to form pixels on a metasurface, researchers have demonstrated that they can manipulate incoming visible light in just the right way to create a color "meta-hologram." The new method of creating holograms has an order of magnitude higher reconstruction efficiency than similar color meta-holograms, and has applications for various types of 3D color holographic displays and achromatic planar lenses.

The researchers, Bo Wang _et al_., from Peking University and the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology, both in China, have published a paper on the new type of hologram in a recent issue of _Nano Letters_.


*Full Story -> *High-efficiency color holograms created using a metasurface made of nanoblocks

*###*​
*Visible-Frequency Dielectric Metasurfaces for Multiwavelength Achromatic and Highly Dispersive Holograms*
Bo Wang†, Fengliang Dong‡, Qi-Tong Li†, Dong Yang†, Chengwei Sun†, Jianjun Chen†§, Zhiwei Song‡, Lihua Xu‡, Weiguo Chu*‡, Yun-Feng Xiao†§, Qihuang Gong†§, and Yan Li*†§

† State Key Laboratory for Mesoscopic Physics, Department of Physics, Peking University and Collaborative Innovation Center of Quantum Matter, Beijing 100871, China
‡ CAS Center for Excellence in Nanoscience, National Center for Nanoscience and Technology, Beijing 100190, China
§ Collaborative Innovation Center of Extreme Optics, Shanxi University, Taiyuan, Shanxi 030006, China

_Nano Lett._, Article ASAP
*DOI: *10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b02326
Publication Date (Web): July 11, 2016
Copyright © 2016 American Chemical Society
*E-mail: wgchu@nanoctr.cn., *E-mail: li@pku.edu.cn.

*Abstract*

Dielectric metasurfaces built up with nanostructures of high refractive index represent a powerful platform for highly efficient flat optical devices due to their easy-tuning electromagnetic scattering properties and relatively high transmission efficiencies. Here we show visible-frequency silicon metasurfaces formed by three kinds of nanoblocks multiplexed in a subwavelength unit to constitute a metamolecule, which are capable of wavefront manipulation for red, green, and blue light simultaneously. Full phase control is achieved for each wavelength by independently changing the in-plane orientations of the corresponding nanoblocks to induce the required geometric phases. Achromatic and highly dispersive meta-holograms are fabricated to demonstrate the wavefront manipulation with high resolution. This technique could be viable for various practical holographic applications and flat achromatic devices.​

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## Three_Kingdoms

Great report of another outstanding character.
What Doctor Liang has done is marvellous which has straightened up the patient's spine and prevented irregular outgrowing of bones to damage the patient's vital organs. His humble background has made his personality even more respectable.
I've made a terrible mistake having an oversight of mixing the above disease with multiple sclerosis and my earlier comment is edited


*Scientists find first gene mutation for multiple sclerosis*
Source:Xinhua Published: 2016-6-2 9:06:33

Scientists on Wednesday reported for the first time that a single genetic mutation can cause multiple sclerosis (MS), a major finding that they said should erase doubts that at least some forms of MS are inherited.

The mutation was found in two Canadian families that had several members diagnosed with a rapidly progressive type of MS, in which a person's symptoms steadily worsen and for which there is no effective treatment, they reported in the U.S. journal Neuron.

"This finding is critical for our understanding of MS," said Carles Vilarino-Guell, assistant professor in the Department of Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and one of the study's senior authors.

"Little is known about the biological processes that lead to the onset of the disease, and this discovery has massive amounts of potential for developing new treatments that tackle the underlying causes, not just the symptoms."

MS is a neurodegenerative disease in which the immune system attacks the myelin that protects nerve fibers, upsetting the flow of information between the brain and the body. It affects about two million people worldwide, and in its more severe, progressive form, no good treatments are available.

Although multiple sclerosis (MS) is known to run in certain families, attempts to find genes linked to the disease have been elusive and researchers have found only weak associations between the risk of developing MS and particular gene variants.

Generally, the prevailing view has been that a combination of many genetic variations cause a slight increase in the disease's susceptibility.

But the new study determined that people who carry the newly discovered mutation have a 70 percent chance of developing the disease.

In the study, the investigators reviewed materials from the Canadian Collaborative Project on Genetic Susceptibility to MS, a large database that contains genetic material from almost 2,000 families across Canada.

They found seven individuals from two unrelated families who showed symptoms of rapidly progressive MS carried a mutation in the gene NR1H3 which regulates inflammation and immunity.

Mice with this gene knocked out are known to have neurological problems, including a decrease in myelin production, said neuroscientist Weihong Song, Canada Research Chair in Alzheimer's Disease at UBC and the study's other senior author.

"The mutation we found, in a gene called NR1H3, is a missense mutation that causes loss of function of its gene product, LXRA protein," Song said.

"There is clear evidence to support that this mutation has consequences in terms of biological function, and the defective LXRA protein leads to familial MS development."

Although only one in 1,000 MS patients appears to have this mutation, its discovery helps reveal the biological pathway that leads to the rapidly progressive form of the disease, accounting for about 15 per cent of people with MS, they said.

The researchers noted that there is already interest in targeting this pathway for drug development in other diseases, including atherosclerosis.

"These are still early days and there is a lot to test, but if we are able to repurpose some of these experimental drugs, it could shorten the time it takes to develop targeted MS treatments," Vilarino-Guell said.

While noting that the new study only identified one contributing factor rather than an MS cause, Professor Michael Demetriou at the University of California, Irvine, said that it may provide an excellent strategy for treating progressive multiple sclerosis.

"As we currently don't have any drug therapies for progressive MS, this would be a very big deal," said Demetriou, director of the university's National Multiple Sclerosis Society Designated Comprehensive Care Clinic, who was not involved in the study.

"There are some treatments in the pipeline but this represents a potentially new therapy for progressive MS," he said. "Drug treatments may be many years away but this study suggests that targeting this pathway may have some benefit."

http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/986511.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## TaiShang

*The Future is Now! Chinese Scientists Pioneer Human Gene Editing*

17:58 01.08.2016
*Later this month a team of Chinese geneticists is going to use the so-called “genome editing” technique to treat people suffering from lung cancer, Nature wrote.*


The technique finds and replaces parts of DNA which suppress cellular immunity. This is done using an enzyme named Cas9.

*The experiment by a team of researchers at West China hospital in Chengdu, China, will be the first ever attempt to apply the revolutionary gene-editing method known as Crispr on humans.*

*The CRISPR–Cas9 technique changes a patient’s T-cells by altering both copies of a gene that undermines the T-cells’ ability to recognize and attack cancerous cells thus increasing the human body’s immunity to the deadly disease.*

With the editing process complete the modified cells will be multiplied and reintroduced into a patient’s system to better spot and destroy cancerous cells.

Many wonder if people could receive certain genes to make them good in sports or other areas, however scientists believe that this is highly unlikely.

Interestingly, among the tens of thousands of human genes, the ones that can determine one’s eye color, height, predisposition to alcoholism or musical ear are all but nonexistent.

Moreover, the effect of the environment on the development of any of our physical or mental properties is too big to ignore.

*A toddler who is genetically predisposed to growing 2 meters tall can wind up growing to something short of a midget all because of malnutrition, adverse living conditions and poor health.*

And, finally, we should not discard things like chance and the unpredictability of our life, which make it fun and can encourage or hold back whatever talents Mother Nature may have in store for us.

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## JSCh

Posted: Aug 01, 2016
* Swapping substrates improves edges of graphene nanoribbons *

(_Nanowerk News_) It is now feasible to make a prized material for spintronic devices and semiconductors -- monolayer graphene nanoribbons with zigzag edges.

Miniscule ribbons of graphene are highly sought-after building blocks for semiconductor devices because of their predicted electronic properties. But making these nanostructures has remained a challenge. Now, a team of researchers from China and Japan have devised a new method to make the structures in the lab. Their findings appear in the current issue of _Applied Physics Letters_ ("Patterning monolayer graphene with zigzag edges on hexagonal boron nitride by anisotropic etching"). 



_*Full Story -> *_ http://www.nanowerk.com/nanotechnology-news/newsid=44100.php

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## cirr

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblo...e-accelerator-twice-the-size-and-seven-t.html

@Bussard Ramjet

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

cirr said:


> http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblo...e-accelerator-twice-the-size-and-seven-t.html
> 
> @Bussard Ramjet



Actually this piece has nothing new. 

What I wanted to know was that has the particle accelerator been given the go ahead by authorities in terms of funding?

Can you do me a favor?
I hear there's an extensive list of scientific projects and goals in the 13th five year plan. But I wasn't able to find it anywhere. Can you provide it to me?


----------



## Three_Kingdoms

Bussard Ramjet said:


> Actually this piece has nothing new.
> 
> What I wanted to know was that has the particle accelerator been given the go ahead by authorities in terms of funding?
> 
> Can you do me a favor?
> I hear there's an extensive list of scientific projects and goals in the 13th five year plan. But I wasn't able to find it anywhere. Can you provide it to me?



What do you want it for?

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## Han Patriot

Three_Kingdoms said:


> What do you want it for?


Espionage? LOL.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

Han Patriot said:


> Espionage? LOL.



13th Five Year Plan is a publicly available document. 

I am just looking for an English version of parts of it.


----------



## JSCh

*Joint Survey Gets Insight of Central Asia’s Ecological Environment and Resources*
Aug 01, 2016

As a key and indispensible part of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the neighboring region of China, Central Asia has the similar climate characteristics, physical geographic settings and even the same ecological environmental problems of the arid zone of northwestern China. 

Better understanding of ecological environment and resources in this area will help enhance social and economical development in Central Asia countries, especially against a backdrop of global climate change era. 

A five-year joint survey project carried out by scientists from more than 60 research organizations in China and Central Asia countries has got a clear picture of resources and environment conditions in this area. It helps to know better of the impact of climate change on biological resources and ecological environment in Central Asian countries. 

The project, with 28 branch topics, summons the forces of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and universities in China, as well as 48 academic institutions from Central Asian countries. It opens a door for multilateral science collaboration of the Silk Road Economic Belt countries, including China. 

“It is a pioneering, guiding and sustainable project, and will be a scientific engine for the development of Silk Road Economic Belt countries,” said CHEN Xi, director of the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, leading institution of the project. 

In Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, joint laboratories on soil, water, plants, animals, minerals, environment and gene studies set up under the project enable resource and environment determination. This will help to smooth the import and export business for Central Asian countries. 

The survey project proves to be a successful try for China’s science and technology cooperation with its Central Asian neighbors. A joint international ecological system observation network with 15 filed observation stations fills the gap of similar observation stations in Central Asia, making it possible for in-situ monitoring to cover glaciers, mountain areas, forests, grasslands, crop land in oasis, lakes and wetlands, and deserts in the area. 

A series of 30 monographs on resources, ecological condition, environment and social economy under the project were completed after a series of collaborated investigations done by scientists from these countries. 

Also, more than 100 masters and doctors graduated under joint supervision in the projects, providing Central Asian countries with more talent and intellectual support for further development. 

The projects are expected to offer more potential for Central Asia’s long-term and sustainable development in scientific, social and economic areas, and benefit all countries in the Silk Road Economic Belt areas. 
*

*
Joint Survey Gets Insight of Central Asia’s Ecological Environment and Resources---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## GS Zhou

Bussard Ramjet said:


> What I wanted to know was that has the particle accelerator been given the go ahead by authorities in terms of funding?



A news from the Institute of High Energy Physics, CAS, which said the institution has started the concept design of CEPC (Circular Electron Positron Collider). The news specifically mentioned the concept design is fully funded by government.

Although it doesn't mean the CEPC project has got the final approval from the government, it is still a positive signal!

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists Synthesize New Deep-Ultraviolet Transparent Nonlinear Optical Material*
Aug 02, 2016

Deep-ultraviolet (UV) nonlinear optical (NLO) materials have been widely used in laser and photonic technologies. The previously discovered NLO materials, such as β-BaB2O4, LiB3O5 and CsLiB6O10, show some drawbacks for practical usage. Therefore, the exploration and development of next generation deep-UV NLO materials are in great demand. However, it is still a challenge to explore satisfied deep-UV NLO materials possessing large second harmonic generation (SHG) response, wide deep-UV transparent window, and phase matching ability.

A research group led by Prof. PAN Shilie at Xinjiang Technical Institute of Physics & Chemistry of Chinese Academy of Sciences developed a promising deep-UV NLO material, LiCs2PO4, which was synthesized by the flux method. It crystallizes in the non-centrosymmetric and polar space group of Cmc21 (No. 36). The crystal structure can be described as two dimensional (LiPO4)2− layers along the a axis with the Cs+ cations residing between the layers. LiCs2PO4 exhibits an unusual edge-sharing LiO4 -PO4 tetrahedra connection, which is first found in alkali metal phosphates.

Researchers found that this material achieves a new record of powder SHG response in deep-UV phosphates (2.6 times that of KH2PO4), and it also exhibits a short UV cutoff edge of 174 nm and is type–I phase-matchable, indicating that it can be used as a deep UV nonlinear optical material.

The large SHG response of LiCs2PO4 was quite unusual as it cannot contain additional anionic groups. It was difficult to explain the origin of its large SHG response by using the anionic group concept alone. Researchers employed first-principles electronic structure analyses confirm the experimental results and the calculated SHG coefficients of LiCs2PO4 were d15 = d31 = −0.65 pm/V, d24 = d32 = 0.22 pm/V, and d33 = 0.61 pm/V. 

In addition, the electronic structure was calculated to explore the intrinsic relationship between the structure and optical properties. The band-resolved method and orbital analysis indicate that the SHG enhancement of LiCs2PO4 was intimately associated with its unique structural feature, i.e., the edge-sharing LiO4-PO4 tetrahedra and aligned non-bonding O-2p orbitals.

The discovery and understanding of this material provide a new insight into the structure-property relationship of phosphate-based NLO materials with both large SHG response and deep-UV transparency. 

The study was published in J. Am. Chem. Soc. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the West Light Foundation of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xinjiang International Science & Technology Cooperation Program, etc. *


*
Scientists Synthesize New Deep-Ultraviolet Transparent Nonlinear Optical Material---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## Three_Kingdoms

China's new rectangular Tunnel Boring Machine was launched in China a year ago.






















The world's first horse-shoe shaped TBM was rolled out of production line on July 17, 2016

http://news.sciencenet.cn/htmlnews/2016/7/351650.shtm






Another "rectangular" one different from the above and it claimed to be the world's largest:











And more, another one - a new design:

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## Han Patriot

This is crazy, as recent as 10 years ago, we still had to import these machines from Germany. We are entering the innovation stage now, since there is nothing more to learn.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## Three_Kingdoms

Han Patriot said:


> This is crazy, as recent as 10 years ago, we still had to import these machines from Germany. We are entering the innovation stage now, since there is nothing more to learn.



We are not the manufacturer of the world's largest (diameter-wise) tunnel boring machine yet but our development in this tech is astounding

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## CCP



Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Sichuan observatory may capture cosmic rays, challenge Einstein's theory*
(Global Times) 09:49, August 04, 2016



An observatory being built in Sichuan Province aims to capture cosmic rays from outside the solar system and help to explore the evolution of the universe.

Construction began Wednesday on the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) in Daocheng county in Southwest China, 4,410 meters above sea level, Cao Zhen, chief scientist of LHAASO and research fellow at the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

Cosmic rays and their origin play an important role in exploring the universe and its evolution, said Cao, stressing that the rays are man's only way to obtain samples of substances outside the solar system.

He said that cosmic rays contain many messages that electromagnetic waves, a traditional subject in astronomy research, cannot deliver.

"Electromagnetic waves are signals accompanying a series of celestial events. By researching these "signals," man can discover the properties of materials, while cosmic rays deliver the particles to Earth. It's like the difference between observing the moon and getting samples directly from the moon," Cao explained.

"However, the origin of cosmic rays remains one of the physical world's mysteries ever since they were first discovered in 1912," said Cao. LHAASO's goal is to solve this mystery by capturing rarely-obtained cosmic rays, he noted.

"If the gamma ray bursts, the most intense star explosion so far known to man, are captured by LHAASO, Einstein's relativity theory may be challenged," Cao said.

"Despite significant progress in building new detectors and in analysis techniques, the key questions concerning the origin, acceleration and propagation of galactic cosmic rays are still open … The most ambitious and sensitive project between them is LHAASO," said Giuseppe Di Sciascio, an expert at the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, an institution for nuclear, particle and astro-particle physics in Italy, in his paper in 2015. The institution is collaborating with LHAASO.

LHAASO, which the government invested 1.2 billion yuan ($180 million) in, will be completed in two stages. The first stage is expected to be completed within 5 years, while the second stage in 6-7 years, said Cao.

More than 80 scientists from 16 Chinese institutions, including Tsinghua University and Peking University, joined the project, said the official website. Scientists from other countries, including France, Italy and Sweden are also participating in LHAASO, Xinhua reported.

"China's remarkable rise in high-quality research output is now well established, which is why we no longer consider the country a rising star," according to a press release of Nature Index 2016 Rising Stars in assessing research performance.

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## cirr

JSCh said:


> *Sichuan observatory may capture cosmic rays, challenge Einstein's theory*
> (Global Times) 09:49, August 04, 2016
> 
> 
> 
> An observatory being built in Sichuan Province aims to capture cosmic rays from outside the solar system and help to explore the evolution of the universe.
> 
> Construction began Wednesday on the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) in Daocheng county in Southwest China, 4,410 meters above sea level, Cao Zhen, chief scientist of LHAASO and research fellow at the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the Global Times on Wednesday.
> 
> Cosmic rays and their origin play an important role in exploring the universe and its evolution, said Cao, stressing that the rays are man's only way to obtain samples of substances outside the solar system.
> 
> He said that cosmic rays contain many messages that electromagnetic waves, a traditional subject in astronomy research, cannot deliver.
> 
> "Electromagnetic waves are signals accompanying a series of celestial events. By researching these "signals," man can discover the properties of materials, while cosmic rays deliver the particles to Earth. It's like the difference between observing the moon and getting samples directly from the moon," Cao explained.
> 
> "However, the origin of cosmic rays remains one of the physical world's mysteries ever since they were first discovered in 1912," said Cao. LHAASO's goal is to solve this mystery by capturing rarely-obtained cosmic rays, he noted.
> 
> "If the gamma ray bursts, the most intense star explosion so far known to man, are captured by LHAASO, Einstein's relativity theory may be challenged," Cao said.
> 
> "Despite significant progress in building new detectors and in analysis techniques, the key questions concerning the origin, acceleration and propagation of galactic cosmic rays are still open … The most ambitious and sensitive project between them is LHAASO," said Giuseppe Di Sciascio, an expert at the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, an institution for nuclear, particle and astro-particle physics in Italy, in his paper in 2015. The institution is collaborating with LHAASO.
> 
> LHAASO, which the government invested 1.2 billion yuan ($180 million) in, will be completed in two stages. The first stage is expected to be completed within 5 years, while the second stage in 6-7 years, said Cao.
> 
> More than 80 scientists from 16 Chinese institutions, including Tsinghua University and Peking University, joined the project, said the official website. Scientists from other countries, including France, Italy and Sweden are also participating in LHAASO, Xinhua reported.
> 
> "China's remarkable rise in high-quality research output is now well established, which is why we no longer consider the country a rising star," according to a press release of Nature Index 2016 Rising Stars in assessing research performance.



This is one of the 16 major science and technology infrastructure projects slated for implementation between 2012 and 2030.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

* China Focus: Chinese researchers to develop 3D skin printing technology*
Source: Xinhua 2016-08-04 19:11:12

CHONGQING, Aug. 4 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers and companies are developing the technology and processes to make 3D-printed skin a reality, and they expect to achieve this within two to three years.

Wu Jun, director of the Burns Institute at the Southwest Hospital in Chongqing, said he has been testing the process with pig skin.

"In printing skin, the biggest challenge is the 'ink.' We need to find the right material that can be made into a certain form while not damaging its activity," he said. The ink he refers to is the skin tissue, at the current time, 3D printing in the medical industry mostly produces hard items, the flexibility of skin makes this process more difficult.

"I expect the process to be finalized within two to three years," he said.

"Many other researchers are at the same stage as us, so we are moving fast to be the first to make this breakthrough," he said.

The aim is to make custom-made skin for burns patients that will be printed according to their wounds.

3D printing has been used in many operations, but there are still a few more years to go until we can successfully print live tissue or organs, Wu said.

Some researchers across the globe have printed small tissue samples in a lab environment, but the challenge is to keep it alive, functional and fit for clinical use, he said.

There is a 3D printing factory for medical products under construction in Chongqing, said Yang Chen, manager of Hkable Biological 3D (China) Co. Ltd.

The factory, a joint venture between U.S.-based Hkable and Chinese biotechnology company Jintai in Chongqing, is the first 3D medical printing factory in China.

"We will use 3D printers to make splints and artificial limbs in the beginning, then we will develop more advanced stem cell-printed products," Yang said.

Across China, there have been a number of successes using 3D printing for surgical purposes.

In June, doctors in Peking University Third Hospital replaced five vertebrae with 3D-printed replicas in a cancer patient. The 3D-printed vertebrae measured 19 centimeters, the longest ever in a successful operation.

"3D printing is changing medicine," said Dai Kerong, an academic with the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

"Mass-produced joints do not fit every patient, there is a need for custom-made 3D printed joints," he said.

"This is only the beginning, however, we must make sure 3D medical applications are properly supervised," said Dai.

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists find possible evidence for legendary flood tied to Chinese civilization*
Source: Xinhua | 2016-08-05 05:34:41 | Editor: huaxia



The skeletons in collapsed cave dwelling F4, where three bone samples for radiocarbon dating were collected.(Credit: Cai Linhai)

WASHINGTON, Aug. 4 (Xinhua) -- Scientists have found what could be geological evidence of a legendary flood tied to the establishment of the first dynasty in China, Xia, and even the beginning of Chinese civilization, a study published in the U.S. journal Science said Thursday.

The flood occurred in roughly 1920 BC on the Yellow river, the study said, which is some two to three centuries later than traditionally thought, meaning the Xia dynasty, and its renowned Emperor Yu, likely had a later start than Chinese historians have thought, too.

According to Chinese legend, Emperor Yu tamed this flood by dredging, earning him the divine mandate to establish the Xia dynasty.

However, no scientific evidence has been discovered before, leading some scholars to believe that the legend of Xia was just a fabrication of later historians to justify political succession, said Qinglong Wu of the Nanjing Normal University, who led the study.

In the new study, Wu and colleagues reported geological evidence for a catastrophic flood on the Yellow River about 4,000 years ago, including remains of a landslide dam and dammed lake sediments.

He said the flood was the result of an earthquake-induced landslide that dammed the Yellow River to form a huge lake in the Jishi Gorge on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau.



The outburst flood sediments in the Jishi Gorge.(Credit: Wu Qinglong/Nanjing Normal University)

Landslide dams like this typically fail by overtopping, and in this case, the dam could have completely blocked the Yellow River for six to nine months before overtopping, said Wu.

"Roughly 11 to 16 cubic kilometers of the dammed lake water was released in a very short period of time when the dam broke, resulting in a huge flood," he told Xinhua.

Using a standard engineering equation to determine flood discharge, the researchers calculated that the waters could have surged down the river at a rate of 300,000 to 500,000 cubic meters per second. The damage may have reached as far as 2,000 kilometers downstream.

"To put that into perspective, that's roughly equivalent to the largest flood ever measured on the Amazon River, the world's largest river," study co-author Darryl Granger, a geologist at Purdue University, said at a teleconference.

"It's among the largest known floods to have happened on earth during the past 10,000 years, and it's more than 500 times larger than a flood we might expect on the Yellow River from a massive rainfall event. So this cataclysmic flood would've been a truly devastating event for anyone living on the Yellow River downstream."

To date the outburst flood, the researchers used radiocarbon dating techniques on skeletons of children who died in the same earthquake that triggered the massive landslide dam, at a prehistoric settlement site called Lajia, 25 kilometers downstream from the Jishi Gorge.

Results showed that the flood happened around 1920 BC, which coincides with the major transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age in the Yellow River valley.

"Because this flood happens at a critical turning point in the development of Chinese civilization, this geological event takes on even greater significance," said David Cohen, an archaeologist at National Taiwan University, who also worked on the study.

"This is because the flood dates to the likely period where China's legendary great flood. This is the first time a flood of scale large enough to account for it has been found. The outburst flood could've caused social disruptions downstream lasting for years, and if this is the case, we think it could've been the source of the great flood legend."



The Jishi Gorge upstream the landslide dam, the white grey terraces are sediments of the remnant lake after the outburst flood. (Credit: Wu Qinglong/Nanjing Normal University)

According to legend, it took Emperor Yu and his farther about 20 years to tame this flood. As a result, the researchers proposed a new start date for the Xia dynasty, at 1900 BC.

"The outburst flood provides us with a tantalizing hint that the Xia dynasty might really have existed," Cohen said.

"Our reasoning is like this, if the founding of the Xia dynasty is really tied to a great flood, then here we have evidence for a natural event that could have eventually been recorded as the great flood," he said. "If the great flood really happened, then perhaps it is also likely that the Xia dynasty really existed too. The two are directly tied to each other."

Traditionally, historians have dated the start of Xia to about 2200 BC, whereas a government-sponsored chronology project adopted the date as 2070 BC.

In an accompanying perspective in Science, David Montgomery of the University of Washington wrote: "Great floods occupy a central place in some of the world's oldest stories. And Emperor Yu's flood now stands as another such story potentially rooted in geological events."

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

An ancient landslide once blocked the Yellow River at Jishi Gorge in China, shown here. The resulting lake eventually burst through the rubble dam, causing what may have been one of history’s largest floods.
Qinglong Wu​*Massive flood may have led to China's earliest empire*
By Dennis Normile
Aug. 4, 2016 , 2:00 PM

Many cultures trace their origins to the hazy horizon where history meets legend. In China's case, that blurry line occurs sometime between 2200 B.C.E. and 2000 B.C.E., when a legendary hero named Yu tamed Yellow River flooding and earned a mandate to become the founding emperor of the Xia dynasty, the country's first. That’s the story according to texts written long after the fact, and many Chinese believe their civilization started with emperor Yu. But archaeologists have been unable to find convincing evidence for either the flood or the Xia dynasty itself.

Now, an international team of scientists drawn from the fields of archaeology, anthropology, seismology, and geology have gathered disparate evidence from ancient texts, sedimentary deposits, earthquake-triggered landslides, and skeletons in collapsed cave dwellings to craft a scenario presented this week in Science that they claim supports the legend of a great flood and hints that the Xia dynasty might be real. If the findings hold up, they could lend credence to early historical texts and help resolve a long-running debate over the origins of China and its people.


_
Full Story -> _Massive flood may have led to China's earliest empire | Science | AAAS

###​
"Outburst flood at 1920 BCE supports historicity of China's Great Flood and the Xia dynasty," _Science_, science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi/10.1126/science.aaf0842

*Flood control initiates Chinese civilization*
Around four millennia ago, Emperor Yu the Great succeeded in controlling a huge flood in the Yellow River basin. This is considered to have led to the establishment of the Xia dynasty and the start of Chinese civilization. However, the dates of the events and the links between them have remained uncertain and controversial. Using stratigraphic data and radiocarbon dating, Wu _et al._ verify that the flood occurred and place the start of the Xia dynasty at about 1900 BC, thus reconciling the historical and archaeological chronologies (see the Perspective by Montgomery).

_Science_, this issue p. 579; see also p. 538

*Abstract*
China’s historiographical traditions tell of the successful control of a Great Flood leading to the establishment of the Xia dynasty and the beginning of civilization. However, the historicity of the flood and Xia remain controversial. Here, we reconstruct an earthquake-induced landslide dam outburst flood on the Yellow River about 1920 BCE that ranks as one of the largest freshwater floods of the Holocene and could account for the Great Flood. This would place the beginning of Xia at ~1900 BCE, several centuries later than traditionally thought. This date coincides with the major transition from the Neolithic to Bronze Age in the Yellow River valley and supports hypotheses that the primary state-level society of the Erlitou culture is an archaeological manifestation of the Xia dynasty.​

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

* China scientists show cell subset contains chronic viral infection*
Source: Xinhua 2016-08-06 17:04:10

CHONGQING, Aug. 6 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have defined a subset of a type of virus-specific cells that play a vital role in the control of viral replication in chronic viral infection, possibly paving the way for new ways to treat chronic diseases like HIV/AIDS and cancer.

According to research published online by Nature magazine on Aug. 3, virus-specific cells, CD8 +T, appear to deplete during chronic viral infection.

However, according to the research findings, the cells are able to control viral replication in both animal models and HIV infection.

Researchers found a unique subset that offer higher anti-viral potential than previously known, thus, showing greater therapeutic potential.

The research also identified an important regulator for the generation of this subset.

The research was led by the Third Military Medical University in Chongqing Municipality, with a number of partner institutions. It began in early 2013 with government financial support.

"Through certain means, to increase and stabilize the type of cells can strengthen their virus-purging ability, thus, providing new possibilities for cures," Ye Lilin, co-author of the paper and professor at the Third Military Medical University, told Xinhua Saturday.

Current therapies can only contain the viral replication, but cannot purge them completely in chronic diseases like HIV.

Chinese researchers will now use the findings to further research into immunotherapy in cancer and HIV, Ye said.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

* China to establish newborns, embryos genome databases*
Source: Xinhua 2016-08-07 20:25:07

SHANGHAI, Aug. 7 (Xinhua) -- A genome project for newborn babies was launched in Shanghai on Sunday, to aid the early identification and treatment of hereditary diseases.

Jointly initiated by Chinese Board of Genetic Counseling and Children's Hospital of Fudan University in Shanghai, the project will carry out genetic testing on 100,000 newborn babies over the coming five years.

The findings will be gathered in a database and a genetic testing standard for hereditary diseases will be developed, which will improve the identification and treatment of inherited diseases.

Huang Guoying, president of the hospital, said early identification can help doctors make better treatment strategies and improve the patients' quality of life.

Also on Sunday, the Chinese Board of Genetic Counseling and Reproductive Hospital, which is affiliated with Shandong University, jointly launched China's embryo genome project.

An embryo genome database will improve research and understanding of the development of embryos and improve diagnostic rates.

He Lin, with the Chinese Board of Genetic Counseling, said there are some 7,000 known inherited diseases and China sees about 900,000 babies born with birth defects every year.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Han Patriot

http://www.viet-studies.info/kinhte/ChinaSupercomputing_FA.htm

The origins of Chinese Supercomputing. We manage to make the vacuum tube even under such hardship. And they thought we made a supercomputer out of thin air, you can actually trace the scientific development in China.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Single-Crystal Graphene Films Grown More Than 100 Times as Fast as Previously Possible*
By Dexter Johnson
Posted 9 Aug 2016 | 20:00 GMT





Image: Peking University/Nature Nanotechnology​
The adaptation of chemical vapor deposition (CVD) production of graphene so that it’s compatible with roll-to-roll processing is transforming graphene manufacturing. That effort is being led by companies like Graphene Frontiers, based in Philadelphia.

However, the production of single-crystal graphene on copper foils in a CVD process remains a fairly time consuming procedure. Fabrication of centimeter-size single crystals of graphene still takes as much as a day.

Now researchers at Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Peking University have developed a technique that accelerates the process so that the growth happens at 60 micrometers per second—far faster than the typical 0.4 µm per second. The key to this 150-fold speed increase was adding a little oxygen directly to the copper foils.


_*Full story -> *_Single-Crystal Graphene Films Grown More Than 100 Times as Fast as Previously Possible - IEEE Spectrum

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Picoscale precision though ultrathin film piezoelectricity*
August 10, 2016
by Stuart Mason Dambrot

Piezoelectricity (_aka_ the piezoelectric effect) occurs within certain materials – crystals (notably quartz), some ceramics, bone, DNA, and a number of proteins – when the application of mechanical stress or vibration generates electric charge or alternating current (AC) voltage, respectively. (Conversely, piezoelectric materials can vibrate when AC voltage is applied to them.) The piezoelectric effect has a significant range of uses, including sound production and detection, generation of high voltages and electronic frequencies, atomic resolution imaging technologies (e.g., scanning tunneling and atomic force microscopy), and actuators for highly accurate positioning of nanoscale objects – the last being crucial for fundamental research and industrial applications. That being said, subatomic scale positioning still presents a number of challenge. Recently, however, researchers at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Suzhou, and Duke University, Durham demonstrated vertical piezoelectricity at the atomic scale (three to five space lattices) using ultrathin cadmium sulfide (CdS) films. The researchers determined a vertical piezoelectric coefficient (_d_33) three times that of bulk CdS using _in situ_ scanning Kelvin force microscopy and single and dual ac resonance tracking piezoelectric force microscopy, leading them to conclude that their findings have a number of critical roles in the design of next-generation sensors and microelectromechanical devices.



*Con't -> *http://phys.org/news/2016-08-picoscale-precision-ultrathin-piezoelectricity.html

X. Wang et al, Subatomic deformation driven by vertical piezoelectricity from CdS ultrathin films, _Science Advances_ 01 Jul 2016, Vol. 2, no. 7, e1600209, 
doi:10.1126/sciadv.1600209

*Abstract*

Driven by the development of high-performance piezoelectric materials, actuators become an important tool for positioning objects with high accuracy down to nanometer scale, and have been used for a wide variety of equipment, such as atomic force microscopy and scanning tunneling microscopy. However, positioning at the subatomic scale is still a great challenge. Ultrathin piezoelectric materials may pave the way to positioning an object with extreme precision. Using ultrathin CdS thin films, we demonstrate vertical piezoelectricity in atomic scale (three to five space lattices). With an in situ scanning Kelvin force microscopy and single and dual ac resonance tracking piezoelectric force microscopy, the vertical piezoelectric coefficient (_d_33) up to 33 pm·V−1 was determined for the CdS ultrathin films. These findings shed light on the design of next-generation sensors and microelectromechanical devices.​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Yifang Wang: high energy physics in China*
Ling Wang and Mu-ming Poo

Mu-ming Poo is the Director of CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, and Executive Associate Editor of NSR, and Ling Wang is a science news reporter based in Beijing. ​
*Abstract*

On 8 March 2012, Yifang Wang, co-spokesperson of the Daya Bay Experiment and Director of Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, announced the discovery of a new type of neutrino oscillation with a surprisingly large mixing angle (θ13), signifying ‘a milestone in neutrino research’. Now his team is heading for a new goal—to determine the neutrino mass hierarchy and to precisely measure oscillation parameters using the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory, which is due for completion in 2020. Neutrinos are fundamental particles that play important roles in both microscopic particle physics and macroscopic universe evolution. The studies on neutrinos, for example, may answer the question why our universe consists of much more matter than antimatter. But this is not an easy task. Though they are one of the most numerous particles in the universe and zip through our planet and bodies all the time, these tiny particles are like ‘ghost’, difficult to be captured. There are three flavors of neutrinos, known as electron neutrino (νe), muon neutrino (νμ), and tau neutrino (ντ), and their flavors could change as they travel through space via quantum interference. This phenomenon is known as neutrino oscillation or neutrino mixing. To determine the absolute mass of each type of neutrino and find out how they mix is very challenging. In a recent interview with NSR in Beijing, Yifang Wang explained how the Daya Bay Experiment on neutrino oscillation not only addressed the frontier problem in particle physics, but also harnessed the talents and existing technology in Chinese physics community. This achievement, Wang reckons, will not be an exception in Chinese high energy physics, when appropriate funding and organization for big science projects could be efficiently realized in the future.



*Con't -> http://nsr.oxfordjournals.org/content/3/2/252.full*

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Construction starts on huge Chinese cosmic-ray observatory*
Aug 9, 2016





Seeking pedigrees: LHAASO will look into the origins of cosmic rays​
Construction has begun on one of the world's largest and most sensitive cosmic-ray facilities. Located about 4410 m above sea level in the Haizi Mountain in Sichuan Province in southwest China, the 1.2 billion yuan ($180m) Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) will attempt to understand the origins of high-energy cosmic rays. LHAASO is set to open in 2020.

Cosmic rays are particles that originate in outer space and are accelerated to energies higher than those that can be achieved in even the largest man-made particle accelerators. Composed mainly of high-energy protons and atomic nuclei, cosmic rays create an air shower of particles such as photons and muons when they hit the atmosphere. Where cosmic rays come from, however, has remained a mystery since they were first spotted some 100 years ago.

*Cosmic showers*
LHAASO aims to detect cosmic rays over a wide range of energies from 1011–1018 eV using a Cherenkov water detector, covering a total area of 80 000 m2, together with 12 wide-field Cherenkov telescopes. These two types of instrument, which are above ground, will spot the Cherenkov radiation emitted when a charged particle travels through a medium faster than light can travel through that medium. LHAASO will also consist of a 1.3 km2 array of 6000 scintillation detectors that will study electrons and photons in the air showers, while an overlapping 1.3 km2 underground array of 1200 underground Cherenkov water tanks will detect muons.

LHAASO is not the only facility in the world trying to study the origin of cosmic rays. The IceCube facility at the South Pole observes high-energy neutrinos, while the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina explores cosmic rays with energies above 1018 eV. "LHAASO will play a complementary role with existing detectors to offer a more comprehensive picture of the cosmic-ray sky," says Yifang Wang, head of the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

*Challenges ahead*
According to IHEP researcher Zhen Cao, who is LHAASO's chief scientist, the construction of LHAASO will not be easy, with the Cherenkov water detectors being particularly tricky. Benedetto D'Ettorre Piazzoli, a former vice president of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) in Italy, who has been involved in Sino-Italian collaborations in cosmic-ray research, agrees, adding that combining all of these detector types will be difficult. "The deployment, debugging, and operations management of many thousands of detectors of different types is very challenging at a level never faced before," he says.

D'Ettorre Piazzoli is, however, confident that the facility will play an important role in cosmic-ray research. "As LHAASO is a very large installation, with a large amount of many types of detectors allowing the observation of cosmic rays and photons over a wide range of energies, it is expected to provide detailed and statistically relevant information on the transition from the galactic to the extra-galactic contribution," he adds.

LHAASO is an international collaboration that includes scientists from China, France, Italy, Russia, Switzerland and Thailand. First mooted in 2008, the facility won approval from the National Development and Reform Commission of China in December 2015. Haizi Mountain was selected as the site due to its high elevation and good accessibility – being only 10 km away from Yading Airport – the world's highest – and about 50 km from Daocheng County, which will be the base for the LHAASO team.



Construction starts on huge Chinese cosmic-ray observatory - physicsworld.com

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*Chinese scientists tackle conundrum of why humans are brighter than animals with bigger brains*

Answer may lie in our ability to create information-relaying particles using much less energy than other species, making our brains more efficient, researchers suggest

PUBLISHED : Thursday, 11 August, 2016, 4:25pm
UPDATED : Thursday, 11 August, 2016, 10:45pm

Chinese scientists have suggested a new theory as to why people are so much more intelligent than animals even though our brains are sometimes much smaller than those of other species.

Researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Neuroscience and Neuro-engineering have previously carried out studies backing the scientifically contentious idea that the brain not only processes and passes on information through electrical and chemical signals, but also with photons, a form of tiny particle that can include light.

In their latest study, the researchers said human brains are able to create information-relaying photons using much less energy than other animals, which suggested they are able to operate more speedily and efficiently than those of other species.

The hypothesis that our brain also operates using other mechanisms rather than just electrical and chemical signals has been around for decades.

Its supporters have included the physicist Eugene Wigner, Nobel Prize laureate in 1963 and more recently the eminent physicist Sir Roger Penrose at the University of Oxford.

These theories include the idea that the brain transmits non-electrical particles, a form of physics which also underpins the idea of the quantum computer.

But other scientists have remained sceptical, with one of their biggest concerns the absence of a physical medium in the brain through which information is transmitted.

The rise of China’s millionaire research scientists

A research team led by professor Dai Jiapei at the Wuhan institute suggested two years ago that neurons, nerve cells in the brain that transmit information, can emit photons.

They were extremely weak, detectable only with the most sensitive equipment, but capable of transmission along brain fibres and circuits, the researchers said.

The generation and transmission of these extremely faint “lights” in the brain was stimulated by a chemical called glutamate, which is commonly used as a flavour additive in food.

In their latest study, Professor Dai and his colleagues sliced tissue samples from the brains of a bullfrog, mouse, chicken, pig, monkey and human.

The neurons, still alive in the culture dish, were then stimulated with glutamate and the photons recorded with specially-built sensors.

They observed the spectral redshift, or the change of light waves from higher to lower energy levels.

Human brain tissue showed the lowest energy photons, followed by the monkey, pig, chicken and mouse, with the frog at the highest level.

Quantum teleportation breakthrough earns Pan Jianwei’s team China’s top science award

“Interestingly, we found that the chicken exhibits more redshift than the mouse, raising the question of whether chickens hold higher cognitive abilities than those of mice,” the researchers wrote in their paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States.

“It has been suggested that birds might have evolved from a certain type of dinosaur and that dinosaurs, which dominated on Earth for a long time, should hold certain advanced cognitive abilities over other animals. Based on this theory, it may be true that poultry have higher cognitive abilities than rodents, at least in language abilities, because certain birds, such as parrots, are able to imitate human words,” the researchers wrote.

The authors said they hoped the findings would suggest a new viewpoint in understanding the mechanisms of the brain and also explain why human brains were better than those of other animals in some advanced cognitive functions, such as language, planning and problem solving.

Traditional measurements such as brain size cannot fully explain differences in intelligence, they said. Elephants, for example, are not smarter than humans and dolphins can outwit whales.

The authors stress, however, that some crucial questions remained unanswered.

Physicists take a ‘quantum leap’ in teleporting photon

It is still not clear, for example, how the brain carries out the transfer of information, coding and storage via photons.

Critics of the “quantum brain” theory have also questioned whether the brain is physically able to relay information through photons.

“The critical questions we are here concerned with is whether any components of the nervous system ... wet and warm tissue strongly coupled to its environment - display any macroscopic quantum behaviours, such as quantum entanglement,” wrote Professor Christof Koch and Professor Klaus Hepp at the University of Zürich in a 2007 paper.


This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as:
Why our brains are best and brightest 

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/soci...ists-tackle-conundrum-why-humans-are-brighter

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

Friday, August 12, 2016, 10:18
*China creates high-tech insulation for space*
By Zhao Lei






The Long March 5 is shown in this undated picture being tested at the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center in Hainan province. (Photo by Sun Hao / China Daily)​
China has developed a cutting-edge ultralight material for thermal insulation on its rockets and spacecraft, according to engineers.

Zou Junfeng, a senior engineer at the Aerospace Institute of Advanced Materials and Processing Technology in Beijing, said the material, called aerogel, has been widely used in space missions by the United States, Russia and Europe.

"We have also developed our own aerogel products and some of them are at the highest technological level in the world," he said. "A lot of our spacecraft, satellites and rockets are now using our products to resist heat or maintain internal temperatures."

The heavy-duty Long March 5 rocket, which will be China's most sophisticated and strongest launch vehicle, is scheduled to conduct its maiden flight before the end of this year.

It will use aerogel developed by Zou's institute to maintain the required temperature for its engine's pipes, he said.

"Our aerogel products are capable of not only insulating heat but also withstanding strong vibration, so they will ensure the smooth operation of the rocket," he said.

Moreover, the nation's future Mars rover will use aerogel to maintain warmth when it lands on the Red Planet.

"Our cargo spacecraft that will be launched next year will also be equipped with a refrigerator that uses our aerogel materials, significantly reducing the refrigerator's weight," Zou said.

NASA also used aerogel for thermal insulation of its Mars Rover and space suits.

Zou's institute, part of the Third Academy of the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp, specializes in materials used on spacecraft and missiles. It has developed a series of aerogel products that can work in a wide range of temperatures, from minus 100 C to 2,500 C. They are used in the Chinese military's latest weapons, said Cao Hui, director of the institute.

He said aerogel is the lightest solid material ever developed by humans, calling it a "magic material that will change the world".

Cao said the institute's aerogel products are also used on China's large ships and high-speed trains, adding that engineers will promote the advanced material to more civilian sectors.





China's first Long March 7 launches from Wenchang on June 25, 2016. (Photo by Su Dong, China Daily)​

Reactions: Like Like:
10


----------



## CAPRICORN-88

This means that the "Tianggong-2 Space Lab" will launched on schedule in September 2016.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 12-Aug-2016
* Seeing the invisible: Visible light superlens made from nanobeads *
_New solid 3-D superlenses extends magnification x5 to reveal new detail_

Bangor University



Fig.1 (a) Conceptual drawing of nanoparticle-based metamaterial solid immersion lens (mSIL) (b) Lab made mSIL using titanium dioxide nanoparticles (c) SEM image of 60 nm sized imaging sample (d) corresponding superlens imaging of the 60 nm samples by the developed mSIL. ©Bangor University Fudan University

Nanobeads are all around us- and are, some might argue, used too frequently in everything from sun-screen to white paint, but a new ground-breaking application is revealing hidden worlds.

A paper in _Science Advances_ (12 August) provides proof of a new concept, using new solid 3D superlenses to break through the scale of things previously visible through a microscope.

Illustrating the strength of the new superlens, the scientists describe seeing for the first time, the actual information on the surface of a Blue Ray DVD. That shiny surface is not as smooth as we think. Current microscopes cannot see the grooves containing the data- but now even the data itself is revealed.

Led by Dr Zengbo Wang at Bangor University, UK and Prof Limin Wu at Fudan University, China, the team created minute droplet-like lens structures on the surface to be examined. These act as an additional lens to magnify the surface features previously invisible to a normal lens.

Made of millions of nanobeads, the spheres break up the light beam. Each bead refracts the light, acting as individual torch-like minute beam. It is the very small size of each beam of light which illuminate the surface, extending the resolving ability of the microscope to record-breaking levels. The new superlens adds 5x magnification on top of existing microscopes.

Extending the limit of the classical microscope's resolution has been the 'El Dorado' or 'Holy Grail' of microscopy for over a century. Physical laws of light make it impossible to view objects smaller than 200 nm - the smallest size of bacteria, using a normal microscope alone. However, superlenses have been the new goal since the turn of the millennium, with various labs and teams researching different models and materials.

"We've used high-index titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles as the building element of the lens. These nanoparticles are able to bend light to a higher degree than water. To explain, when putting a spoon into a cup of this material, if it were possible, you'd see a larger bend where you spoon enters the material than you would looking at the same spoon in a glass of water," Dr Wang says.

"Each sphere bends the light to a high magnitude and splits the light beam, creating millions of individual beams of light. It is these tiny light beams which enable us to view previously unseen detail."

Wang believes that the results will be easily replicable and that other labs will soon be adopting the technology and using it for themselves.

The advantages of the technology is that the material, titanium dioxide, is cheap and readily available, and rather than buying a new microscope, the lenses are applied to the material to be viewed, rather than to the microscope.

"We have already viewed details to a far greater level than was previously possible. The next challenge is to adapt the technology for use in biology and medicine. This would not require the current use of a combination of dyes and stains and laser light- which change the samples being viewed. The new lens will be used to see germs and viruses not previously visible."

Seeing the invisible: Visible light superlens made from nanobeads | EurekAlert! Science News


Three-dimensional all-dielectric metamaterial solid immersion lens for subwavelength imaging at visible frequencies, Science Advances 12 Aug 2016. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1600901

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## Dungeness

Now China is capable of making plasma etching equipment for 14nm process, the KEY tech for semiconductor industries:

Reactions: Like Like:
8


----------



## JSCh

*China's new submersible mother ship completes maiden voyage *
Source: Xinhua | 2016-08-12 18:31:20 | Editor: huaxia



China's deep-sea submersible mother ship, Tansuo-1, returns to Sanya in south China's Hainan Province, Aug. 12, 2016. Tansuo-1 returned to Sanya on Friday after completing its successful maiden voyage to the Mariana Trench. The mother ship carried 60 researchers and crew as well as a 10,000-meter autonomous remote-controlled submersible, a 9,000-meter ocean-bottom seismometer and other domestically made devices. It left Sanya on June 22 for the Mariana Trench expedition. (Xinhua/Sha Xiaofeng)

SANYA, Aug. 12 (Xinhua) -- China's deep-sea submersible mother ship, Tansuo-1, returned to Sanya in south China's Hainan Province on Friday after completing its successful maiden voyage to the Mariana Trench.

The mother ship carried 60 researchers and crew as well as a 10,000-meter autonomous remote-controlled submersible, a 9,000-meter ocean-bottom seismometer and other domestically made devices. It left Sanya on June 22 for the Mariana Trench expedition.

During the expedition, researchers with the Chinese Academy of Sciences conducted 84 research tasks and collected a large amount of samples and data at different depths. The results will be announced later.

The 94.45-meter-long Tansuo-1 has a range of 10,000 nautical miles. It is equipped with 10 permanent research labs and two removable labs.

The ship serves as the mother ship for a new manned submersible that can reach a depth of 4,500 meters.

China's current manned submersible, Jiaolong, reached a depth of 7,062 meters in the Mariana Trench in June 2012.

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## ahojunk

*China's technology innovation plan to support GM crops research*
2016-08-12 08:48 | Xinhua | _Editor: Mo Hong'e
_
China will allocate more resources to GM crop R&D, according to a five-year plan for science and technology progress published Monday by the State Council.

The plan lists science and technology targets for the 2016-2020 period, as well as the government action needed to achieve the proposed results.

China has identified GM as an important area on many occasions, ordering research and supervision to be improved, the development of a GM food evaluation system and the industrialization of certain GM food crops.

A GM research project, approved by the State Council in 2008, explored the creation of new GM varieties alongside their application value and proprietary intellectual property rights. The project was part of a wider push to ensure the sustainable development of China's agriculture.

"Since 2008, China has built a GM technology system," according to an official with the Ministry of Agriculture. "The system covers gene cloning, genetic transformation, new variety breeding and safety evaluation."

The new plan, with its emphasis on innovation, advantages of hybrids and breeding by molecular design, will help elevate GM research to the next level.

"Innovation is extremely important in the industry," said Zhang Shihuang, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

Agricultural experts had predicted, for example, that the industrialization of genetically modified corn would be realized in the next five years, but a suitable breed has yet to be identified. Zhang attributes this to a lack of innovation.

*SAFETY SHOULD BE PRIORITY*

GM remains shrouded in controversy due to safety concerns. The new plan reveals that China is taking a prudent attitude toward the research and application of GM crops. Safety, however, has always been, and will always be, put first.

China has a sound safety evaluation system for genetically modified crops, according to Guo Anping, a member of the country's GM crop bio-safety committee and vice president of the Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences.

"China's safety evaluation system on genetically modified crops is the world's strictest in terms of technical standards and procedures," said Wu Kongming, from the Chinese Academy of Engineering and also a member of China's GM crop bio-safety committee.

Compared to China's regulation on GM crops over the past five years, which places emphasis on improving the GM organism cultivation and safety evaluation systems, the new plan proposes that a standardized bio-safety evaluation technical system should be established over the following five years to ensure the safety of GM products.

The safety management of GM organisms must be improved to avoid any risks to people, micro-organisms, animals and plants as well as the environment, Guo said.

From field experiments to application, every procedure concerning GM organisms requires a rigid evaluation and approval process, he continued.

Experts said China should focus on GM research of fields that can solve agriculture problems, such as insect resistance, water scarcity as well as high yield and high quality.

For GM crops, China currently only allows insect-resistant cotton and antiviral papaya for commercial purposes to be planted.

For instance, China has cultivated 147 species of GM insect-resistant cotton, which has helped reduce pesticide consumption by 400,000 tonnes, saving 45 billion yuan (6.78 billion U.S. dollars).

China has released a GM crop roadmap, giving priority to the development of non-edible cash crops, according to official Liao Xiyuan, with the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA), in April.

Next in line comes indirectly edible and then edible crops, reflecting China's prudent attitude to GM crops, said Liao.

*CALL FOR SUPPORT, SUPERVISION*

Although China has made discoveries, especially with regards to GM technology, it still has a way to go in the industrialization of GM products.

A total of 28 countries around the world have planted GM crops. China was the sixth largest GM crop grower in 2015, following the United States, Brazil, Argentina, India and Canada, according to a study by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA).

GM researchers say the new plan is inspiring but it lacks a general framework, and detailed policies and actions are needed to ensure implementation.

Agriculture officials say they hope the plan will improve GM crop safety. Severe punishment will be given for any unauthorized GM crop sales, planting and field trials, according to Liao.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## bobsm

*China’s quantum satellite leap into space leads the world*

Groundbreaking project could result in breakthroughs in cryptography and teleportation

PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 16 August, 2016, 9:17am
UPDATED : Tuesday, 16 August, 2016, 9:31am






Stephen Chen

China launched the world’s first quantum science satellite into space early on Tuesday morning, with the project carrying the hopes of scientists around the world.

At 1.40am, the small satellite, recently named Micius after an ancient Chinese philosopher and engineer, began a journey into the big unknown on top of a Long March 2D rocket launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in Inner Mongolia’s Gobi Desert.

Eight years ago, quantum physicist Pan Jianwei and space engineer Wang Jianyu teamed up to build the world’s first quantum satellite in the hope of finding the portal to a whole new universe.

“Pan has some big ideas, my job is to squeeze them in a satellite,” Professor Wang, commander in chief of China’s quantum science satellite (QSS) project, told the _South China Morning Post_ in an exclusive interview.

China has been trailing the footsteps of others for more than a century. QSS will be our first step ahead of others
WANG JIANYU, CAS
The satellite was initially called QUESS (quantum experiments at space scale) and then QSS. Pan, the project’s chief scientist, said they had been scratching their heads for a long time to find a proper name for it.

Micius was chosen not only because it fit the pioneering nature of the experiments, but also as a nod to Chinese culture, Pan told state media on Monday. More than 2,400 years ago, Micius proposed that light always travelled in a straight line and that the physical world was made up by particles. He also built the world’s first pinhole camera.

The QSS project began at the Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics, a subsidiary of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), in 2008.

The satellite, weighing less than a Smart car, will be looking for a universe different from Einstein’s. One where a cat can be alive and dead at the same time, where bits of information can be “teleported” from one galaxy to another faster than the speed of light, where the internet cannot be hacked, and where a calculator can run faster than all the world’s super computers combined.








“The QSS missions are something never attempted by other nations,” Wang said. “China has been trailing the footsteps of others for more than a century. QSS will be our first step ahead of others [in space].

“It is a tiny step, but it is a step for the human race.”

In ancient times, China was the land of innovation, inventing black powder, paper, printing and the compass. Now, after decades of rapid economic development, it has built up the world’s largest army of scientists and engineers, some armed with cutting-edge technology and state-of-the-art hardware, and is ready to reclaim the glory of the past with ambitious projects.

Wang said the quantum satellite had three successively more challenging missions.

The first was to establish a hacker-proof communication line between China and Europe.

A message would encrypted by a unique cryptographic key chain in Beijing and sent to Vienna through the conventional telecommunications network. At the same time, the key chain would be beamed to the quantum satellite by Beijing in the form of photons with various quantum properties such as clockwise or counterclockwise spins, and then the satellite would relay the cryptographic keys to the receiver in Vienna to decipher the message.

Quantum properties – the states of a particle – cannot be measured or cloned without destroying the particle’s original quantum states, so the cryptographic keys, in theory, could not be stolen.

The technology had obvious military value and Micius would have ended up as a secret military satellite if not for a rare fight led by Professor Pan and other Chinese scientists against the generals of the People’s Liberation Army.

“Originally, the army wanted to take over the responsibility [to bring quantum technology to space],” Pan told _Nature_magazine in January. “We at the CAS really worked hard to convince our government that it is important that we have a way to launch science satellites … it was finally agreed that CAS is the right organisation.”






The Chinese scientists’ efforts won respect and applause from colleagues and competitors in Europe, the United States, Russia, Canada and Japan who had proposed similar plans to take quantum technology into space to their governments only to face delays or postponements for a range of reasons, including budget cuts.

Professor Anton Zeilinger, who was Pan’s mentor when he was a PhD student in Vienna and now leads a quantum satellite project in Europe, said the launch of Micius launch would benefit everyone.

“The quantum satellite will for the first time prove that quantum communication on a worldwide scale is possible,” he said. “This is a crucial step to the future quantum internet.”

But it is the satellite’s second and third missions that reveal the scale of the Chinese scientists’ ambitions and have physicists around the world holding their breath.

One of the most intriguing elements of quantum theory is the entanglement of particles. If two particles are entangled, the change of quantum state on one particle would immediately trigger a counter-change on the other. In theory, the entanglement would occur regardless of the distance between the particles, but the greatest distance of entanglement on the ground, achieved by a team led by Pan and Wang, was only 100km.

Micius will seek to improve on that by an order of magnitude, beaming one entangled photon to a ground station in Delingha, Tibet, and the other to a station in Lijiang in Yunnan or Nanshan in Xinjiang, so see if the entanglement can be maintained between two ground stations more than 1,000km apart.

If the results of the second mission are positive, the satellite’s third mission will take quantum theory to its most exciting application: quantum teleportation in space.






Researchers will generate a pair of entangled photons at a ground station. One photon will be beamed to the satellite, the other kept on the ground. Then, the scientists will alter the quantum state of the particle on the ground, such as giving it a clockwise spin. A detector on the satellite will tell if a counterclockwise spin occurs simultaneously on the particle in space.

*Quantum teleportation technology would be able to eliminate the 20-minute time delay in communication between earth and Mars and would allow tiny spacecraft to send back images and videos of planets many light years away without the need to carry a huge antenna. It could even give us a glimpse of what’s inside a black hole.*

Many problems remain to be solved, such as maintaining the entangled state of quantum particles, which is fragile and can be lost in long-distance space flight, but Wang said the first glimpse of hope was on the horizon.

“Before the appearance of television, sending images from one place to another was considered magic,” he said. “Quantum teleportation is magic, but it may become as simple and common as television in the future.”

Wang still has many practical issues to worry about. Though all the technology and equipment has been tested on the ground, there’s no guarantee it will all work in space. In a ground experiment, the equipment can be fine-turned or fixed; once in space, the hardware on the satellite cannot be modified.

But Wang said their biggest challenge was distance. To beam a single photon from the satellite to a one-metre-wide telescope on the ground, or to catch a single photon from the ground with a satellite moving at 7,000km/h to 8,000km/h, with rain, clouds and air turbulence in between, would be “the most difficult sniper shot ever”, he said.

Development of the quantum satellite had taken China’s space technology to new heights in many areas, he said, including ultra-precise tracking, timing and spacecraft control.

But what if the experiments do not find what they are looking for, for instance the particles fail to entangle beyond a certain distance. Wang said it was something he had discussed with Pan.

“If the QSS shows some fundamental laws of quantum physics do not work in the universe, we will be equally thrilled,” he said. “It will open another door to the unknown.”


http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1999061/chinas-quantum-satellite-leap-space-leads-world

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## JSCh

*World’s first 3.4-megawatt modular tidal current power generator put into use*
(People's Daily Online) 13:38, August 16, 2016





The hoisting work of a module of the generator.(Photo/zjol.com.cn)​
After being independently developed by China, the world's first 3.4-megawatt modular tidal current power generator has successfully generated electricity in the sea near Xiushan Island in Zhoushan, Zhejiang province on Aug. 15.

Ocean tidal current power is a widely recognized source of clean energy. Half of China's current tidal power resources are in Zhejiang province, and 96 percent of Zhejiang's tidal current power resources are in Zhoushan.

Currently, the world's biggest tidal current power station is a 1.2-megawatt project in the U.K., which began to operate in 2008. China's biggest tidal current power unit has a capacity of 0.3 megawatts.

On July 27, China's first 3.4-megawatt modular tidal current generator unit was successfully installed in the sea. So far, two of the seven modules of the generator have been put into use. The generator will be connected to the grid at the end of August. Its designed annual energy output is between 5 and 6 million kilowatt hours, which is capable of meeting the electricity demand of 2,000 to 3,000 households.

According to the design, the new generator can withstand up to a 16-grade typhoon and a 4-meter-high surge.






(Photo/wzsee.com)​

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## JSCh

Posted: Aug 16, 2016
* Novel nanotechnology processing capable of producing nanomaterials on an industrial scale *

(_Nanowerk News_) Researchers at Illinois Tech recently unveiled a major breakthrough in nanotechnology processing that reduces the time, and increases the amount of product that can be manufactured on an industrial scale. The new technique makes nanotechnology economically viable for numerous applications, including pollution control for vehicles, reduction in waste heat from vehicles and electronics, and removal of toxic waste from water.

“This novel approach is capable of producing nanostructured material on an industrial scale and on an economically viable time-scale thus overcoming two major hurdles in nanotechnology; inability to scale up to industrial production quantities and economically unacceptable synthesis times,” says Philip Nash, Charles and Lee Finkl Professor of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering.

Nash, working with graduate students Yang Zhou and Tian Liu of Armour College of Engineering’s Department of Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering, detailed his findings in a paper he co-authored with colleagues from Tianjin University, China on the large-scale synthesis of nanostructured plates.

The paper, published in _Scientific Reports_ ("The Large Scale Synthesis of Aligned Plate Nanostructures"), describes a paradigm-shifting synthesis technique that can be applied to many alloy systems to produce functional material for applications in energy technology, catalysis, and waste-water treatment. The technique involves developing nanoscale two-phase microstructures through discontinuous precipitation followed by selective etching to remove one of the phases. The method may be applied to any alloy system in which the discontinuous precipitation transformation goes to completion.

The Ni-Co-Al alloy discussed in the paper epitomizes the concept. The material is ductile before heat treatment so that it can be fabricated into complex shapes, including tubes and wire. The alloy can then be treated to produce the nanostructure either on the inside, outside, or both sides of the tube. The tube will retain its structural integrity and has the added functionality of the nanoscale surface.

Source: _Illinois Tech_

http://www.nanowerk.com/nanotechnology-news/newsid=44237.php

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

The fabrication of a blue–violet semiconductor laser on a silicon substrate enhances the integration of optoelectronics with electronics.

Nature Photonics. doi:10.1038/nphoton.2016.158
Published online 15 August 2016

Authors: Yi Sun, Kun Zhou, Qian Sun, Jianping Liu, Meixin Feng, Zengcheng Li, Yu Zhou, Liqun Zhang, Deyao Li, Shuming Zhang, Masao Ikeda, Sheng Liu & Hui Yang

Silicon photonics would greatly benefit from efficient, visible on-chip light sources that are electrically driven at room temperature. To fully utilize the benefits of large-scale, low-cost manufacturing foundries, it is highly desirable to grow direct bandgap III-V semiconductor lasers directly on Si. Here, we report the demonstration of a blue–violet (413 nm) InGaN-based laser diode grown directly on Si that operates under continuous-wave current injection at room temperature, with a threshold current density of 4.7 kA cm–2. The heteroepitaxial growth of GaN on Si is confronted with a large mismatch in both the lattice constant and the coefficient of thermal expansion, often resulting in a high density of defects and even microcrack networks. By inserting an Al-composition step-graded AlN/AlGaN multilayer buffer between the Si and GaN, we have not only successfully eliminated crack formation, but also effectively reduced the dislocation density. The result is the realization of a blue–violet InGaN-based laser on Si.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*Using nature's recipe to create mother of pearl*
Date: August 18, 2016
American Association for the Advancement of Science



Optical images of the natural nacre. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the Aug. 19, 2016, issue of _Science_, published by AAAS. The paper, by L.-B. Mao at University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, China, and colleagues was titled, 'Synthetic nacre by predesigned matrix-directed mineralization.' 
Li-Bo Mao, Huai-Ling Gao, Yu-Feng Meng, Ning Yang and Si-Ming Chen, University of Science and Technology of China

Researchers have created a synthetic nacre remarkably similar to the natural material, which is also known as mother of pearl, though their synthetic version forms in weeks instead of months or years. Nacre is the shiny material found coating pearls and inside some mollusk shells.

Its substantial strength and toughness make it an appealing material to synthesize, for various applications, yet its multifaceted and complex structure have made this process difficult. Current synthesis methods involve intricate layering and steps, as well as high degrees of heat, which limit the types of materials that can be used.

In nature, nacre is produced using an organic matrix that acts as scaffolding. On the matrix, aragonite plates grow into one another through a mineralization process, in a brick-and-mortar fashion.

Here, Li-Bo Mao and colleagues designed a similar matrix, and subjected it to a system that steadily pumps minerals and additives into the matrix. In this system, calcium carbonate is precipitated gradually across the matrix from a pool of calcium bicarbonate. The slow precipitation of the mineral offers a more uniform -- and natural -- formation of nacre than exists in current synthesis processes.

Analysis of the final synthetic product reveals that is it slightly less dense than true nacre.

As well, the aragonite platelets are slightly oversized, which means they can partially pop out of place, making the synthetic nacre slightly less crack-resistant. Regardless, the synthetic material maintains mechanical properties similar to its natural counterpart.

The authors anticipate that this artificial mineralization method could be extended to produce other bio-inspired materials with unique or desirable properties.

#####​*Synthetic nacre by predesigned matrix-directed mineralization*

*Abstract*
Although biomimetic designs are expected to play a key role in exploring future structural materials, facile fabrication of bulk biomimetic materials under ambient conditions remains a major challenge. Here, we describe a mesoscale “assembly-and-mineralization” approach inspired by the natural process in mollusks to fabricate bulk synthetic nacre that highly resembles both the chemical composition and the hierarchical structure of natural nacre. The millimeter-thick synthetic nacre consists of alternating organic layers and aragonite platelet layers (91 weight %) and exhibits good ultimate strength and fracture toughness. This predesigned matrix-directed mineralization method represents a rational strategy for the preparation of robust composite materials with hierarchically ordered structures, where various constituents are adaptable, including brittle and heat-labile materials.​
*References : *L-B Mao _et al_, _Science_, 2016, DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf8991

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

Friday, August 19, 2016, 10:19
* Advanced solar cells ready for production*
By Zhou Wenting 
*
Third-generation design abandons silicon, mimics photosynthesis for high performance.*

A third-generation solar cell that produces zero pollution in manufacture, requires less light intensity and works with lower angles of sunlight, was handed off from its Chinese creator on Thursday to a commercial manufacturer in Shenzhen.

The transfer indicates that the cells are approaching the point of practical application in intelligent buildings, transportation and the so-called internet of things.

Shenzhen Precision Light & Automatic Equipment Co purchased the technology for the dye-sensitized solar cells - whose performance is said to surpass competitors worldwide - for 100 million yuan (US$15 million) from the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In developing the cells over a 10-year period, researchers amassed more than 50 patents, all of which transfer to the Shenzhen company. The institute's existing production line is also included in the deal.

The cell, which differs from those of the previous two generations in light acquisition and principle of power-generation, will serve in a wide variety of applications in modern cities - for example, in household electrical appliances, wearable devices, traffic lights and outdoor big screens - said Liu Yan, the institute's Party chief.

"The first two generations of solar cells require strong and direct sunlight, but the third generation is able to work even indoors or on cloudy days or when the sunshine slants through. So it can be applied to more situations, such as an outdoor display screen that's shaded by trees," Liu said.

Shen Hujiang, a leading researcher of the project, added: "It can also be used for portable chargers, which will work despite environmental constraints. Portable chargers made with solar cells of the first or second generation can fail to work for tourists in jungles. But with the latest technology, a charger will continue to work."

Crystalline silicon is the main ingredient in the first two generations of solar cells. Its semiconductor properties have been used to produce and transport electrical signals, Shen said.

In the third generation, however, researchers simulated the process of photosynthesis. Light received by the cells is converted into electrons and stored in a special material, and when the electrons gather and reach a certain amount, they will produce voltage and electrical current.

"The chemical materials used during manufacture are widely used in food products and cosmetics, so they are safe and environmentally friendly," Shen said.

The cells were used in display screens at bus stops in Shanghai's Pudong New Area as part of a pilot project.

"Shanghai is building its intelligent public transportation system, one element of which is screens to show when the next bus will arrive," Liu said. "All the buses have been equipped with GPS. Screens with solar cells will be more energy-conserving and sustainable," Liu said.

Chu Junhao, a specialist in solar energy at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said he believes the cells will help people use energy more efficiently and achieve a rich and colorful life while building smart cities.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*College students develop device to wash hands with air, save water*
(People's Daily Online) 13:34, August 19, 2016





The "air hand-washing device" developed by students from Zhejiang University. ​
A group of senior students from Zhejiang University have successfully developed an "air hand-washing device." The device utilizes an infrared ray induction system, which detects the presence of hands. A tap then sprays a light water mist along with a strong gust of air, which the students have proven to be nearly as effective as traditional hand-washing. However, the device uses only 10 percent of the water that regular hand-washing does.

Li Qizhang, a member of the team that developed the device, told a reporter from thepaper.cn that a model of their device has already been installed in a classroom building at the university, and that the results have been satisfactory. The students have set up a company to further promote their product.

In 2014, a student named Chen Puyang first came up with the idea while washing his hands in the school cafeteria. Washing one's hands uses a lot of water, Chen thought. Would it be possible to replace the water with air?

Others may not have given the question a second thought. However, for Chen and Li, who were studying fluid mechanics, this constituted a brilliant idea.

Soon, Chen, Li and several classmates embarked on the project. The design of the device required knowledge from a variety of different majors, so the R&D team eventually came to be composed of seven students from various majors.

"We put different kinds of dirt on our hands and washed them with water. It turned out that 95 percent of water is used to flush away the dirt; only 5 percent is used to dissolve it. If we washed with only air, then the dirt on our hands would not dissolve. So we decided to use a fine water spray to complement the air. That way, the dirt is carried away by air and dissolved by water," explained Li.

After a year of research and experimentation, the team came up with a gravity-driven hand-washing device whose reliance on water was minimal. The user stands on a platform in front of the device, which sinks because of the weight of the user. The gravity exerted by the user pulls the piston through a pulley block, and a gust of air is generated through air extrusion. The tap then releases a water mist coupled with the gust.

The team tested the device by conducting chromogenic reaction and residual bacteria experiments, which proved that the results of hand-washing with air can be similar to those of washing with water.

In September 2015, the team took its invention to the Global Grand Challenges Summit. They took home the top award, beating teams from 14 universities including MIT and Cambridge.

Now they have launched a second generation of their product, which is powered by electricity and equipped with an infrared ray induction system.



The R&D team show their "air hand-washing device" at the 44th Geneva International Exhibition of Inventions in April 2016. ​

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## ahojunk

Chinese scientists discover molecules to repair organs
2016-08-20 14:24:26 Xinhua Web Editor: Zhang Xu



_ 
Chinese scientists have discovered a small molecule that can regenerate tissue, which in the future could make tissue regeneration much easier for many. [Photo: Agencies]_

Chinese scientists have discovered a small molecule that can regenerate tissue, which in the future could make tissue regeneration much easier for many.

The research was led by professor Zhou Dawang and Deng Xianming of the School of Life Sciences, Xiamen University, and professor Yun Caihong of Peking University.

The findings were published in the latest edition of Science Translational Medicine, on August 17.

Zhou said they have discovered a drug, XMU-MP-1, which can promote repair and regeneration in the liver, intestines and skin.

In the future, the pills may do away the need for organ transplant or complex biomaterial and cell therapies, he said.

Zhou and his colleagues specifically targeted a critical signaling molecule in the Hippo pathway, which controls organ size.

The XMU-MP-1 has proven to inhibit the activity of MST1/2, the central component of this pathway and promote cell growth in four different mouse models of acute and chronic injuries, including acetaminophen-induced injury, which is a common cause of liver failure worldwide.

Zhou said they have applied for a patent and are cooperating with pharmaceutical companies to produce the medicine.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## TaiShang

*CUHK wins gold in world's first engineering medical innovation competition*

HONG KONG, Aug. 20 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) became champion in the Engineering Medical Innovation Global Competition, the world's first medical innovation challenge, with an award presentation ceremony held here Saturday.

Launched by CUHK, the competition aimed to promote the research and development of medical engineering and draw more talents to the field. University students from around the world were invited to design and develop clinically-driven and patient-centered technology innovations for the future of medicine and healthcare.

*Out of the 40 submissions, 27 finalist teams from Canada, Britain, the *United States*, Switzerland, the Chinese Mainland, Singapore, *South Korea*, China's Taiwan, Saudi Arabia and China's Hong Kong were shortlisted and gathered at CUHK for the final contest from Aug. 18 to 19.*

Prof. Joseph Sung, vice-chancellor and president of CUHK, said that the application of innovation technology in medical services has become a global trend. The launching of the competition helped to gather young talents from around the world and inspires innovative ideas on medical technologies for the sake of patients.

Participants of the competition must compete as part of a team and interdisciplinary teams with members from various engineering, science and other disciplines are encouraged. The scope of competition includes health screening and diagnostic devices, medical monitoring devices, non-implantable therapeutic devices and implantable therapeutic devices.

Submissions are screened by an international judging panel and there are six evaluation criteria, including clinical need, novelty, technical merit, demonstration of technical feasibility, clinical feasibility and translational readiness, and IP potential and business model.

The Gold Award went to a team formed by students from CUHK Mechanical and Automated Engineering and Surgery for their project on "Surgical Robotic System for Endoscopic Submucosal Dissection".

National University of Singapore's "EsoGlove: A Soft and Wearable Robotic Glove for Assistance and Rehabilitation of Hand-Impaired Patients" and ETH Zurich's "Assistive System for Intravitreal Therapy" won Silver Awards.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## cirr

AUG 21, 2016, 21:00 ET

*GPT Announces New Developments in Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) at HSA Foundation Global Summit*

Releases First Silicon Based on its HSA Enabled IP Core and Unveils Machine Learning Open Source Project

BEIJING, Aug. 21, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- General Processor Technologies (GPT), a wholly owned subsidiary of China-based Hua Xia GPT, a leading licensor of processor IP for heterogeneous systems, announced today that its licensable IP technology has been implemented in silicon and is already passing conformance tests for HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture). The company also unveiled a new machine learning deep neural network open source project designed to further proliferate HSA technologies.

The announcement will be highlighted at the HSA Foundation 2016 Global Summit being held in Beijing. HSA is a standardized platform design with wide industry support which unlocks the performance and power efficiency of the parallel computing engines found in most modern electronic devices. The HSA Summit examines integrated circuit technologies and industry applications and solutions with an emphasis on the "CPU +" era and the future of heterogeneous processing technologies.

*IP Cores Designed for HSA*
Historically GPT has developed IP specifically for the China market. The company recently announced a range of new IP licensing offerings along with an enhanced geographical licensing program. With the company-wide adoption of HSA standards, GPT now licenses IP worldwide. All GPT processors include HSA support and the company is now offering world-class HSA-enabled processors to its customers.

The HSA enabled IP core which is sampling now in silicon is a first implementation of GPT's 3-in-1 Unity architecture designed for multidimensional signal processing including image and video processing.

"Rather than designing for fixed size vectors, the length is architecturally specified, allowing for forward and backward software compatibility. Combined with a unique, very low-power out-of-order execution pipeline, it allows for multiple threads of control to efficiently execute while the vector unit processes data," said Dr. Mayan Moudgill, CTO of GPT.

"It is exciting to see the new IP core passing PRM HSA conformance tests. Targeting industrial, IoT, ADAS, and embedded systems, the core is optimized for low-power operation and is available for licensing worldwide," said Kerry Li, Chairman of GPT.

*ML-HSA Open Source Project*
The new Open Source project targets machine learning and deep neural networks (ML-HSA). The project will provide a freely available library in the form of HSAIL – the HSA assembly language – that any compliant HSA platform can finalize and execute. The implementation will be optimized for GPT's previously sponsored open source gccbrig project that provides for compilation (finalization) to any platform supporting gcc.

"Over the last four years the HSA Foundation has developed the hardware and software infrastructure to support heterogeneous systems. The ecosystem for developers is available with open source implementations of compilers, runtimes, and more. The Foundation is also committed to providing applications that enable portability across HSA platforms. I'm excited that GPT is involved in both the HSA developer and applications programming ecosystem," said Dr. John Glossner, HSAF President and GPT CEO.

"Parmance is delighted to continue collaborating with GPT on ML-HSA. Machine learning algorithms are used in many applications and HSA platforms are excellent targets for these algorithms due to the highly parallel execution capability of most agents. Optimizing for low power DSPs and ISPs is of particular interest", said Dr. Pekka Jääskeläinen, CEO of Parmance.

"The HSA Foundation is a strong supporter of Open Source software with tools, runtime, compilers, and open specifications all freely available from the Foundation's website and GitHub accounts. HSA already supports multiple languages such as C++, Python, and OpenCL. With compliant systems now shipping, providing support for important classes of algorithms will enable performance benefits to applications programmers," said Greg Stoner, Executive Director and Chair of the Board of the HSA Foundation.

*About GPT*
General Processor Technologies (GPT) is the US division of Huaxia General Processor Technologies Inc. GPT designs and licenses embedded HSA-compatible processors for use world-wide. Best known for building multithreaded vector Digital Signal Processors (DSP) for wireless communications, GPT also licenses cores for use in machine vision, Internet of Things (IoT), Machine-to-Machine (M2M), consumer electronics, and deep learning. GPT's patent-pending Unity architecture allows customers to optimize cores for a range of applications and easily integrates into heterogeneous systems providing power-efficient computing and software reuse. http://www.GeneralProcessorTech.com

*About the HSA Foundation*
The HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture) Foundation is a non-profit consortium of SoC IP vendors, OEMs, Academia, SoC vendors, OSVs and ISVs, whose goal is making programming for parallel computing easy and pervasive. HSA members are building a heterogeneous computing ecosystem, rooted in industry standards, which combines scalar processing on the CPU with parallel processing on the GPU, while enabling high bandwidth access to memory and high application performance with low power consumption. HSA defines interfaces for parallel computation using CPU, GPU and other programmable and fixed function devices, while supporting a diverse set of high-level programming languages, and creating the foundation for next-generation, general-purpose computing. http://www.hsafoundation.com 

*About Parmance*
Parmance, based in Tampere, Finland, provides a wide variety of software engineering services – some of these include compiler development, runtime development and performance engineering. The company's specialists have extensive expertise with heterogeneous parallel computing, processor architectures, instruction-set simulators, and compilers. For more information, log on to www.parmance.com.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-rele...t-hsa-foundation-global-summit-300316171.html

@Bussard Ramjet

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Three_Kingdoms

*Potential Alzheimer’s breakthrough by Hong Kong scientists restores memory of lab-mice*


Hong Kong researchers have made what could be a major breakthrough in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease, by successfully restoring the memory of the mice affected by dementia, by injecting them with a protein










Announcing the result, professor Nancy Ip, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology University (HKUST), said it will require at least ten years to develop a human treatment from the protein, which they found can stop a harmful substance from damaging the patients’ brain.

Alzheimer’s disease, a major cause of dementia, affects around 80,000 Hongkongers and 9 million individuals in China..

Alzheimer’s disease linked to high blood sugar; green tea slows its progression

“Unlike existing treatments that can only deter and contain the deterioration of the conditions, this is the first breakthrough that addresses the root of the problem of Alzheimer’s disease,” said Ip.

“The next step will be to translate the findings from the mouse study into clinical treatments for human. I would be very happy if it can happen in ten years.”

Alzheimer’s disease causes dementia, which progressively damages brain functions and leads to memory loss, cognition problems and physical difficulties. Patients with severe forms of the illness rely heavily on carers and could die as a result of the condition.
In Hong Kong, the Alzheimer’s Disease Association estimates that the costs associated with dementia amounted to HK$25.6 billion last year.

Around the globe, the number of Alzheimer’s sufferers is projected to rise from 46.8 million to 131.5 million by 2025 amid the trend of an ageing population, potentially having a catastrophic impact to the health care system around the globe.

Grilled and fried food may raise Alzheimer’s risk, study finds

In a three-year study led by researchers in the local university in Sai Kung, laboratory tests proved the natural protein that affects immune function, known as IL-33, was effective in eliminating a harmful substance damaging the central nervous system of the brain.

The researchers then tested the effectiveness of the protein on hundreds of laboratory-bred mice that were genetically altered to suffer dementia-like symptoms.

The mice were then placed under a fear test inside a box that gave them electric shock if they moved around.

Those mice with no treatment kept walking around in the box as they had forgotten their actions would trigger electric shock.

But those injected with the protein would freeze on the spot - showing they remembered the fear of pain.

“The study showed that the injections of the proteins have restored the memory of these mice to a normal level,” said Ip. “Same doses were given to elder mice suffering more advanced conditions. The effect is proven to be the same.”

But the researchers have only observed the conditions of the mice for a week. It will require further study on the sustainability of the treatment, its side effects, and to determine the correct dose to treat different levels of seriousness of the disease, Ip said.

The study, carried out in collaboration with the University of Glasgow in the UK and Zhejian University in China, has been published in scientific journal _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA._

Chinese University’s professor Timony Kwok Chi-yiu, an expert in dementia, believed the research has offered a positive sign in treating Alzheimer’s.

“There is potential for this study to develop a cure,” Kwok said, but he stressed it would require a clinical study to determine its effect on humans, since there were some previous breakthroughs in animals that could not be translated into human patients.



*HKUST Develops Tiny Lasers that Opens New Era for Light-based Computing*
22-08-2016


Researchers at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have fabricated microscopically-small lasers directly on silicon, enabling the future-generation microprocessors to run faster and less power-hungry – a significant step towards light-based computing.

The innovation, made by Prof Kei-may Lau, Fang Professor of Engineering and Chair Professor of the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, in collaboration with the University of California, Santa Barbara; Sandia National Laboratories and Harvard University, marks a major breakthrough for the semiconductor industry and well beyond.

Silicon forms the basis of everything from solar cells to the integrated circuits at the heart of our modern electronic gadgets. However, the crystal lattice of silicon and of typical laser materials could not match up, making it impossible to integrate the two materials until now, when Prof Lau’s group managed to integrate subwavelength cavities — the essential building blocks of their tiny lasers — onto silicon, allowing them to create and demonstrate high-density on-chip light-emitting elements. The finding was recently published as the cover story on Applied Physics Letters.

“These whispering gallery mode lasers are extremely attractive light source for on-chip optical communications, data processing and chemical sensing applications,” Prof Lau said. “Putting lasers on microprocessors boosts their capabilities and allows them to run at much lower powers – a big step towards photonics and electronics integration on the silicon platform and a key solution to the next-generation green information technology.”

For years, photonics had been the most energy-efficient and cost-effective method to transmit large volumes of data over long distances, now with these new silicon-based integrated lasers, photonics may be able to use for short-distance data transmission as well, which is set to greatly enhance the speed of data communication.

In fabricating these “whispering gallery mode lasers”, Prof Lau’s team etched nano-patterns directly onto the silicon, so as to confine the defects of its crystal lattices while ensuring the necessary quantum confinement of electrons within quantum dots grown on this template. Her team then use optical pumping – a process that uses light to raise or “pump” electrons from a lower energy level to a higher one, to demonstrate that the devices they created were able to operate as lasers.

These tiny lasers measure only 1 micron in diameter, and are 1,000 times shorter in length and 1 million times smaller in area than those currently used.





*HKUST Finds a New Material System that Opens a New Era for Organic Solar Cells*
01-08-2016


Researchers at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have discovered a novel material system that would revolutionize the future development of Organic Solar Cells (OSCs). OSCs based on this new material system have demonstrated ultrafast and efficient charge separation despite a nearly zero charge separation driving force, meaning that the more environmentally-friendly OSCs may be able to perform as good as inorganic solar cells in the future.

The breakthrough, discovered by a research team led by Prof Henry He Yan from the Department of Chemistry, was published in _Nature Energy _in June_._

OSC is a promising third-generation solar technology. However, its charge separation – an essential step for solar cells to generate electricity, required a significant driving force – typically 0.3 eV or higher, which had been a fundamental limitation for OSC’s development as the driving force inevitably causes a large voltage loss in OSC and limits its maximum achievable efficiency.

Now Prof Yan’s group may have found a solution for this problem which researchers have sought to tackle over the past two decades. In collaboration with Prof Feng Gao at Linkoping University, Sweden, and Prof Kenan Gundogdu at North Carolina State University, USA, the group demonstrated an ultrafast charge separation in their OSC built on a new material system, which occurred in a time-scale of between 0.1 to 3 picosecond, despite a near-zero driving force.

This breakthrough is set to remap the future of OSC. Currently, the best-performing OSC only has an efficiency of between 12 and 13 per cent, but with the required driving force reduced to near zero, its maximum efficiency could increase to between 20 – 25 per cent, a level comparable to the most advanced inorganic solar cells nowadays. The finding has prompted questions on how charge transfer and recombination occur in OSCs, it may also spark a new wave of studies on the photophysics processes in organic semiconductor materials.

This is the third major achievement by Prof Yan’s group over the past two years (with the previous two published at_Nature Comm., 2014, 5293_ and _Nature Energy, 2016, 15027_). In 2014, the group identified a new method to expedite the development of OSC materials. That method eventually led to the creation of a record-efficient OSC developed via environmentally-friendly processing method in early 2016. But Prof Yan said the team’s latest achievement is even more important than the previous two. “We now have reasons to be very optimistic about the future of OSC, as our finding completely redefines OSC’s maximum potential in both fundamental studies and industrial applications,” he said. “We hope to set up a major research platform on this very exciting and rapidly-developing front with the help from colleagues of the chemistry, physics and energy field.”

Prof Yan graduated from Peking University and obtained his PhD at Northwestern University in 2004. Before joining HKUST in 2012, he led a research group at Polyera Corporation – a leading company in the organic electronics industry.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

* World's biggest telescope meets world's second fastest supercomputer *
International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research

A prototype part of the software system to manage data from the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope has run on the world’s second fastest supercomputer in China.






Chinese Supercomputer Tianhe-2. Image Credit: Prof. Yutong Lu​
The complete system, currently being designed by an international consortium, will process raw observations of distant stars and galaxies and turn them into a form that can be analysed by astronomers around the world.

“It is known as the SKA Science Data Processor, or the ‘brain’ of the telescope”, said Professor Andreas Wicenec, head of data intensive astronomy at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR).

The successful deployment of the prototype science data processor execution framework on the Tianhe-2 supercomputer was conducted by an international team led by Professor Tao An from Shanghai Astronomical Observatory in China and Professor Wicenec in Western Australia.

The execution framework provides the control and monitoring environment to execute millions of tasks, consuming and producing millions of data items on many thousands of individual computers.

This is the scale of processing required for every single SKA observation obtained within six to 12 hours.

Professor Wicenec said the novel execution framework of the science data processor is “data activated”, meaning individual data items are wrapped in an active piece of software that automatically triggers the applications needed to process it.

“Whenever a data item is ready, that’s triggering the next task—the task is not running idle, waiting for anything,” he said. Professor An said the prototype was initially run on 500 compute nodes of the supercomputer and then extended to 1000 nodes.

“The next step is to ramp up the number of individual items we’re deploying and then increase the number of compute nodes to what we are expecting for the SKA computer, which is about 8500,” he said.

Professor Wicenec said the system is now running 66,000 items and the next stage will be a few million.

“Then we’ll run between 50 and 60 million items on 8500 or 10,000 nodes,” he said.

Tianhe-2 was deployed on National Super Computing Center in Guangzhou, China, which has 16,000 computer nodes and can perform quadrillions of calculations per second.

It was the world’s fastest supercomputer from June 2013 until June 2016.

“The most important part is the co-design and co-optimisation of SKA data processing software set and supercomputers such as Tianhe-2, preparing for the faster computers in a few years from now,” Tianhe-2 director Professor Yutong Lu said.

This work was carried out as part of the Science Data Processor work package for the SKA, which is led by the University of Cambridge.

The SKA is arguably the world’s largest science project, with the low frequency part of the telescope alone set to have more than a quarter of a million antennas facing the sky.

Each of the two SKA telescopes will produce enough data to fill a typical laptop hard drive every second.

*FURTHER INFORMATION*
The International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) is a joint venture between Curtin University and The University of Western Australia with support and funding from the State Government of Western Australia. ICRAR’s Data Intensive Astronomy team is leading the international effort to address the challenges surrounding the flow of data within the SKA observatory.

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project is an international effort to build the world’s largest radio telescope, led by the SKA Organisation based at the Jodrell Bank Observatory near Manchester. The SKA will conduct transformational science to improve our understanding of the Universe and the laws of fundamental physics, monitoring the sky in unprecedented detail and mapping it hundreds of times faster than any current facility.

The SKA is not a single telescope, but a collection of telescopes or instruments, called an array, to be spread over long distances. Construction of the telescope is set to start in 2018, with early science observations in 2020.






Artist’s impression of the low frequency antennas to be built in Australia as part of the Square Kilometre Array. Credit: Australia SKA Office​

World’s biggest telescope meets world’s second fastest supercomputer - ICRAR

Reactions: Like Like:
 6


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese unmanned underwater vehicle sets a new deep-sea diving record: 10,767 meters down*
(People's Daily Online) 17:21, August 23, 2016



A Chinese unmanned underwater vehicle dived to a depth of 10,767 meters, setting a new deep-sea diving record.

China’s independently developed Haidou unmanned underwater vehicle became China’s first autonomous underwater vehicle for scientific research to dive to a depth of more than 10,000 meters, reaching a maximum depth of 10,767 meters, the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced on August 23rd at a press conference. This achievement makes China the third country, behind only Japan and the US, to send unmanned vessels to depths greater than 10,000 meters.

This incredible feat was reached five times during the maiden voyage of the scientific research ship Tansuo-1, developed by China to study the deep seas. During the voyage, Haidou completed two dives and three dives were completed by the deep-sea submersibles Tianya, a deep-sea lander, and The Yuanwei Experiment, a deep sea elevator used to study the seabed. Haidou, Tianya, Haijiao, and The Yuanwei Experiment are all deep-sea equipment developed independently by China.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese IC design firm unveils 64-core supercomputer processor *
Source: Xinhua | 2016-08-24 12:08:35 | Editor: huaxia




FT-2000/64 CPU,designed by Phytium Technology Co. Ltd, a Chinese integrated circuit design firm. (Xinhua Photo)

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) -- Phytium Technology Co. Ltd., a Chinese integrated circuit (IC) design firm, has unveiled its latest product, a 64-core central processing unit (CPU), and a related prototype computer server at a technology event in Silicon Valley.

The company, based in Tianjin, northern China, claims that its FT-2000/64 CPU, with 4.8 billion transistors on a die 25.20 millimeters in width and 25.38 millimeters in length within a chip package 55 millimeters in width and 55 millimeters in length, is the first of its kind adopting the Advanced RISC Machine (ARM) architecture.

As RISC stands for reduced instruction set computer, the ARM architecture results in processors, as the heart of computers, with relatively less number of transistors and therefore reduced cost, heat and power use.

At Hot Chips, an annual symposium on high performance computer chips co-sponsored by the U.S. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), in Cupertino, northern California, from Sunday through Tuesday, engineers from Phytium said the new CPU chip, with 64-bit arithmetic compatible with ARMv8 instructions, is able to perform 512 billion floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) at base frequency of 2.0 GHz and on 100 watts of power dissipation.

While the architecture is licensed from ARM Holdings, a British company, Phytium has designed its own cores, known as FTC661s, which are the units that read and execute program instructions, such as add, move data and branch, to be integrated into the chip, enabling it to run multiple instructions at the same time in what is called parallel computing.

One of major CPU developers in China, Phytium's previous CPU series integrate either 4 or 16 cores.

Shying off comparing its products with more typical complex instruction set computing (CISC) x86 processors, such as those manufactured by Intel Corporation, one of the world's largest chip makers based on revenue, Phytium says the FT-2000/64 is so far the best in the ARM category.

According to a sales respresentative, Phytium has provided thousands of CPUs to system builders that supply equipment for government institutions, telecommunication businesses, banks and public utilities in China, and its latest chip is expected to be used in high-throughput and high-performance servers.

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## cirr

*China funds 18 bln yuan on science projects*

Source: Xinhua 2016-08-24 16:40:04

BEIJING, Aug. 24 (Xinhua) -- The National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) has approved funding for 38,160 projects this year, with a total investment of more than 18 billion yuan (2.8 billion U.S.dollars).

With a budget of 24.8 billion yuan for 2016, the NSFC received 177,551 applications as of August 16, it announced on Tuesday.

For programs exploring scientific frontiers, each has received an average 600,000 yuan investment. Those designated priority areas, such as quantum information technology, cosmic ray detection, and global environmental change, were each financed with 2.8 million yuan on average.

China has used its science fund to further develop basic science research and elevate the reputation of its academic papers, cutting-edge programs and research achievements.

During 2011 to 2015, the science fund financed nearly 200,000 programs, with around 88.8 billion yuan from state revenue and more than 1.7 billion yuan from other sources, according to NSFC figures.

To prevent misuse of funds, the foundation has issued regulations to ensure all the money is used appropriately.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## bobsm

*Chinese scientists have recently made a breakthrough in quantum computing*

Aug 24, 2016

Pan Jianwei and his colleagues from the University of Science and Technology of China achieved the generation, manipulation and detection of atomic spin entanglement by using ultra-cold atoms in optical lattices, which is a great step towards the scalable quantum information computation and quantum simulation based on ultra-cold atoms. 

According to previous research, ultra-cold atoms in optical lattices offer a great promise to generate entangled states for scalable quantum information processing owing to the inherited long coherence time and controllability over a large number of particles. 

The process of generating entangled states has three stages. Pan and his colleagues have finished the first stage, which is to produce regularly arranged entangled atom-bits pairs. 

*"We have compared our work with others in the world. We found that other scientists are capable of produce many atoms, but they cannot produce entangled pairs or using quantum manipulation to control them, or measure the quantum state. We are the first team in the world that have managed to produce entangled atom pairs, manipulate them and measure the quantum state. So we are leading the world in this area," said professor Yuan Zhensheng from the University of Science and Technology of China. *

The new breakthrough is also seen as a great step towards faster quantum computing. 

"Quantum computer is much faster than the digital computer we are using right now. The goal of our research is to make the quantum computing upgradable and to put it in a bigger mechanism so that it will be usable. The result of our research can be used in faster quantum computing," said Yuan. 

"Nature Physics," an authoritative academic journal, said that their work "paves the way to create larger highly entangled states, such as 1D and 2D cluster states, the main resource for measurement based quantum computing". 

Quantum computing studies theoretical computation systems (quantum computer) that make direct use of quantum-mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement, to perform operations on data.


http://newscontent.cctv.com/NewJsp/news.jsp?fileId=371791

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## JSCh

*Tired Of Rush Hour Traffic? A Machine Could Fix That *
_ A deep reinforcement learning algorithm could optimally plan traffic signals and help to reduce congestion, according to a new study.



_

AsianScientist (Aug. 24, 2016) -- A study from China published in the IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica suggests that machines can learn how to plan traffic signals to reduce wait times and make traffic queues shorter.

In traffic signaling, it’s the pattern of traffic light switches that minimizes the time drivers spend waiting in a queue or the length of that queue. Automating traffic control is notoriously tricky because it involves two challenging tasks: modeling traffic flow and then optimizing it.

Much like the reward system in our brain, reinforcement learning algorithms operate by determining what set of actions are most beneficial to a system in a given state. In video games, for example, these steps are the strategic moves a player must make to earn the highest possible score.

Inspired by how the human brain works, Lv Yisheng and colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tsinghua University used special algorithms called neural networks to search for hidden patterns in sets of data. When combined with reinforcement learning, this technique effectively reduces the space a machine must search through, and the computational time it takes, as it seeks the best solution.

Interestingly, when deployed on a virtual four-way traffic intersection with four lanes heading east-west and four heading north-south, the deep reinforcement learning algorithm outperformed a conventional reinforcement learning algorithm.

Not only were there shorter lines and a better balance of traffic in both directions, over the course of a full day, more than 1,000 fewer vehicles came to a full stop. In the end, the average delay was cut by 14 percent, with vehicles spending 13 seconds less in traffic during peak morning hours.

Deep reinforcement learning algorithms aren’t quite ready to hit the streets, the researchers say, but they are helping make real-world traffic scenarios a lot less complicated, which could pave the way toward a new understanding of how traffic flows work.

The article can be found at: Li et al. (2016) Traffic Signal Timing via Deep Reinforcement Learning.


http://www.asianscientist.com/2016/08/tech/machine-learning-traffic-lights/

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*Crystal Unclear: Why Might This Uncanny Crystal Change Laser Design?*
August 26, 2016

*Contact:* Chad Boutin
301-975-4261

Laser applications may benefit from crystal research by scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and China’s Shandong University. They have discovered a potential way to sidestep longstanding difficulties with making the crystals that are a crucial part of laser technology. But the science behind their discovery has experts scratching their heads.

The findings, published today in _Science Advances_, suggest that the relatively large crystals used to change several properties of light in lasers – changes that are crucial for making lasers into practical tools – might be created by stacking up far smaller, rod-shaped microcrystals that can be grown easily and cheaply.

So far, the team’s microcrystals outperform conventional crystals in some ways, suggesting that harnessing them could signal the end of a long search for a fast, economical way to develop large crystals that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive and time-consuming to create. But the microcrystals also challenge conventional scientific theory as to why they perform as they do.


_Continue -> _http://www.nist.gov/pml/div684/why-might-this-uncanny-crystal-change-laser-design.cfm


Paper: Y. Ren, X. Zhao, L. Deng, and E.W. Hagley. _Ambient-condition growth of high-pressure phase centrosymmetric crystalline KDP microstructures for optical second harmonic generation. Science Advances_, 26 August 2016. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1600404.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## cirr

World beating FL-10 wind tunnel operational !! 






Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure! 

http://www.cannews.com.cn/epaper/zghkb/2016/08/27/A01/story/1125149.shtml

@Bussard Ramjet

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Irish Researchers have joined international team to make a breakthrough in fundamental physics*
29.08.16

An international team of researchers have for the first time, discovered that in a very high magnetic field an electron with no mass can acquire a mass. Understanding why elementary particles e.g. electrons, photons, neutrinos have a mass is a fundamental question in Physics and an area of intense debate. This discovery by Prof Stefano Sanvito, Trinity College Dublin and collaborators in Shanghai was published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications this month.

While the applications of this discovery remain to be seen, this represents a significant breakthrough in fundamental physics. It could inspire work in high-energy physics, such as the collision experiments carried out in particle accelerators like CERN. This is the third joint publication between the group in Trinity and Prof. Faxian Xiu at Fudan University in Shanghai, who approached Prof Sanvito to provide theory support for their experimental activity based on his previous publications and international reputation in the field of theoretical physics.

Prof Stefano Sanvito, Principal Investigator at the Science Foundation Ireland funded AMBER (Advanced Materials and BioEngineering Research) centre based at Trinity and the CRANN Institute and Professor in Trinity’s School of Physics said, “This is a very exciting breakthrough because until now, nobody has ever discovered an object whose mass can be switched on or off by applying an external stimulus. Every physical object has a mass, which is a measure of the object’s resistance to a change in its direction or speed, once a force is applied. While we can easily push a light-mass shopping trolley, we cannot move a heavy-mass 6-wheel lorry by simply pushing. However, there are some examples in Nature of objects not having a mass. These include photons, the elementary particles discovered by Einstein responsible for carrying light, and neutrinos, produced in the sun as a result of thermonuclear reactions. We have demonstrated for the first time one way in which mass can be generated in a material. In principle the external stimulus that enabled this, the magnetic field, could be replaced with some other stimulus and perhaps applied long-term in the development of more sophisticated sensors or actuators. It is impossible to say what this could mean, but like any fundamental discovery in physics, the importance is in its discovery.”

He continued, “It has been very satisfying to continue to work with Prof Xiu in Shanghai. While his group are experts in growing and characterizing materials such as ZrTe5 which are very difficult to make, my group has the expertise in the theoretical interpretation. The measurements were carried out in Fudan and at the Wuhan National High Magnetic Field Center in China, while the Dublin team provided the theoretical explanation for the finding. This has been a very fruitful collaboration and we have a number of other publications in progress”.

The team studied what happened to the current passing through the exotic material zirconium pentatelluride (ZrTe5) when exposed to a very high magnetic field. Measuring a current in a high magnetic field is a standard way of characterising the material’s electronic structure. In the absence of a magnetic field the current flows easily through ZrTe5. This is because in ZrTe5 the electrons responsible for the current have no mass. However, when a magnetic field of 60 Tesla is applied (a million times more intense than the earth’s magnetic field) the current is drastically reduced and the electrons acquire a mass. An intense magnetic field in ZrTe5 transforms slim and fast electrons into fat and slow ones.

http://ambercentre.ie/news/single/i...-international-team-to-make-a-breakthrough-in

*Paper: *Yanwen Liu et al, Zeeman splitting and dynamical mass generation in Dirac semimetal ZrTe5, _Nature Communications_ (2016). DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12516

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*U.S. developers have the numbers, but China and Russia have the skills*
_A report from HackerRank finds that while the U.S. and India have lots of developers, Chinese and Russian programmers are the most talented_


 By Paul Krill

While the United States and India may have lots of programmers, China and Russia have the most talented developers according to a study by HackerRank, which administers coding tests to developers worldwide.

The study looked at the results of 1.4 million of HackerRank's coding test submissions, called "challenges," during the last few years. "According to our data, China and Russia score as the most talented developers. Chinese programmers outscore all other countries in mathematics, functional programming, and data structures challenges, while Russians dominate in algorithms, the most popular and most competitive arena," said Ritika Trikha, a blogger at HackerRank.

The United States and India provide the majority of competitors on HackerRank but only manage to rank 28th and 31st, respectively. "If we held a hacking Olympics today, our data suggests that China would win the gold, Russia would take home a silver, and Poland would nab the bronze," Trikha said. "Though they certainly deserve credit for making a showing, the United States and India have some work ahead of them before they make it into the top 25."


_*Continue -> *_U.S. developers have the numbers, but China and Russia have the skills | InfoWorld

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## ahojunk

*China to build 40 manufacturing innovation centers by 2025*
Source: Xinhua 2016-08-30 21:17:09

BEIJING, Aug. 30 (Xinhua) -- China will set up around 40 national manufacturing innovation centers by 2025, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said on Tuesday.

The centers will be devoted to information technology, intelligent manufacturing, new materials and biomedicine. Around 15 will be established by 2020.

The MIIT has promised to improve the intellectual property management system to promote cooperation and profit sharing between centers.

To build a better manufacturing sector, China came up with the "Made in China 2025" plan last year, to shift the country away from low-end manufacturing to more value-added production.

China's value-added industrial output grew 6.1 percent in 2015, lower than the 8.3-percent growth in 2014. Manufacturing output expanded 7 percent, 2.4 percentage points lower than the previous year.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## bobsm

*CAS researchers build 3D printed self-driving mini vehicle with deforming liquid metal wheels*
Aug 31, 2016 | By Alec






Who says metal needs to be solid to be functional? A team of researchers from the Institute of Physical and Chemical Technology (of CAS, the Chinese Academy of Sciences) and Tsinghua University have just proven that the opposite can be true as well. As part of their studies on wire oscillation effects and liquid metals, they have harnessed a liquid metal jumping phenomenon to build a self-driven miniature vehicle with deforming liquid metal wheels.

This is a huge breakthrough that will definitely speed up the development of flexible machinery and robotics, while it can also be used to develop drug delivery systems and control switches for electrical, mechanical and optical systems. While liquid metal machines generally rely on pure liquid materials, this Chinese breakthrough actually combines solid and liquid metals, with the metal particles triggering the jumping effect. This is perfectly illustrated by this cool little metal vehicle, that is coated in a functional magnetic layer and features liquid metal wheels that push themselves forward through this jumping phenomenon.

This remarkable breakthrough has already been published in numerous sources. In their paper ‘Liquid Metal Machine Triggered Violin-like Wire Oscillator’, published in the Advanced Science journal, the researchers reported on the unusual self-oscillation effect that their blend of liquid and solid metals exhibited. When treated copper wire touched the metal liquid containing aluminum particles, the wire was quickly swallowed into the liquid blob. The blob subsequently started shuffling back and forth over the surface of the liquid metal manufacturing machine – just like a harp stick moving over the strings while playing music.






_'Liquid Metal Machine Triggered Violin-like Wire Oscillator'_

What’s more, stainless steel wires can also trigger this oscillation behavior through AM and FM manipulation. The underlying mechanism beneath this weird phenomenon is essentially the reaction of the aluminum and alkali solution to the ends of the liquid metal wires. The dynamic coupling of copper, liquid metal, electrolytes and hydrogen essentially causes rhythmic traction.

The researchers further elaborated on their discovery in the paper ‘Jumping Liquid Metal Droplet in Electrolyte Triggered by Solid Metal Particles’, published in Applied Physics Letters. As they explained, the stationary solution would begin to jump up and down and leave a series of footprints around by adding solid metal particles to a solution containing metal droplets. They discovered that when the metal particles touch the surface of the liquid metal, the electric field on the surface is significantly enhanced and produces hydrogen through electrolysis. Hydrogen bubbles are formed at the bottom and continue to adsorb and grow into a ‘gas spring’, which provides the necessary thrust. Aside from the galvanic effect between the liquid and solid metals, this process is supported by the microstructure differences between the two materials – which leads to charge accumulation.






_Jumping Liquid Metal Droplet in Electrolyte Triggered by Solid Metal Particles_






The Chinese researchers are currently working hard to develop various applications for this discovery, and actually showcased a potential a drug delivery system in a paper entitled ‘Self-Propelled Liquid Metal Motors Steered by Magnetic or Electrical Field for Drug Delivery’, a 2016 cover story in Journal of Materials Chemistry B (4, 5349). In that paper, they described how they could harness the ‘jumping mechanism’ with an ferromagnetic nickel layer embedded into the liquid metal. This allows them to gain control over the mechanism, allowing them to start, stop, steer, and accelerate the behavior.






_Self-Propelled Liquid Metal Motors Steered by Magnetic or Electrical Field for Drug Delivery_

What’s more, they also developed a kind of flexible deformable ‘wheels’ that drive a miniature vehicle that is 3D printed in plastic and metal. In the created electrical field, the ‘wheel’ rotates and deforms – driving the vehicle forward and even allowing for acceleration. Currently reaching speeds of 25 mm per second, it’s a concept that can definitely be transferred to more complex applications.






_Liquid Metal Wheeled Small Vehicle for Cargo Delivery_

While this innovation is thus still under development, the CAS team led by Liu Jing has realized a huge breakthrough. It is the result of liquid metal research that has been ongoing for more than ten years, with an eye on chip cooling, advanced manufacturing and electronic, biomedical and flexible machinery applications. The research is partly funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, with liquid metal being seen as a key frontier technology for future breakthroughs.

http://www.3ders.org/articles/20160...hicle-with-deforming-liquid-metal-wheels.html

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Study: Sound-induced fear can be treated*
By Zhou Wenting in Shanghai (China Daily) Updated: 2016-09-06 08:04

Scientists in Shanghai say they've found a way to erase the brain's association of fear with certain sounds.

Their findings could open up new methods to cure post-traumatic stress and anxiety disorders. A particular pathway in the brain, and the suppression of its activity, can lead to reduction in fear responses.

Research results were published on the website of the journal Nature Neuroscience on Sept 5.

The researchers, from the Institute of Neuroscience, a branch of Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, tested their hypothesis on mice. They played a certain sound and delivered a simultaneous electric shock. The mice learned to associate the sound with the shock and exhibited fear responses whenever the sound was played, even when no shock was delivered.

"When we used methods such as optogenetics and chemogenetics to selectively reduce the neural activity on this pathway, the fear responses exhibited by the mice were greatly reduced. They will be active as usual when hearing the sound instead of freezing with fear," said Yang Yang, a researcher on the team.

The pathway is found between the amygdala, a tiny area in the brain that reacts to threats in one's environment, and the auditory sensory area called the auditory cortex, Yang said.

She said the research result is of great significance because a similar pathway is known to exist in the brains of primates.

If the corresponding pathway can be found in the human brain and similar interventions are implemented, people who suffer from anxiety disorder and PTSD brought by fearful memories will be relieved, Yang said.

Mu-Ming Poo, the lead researcher for the project and director of the institute, said the possible clinical applications of the research could conceivably serve as a substitute for the current underdeveloped drug therapies for brain diseases.

"Medicines in this area have poor specificity, as well as visible side effects such as damage to other brain functions. Scientists and doctors have been looking for such noninvasive means to help sufferers of mental disorders recover," Poo said.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*China to launch deep earth exploration plan*
(People's Daily Online) 15:06, September 06, 2016

China has announced plans to launch a deep earth exploration plan, which, in addition to deep earth exploration, also includes deep sea exploration and space-borne earth observation. The plan was outlined in a report entitled "Development Planning of Territorial Resources for Scientific Innovation During the 13th Five-Year Plan," issued recently by the Ministry of Land and Resources.

"Just 2 percent of the resources from between 3 and 10 kilometers beneath Chinese territory could be enough for us to use for over 5,000 years," said Dong Shuwen, former deputy director of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, at the National Land and Resources Scientific Innovation Conference on Sept. 5.

In the next five years, China will conduct surveys of urban underground space utilization, underground water-bearing and more in order to evaluate the potential resources and prospects of Chinese cities' underground territory.

The effective utilization of underground space has been going on for many years already in some developed countries. Singapore and Japan utilize space up to 200 meters below ground. However, China's current average utilization is less than 50 meters; this means that in most cities, there are at least 150 meters of space yet to be exploited.

"In many countries, the utilization of underground spaces is diversified, spanning culture, communication, transportation and ecology," said Dong.

By 2020, China's strategic exploration targets include mining ability at 2 kilometers underground, the technology to conduct mineral resources prospecting at 3 kilometers underground, advanced technology to explore resources at 5 kilometers underground and the improvement of oil and gas exploration at between 6.5 and 10 kilometers underground. Meanwhile, the prospecting depth for oil and gas exploration will reach 10 kilometers underground, and new energies such as terrestrial heat will be exploited.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## cirr

115 metre long superconducting wire made from (Sr,K) Fe2As2

http://news.sciencenet.cn/htmlnews/2016/9/355643.shtm

By far the world's longest and a milestone from lab to industry 

@Bussard Ramjet

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 1-Sep-2016
* Chemistry method expedites path to useful molecules for medicine *
University of Wisconsin-Madison

MADISON, Wis. -- Opening a broad vista in the search for effective pharmaceuticals, a collaboration of Chinese and U.S. chemists has laid out a highly efficient new method to convert abundant organic molecules into new medicines.

Writing Sept. 2 in the journal _Science_, teams led by Guosheng Liu of the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry (SIOC) and Shannon Stahl of the University of Wisconsin-Madison describe a way to convert carbon-hydrogen bonds into nitriles, common components of bioactive molecules used in medicinal and agricultural applications.

Carbon-hydrogen bonds are the most common feature of the molecular building blocks used to make valuable chemicals. The new method will help break the stranglehold of carbon-hydrogen bonds present in the chemical feedstocks used to make bioactive molecules. Exchanging hydrogen atoms in such molecules for more useful elements is difficult without damaging or destroying the rest of the molecule. The new method described by Liu and Stahl gives chemists prospecting for bioactive molecules a new tool in the search for novel drugs or chemicals for agriculture.

"We need more efficient ways to convert feedstocks into useful molecules," explains Stahl, a UW-Madison professor of chemistry. "Selective functionalization of carbon-hydrogen bonds is one of the holy grails of modern chemistry."

Although chemists have ways of making biologically active molecules now, the current routes are often laborious and create large amounts of waste. The new method removes many of the intermediate steps and will make the process far easier for medicinal chemists.

An important feature of the new method is that it provides access to so-called chiral molecules that are a match for enzymes targeted in disease. Chiral molecules have mirror-image versions of themselves, similar to a pair of human hands. For drug molecules to be effective, they must fit -- like a hand into a glove -- the targeted molecular niche of an enzyme.

"The three-dimensional shape and chirality of molecules often correlates with the efficacy or potency of a pharmaceutical," notes Stahl.

The two mirror-image forms of drug molecules can have vastly different effects. An infamous example is thalidomide, first prescribed as a sedative in the 1950s. The reverse image of the molecule, however, was later linked to severe birth defects.

"It is important to be able to synthesize only one of two mirror images of the molecule, and development of new catalytic methods that achieve this goal, starting with carbon-hydrogen bonds, is highly desired," says Liu, a professor of chemistry at SIOC.

In their _Science_ report, Liu, Stahl and colleagues Wen Zhang, Fei Wang, Dinghai Wang and Pinhong Chen of SIOC, and Scott McCann of UW-Madison, describe a very efficient strategy for the preparation of benzylic nitriles, which are precursors to broad classes of hormones, neurotransmitters, psychoactive and anti-inflammatory drugs.



Chemistry method expedites path to useful molecules for medicine | EurekAlert! Science News

###​_*Paper: *_W. Zhang, F. Wang, S. D. McCann, D. Wang, P. Chen, S. S. Stahl, G. Liu. *Enantioselective cyanation of benzylic C-H bonds via copper-catalyzed radical relay*. _Science_, 2016; 353 (6303): 1014 DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf7783

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists developing multipurpose stratospheric airships*
China Daily, 2016-09-07 08:48

Chinese scientists are developing a family of high altitude airships that can help with Earth observation, maritime monitoring and communication signal relays.

Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences are working on the stratospheric airships, so-called because they are capable of conducting long-term operations in the stratosphere－the second major layer of Earth's atmosphere at an altitude of 20 to 50 km.

According to the academy's development plan for the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-2020), which lists 140 research and development priorities, researchers are to develop key technologies and techniques for controllable stratospheric airships and perform flight tests before the end of 2020.

"Our stratospheric airships will come in various sizes, and we have test-flown two of them already," said Wang Yuechao, director of the academy's Bureau of Major Research and Development Programs.

"The latest test took place in August, when we flew an airship and achieved our goals."

He said that almost all of the world's major powers are exploring high-altitude aerospace craft, with China among the top players in the field.

The academy's stratospheric airships can operate autonomously or be remotely controlled by ground personnel, according to earlier reports.

Solar-powered, reusable and unmanned, such vehicles can spend a long time aloft and serve a wide range of purposes. At least five nations, including the United States and Japan, are developing such systems.

Wang Ya'nan, editor-in-chief of Aerospace Knowledge magazine, said that compared with spacecraft and satellites, stratospheric airships do not need a launch pad and are convenient to retrieve and reuse. They also provide a wider view of the Earth and a much longer operational time than aircraft.

"Therefore, they provide a better platform for Earth monitoring and maritime surveillance," Wang said.

Moreover, because airships are closer to the Earth than satellites, they can act as a better hub for relaying communications signals.

"In addition, stratospheric airships are able to carry payloads that will be as much as 10 times that of a spacecraft," Wang said.

Zhu Ming, an associate professor at Beihang University in Beijing, said they could have many uses in the public sector.

"They have a lot of potential in environmental protection, disaster relief and weather forecasting," he said.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

cirr said:


> 115 metre long superconducting wire made from (Sr,K) Fe2As2
> 
> http://news.sciencenet.cn/htmlnews/2016/9/355643.shtm
> 
> By far the world's longest and a milestone from lab to industry
> 
> @Bussard Ramjet



But what is the industrial application? 

What is the temperature required for superconductivity? How much dollar worth of impact would this have?


----------



## JSCh

* Sugar Transforms a Traditional Chinese Medicine into a Cruise Missile*
_Anticancer compound becomes more soluble and selective after glucose is attached_

Release Date: September 7, 2016




Glutriptolides can act as “cruise missiles” against cancer. The glucose component targets glucose transporters (red) in the membrane of cells, pulling the toxic triptolide inside.
Johns Hopkins Medicine 

More than 20 years ago, a billboard in China piqued the interest of a chemical biologist. It endorsed an extract from the plant known as the “thunder god vine” as an immunosuppressant. A brief review of published research revealed that the extract’s key ingredient — the small molecule triptolide — had been identified 20 years before that billboard ad, and it could stop cells from multiplying.

Now, that chemical biologist and his colleagues at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine report that tests of triptolide in human cells and mice are vastly improved by the chemical attachment of glucose to the triptolide molecule. The chemical add-on makes the molecule more soluble and essentially turns it into a “cruise missile” that preferentially seeks out cancer cells, the research says. The change might also decrease side effects in patients and make the drug easier to administer.

A summary of the research is published in the journal _Angewandte Chemie_ and was published online on Aug. 30.

“We have a long way to go before we can test this derivative of triptolide in humans, and we think that additional adjustments could improve it even more,” says Jun O. Liu, Ph.D., professor of pharmacology and molecular sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a member of the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, “but it already has the key characteristics we’ve been looking for: It is quite water soluble, and it prefers cancer cells over healthy cells.”

Liu, a native of a small town north of Shanghai in China, explains that the thunder god vine has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for more than 400 years, mostly to calm an overactive immune system, which can cause diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis.

His laboratory specializes in figuring out how natural compounds with known healing properties exert their effects on human cells. Five years ago, he and his colleagues discovered that triptolide halts cell growth by interfering with the protein XPB, part of the large protein machine transcription factor IIH, which, in turn, is needed by enzyme complex RNA polymerase II to make mRNA.

Because triptolide halts cell growth, it works well to fight the multiplication of cancer cells, Liu says, both in lab-grown cells and in laboratory animals with cancer. Unfortunately, it — and many of its derivatives — has failed to work well in patients because it doesn’t dissolve well in water or blood, and has too many side effects due to its indiscriminate killing of healthy cells as well as tumor cells.

Liu’s latest research sought to “train” triptolide to target cancer cells by exploiting the knowledge that most cancer cells make extra copies of proteins, called glucose transporters. Those transporters form tunnels through a cell’s membrane to import enough glucose to fuel rapid growth. By attaching glucose to triptolide, the researchers hoped to trick the cancer cells into importing the cell-killing poison, as had been done successfully with other anticancer drugs.

“We were looking for something that could be administered intravenously, remain stable in the blood and then become active as soon as it was imported into cancer cells,” says Liu.

To begin, the chemists designed and synthesized five derivatives of triptolide, dubbed glutriptolides. Each derivative had glucose attached to the same spot on the triptolide molecule but had different “linkers” connecting them.

An initial experiment showed that none of the glutriptolides were good at blocking the activity of purified transcription factor IIH. Liu explains that what might seem like bad news was actually a positive result, since it suggested that the drugs would only be active once they entered cells and had their glucose attachments removed.

When the five glutriptolides were tested on human embryonic kidney cells, glutriptolide 2 slowed down cell growth better than the rest and is the only derivative they continued to study.

In later test tube and cell experiments, the researchers confirmed that glutriptolide 2 works just like triptolide — by interfering with XPB — though it does so only in higher concentrations. They also showed that a cancer cell line (DLD1-Mut) known to produce lots of glucose transporter 1 was more sensitive to glutriptolide 2’s effects than a similar cell line (DLD1-WT) without extra copies of the transporter.

When the researchers assessed triptolide’s effects on a variety of healthy cells and cancer cells in parallel with glutriptolide 2, they found that triptolide tended to equally slow the growth of healthy cells and cancer cells, while glutriptolide 2 was eight times more effective against cancer cells, on average. Liu says this result suggests that the new compound — if tested in humans — may be more selective against cancer cells and could therefore have fewer side effects.

Finally, due to the differences in the compounds’ general toxicity, tests showed that mice could tolerate a dose of 0.2 milligram/kilogram of triptolide and 1 milligram/kilogram of glutriptolide 2. At those doses*,* glutriptolide 2 eradicated tumors more quickly in mice with prostate cancer and prevented tumor cells from reappearing for a full three weeks after treatment had stopped.

“We were totally surprised to see that sustained antitumor activity,” says Liu. “It’s something we want to study further.” The group plans to test additional modifications to the biochemical links that connect glucose to triptolide to see if it can further decrease the compound’s toxicity to healthy cells and increase its effectiveness against cancerous ones.

The work was accomplished through a close international collaboration among three research groups led by Liu, Martin Pomper of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Biao Yu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Other authors of the report include Qing-Li He, Il Minn, Sarah Head and Emmanuel Datan of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and Qiaoling Wang and Peng Xu of the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

This work was supported by a Synergy Award from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Institute for Clinical and Translational Research, which is funded in part by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (UL1 TR 001079).

A nondisclosure agreement for the invention/technology described in this publication has been executed between The Johns Hopkins University and Rapafusyn Pharmaceuticals Inc. Dr. Liu is a co-founder of and a Scientific Advisory Board Member for Rapafusyn Pharmaceuticals Inc. This arrangement has been reviewed and approved by The Johns Hopkins University in accordance with its conflict of interest policies.






_The Chinese billboard that inspired Liu to study thunder god vine extract._​
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/sugar_transforms_a_traditional_chinese_medicine_into_a_cruise_missile

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## cirr

*Photocontrol of fluid slugs in liquid crystal polymer microactuators* 

(Nature，2016，DOI 10.1038/nature19344)

*Superior to all existing technologies; very nice piece of work with real openings*　

http://www.focusnews.top/news-12356314.html

http://www.top-news.top/news-12356314.html

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Study shows how Chinese medicine kills cancer cells*
Thursday, 8 September 2016





Researchers at the University of Adelaide have shown how a complex mix of plant compounds derived from ancient clinical practice in China – a Traditional Chinese Medicine – works to kill cancer cells.

Compound kushen injection (CKI) is approved for use in China to treat various cancer tumours, usually as an adjunct to western chemotherapy – but how it works has not been known.

This study, published in the journal _Oncotarget_, is one of the first to characterise the molecular action of a Traditional Chinese Medicine rather than breaking it down to its constituent parts.

“Most Traditional Chinese Medicine are based on hundreds or thousands of years of experience with their use in China,” says study leader, Professor David Adelson, Director of the Zhendong Australia – China Centre for the Molecular Basis of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

“There is often plenty of evidence that these medicines have a therapeutic benefit, but there isn’t the understanding of how or why.

“If we broke down and tested the components of many Traditional Chinese Medicines, we would find that individual compounds don’t have much activity on their own. It’s the combination of compounds which can be effective, and potentially means few side-effects as well.

“This is one of the first studies to show the molecular mode of action of a complex mixture of plant-based compounds – in this case extracts from the roots of two medicinal herbs, Kushen and Baituling – by applying what’s known as a systems biology approach. This is a way of analysing complex biological systems that attempts to take into account all measurable aspects of the system rather than focussing on a single variable.”

The Zhendong Australia China Centre for Molecular Traditional Chinese Medicine was established at the University of Adelaide in 2012 in a collaboration with the China-based Shanxi College of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Zhendong Pharmaceutical Company.

The Centre was established with a donation by the Zhendong Pharmaceutical Company, with the aim of understanding how Traditional Chinese Medicine works, and the long-term aim of possible integration into western medicine.

The researchers used high-throughput next generation sequencing technologies to identify genes and biological pathways targeted by CKI when applied to breast cancer cells grown in the laboratory.

“We showed that the patterns of gene expression triggered by CKI affect the same pathways as western chemotherapy but by acting on different genes in the same pathways,” says Professor Adelson.

“These genes regulate the cell cycle of division and death, and it seems that CKI alters the way the cell cycle is regulated to push cancer cells down the cell death pathway, therefore killing the cells.”

Professor Adelson says this technique could be used to analyse the molecular mechanisms of other Traditional Chinese Medicines, potentially opening their way for use in western medicine.



http://www.adelaide.edu.au/news/news87624.html

*Reference
*
Qu, Cui, Harata-Lee et al. Identification of candidate anti-cancer molecular mechanisms of compound kushen injection using functional genomics, _Oncotarget_, September 1, 2016​

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*China develops world's first 100-meter iron-based superconducting wire*
(People's Daily Online) 14:50, September 09, 2016



File photo of the high-performance type 122 iron-based superconducting wire developed by Ma Yanwei's team in 2014.

The Institute of Electrical Engineering under the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced on Sept. 9 that a research group led by Ma Yanwei has successfully developed the world’s first 100-meter, iron-based superconducting wire, which is a milestone in the research of iron-based superconducting materials.

Currently, the production of iron-based superconducting wire in the U.S., Japan and Europe falls short of 100 meters. However, manufacturing technology at the 100-meter level is key for the mass application of the material.

Ma's research group created the world's first iron-based superconducting wire in 2008. In 2010, they invented a special technology for welding, which laid a foundation for further improvement of the wire. In 2013, they made the world’s first high-performance iron-based, multi-filament superconducting wire; in 2014, they successfully developed the world's first 10-meter iron-based superconducting wire, taking the first step toward large-scale manufacturing.

More recently, the research team was finally able to get past the technological difficulties in large-scale manufacturing, producing a wire that is 115 meters long.

The successful development of this improved superconducting wire means that China possesses intellectual property that can be applied to medicine, national defense and many other industries.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Researchers Make New Progress in Understanding Genetic Basis of Heterosis in Rice*
2016-09-09

On Sep 8, 2016 (Beijing time), _Nature_ online published a research paper entitled “'Genomic architecture of heterosis for yield traits in rice” from Prof. HAN Bin’s group and Prof. HUANG Xuehui’s group of Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology (SIPPE), Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, with the cooperation from Prof. YANG Shihua’s group of China National Rice Research Institute. 

Improvement of grain yield is an on-going effort in crop breeding to meet the demand of global food security. Exploiting the heterosis phenomenon in hybrid crop breeding is one of the most efficient ways to increase grain yield in many crops including rice, maize and sorghum. However, the genetic cause of heterosis in crop has long been a puzzle despite that the heterotic phenomenon has been discovered for more than a century and various genetic models have been suggested to explain it. 

This work report large-scale genomic mapping for yield related traits and evaluation of the heterotic effects by analyzing over 10,000 rice lines produced from 17 elite rice lines. The large data of genomics and phenomics from the well-designed populations enabled us, for the first time, to identify the genetic contributors comprehensively and find out the exact causes of heterosis. The researchers find that modern rice varieties can be classified into three major types, reflecting the major breeding systems. Within each group a few genomic regions and gene alleles from female parents linked to heterosis effects for improved yields were identified, but these loci varied across the three groups. The key heterosis-related genes often controlled several yield-related components simultaneously, severing as the major contributors of heterosis. For the individual yield components, the heterozygous state of the heterosis-related genes generally acted through the way of dominance complementation.

Taking all the components into account, the hybrids with yield heterosis resulted from an optimal combination of multiple yield-related components, meaning better performance of overall yield in crop productions.

These results inform on the genomic architecture of heterosis for yield traits in rice, which will be useful information for crop improvement programmes. 

This project is financially supported by Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA08020101) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China. 



Figure 1. The experimental design and analysis procedure in this study 



 *Figure. 2.* Large-scale sequencing, genotyping and genetic mapping in 10,074 F2 lines. 
(Images provided by SIPPE)



Researchers Make New Progress in Understanding Genetic Basis of Heterosis in Rice----Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences



*Paper Reference:*
Xuehui Huang et al. Genomic architecture of heterosis for yield traits in rice, _Nature_ (2016). DOI: 10.1038/nature19760​

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Careless Consumption: Developed Countries Responsible for Worsening Pollution in East Asia*
By A. Vila
Sep 09, 2016 04:00 AM EDT



A study shows that most of East Asia's aerosol emissions are driven by consumption in the developed countries of Western Europe and North America. 
(Photo : Flickr/Creative Commons/Jonatahan Kos-Read) 

Air pollution is one of the most severe environmental problems in East Asia. But where does Asia's air pollution come from?

A study published recently in the journal Nature Geoscience revealed that most of East Asia's aerosol emissions are driven by consumption in the developed countries of Western Europe and North America. This marks the first time the climate effect of international trade had been calculated.

Researchers looked at a number of aerosols, tiny particles suspended in air, created through manufacturing and energy production.

"Our study revealed a strong, yet little-recognized link among consumption, trade and environmental and climate consequences," says co-author, atmospheric scientist Yi Huang in a press release. ''Although global pollution is largely generated in developing countries, it is foreign demand that drives much of the goods production and associated pollution.''


_*Continue to read -> *_
Careless Consumption: Developed Countries Responsible for Worsening Pollution in East Asia : News : Nature World News
​

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Super fast lasers that are out of this world*
Update time： 09-09-2016

A machine has successfully demonstrated ultra-intense, ultra-fast lasers that can deliver peak power of more than five petawatts for the first time in the world, scientists said yesterday.

"The extreme physical conditions created by the laser pulses with petawatt level peak power exist mainly inside stars or edge of the black holes,” said Leng Yuxin, the laboratory head.

"With the laser beams we can create such extreme environments in a controllable scale within a laboratory, and help scientists in producing hyperfast X-ray source, finding new materials under extreme conditions and even detect dark matter.”

This advancement in laser technology can be projected to research in such fields as astrophysics; nuclear medicine, a medical specialty involving the application of radioactive substances in the diagnosis and treatment of disease; and material science, which involves the discovery and design of new materials.

The Shanghai Superintense-Ultrafast Lasers Facility, or SULF, is being developed by Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics (SIOM) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Ultra-intense ultra-fast lasers, also known as the brightest light known to man, are capable of creating extreme physical conditions that rarely exist in the universe.

The director of SIOM, Li Ruxin, said the lasers offered broad and promising applications, such as making an impressive advancement in the running speed of smartphones.

The laser machine facility, located in ShanghaiTech University, is one of the core research platforms in Shanghai Zhangjiang High-Tech Park.

The developers are expected to deliver 10-petawatt lasers next year. One petawatt is equivalent to one quadrillion watts.The project’s three platforms to serve interdisciplinary application in material science and life science are expected to be put into operation by the end of 2018. They will be made available to research institutions and innovative companies around the world. (Shanghai Daily)







The Shanghai Superintense-Ultrafast Lasers Facility/Image by Zhao Kan
​

Super fast lasers that are out of this world----Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Three_Kingdoms

JSCh said:


> *China develops world's first 100-meter iron-based superconducting wire*
> (People's Daily Online) 14:50, September 09, 2016
> 
> 
> 
> File photo of the high-performance type 122 iron-based superconducting wire developed by Ma Yanwei's team in 2014.
> 
> The Institute of Electrical Engineering under the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced on Sept. 9 that a research group led by Ma Yanwei has successfully developed the world’s first 100-meter, iron-based superconducting wire, which is a milestone in the research of iron-based superconducting materials.
> 
> Currently, the production of iron-based superconducting wire in the U.S., Japan and Europe falls short of 100 meters. However, manufacturing technology at the 100-meter level is key for the mass application of the material.
> 
> Ma's research group created the world's first iron-based superconducting wire in 2008. In 2010, they invented a special technology for welding, which laid a foundation for further improvement of the wire. In 2013, they made the world’s first high-performance iron-based, multi-filament superconducting wire; in 2014, they successfully developed the world's first 10-meter iron-based superconducting wire, taking the first step toward large-scale manufacturing.
> 
> More recently, the research team was finally able to get past the technological difficulties in large-scale manufacturing, producing a wire that is 115 meters long.
> 
> The successful development of this improved superconducting wire means that China possesses intellectual property that can be applied to medicine, national defense and many other industries.



Congrats 
China in another exclusive club again and at the moment better than other club members



JSCh said:


> *Super fast lasers that are out of this world*
> Update time： 09-09-2016
> 
> A machine has successfully demonstrated ultra-intense, ultra-fast lasers that can deliver peak power of more than five petawatts for the first time in the world, scientists said yesterday.
> 
> "The extreme physical conditions created by the laser pulses with petawatt level peak power exist mainly inside stars or edge of the black holes,” said Leng Yuxin, the laboratory head.
> 
> "With the laser beams we can create such extreme environments in a controllable scale within a laboratory, and help scientists in producing hyperfast X-ray source, finding new materials under extreme conditions and even detect dark matter.”
> 
> This advancement in laser technology can be projected to research in such fields as astrophysics; nuclear medicine, a medical specialty involving the application of radioactive substances in the diagnosis and treatment of disease; and material science, which involves the discovery and design of new materials.
> 
> The Shanghai Superintense-Ultrafast Lasers Facility, or SULF, is being developed by Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics (SIOM) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
> 
> Ultra-intense ultra-fast lasers, also known as the brightest light known to man, are capable of creating extreme physical conditions that rarely exist in the universe.
> 
> The director of SIOM, Li Ruxin, said the lasers offered broad and promising applications, such as making an impressive advancement in the running speed of smartphones.
> 
> The laser machine facility, located in ShanghaiTech University, is one of the core research platforms in Shanghai Zhangjiang High-Tech Park.
> 
> The developers are expected to deliver 10-petawatt lasers next year. One petawatt is equivalent to one quadrillion watts.The project’s three platforms to serve interdisciplinary application in material science and life science are expected to be put into operation by the end of 2018. They will be made available to research institutions and innovative companies around the world. (Shanghai Daily)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The Shanghai Superintense-Ultrafast Lasers Facility/Image by Zhao Kan
> ​
> 
> Super fast lasers that are out of this world----Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics



Wonderful 
The range of this discovery is so broad that it can be extended to cutting edge military applications
Congrats Congrats!

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Three_Kingdoms

Bussard Ramjet said:


> But what is the industrial application?
> 
> What is the temperature required for superconductivity? How much dollar worth of impact would this have?



""115 metre long superconducting wire made from (Sr,K) Fe2As2"

What is this chemical compound (Sr,K) Fe2As2?


----------



## Han Patriot

Bussard Ramjet said:


> But what is the industrial application?
> 
> What is the temperature required for superconductivity? How much dollar worth of impact would this have?


Trust me...it will have worthless application. The Chinese are stupid ppl...they waste their money on these technologies. India should just adopt the usual chanakyian strategy...which is do nothing at all.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 9-Sep-2016
* Scientists expect to calculate amount of fuel inside Earth by 2025 *
_With three new detectors coming online in the next several years, scientists are confident they will collect enough geoneutrino data to measure Earth's fuel level_

University of Maryland




By 2022, scientists expect to be able to detect at least 536 antineutrino events per year at these five underground detectors: KamLAND in Japan, Borexino in Italy, SNO+ in Canada, and Jinping and JUNO in China. Credit: Ondrej Sramek

Earth requires fuel to drive plate tectonics, volcanoes and its magnetic field. Like a hybrid car, Earth taps two sources of energy to run its engine: primordial energy from assembling the planet and nuclear energy from the heat produced during natural radioactive decay. Scientists have developed numerous models to predict how much fuel remains inside Earth to drive its engines -- and estimates vary widely -- but the true amount remains unknown.

In a new paper, a team of geologists and neutrino physicists boldly claims it will be able to determine by 2025 how much nuclear fuel and radioactive power remain in the Earth's tank. The study, authored by scientists from the University of Maryland, Charles University in Prague and the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, was published on September 9, 2016, in the journal Nature _Scientific Reports_.

"I am one of those scientists who has created a compositional model of the Earth and predicted the amount of fuel inside Earth today," said one of the study's authors William McDonough, a professor of geology at the University of Maryland. "We're in a field of guesses. At this point in my career, I don't care if I'm right or wrong, I just want to know the answer."

To calculate the amount of fuel inside Earth by 2025, the researchers will rely on detecting some of the tiniest subatomic particles known to science -- geoneutrinos. These antineutrino particles are byproducts of nuclear reactions within stars (including our sun), supernovae, black holes and human-made nuclear reactors. They also result from radioactive decay processes deep within the Earth.

Detecting antineutrinos requires a huge detector the size of a small office building, housed about a mile underground to shield it from cosmic rays that could yield false positive results. Inside the detector, scientists detect antineutrinos when they crash into a hydrogen atom. The collision produces two characteristic light flashes that unequivocally announce the event. The number of events scientists detect relates directly to the number of atoms of uranium and thorium inside the Earth. And the decay of these elements, along with potassium, fuels the vast majority of the heat in the Earth's interior.

To date, detecting antineutrinos has been painfully slow, with scientists recording only about 16 events per year from the underground detectors KamLAND in Japan and Borexino in Italy. However, researchers predict that three new detectors expected to come online by 2022--the SNO+ detector in Canada and the Jinping and JUNO detectors in China--will add 520 more events per year to the data stream.

"Once we collect three years of antineutrino data from all five detectors, we are confident that we will have developed an accurate fuel gauge for the Earth and be able to calculate the amount of remaining fuel inside Earth," said McDonough.

The new Jinping detector, which will be buried under the slopes of the Himalayas, will be four times bigger than existing detectors. The underground JUNO detector near the coast of southern China will be 20 times bigger than existing detectors.

"Knowing exactly how much radioactive power there is in the Earth will tell us about Earth's consumption rate in the past and its future fuel budget," said McDonough. "By showing how fast the planet has cooled down since its birth, we can estimate how long this fuel will last."



Scientists expect to calculate amount of fuel inside Earth by 2025 | EurekAlert! Science News

*Paper Reference:*

Ondřej Šrámek, Bedřich Roskovec, Scott A. Wipperfurth, Yufei Xi, William F. McDonough. *Revealing the Earth’s mantle from the tallest mountains using the Jinping Neutrino Experiment*. _Scientific Reports_, 2016; 6: 33034 DOI: 10.1038/srep33034​

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 9-Sep-2016
* Chinese Academy of Sciences eyes multiple S&T breakthroughs in next 5 years *
Chinese Academy of Sciences Headquarters

The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) announced its 13th Five-year Plan (2016-2020) this Wednesday in Beijing, outlining breakthrough programs in areas ranging from particle physics and galactic structure, to brain science and artificial intelligence, as well as oceanology, ecology and the environment, among others.

The plan, released by CAS President BAI Chunli, sets the Academy's goals and strategy for the five-year period ending in 2020.

"We will strive to achieve international prominence in strategically key fields and blaze the trail in cutting-edge and cross-disciplinary scientific areas, achieving a series of major original achievements, technologies and products," said BAI.

As China's driving force for exploring and harnessing high technology and the natural sciences, the plan calls for CAS to lead the country's key S&T projects in such fields as aviation, space and deep-sea exploration, quantum communication and computation, brain science and artificial intelligence, cyberspace security, the seed industry, clean energy, big data, intelligent manufacturing and robotics, new-generation materials development and applications, comprehensive environmental treatment, and public health research.

As part of this effort, CAS will heavily focus on fostering innovation. The five-year plan sets forth 60 major science and technology breakthroughs the Academy aims to achieve as well as 80 key projects it will undertake.

Ongoing projects will also be a major focus of the Academy over the five-year period, including: manned space exploration and lunar probe, high-resolution earth observation, nanotechnology, precision control of protein machinery and life processes, restoration and protection of fragile ecological areas, strategic advanced electronic materials, quantum control and information, and deep sea research.

By the end of the five-year period, CAS plans to spend 40 per cent of its research budget on basic research, 50 per cent on applied research, and 10 per cent on R&D, with the goal of making the Academy a top-ranked, globally influential and competitive research institution. CAS hopes to attain world-class levels in physics, chemistry, material science, mathematics, environment and ecology, and geoscience by 2020.

During the five-year plan period, the Academy will bring together resources from across the country to build 3-5 large-scale international cooperative science projects and more national laboratories in support of China's development.

Furthermore, CAS aims to further develop independent intellectual property rights (IPR) and industrial technology standards, as well as practical applications for its S&T output in order to enhance social development.

During this period, CAS plans to establish about 10 overseas research institutions. In addition, it aims to set up 5-10 CAS-TWAS Centers of Excellence, as part of China's Belt and Road Initiative. 



Chinese Academy of Sciences eyes multiple S&T breakthroughs in next 5 years | EurekAlert! Science News

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists find substitute for rare herb*
Source: Xinhua | September 12, 2016, Monday




CHINESE scientists have developed a substitute for wild caterpillar fungus, a rare Tibetan herb known for its cancer-resisting properties.

According to the science department of northwest China’s Qinghai Province, after 11 years research, scientists can extract and cultivate the hypha from caterpillar fungus by producing an artificial substitute.

“The research was sponsored by the provincial government, as it wanted to stop depletion of the wild herb,” said Zhang Chaoyuan, deputy director of the science department.

A tiny stalk of fungus, known in China as “winter worm, summer grass”, sells for about the same price as gold. The wild herb has been a key source of income for ethnic Tibetans living in the region. But excessive digging of the fungus, which has a long growing cycle, has led to serious damage to the fragile ecological environment in the region.

Zhang said scientists collected the wild fungus from the Tibetan prefecture of Yushu, which is 4,800 meters above sea level, and used it to produce the artificial substitute, which also possesses the herb’s medical properties.

Found only on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the caterpillar fungus reportedly has cancer fighting properties and boosts the immune system.

The artificial product has a 97-percent DNA similarity with the wild herb, according to researchers.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*Manipulating liquid flow with light*
By Zhou Wenting in Shanghai (chinadaily.com.cn) Updated: 2016-09-08 21:10

Chinese researchers have invented a new material to create light-activated micro-channels to transport liquid, which is likely to bring about breakthroughs in medical lab tests, as well as chemical engineering, aviation and aerospace industries.

Scientists believed that microfluidic chips can be applicable in various sectors, including medical lab tests, but the bottleneck for experts in the circle was that it needed an add-on pump, which is often large, to drive the liquid to flow. Therefore even though the chip is tiny enough, it is hard for the whole device to become small and portable.

Researchers from Shanghai-based Fudan University invented a special material to produce the channel to contain the liquid. Some certain changes in the shape of the channel will happen when light shines on the channel, and therefore the liquid will flow in a certain direction in the channel. "Thus we realized the manipulation of the liquid flow with light," said Yu Yanlei, a leading researcher on the team, whose research results were published on the website of the scientific journal _Nature_ today.

Lyu Jiu'an, another researcher on the team, cited the example of its promising application in lab tests, and blood tests in particular.

"During the process of a test, a sample of blood needs to go to different stops in the channel for different steps, such as being purified and separated for the tests for various indicators. An add-on pump was used to drive the blood to run in the channel, but now we can cast the pump aside," Lyu said.

Researchers said small-sized and portable instruments for biochemical inspections, such as blood tests, will probably be developed with such technology, and people will be able to do blood tests by themselves at home.

Moreover, the tiny amount of material needed for a test sample will make collecting several tubes of blood from a patient history.

"In our tests, we only need a liquid sample of 0.2 microliter," Lyu said.

#####​

_*Paper Reference:*
_
Jiu-an Lv, Yuyun Liu, Jia Wei, Erqiang Chen, Lang Qin & Yanlei Yu. Photocontrol of fluid slugs in liquid crystal polymer microactuators, _Nature_ (2016). DOI:10.1038/nature19344

*Abstract
*
The manipulation of small amounts of liquids has applications ranging from biomedical devices to liquid transfer. Direct light-driven manipulation of liquids, especially when triggered by light-induced capillary forces, is of particular interest because light can provide contactless spatial and temporal control. However, existing light-driven technologies suffer from an inherent limitation in that liquid motion is strongly resisted by the effect of contact-line pinning. Here we report a strategy to manipulate fluid slugs by photo-induced asymmetric deformation of tubular microactuators, which induces capillary forces for liquid propulsion. Microactuators with various shapes (straight, ‘Y’-shaped, serpentine and helical) are fabricated from a mechanically robust linear liquid crystal polymer. These microactuators are able to exert photocontrol of a wide diversity of liquids over a long distance with controllable velocity and direction, and hence to mix multiphase liquids, to combine liquids and even to make liquids run uphill. We anticipate that this photodeformable microactuator will find use in micro-reactors, in laboratory-on-a-chip settings and in micro-optomechanical systems.​

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*Tianhe Project proposes 'air corridor' to advance cross-regional water diversion*
(People's Daily Online) 15:09, September 12, 2016



Wang Guangqian, academician with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and president of Qinghai University, delivers a speech on Sept. 9, 2016. (Chinanews.com/Zhang Tianfu)

"Once the Tianhe Project is completed, it will be possible to transfer water in the air via an ‘air corridor.' [The corridor] will be formed as part of the South-to-North Water Diversion project," said Wang Guangqian, an academician with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and president of Qinghai University. Wang introduced his proposal at a meeting on Sept. 9, which aimed to jumpstart the novel project.

According to the project's description, the atmospheric boundary layer and the troposphere form a passage through which water vapor can be transported in a stable and orderly way. The passage can be regarded as "tianhe" (literally, a river in the sky). The proposed undertaking has therefore been named "Tianhe Project."

"We monitor the content and migration routes of water vapor, and then we conduct interference in certain regions to solve water shortages in northern China," Wang explained.

According to the UN World Water Development Report, northern China will face a severe water shortage by 2025. The established eastern and middle routes of the South-to-North Water Diversion project, which began in 2002, have relieved that "thirst" to some degree. However, the western route is still a work in progress due to high altitude, complex terrain and fragile ecosystems. The air corridor proposition may offer an innovative solution to those challenges.



The South-to-North water diversion project is the biggest project of its kind ever undertaken in China

The South-to-North Water Diversion project is the world's largest water diversion project, according to a Xinhua report. It was designed to transport water from the Yangtze River to dry regions in the north of the country. At its outset, the project was estimated to cost 500 billion yuan ($81.4 billion).

Bao Weimin, a CAS academician and director of the Science and Technology Committee of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, believes the proposed Tianhe Project and future air corridor are natural next steps toward supporting the ecology of the Tibetan Plateau. Bao also hopes the project will promote national economic and social development, especially in northern China.



File photo taken on May 18, 2015 shows one part of the South-to-North Water Diversion Middle Route Project in Zhengding County, north China's Hebei Province. (Photo/Xinhua)

Tianhe Project will attempt to increase annual precipitation in Sanjiangyuan (the birthplace of the Yangtze, Yellow and Lancang Rivers), the Qilian Mountains and the Qaidam region by 2.5 billion, 200 million and 120 million cubic meters respectively. Its long-term goal is to transfer 5 billion cubic meters of water per year.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Walk Around in the Sun to Power Wearables With This Cloth*
Posted 12 Sep 2016 | 15:29 GMT





Photo: Xing Fan/Chongqing University​
A new wearable fabric that generates electricity from both sunlight and motion could let you power your cell phone or smart watch by walking around outside. Researchers made the textile by weaving together plastic fiber solar cells and fiber-based generators that produce electricity when rubbed against each other.

The 0.32-millimeter-thick fabric is lightweight, flexible, breathable, and uses low-cost materials, its creators say. It could be integrated into clothes, tents, and curtains, turning them into power sources when they flap or are exposed to the sun. By harvesting solar and mechanical energy, the power-generating cloth could work day and night, its inventors say.

“The hybrid power textile could be extensively applied not only to self-powered electronics but also possibly to power generation on a larger scale,” Zhong Lin Wang at Georgia Tech, Xing Fan at Chongqing University in Chongqing, China, and their colleagues write in a research published today in the journal _Nature Energy_.



*Continue -> *http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise...eeeSpectrumFullText+(IEEE+Spectrum+Full+Text)
Walk Around in the Sun to Power Wearables With This Cloth - IEEE Spectrum​http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise...eeeSpectrumFullText+(IEEE+Spectrum+Full+Text)
_*Paper Reference:*_
Micro-cable structured textile for simultaneously harvesting solar and mechanical energy, _Nature Energy _(2016). DOI: 10.1038/nenergy.2016.138 

*Abstract*

Developing lightweight, flexible, foldable and sustainable power sources with simple transport and storage remains a challenge and an urgent need for the advancement of next-generation wearable electronics. Here, we report a micro-cable power textile for simultaneously harvesting energy from ambient sunshine and mechanical movement. Solar cells fabricated from lightweight polymer fibres into micro cables are then woven via a shuttle-flying process with fibre-based triboelectric nanogenerators to create a smart fabric. A single layer of such fabric is 320 μm thick and can be integrated into various cloths, curtains, tents and so on. This hybrid power textile, fabricated with a size of 4 cm by 5 cm, was demonstrated to charge a 2 mF commercial capacitor up to 2 V in 1 min under ambient sunlight in the presence of mechanical excitation, such as human motion and wind blowing. The textile could continuously power an electronic watch, directly charge a cell phone and drive water splitting reactions.​

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## Three_Kingdoms

Working at Florida State University. Professor *Tang Hengli* along with Johns Hopkins Professors *Ming* *Guo-Li *and *Song Hongjun* and National Institutes of Health scientist *Zheng* *Wei *lead a team of researchers to discover a possible solution to cure the disease









*FSU research team makes Zika drug breakthrough*
BY: KATHLEEN HAUGHNEY | PUBLISHED: AUGUST 29, 2016 | 11:00 AM | SHARE:

A team of researchers from Florida State University, Johns Hopkins University and the National Institutes of Health has found existing drug compounds that can both stop Zika from replicating in the body and from damaging the crucial fetal brain cells that lead to birth defects in newborns.

One of the drugs is already on the market as a treatment for tapeworm.

“We focused on compounds that have the shortest path to clinical use,” said FSU Professor of Biological Science *Hengli Tang*. “This is a first step toward a therapeutic that can stop transmission of this disease.”

Tang, along with Johns Hopkins Professors *Guo-Li Ming *and *Hongjun Song* and National Institutes of Health scientist *Wei Zheng* identified two different groups of compounds that could potentially be used to treat Zika — one that stops the virus from replicating and the other that stops the virus from killing fetal brain cells, also called neuroprogenitor cells.

One of the identified compounds is the basis for a drug called Nicolsamide, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved drug that showed no danger to pregnant women in animal studies. It is commonly used to treat tapeworm.

This could theoretically be prescribed by a doctor today, though tests are still needed to determine a specific treatment regimen for the infection.

Their work is outlined in an article published Monday by Nature Medicine.





Doctoral students Emily Lee, Yichen Cheng and Sarah Ogden played a key role in conducting Zika research in Professor Hengli Tang’s laboratory.


Though the Zika virus was discovered in 1947, there was little known about how it worked and its potential health implications — especially among pregnant women — until an outbreak occurred in South America last year. In the United States, there have been 584 cases of pregnant women contracting Zika, though most of those are travel related. As of Friday, there have been 42 locally transmitted cases in Florida.

The virus, among other diseases, can cause microcephaly in fetuses leading them to be born with severe birth defects.

“It’s so dramatic and irreversible,” Tang said. “The probability of Zika-induced microcephaly occurring doesn’t appear to be that high, but when it does, the damage is horrible.”

Researchers around the world have been feverishly working to better understand the disease — which can be transmitted both by mosquito bite and through a sexual partner — and also to develop medical treatments.

Tang, Ming and Song first met in graduate school 20 years ago and got in contact in January because Tang, a virologist, had access to the virus and Ming and Song, neurologists, had cortical stem cells that scientists needed for testing.

The group worked at a breakneck pace with researchers from Ming and Song’s lab, traveling back and forth between Baltimore and Tang’s lab in Tallahassee where they had infected the cells with the virus.

In early March, the group was the first team to show that Zika indeed caused cellular phenotypes consistent with microcephaly, a severe birth defect where babies are born with a much smaller head and brain than normal.

They immediately delved into follow-up work and teamed with NIH’s Zheng, an expert on drug compounds, to find potential treatments for the disease.

Researchers screened 6,000 compounds that were either already approved by the FDA or were in the process of a clinical trial because they could be made more quickly available to people infected by Zika.

“It takes years if not decades to develop a new drug,” Song said. “In this sort of global health emergency, we don’t have time. So instead of using new drugs, we chose to screen existing drugs. In this way, we hope to create a therapy much more quickly.”

All of the researchers are continuing the work on the compounds and hope to begin testing the drugs on animals infected with Zika in the near future.

The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health, Florida State University, Emory University and the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund.

Other institutions contributing to the research are the *Zhejiang University School of Medicine in China*, *Emory University *and* the Icahn School of Medicine*. Emily Lee, a Florida State University graduate student working with Tang, shared the first authorship position with Assistant Professor of Biology at Emory *Zhexing Wen *and NIH scientist *Miao Xu*.

https://news.fsu.edu/news/science-t...u-research-team-makes-zika-drug-breakthrough/

Professor Tang is a graduate of Anhui University and the University of Science and Technology, China

And in earlier news this year:

*Breakthrough in Zika epidemic after Chinese scientists decode genome*
23 February 2016, Beijing, Agencies

Chinese scientists today said they have successfully sequenced the genome of the country's first imported Zika virus, helping with prevention and diagnosis of the mosquito-borne disease that has triggered a global health emergency.

The success was achieved by scientists with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the provincial center in east China's Jiangxi Province. China confirmed the first imported Zika case on February 9. The patient, a 34-year-old man from Jiangxi, developed a fever, headache and dizziness on January 28 in Venezuela, before returning home on February 5. He has been discharged from hospital after a full recovery.

Monday's success has laid foundation for understanding the virus' variations as well as developing bacteria and reagents to diagnose the disease, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

The World Health Organisation has declared a global health emergency over the Zika virus and its suspected links to birth defects.

The virus has been reported in at least 34 countries, many of them in Central and Latin America. WHO and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have advised pregnant women to consider delaying travel to Zika-infected countries.

Zika virus is spread by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which also carries dengue fever and yellow fever. 

http://millenniumpost.in/NewsContent.aspx?NID=238514

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Developing composites that self-heal at very low temperatures*
September 13, 2016
University of Birmingham

Scientists have developed a method of allowing materials, commonly used in aircraft and satellites, to self-heal cracks at temperatures well below freezing. The article is among the first to show that self-healing materials can be manipulated to operate at very low temperatures.



Developing composites that self-heal at very low temperatures -- ScienceDaily

*Journal Reference*:

Yongjing Wang, Duc Truong Pham, Zhichun Zhang, Jinjun Li, Chunqian Ji, Yanju Liu, Jinsong Leng. *Sustainable self-healing at ultra-low temperatures in structural composites incorporating hollow vessels and heating elements*. _Royal Society Open Science_, 2016; 3 (9): 160488 DOI: 10.1098/rsos.160488

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## ahojunk

*Beijing builds serious diseases database*
2016-09-15 09:30 | Xinhua _Editor: Yao Lan_

Beijing has established a serious diseases database, which contains 164,000 cases and 1.63 million samples of diseases, according to the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission Wednesday.

Fourteen medical institutions participated in establishing the database.

The samples will provide substantial resources for medical research.

Beijing is aiming to improve scientific and technological development in medical science. By 2020, the city is expected to have more than 20 innovative achievements in the treatment of serious diseases, and will introduce 100 codes and standards in medical technology, according to the commission.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*China launches second space lab*
_Tiangong 2 will develop expertise for a future space station and conduct science experiments.

_Davide Castelvecchi, 15 September 2016

China has launched Tiangong 2, its second orbiting space lab — marking another stepping stone towards the country’s goal of building a space station by the early 2020s. The module, which launched aboard a Long March rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi desert at 22:04 local time on 15 September, will initially fly uncrewed in low-Earth orbit, but a planned second launch will carry two astronauts to it in November.

Tiangong 2 (meaning ‘heavenly palace’) carries a number of scientific experiments, including an astrophysics detector that is the first space-science experiment built jointly by China with European countries.

“By itself, Tiangong 2 is not a monumental achievement, but it is an important step in a larger effort to eventually build a Chinese space station in the early 2020s,” says Brian Weeden, a space-policy expert at the Secure World Foundation in Washington DC.

The 8-tonne module replaces the now-defunct Tiangong 1, a mission that marked several milestones in China’s manned space programme, including the country’s first in-orbit rendezvous with another spacecraft. Mission control lost contact with that station earlier this year, and its orbit is slowly decaying. An uncontrolled re-entry is expected some time in 2017.

In November, a Shenzhou spacecraft will carry two astronauts to Tiangong-2 for a 30-day stay. Then in April 2017, a cargo craft will dock to refuel and bring more supplies. The module also carries a robotic arm, a prototype for a similar tool that would fly on a space station.

*Science projects*
Tiangong 2 reportedly carries 14 experiments. These include POLAR, an international mission dedicated to establishing whether the photons from γ-ray bursts (GRBs) — thought to be a particularly energetic type of stellar explosion — are polarized. Answering this long-debated issue could shed light on how GRBs produce such high-energy photons in the first place.

“We aim to measure ten γ-ray bursts per year,” says POLAR project manager Nicolas Produit, an astrophysicist at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, who spoke to _Nature_ from a hotel near the Jiuquan launch centre.

The €3-million (US$3.4 million) detector was built largely with Swiss funding, and with the collaboration of Swiss, Chinese and Polish scientists, and support from the European Space Agency (ESA). POLAR is the first space experiment developed as a full international collaboration between China and other countries, Produit says.

US law bars NASA from doing joint projects with China’s space agencies, but the Chinese Academy of Sciences is discussing a number of other space collaborations with ESA. The country has also been aggressively ramping up its space science: just in the last year, it put into orbit DAMPE, its first space probe dedicated to the search for dark matter, as well as QUESS, the world’s first quantum-communications satellite.

This is making the country an exciting place for international researchers to test ideas for space science, compared to projects run by ESA and NASA, which Produit says are slower-moving. “In China, things go fast. They have the money; they have the will,“ Produit says. “China is where things happen now.”

Still, the main goal for Tiangong 2 and a future space station is not science, Weeden points out. “China wants to build and operate a space station for the same reasons the United States and Soviet Union did in decades past: prestige.”

Nature | doi:10.1038/nature.2016.20611





China launches second space lab : Nature News & Comment

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Water supply: China's sponge cities to soak up rainwater*

Dasheng Liu
Nature 537, 307 (15 September 2016) doi:10.1038/537307c
Published online 14 September 2016
China's Sponge City programme aims to improve resilience to urban expansion and climate change by enabling cities to save and resupply rainwater. It is crucial for cities such as Beijing and Jinan, which suffer water shortages even after severe flooding. However, several hurdles must be overcome to get it working efficiently.

The programme will involve some 30 pilot cities this year (see www.mohurd.gov.cn). They will create a 'sponge' infrastructure to detain runoff, control flooding, recharge groundwater and reuse storm water. The project still has to recruit enough planners, designers and construction workers to support this colossal initiative. Time is short for completing technical training.

Plans and technology will need to be customized for individual cities, where local weather conditions and the degree of urbanization can vary considerably; a blanket strategy will not work.

Once in place, the sponge infrastructure should be combined with conventional drainage systems, particularly in areas of medium- and high-intensity urbanization.





Water supply: China's sponge cities to soak up rainwater : Nature : Nature Research

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Trio of Nations Aims to Hook Asia Super Grid to Grids of the World*
By John Boyd
Posted 13 Sep 2016 | 15:32 GMT






Image: Renewable Energy Institute​
Northeast Asia, the region encompassing China, South Korea, and Japan, has not yet gotten around to connecting its electricity grids together. But that’s not stopping these countries from promoting the Asia Super Grid, calculated to become the center of a global energy grid providing abundant, cheap electricity based on renewable energy.

In Japan, the idea emerged following the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and subsequent Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster. The possibility of a nuclear disaster so shocked Masayoshi Son, founder and head of the telecom and Internet giant SoftBank Group, that he established the Renewable Energy Institute soon after to help develop and promote renewable energy.

“I was a total layman (in renewable energy) at the time of the earthquake,” Son told a packed audience attending a symposium celebrating the fifth anniversary of the institute in Tokyo last Friday.

Yet it was this naïveté that led the entrepreneur to go on and propose the Asia Super Grid to tap wind and solar energy in the Gobi Desert, estimated to be the equivalent of thousands of nuclear reactors. “People said it was crazy, too grand a scheme…politically impossible,” he added.

Nonetheless, entrepreneur Son found kindred spirits in South Korea’s state-owned Korea Electric Power Company (KEPCO) and more recently in the State Grid Corporation of China and the Russian power company PSJC Rosseti. At an international conference on global energy interconnection in Beijing this March, the four entities signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to work together on interconnecting power grids to form the Asia Super Grid.

The idea gained further momentum with the establishment in Beijing in March of the nonprofit Global Energy Interconnection Development and Cooperation Organization. GEIDCO is led by Liu Zhenya, former chairman of State Grid. Members include the four Asia Super Grid signatories, as well as utilities, universities, and equipment manufacturers from 14 countries.

GEIDCO’s declared goal is to link the world’s electric grids to meet global power needs by generating electricity from renewables. At Friday’s symposium in Tokyo, Zhenya outlined this vision, saying global energy interconnection (GEI) based on clean energy was the only feasible answer to issues of resource constraints, environmental pollution, and climate change.

The challenge for GEI, he noted, was connecting the world’s alternative energy resources of wind, hydro, and solar to the areas of demand. Such energy sources, he pointed out, are available in a band arcing from North Africa through central Asia to eastern Russia and North Asia. But the closest areas of demand are in Europe, southern Africa, and East and Southeast Asia.

And because “wind and solar power are random, intermittent, and volatile,” noted Zhenya, “only by integrating them into a vast power grid can they enjoy better development.”

He describes GEI as a globally interconnected smart grid using UHV grids as the backbone, with an infrastructure platform on which clean energy can be developed, transmitted, and used worldwide.

The backbone will transmit electricity “at more than 1,000 kilovolts AC and 800 kilovolts DC over thousands of kilometers and interconnect grids across regions, nations, and even continents with a capacity of over 10 gigawatts,” he explained. Nine such grids are already in operation or being constructed in China, he added, so there are no longer any problems concerning the key technologies for GEI.

Meanwhile, the price of wind- and solar-generated power is falling rapidly. Zhenya said recent PV bid prices for projects in the United Arab Emirates and Chile were as low as 3 U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour. Consequently, “according to our calculations, the cost efficiency (of wind and solar generation) will be more than fossil fuel energy by 2025,” he predicted.



_*Continue reading ->*_
Trio of Nations Aims to Hook Asia Super Grid to Grids of the World - IEEE Spectrum​

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Echoes of black holes eating stars discovered*
September 15, 2016
NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory

A black hole destroying a star, an event astronomers call 'stellar tidal disruption,' releases an enormous amount of energy, brightening the surroundings in an event called a flare. Two new studies characterize tidal disruption flares by studying how surrounding dust absorbs and re-emits their light, like echoes. This approach allowed scientists to measure the energy of flares from stellar tidal disruption events more precisely than ever before.



This illustration shows a glowing stream of material from a star as it is being devoured by a supermassive black hole in a tidal disruption flare. _Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech_



Echoes of black holes eating stars discovered -- ScienceDaily

*Journal References*:

S. van Velzen, A. J. Mendez, J. H. Krolik, V. Gorjian. *Discovery of transient infrared emission from dust heated by stellar tidal disruption flares*. _The Astrophysical Journal_, 2016; 829 (1): 19 DOI: 10.3847/0004-637X/829/1/19
Ning Jiang, Liming Dou, Tinggui Wang, Chenwei Yang, Jianwei Lyu, Hongyan Zhou. *The WISE Detection of an Infrared Echo in Tidal Disruption Event ASASSN-14li*. _The Astrophysical Journal_, 2016; 828 (1): L14 DOI: 10.3847/2041-8205/828/1/L14

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

September 15, 2016
*Levitating nanoparticle improves 'torque sensing,' might bring new research into fundamentals of quantum theory*



This graphic represents a new experiment where levitating a nanodiamond with a laser in a vacuum chamber for the first time was used to detect and measure its "torsional vibration," an advance that could bring new types of sensors and studies in quantum mechanics. (Purdue University image/ Thai M. Hoang)

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Researchers have levitated a tiny nanodiamond particle with a laser in a vacuum chamber, using the technique for the first time to detect and measure its "torsional vibration," an advance that could bring new types of sensors and studies in quantum mechanics.

The experiment represents a nanoscale version of the torsion balance used in the classic Cavendish experiment, performed in 1798 by British scientist Henry Cavendish, which determined Newton's gravitational constant. A bar balancing two lead spheres at either end was suspended on a thin metal wire. Gravity acting on the two weights caused the wire and bar to twist, and this twisting – or torsion - was measured to calculate the gravitational force.

In the new experiment, an oblong-shaped nanodiamond levitated by a laser beam in a vacuum chamber served the same role as the bar, and the laser beam served the same role as the wire in Cavendish's experiment.

"A change of the orientation of the nanodiamond caused the polarization of the laser beam to twist," said Tongcang Li, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy and electrical and computer engineering at Purdue University. "Torsion balances have played historic roles in the development of modern physics. Now, an optically levitated ellipsoidal nanodiamond in a vacuum provides a new nanoscale torsion balance that will be many times more sensitive."

Findings are detailed in a paper that appeared on Thursday (Sept. 15) in the journal Physical Review Letters.

"This is the first experimental observation of torsional motion of a nanoparticle levitated in a vacuum and represents a very sensitive torque detector," Li said. "In principle, we could detect the torque on a single electron or a single proton."

The paper was authored by Purdue postdoctoral research associate Thai M. Hoang; student Yue Ma from Tsinghua University in China; Purdue graduate students Jonghoon Ahn and Jaehoon Bang; Francis Robicheaux, a Purdue professor of physics and astronomy; Zhang-Qi Yin, an assistant research fellow at Tsinghua University; and Li.

The paper details the detection of torsional vibration, a proposal to use the technique for torque sensing and also to achieve torsional "ground state cooling," which could aid efforts to study quantum theory and realize potential applications in quantum information processing and high-precision measurement for sensors.

This cooling reduces "noise" caused by vibrating molecules and atoms, making it possible to precisely measure torque and probe the relationships between motion and electron "spin." Electrons can be thought of as having two distinct spin states, "up" or "down," and this phenomenon might be used in future quantum simulations.

The paper includes experimental and theoretical portions.

"Experimentally, we observed torsional motion, and the theoretical part is a proposal of how to cool down the motion to achieve quantum ground state," Li said.

The nanodiamonds are about 100 nanometers in diameter, or roughly the size of a virus. Future research will include efforts to achieve ground state cooling.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.



Levitating nanoparticle improves 'torque sensing,' might bring new research into fundamentals of quantum theory - Purdue University























*Journal References*:

Torsional Optomechanics of a Levitated Nonspherical Nanoparticle, _Phys. Rev. Lett_. 117, 123604 – Published 15 September 2016 , dx.doi.org/10.110/PhysRevLett.117.123604​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Making scientists live with farmers makes crop productivity boom*
_Embedding scientists with farmers in China dramatically increased crop yields._

Diana Gitig - Sep 15, 2016 2:01 pm UTC




The "organic versus conventional farming" debate that runs in hipster circles often ignores a hugely important aspect of agriculture: how either method impacts crop yields. It's pretty easy to rail against the evils of synthetic pesticides when the biggest ramification of your views is having to walk half a block out of your way or spend an extra $1.50 for an all-organic, non-GMO, shade grown, free-range, kale smoothie instead of a regular one.

But it's not quite as simple when trying to grow enough calories to sustain our planet’s growing population on a shrinking number of arable acres. A radical new venture, undertaken in rural China in 2009, has helped maximize crop yields, getting them within a hair of their theoretical maximum. And it didn't rely on any fancy new chemicals or technologies. Rather, it “deployed several time-honored education-extension methods coupled with innovative outreach mechanisms.” In other words, scientists moved in with and tutored the farmers.


_*Continue reading ->*_
Making scientists live with farmers makes crop productivity boom | Ars Technica​
*Journal References*:
Closing yield gaps in China by empowering smallholder farmers, _Nature _2016, DOI:10.1038/nature19368​

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## meis

*






China Launched the World’s First Quantum Satellite

China’s Quantum Satellite Experiments: Strategic And Military Implications – Analysis*

While China’s quantum science satellite (QSS) project is part of the Strategic Priority Programme on Space Science, the country’s first space exploration programme intended purely for scientific research, its experiments have significant military implications.

By Michael Raska*

On August 16, 2016 China launched the world’s first quantum communications experiment satellite into orbit from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the Gobi Desert. The small satellite, recently named Micius after an ancient Chinese philosopher, is tasked to establish a hack-proof communication line – a quantum key distribution network, while performing a series of quantum entanglement experiments in space for the first time.

The quantum science satellite (QSS) programme is the third mission of the 2011 Strategic Priority Programme on Space Science that includes a series of satellite launches between 2015 and 2030 to explore black holes, dark matter, and cosmic background radiation. Research on quantum technology is also a key priority, including in the 13th Five-Year Plan, China’s latest economic blueprint for research and development released in March 2016. The QSS is sponsored and managed by the China Academy of Sciences (CAS), and led by chief scientist Pan Jianwei. Its mission payload was developed jointly by the CAS’s Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics (SITP) and the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC).

*“Quantum Internet” and Communication Experiments*
While the QSS will advance research on “quantum internet” – i.e. secure communications and a distributed computational power that greatly exceeds that of the classical Internet, Micius’ experiments will also advance quantum cryptography, communications systems, and cyber capabilities that the China’s military (PLA) requires for its sensors and future strike systems.

Micius’ experiments are designed to advance communication between space and Earth using quantum information technology, which relies on transmitting photons, or tiny particles of light. In particular, rather than using radio waves by traditional communications satellites, a quantum communication uses a crystal that produces a pair of entangled photons whose properties can be manipulated to perform cryptographic tasks.

For example, one can encode cryptographic keys in the discrete properties of a pulse of light, such as its polarisation state, or the continuous aspects of an electromagnetic wave, such as the intensity and phase of the wave’s electric field. In doing so, the complex quantum properties cannot be measured or reverse engineered without destroying the particle’s original quantum states, so the embedded cryptographic keys, in theory, cannot be copied, stolen, or manipulated.

In this context, Micius will conduct three rounds of experiments in the next two years. The first phase includes testing a secure transmission of data to targeted areas on Earth, including three ground receiving stations located at Miyun (Beijing), Sanya (Hainan), and Kashgar (Xinjiang), and processed by the National Space Science Centre (NSSC) of the China Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Beijing. These ground stations will then beam the photon chains with cryptographic keys back to Micius, which the satellite will then relay to other ground stations to decode the message.

*More Ambitious Goal*
The second and third round of experiments are more ambitious, focusing on complex challenges related to particle entanglement – i.e. if two quantum particles are entangled, a change of quantum state of one particle triggers a counter-change on the other, even for systems that are too far apart to physically interact. Particle entanglement is theoretically possible across any distance, however, the fragile state of entanglement currently limits that distance to around 100 kilometres. With the QSS, Chinese researchers hope to increase that distance to more than 1,000 km.

If this phase succeeds, the QSS third round of experiments will attempt to implement the idea of teleportation of quantum information, a phenomenon described by Albert Einstein as “a spooky action at a distance”. Scientists will generate a pair of entangled photons at a ground station; one photon will be transmitted to Micius, while the other will remain on the ground.

Altering the quantum state of the particle on the ground – such as a clockwise spin – may simultaneously trigger a counter-clockwise spin in space. While theoretically possible, such ‘teleportation’ carries significant challenges, including compensating for atmospheric turbulence and movement on the ground. It also requires advanced precision technologies to synchronise both ends.

*Strategic and Military Implications*
China plans a network of quantum satellites by 2030, which will augment a ground-based quantum computer network, which will likely be extended from the currently operational 2,000 km link between Beijing and Shanghai. If successful, China’s quantum communication network will serve as a dual-use strategic asset that may advance PLA’s capacity for power projection through a constellation of space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms, tactical warning and attack assessment; command, control, and communications; navigation and positioning, and environmental monitoring.

In the PLA terms, establishing “space dominance” (“zhi tian quan”) is an essential enabler for “information dominance” (zhi xinxi quan) – a key prerequisite for allowing the PLA to seize air and naval superiority in contested areas. To this end, the PLA and civilian-defence R&D community have been developing multiple types of satellites to enhance PLA’s military effectiveness: electro-optical (EO), synthetic aperture radar (SAR), electronic intelligence (ELINT), Beidou navigation satellites, microsatellites, and also quantum communication satellites. In the PLA’s strategic thought, as reflected in the 2013 Science of Military Strategy, the ability to enter, control, and exploit space serves not only as a force enhancement, but also as a deterrent factor.

Specifically, integrated space-based electronic reconnaissance and secure communications enables PLA’s long-range precision strike capabilities, including its anti-ship ballistic missiles such as DF-21D. An SAR satellite uses a microwave transmission to create an image of maritime and ground-based targets in real time and in all weather conditions. Quantum communication satellites could be then used as data relay satellites to securely transmit targeting data to and from command centres, while evading cyber interceptions. These capabilities may in turn shape the direction and character of US carrier strike group operations at sea.

China, however, does not have a monopoly on quantum technologies. Both Russia and the US have large-scale cryptologic quantum computing development programmes, attempting to exploit the potential of quantum computing in future warfare. Military space operations together with quantum computing and cyber warfare will likely shape the contours of strategic competition as well as competitive strategies between great powers and their allies.

source:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/060920...strategic-and-military-implications-analysis/
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/arti...ite-performing-even-better-expected-says-team
http://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-latest-leap-forward-isnt-just-greatits-quantum-1471269555
http://qz.com/760804/chinas-new-qua...pace-and-time-and-create-an-unbreakable-code/

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Big step for quantum teleportation won’t bring us any closer to Star Trek. Here’s why*
By Adrian Cho, Sep. 19, 2016 , 11:15 AM

Two teams have set new distance records for quantum teleportation: using the weirdness of quantum mechanics to instantly transfer the condition or “state” of one quantum particle to another one in a different location. One group used the trick to send the state of a quantum particle of light, or photon, 6.2 kilometers across Calgary, Canada, using an optical fiber, while the other teleported the states of photons over 14.7 kilometers across Shanghai, China.

Both advances, reported today in Nature Photonics, could eventually lead to an unhackable quantum internet. But what else is quantum teleportation good for? And will we ever be able to use it to zip painlessly to work on a frigid January morning?


_*Continue reading -> *_
Big step for quantum teleportation won’t bring us any closer to Star Trek. Here’s why | Science | AAAS​

_*-----*_---------#####_*-----*_---------
​*September 19, 2016*
*Next Big Future: Quantum teleportation and communication across result fiber networks*

Two independent teams have transferred quantum information over several kilometers of fiber optic networks.

_Conceptually, one way of doing teleportation involves three participants: say, Alice, Bob and Charlie. In order for Alice and Bob to exchange cryptographic keys, they have to first establish the capacity for teleportation, with Charlie’s help.

First Alice sends a particle (A) to Charlie. Bob, meanwhile, creates a pair of entangled particles (B & C), sends B to Charlie and holds on to C. Charlie receives both A and B, and measures the particles in such a way that it’s impossible to tell which particle was sent by Alice and which by Bob. This so-called Bell state measurement results in the quantum state of particle A being transferred to particle C, which is with Bob.

In the first teleportation experiments performed in 1997, Alice, Bob and Charlie were on the same optical bench in the same laboratory. The distances involved were few tens of centimetres. If teleportation distance is defined as the distance between Charlie and Bob, then until recently the record was a mere 800 metres, because doing a Bell state measurement was difficult with photons that had travelled too far.

The record for sheer distance between Alice and Bob was set in 2012, when a group led by Anton Zeilinger at the University of Vienna achieved teleportation over 143 kilometres of free space between two of the Canary Islands. But there’s no obvious way to translate that feat into a practical quantum network that would work within a city, where free space is hard to come by and other interference would destroy delicate quantum states.

Now, Wolfgang Tittel at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, and colleagues have upped the ante. They extended the distance between Charlie and Bob and teleported quantum states using part of Calgary’s fibre optic network that isn’t being used for regular communications._

_

_​_
“The distance between Charlie and Bob, that’s the distance that counts,” says Tittel. “We have shown that this works across a metropolitan fibre network, over 6.2 kilometres, as the crow flies.”

Jian-Wei Pan at the University of Science and Technology of China and colleagues achieved a comparable separation between Charlie and Bob when they teleported quantum states using the city of Hefei’s fibre optic network. Their setup was slightly different, though: it was Charlie in the middle who created the entangled pair of particles and sent one to Bob, instead of the other way around._

*The current work is scalable with Quantum repeaters. This could allow communication across arbitrary distances*

If a photon interacts with a member of an entangled photon pair via a so-called Bell-state measurement (BSM), its state is teleported over principally arbitrary distances onto the second member of the pair. Starting in 1997, this puzzling prediction of quantum mechanics has been demonstrated many times; however, with one very recent exception, only the photon that received the teleported state, if any, travelled far while the photons partaking in the BSM were always measured closely to where they were created. Here, using the Calgary fibre network, we report quantum teleportation from a telecommunication-wavelength photon, interacting with another telecommunication photon after both have travelled over several kilometres in bee-line, onto a photon at 795~nm wavelength. This improves the distance over which teleportation takes place from 818~m to 6.2~km. Our demonstration establishes an important requirement for quantum repeater-based communications and constitutes a milestone on the path to a global quantum Internet.

Arxiv - Quantum teleportation across a metropolitan fibre network 

Nature Photonics - Quantum teleportation across a metropolitan fibre network

Nature Photonic - Quantum teleportation with independent sources and prior entanglement distribution over a network​

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*China-only science prize honours pathologist and experimental physicist*
_Research on non-invasive pregnancy tests and superconductors earns $1 million 'Chinese Nobels'._

David Cyranoski_,_19 September 2016 

The first winners of a prize devoted exclusively to scientific discoveries made in China were announced on 19 September in Beijing.

The Future Forum, a non-profit organization established last year in Beijing, announced that pathologist Dennis Ming Yuk Lo of Chinese University of Hong Kong won the life science Future Science Prize for the discovery that DNA from a foetus can be extracted from the mother’s blood. The discovery led to the now-widely-used non-invasive tests to screen a pregnant woman’s blood to see if the foetus has disorders such as Down’s syndrome. Shenzhen-based BGI alone has carried out more than 1 million screens based on the finding.

Qi-Kun Xue of Tsinghua University in Beijing netted the physics prize for the experimental discovery of high-temperature superconductivity at the interfaces of materials1 and the quantized anomalous Hall effect2 — an unusual orderly motion of electrons in a conductor at low temperature. That line of work belongs in the fast-emerging field of topological insulators. Each prize is worth US$1 million.


_*Continue reading -> *_
China-only science prize honours pathologist and experimental physicist : Nature News & Comment​

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## TaiShang

*China sets world record for scientific ocean coring*
lXinhua, September 20, 2016

China has set a new world record for scientific ocean coring, *successfully drilling 2,843.18 meters into a continental shelf in the Yellow Sea.*

Shandong No. 3 Institute of Geology and Mineral Resources said Tuesday that the drilling operation had helped verify that there were oil and gas deposits in the stratum.

The institute developed and established a drilling platform for the project in March 2015 in the waters some 83 sea miles east of Lianyungang City in the eastern province of Shandong, where the water is about 30 meters deep.

The platform is capable of holding up in gales of up to 150 km per hour.

The project is sponsored by the China Geological Survey Bureau. The coring sample can assist research into the geology of continental shelf, an important belt linking continents with oceans.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*China's first gene bank to open in Shenzhen*
By Yuan Can (People's Daily Online) 15:34, September 20, 2016





(Xinhua/Mao Siqian)​
China's first national gene bank, China National Genebank, will open in the southern city of Shenzhen on Sept. 22, with the goal of protecting, researching and utilizing genetic resources, Nanfang Daily reported. The gene bank hopes to boost the genetics industry and safeguard China’s genetic information.

The new gene bank is outfitted with dozens of refrigerators to store samples, as well as 150 domestically developed desktop gene sequencing machines. The bank will work to restore global biological samples and data. A total of 10 million samples are currently stored in the bank, according to the report.

The national gene pool consists of a biological information database and biological sample library. It can support a total of 60PB of gene data access. If a film is 500MB, then that amount is equal to 128 million pieces of film.





(Xinhua/Mao Siqian)​
The gene bank in Shenzhen is the world's fourth national-level gene bank, followed by predecessors in the U.S., Europe and Japan. Different from the other three gene banks, China’s not only consistently produces data, it also focuses on data research and usage.

"We hope to make the gene bank China's – and even the world's – biggest biological information data center, like a Google but in the field of life and health data," said Mei Yonghong, director of the China National Genebank and chairman and CEO of Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) Agriculture Group.

The gene bank was approved by the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the National Health and Family Planning Commission in October 2011. It is supported by China-based genome sequencing firm BGI.





(Xinhua/Mao Siqian)​
Before the establishment of the gene bank, gene data produced by China was stored in three international databases: the National Center for Biotechnology Information in the U.S., the European Bioinformatics Institute in the U.K. and the DNA Data Bank of Japan. It is of great importance to preserve gene data in the country of its origin, as such data can be regarded as part of national strategy.

The report stated that the gene bank will announce a cooperative project with Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a secure seed bank of Norway, on Sept. 22.

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## Three_Kingdoms

JSCh said:


> *China's first gene bank to open in Shenzhen*
> By Yuan Can (People's Daily Online) 15:34, September 20, 2016
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> (Xinhua/Mao Siqian)​
> China's first national gene bank, China National Genebank, will open in the southern city of Shenzhen on Sept. 22, with the goal of protecting, researching and utilizing genetic resources, Nanfang Daily reported. The gene bank hopes to boost the genetics industry and safeguard China’s genetic information.
> 
> The new gene bank is outfitted with dozens of refrigerators to store samples, as well as 150 domestically developed desktop gene sequencing machines. The bank will work to restore global biological samples and data. A total of 10 million samples are currently stored in the bank, according to the report.
> 
> The national gene pool consists of a biological information database and biological sample library. It can support a total of 60PB of gene data access. If a film is 500MB, then that amount is equal to 128 million pieces of film.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> (Xinhua/Mao Siqian)​
> The gene bank in Shenzhen is the world's fourth national-level gene bank, followed by predecessors in the U.S., Europe and Japan. Different from the other three gene banks, China’s not only consistently produces data, it also focuses on data research and usage.
> 
> "We hope to make the gene bank China's – and even the world's – biggest biological information data center, like a Google but in the field of life and health data," said Mei Yonghong, director of the China National Genebank and chairman and CEO of Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) Agriculture Group.
> 
> The gene bank was approved by the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the National Health and Family Planning Commission in October 2011. It is supported by China-based genome sequencing firm BGI.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> (Xinhua/Mao Siqian)​
> Before the establishment of the gene bank, gene data produced by China was stored in three international databases: the National Center for Biotechnology Information in the U.S., the European Bioinformatics Institute in the U.K. and the DNA Data Bank of Japan. It is of great importance to preserve gene data in the country of its origin, as such data can be regarded as part of national strategy.
> 
> The report stated that the gene bank will announce a cooperative project with Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a secure seed bank of Norway, on Sept. 22.



" Before the establishment of the gene bank, gene data produced by China was stored in three international databases: *the National Center for Biotechnology Information in the U.S., the European Bioinformatics Institute in the U.K. and the DNA Data Bank of Japan*. It is of great importance to preserve gene data in the country of its origin, as such data can be regarded as part of national strategy."

Jeez, finally
Better late than never though

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## ahojunk

_Another supercomputer in the works..._

---------
Sugon launches exascale computing project
(People's Daily Online) 15:24, September 19, 2016


_*




(Photo/sugon.com)*_​

Sugon, a leader in China's high-performance computing sector, has launched its E generation high-performance computer prototype project, and will soon demonstrate the applications of the project in Shanghai and Shenzhen, Xinhua reported on Sept. 18.

E generation supercomputing refers to supercomputers that are capable of performing a billion billion calculations per second. Such computers can play an essential role in solving crucial problems like those related to energy and climate change.

In the national 13th Five-Year Plan for computing research, Sugon, together with National University of Defense and Technology and Jiangnan Computing Technology Research Institution, was approved to execute an E generation prototype research project, positioning the three parties to lead the Chinese market in E generation calculation.

"The prototype system is able to support applications in the field of high-performance computing, big data and cloud computing, as well as accelerate the industrialization of technological achievements, which plays a major role in the development of China's high-performance computing industry," said Sha Chaoqun, vice president of Sugon.

Sugon has promised specific solutions to the potential challenges involved in E generation computing, specifically with regards to calculations, storage, networks, software, system cooling and reliability.

According to Sugon, the E generation computing prototype system will provide commercial services including high-performance computing, cloud computing and big data solutions once it is completed.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## TaiShang

*Chinese scientists realize quantum teleportation within intercity network*
(People's Daily Online) September 21, 2016

Recently, scientists from the University of Science and Technology of China accomplished the world’s first quantum teleportation between independent sources in the intercity communication network of Hefei, Anhui province, People’s Daily reported. *Quantum teleportation is used to deliver quantum information, which is enciphered in photons, from one place to another.*

This research result was published online by Nature Photonics on Sept. 19. The finding of a Canadian research team on quantum teleportation was also published in the same journal. Together, these two research projects demonstrate that it is feasible to conduct quantum teleportation within an intercity network. They have also laid a solid foundation for the construction of a more expansive quantum network in the future.

Zhang Qiang, a professor at the University of Science and Technology of China, explained that private quantum communication currently uses a quantum key to encrypt classified information. As the technology develops, the transmission of quantum information will be realized, and quantum teleportation - which depends on optical networks - will greatly enhance the security and strength of Internet connections.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## grey boy 2

A copy is archived here of the post - https://defence.pk/threads/chinas-f...robot-starts-work-at-shenzhen-airport.450894/

China's first intelligent security robot, starts work at Shenzhen airport 
(People's Daily Online) 14:09, September 22, 2016





AnBot, China's first intelligent security robot, starts work at Shenzhen airport. (Photo/IC)

AnBot, the first intelligent robot in China trained to carry out security checks, recently started work at the Shenzhen airport. The robot will conduct around-the-clock independent patrol in the departure hall of Terminal 3.
*

Four high-definition digital cameras help the robot to effectively uphold civil aviation security and take advantage of its mobile face recognition. Images will be passed along to behind-the-scenes security stations, where they will be analyzed. The robot is designed with four major capabilities: independent patrol, face recognition, intelligent service and emergency response.*










http://en.people.cn/n3/2016/0922/c90000-9118480-4.html

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## ahojunk

_The intelligent security robot made its debut at the Chongqing Hi-Tech Fair in April this year.
Now it's already in service. Talking about China speed, everything is fast in China.
Don't blink or you will miss it! While others talk, China do. _

--------
*China's first intelligent security robot debuts in Chongqing*
By Liang Jun (People's Daily Online) 07:27, April 26, 2016




_*China's first intelligent security robot.(CNS Photo)*​_
China’s first robot boasting both security capabilities and intelligence skills, debuted at the 12th Chongqing Hi-Tech Fair on April 21. 

Developed by the National Defense University, AnBot represents a series of breakthroughs in key technologies including low-cost autonomous navigation and intelligent video analysis, which will play an important role in enhancing the country's anti-terrorism and anti-riot measures.

AnBot's shape is similar to that of a Russian nesting doll. The robot is 1.49 meters in height, 78 kilograms in weight and 0.8 meters in diameter. Its maximum speed is 18 kilometers per hour, and its standard patrol speed is 1 kilometer per hour. It has sensors that mimic the human brain, eyes and ears. Capable of eight hours of continuous work, AnBot is able to patrol autonomously and protect against violence or unrest. 

When people around AnBot face security threats, the robot’s control personnel can remotely deploy AnBot’s electrically charged riot control tool. Within AnBot’s patrol area, people can also call for help or press the SOS button on the robot’s body to notify police of a problem.


_*



*_​_*Staff demonstrates AnBot’s functions through remote control.(CNS Photo)*​_

Source: https://defence.pk/threads/chinas-f...ork-at-shenzhen-airport.450894/#ixzz4L2J03ooJ

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

Friday, September 23, 2016, 10:19
*First national gene bank opens*
By Chai Hua in Shenzhen





​ 
 A scholar at the China National GeneBank puts gene samples into liquid nitrogen for preservation. (Photo / Xinhua)​China National GeneBank, the country’s first national gene bank, was officially put into use on Thursday. The complex is expected to offer strong support to the development of the genetics industry.

Located in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, the billion-dollar CNGB covers an area of 47,500 square meters with a unique design like terraced fields and has saved more than 10 million bio-samples with a data storage capacity of 20 petabytes for phase I.

One petabyte is about 400 billion pages of word documents.

It is the world’s fourth national-level gene bank. The other three are in the US, Europe and Japan.

Wang Jian, president of Shenzhen-based genetic sequencing firm BGI, said: “The CNGB’s data will be open to society, providing strong support to the development of the genetics industry.”

China’s genetic sequencing market, one of the most important aspects of the industry, in 2016 has become the largest in the world with an annual growth rate of above 20 percent, according to research firm iResearch Consulting Group.

To further support the development of the industry, the National Development and Reform Commission in 2011 approved the establishment of CNGB and entrusted BGI-Research with its construction.

Mei Yonghong, former mayor of Jining in Shandong province who is now director of CNGB, said he believes the gene bank can link all elements of gene-related fields, from resources and scientific research to applications in different industries, such as precision medicine and agriculture.

At the opening ceremony, CNGB signed cooperation agreements with some international and local partners, such as Svalbard Global Seed Vault, German Cancer Research Center, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology and Huawei Technologies, which provides data storage service for the bank.

Lyu Jiancheng, vice director of SIAT, said the CNGB will help them to write genes of 10 million phages (a kind of virus) so that they can make new reagents and develop new medicines.

The opening of the gene platform will also reduce costs in the genetic industry, thanks to home made equipment with high precision.

The world leading gene company Illumina has managed to practice individual genetic sequencing within the cost of below US$1,000 in 2014, but Mei Yonghong said the aim of CNGB is 1,000 yuan (US$152).

BGI’s new genetic sequencing equipment BGISEQ-500, which is expected to hit the market in October and the price is said to be one third of its counterparts.

CNGB owns 150 sets of the equipment now and the platform could satisfy the gene sequencing needs of 50,000 people.

Xu Xun, executive director of CNGB, disclosed the machine is completely manufactured in Shenzhen — an important reason for its low price, and more models of their genetic sequencing equipment will be released in November.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*How to power up graphene implants without frying cells*
_New analysis finds way to safely conduct heat from graphene to biological tissues. _

Jennifer Chu | MIT News Office
September 23, 2016



This computational illustration shows a graphene network structure below a layer of water. 
Image: Zhao Qin

In the future, our health may be monitored and maintained by tiny sensors and drug dispensers, deployed within the body and made from graphene — one of the strongest, lightest materials in the world. Graphene is composed of a single sheet of carbon atoms, linked together like razor-thin chicken wire, and its properties may be tuned in countless ways, making it a versatile material for tiny, next-generation implants.

But graphene is incredibly stiff, whereas biological tissue is soft. Because of this, any power applied to operate a graphene implant could precipitously heat up and fry surrounding cells.

Now, engineers from MIT and Tsinghua University in Beijing have precisely simulated how electrical power may generate heat between a single layer of graphene and a simple cell membrane. While direct contact between the two layers inevitably overheats and kills the cell, the researchers found they could prevent this effect with a very thin, in-between layer of water.

By tuning the thickness of this intermediate water layer, the researchers could carefully control the amount of heat transferred between graphene and biological tissue. They also identified the critical power to apply to the graphene layer, without frying the cell membrane. The results are published today in the journal_ Nature Communications.


*Continue reading -> *_
How to power up graphene implants without frying cells | MIT News
​_Paper: _Intercalated water layers promote thermal dissipation at bio–nano interfaces. Yanlei Wang, Zhao Qin, Markus J. Buehler & Zhiping Xu. _Nature Communications_ (2016)_, _DOI:10.1038/ncomms12854

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## cirr

*Major breakthrough! Chinese doctor with baking soda, hungry dead cancer cells*

2016-09-25 00:59:19 132 ℃

Introduction: he and his research team found a new therapy starve cancer cells, and published in the field of international biological and Medical Journal of eLife, the international famous scholars of tumor.






Cancer cells also need to 'eat' things to survive, deprived of its food, cancer cells will die." Professor Hu Xun of Zhejiang University cancer research that is in this seemingly simple principle, he and his research team found a new therapy starve cancer cells, and published in the field of international biological and Medical Journal of eLife, the international famous scholars of tumor.

After years of research, Hu Xun found that glucose cancer cells must eat something, they see the cancer will die glucose deprivation. But in fact, the lack of glucose supply, the tumor did not starve to death also continue to grow.

Professor Hu Xun revealed the mystery: there are a lot of lactic acid in tumor, lactic acid dissociation into lactic acid anion and hydrogen ion, as the two "helper" cancer cells, make its own according to "food" determines the number of how many "consumption".





Hu xun

Two "helper" synergy makes cancer cells in glucose content rarely, very economical use of glucose; enter "sleep" state in the absence of glucose; when the glucose supply restored growth state.

Therefore, if you want to effectively "starve to death" cancer cells, not only to deprive of glucose, but also to destroy the lactic acid anion and hydrogen ions synergistic effect. In the absence of glucose starvation or lack of the premise, as long as the removal of any one of the two factors,*Cancer cells will die quickly.*

The researchers used alkali such as sodium bicarbonate (sodium bicarbonate) to remove hydrogen ions within the tumor, the synergistic effect can destroy lactate and hydrogen ions, so as to effectively kill in glucose starvation or lack of tumor cells.

The rapid transformation of basic research results into tumor clinical treatment, so that more patients benefit is the key.

Since 2012, with 30 years of clinical experience in radiology the Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine Department of interventional radiology doctor Chao Minghe Hu Xun team hit it off, into the primary hepatocellular carcinoma model therapy study, and this method is named "targeting tumor lactate anions and hydrogen ions arterial chemoembolization, referred to as" TILA-TACE".





Ming Chao

Clinically, Chao Ming explained: "conventional arterial chemoembolization (cTACE) cut off the tumor 'food channel', and then we use sodium bicarbonate to remove hydrogen ion within the tumor, the tumor is equivalent to not only to 'eat' let it go to the gym, fast consumption, rapid" starve "."

It is inspired, clinical study results show: they were treated with cTACE 37 patients, 18 cases were effective; with TILA-TACE for the treatment of 40 cases of patients, 40 cases were effective.

And liver cancer treated with TILA-TACE in this clinical study.*Are difficult to treat liver cancer*.

And the international comprehensive report, the average objective effective rate of cTACE treatment was 35%. 35% to 100%, such a huge contrast, not only to the international counterparts in the acceptance of this article, very carefully, even the two professors have been suspected in carrying out this research.

"At present preliminary statistics, the patient's median survival, has more than three years and a half; follow-up still need large sample randomized controlled study, if confirmed effective, for liver cancer treatment, is indeed a leap." Two experts said.

@Bussard Ramjet We need formal translation of this great achievement in cancer therapy! 

Life science is one area in which China will play an increaingly important role in the coming decade.

http://www.bestchinanews.com/Health/4326.html

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## Three_Kingdoms

*China’s version of GPS ‘is now just as accurate’*
Viola Zhou
Developer of Beidou global positioning system says it can match performance of US rival
PUBLISHED : Monday, 26 September, 2016, 12:00am
UPDATED : Monday, 26 September, 2016, 12:00am







China’s Beidou navigation system is now accurate within centimetres and on par with the US Global Positioning System (GPS), said a scientist who has been developing the technology.

The system could even offer more precise positioning services than its US rival within China, but further support was needed to make GPS users switch to Beidou, navigational-systems expert Xu Ying said at a technology expo in Hong Kong on Sunday.

Beijing has been building the system to make its domestic users, including the military, less dependent on foreign technology. Most Chinese lighthouses, military facilities and fishing boats had been using it since an Asia-Pacific network was completed in 2012, officials said earlier.

China to launch world’s first ‘cold’ atomic clock in space ... and it’ll stay accurate for a billion years

For military users, Beidou provided improved security against interference and interception, Xu said. It is unclear how many users within the PLA have switched to Beidou.

Xu said about 70 per cent of the fishing boats in the South China Sea had been equipped with the system. They benefited from its unique communication function, which enabled terminals to send out messages along with their location information, she added.

“With Beidou, they can let families know they are safe,” Xu said. “They can also report to coastguards if something happens. It ensures the safety of South China Sea fishermen.”

Busted by Beidou: Satellite tracking pins down Hunan officials misusing government cars

Xu said some mapping and construction companies were using Beidou and GPS at the same time to prepare for a complete shift to the home-grown system.

In 2013, a Xinhua report said more than 90 per cent of industrial users who needed positioning accuracy within centimetres relied on GPS.

A major goal of Beidou was to protect those industries, such as irrigation and urban planning, against the risk of the US turning the GPS off, the report said.

With 23 satellites in orbit, the Beidou navigation system now covers China and some neighbouring countries. Beijing hopes to launch about 20 more satellites by 2020 for its global network.

China launches new workhorse ‘Long March’ rocket with 20 ‘micro satellites’ aboard

China hopes to make Beidou a world-class navigation system that serves people all over the globe, according to an official document on Beidou released in June.

Beijing has persuaded a few Asian countries, including Laos and Pakistan, to adopt Beidou’s free civilian service. The government is in contact with other states under the “One Belt, One Road” infrastructure scheme to promote the system.

The Beidou team was also exploring applications in agriculture, disaster relief and even animal protection, Xu said.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Real 'Ironman': China's first robot exoskeleton AIDER debuts in Chengdu*
(People's Daily Online) 15:50, September 28, 2016





China's first robot exoskeleton, AIDER. (file photo)​
The first robot exoskeleton in China, named AIDER, has been officially unveiled in Chengdu, Sichuan province, making China the fourth country in the world to develop the cutting-edge technology.

AIDER, which some compare to the fictional Ironman, was developed by the Center of Robotics at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. The technology took six years of hard work and technical innovation to master.

AIDER functions through the use of dozens of censors, which detect a user's physical intentions. The censors then send electronic signals to the control unit, prompting various components to work together to drive the joint parts and help the user move freely.





China's first robot exoskeleton, AIDER. (file photo)​
According to Lin Xichuan, one of the developers, this wearable exoskeleton robot combines human intelligence with physical strength. It is an important breakthrough for many people who require assistance with walking and rehabilitation. Compared with traditional rehabilitation equipment, AIDER enables patients to walk relatively freely. It also facilitates blood circulation to the legs and prevents muscle atrophy. It can even help patients recover their biological memories of walking.

Cheng Hong, executive director of the Center of Robotics, said that the robot exoskeleton can be used in military and sporting applications, as it can help users carry heavy objects. Using the robot exoskeleton, a single soldier can carry items as heavy as 90 kilograms.

At present, AIDER has begun low-volume production. Preliminary clinical trials have been conducted on a group of physically disabled people.

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## JSCh

*28 September 2016*
Our home spiral arm in the Milky Way is less wimpy than thought | New Scientist
By Rebecca Boyle




Our home in the universe
NASA/JPL

It’s tricky to map an entire galaxy when you live in one of its arms. But astronomers have made the clearest map yet of the Milky Way – and it turns out that the arm that hosts our solar system is even bigger than previously thought.

The idea that the Milky Way is a spiral was first proposed more than 150 years ago, but we only started identifying its limbs in the 1950s. Details about the galaxy’s exact structure are still hotly debated, such as the number of arms, their length and the size of the bar of hot gas and dust that stretches across its middle.

The star-filled arms are densely packed with gas and dust, where new stars are born. That dust can obscure stars we use to measure distances, complicating the mapping process.

Two of the arms, called Perseus and Scutum-Centaurus, are larger and filled with more stars, while the Sagittarius and Outer arms have fewer stars but just as much gas. The solar system has been thought to lie in a structure called the Orion Spur, or Local Arm, which is smaller than the nearby Perseus Arm.

*Just as grand*
Now, Ye Xu and colleagues from the Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing, China, say the Local Arm is just as grand as the others.

The team used the Very Long Baseline Array in New Mexico to make extremely accurate measurements of high-mass gas clouds in the arms, and used a star-measuring trigonometry trick called parallax to measure their distances.

“Radio telescopes can ‘see’ through the galactic plane to massive star forming regions that trace spiral structure, while optical wavelengths will be hidden by dust,” Xe says. “Achieving a highly accurate parallax is not easy.”

The new measurements suggest the Milky Way is not a grand design spiral with well-defined arms, but a spiral with many branches and subtle spurs.

However, Xu and colleagues say the Orion Spur is not a spur at all, but more in line with the galaxy’s other spectacular arms. The team also discovered a spur connecting the Local and Sagittarius arms.

“This lane has received little attention in the past because it does not correspond with any of the major spiral arm features of the inner galaxy,” the authors of the study write.

Future measurements with other radio telescopes will shed more light on the galaxy’s shape. The European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft is in the midst of a mission to make a three-dimensional map of our galaxy, too. More measurements of the high-mass gas regions will help astronomers determine what our galaxy looks like, from the inside out.


*Journal reference: *
The local spiral structure of the Milky Way, Ye Xu, Mark Reid, Thomas Dame, Karl Menten, Nobuyuki Sakai, Jingjing Li, Andreas Brunthaler, Luca Moscadelli, Bo Zhang and Xingwu Zheng, _Science Advances_ 28 Sep 2016, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1600878​
*Abstract*

The nature of the spiral structure of the Milky Way has long been debated. Only in the last decade have astronomers been able to accurately measure distances to a substantial number of high-mass star-forming regions, the classic tracers of spiral structure in galaxies. We report distance measurements at radio wavelengths using the Very Long Baseline Array for eight regions of massive star formation near the Local spiral arm of the Milky Way. Combined with previous measurements, these observations reveal that the Local Arm is larger than previously thought, and both its pitch angle and star formation rate are comparable to those of the Galaxy’s major spiral arms, such as Sagittarius and Perseus. Toward the constellation Cygnus, sources in the Local Arm extend for a great distance along our line of sight and roughly along the solar orbit. Because of this orientation, these sources cluster both on the sky and in velocity to form the complex and long enigmatic Cygnus X region. We also identify a spur that branches between the Local and Sagittarius spiral arms.​

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## ahojunk

_More news on the baking soda stuff._

========
*Study finds soda helps fight cancer*
2016-09-27 09:14 | China Daily | _Editor: Feng Shuang_

Therapy involves injection as part of liver treatment, not drinking liquid

A test of a cancer therapy by Chinese researchers based on baking soda - or sodium bicarbonate - shows promise but is still in the preliminary stages of research, and much more testing is needed, they said.

The researchers made the statement after heated discussion arose online about the research, with some netizens speculating that drinking sodium bicarbonate dissolved in water can cure cancer.

The study, published in the journal eLife in August, was led by Hu Xun, a cancer researcher at the Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University's School of Medicine, and Chao Ming, a radiology researcher at the hospital. All 40 liver cancer patients on whom the therapy was tried during the trial responded positively.

An infusion of soda before a procedure to restrict a tumor's blood supply appeared to aid the attack on cancerous cells.

The research aroused public attention over the past few days, with many netizens excited because they believed doctors had found an effective and cheap way - merely a drink of soda water - to cure liver cancer, one of the most common types of cancer among Chinese people.

"The research is valid, but it is preliminary," Chao said in a statement posted on the hospital's website on Monday. "Repeated tests are needed."

The therapy involves injecting sodium bicarbonate into the blood vessels that supply tumors. Patients are not asked to drink it, he said, adding that it is not clear that slightly alkaline water, such as soda water, is beneficial to the treatment of cancer.

In addition, the therapy only proved effective in patients with liver cancer in the research. Further research is needed to see whether it is effective against other cancers, he said.

Zhang Yuewei, a radiologist at Beijing Tsinghua Changgung Hospital who had discussed the research earlier with Chao, said the new therapy is at an early research stage, and the therapy is intended to improve the effectiveness of the usual treatment for liver cancer, not to replace it.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*Documentary traces apple's origin to China*
Updated: 2016-09-27 08:02
By Xinhua in Urumqi(China Daily)

A documentary broadcast on Monday traces the origins of the apple to the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, quashing the popularly held Chinese belief that they were introduced to the country from the West.

The documentary, "Saving the Gene Pool", draws on a multitude of scientific evidence to show that all cultivated apple varieties are offshoots of Malus sieversii, a wild apple native to the Tianshan mountain range in Central Asia.

Many Chinese attribute the introduction of the apple to China by John Livingston Nevius (1829-93), a US Christian missionary. Livingstone and his wife were said to have brought apple seedlings with them to Yantai, Shandong province, now a major apple growing region.

The documentary team also tested a wild apple tree in the Ili Kazak autonomous prefecture in Xinjiang. The 12.9-meter tree is believed to be over 600 years old, predating the supposed introduction of apples to China by a few hundred years.

The sequencing of the apple genome by Italian Riccardo Velasco further supports the relationship between wild apples and domesticated apples, said Zhang Daoyuan, a researcher with the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The Tianshan mountain range has one of the world's largest wild fruit ecological systems. Many wild fruit species flourished in the valleys and basins about 65 million years ago. According to the latest research, the region has 84 varieties of wild apple, making it a rare and rich apple gene pool.

Guan Kaiyun, deputy head of the institute, said researchers are exploring the potential to domesticate wild varieties that are not only drought- and cold-resistant, but also taste good.

The documentary, broadcast by China Central Television, was jointly produced by the institute, CCTV and the CAS Bureau of Science Communication.






A farmer picks apples at an orchard in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. Wang Tiesuo / China News Service File Photo​

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## ahojunk

Chinese, U.S. scientists invent power-generating fabric
2016-09-30 15:17:18 Xinhua Web Editor: Fei Fei

_*




The special cloth can utitlize sunshine and body movements to charge small electronics
like watches and mobile phones. [Photo: Chinanews.com/Chongqing University]*_​
Playing a baseball game on a sunny afternoon may soon be a way to charge your iPhone, thanks to a new fabric developed by Chinese and American scientists.

The fabric harvests energy from both motion and sunlight. Solar cells and nano-generators embedded in lightweight fibers are woven with wool to create the fabric, according to Fan Xing, a chemical engineering professor at Chongqing University.

Only 0.32 millimeters thick, the fabric could be used with wearable devices, or as window shades and tents in the future, Fan told Xinhua on Friday.

With sufficient sunlight and constant motion, a 5-cm long and 4-cm wide fabric can generate and maintain electricity with a voltage of 5V, enough to charge a cellphone.

"Our research considers the safety of the fabric and we conduct our tests at low voltage," Fan said. "The fabric is safe the for human body."

Durability tests have not yet been run, but the fabric can be bent 500 times without losing performance.

The findings, in cooperation from the Georgia Institute of Technology, were published in Nature Energy, an international academic journal earlier this month.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Maojun Yang’s Group Published the Structure of Respirasome in Nature*

On September 21st 2016, a research team led by Professor Maojun Yang from the School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua University published an article entitled “The Architecture of the Mammalian Respirasome” in Nature which has reported the highest resolution cryo-EM structure of mitochondria respirasome (1). This work is the second breakthrough by Prof. Yang in the area after reporting the structure of type-II mitochondria complex I in Nature in 2012 (2). The structure of respirasome, which is the largest and most complicated membrane protein complex identified to date, provides insight into the organization of mammalian respiratory chain as well as the mechanism of proton pumping and electron transfer, ultimately provides critical information into the treatment of cellular-respiration related diseases.

Respiration is the most basic activity of all living organisms. Respirasome abnormality in human can lead to various serious diseases, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, multiple sclerosis, Friedreich’s ataxia and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Respirasome, which is a gigantic molecular machine responsible for cellular respiration, locates in the inner mitochondrial membrane (IMM). In 1997, American scientist Hackenbrock proposed the fluid model claiming that four protein complexes, including NADH dehydrogenase (CI), succinate dehydrogenase (CII), cytochrome bc1 complex (CIII) and cytochrome c oxidase (CIV), are separately scattered in the IMM, and each of them catalyzes one step of respiration, while since 2000, more and more evidence shows these complexes are not independent from of each other, but can combine to form a higher order structure, supercomplex (SC). Different combination types can form different supercomplexes, among which SCI1III2IV1 is the most abundant and important.



*More -> *Maojun Yang’s Group Published the Structure of Respirasome in Nature* | *Tsinghua University News
_
*Paper: *_The architecture of the mammalian respirasome, _Nature_ (2016), DOI: 10.1038/nature19359

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Scientist from China, UK team up to find out how anti-cancer components are produced in Chinese herb ‘Huangqin’*
By Cai Wenjun | September 27, 2016, Tuesday |



Online Edition




Scientists from China and UK have started co-efforts on a research to find out how the anti-cancer components are produced inside a traditional Chinese herb.

This can lead to development of new health supplement and drugs to help control and fight with cancer, scientists said during the establishment of a new Sino-UK joint research centre.

Under the cooperation of China Academy of Sciences (CAS) and UK-based John Innes Center (JIC), a joint research center called CAS-JIC Centre of Excellence for Plant and Microbial Science with participation of three leading institutes from China and UK was established with main focus on the improvement of food crops and the production of high-value, beneficial products from plants and microbes, experts announced over the weekend.

Herb Huangqin, or Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi, is been used in traditional Chinese medicine for the treatment of respiratory infection through effects of anti-inflammation and clearing away heat. But scientists have found its anti-cancer effects in its two compounds—baicalein and wogonin, but how the two elements compound and metabolize remained unknown.

Through the team from both Shanghai and UK, scientists explained how the two useful compounds are made in Huangqin. “With the discovery, we can introduce the two compounds in other plants to product plants with anti-cancer effects and develop pure supplements and drugs with anti-cancer effects to benefit the public,” said Dr Zhao Qing from the team.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Save Genes for the Future*
Sep 30, 2016

It is delicious, it is ancient, it is popular, and it plays an important part in human culture. It is apple, a kind of fruit included in our food list long since the Stone Age.

Modern cultivars of domesticated apple (Malus pumila) were first brought to the world from Europe, and were therefore believed to be originated from Europe. However, scientists found through years of investigation that cultivated apples around the world may trace back to one ancestor—the Malus sieversii.

Malus sieversii is a wild apple native to the mountains of Central Asia in southern Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Xinjiang, China. It was first described (as Pyrus sieversii) in 1833 by Carl Friedrich von Ledebour, a German naturalist who saw them growing in the Altai Mountains.

Located in the far interior of the Eurasia continent, the Tianshan Mountains preserved many of the Mesozoic warmth-requiring wild fruits, when the Quaternary glaciation of the Cenozoic came about two to three million years ago.

Recent survey reveals that the wild fruit forest in the Tianshan Mountains owns 58 wild fruit species, and Malus sieversii is the major species, with as many as 84 varieties. This is a natural gene pool rarely seen in the world and may provide future possibilities for the development of apple species.

However, the species is now considered vulnerable to extinction due to human activities. Wild fruit forest now covers only about half of its areas 50 years ago. Plant diseases and insect pests caused blockbuster damage to the forest. Death rate of the forest reached 80 per cent in Xinjiang’s Xinyuan County, core area of the wild fruit forest. Statistics indicate that the damage is spreading at a speed of 400 hectares per year.

Scientist from the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography proposed an initiative to preserve the gene pool for wild fruits in the Tianshan Mountains in 2014. The initiative was highlighted by the Chinese government. The project to save and preserve the wild fruit forest was approved this April and will be launched in early October.

The remaining wild fruit forest of about 5,000 hectares will get systematic conservation and research under the frame of the project. Scientists hope to find the reasons for the ecosystem degradation of the wild fruit forest and therefore develop key technologies for species rejuvenation of the forest ecosystem.

Modern thremmatoloy develops more and more refined breeding technologies, but leaves less and less farming varieties. About 75 per cent of farming species have gone extinct around the world. This will mean less and less possibilities for variety development, in the perspective of gene basis.

The wild fruit forest, with its abundant germplasm resources, may hold the last key for future development of fruit. But can that happen? Maybe, the answer lies in the wild fruit forest preservation project.


Save Genes for the Future---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## ahojunk

_Besides in Shenzhen airport, now there are 10 robots in Zhuhai and Zhongshan ports.
These robot designs are different to that at Shenzhen or Chongqing._

========
Robot customs officers debut in south China ports
2016-10-01 23:50:41 Xinhua Web Editor: Meng Xue

_*




An intelligent robot works as customs officer at a port in Zhuhai, south China's 
Guangdong Province on October 1, 2016. [Photo: ycwb.com]*_​
Ten intelligent robots have started to work as customs officers at three ports in the cities of Zhuhai and Zhongshan, southern China's Guangdong Province on Saturday, according to the local customs office.

They are the first batch of intelligent robots, to be used by Chinese customs at the ports of Gongbei, Hengqin and Zhongshan. The robots, named Xiao Hai, have state-of-the-art perception technology and are able to listen, speak, learn, see and walk.

Based on a specialized customs database, the robots can answer questions in 28 languages and dialects, including Cantonese, Mandarin, English and Japanese.

There are some particular problems they cannot solve, and customs officials said they will link the robots to their customer service hotline in the future.

With face recognition technology, the robots can detect suspicious people and raise an alarm, according to Zhao Min, director of Gongbei customs.

_*




An intelligent robot works as customs officer at a port in Zhuhai,
south China's Guangdong Province on October 1, 2016. [Photo: ycwb.com]
*_​*Discussions for the robots are here* - 
https://defence.pk/threads/chinas-intelligent-robots.450894/

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* Chinese scientists control major cotton disease with gene technology*
Source: Xinhua  2016-10-04 12:58:36

BEIJING, Oct. 4 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have made a breakthrough in controlling a major disease of cotton plants using gene technology, Xinhua has learned.

After eight years of research, scientists with the Institute of Microbiology of Chinese Academy of Sciences found that gene interference technology can prevent the spread of a pathogenic fungus, the cause of verticillium dahliae wilt.

Verticillium dahliae is a vascular fungal pathogen responsible for devastating many crops.

Led by Guo Huishan, the research group has discovered how the fungus infects the cotton.

Based on their findings, scientists have cultivated a new strain of cotton with resistance to verticillium dahliae increased by 22.25 percent.

"Anti-pathogenic fungus cotton will help cotton farmers make more money," said Guo.

The findings have been published in the latest edition of "Nature Plants."

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

Posted: Oct 05, 2016
* 'Smart clothing' could someday power cell phones with the sun's rays *

(_Nanowerk News_) Batteries in smart phones and other portable electronics often die at inopportune times. Carrying a spare battery is one solution. As an alternative, researchers have tried to create fibers to incorporate in clothing that would power these devices. However, many of these fibers can't withstand clothing manufacturing, especially weaving and cutting.

Now, in the journal _ACS Nano_ ("Tailorable and Wearable Textile Devices for Solar Energy Harvesting and Simultaneous Storage"), scientists report the first fibers suitable for weaving into tailorable textiles that can capture and release solar energy. 



The “threads” (fiber electrodes) featuring tailorability and knittability can be large-scale fabricated and then woven into energy textiles. The fiber supercapacitor with merits of tailorability, ultrafast charging capability, and ultrahigh bending-resistance is used as the energy storage module, while an all-solid dye-sensitized solar cell textile is used as the solar energy harvesting module. (© ACS) 

To collect solar power, Wenjie Mai, Xing Fan and colleagues created two different types of fibers. One contained titanium or a manganese-coated polymer along with zinc oxide, a dye and an electrolyte. These fibers were then interlaced with copper-coated polymer wires to create the solar cell section of the textile. To store power, the researchers developed a second type of fiber. This one was made of titanium, titanium nitride, a thin carbon shell to prevent oxidation and an electrolyte. These fibers were woven with cotton yarn. 

When combined, the new materials formed a flexible textile that the team could cut and tailor into a "smart garment" that was fully charged by sunlight. The researchers say the clothing could potentially power small electronics including tablets and phones.

Source: _American Chemical Society
_
'Smart clothing' could someday power cell phones with the sun's rays


Journal Reference:
Tailorable and Wearable Textile Devices for Solar Energy Harvesting and Simultaneous Storage, _ACS Nano _(2016), DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.6b05293

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Editor's summary*

The lower olefins—chiefly ethylene, propylene and butylene—are starting materials for many plastics and other industrial products. They are usually obtained by cracking hydrocarbon feedstocks, so as petroleum reserves become depleted the urgency to switch to alternative feedstocks such as biomass increases. The 'Fischer–Tropsch to olefins' (FTO) process produces lower olefines from syngas—a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide derived from biomass, coal and natural gas—but at the same time produces large amounts of unwanted methane. Here Liangshu Zhong and colleagues describe a new catalyst for the FTO conversion. Formed from cobalt carbide nanoprisms, the catalyst is active in mild reaction conditions, is highly selective for lower olefins and, critically, produces very little methane.


Cobalt carbide nanoprisms for direct production of lower olefins from syngas : Nature : Nature Research

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Researchers demonstrate a single laser source scheme for studying topological matter in cold-atom systems*
October 7, 2016 by Bob Yirka report



Experimental realization of 2D SO interaction and 1D-2D crossover. Credit: _Science_ (2016). DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf6689

(Phys.org)—A team of researchers with members from several institutions in China has developed a new means for studying topological matter in cold-atom systems that involves using a single laser source. In their paper published in the journal _Science_, the team describes how the scheme works and outlines possible uses for it. Monika Aidelsburger with UPMC Sorbonne University offers an overview of the work done by the team in a Perspective piece in the same journal issue and offers some insight into some of the possible directions such research is going.


_*Continue -> *_http://phys.org/news/2016-10-laser-source-scheme-topological-cold-atom.html

*More information:* Z. Wu et al. Realization of two-dimensional spin-orbit coupling for Bose-Einstein condensates, _Science_ (2016). DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf6689

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

By Karen McNulty Walsh | October 7, 2016
*Still No 'Sterile' Neutrinos, But the Search Goes On*
_Looking through a window into the "dark" universe_



 A liquid-filled detector at the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment in China (Credit: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)​
Reports of the non-existence of the so-called “sterile” neutrino are premature, say scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory—even as they release results from two experiments that further limit the places this elusive particle may be hiding. These results, described in three papers published in _Physical Review Letters (PRL) _by scientists working on the Daya Bay Neutrino Experiment in China and the Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (MINOS) at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory—like results recently announced by another neutrino experiment known as IceCube—greatly narrow the “phase space” where scientists must hunt.

Whether you look at the new results as “zeroing in” on the elusive particles, or largely ruling out their existence, the scientists say the search for sterile neutrinos will and should go on.

“Finding true evidence that sterile neutrinos exist would profoundly change our understanding of the universe,” said Brookhaven physicist Xin Qian, one of the neutrino hunters. These light, electrically neutral particles could be components of the mysterious “dark world,” including the dark matter that physicists know makes up about a quarter of the universe, but has never been directly detected.

_*Continue -> *_
Brookhaven National Lab Newsroom | Still No 'Sterile' Neutrinos, But the Search Goes On​
Journal Reference:

Daya Bay-only Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 151802
MINOS-only Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 151803
MINOS-Daya Bay-Bugey 3 Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 151801

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## beijingwalker

*60 years of China aerospace development*
*



*

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## beijingwalker

*60 years of China aerospace development*
Baku, September 19, AZERTAC

Beijing authorities plan to 2030 to transform the Chinese capital into the global scientific and technical innovation center.

This is stated in the document, ratified by the Premier of the state Council of China Li Keqiang.

According to the plan of the authorities, Beijing will become the world leader in the field of scientific and technical innovation pole for a high level of economic growth, the best place for innovative personnel, by area of innovation in the field of culture and the city, is an example for others in the field of exemplary environmental building.

By 2017, the government plans to form the basis for the construction of the Beijing innovation center. By 2020 it is planned to further strengthen the basic functions of the scientific and technical innovation center and its scientific and technical innovation potential. By 2030, the authorities plan to further strengthen and optimize the basic functions of the city as a centre of excellence of the scientific and technical innovation to provide support for scientific and technological development of the country.
http://azertag.az/en/xeber/993803

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## onebyone

Canada and China have agreed to form a new joint venture to develop to market and construct the Advanced Fuel Candu Reactor (AFCR) in China. The deal was signed by Canada's SNC-Lavalin, China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) and Shanghai Electric. The reactor reuses used fuel from light water reactors.

The joint venture company is expected to be registered in mid-2017. This would be followed by the formation of two design centres - one in Canada and the other in China - to complete the AFCR technology. SNC-Lavalin said this could lead to the construction of the world's first two ACFR units in China and "possible subsequent builds in China and around the world".

The AFCR is described as "a 700 MW Class Generation III reactor based on the highly successful Candu 6 and Enhanced Candu 6 (EC6) reactors with a number of adaptations to meet the latest Canadian and international standards." The reactor features a heavy-water moderator and heavy-water coolant in a pressure tube design and can use both recycled uranium and thorium as fuel. Candu reactors can be refueled online.
Units 1 and 2 of the Qinshan Phase III nuclear power plant in China use the Candu 6 pressurized heavy water reactor technology, with Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) being the main contractor of the project on a turnkey basis. 

The Candu 6 reactors should be modified to become full AFCRs. 

The AFCR efficiently uses RU (recycled Uranium) from the spent fuel of LWR (light water reactors)

Current CANDU reactors, as a result of favorable reactor core physics characteristics and on-power fuelling, use approximately 30% less natural uranium per each kilowatt-hour of electricity as compared to PWR designs. 

The AFCR uses advanced fuels specifically direct use of recycled uranium (DRU) fuel or low enriched uranium/thorium (LEU/Th) fuel. DRU fuel represents a gradual transition from NU-based fuels that are used in current CANDU 6 reactors. DRU fuel is similar to the already proven natural uranium equivalent (NUE) fuel in that it is composed of RU, from reprocessed pressurized water reactor (PWR) spent fuel but has a slightly higher fissile content (contains about 0.95%wt. 235U) than the NUE fuel.

The AFCR, although specifically designed for DRU and LEU/Th fuels, retains the ability to easily adapt to various fuel cycle options, such as NU, NUE and Pu/Th.

The DRU fuel is recycled uranium (RU) based fuel, arranged in a 43-element CANFLEX fuel bundle. The nominal enrichment of the RU is 0.95 wt% 235U to achieve a target burnup of 10,000 MWd/tHE. 

The low-enriched uranium (LEU) and thorium (Th) fuel is a heterogeneous combination of the constituent fuels arranged in a 43-element CANFLEX fuel bundle. The fuel is designed to achieve a target burnup of 20,000 MWd/tHE.

Adopting alternative fuel cycles such as NUE, DRU, and LEU/Th significantly improves the uranium utilization rates while meeting nuclear power generation requirements. In fact, an AFCR twin-unit plant using DRU fuel would save approximately 10,000 tonnes of natural uranium over its 60-year design life. 

AFCR Generation III enhancements include:
•  Extended plant life of 60 years
•  Increased operating and safety margins
•  Advanced fuel design
•  Robust design against internal and external events
•  Inherent accident resistance
•  Enhanced safety features for extended station blackout
•  Enhanced core damage prevention features and severe accident response
•  Advanced fire protection system

Reactivity control in the AFCR is a triple layer of defence that ensures reactor shutdown at all times (no loss of shutdown event)





















http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/09/advanced-candu-reactors-for-china-will.html

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Surya 1

Now a days every thing in china is advance.

Good luck guys.


----------



## Jlaw

What's the comparison between this reactor and the current gen one?


----------



## JSCh

*A Novel Battery Design of Making Dual-Ion Battery Efficient*

Dual-ion batteries (DIBs) are a new type of battery developed in recent years, typically using graphite as both cathode and anode material. DIBs can operate at a wider voltage window with safer performance, and cheaper than conventional Lithium ion batteries. 

Prof. TANG Yongbing and co-workers from Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, had previously developed a novel and low-cost aluminum-graphite DIB (AGDIB) using Al foil as both the anode and current collector. While the AGDIB exhibits high energy density, but it is far from practical applications due to the poor stability caused by the crack and pulverization problem of Al foil during cycling.

To solve this problem, Prof. TANG and his co-workers designed a 3D porous Al foil coated with a uniform carbon layer (pAl/C) both as the anode and the current collector for the DIB. The 3D porous structure of Al alleviates the mechanical stress caused by the volume change of Al during electrochemical cycling, and shortens the ion diffusion length as well. The carbon layer helps buffer the Al volume change, and alleviates undesirable surface reactions through SEI film formation. Therefore, owing to the synergistic effect of the porous and conductive structure of the pAl/C anode, the DIB exhibits excellent long-term cycling stability of over 1000 cycles with 89.4% retention of capacity at 2C current rate (charging/discharging within 30 minutes). It's worth noting that the energy density of this DIB is estimated to be 204 Wh kg-1 at a high power density of 3084 W kg-1 (charging/discharging within 4 minutes), which is two times larger than best commercial lithium ion batteries and the best performance of any reported DIBs. 

Prof. TANG and co-workers believe that this novel DIB with merits of low-cost, high rate, high energy density and long-term cycling capabilities shows great potential for industrial applications in the energy field such as portable electronics and electric vehicles.

This research was supported by the Guangdong Innovation Team and the National Natural Science Foundation of China and has already online published in Advanced Materials.http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.201603735/full.







Schematic structure of the DIB (Image by Professor TANG Yongbing) ​
Tang Yongbing
Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology
Email: tangyb@siat.ac.cn

A Novel Battery Design of Making Dual-Ion Battery Efficient----Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology

Journal Reference:

Xuefeng Tong, Fan Zhang, Bifa Ji, Maohua Sheng, Yongbing Tang,
Carbon-Coated Porous Aluminum Foil Anode for High-Rate, Long-Term Cycling Stability, and High Energy Density Dual-Ion Batteries, _Adv. Mater._ (2016), DOI: 10.1002/adma.201603735​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

Cold atoms twisting spin and momentum

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6308/35.full

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6308/83.full.pdf+html

@Bussard Ramjet 

*我国科学家在超冷原子量子模拟领域取得重大突破*

文章来源：中国科学技术大学 发布时间：2016-10-11 【字号： 小 中 大 】

　　中国科学技术大学和北京大学相关研究人员组成的联合团队日前在超冷原子量子模拟领域取得重大突破，在国际上首次理论提出并实验实现超冷原子二维自旋轨道耦合的人工合成，测定了由自旋轨道耦合导致的新奇拓扑量子物性。这一关键突破将对促进新奇拓扑量子物态的研究，进而推动人们对物质世界的深入理解带来重大影响。该合作成果以“研究长文”的形式发表在国际权威学术期刊《科学》上。由于该工作“对研究超越传统凝聚态物理的奇异现象具有重大潜力 ”，《科学》杂志在同期的“观点”栏目专门配发评论文章。

　　自旋轨道耦合是量子物理学中基本的物理效应，它在多种基本物理现象和新奇量子物态中扮演了核心角色。对这些现象的研究产生了自旋电子学、拓扑绝缘体、拓扑超导体等当前凝聚态物理中最重要的前沿研究领域。然而，由于普遍存在难以控制的复杂环境，很多重要的新奇物理难以在固体材料中进行精确研究，对相关科研工作带来很大挑战。

　　同时，随着超冷原子物理量子模拟领域的不断发展，在超冷原子中实现人工自旋轨道耦合并研究新奇量子物态已成为该领域最重大的前沿课题之一。冷原子有环境干净、高度可控等重要特性。过去5年里，一维人工自旋轨道耦合在实验上实现并取得一系列成果，但探索广泛深刻的新型拓扑量子物态须获得二维以上的自旋轨道耦合。如何实现高维自旋轨道耦合已成为超冷原子量子模拟最紧迫的核心课题。

　　在超冷原子中实现高维自旋轨道耦合在理论和实验上都是极具挑战性的问题，国际上多个团队均为此付出了大量努力。为解决这一根本困难，北京大学教授刘雄军带领的理论小组提出了“拉曼光晶格量子系统”，并发现基于该系统不仅可完好地实现二维人工自旋轨道耦合，而且能得到如量子反常霍尔效应和拓扑超流等深刻的基本物理效应。基于该理论方案，中国科大教授潘建伟、陈帅和邓友金等组成的实验小组在经过多年艰苦努力发展起来的超精密激光和磁场调控技术的基础上，成功构造了拉曼光晶格量子系统，合成了二维自旋轨道耦合的玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚体。进一步研究发现，合成的自旋轨道耦合和能带拓扑具有高度可调控性。

　　该工作将对冷原子和凝聚态物理研究产生重大影响，基于此突破可研究全新的拓扑物理，包括固体系统中难以观察到的玻色子拓扑效应等，从而为超冷原子量子模拟开辟出一条新的道路。该项突破也显示出我国在超冷原子量子模拟相关研究方向上已走在国际最前列。

　　潘建伟、刘雄军、陈帅依次为论文的通讯作者。该项目得到国家自然科学基金委员会、科学技术部、教育部、中国科学院和中科院-阿里巴巴量子计算联合实验室等的支持。

　　*相关链接：* 

　　《科学》杂志论文

　　《科学》评论文章






　　二维自旋轨道耦合和拓扑能带实现示意图。在激光场作用下，原子在光晶格中发生自旋翻转的量子隧穿，导致自旋轨道耦合。






自旋轨道耦合诱导的不同自旋态的原子团分布






测量到的高对称点自旋态分布以及对应的能带陈省身拓扑数与理论计算相符

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

cirr said:


> Cold atoms twisting spin and momentum
> 
> http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6308/35.full
> 
> http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6308/83.full.pdf+html
> 
> @Bussard Ramjet
> 
> *我国科学家在超冷原子量子模拟领域取得重大突破*
> 
> 文章来源：中国科学技术大学 发布时间：2016-10-11 【字号： 小 中 大 】
> 
> 中国科学技术大学和北京大学相关研究人员组成的联合团队日前在超冷原子量子模拟领域取得重大突破，在国际上首次理论提出并实验实现超冷原子二维自旋轨道耦合的人工合成，测定了由自旋轨道耦合导致的新奇拓扑量子物性。这一关键突破将对促进新奇拓扑量子物态的研究，进而推动人们对物质世界的深入理解带来重大影响。该合作成果以“研究长文”的形式发表在国际权威学术期刊《科学》上。由于该工作“对研究超越传统凝聚态物理的奇异现象具有重大潜力 ”，《科学》杂志在同期的“观点”栏目专门配发评论文章。
> 
> 自旋轨道耦合是量子物理学中基本的物理效应，它在多种基本物理现象和新奇量子物态中扮演了核心角色。对这些现象的研究产生了自旋电子学、拓扑绝缘体、拓扑超导体等当前凝聚态物理中最重要的前沿研究领域。然而，由于普遍存在难以控制的复杂环境，很多重要的新奇物理难以在固体材料中进行精确研究，对相关科研工作带来很大挑战。
> 
> 同时，随着超冷原子物理量子模拟领域的不断发展，在超冷原子中实现人工自旋轨道耦合并研究新奇量子物态已成为该领域最重大的前沿课题之一。冷原子有环境干净、高度可控等重要特性。过去5年里，一维人工自旋轨道耦合在实验上实现并取得一系列成果，但探索广泛深刻的新型拓扑量子物态须获得二维以上的自旋轨道耦合。如何实现高维自旋轨道耦合已成为超冷原子量子模拟最紧迫的核心课题。
> 
> 在超冷原子中实现高维自旋轨道耦合在理论和实验上都是极具挑战性的问题，国际上多个团队均为此付出了大量努力。为解决这一根本困难，北京大学教授刘雄军带领的理论小组提出了“拉曼光晶格量子系统”，并发现基于该系统不仅可完好地实现二维人工自旋轨道耦合，而且能得到如量子反常霍尔效应和拓扑超流等深刻的基本物理效应。基于该理论方案，中国科大教授潘建伟、陈帅和邓友金等组成的实验小组在经过多年艰苦努力发展起来的超精密激光和磁场调控技术的基础上，成功构造了拉曼光晶格量子系统，合成了二维自旋轨道耦合的玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚体。进一步研究发现，合成的自旋轨道耦合和能带拓扑具有高度可调控性。
> 
> 该工作将对冷原子和凝聚态物理研究产生重大影响，基于此突破可研究全新的拓扑物理，包括固体系统中难以观察到的玻色子拓扑效应等，从而为超冷原子量子模拟开辟出一条新的道路。该项突破也显示出我国在超冷原子量子模拟相关研究方向上已走在国际最前列。
> 
> 潘建伟、刘雄军、陈帅依次为论文的通讯作者。该项目得到国家自然科学基金委员会、科学技术部、教育部、中国科学院和中科院-阿里巴巴量子计算联合实验室等的支持。
> 
> *相关链接：*
> 
> 《科学》杂志论文
> 
> 《科学》评论文章
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 二维自旋轨道耦合和拓扑能带实现示意图。在激光场作用下，原子在光晶格中发生自旋翻转的量子隧穿，导致自旋轨道耦合。
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 自旋轨道耦合诱导的不同自旋态的原子团分布
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 测量到的高对称点自旋态分布以及对应的能带陈省身拓扑数与理论计算相符



Give at least a one line explanation in English, about what this is.


----------



## Beast

Bussard Ramjet said:


> Give at least a one line explanation in English, about what this is.


You already answer your own enquiry when you quote his post! Dont you realise that?


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists detect 'dark matter' in human genome*
(People's Daily Online) 15:44, October 11, 2016






(file photo)​
A research team led by Professor Ye Kai from Xi'an Jiaotong University has detected the existence of "dark matter" in human genomes, including novel forms of complex variants that have never been observed before, Xi'an Daily reported on Oct. 10.

Professor Ye's team published a paper titled "A high-quality human reference panel reveals the complexity and distribution of genomic structural variants" in Nature Communications on Oct. 6.

Genetic material in the human genome may acquire variations over the course of development. No two people share exactly the same genetic sequencing. Some variations lead to differences in appearance and height, while others may be linked to diseases.

The study on individual genetic variations is useful for helping human beings to understand their own potential health risks. It is also the first step toward accurate and personalized medical treatment.

Professor Ye's team, together with 20 research institutions from the Netherlands, the U.S. and Germany, have analyzed the entire genome sequencing data of 769 healthy individuals from 250 families, and provided a haplotype-resolved map of 1.9 million genome variants, including novel forms of complex variants - the dark matter.

The result has been saved in an international database so that more scientists can study and better understand human diseases.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Cicada wings inspire antireflective surfaces*
October 11, 2016





American Institute of Physics (AIP)

A team of Shanghai Jiao Tong University researchers has used the shape of cicada wings as a template to create antireflective structures fabricated with one of the most intriguing semiconductor materials, titanium dioxide (TiO2). The antireflective structures they produced are capable of suppressing visible light -- 450 to 750 nanometers -- at different angles of incidence.



Cicada wings inspire antireflective surfaces -- ScienceDaily

*Journal Reference*:

Imran Zada, Wang Zhang, Yao Li, Peng Sun, Nianjin Cai, Jiajun Gu, Qinglei Liu, Huilan Su, Di Zhang. *Angle dependent antireflection property of TiO2 inspired by cicada wings*. _Applied Physics Letters_, 2016; 109 (15): 153701 DOI: 10.1063/1.4962903​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Posted: Oct 11, 2016




* Recharging on stable, amorphous silicon *

(_Nanowerk News_) Next-generation anodes for lithium ion batteries will probably no longer be made of graphite. Silicon, which is a related material, can provide a much higher capacity than graphite, but its crystallinity poses problems. In the journal _Angewandte Chemie_ ("Mesoporous Amorphous Silicon: A Simple Synthesis of a High-Rate and Long-Life Anode Material for Lithium-Ion Batteries"), Chinese scientists have introduced a porous silicon form that is amorphous, not crystalline, and has the potential to outstrip the other materials in rechargeable battery applications.


http://www.nanowerk.com/nanotechnology-news/newsid=44788.php

*Journal Reference*:
Mesoporous Amorphous Silicon: A Simple Synthesis of a High-Rate and Long-Life Anode Material for Lithium-Ion Batteries, Liangdong Lin, Xuena Xu, Chenxiao Chu, Muhammad K. Majeed, Jian Yang, _Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. _2016. DOI: 10.1002/anie.201608146​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Silkworms fed carbon nanotubes or graphene produce stronger silk*
October 11, 2016 by Bob Yirka report 

(Phys.org)—A team of researchers at Tsinghua University in China has found that adding graphene or carbon nanotubes to the food eaten by silkworms causes them to produce silk that is stronger than normal. In their paper published in _Nanoletters_, the team describes the approach they took and what was revealed when they tested the new kind of silk.



http://phys.org/news/2016-10-silkworms-fed-carbon-nanotubes-graphene.html

*Journal Reference*:
Qi Wang et al. Feeding Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes or Graphene to Silkworms for Reinforced Silk Fibers, _Nano Letters_ (2016).
DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b03597​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## GS Zhou

Oct. 12, 2016, Beijing, China ---- China today said its world's first quantum technology satellite, Micius, is near to complete all in-orbit tests. The quantum technology experiment carried out by Micius is scheduled to be started in mid-November.

Pan Jianwei, the chief scientist of the Micius mission, today said in a press conference in Beijing that, the satellite platform test and payload test have all be completed; the space-ground link systems (SGLS) test is still working in progress. Pan expects the SGLS test could be completed by mid-November. Once SGLS test done, Pan and his team will start the in-orbit quantum communication experiment, the first trial ever in the human history!

According to Pan, Micius has established the space-ground links with test stations in Beijing, Qinghai, Xinjiang and Tibet. In particular, Micius has established the teleportation link with the Tibet-based test station.

The Quantum Space Satellite Micius was launched from China's Jiuquan launch site in August 17, 2016.

http://www.guancha.cn/Science/2016_10_13_377007.shtml

Pan Jianwei in the conference
P.s (red light emitted from the ground station; green light emitted from the satellite)





Space-ground link between the Tibet station and the satellite





Team of the Micius mission
(looking at their young faces!!! )

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## JSCh

*Asia's biggest sand-dredging boat unveiled in Guangzhou*
2016-10-13 13:57:30 CRIENGLISH.com Web Editor: Zhang Shuai





The Juanyang 1 sand-dredging boat. [File photo: Xinhua]​The biggest sand-dredging boat in Asia and one of the world's most advanced, the Junyang 1, was completed and handed over to Guangzhou Harbor on October 10, the China News Agency reports.

Junyang 1 was constructed by the Guangzhou Dredging Company Limited (GDC), a subsidiary of the China Communications Construction Company, in the Netherlands, at a cost of 160 million euros (176 million US dollars).

The jumbo-sized boat can dredge approximately 20 thousand cubic meters of sand an hour with its rakes reaching as deep as 90 meters under the sea. Only three crew members are needed to operate the boat, as it is equipped with a self-control system.

One of Junyang 1's first projects, is the construction of Colombo Port City project, a "one belt, one road" cooperation project between China and Sri Lanka, Wang Bohuan, the chairman of GDC said.



​

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## GS Zhou

New improvement of the quantum communication in China!
- Beijing to Shanghai quantum communication network completed by Dec. 2016
- CBRC (China Banking Regulation Commission) Shandong Branch, Anhui Branch and Shanghai Branch will submit confidential data to CBRC Beijing HQ via the new Beijing-shanghai quantum network




【中国新闻网】专家：2030年星地一体的广域量子通信网络可投入应用
我要分享
文章来源：中国新闻网 程春雨 发布时间：2016-10-13 【字号： 小 中 大 】


2016年中国量子信息技术产业发展论坛现场。程春雨 摄

中国信息协会量子分会与中国量子通信产业联盟12日宣告成立。程春雨 摄

　　中科院院士、通信与量子技术专家尹浩10月12日在“2016年中国量子信息技术产业发展论坛”上表示，目前中国的量子通信发展到了组网应用阶段，2020年中国区域量子通信网络可成熟应用，2030年星地一体的广域量子通信网络可投入应用。

　　中国量子科学实验卫星“墨子号”今年8月16日在酒泉卫星发射中心成功发射。12日，中科院举行新闻发布会介绍，“墨子号”正在开展为期三个月的在轨测试，目前状态良好，预计11月中旬完成全部在轨测试工作，随后卫星将交付使用，正式开始科学实验。

　　量子卫星首席科学家、中科院院士潘建伟介绍，量子卫星在轨测试包括卫星平台测试、有效载荷测试、天地链路测试三部分，目前卫星平台测试和有效载荷测试已经完成，天地链路测试部分完成。

　　此外，记者从论坛现场获悉，量子通信“京沪干线”将于今年年底建成。

　　尹浩表示，“京沪干线”大尺度光纤量子通信骨干网工程，连接北京、上海，贯穿济南、合肥等地，将成为大尺度量子通信技术验证、应用研究和应用示范平台。

　　中国银监会银行业信息科技监管部副主任单继进表示，围绕“京沪干线”，*2016年12月，将完成京沪异地量子骨干线路、合肥、济南、上海城域量子线路的建设工作，实现京沪量子骨干网整体贯通，启动山东银监会、安徽银监局、上海银监局向中国银监会的量子保密通信银行业金融数据采集系统远程报送应用，启动工商银行网上银行数据的京沪异地灾备传输应用。*

　　本次论坛是在中国科学院的指导下，由中国科学院重大科技任务局和中国信息协会联合举办。为更加完善产业链，推动量子技术的应用推广，中国信息协会量子分会与中国量子通信产业联盟12日在论坛上宣告正式成立。国科量子、科大国盾量子、阿里巴巴、神州信息等企业或研究机构成为联盟或分会首批成员。

　　神州信息、科大国盾量子、国科量子、苏州科达、信威通信等企业同日在论坛发布了量子密钥应用系统以及面向金融、政务、大数据等领域的信息安全解决方案等合作成果。

　　神州信息总裁周一兵表示，在推动量子技术与国家电子政务应用融合的过程中，神州信息业已完成量子系统与安全可靠信息系统一体化解决方案的适配，并取得良好效果，为量子系统和量子产品在安全可靠政务平台的推进提供了通路。神州信息还通过量子+传统加密的方式去帮助银行提升核心业务系统的安全抗攻击能力，开拓量子技术与金融核心业务系统相结合的解决方案。
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Status of our quantum satellite payload is better than planned

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 13-Oct-2016
* The Lancet: China's recent two-child policy unlikely to lead to short-term population boom, according to new predictions *
The Lancet

-- The effect of the new policy on the shrinking workforce and rapid population ageing may not be felt for two decades, suggesting changes to retirement age could be beneficial.

China's recently introduced universal two-child policy is predicted to have a relatively small effect on population growth, with a likely peak of 1.45 billion in 2029, compared to 1.4 billion in 2023 if the one-child policy had continued, according to academics writing in _The Lancet_. By 2050, the population is predicted to be 1.42 billion under the two-child policy, compared to 1.27 billion under the one-child policy.


The Lancet: China's recent two-child policy unlikely to lead to short-term population boom, according to new predictions | EurekAlert! Science News

*Journal Reference*:
The effects of China's universal two-child policy, Prof Yi Zeng, PhD, Prof Therese Hesketh, PhD, _The Lancet_ (2016), DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(16)31405-2​


----------



## JSCh

*Dalian Coherent Light Source Produces Laser Output for the First Time*
Oct 10, 2016

The installation process of the main body of the comprehensive experimental device based on tunable Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) coherent light source - Dalian Coherent Light Source (DCLS) has completed on September 24, 2016.

After strictly system installation project acceptance of relevant experts, the project experts began the free electron laser (FEL) amplifier light debugging at 21:30, the whole debugging process went very smoothly.

At 22:50, high-quality pulsed electron beams with more than 300 Mev energy passed through all the elements of the free electron laser amplifier, the first beam of ultraviolet light was emitted through the 18-meter wave oscillator array.

DCLS is the only user FEL facility operating exclusively in the EUV wavelength region in the world, and it is also the first free electronic laser large scientific user device of our country. After debugging, this device will produce the world's brightest EUV beam.

Each laser pulse of the light source can emit more than 10 trillion photons with wavelengths continuously adjustable from 50nm to 150nm, with complete coherence. This light source can be widely applied in chemical, physical, biological, energy, materials, environmental and other important scientific fields.







Figure 1. Dalian coherent light linear accelerator (Image by ZHANG Weiqing) ​
DCLS is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and jointly developed by Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics and Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. This project was launched in early 2012, and started building in October 22, 2014.

The main infrastructure projects and the main light source device development is completed in less than two years since the start, which creates a new record of the construction of similar large-scale scientific facilities.

This project also created a precedent for the successful cooperation between scientific research experts and experts in the development of large scientific devices.






Figure 2. Dalian coherent light source undulator (Image by ZHANG Weiqing) 
​DCLS team will cooperate closer on the basis of existing work, and manages to finish the parameter optimization and beam line station debugging in the near future, to achieve the design targets for scientific research to provide high-quality extreme ultraviolet light source as soon as possible.






Figure 3. The first beam of ultraviolet light of DCLS (Image from DCLS) ​*

*
Dalian Coherent Light Source Produces Laser Output for the First Time---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## TopCat

We already started planting them after successful innovation of the new seed.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*SMIC set to invest US$10b in wafer plant*

By Zhu Shenshen | October 14, 2016, Friday

SEMICONDUCTOR Manufacturing International Corp will invest US$10 billion in a new 12-inch wafer plant in Shanghai, the most advanced chip manufacturing technology in the integrated circuit industry, the company said yesterday.

The entire project, including the 67.5 billion yuan (US$10 billion) new 12-inch wafer line and related industries, will cost more than 100 billion yuan, said officials of SMIC, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and Shanghai city government attending the ground-breaking ceremony yesterday in the Pudong New Area.

The new wafer plant, with a monthly capacity of 70,000 units when fully operated, is expected to meet surging domestic demand in the integrated circuit market, the Chinese mainland’s biggest made-to-order chip maker said.

The wafer plant will produce highly advanced chips that are widely used in smartphones, TVs, automotives and other devices.

China aims to invest US$100 billion in its semiconductor industry over the next few years, research firm Bain said in a previous report.

By 2020, 55 percent of the world’s memory, logic and analog chips are destined to flow to or through China. The country only produces about 15 percent of these chips, up from about 10 percent a few years ago. But the higher production is still not sufficient to narrow the gap between supply and demand, Bain said.


*SMIC Shanghai Starts Construction of a New 12-Inch Wafer Fab*

Oct 13, 2016, 04:15 ET

SHANGHAI, Oct. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation ("SMIC"; NYSE: SMI; SEHK: 981), one of the leading semiconductor foundries in the world and the largest and most advanced foundry in Mainland China, today held the groundbreaking ceremony of a new 12-inch wafer fab inShanghai to meet SMIC Shanghai's increasing production and development needs.

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and the Shanghai Government have placed a high value on and provided strong support for the new project. Guests and leaders from the IC industry and investment funds attended the ceremony. The Chairman of SMIC, Dr. Zixue Zhou, and the CEO and Executive Director of SMIC, Dr. Tzu-Yin Chiu, together laid the foundation stone for the new project.

SMIC has 8-inch and 12-inch wafer fabs in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Italy, and the company's revenue has continued to hit record highs recently. SMIC booked record revenue of US $1.3245 billion in the first half of 2016 (a year-on-year increase of 25.4%). SMIC has achieved 17 consecutive quarters of profit and is close to full production capacity. *Revenue is expected to maintain rapid growth of 20% annually over the next three to four years*. SMIC will manage production capacity and arrange facility expansions based on customer and market demand.

The Chairman of SMIC, Dr. Zixue Zhou, said: "The start of our new 12-inch wafer fab in SMIC Shanghai will not only help to meet our growing customer demand for advanced production, but also further strengthen and expand SMIC itself."

@Bussard Ramjet What is India doing in this department? Don't tell me India is a consumption-driven economy! 

*Intel makes 14nm chips for Spreadtrum*

by NICK FARRELL on 04 OCTOBER 2016





*Thinks Samsung will be interested*

Chipzilla has announced that it is making 14nm application processors for Spreadtrum and the pair might have Samsung as a client.

Spreadtrum thinks its Intel chips will just be what Samsung wants for its mid-range smartphone series for 2017.

According to _Digitimes_, Spreadtrum is also contracting TSMC to build chips using the foundry's 16nm process technology. LG has signed up Intel to make its 10nm process technology for its ARM-based mobile SoCs. LGE is also TSMC's 16nm and 28nm clients.

Intel only has a workforce of 2,000 people, but it is targeting fabless customers based mainly in China, South Korea, Japan and other countries of Asia. In addition, a team of Intel employees stationed in Shanghai is working with local Chinese manufacturers.

@Bussard Ramjet Spreadtrum going places...Indian equivalent???

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## onebyone

cirr said:


> *SMIC set to invest US$10b in wafer plant*
> 
> By Zhu Shenshen | October 14, 2016, Friday
> 
> SEMICONDUCTOR Manufacturing International Corp will invest US$10 billion in a new 12-inch wafer plant in Shanghai, the most advanced chip manufacturing technology in the integrated circuit industry, the company said yesterday.
> 
> The entire project, including the 67.5 billion yuan (US$10 billion) new 12-inch wafer line and related industries, will cost more than 100 billion yuan, said officials of SMIC, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and Shanghai city government attending the ground-breaking ceremony yesterday in the Pudong New Area.
> 
> The new wafer plant, with a monthly capacity of 70,000 units when fully operated, is expected to meet surging domestic demand in the integrated circuit market, the Chinese mainland’s biggest made-to-order chip maker said.
> 
> The wafer plant will produce highly advanced chips that are widely used in smartphones, TVs, automotives and other devices.
> 
> China aims to invest US$100 billion in its semiconductor industry over the next few years, research firm Bain said in a previous report.
> 
> By 2020, 55 percent of the world’s memory, logic and analog chips are destined to flow to or through China. The country only produces about 15 percent of these chips, up from about 10 percent a few years ago. But the higher production is still not sufficient to narrow the gap between supply and demand, Bain said.
> 
> 
> *SMIC Shanghai Starts Construction of a New 12-Inch Wafer Fab*
> 
> Oct 13, 2016, 04:15 ET
> 
> SHANGHAI, Oct. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation ("SMIC"; NYSE: SMI; SEHK: 981), one of the leading semiconductor foundries in the world and the largest and most advanced foundry in Mainland China, today held the groundbreaking ceremony of a new 12-inch wafer fab inShanghai to meet SMIC Shanghai's increasing production and development needs.
> 
> China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and the Shanghai Government have placed a high value on and provided strong support for the new project. Guests and leaders from the IC industry and investment funds attended the ceremony. The Chairman of SMIC, Dr. Zixue Zhou, and the CEO and Executive Director of SMIC, Dr. Tzu-Yin Chiu, together laid the foundation stone for the new project.
> 
> SMIC has 8-inch and 12-inch wafer fabs in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Italy, and the company's revenue has continued to hit record highs recently. SMIC booked record revenue of US $1.3245 billion in the first half of 2016 (a year-on-year increase of 25.4%). SMIC has achieved 17 consecutive quarters of profit and is close to full production capacity. *Revenue is expected to maintain rapid growth of 20% annually over the next three to four years*. SMIC will manage production capacity and arrange facility expansions based on customer and market demand.
> 
> The Chairman of SMIC, Dr. Zixue Zhou, said: "The start of our new 12-inch wafer fab in SMIC Shanghai will not only help to meet our growing customer demand for advanced production, but also further strengthen and expand SMIC itself."
> 
> @Bussard Ramjet What is India doing in this department? Don't tell me India is a consumption-driven economy!
> 
> *Intel makes 14nm chips for Spreadtrum*
> 
> by NICK FARRELL on 04 OCTOBER 2016
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *Thinks Samsung will be interested*
> 
> Chipzilla has announced that it is making 14nm application processors for Spreadtrum and the pair might have Samsung as a client.
> 
> Spreadtrum thinks its Intel chips will just be what Samsung wants for its mid-range smartphone series for 2017.
> 
> According to _Digitimes_, Spreadtrum is also contracting TSMC to build chips using the foundry's 16nm process technology. LG has signed up Intel to make its 10nm process technology for its ARM-based mobile SoCs. LGE is also TSMC's 16nm and 28nm clients.
> 
> Intel only has a workforce of 2,000 people, but it is targeting fabless customers based mainly in China, South Korea, Japan and other countries of Asia. In addition, a team of Intel employees stationed in Shanghai is working with local Chinese manufacturers.
> 
> @Bussard Ramjet Spreadtrum going places...Indian equivalent???




Good job


----------



## TaiShang

*Chinese scientists achieve high-power quantum computing*
(China Daily) October 15, 2016

If early mechanical computers were never introduced to expand people's computing ability, the invention of the atomic bomb would have gone out the window, and human history would have been rewritten.

This highlights the significance of computer simulation in scientists' exploration of the physical world, which also explains their strong motivation in continuously pursuing higher computing power.

In a recent case, Chinese scientists managed to tremendously enhance such power — they succeeded in performing quantum simulation with atoms in extraordinarily cold conditions.

In physics, quantum refers to the minimum amount of any physical matter. Like the rotation and revolution of the Earth, quantum spins and moves at the same time, and sometimes can be twisting together, which is called spin-orbit coupling — the interplay of a quantum's 'rotation' and 'revolution'.

"The most exciting discovering in physical theories exists in the particles with spin-orbit coupling effect," said Liu Xiongjun, a professor of physics from the Peking University.

According to Liu, spin-orbit coupling is the key to understanding some most significant discoveries in recent years, such as the topological superconductivity and the Quantum Spin Hall effect, in the development of new energy and new materials.

However, it is virtually impossible to conduct precise studies on such quantum effect in realistic experiment, given the extremely complex environment required.

"That is where computers take better place. We can use a computer to simulate the process and observe the physical properties of different particles," Liu said.

Nonetheless, such simulation requires a computation capacity far beyond that of any conventional computers. So scientists from the University of Science and Technology of China and Peking University proposed and built a two-dimensional spin-orbit coupling system to simulate the process directly, without any computation.

They first held atoms in position by cooling them to extraordinarily low temperature, and then used laser beams to make them move in a way that caused spin and movement to be twisted together on a plane.

This achievement was published in the prestigious journal Science on October 7.

"The two-dimensional spin-orbit coupling system gives us a new tool to look into the laws of physical world. I believe that major discoveries could be made from the system within five years," said Pan Jianwei, a top physicist from the University of Science and Technology of China and an author of the latest paper.

"Now the whole world's physicists are racing against each other to develop a quantum computer. Although a general-purpose quantum computer may be the story two or three decades later, now we can already use quantum simulating technology to serve some special purpose, or mimicking some quantum matters that even beyond our present knowledge," Pan said.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## kaka404

Jhon Smith said:


> Shall we laugh or cry??? Its is unfortunate day , How some Scientists fool the Govt for funding. .. Though I appreciate govt should fund them but it has very sever consequences, As Chines/Indian/Pak Agri Scientist are fooling the world by fraud projects. Sir You should slap this project team ... Its just Rich Man's Trick of certain class how has wife and few children to make more money for them....
> The fools of the chines Agri science likely to have been people with learning disabilities as a new project demonstrates,
> 
> GRANT WRITING FOR DUMMIES CHEAT SHEET
> From Grant Writing For Dummies,
> Building your grant seeking and grant writing skills is the best way to secure funding for your organization. The keys to finding grant funding opportunities and writing award-winning grant proposals are knowing where to find opportunities and understanding what funders want to read. In terms of your professional development as a grant writer, it also helps to know that core measure of success: your win rate.


development of varieties of rice that can survive using briny water is not that new. hence why there're some rice paddy exist near an estuary using briny water... as well as variety of rice that survive in dry soil. and the development of varieties of paddy that can survive in an extreme environment does exist. especially in countries where rice are the main food source.


----------



## cirr

onebyone said:


> Good job



Starting with 14nm process, graduating to 10/7nm process(es) later.

Nearly 100 billion yuan investment

http://news.hexun.com/2016-10-14/186423740.html

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

cirr said:


> Starting with 14nm process, graduating to 10/7nm process(es) later.
> 
> Nearly 100 billion yuan investment
> 
> http://news.hexun.com/2016-10-14/186423740.html



Where is it written that the recent chip fab investment is for 14 nm process? 

As far as I know, the most advanced node that SMIC offers is 28 nm.


----------



## cirr

Bussard Ramjet said:


> Where is it written that the recent chip fab investment is for 14 nm process?
> 
> As far as I know, the most advanced node that SMIC offers is 28 nm.



In Chinese media(the link to which was provided in post #1136) and from the CEO's mouth.

As I have said before and I shall say it again: only a tiny body of information regarding China is released through the English media.

Next learn to answer question before asking any.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## GS Zhou

cirr said:


> In Chinese media(the link to which was provided in post #1136) and from the CEO's mouth.
> 
> As I have said before and I shall say it again: only a tiny body of information regarding China is released through the English media.
> 
> Next learn to answer question before asking any.


you are wasting your time to response and tag such a China-hater.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* Xinhua Insight: New meteorite strewn field gives clue of largest meteor shower on Earth*
Source: Xinhua 2016-10-13 17:27:41

NANJING, Oct. 13 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists announced Thursday they have looked into three giant meteorite irons to ascertain the world's longest meteorite-strewn field in Altay, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Scientists with the Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing, capital of the eastern province of Jiangsu, said Thursday that the meteorites were all from the same parent asteroid, as their chemical elements are identical.

The earliest dated discovery of the extraterrestrial stones was in 1898, when herdsmen in the Gobi Desert found a 28-tonne silvery stone, which was in the shape of a camel. The Meteoritic Society later named it Armanty, and confirmed it to be the world's fourth-largest meteorite.

Over 100 years later, a second one was found. It weighed 430 kg and was named Ulasitai.

It was not until 2011, when a third one -- Wuxilike -- weighing 5 tonnes was found, that scientists began to notice that the three meteorite were in a line, although across a distance of 425 km.

"They are on the same axis from southeast to northwest, which piqued our interest," said Xu Weibiao, meteorite curator with the observatory under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

Xu, one of the chief scientists with the mineralogical research arm of the meteorites, said the meteorites were composed of the same chemical components and microelements.

Several smaller meteorites have also been found in the field, all with the same chemical composition as the larger rocks.

"This suggests that the meteorites were all from the same parent asteroid before it separated as it entered the Earth' atmosphere," said Xu.

HOW BIG WAS THE METEOR SHOWER?

An ordinary meteor shower can scatter meteorites across dozens of kilometers.

Before the finding in Altay, the world's largest meteorite strewn field was Gibeon, with a long axis of 275 km.

Judging by the 425-km strewn length of the Altay field, its meteor shower is likely the largest on the Earth.

However, there is no historical documentation on the incident. Scientists speculate it might have happened prehistorically.

"A meteor shower of such a scale must have had a great impact on the Earth. If it happened after humans walked the earth, we often find cave painting depicting the incident in the area," said Xu.

He said the team has used isotopic dating to determine when the meteor shower occurred.

An average of 20,000 meteorites fall to the Earth every year. Scientists use extraterrestrial stones to determine information about the universe and life signs in space through chemical classification.

For example, scientists previously discovered evidence of magma activity on Mars some 200 million years ago after sampling a meteorite.

In 2017, China will launch the Chang'e-5 lunar probe, which will collect samples from the moon.

"For the moon sample research, the observatory will use more advanced analytical equipment, which will greatly assist our petrological and mineralogical research," Xu said.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

GS Zhou said:


> you are wasting your time to response and tag such a China-hater.




According to you then, any person who doesn't blindly parrot Chinese line, is a China hater?


----------



## GS Zhou

Bussard Ramjet said:


> According to you then, any person who doesn't blindly parrot Chinese line, is a China hater?



I can make a clear distinguish between who is making a fact-based discussion, and who is a troller and China-hater, but try to pretend to be objective.

Your typical behavior is:
- if a technology originally invented by Germany or US years before, and we Chinese made it localized later, you will say: this is nothing new, US or Germany already made the technology happens. Fine, very objective comment x1

- if it is a technology invented by us, you will say this technology has few real applications yet, so it is a waste of money to invest on this. Fine, very objective comment x2

- if we invented a technology and start to put it to real use, you will say it requires a huge investment and makes no economical sense. Fine, very objective comment x3

- but if we don't make anything on scientific research, will you stop your bulxxxit comment? No! You will say: China is lagging behind countries A, B, C, D to Z for this, this , this, and this.

Continue your act. This is a public forum that every one has the right to make opinions. But to any China haters, the more time they spend on the China & Fast East section to read all the China-related news, the more desperate they will be.

I don't want to be off topic too much. This thread: China Science & Technology News and Discussion, is the most valuable thread on this section. So I don't want to ruin it.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Offshore

GS Zhou said:


> I can make a clear distinguish between who is making a fact-based discussion, and who is a troller and China-hater, but try to pretend to be objective.
> 
> Your typical behavior is:
> - if a technology originally invented by Germany or US years before, and we Chinese made it localized later, you will say: this is nothing new, US or Germany already made the technology happens. Fine, very objective comment x1
> 
> - if it is a technology invented by us, you will say this technology has few real applications yet, so it is a waste of money to invest on this. Fine, very objective comment x2
> 
> - if we invented a technology and start to put it to real use, you will say it requires a huge investment and makes no economical sense. Fine, very objective comment x3
> 
> - but if we don't make anything on scientific research, will you stop your bulxxxit comment? No! You will say: China is lagging behind countries A, B, C, D to Z for this, this , this, and this.
> 
> Continue your act. This is a public forum that every one has the right to make opinions. But to any China haters, the more time they spend on the China & Fast East section to read all the China-related news, the more desperate they will be.
> 
> I don't want to be off topic too much. This thread: China Science & Technology News and Discussion, is the most valuable thread on this section. So I don't want to ruin it.



Just leave him alone, the Indian have a hard time to swallow the fact! So they trying to used the best ability they had.. which is reality distortion..
Whenever he can't answer the fact we Show. he will disappear for a while , and then come up with the same topic in another thread ..
This is typical Indian behavior, nothing news. Just ignored him.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 17-Oct-2016
* 'Shadow method' reveals locomotion secrets of water striders *
_A 'shadow technique' to measure forces acting upon the legs of water-walking arthropods was developed by researchers in China to discern the locomotion principles behind water striders, which may help design advanced biomimetic robotics in the future_

American Institute of Physics

WASHINGTON, D.C., October 17, 2016 -- While walking beside the creek in the Beijing Botany Garden one autumn, Yu Tian, a professor of mechanical engineering at Tsinghua University in China, noticed the beautiful shadows cast by water striders on the bottom of a shallow creek. If you've spent any time in or around water you've likely seen these water insects zipping along -- they appear to walk or glide swiftly on the surface of still water.


'Shadow method' reveals locomotion secrets of water striders | EurekAlert! Science News

*Journal Reference*:

Three-dimensional topographies of water surface dimples formed by superhydrophobic water strider legs, _Appl. Phys. Lett._ (2016), DOI: 10.1063/1.4964788

*Abstract
*
A water strider has a remarkable capability to stand and walk freely on water. Supporting forces of a water strider and a bionic robot have been calculated from the side view of pressed depth of legs to reconstruct the water surface dimples. However, in situ measurements of the multiple leg forces and significantly small leg/water contact dimples have not been realized yet. In this study, a shadow method was proposed to reconstruct the in situ three-dimensional topographies of leg/water contact dimples and their corresponding supporting forces. Results indicated that the supporting forces were affected by the depth, width, and length of the dimple, and that the maximum dimple depth was not proportional to the supporting forces. The shadow method also has advantages in disclosing tiny supporting force of legs in their subtle actions. These results are helpful for understanding the locomotion principles of water-walking insects and the design of biomimetic aquatic devices.​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

October 18, 2016, 11:30 P.M. ET
*SMIC To Build The World’s Largest 8-Inch Wafer Fab: 50% Upside Seen*

*By Shuli Ren*
*
Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp.* or SMIC (981.Hong Kong), soared 3% in Hong Kong after announcing an expansion project for its *Tianjin* factory to become the world’s largest 8-inch wafer fab.

In addition to expanding the cutting-edge 8-inch wafer fab, SMIC last week held a groundbreaking ceremony for a new 12-inch wafer fab in *Shanghai*. Total investment in that fab will be close to 100 billion yuan ($15 billion), reported China’s state-owned *Xinhua* News Agency. China’s *Ministry of Industry and Information Technology* and the Shanghai government have given strong support for this project.

While investors are understandably concerned with rising depreciation expenses (as SMIC builds new factories, it’s got to incur more depreciation charges down the road), *Nomura Securities *believes these two projects can place SMIC to “*become global no. 3″, competing against Taiwan’s TSMC (TSM) and Korea’s Samsung Electronics* (SSNLF) (and *Intel* (INTC) of course). The broker this morning raised its *price target to 1.50 Hong Kong dollars*, or another 50% upside. Analyst *Leping Huang* wrote:

We think SMIC illustrated a clear capacity expansion plan in the coming years including (1) joint venture in Beijing/Shanghai with local government focusing on leading edge node (14nm/28nm), (2) 100% subsidiary focusing on high margin 8-inch and 12-inch mature node process (40/45nm, 65nm). We expect this approach can help SMIC to simultaneously tackling the top-line growth opportunities in leading edge as well as profit generation opportunity in mature node. Our analysis shows those capacity expansion plan will boost SMIC’s capacity by 250% if equipment are fully installed.

J-curve ROE improvement via operating leverage expansion. We forecast SMIC to *maintain 23% CAGR revenue growth from 2016-2020F*, driven by rising demand from Chinese customers. On the cost side, we expect SMIC’s EBITDA Margin to improve from 34% in FY15 to 43% in FY20F thanks to the improving operating leverage.

http://blogs.barrons.com/asiastocks...rlds-largest-8-inch-wafer-fab-50-upside-seen/

@Bussard Ramjet

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Fish fossil upends scientists’ view of jaw evolution*
_Specimen suggests that people and ancient fish have more in common than previously thought._

Anna Nowogrodzki
20 October 2016



An artist’s impression of the newly described ancient fish _Qilinyu rostrata_.
Dinghua Yang

A fossil fish found in Yunnan, China, has filled in a gaping hole in how researchers thought the vertebrate jaw evolved.

The 423-million-year-old specimen, dubbed _Qilinyu rostrata,_ is part of an ancient group of armoured fish called placoderms. The fossil is the oldest ever found with a modern three-part jaw, which includes two bones in the upper jaw and one in the lower jaw. Researchers reported their find on 20 October in _Science._



Fish fossil upends scientists’ view of jaw evolution : Nature News & Comment


Zhu, M. _et al_. A Silurian maxillate placoderm illuminates jaw evolution. _Science _(2016). DOI: 10.1126/science.aah3764

*Jaws from the jawless*

Until a fossil called Entelognathus was found to contain a tripartite jaw a few years ago, it was believed that the skeletons of early osteichthyans (bony fish), the ancestors of all vertebrates, were derived independently of those of the earlier placoderms (so-called jawless fish). Zhu _et al._ now describe a second Silurian placoderm that more securely bridges the jawless toothlike plates of placoderms to the development of the jawed condition that ultimately led to the three-boned jaw in ancestors of modern vertebrates (see the Perspective by Long). This finding upends the traditional belief that the two types of jaw were nonhomologous and sheds light on the evolution of the complex maxilla, a key component of diversification across many modern taxa, including humans.

_Science_, this issue p. 334; see also p. 280​


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese researchers develop algorithms for smart energy grid*
October 20, 2016





A fallen tree, a lightning strike—it doesn't take much to disrupt the electrical grid. An outage could last just a few minutes, but restoring electricity to millions of people typically takes hours, days or even weeks. The outdated system, developed a century ago, is due for an overhaul.

Enter the energy internet. It's based on the idea that electricity could be distributed similarly to the actual internet. The energy internet isn't yet reality, but scientists at Northeastern University in Shenyang, China, have proposed a way to actualize the theory.



http://phys.org/news/2016-10-chinese-algorithms-smart-energy-grid.html
*
More information:* Distributed Optimal Co-multi-microgrids Energy Management for Energy Internet: ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=7589482

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Self-healable battery*
October 20, 2016


























Electronics that can be embedded in clothing are a growing trend. However, power sources remain a problem. In the journal _Angewandte Chemie_, scientists have now introduced thin, flexible, lithium ion batteries with self-healing properties that can be safely worn on the body. Even after completely breaking apart, the battery can grow back together without significant impact on its electrochemical properties.



Self-healable battery -- ScienceDaily

*Journal Reference*:

Yang Zhao, Ye Zhang, Hao Sun, Xiaoli Dong, Jingyu Cao, Lie Wang, Yifan Xu, Jing Ren, Yunil Hwang, In Hyuk Son, Xianliang Huang, Yonggang Wang, Huisheng Peng. *A Self-Healing Aqueous Lithium-Ion Battery*. _Angewandte Chemie International Edition_, 2016; DOI: 10.1002/anie.201607951


----------



## JSCh

*How Hot Is Lightning?*
_Scientists create artificial lightning strikes to study the temperature inside real bolts of lightning. _

Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - 12:00
Yuen Yiu, Staff Writer




Thor's Battle Against the Jötnar (1872) by Mårten Eskil Winge
Image credits: Swedish National Museum of Fine Arts​
(Inside Science) -- Lightning is one of the most destructive forces in nature. But for all the folklore and legends amassed over human history on lightning, we know surprisingly little about the inner workings of this powerful phenomenon, including something as simple as how the current that flows through a thunder-inducing flash is related to the temperature of the strike.

"The basic physics of lightning, such as lightning initiation and lightning propagation, is not fully understood at this point," said Robert Moore, a lightning researcher from University of Florida in Gainesville.

"We know the basics, but not the details. So when anybody makes headway, it is major news."

Lightning causes more than $5 billion in damages every year in the U.S., as well as more fatalities than hurricanes.

"A direct hit from a lightning strike can melt a power cable or start a forest fire, where the amount of heat from the lightning plays a major role," said Xiangchao Li, a scientist from China who specializes in lightning research. Li and his team discovered a mathematical relationship between the current intensity and the temperature inside lightning. Their result was published last month in the journal _Scientific Reports_.


How Hot Is Lightning? | Inside Science

X. Li, J. Zhang, L. Chen, Q. Xue & R. Zhu, Measuring Method for Lightning Channel Temperature, _Scientific Reports _(2016), DOI:10.1038/srep33906


----------



## JSCh

Press Release
October 21, 2016

*Scientists show how plants turn a “light switch” on and off*

_In research published today in Science, an international team of researchers led by scientists at the RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science in Japan, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, China, and the University of California, Los Angeles, have uncovered the mechanisms through which cryptochrome 2—a key photoreceptor that allows plants to respond to blue light—is switched on and off, allowing plants to remain responsive to light._

Plants rely on light to carry out photosynthesis, though which they produce energy, but response to light is important in other ways as well. Plants grow during the nighttime, using the energy they stored during the daytime, and long-day plants begin to flower when the day grows longer and the night shorter. Though it was long known that blue light played a key role in activating plants’ response in the natural light environment, through the action of cryptochromes—blue light photoreceptors—and other photoreceptors, the mechanism through which the response was turned on and off remained elusive.

In recent years, significant progress has been made in understanding the function of cryptochromes. Initially it was hypothesized that the receptors were activated and inactivated through a process of “photoreduction”—a system like that used in the process of photosynthesis where electrons are transferred, moving energy across molecules.

To determine whether this was the real mechanism, the group began by screening transgenic lines of Arabidopsis—a model grass used in plant genetics—using the FOX library developed by Takanari Ichikawa and Minami Matsui of the former RIKEN Plant Science Center, to find lines that expressed phenotypes similar to a mutant strain that does not respond properly to blue light. They identified lines that overexpress a protein, named BIC1, which corresponded to the mutant phenotype. They determined that this protein blocks the action of the cryptochrome 2 photoreceptor.

Further, through a series of experiments, they were able to show that it was not a process of photoreduction, and uncovered the exact mechanism through which this takes place. It turns out that cryptochrome 2 undergoes a conformational change—taking a dimer form—when exposed to blue light, and that this homodimer form is the active form. The dimer form, however, disappeared in the presence of the BIC1 protein. “We have shown,” says Matsui, one of the leaders of the study, “that there is a desensitization mechanism, where the photoactivated photoreceptor is regulated in blue light to avoid excess response. This is important as it allows plants to maintain the homeostasis of their blue light responsiveness in order to adapt to the fluctuating light environment in nature.”

Matsui continues, “Through this work, we hope to learn how we can use the action of BIC1 to develop plants with better biomass characteristics. This work is also important because animal cryptochromes also form homodimers, and this can help us gain clues into how the circadian rhythm is maintained in animals.”



Scientists show how plants turn a “light switch” on and off | RIKEN

*Reference*

Qin Wang, Zecheng Zuo, Xu Wang, Lianfeng Gu, Takeshi Yoshizumi, Zhaohe Yang, Liang Yang, Qing Liu, Wei Liu, Yun-Jeong Han, Jeong-Il Kim, Bin Liu, James A. Wohlschlegel, Minami Matsui, Yoshito Oka, Chentao Lin, "Photoactivation and inactivation mechanisms of Arabidopsis cryptochrome 2", _Science_, doi: 10.1126/science.aaf9030

*Turning off the blue-light response*
In plants, blue light is perceived by cryptochromes, which, once activated, set off signaling events that regulate gene expression, circadian rhythms, and photomorphogenesis. Wang _et al._ now show that in the model plant _Arabidopsis_, one of the functions of activated cryptochromes, which are dimers or oligomers when active, is to activate production of the protein BIC1 (blue-light inhibitor of cryptochromes 1) (see the Perspective by Fankhauser and Ulm). BIC1 then favors monomerization and thus inactivation of the cryptochromes. This feedback loop resets the system so that blue-light responses can be turned off as well as turned on.

_Science_, this issue p. 343; see also p. 282​


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 21-Oct-2016
* Converting optical frequencies with 10^(-21) uncertainty *
Science China Press

Frequency synthesizers from audio frequency to the microwave region have been widely used in daily life, high technology and scientific research. Those frequency synthesizers can output a signal with frequency related to the input light frequency (fin) as fin/R. Meanwhile, the phase coherence, frequency stability and accuracy of the output signal inherit from the input signal. While in the optical region, there was no such a device. Since the invention of lasers, scientists are able to realize optical frequency conversion with nonlinear optical process. For example, second harmonic generation can convert optical frequencies as fout = fin/0.5, where fout is the output light frequency. However, optical frequency conversion with arbitrary ratios has not been realized for a long time.

The invention of optical frequency comb paved the way for optical frequency divider. In 2003, international comparison among four optical frequency combs from East China Normal University (ECNU, China), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST, USA) and International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) was performed, which demonstrated that the frequency synthesis uncertainty of optical frequency combs based on different types of femtosecond lasers was at the 10^(-19) level (Long-Sheng Ma, et. al, Science, Vol. 303, page.1843, 2004). Recently, the group from ECNU has realized a low noise, accurate optical frequency divider by combining several key techniques of an optically-referenced frequency comb, a collinear self-referencing interferometer for detecting the comb carrier-envelope offset frequency, an optically-referenced RF time base, and the transfer oscillator scheme. By comparing against the frequency ratio between the fundamental and second harmonic of a 1064 nm laser instead of a second copy of the identical optical frequency divider, the division uncertainty is demonstrated to be 1.4 × 10^(-21). The optical frequency divider can accurately divide an optical frequency with an arbitrary preset ratio to several different wavelengths. Scientists are able to measure optical frequency ratios directly from the division ratios of the optical frequency dividers when the output and input light of the optical frequency dividers correspond to clock frequencies.

Optical frequency divider will be instrumental in the applications of optical clocks. "Recent progress in optical atomic clocks demonstrates record fractional frequency instability and uncertainty at the 10^(-18) level. The unprecedented accuracy is fostering a revolution in science and technology. Using optical clocks, searches for possible variations of fundamental constants are carried out in laboratories by precisely measuring the frequency ratios of two different atomic transitions of optical clocks over time. In relativistic geodesy, long-distance geopotential difference will be accurately measured by comparing the frequencies of remotely-located optical clocks linked with optical fibers, where the frequencies of optical clocks have to be accurately converted to the fiber telecom band for long-distance transmission. In metrology, the fundamental unit for time, the second, in the International System of Units (SI) will be redefined based on optical atomic clocks. Frequency comparisons between optical clocks based on different atom species have to be performed in order to affirm the agreement between optical clocks with uncertainty beyond the current SI second, as well as to demonstrate the frequency reproducibility of optical clocks. Moreover, in atomic and molecular precision spectroscopy hopes are high that accurate and stable clock light can be transferred to wider spectral range. All those applications rely on accurate frequency ratio measurement between spectrally-separated optical clocks or frequency conversion of optical clocks."

In a research article published in the Beijing-based _National Science Review_, Yao et. al. introduce an optical frequency divider with division uncertainty at the 10^(-21) level. The division uncertainty induced by the optical frequency divider is therefore three orders of magnitude better than the most accurate optical clocks, promising optical frequency division without degrading the performance of optical clocks. They hope this type of optical frequency divider will be also instrumental in precision measurement.


Converting optical frequencies with 10^(-21) uncertainty | EurekAlert! Science News

Journal Reference:

Yuan Yao, Yanyi Jiang, Hongfu Yu, Zhiyi Bi, and Longsheng Ma, Optical frequency divider with division uncertainty at the 10^(-21) level, _Natl Sci Rev_ (September 2016), DOI: 10.1093/nsr/nww063​


----------



## JSCh

Monday, October 24, 2016, 09:49
*Drones for monthslong missions in the pipeline*
By Zhao Lei
_Academy to display its next-generation, solar-powered model at Zhuhai Air Show_



An undated photo of the China Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics' solar-powered drone during a flight test in Northwest China. (Provided To China Daily)

Aviation researchers in China are developing solar-powered drones capable of staying airborne for at least a month, a senior designer has revealed.

Shi Wen, head of unmanned aircraft development at the China Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics, said in an exclusive interview that his team has developed prototypes to demonstrate new technologies and equipment.

Last week, his team conducted the maiden flight of a giant solar-powered drone at an airport in northwestern China. Shi said the 14-meter-long drone has a 45-meter wing span, longer than a Boeing 737, and can carry a payload of 20 kilograms.

He said mass-produced models will eventually be able to fly for one to six months, and added: "We plan to make one that can stay in the air for five years. Our next-generation drones will have a 60- to 70-meter wing span and will be able to carry a payload of at least 50 kg."

Scale models of the solar-powered drone as well as advanced combat drones developed by the academy will go on show at the 11th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition, commonly known as the Zhuhai Air Show, on Nov 1.

The academy began to research drones in 2002 and conducted its first test flight three years later, according to Shi, who said its engineers have gone on to develop advanced aerodynamic designs, ultralight frames, flight control systems and high-quality solar cells.

Scientists are continuing work to improve batteries and motors, he said, adding that China is already a top maker of solar-powered drones, second only to the United States.

The academy, part of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, is one of the country's largest military drone developers. Shi said its CH series has been sold to 20 military buyers in more than 10 countries.

Solar-powered drones can fly at altitudes of 20 to 30 kilometers for a long time, which means they can be used as "atmospheric satellites" to provide services conventionally dominated by satellites in space, Shi said.

He added that they have big potential in military reconnaissance, electronic warfare, maritime surveillance, traffic navigation, telecommunications and aerial surveys.

Shi said he expects solar-powered drones to have an enormous market and they are receiving a lot of attention from potential users.

Wu Peixin, an aviation industry analyst in Beijing, said researchers around the world are striving to develop high-efficiency solar cells, reliable ultralight frames and power management systems to promote solar-powered drones for large-scale use.

Technology company AeroVironment Inc in California has been developing solar-powered unmanned aerial vehicles since the late 1970s, and some of its models have been funded by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Internet giant Facebook has also invested in the field in the hope of being able to connect the entire world to the web. The company has developed a drone called Aquila that will beam internet signals to rural areas that lack the telecom infrastructure needed for internet connectivity, fortune.com reported.

The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich has produced the solar-powered AtlantikSolar unmanned aircraft system to demonstrate and test technologies.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

24 October 2016
*Clearing "Visual Noise" to Improve Underwater Vision and Deep Sea Exploration *

_Researchers are using logical stochastic resonance to improve underwater viewing_

WASHINGTON — Mankind has long been peering into the depths of the sea. From finding fish to avoiding rocks, the ability to see as far as possible through turbid water has been important for thousands of years. More recently, scientists are using sophisticated cameras to study sea floor geology and deep-sea animal behaviors but are continually challenged to get a clear picture of the remote fathoms of the ocean.

Now, a team of researchers from Ocean University of China in Qingdao, China, may have helped improve the quality of underwater visualizations. In a novel methodology for improving underwater viewing, they applied a mathematical approach known as logical stochastic resonance (LSR). When applied to poor-quality underwater images, the LSR algorithms improved the team’s ability to visually detect objects. The results of their investigation are published in the journal _Optics Letters__, _from The Optical Society.


Clearing "Visual Noise" to Improve Underwater Vision and Deep Sea Exploration | News Releases | The Optical Society

*Paper:* B. Zheng, N. Wang, H. Zheng, Y. Zhinbin and J. Wang. “Object Extraction from Underwater Image through Logical Stochastic Resonance,” Opt. Lett. 41, 4967-4970. DOI: 10.1364/OL.41.004967.


----------



## TaiShang

*China's Weibo to help microbloggers build their brands*
Xinhua, October 25, 2016

China's microblogging site Weibo plans to build a *one-stop system to help some of its most-followed users turn their online influence into money*, the company's CEO said Tuesday.

Weibo, the largest domestic microblogging platform, will help users define their brand focus, attract and accumulate followers and cash in on their popularity through advertisements, pay-per-read posts and other marketing tools, Weibo CEO Wang Gaofei told the ongoing 2016 V-Influence Summit on the country's growing new media platforms and fan economy.

Microbloggers have raked in 11.7 billion yuan (1.73 billion U.S.dollars) via Weibo's current services. Promotions that link to online shopping generated the highest earnings, 10.8 billion yuan in total, for users, followed by pay-per-read posts and brand promotions at 470 million and 430 million yuan, respectively.

Weibo has around 340,000 microbloggers deemed "influential," meaning those whose articles or posts are read by at least 100,000 people each month, up 34 percent year on year, while those with 10 million monthly readers saw a 70 percent increase year on year.

The company has earmarked 100 million yuan to support the promotion of influential microbloggers; 500 million yuan in short-length video promotion; and has plans to release a live voice streaming service next year, according to Wang.

Weibo has partnered with over 300 multi-channel networks (MCN) to help microbloggers grow their brands with programming, funding, cross-promotion, audience development and other services, Wang added.

The NASDAQ-listed company overtook its U.S. counterpart Twitter in market capitalization for the first time during trading earlier this month thanks to its strong revenue and user growth. The company is expected to release its third quarter financial performance in late November.

Weibo had 282 million active monthly users by the end of the second quarter of this year and aims to have 500 million within three years, according to Wang.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## TaiShang

*Chinese firms lead world in innovation spending growth*
Xinhua, October 26, 2016





Chinese companies led their global peers in research and development (R&D) spending growth, *with an annual rate of 18.6 percent*, according to the "2016 Global Innovation 1000 Study" report, released Wednesday by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

*A total of 130 Chinese companies were included among the 1,000 Global Innovation entities of 2016, up from 123 in the 2015 report. These companies spent 46.8 billion U.S. dollars in total on R&D.*

As a result, R&D spending contributed by Chinese companies also increased, up from 5.8 percent in the 2015 report to 6.9 percent in this year's report.

*With R&D spending at 2.2 billion U.S. dollars and R&D intensity (R&D divided by total sales) of 13.6 percent, Alibaba was the biggest R&D spender among such public companies.*

Huawei, although a non-public company and not on the list, spent 59.6 billion yuan (8.8 billion U.S. dollars) on R&D in 2015, making it the highest spender in China, according to the report.

*"As R&D spending by European companies and Japanese companies declined by 9 percent and 8 percent, and by North American companies grew by 8 percent, Chinese companies were in the lead*," said Adam Xu, partner and leader of Digital Practice with Strategy&.

"Due to China's innovation-driven development strategy, Chinese companies have increased investment into R&D, indicating that they were shifting their advantage from competitive costs to innovation to build up their technological capabilities to win over the global market," Xu said.

@Shotgunner51

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## TaiShang

*Twitter said to be planning more job cuts soon *
China Daily, October 26, 2016

Twitter Inc is planning widespread job cuts, to be announced as soon as this week, according to people familiar with the matter.

The company may cut about 8 percent of the workforce, or about 300 people, the same percentage it did last year when co-founder Jack Dorsey took over as chief executive officer, the people said. Planning for the cuts is still fluid and the number could change, they added. The people asked not to be identified talking about private company plans.

An announcement about the job reductions may come before Twitter releases third-quarter earnings on Thursday, one of the people said. A Twitter representative declined to comment.

*Twitter, which has been losing money, is trying to control spending as sales growth slows.* The company recently hired bankers to explore a sale, but the companies that had expressed interest in bidding－Salesforce.com Inc, The Walt Disney Co and Alphabet Inc－later backed out from the process.

Twitter's losses and 40 percent fall in its share price the past 12 months have made it more difficult for the company to pay its engineers with stock. That has made it harder for Twitter to compete for talent with giant rivals like Alphabet Inc's Google and Facebook Inc. Reducing employee numbers would relieve some of this pressure.

***
_
As US social media goes down in effectiveness and financial viability, China's internet and social media ecosystem has just begun expanding. Practical advantages of keeping US social media and internet from China's market at the time China's own brands were small and vulnerable. _

_Now Baidu can eat Google alive in any day in AI, driverless cars and VR. _

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## TaiShang

*Home-made ticket system for airlines flies high *
China Daily, October 27, 2016




Passengers use the self-service boarding system at the Beijing Capital International Airport. [Photo/China Daily]

Beijing-based China TravelSky Holding Co, *a State-owned aviation information provider*, plans to expand its research and development efforts so as to innovate and upgrade its electronic ticket system, the first such China-made software.

*Flag carrier Air China Ltd transferred to the completely home-developed TravelSky system in April.* *Barring a few, most other domestic airlines also use it now, saving more than 60 percent of costs that imported software entails.*

TravelSky has ensured safe custody of passenger, flight and airline data collected so far.

*TravelSky's R&D investments for the system now account for more than 35 percent of its total costs.*

*"For every flight ticket that is sold through our e-ticket system, we charge only one-sixth of commission charged by foreign e-ticket systems*," said Huang Yuanchang, chairman of the board of supervisors at TravelSky.

*"Our average profit margin is 35 percent to 40 percent, and this is the best performance compared with the peers globally."*

In 2001, the China Civil Computer and Information Center brought all airline companies together to establish TravelSky Technology Ltd, to provide them with accurate and authentic information on airports and flights.

It is China's main e-ticket system and the world's third-largest in terms of business-handling capacity. A passenger can search flight information, buy tickets, change or cancel flight reservations, and modify remarks.

Last year, TravelSky netted sales revenues worth 5.5 billion yuan ($825 million) and generated profits of more than 2 billion yuan, the company said. Sales have surged in recent years as the Chinese have been overcome by wanderlust of late.

The surge will continue in the next decade as China's emerging middle class takes to the skies. Passengers will increase by threefold, according to a report by global consulting firm McKinsey & Co.

Peng Mingtian, deputy chief engineer of the R&D center at TravelSky, said: "At the moment, the 24x7 ticketing software is taking a lot of pressure. If the backup system malfunctions or stops for whatever reason, nearly all domestic airlines will face problems.

"Our biggest challenge, therefore, is to preempt problems because any problems would erode customers' confidence, which would make it difficult to promote the system again. We need to ensure its safe operation even as we upgrade it."

More than a decade ago, TravelSky started trials of the software. It also developed China's first self-check-in system at airports.

Back in 2003 and 2004, major airlines started using electronic systems to sell tickets online. In the first few years, volume as well as sales surged 300 percent annually.

TravelSky completed restructuring its main business and assets, and got listed in Hong Kong in 2008.

In its niche, TravelSky doesn't have any rivals domestically as entry barriers for private players are high.

"We aim to lure more foreign airlines to shift to our system. We also want to further improve the system quality and lower the costs," Huang said.

***

_Domestication of key industries is the part and parcel of China's new era development. We will observe foreign interests being squeezed and forced to innovate and cut prices if they wish to stay competitive in China's cut throat competitive market. The bloodbath will not be limited with Apple and the likes. _

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

* Bio-inspired lower-limb 'wearing robotic exoskeleton' for human gait rehab *
_Stroke and spinal cord injury rehab may soon be improved by a 'wearable robotic exoskeleton' designed by a team of researchers in China and Denmark_

American Institute of Physics



This is a prototype of the lower-limb exoskeleton being developed at Beihang University in Beijing, China.* Credit: *Beihang University

WASHINGTON, D.C., Oct. 25, 2016 -- Stroke and spinal cord injury patients often require gait rehabilitation to regain the ability to walk or to help strengthen their muscles. Wearable "robot-assisted training" is quickly emerging as a method that helps improve this rehab process.

In a major advance, researchers from Beihang University in China and Aalborg University in Denmark have designed a lower-limb robot exoskeleton -- a wearable robot -- that features natural knee movement to greatly improve patients' comfort and willingness to wear it for gait rehab.


Bio-inspired lower-limb 'wearing robotic exoskeleton' for human gait rehab | EurekAlert! Science News

Mingxing Lyu, Weihai Chen, Xilun Ding, Jianhua Wang, Shaoping Bai and Huichao Ren. "Design of a biologically inspired lower limb exoskeleton for human gait rehabilitation," _Rev. Sci. Instrum._ (2016)_. _DOI: 10.1063/1.4964136

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*China starts developing new-era exascale supercomputer*
Xinhua | Updated: 2016-10-28 08:29

TIANJIN - Scientists have started to develop a sample machine that will play a part in the development of a new era supercomputer capable of a billion-billion calculations per second, researchers said Tuesday.

The National Supercomputer Center in Tianjin is developing the exascale supercomputer with the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT), said Meng Xiangfei, assistant director of the center.

The aim is to make the computer, which will be capable of a quintillion calculations per second, by 2020.

It will be 200 times faster than China's Tianhe-1 supercomputer, and even faster than the most powerful supercomputers in the world, he said.

China's Sunway TaihuLight is the world's fastest system, capable of 93 quadrillion calculations per second, according to an announcement at the 2016 International Supercomputing Conference, Germany.

This new project will expend on existing theories and applications of the exascale system's hardware and software. The sample machine will hopefully be ready by early 2018, Meng said.

The new era computing system will mark a huge advancement in terms of intensity of calculation, capacity of single chips and the rate of data transmission, he said.

In 2010, the country's first petaflop supercomputer, Tianhe-1, which is capable of at least a million billion calculations per second, was unveiled to the world.

At present, Tianhe-1 supports various tasks including oil exploration, high-end equipment manufacturing, biological medicine and animation design, and serves nearly 1,000 customers.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

* China shows excellent performance in 30 research fronts: report*
Source: Xinhua 2016-11-01 01:52:21

BEIJING, Oct. 31 (Xinhua) -- China ranks second place, after the United States, for the number of research areas that demonstrate excellent research performance, according to a report released Monday.

China has shown excellent performance in 30 out of 180 emerging areas in the sciences and social sciences, covering eight fields, including chemistry, material sciences, physics and biology, the "Research Fronts 2016" report said.

The report, jointly released by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Clarivate Analytics, identified prominent areas of scientific research based on an analysis of scientific literature citations.

###​
*CAS and Clarivate Analytics Collaborate on Report Identifying Hottest, Emerging Fields in Scientific Research*
Oct 31, 2016

_*Hottest fields include Detection of Dark Matter, Advances in Crop Science and Food Science, Global Warming Hiatus and Impact of Biodiversity Loss on the Ecosystem. Hottest emerging fields include Elemental composition of the North Atlantic Ocean and Southern Ocean, and Energy Management Strategies of Hybrid Electric Bus.*_ 

October 31, 2016 – Chinese Academy of Sciences and Clarivate Analytics today released “Research Fronts 2016”, an annual report identifying prominent areas of scientific research over the past year. This is the third collaborative report from these two organizations.

The joint paper identifies 180 key research fronts including 100 hot and 80 emerging fronts, based on a comprehensive analysis of scientific literature citations. The analysis generated 12,188 research fronts in the Essential Science Indicators (ESI) database from 2009 until 2015. Research fronts are specialties discovered when scientists cite one another’s work, reflecting a specific commonality in the research, which can be experimental data, a concept or hypothesis or even a method.

Working in collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Clarivate bibliometric experts utilized the ESI database, a web-based research analytics platform and a unique compilation of science performance metrics and trend data based on scholarly paper publication counts and citation data from the Web of ScienceTM. Once identified, the research fronts built on recently published “core” or foundational journal articles.

The 2016 report also features an analysis of the current and potential performance of six leading countries in the 180 research fronts -- USA, China, the UK, Germany, France and Japan. Analysts at the the Institutes of Science and Development and the National Science Library of the Chinese Academy of Sciences also analyzed the 180 research fronts provided by Clarivate in great depth and interpreted it to highlight 28 research fronts of particular interest.

"We are honored and pleased to once again collaborate with CAS to produce this year’s Research Fronts report with expanded content,” said Linda Guo, managing director of China, Clarivate Analytics. “The combined strength of trusted data and analysis capabilities from Clarivate, with the Chinese Academy’s deep expertise in scientific research not only increases the depth of the report, but also provides a solid foundation to help researchers, funding agencies, administrators, policy makers and other key stakeholders make better decisions by identifying research trends and new areas of study. The analysis of research fronts at a national level can provide insights about a country’ current and potential leading performance.”

The president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dr Bai Chunli said, “To produce this joint Research Fronts 2016 report with Clarivate Analytics, we undertook extensive thesis data analysis to provide a meaningful analysis and interpretation of the global research & technology landscape and competitive structure, and in the process, we enhanced the method of combining thesis analysis with expert opinion and showcased China’s expertise in evaluating cutting-edge research fields. This collaborative project also underscores the importance of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ role as China’s foremost think tank on global science & technology issues and trends and pioneer supporter of China’s S&T development.”

Ten noteworthy topics among the hottest research fronts are:
*




*

Eight noteworthy topics among the emerging research fronts are:







CAS and Clarivate Analytics Collaborate on Report Identifying Hottest, Emerging Fields in Scientific Research---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

* NIST Collaboration Heats Up Exotic Topological Insulators *
October 31, 2016

Fashion is changing in the avant-garde world of next-generation computer component materials. Traditional semiconductors like silicon are releasing their last new lines. Exotic materials called topological insulators (TIs) are on their way in. And when it comes to cool, nitrogen is the new helium.

This was clearly on display in a novel experiment at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) that was performed by a multi-institutional collaboration including UCLA, NIST and the Beijing Institute of Technology in China.



This topological insulator, doped with chromium (Cr) atoms, conducts electricity on its surface and possesses desirable magnetic properties at a higher range of temperatures than before when sandwiched between magnetic materials known as ferromagnets.

Credit: 
Natasha Hanacek/NIST 
Topological insulators are a new class of materials that were discovered less than a decade ago after earlier theoretical work, recognized in the 2016 Nobel Prize in physics, predicted they could exist. The materials are electrical insulators on the inside and they conduct electricity on the outer surface. They are exciting to computer designers because electric current travels along them without shedding heat, meaning components made from them could reduce the high heat production that plagues modern computers. They also might be harnessed one day in quantum computers, which would exploit less familiar properties of electrons, such as their spin, to make calculations in entirely new ways. When TIs conduct electricity, all of the electrons flowing in one direction have the same spin, a useful property that quantum computer designers could harness.

The special properties that make TIs so exciting for technologists are usually observed only at very low temperature, typically requiring liquid helium to cool the materials. Not only does this demand for extreme cold make TIs unlikely to find use in electronics until this problem is overcome, but it also makes it difficult to study them in the first place.

Furthermore, making TIs magnetic is key to developing exciting new computing devices with them. But even getting them to the point where they can be magnetized is a laborious process. Two ways to do this have been to infuse, or “dope,” the TI with a small amount of magnetic metal and/or to stack thin layers of TI between alternating layers of a magnetic material known as a ferromagnet. However, increasing the doping to push the temperature higher disrupts the TI properties, while the alternate layers’ more powerful magnetism can overwhelm the TIs, making them hard to study.

To get around these problems, UCLA scientists tried a different substance for the alternating layers: an antiferromagnet. Unlike the permanent magnets on your fridge, whose atoms all have north poles that point in the same direction, the multilayered antiferromagnetic (AFM) materials had north poles pointing one way in one layer, and the opposite way in the next layer. Because these layers’ magnetism cancels each other out, the overall AFM doesn’t have net magnetism—but a single layer of its molecules does. It was the outermost layer of the AFM that the UCLA team hoped to exploit.

Fortunately, they found that the outermost layer’s influence magnetizes the TI, but without the overwhelming force that the previously used magnetic materials would bring. And they found that the new approach allowed the TIs to become magnetic and demonstrate all of the TI’s appealing hallmarks at temperatures far above 77 Kelvin—still too cold for use as consumer electronics components, but warm enough that scientists can use nitrogen to cool them instead.

“It makes them far easier to study,” said Alex Grutter of the NIST Center for Neutron Research, which partnered with the UCLA scientists to clarify the interactions between the overall material’s layers as well as its spin structure. “Not only can we explore TIs’ properties more easily, but we’re excited because to a physicist, finding one way to increase the operational temperature this dramatically suggests there might be other accessible ways to increase it again. Suddenly, room temperature TIs don’t look as far out of reach.”

*Paper:* Q.L. He, X. Kou, A.J. Grutter, G. Yin, L. Pan, X. Che, Y. Liu, T. Nie, B. Zhang, S.M. Disseler, B.J. Kirby, W. Ratcliff II, Q. Shao, K. Murata, X. Zhu, G. Yu, Y. Fan, M. Montazeri, X. Han, J.A. Borchers and K.L. Wang. Tailoring Exchange Couplings in Magnetic Topological Insulator/Antiferromagnet Heterostructures. _Nature Materials_, October 31, 2016. DOI: 10.1038/nmat4783



NIST Collaboration Heats Up Exotic Topological Insulators | NIST

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## TaiShang

*Innovation takes the spotlight*
Shanghai Daily, November 1, 2016




Exhibitors prepare a robot with two seven-joint arms yesterday for the 2016 China International Industry Fair, which opens in Shanghai today. [Photo/Shanghai Daily]

Innovative products including a robot with two seven-joint arms and a high-temperature superconducting maglev pen will be among innovative products that visitors can marvel at the 2016 China International Industry Fair, which opens in Shanghai today.

*The robot, developed by Shanghai Gene Automation Technology Co, imitates a man's movements and its two arms can work collaboratively. Each arm has seven joints — one joint more than common robots — allowing it to handle precise and complicated work like chip and digital device assembling.*

*"It imitates a human's working method and uplifts efficiency for labor-intensive industry,"* Ju Zheng, an engineer at the developer, told Shanghai Daily. "The added joint raises the robot's flexibility and its multi-task skills."

Ju said the robot is undergoing laboratory tests and is set to enter the market next year.

Shanghai Superconductor Technology Co hopes to impress visitors with its levitating pen that can write down sentences read out by visitors on a vertical board.

The firm applies an onboard high-temperature superconducting maglev technology to the pen, which operates on voice and movement recognition, said Hong Yiming, its marketing director.

"You just speak out or write down a sentence, either in Chinese or English, and the pen will immediately write what you said or wrote onto the vertical board," said Hong.

A "purely original innovation," the levitating pen, weighing between 100 and 200 grams, may also imitate a person's handwriting.

The company is also introducing an HTS wireless power transfer system so that electric devices like cell phones can be charged without using wires.

Over 2,300 exhibitors are taking part in the annual five-day fair at the National Exhibition and Convention Center. More than 130,000 trade visitors are expected to attend.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*WIPO expects China to become second biggest international patent applicant in two year*
Source: Xinhua 2016-11-01 04:42:49

GENEVA, Oct. 31 (Xinhua) -- Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Francis Gurry said on Monday he expected China to become the world's second biggest international patent applicant in two years.

"China is arising into intellectual property and technological power; 14 percent of all international patent applications last year were from China. We expect this year to go about 17 or 18 percent, or even higher," Francis Gurry told the press as the UN agency unveiled a new neural machine translation tool on Monday to translate Chinese patent documents into English.

He said China ranked third in terms of the number of international patent applications filed in 2015. "We might expect it to achieve number two within the next two years," Gurry noted.

WIPO initially "trained" the new technology to translate Chinese, Japanese and Korean patent documents into English. Patent applications in those languages accounted for some 55 percent of worldwide filings in 2014.

The high level of accuracy of the Chinese-English translation is the result of the training of the neural machine translation tool, which compared 60 million sentences from Chinese patent documents provided to WIPO's PATENTSCOPE database by the State Intellectual Property Office of China with their translations as filed at the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

The neural machine translation can produce more natural word order, with particular improvements seen in so-called distant language pairs, like Chinese-English. WIPO said users can already try out the Chinese-English translation facility on the public beta test platform.

WIPO plans to extend the neural machine translation service to French-language patent applications, with other languages to follow.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Banglar Bir

*China says it has stealth-defeating quantum radar*
Published time: 8 Sep, 2016 13:05

Get short URL


© Cherie A. Thurlby / Reuters

A Chinese firm has reportedly developed and tested a radar system that uses quantum entanglement to beat the stealth technology of modern military craft, state media said.

*Read more*



China receives first data from unique ‘hack-proof’ quantum satellite

The first Chinese quantum radar was developed by the Intelligent Perception Technology Laboratory of the 14th Institute in CETC, according to Xinhua news agency. CETC stands for Electronics Technology Group Corporation, a defense and electronics firm.

The radar was tested in mid-August, Xinhua said in a Thursday report.

The system was able to detect a target at a range of 100 kilometers in a real-world environment, the report said. The device employs single photon detection technology.

Quantum radar is a device that uses quantum entanglement photons to provide better detection capabilities than conventional radar systems. The method would be useful for tracking targets with a low radar cross section, such as modern aircraft using stealth technology or targets employing active countermeasures to jam or baffle enemy radar.

The technology may also find use in biomedicine, since quantum radar requires lower energy and can be used to non-invasively probe for objects with low reflectivity, such as cancer cells.

Earlier, China launched the world’s first quantum communications satellite, which uses quantum entanglement for cryptography

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Physicists just found more hints of an elusive particle that's its own antiparticle *
Matter and antimatter, simultaneously.

BEC CREW
26 OCT 2016

Almost 80 years ago, an Italian physicist proposed that a particle could exist as both matter and antimatter at the same time. Called the Majorana fermion, this mysterious state of matter set off a decades-long hunt, with scientists finding the first real evidence of its existence earlier this year.

And now physicists in China have discovered that an elusive type of quasiparticle can behave just like a Majorana fermion, and it could help us to finally understand this incredibly weird phenomenon.


-> Physicists just found more hints of an elusive particle that's its own antiparticle - ScienceAlert

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Synopsis: Quantum Cryptography Goes a Long Way*
November 2, 2016
_A protocol for secure quantum communications has been demonstrated over a record-breaking distance of 404 km._





Y. Hua-Lei _et al_., Phys. Rev. Lett. (2016)​
Encryption is critical in many aspects of modern life, such as the millions of credit card transactions that occur every day. However, perfectly secure communication can only be achieved using the strong correlations, or entanglement, between quantum objects. Now, Jian-Wei Pan at the University of Science and Technology of China and his colleagues have experimentally shown that a secure quantum protocol known as measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (MDIQKD) can be implemented over a distance of 404 km. The result breaks the previous MDIQKD record by over a factor of 2 and paves the way for secure quantum communications between distant cities.

MDIQKD—a protocol proposed in 2012—functions even when it uses photon detectors that are not ideal and have, for example, low detection efficiencies. It can also overcome security loopholes of quantum communication schemes by sending out decoy pulses of light to detect eavesdropping attacks. Pan and his team sent pulses of infrared photons through optical fibers with lengths between 102 and 404 km and optimized the MDIQKD scheme by tuning several parameters, such as the average number of photons per pulse. The protocol was found to be secure up to the longest distance. For each length, the researchers also determined the maximum speed by which cryptographic keys could be securely distributed. Compared with earlier experiments, they demonstrated a 500-fold increase in speed, reaching a key-distribution rate that would be sufficient to ensure encrypted voice transmission by telephone.

This research is published in _Physical Review Letters_.

–Katherine Kornei
Katherine Kornei is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon



Physics - Synopsis: Quantum Cryptography Goes a Long Way

*Paper: *Hua-Lei Yin, Teng-Yun Chen, Zong-Wen Yu, Hui Liu, Li-Xing You, Yi-Heng Zhou, Si-Jing Chen, Yingqiu Mao, Ming-Qi Huang, Wei-Jun Zhang, Hao Chen, Ming Jun Li, Daniel Nolan, Fei Zhou, Xiao Jiang, Zhen Wang, Qiang Zhang, Xiang-Bin Wang, and Jian-Wei Pan. "Measurement-Device-Independent Quantum Key Distribution Over a 404 km Optical Fiber". _Phys. Rev. Lett. _(2016).DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.190501

*Abstract*

Measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (MDIQKD) with the decoy-state method negates security threats of both the imperfect single-photon source and detection losses. Lengthening the distance and improving the key rate of quantum key distribution (QKD) are vital issues in practical applications of QKD. Herein, we report the results of MDIQKD over 404 km of ultralow-loss optical fiber and 311 km of a standard optical fiber while employing an optimized four-intensity decoy-state method. This record-breaking implementation of the MDIQKD method not only provides a new distance record for both MDIQKD and all types of QKD systems but also, more significantly, achieves a distance that the traditional Bennett-Brassard 1984 QKD would not be able to achieve with the same detection devices even with ideal single-photon sources. This work represents a significant step toward proving and developing feasible long-distance QKD.​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Posted: Nov 02, 2016
* Lithium ion extraction *

(_Nanowerk News_) The increasing usage of lithium for batteries or high-performance metals requires improved extraction techniques of lithium from primary sources such as salt lake brines. Chinese scientists have now designed a solid composite membrane that combines the mimicking of the chemical selection process in biological ion channels with molecular sieve technology. In the journal _Angewandte Chemie_ ("Polystyrene Sulfonate Threaded through a Metal–Organic Framework Membrane for Fast and Selective Lithium-Ion Separation"), they report the effective and fast separation of lithium ions from brines with that membrane.


-> http://www.nanowerk.com/nanotechnology-news/newsid=44967.php

*Paper: *Yi Guo et al, Polystyrene Sulfonate Threaded through a Metal-Organic Framework Membrane for Fast and Selective Lithium-Ion Separation, _Angewandte Chemie International Edition_ (2016). DOI: 10.1002/anie.201607329


----------



## JSCh

*China to build Antarctic astronomical observatory*
(Xinhua) 18:21, November 02, 2016

NANJING, Nov. 2 -- China is near to building a South Pole Astronomical Observatory, according to four astronomers onboard the Chinese scientific icebreaker Xuelong (or Snow Dragon), which left the port of Shanghai Wednesday for China's 33th Antarctic Expedition.

One of the astronomers on the trip is hoping that being far from home really does make the heart grow fonder. "I am going to propose to my girlfriend from the South Pole," said Lu Haiping, 32, before he set off.

He and his colleagues have embarked on a five-and-a-half-month trip to the South Pole, though it is not love they are interested in but the stars.

The team includes an astronomer from the National Astronomical Observatories and three from the Nanjing Institute of Astronomical Optics and Technology.

China has sent astronomers to the region every year since 2007 to make preparations to build an astronomical observatory on Dome-A, the highest location in Antarctica, about 4,093 meters above sea level.

The Chinese Antarctic Expedition first visited Dome-A in 2005, which is considered one of the best places on earth to set up an observatory as it stores climate information and atmospheric conditions for the entire globe.

China built its first Antarctic expedition station -- Kunlun Station -- in 2009, about 7.3 km from Dome-A.

It was in this station that preparations for building the Dome-A observatory were carried out.

"On each Antarctic expedition, members have just 20 days to work at the Kunlun Station," Lu said, adding that he and his colleagues have been commissioned to finish 100 projects during the new expedition.

China has established an automated astronomical observation platform at Dome-A, and plans to build a high-elevation Antarctic Terahertz telescope, the world's newest far-infrared observatory.

Lu's primary work on the trip is to maintain the automatic telescope AST3-2 unit, and to dismantle old facilities.

In their South Pole astronomical research, China's astronomers have cooperated with astronomers from the United States, Russia and Germany, such as in the observation of high-energy electrons based on data obtained from various Antarctic observatory facilities.

The astronomical research is expected to shine a light on the origin of cosmic objects, dark matter and extraterrestrial life.


----------



## JSCh

*World's first eye-tracking modular unit for VR devices released in Beijing*
By Sun Wenyu (People's Daily Online) 15:54, November 03, 2016



Visitors try the games with virtual reality (VR) devices at the 12th China (Shenzhen) International Cultural Industries Fair in Shenzhen. [File photo]


The world's first virtual reality (VR) eye-tracking modular unit, aGlass, was released on Nov. 2 by 7invensun, a technology company based in Zhongguancun in Beijing, known as the Silicon Valley of China. Enabling users of VR devices to control viewpoints using only their eyes, the device offers an unprecedented VR experience.

Traditional VR devices, controlled by head movements and gyroscopes, are often unable to provide satisfying human-computer interaction.

"Such traditional interactions go against the instincts of the human body, which senses surroundings using both eyesight and head movements," explained Xu You, vice president of 7invensun.

The eye-tracking technology simulates the human eye-focusing mechanism and adjusts images to match users' pupil distance, thus solving the problem of vertigo while using VR devices.

Thanks to years of research and development, aGlass is able to cover the maximum range of human eye movement, 30 vertical degrees and 50 horizontal degrees. In addition, the unit also reduces eye-tracking delay to less than 5 milliseconds, with a high-sampling-rate sensor and optimized computing. The aGlass device even makes VR accessible to those who wear glasses, as users can put lenses in the modular unit to ease blurred vision.

The unit has already been officially recognized by HTC, a leading VR company.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Tech insider: What is the world’s No. 1 supercomputer processing? *
(People's Daily Online) 13:14, November 04, 2016





_Sunway TaihuLight, current fastest supercomputer in the world. File photo._​
Since beginning operation on June 20, China’s Sunway TaihuLight, the world’s fastest supercomputer, has made more than 100 key achievements in 19 fields covering climate, marine life, aerospace, biology, materials science, particle physics, medicine and more.

The supercomputer has worked on important national projects such as predicting the falling trajectory of China's first space station module Tiangong-I, which is set to fall back to Earth in 2017. It has also offered commercial services, processing data for Envision Energy, a Shanghai-based energy technology services provider. The powerful computer calculated China's wind resources from 2014 to 2015 in only 12 days, while simultaneously processing other jobs.

For reference, other supercomputers would need approximately 45 days to achieve the same feat. Sunway TaihuLight has been working more than 60 percent of the time since its deployment, while maintaining a low failure rate of 0.6 percent.

Researchers at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, where the supercomputer is housed, said they have invited scientists from a number of laboratories to work with computing experts at the center to design new software. Fluid mechanics and medical experts have already started to cooperate at the center.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## TaiShang

*China's 'Artificial Sun' achieves fusion breakthrough*
(People's Daily Online) 15:29, November 03, 2016






_[File photo]_

Chinese scientists have successfully obtained *high-confinement plasma for a record length of time*, which experts believe will promote the development of international thermonuclear fusion research.

The recent experiment was conducted using China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), an experimental thermonuclear fusion reactor that replicates the energy-generating process of the sun. *The experiment demonstrated the sustainability of plasma in the H-mode confinement regime, lasting over one minute.* This achievement will be key to the success of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), the largest international program dedicated to thermonuclear fusion experiments. It also marks a major step forward for fusion studies, Thepaper.cn reported on Nov. 2.

This is not the first time that EAST has generated enduring plasma. In 2012, plasma in a similar environment was maintained for 32 seconds, breaking the world record at that time. Since then, EAST has had its tungsten diverters and auxiliary heating system upgraded, laying the foundation to create long-pulse, high-confinement plasma.

Officially established in 2006, the EAST fusion reactor is run by the Institute of Plasma Physics in Hefei, which aims for plasma pulses lasting up to 1,000 seconds.

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## JSCh

*SMO in 14 nm CMOS Production Passes Through Wafer Data Validation in IMECAS*
Nov 07, 2016

Recently, technological breakthrough is made in collaborative optimization of light source mask in 14 nm complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) production in the Institute of Microelectronics of Chinese Academy of Sciences (IMECAS). Researchers completed light source optimization in multi-key layers in the back-end process, including Metal 1X, Metal 1.25X, Via 1X, etc. The optimized light source has passed through the wafer data validation. Compared to the original light source, key indicators are significantly improved. The stability of the lithography process in advanced node is guaranteed to ensure the progress of the follow-up research and development.

Source-mask optimization (SMO) is an essential resolution enhancement technology in 14 nm and below nodes. Aiming at design rules for a particular layer, mask structure, property and structure of photoresist layer and so on, researchers in IMECAS optimized light source shape, intensity distribution and mask shape simultaneously. Customized light source with Max lithography process window and modified mask shape were obtained by this optimization technique. The optimized light source can extend the lithography process window significantly, and improve the quality of graphic exposure and control deficiency effectively.

Based on this technology, R&D team led by WEI Yayi at IMECAS cooperated with Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), aiming at such difficult structures under the limit size among key layers as end to end line, line end to line, forbidden pitch and so on, successfully solved the lithography problem of corresponding structures, and effectively extended the resolution limit under the current process node.

Researchers used a reduced Gauss model to replace the complex photoresist model, greatly reduced the time period of the first round of SMO work meanwhile the simulating accuracy can be ensured. The simulation results can be well matched with the wafer data. Wafer verification results show that the optimized light source can significantly improve Depth of Focus (DOF), Mask Error Enhancement Factor (MEEF), Exposure Level (EL), Normalized Image Log Slope (NILS) and other key indicators in the lithography process. Single exposure process window reaches 80 nm. Exposure tolerance reaches more than 10%. Lithography resolution, image quality, and process stability have reached the desired goal, which laid a solid foundation for the following research and development work.


SMO in 14 nm CMOS Production Passes Through Wafer Data Validation in IMECAS---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## cirr

Another breakthrough?  @Bussard Ramjet

据中国科学院官方消息，中科院合肥物质科学研究院强磁场科学中心的研究人员在用于混合磁体装置的*大型超导高场磁体*上实现了10万高斯的设计指标，为40万高斯混合磁体的联调成功奠定了一项关键基础。

稳态强磁场实验装置项目国家“十一五”重大科技基础设施，包括产生40万高斯磁场的混合磁体装置，由口径为920毫米的10万高斯超导磁体及包含其内的30万高斯水冷磁体组合而成，其中的水冷磁体已在9月份的单独试验中成功实现技术指标。

*大口径超导高场磁体*由于成本高、难度大、风险高、研制周期长等因素，成为混合磁体研制能否成功的关键技术之一。

*该超导磁体的研制成功是国际超导技术发展的一个新的里程碑，此前世界上没有如此大型的磁体能够产生10万高斯磁场，也没有能产生10万高斯磁场的超导磁体能够达到如此大的口径*。

因此，它的研制成功不仅搭起了我国稳态强磁场科学研究的高平台，也为国际超导高场磁体技术的发展创造了新的成功经验。

大型高场超导磁体装置是一个复杂的系统工程，它不仅需要磁体本身具有良好的电磁性能和机械性能，成功运行还需要氦低温冷却系统、超导磁体电源、安保和控制系统等多个子系统的密切配合和保障，因此，该超导磁体的调试成功，也是对自主研发的各相关子系统的成功检验。

据悉，稳态强磁场能够为物理、材料、化学、生命科学等多学科前沿的研究提供难得的极端实验条件，因此，研制包括超导高场磁体在内的强磁场实验装置对于促进我国科学发展意义重大。不仅如此，大型超导高场磁体技术也具有其它十分重要的应用前景。

强磁场中心将再接再厉，在现有基础上，力争早日完成40万高斯混合磁体装置的联调，不断攀登强磁场技术和科学研究的新高峰。






http://news.mydrivers.com/1/506/506582.htm

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

cirr said:


> Another breakthrough?  @Bussard Ramjet
> 
> 据中国科学院官方消息，中科院合肥物质科学研究院强磁场科学中心的研究人员在用于混合磁体装置的*大型超导高场磁体*上实现了10万高斯的设计指标，为40万高斯混合磁体的联调成功奠定了一项关键基础。
> 
> 稳态强磁场实验装置项目国家“十一五”重大科技基础设施，包括产生40万高斯磁场的混合磁体装置，由口径为920毫米的10万高斯超导磁体及包含其内的30万高斯水冷磁体组合而成，其中的水冷磁体已在9月份的单独试验中成功实现技术指标。
> 
> *大口径超导高场磁体*由于成本高、难度大、风险高、研制周期长等因素，成为混合磁体研制能否成功的关键技术之一。
> 
> *该超导磁体的研制成功是国际超导技术发展的一个新的里程碑，此前世界上没有如此大型的磁体能够产生10万高斯磁场，也没有能产生10万高斯磁场的超导磁体能够达到如此大的口径*。
> 
> 因此，它的研制成功不仅搭起了我国稳态强磁场科学研究的高平台，也为国际超导高场磁体技术的发展创造了新的成功经验。
> 
> 大型高场超导磁体装置是一个复杂的系统工程，它不仅需要磁体本身具有良好的电磁性能和机械性能，成功运行还需要氦低温冷却系统、超导磁体电源、安保和控制系统等多个子系统的密切配合和保障，因此，该超导磁体的调试成功，也是对自主研发的各相关子系统的成功检验。
> 
> 据悉，稳态强磁场能够为物理、材料、化学、生命科学等多学科前沿的研究提供难得的极端实验条件，因此，研制包括超导高场磁体在内的强磁场实验装置对于促进我国科学发展意义重大。不仅如此，大型超导高场磁体技术也具有其它十分重要的应用前景。
> 
> 强磁场中心将再接再厉，在现有基础上，力争早日完成40万高斯混合磁体装置的联调，不断攀登强磁场技术和科学研究的新高峰。
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> http://news.mydrivers.com/1/506/506582.htm




What is this?


----------



## terranMarine

*China creates world's most powerful superconducting magnet*

Chinese scientists have successfully created a superconducting magnet that generates a magnet field of 100,000 gauss. The magnet will promote the development of superconducting magnetic technologies worldwide.

The superconducting magnet was invented by High Magnetic Field Laboratory (CHMFL) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. As the world's first large-scale magnet capable of generating a 100,000-gauss magnetic field, the scientific achievement has created a platform for research on high-intensity magnetic fields.

According to CHMFL’s official website, the successful deployment of the large-scale conducting magnet requires a high-strength magnetic field. To this end, China has made great achievements in magnetic fields, including a helium cooling system and power supply for superconducting magnets.

As a key component in the creation of stable, high-intensity magnetic fields, the superconducting magnet can be used with various types of scientific instruments and equipment. It will also create improved research conditions in the fields of medicine and chemistry. CHMFL plans to create a 400,000-gauss magnetic field in the future.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## ahojunk

*China to reform S&T income system to boost innovation*
2016-11-08 08:46 | Xinhua | _Editor: Mo Hong'e_

China will reform its income distribution system for science and technology (S&T) personnel to better reflect their contributions.

A document, "Opinions on Implementing Distribution Policy to Focus on Value of Knowledge," was published on Monday by the general offices of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and the State Council.

Noting current issues such as the imbalance between S&T workers' contributions and their income, the document attempts to tie earnings to scientific, economic and social value.

According to the document, distribution policies should consider the characteristics of different jobs and fields, with improved medium- and long-term evaluation of staff performance and their contributions.

"In addition to more material and economic stimulus, greater efforts should be made to honor S&T workers who have done outstanding work," it said.

While calling for a steady increase in both basic salaries and bonuses, the document specified that, in the case of S&T achievements that yield economic benefits, those who play a key role in making the achievements possible should receive a greater portion of such benefits.

It vowed greater freedom for S&T institutes and colleges to set up their own income distribution standards, but also urged them to value contributions more and strike a balance among teaching staff, researchers, developers and those working in logistical support and other posts.

According to the document, these organizations should prioritize funding support for the basic functions of research and education, and while personnel are allowed to accept side projects from enterprises and social groups, they must first ensure their job duties are performed on schedule.

Also, S&T workers are allowed to hold part-time jobs in other institutes with official approval, but they should report their earnings and never disclose technical secrets or harm the legal interests of their primary institute.

Similarly, university teachers are allowed to hold multiple paid teaching jobs, and more efforts should be made to promote the sharing of outstanding textbooks and lessons via the Internet and other channels.

"Income gaps within a unit should be kept at a reasonable level," the document said, calling on efforts to ensure sound salaries and treatment of young researchers and teachers.

The document aims to "accelerate the implementation of the innovation-driven development strategy, stimulate science workers' passion for innovation and start-ups, and create a social environment in which hard work, knowledge, talent and creativity are respected."

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## ahojunk

*China decides to allow scholars to take work positions in companies*
2016-11-09 08:46 | CRIENGLISH.com | _Editor: Wang Fan_

A new document from the central Chinese authorities is allowing scholars in the country to accept paid job responsibilities from companies and other social organizations while retaining positions and earnings in their own research organizations.

The document says the income earned from such work positions will in principle all belong to individual scholars.

However, it's also been noted that scholars will need to gain the approval from their own work units before they can work for other organizations.

In addition, the document is encouraging scholars to take up non-profit positions.

Majority of China's top scholars currently work for public universities or state-run research institutes in the country.


********
_
@TaiShang 
I hope you can join some think tanks._
.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## TaiShang

ahojunk said:


> *China decides to allow scholars to take work positions in companies*
> 2016-11-09 08:46 | CRIENGLISH.com | _Editor: Wang Fan_
> 
> A new document from the central Chinese authorities is allowing scholars in the country to accept paid job responsibilities from companies and other social organizations while retaining positions and earnings in their own research organizations.
> 
> The document says the income earned from such work positions will in principle all belong to individual scholars.
> 
> However, it's also been noted that scholars will need to gain the approval from their own work units before they can work for other organizations.
> 
> In addition, the document is encouraging scholars to take up non-profit positions.
> 
> Majority of China's top scholars currently work for public universities or state-run research institutes in the country.
> 
> 
> ********
> _
> @TaiShang
> I hope you can join some think tanks._
> .



This is an opportunity for many scholars and a good way to canalize the established institutional expertise into the private sector. I would presume, especially those who are expert on international trade, maritime and dispute management laws could be in high demand by private business.

IR people would have a better chance, as you say, in private think tanks.

Hopefully, this move will lead to the creation of China's own RAND and Brookings and the likes.

***

*Patient grows ear for transplant on his arm*
(China Daily) 08:34, November 10, 2016







_Guo Shuzhong, an expert in reconstructive surgery at the First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, checks an ear grown on the arm of a patient, who lost his right ear in a car accident, on Wednesday.[Ruan Banhui/For China Daily]_

Doctors treating a man who lost his right ear in a car accident have helped him grow a new one－on his arm.

The patient, identified only as Ji, who is in his late 30s, was injured a year ago and has been receiving treatment from Guo Shuzhong, an expert in reconstructive surgery at the First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University in Xi'an, Shaanxi province.

Guo, who has 33 years of experience, and his colleague, Shu Maoguo, devised a three-step reconstruction plan using part of the patient's rib cartilage.

In the first phase, doctors buried a skin expander in the patient's right forearm and regularly injected water to expand the skin. In the second phase, doctors took part of the rib cartilage from the patient and buried it under the expanded skin, which was successfully done on Tuesday.

"The third phase of the operation, to transplant the new ear onto Ji's head, will be carried out in three or four months," Shu said.

Doctors have to wait for the ear to grow completely in order to make it perfect for the patient, he explained.

Ji, looking at the ear growing on his right arm, said with a smile: "It looks exactly the same as my old ear."


**
_
He is so lucky._

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Simulations Show Swirling Rings, Whirlpool-Like Structure in Subatomic ‘Soup’*
International team including Berkeley Lab researcher surprised by complex dynamics in model of quark-gluon plasma

News Release Glenn Roberts Jr. 510-486-5582 • November 10, 2016


​This hydrodynamic simulation shows the flow patterns, or “vorticity distribution,” from a smoke ring-like swirling fluid around the beam direction of two colliding heavy ions. The simulation provides new insights about the properties of a superhot fluid known as the quark-gluon plasma. (Credit: Berkeley Lab)

At its start, the universe was a superhot melting pot that very briefly served up a particle soup resembling a “perfect,” frictionless fluid. Scientists have recreated this “soup,” known as quark-gluon plasma, in high-energy nuclear collisions to better understand our universe’s origins and the nature of matter itself. The physics can also be relevant to neutron stars, which are the extraordinarily dense cores of collapsed stars.

Now, powerful supercomputer simulations of colliding atomic nuclei, conducted by an international team of researchers including a Berkeley Lab physicist, provide new insights about the twisting, whirlpool-like structure of this soup and what’s at work inside of it, and also lights a path to how experiments could confirm these characteristics. The work is published in the Nov. 1 edition of _Physical Review Letters_.


_Continue -> _Simulations Reveal New Details in 'Subatomic Soup' | Berkeley Lab

*Paper: *Long-gang Pang, Hannah Petersen, Qun Wang, and Xin-Nian Wang, "Vortical Fluid and Λ Spin Correlations in High-Energy Heavy-Ion Collisions", _Phys. Rev. Lett. _(2016), DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.192301


----------



## JSCh

*CHMFL Achieves High Field of 10 Tesla in Large-scale Superconducting Magnet*
Nov 11, 2016

A large-scale high field magnet system was under test in the magnet development hall and achieved great success at the High Magnetic Field Laboratory (CHMFL) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences on Nov. 5th in Hefei.

This large-scale high field magnet system achieved the aim of 10 Tesla high field after years of planning, designing and building. According to previous reports, the 10 Tesla superconducting magnet possesses the world’s biggest magnet bore capable of generating such high magnetic fields.

As an engineering rule, the stronger you make a magnet, the narrower that bore needs to be: it’s just really hard to make a high field magnet with lots of room in the middle. Yet CHMFL has successfully built a superconducting magnet that achieved both: high intensity (10 Tesla) and wide bore (920 mm). It is a new milestone for the development of international high field magnet technology.

A large scale superconducting magnet is a complicated system, which needs not only good electromagnetic and mechanical performance of the magnet itself, but also good Helium Cryogenic Cooling System, High Stability Power Supply System, Security System and Central Control System.

The successful test of the superconducting magnet also means a successful inspection of these related systems independently developed by CHMFL.

It is also a significant milestone on the way to CHMFL’s goal of a 40 Tesla hybrid magnet and gives the team at CHMFL new momentum as they approach the final phases of the hybrid magnet project.

The 40 Tesla hybrid magnet is known as a hybrid because it is composed of a 30 Tesla resistive magnet nested in a 10-Tesla superconducting magnet outsert.

The so-called “outsert” superconducting magnet system can generate 10 Tesla within a very large magnet bore of 920 mm, operating at 4.5 Kelvin. It is one of the key components because of the 40-Tesla hybrid magnet because of its high costs, high difficulty, high risk and longer research time and so on.

The 30-Tesla “insert”, a resistive magnet with a 32 mm room temperature bore developed by CHMFL, was tested successfully and reached the goal of 30 Tesla central field by itself in September, 2016.

The achievement of the superconducting magnet is crucial to the success of building the hybrid magnet. The commissioning of the hybrid magnet is to begin in the near future.

By the time the project is completed toward the end of 2016, the 40 Tesla hybrid magnet will be the most powerful magnet in China, which is available to all researchers worldwide, and it will benefit researches in physical, material and life sciences for years to come.




Test results of the 10T superconducting magnet outsert and 30T resistive magnet insert (Image by ZHANG Jun)

CHMFL Achieves High Field of 10 Tesla in Large-scale Superconducting Magnet---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *Synopsis: Quantum Cryptography Goes a Long Way*
> November 2, 2016
> _A protocol for secure quantum communications has been demonstrated over a record-breaking distance of 404 km._
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Y. Hua-Lei _et al_., Phys. Rev. Lett. (2016)​
> Encryption is critical in many aspects of modern life, such as the millions of credit card transactions that occur every day. However, perfectly secure communication can only be achieved using the strong correlations, or entanglement, between quantum objects. Now, Jian-Wei Pan at the University of Science and Technology of China and his colleagues have experimentally shown that a secure quantum protocol known as measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (MDIQKD) can be implemented over a distance of 404 km. The result breaks the previous MDIQKD record by over a factor of 2 and paves the way for secure quantum communications between distant cities.
> 
> MDIQKD—a protocol proposed in 2012—functions even when it uses photon detectors that are not ideal and have, for example, low detection efficiencies. It can also overcome security loopholes of quantum communication schemes by sending out decoy pulses of light to detect eavesdropping attacks. Pan and his team sent pulses of infrared photons through optical fibers with lengths between 102 and 404 km and optimized the MDIQKD scheme by tuning several parameters, such as the average number of photons per pulse. The protocol was found to be secure up to the longest distance. For each length, the researchers also determined the maximum speed by which cryptographic keys could be securely distributed. Compared with earlier experiments, they demonstrated a 500-fold increase in speed, reaching a key-distribution rate that would be sufficient to ensure encrypted voice transmission by telephone.
> 
> This research is published in _Physical Review Letters_.
> 
> –Katherine Kornei
> Katherine Kornei is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon
> 
> 
> 
> Physics - Synopsis: Quantum Cryptography Goes a Long Way
> 
> *Paper: *Hua-Lei Yin, Teng-Yun Chen, Zong-Wen Yu, Hui Liu, Li-Xing You, Yi-Heng Zhou, Si-Jing Chen, Yingqiu Mao, Ming-Qi Huang, Wei-Jun Zhang, Hao Chen, Ming Jun Li, Daniel Nolan, Fei Zhou, Xiao Jiang, Zhen Wang, Qiang Zhang, Xiang-Bin Wang, and Jian-Wei Pan. "Measurement-Device-Independent Quantum Key Distribution Over a 404 km Optical Fiber". _Phys. Rev. Lett. _(2016).DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.190501
> 
> *Abstract*
> 
> Measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (MDIQKD) with the decoy-state method negates security threats of both the imperfect single-photon source and detection losses. Lengthening the distance and improving the key rate of quantum key distribution (QKD) are vital issues in practical applications of QKD. Herein, we report the results of MDIQKD over 404 km of ultralow-loss optical fiber and 311 km of a standard optical fiber while employing an optimized four-intensity decoy-state method. This record-breaking implementation of the MDIQKD method not only provides a new distance record for both MDIQKD and all types of QKD systems but also, more significantly, achieves a distance that the traditional Bennett-Brassard 1984 QKD would not be able to achieve with the same detection devices even with ideal single-photon sources. This work represents a significant step toward proving and developing feasible long-distance QKD.​


*Chinese Scientists Set World Distance Record of 404 km in Secure Quantum Communication*
Nov 11, 2016

Encryption is critical in many aspects of modern life, however, perfectly secure communication can only be achieved using the strong correlations, or entanglement, between quantum objects. Quantum key distribution (QKD) makes it possible for two distant users to share a key with unconditional security.

PAN Jianwei at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of Chinese Academy of Sciences and his colleagues have experimentally shown that a secure quantum protocol, known as measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (MDIQKD), can be implemented over a distance of 404 km. The result breaks the previous MDIQKD record and paves the way for secure quantum communications between distant cities. This study was published on _Physical Review Letters_ and was highlightened as Editor’s Suggestion.

Lengthening the distance and improving the key rate of QKD are vital issues in practical applications. In the past years, PAN’s team has achieved several significant results, however, these experiments failed to provide a satisfying performance in key rate. This time, they employed an optimized four-intensity decoy-state method, which was earlier proposed by WANG Xiangbin and his team from Tsinghua University.

PAN's team sent pulses of infrared photons through optical fibers with lengths between 102 and 404 km and optimized the MDIQKD scheme by tuning several parameters. For each length, researchers also determined the maximum speed by which cryptographic keys could be securely distributed. Compared with earlier experiments, they demonstrated a 500-fold increase in speed, reaching a key-distribution rate that would be sufficient to ensure encrypted voice transmission by telephone.

This record-breaking implementation of the MDIQKD method not only provides a new distance record for both MDIQKD and all types of QKD systems but also, more significantly, achieves a distance that the traditional Bennett-Brassard 1984 QKD would not be able to achieve with the same detection devices even with ideal single-photon sources. This work represents a significant step toward proving and developing feasible long-distance QKD.

This work was supported by Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Education, government of Shandong Province, Jinan High-tech zone, etc.



Experimental setup for the MDIQKD system (Image by ZHANG Qiang, WANG Xiangbin and PAN Jianwei)


Chinese Scientists Set World Distance Record of 404 km in Secure Quantum Communication---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Breakthrough in liquid metal research paves way for 4-D printing*
By Yin Xiaohong (People's Daily Online) 17:28, November 11, 2016

Recently, a study by the Chinese Academy of Sciences reported that liquid metal can be formed into various shapes on the surface of graphite. Moreover, the liquid metal can retain its new shape, and is even capable of some anti-gravity movement. These discoveries have pointed to the possibility of flexible robot research and 4-D printing.

According to the article, the research team first found that by introducing a graphite substrate, they could easily form liquid metal into different clear shapes, such as triangles, squares and circles. Prior to this research, liquid metal was only able to be shaped using external electric fields, and it always shrank back into a sphere as soon as the electric field was removed. This research therefore demonstrates the possibility of more freely manipulating liquid metal, which is of great importance to the development of flexible electronic elements, transformable intelligent machines and advanced manufacturing.

*Paper: *Liang Hu, Lei Wang, Yujie Ding, Shihui Zhan, Jing Liu. "Liquid Metals: Manipulation of Liquid Metals on a Graphite Surface ", _Adv. Mater. _(2016), DOI: 10.1002/adma.201670286

*Abstract*



 A liquid metal (LM) usually appears as a sphere in alkaline solution due to its large surface tension on an ordinary substrate such as glass. On page 9210, J. Liu and co-workers present a fundamental discovery that a spherical liquid-metal droplet becomes flat and dull, with its surface tension significantly reduced when placed on a graphite substrate. Such an intriguing transformation without external energy opens the way for flexibly shaping and patterning liquid-metal-based structures. Moreover, unique transformations and worm-like upslope LM locomotion under a low-voltage electric field are also revealed. These findings provide strategic insight for making future shape-controllable LM soft machines.​




图1：期刊封面故事及液态金属在石墨表面的自由铺展与塑形效应​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

Bussard Ramjet said:


> What is this?



See post #1182

Now this 

黎云、杨森/新华网

2016-11-13 11:36 来源：澎湃新闻

新华社上海11月13日消息，经科技部授权上海市科学技术委员会组织的测试评估，由解放军信息工程大学、复旦大学、浙江大学和中国科学院信息工程研究所等科研团队联合承担的国家“863计划”重点项目研究成果“网络空间拟态防御理论及核心方法”近期通过验证，测评结果与理论预期完全吻合。这标志着我国在网络防御领域取得重大理论和方法创新，将打破网络空间“易攻难守”的战略格局，改变网络安全游戏规则。

拟态，是指一种生物模拟另一种生物或环境的现象。2008年，中国工程院院士邬江兴从条纹章鱼能模仿十几种海洋生物的形态和行为中受到启发，提出了研发拟态计算机的构想。在科技部和上海市的共同支持下，拟态计算原理样机研制成功并入选“2013年度中国十大科技进展”。在此基础上，研发团队针对网络空间不确定性威胁等重大安全问题，开展基于拟态伪装的主动防御理论研究并取得重大突破，所提出的“动态异构冗余体制架构”，能够将基于未知漏洞后门的不确定性威胁或已知的未知风险变为极小概率事件。

2016年1月起，由国内9家权威评测机构组成的联合测试验证团队，对拟态防御原理验证系统进行了为期6个月的验证测试，先后有21名院士和110余名专家参与不同阶段的测评工作。测评专家委员会发布的《拟态防御原理验证系统测评意见》认为：拟态防御机制能够独立且有效地应对或抵御基于漏洞、后门等已知风险或不确定威胁。受测系统达到拟态防御理论预期，并使利用“有毒带菌”构件实现可管可控的信息系统成为可能，对基于“后门工程和隐匿漏洞”的“卖方市场”攻势战略具有颠覆性意义。

邬江兴介绍说，我国是遭受网络攻击最严重的国家之一。据国家互联网应急中心数据显示，仅2015年的抽样监测，我国有1978万余台主机被10.5万余个木马和僵尸网络控制端控制。由于现有的网络防御体制采用的是“后天获得性免疫”机制，先“亡了羊”，才能通过打补丁、封门堵漏来“补牢”，对于不能感知和认知的网络攻击几乎不设防，而拟态防御理论与方法能够有效应对这些问题。

邬江兴还表示，网络空间拟态防御理论与方法是全人类的共同财富，中国科学家愿意将这一技术与世界分享，为构建网络空间命运共同体作出贡献。

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Beast



Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Crystals to the rescue*

*Tiny super magnets could be the future of drug delivery*

Microscopic crystals could soon be zipping drugs around your body, taking them to diseased organs.

In the past, this was thought to be impossible – the crystals, which have special magnetic properties, were so small that scientists could not control their movement. But now a team of Chinese researchers has found the solution, and opened new applications that use these crystals to save lives.

If some magnetic materials, such as iron oxides, are small enough – perhaps a few millionths of a millimetre across, smaller than most viruses – they have an unusual property: their magnetisation randomly flips as the temperature changes.

By applying a magnetic field to these crystals, scientists can make them almost as strongly magnetic as ordinary fridge magnets. It might seem odd, but this is the strongest type of magnetism known. This phenomenon is called superparamagnetism.

Superparamagnetic particles could be ideal for drug delivery, as they can be directed to a tumour simply by using a magnetic field. Their tiny size, however, has made them difficult to guide precisely. Until now. Kezheng Chen and Ji Ma from Quingdou University of Science and Technology, Quingdou, China have demonstrated a method of producing much larger superparamagnetic crystals and have recently published their findings in _Physics Letters A_.

These large crystals do not show the unwanted magnetic properties of the small crystals. “The largest superparamagnetic materials that we have been able to make before now were clusters of nanocrystals that were together about a thousand times smaller than these,” says Chen. The large crystals are about the width of a human hair.

This discovery paves the way for superparamagnetic bulk materials that could revolutionise drug delivery in the body. And this is just the beginning. Chen's crystals might, for example, be useful in the many engineering projects that need "smart fluids" to build safer car parts or better human prostheses.

*Article details*

Elsevier has made the following article freely available until mid-2017.

Ji Ma and Kezheng Chen: "Discovery of superparamagnetism in sub-millimeter-sized magnetite porous single crystals," _Physics Letters A_ (October 2016)





SEM images of the as-synthesized Fe3O4 product with (a) low- and (b) high-magnification.​

Crystals to the rescue - Highlighted Articles - Elsevier

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## JSCh

*CRISPR gene-editing tested in a person for the first time*
_The move by Chinese scientists could spark a biomedical duel between China and the United States._

David Cyranoski
15 November 2016
A Chinese group has become the first to inject a person with cells that contain genes edited using the revolutionary CRISPR–Cas9 technique.

On 28 October, a team led by oncologist Lu You at Sichuan University in Chengdu delivered the modified cells into a patient with aggressive lung cancer as part of a clinical trial at the West China Hospital, also in Chengdu.

Earlier clinical trials using cells edited with a different technique have excited clinicians. The introduction of CRISPR, which is simpler and more efficient than other techniques, will probably accelerate the race to get gene-edited cells into the clinic across the world, says Carl June, who specializes in immunotherapy at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and led one of the earlier studies.

"I think this is going to trigger ‘Sputnik 2.0’, a biomedical duel on progress between China and the United States, which is important since competition usually improves the end product,” he says.



-> CRISPR gene-editing tested in a person for the first time : Nature News & Comment

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## JSCh

*Researchers Solve Mystery of Historic 1952 London Fog and Current Chinese Haze*
November 14, 2016



​
A fog blanketed London in December 1952, killing as many as 12,000 people and puzzling researchers for decades. Texas A&M researchers believe they have solved the mystery.

Few Americans may be aware of it, but in 1952 a killer fog that contained pollutants covered London for five days, causing breathing problems and killing thousands of residents. The exact cause and nature of the fog has remained mostly unknown for decades, but an international team of scientists that includes several Texas A&M University-affiliated researchers believes that the mystery has been solved and that the same air chemistry also happens in China and other locales.

Texas A&M researcher Renyi Zhang, University Distinguished Professor and the Harold J. Haynes Chair of Atmospheric Sciences and Professor of Chemistry, along with graduate students Yun Lin, Wilmarie Marrero-Ortiz, Jeremiah Secrest, Yixin Li, Jiaxi Hu and Bowen Pan and researchers from China, Florida, California Israel and the UK have had their work published in the current issue of _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)._

In December of 1952, the fog enveloped all of London and residents at first gave it little notice because it appeared to be no different from the familiar natural fogs that have swept over Great Britain for thousands of years.

But over the next few days, conditions deteriorated, and the sky literally became dark. Visibility was reduced to only three feet in many parts of the city, all transportation was shut down and tens of thousands of people had trouble breathing. By the time the fog had lifted on Dec. 9, at least 4,000 people had died and more than 150,000 had been hospitalized. Thousands of animals in the area were also killed.

Recent British studies now say that the death count was likely far higher – more than 12,000 people of all ages died from the killer fog. It has long been known that many of those deaths were likely caused by emissions from coal burning, but the exact chemical processes that led to the deadly mix of fog and pollution have not been fully understood over the past 60 years.

The 1952 killer fog led to the passage of the Clean Air Act in 1956 by the British Parliament and is still considered the worst air pollution event in the European history.

Through laboratory experiments and atmospheric measurements in China, the team has come up with the answers.

“People have known that sulfate was a big contributor to the fog, and sulfuric acid particles were formed from sulfur dioxide released by coal burning for residential use and power plants, and other means,” Zhang says.

“But how sulfur dioxide was turned into sulfuric acid was unclear. Our results showed that this process was facilitated by nitrogen dioxide, another co-product of coal burning, and occurred initially on natural fog. Another key aspect in the conversion of sulfur dioxide to sulfate is that it produces acidic particles, which subsequently inhibits this process. Natural fog contained larger particles of several tens of micrometers in size, and the acid formed was sufficiently diluted. Evaporation of those fog particles then left smaller acidic haze particles that covered the city.”

The study shows that similar chemistry occurs frequently in China, which has battled air pollution for decades. Of the 20 most polluted cities in the world, China is home to 16 of them, and Beijing often exceeds by many times the acceptable air standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“The difference in China is that the haze starts from much smaller nanoparticles, and the sulfate formation process is only possible with ammonia to neutralize the particles,” Zhang adds.

“In China, sulfur dioxide is mainly emitted by power plants, nitrogen dioxide is from power plants and automobiles, and ammonia comes from fertilizer use and automobiles. Again, the right chemical processes have to interplay for the deadly haze to occur in China. Interestingly, while the London fog was highly acidic, contemporary Chinese haze is basically neutral.”

Zhang says China has been working diligently over the past decade to lessen its air pollution problems, but persistent poor air quality often requires people to wear breathing masks during much of the day. China’s explosive industrial and manufacturing growth and urbanization over the past 25 years have contributed to the problem.

“A better understanding of the air chemistry holds the key for development of effective regulatory actions in China,” he adds.

“The government has pledged to do all it can to reduce emissions going forward, but it will take time,” he notes. “We think we have helped solve the 1952 London fog mystery and also have given China some ideas of how to improve its air quality. Reduction in emissions for nitrogen oxides and ammonia is likely effective in disrupting this sulfate formation process.”

The study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Robert A. Welch Foundation, the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, a US National Science Foundation Fellowship, a NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship, and a collaborative research grant between Texas A&M and China.



Researchers Solve Mystery of Historic 1952 London Fog and Current Chinese Haze | Texas A&M Today

*Journal Reference*:

Gehui Wang, Renyi Zhang, Mario E. Gomez, Lingxiao Yang, Misti Levy Zamora, Min Hu, Yun Lin, Jianfei Peng, Song Guo, Jingjing Meng, Jianjun Li, Chunlei Cheng, Tafeng Hu, Yanqin Ren, Yuesi Wang, Jian Gao, Junji Cao, Zhisheng An, Weijian Zhou, Guohui Li, Jiayuan Wang, Pengfei Tian, Wilmarie Marrero-Ortiz, Jeremiah Secrest, Zhuofei Du, Jing Zheng, Dongjie Shang, Limin Zeng, Min Shao, Weigang Wang, Yao Huang, Yuan Wang, Yujiao Zhu, Yixin Li, Jiaxi Hu, Bowen Pan, Li Cai, Yuting Cheng, Yuemeng Ji, Fang Zhang, Daniel Rosenfeld, Peter S. Liss, Robert A. Duce, Charles E. Kolb, Mario J. Molina. *Persistent sulfate formation from London Fog to Chinese haze*. _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_, 2016; 201616540 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1616540113

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*Synopsis: Ten Photons in a Tangle*
November 15, 2016
_An entangled polarization state of ten photons sets a new record for multiphoton entanglement._




X.-L. Wang _et al_., Phys. Rev. Lett. (2016)​
Quantum computing requires multiple qubits entangled together. So far, only a handful of qubits have been coupled together successfully. A new experiment raises the bar with the entangling of ten photons, two more than the previous photon record. While still a ways off from what’s needed to make quantum computers competitive with classical ones, the entanglement of this many photons might be sufficient for certain quantum error correction codes and teleportation experiments.

Entangling photons typically relies on a nonlinear crystal, which converts a small fraction of incoming photons into a pair of entangled photons. In the case of the -barium borate (BBO) crystal, the two photons have opposite polarizations—one being horizontal, the other vertical—and they are emitted in different directions. Researchers therefore use a variety of optical devices to collect the photon pair, which can then be entangled with pairs from other BBO crystals.

Previous multiphoton entanglement experiments had relatively low collection efficiencies of around 40%. Xi-Lin Wang from the University of Science and Technology of China and colleagues have developed a system with 70% collection efficiency. Rather than using a single BBO crystal to create pairs, they utilize two closely spaced BBO crystals separated by a polarization-rotating plate. This “sandwich” configuration generates entangled pairs of photons traveling in the same direction with the same polarization. The boost in efficiency from this output alignment means Wang and colleagues can achieve a high count rate with relatively low input power. To create ten-photon entanglement, the team placed five sandwich structures in a row and illuminated them all with a 0.57-W laser. They then used polarizing beam splitters to combine the photon pairs from each BBO crystal together.

This research is published in _Physical Review Letters_.

–Michael Schirber

*Paper: *Xi-Lin Wang, Luo-Kan Chen, W. Li, H.-L. Huang, C. Liu, C. Chen, Y.-H. Luo, Z.-E. Su, D. Wu, Z.-D. Li, H. Lu, Y. Hu, X. Jiang, C.-Z. Peng, L. Li, N.-L. Liu, Yu-Ao Chen, Chao-Yang Lu, and Jian-Wei Pan. "Experimental Ten-Photon Entanglement", _Phys. Rev. Lett._ (2016), DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.210502


Physics - Synopsis: Ten Photons in a Tangle

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## TaiShang

*China develops wearable exoskeleton that mimics human knee*
By Li Yan (People's Daily Online) 16:56, November 15, 2016





A wearable robotic leg developed by a team from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC) is purportedly one of the first devices of its kind to mimic natural knee movement.

The 1-meter-tall robotic leg weighs 19 kilograms. From top to bottom, it features more than 10 joints and dozens of sensors that help patients to walk normally.

This exoskeleton is more advanced and simulates the behavior of a natural knee joint more closely than previous models, according to an employee at the robot development center. Several companies have shown interest in investing in the invention, noted Hong Cheng, the chief executive of the center.

Starting from scratch in 2010, the UESTC team spent only five years developing the robot. That time frame is especially notable when compared to those of overseas scientists working toward the same goal, Hong pointed out. He added that many Chinese universities have now established wearable exoskeleton development centers, driving forward achievements in that area.

Medical robots have conducted 600,000 operations in 800 hospitals around the world. They can also be used in athletic and military projects, Hong said.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*EAST achieves longest steady-state H-mode operations*
November 16, 2016





Time traces of key plasma parameters for steady state H-mode operation over 60 seconds in EAST. Credit: EAST team​
Celebrating the 10th anniversary of physics operations, the 11th EAST (Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak) campaign reached a milestone in the exploration of advanced operation scenarios—achieving over 60s fully non-inductive/steady-state long-pulse H-mode plasmas under radio-frequency heating and ITER-like tungsten divertor operations, which marks the first minute-scale steady-state H-mode operation obtained on past and existing tokamaks around the world.

This is a major advance beyond the achievement of a record 32s long-pulse H-mode discharge in 2012. Since then, the EAST team has made great efforts to develop the steady-state H-mode scenario on EAST.


-> http://phys.org/news/2016-11-east-longest-steady-state-h-mode.html

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*IMECAS and SMIC Cooperate on MEMS R&D and Foundry Platform*
Nov 16, 2016

Institute of Microelectronics of Chinese Academy of Sciences (IMECAS) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation ("SMIC"; NYSE: SMI; SEHK: 981) signed a cooperation agreement on Nov. 15 in Shanghai for a MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical System) R&D foundry platform to jointly develop MEMS sensor standard processes and build a complete MEMS supply chain.

According to the agreement, IMECAS and SMIC will work together to create a platform based standard as well as mass production technologies, which will shorten the development cycle from design to production and thus help the MEMS industry grow more effectively and efficiently. IMECAS has rich experiences in MEMS Sensor design, packaging technology design. And SMIC has leading standardized process technology platforms, industry and market influence. Both will provide a strong foundation for future cooperation.

Joint development will start from a MEMS environmental sensor, combining the features of other types of MEMS Sensors.

"Through the cooperation between SMIC and IMECAS, we can exploit our advantages and jointly build an open MEMS technology service platform and an electronic information integration platform for the MEMS supply chain. With the integration of design, manufacturing, packing, testing, public platform and venture investment, we can form a supply chain ecosystem and support the development of a global as well as domestic Chinese MEMS industry," said YE Tianchun, director of IMECAS.

"SMIC’s R&D team has made a lot of achievements in developing new sensor technology platforms and introducing new customers. SMIC is willing to open our platforms to support commercialized production and the R&D of universities and research institutions." said Dr. Tzu-Yin Chiu, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of SMIC.

"SMIC and IMECAS have cooperated in numerous logic process development projects. This time we will expand our collaboration and promote the R&D of complete standardized MEMS sensor technologies to help integrate and improve the MEMS supply chain," Chiu said.



IMECAS and SMIC Cooperate on MEMS R&D and Foundry Platform---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Look! Dolphin Robot Takes Their First Leap in Qinhai Trangu Reservoir *
Nov 16, 2016

As the Olympic Motto “faster, higher, stronger” goes, dolphins are generally recognized as gifted swimmers in nature with outstanding water sports capabilities, e.g. leaping up to several meters and then making a turn in the air swiftly. Inspired by dolphins in natural world, Professor YU Junzhi and his colleagues from Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CASIA), have developed an elegant robotic dolphin to mimic dolphin leaps.





Researchers of CASIA & thier dolphin robot. (Image by CASIA)​
This robotic dolphin, modeled after a spotted dolphin, is designed with particular emphasis on streamlining as well as a high thrust tail powered by electric motors. The main load-bearing parts of the skeleton are made of titanium and other parts are made of aluminum, copper, and nylon. As for electronics, the dolphin robot is equipped with a microcontroller with high computational performance, a variety of onboard sensors, and a wireless communication module.

Building the hardware was only part of the challenge. The other half was modeling and calculating the speeds and angles needed for recreating the dolphin's leap. To solve this problem, the research team proposed a novel angle of attack theory based on control method to maximize the pushing speed. Meanwhile, a synthesized attitude control scheme was formed through the hybrid propulsion capability of the posterior body and the complementary maneuverability of the flippers.





Dolphin robot swims in Qinhai Trangu Reservoir. (Image by CASIA)​
Finally, dolphin robot was successful in swimming test in Qinhai Trangu Reservoir at the speed of 2.1 m/s, making it one of the fastest swimmers for its size ever built. Besides, the dolphins also realized several kinds of dolphin leaps, like one-shot leap and serial leaps.

Under the control of host system, the dolphin-like robots can be used to simulate agile movement, such as swimming straightly, yawing, floating and diving etc., which are hard to observe or measure. In addition, the acquired data of water quality parameters during their cruise, e.g. PH value, temperature, electric conductivity can be uploaded to the host system in real time. 

According to Prof. YU, in next stage the research will focus on investigating the energy expenditure to examine the power-speed relationship of dolphin propulsion on the robotic platform. Besides, another ongoing endeavor is made to increase jumping distance and height by means of improving mechanical design and control approaches.

The research entitled _Development of a Fast-Swimming Dolphin Robot Capable of Leaping_ has been published in _IEEE/ASME Transaction on Mechatronics_.


*Contact: *
Prof. YU Junzhi
Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 95 Zhongguancun East Road, 100190, BEIJING, CHINA
Tel: 86-010-82544796
E-mail: junzhi.yu@ia.ac.cn



Look! Dolphin Robot Takes Their First Leap in Qinhai Trangu Reservoir----Institute of Automation

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

* Chinese Research Team that Employs High Performance Computing to Understand Weather Patterns Wins 2016 ACM Gordon Bell Prize*




*
Salt Lake City, Utah, November 17, 2016* – ACM, the world's leading professional computing society, has named a 12-member Chinese team the recipients of the 2016 ACM Gordon Bell Prize for their research project, “10M-Core Scalable Fully-Implicit Solver for Nonhydrostatic Atmospheric Dynamics.” The winning team presented a solver (method for calculating) atmospheric dynamics. The ACM Gordon Bell Prize tracks the progress of parallel computing and rewards innovation in applying high performance computing to challenges in science, engineering, and large- scale data analytics. The award was bestowed during the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC16) in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Since the dawn of computing, scientists have used data analytics in an effort to predict and simulate the weather and related atmospheric events. In the early years of weather forecasting, scientists might have used standard central processing units (CPUs). With each passing year, the continued expansion in the capabilities of high performance computers has enabled researchers to employ increasingly sophisticated computational methods for the analysis and modeling of weather patterns. Advanced scientific computers break problems down into composite parts and perform immense amounts of mathematical calculations simultaneously. The performance of a supercomputer is measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS). Some of the latest supercomputers are capable of performing quadrillions of FLOPS.

In the abstract of their presentation, the winning team writes, “On the road to the seamless weather-climate prediction, a major obstacle is the difficulty of dealing with various spatial and temporal scales. The atmosphere contains time-dependent multi-scale dynamics that support a variety of wave motions.”

To simulate the vast number of variables inherent in a weather system developing in the atmosphere, the winning group presents a highly scalable fully implicit solver for three-dimensional nonhydrostatic atmospheric simulations governed by fully compressible Euler equations. Euler equations are a set of equations frequently used to understand fluid dynamics (liquids and gasses in motion).

Elaborating further, they add, “In the solver, we propose a highly efficient domain-decomposed multigrid preconditioner that can greatly accelerate the convergence rate at the extreme scale. For solving the overlapped subdomain problems, a geometry-based pipelined incomplete LU factorization method is designed to further exploit the on-chip fine-grained concurrency.”

The fully-implicit solver successfully scales to the entire system of the Sunway TaihuLight, a Chinese supercomputer with over 10.5 M heterogeneous cores, allowing for a performance of 7.95 PFLOPS in double precision. The Chinese team contends that this is the largest fully-implicit simulation to date. The Sunway TaihuLight is ranked as the fastest supercomputer in the world. It is nearly three times as fast as the Tianhe-2, the supercomputer that previously held the world record for speed.

Winning team members include Chao Yang, Chinese Academy of Sciences; Wei Xue, Tsinghua University; Haohuan Fu, Tsinghua University; Hongtao You, National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering and Technology; Xinliang Wang, Beijing Normal University; Yulong Ao, Chinese Academy of Sciences; Fangfang Liu, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lin Gan, Tsinghua University; Ping Xu, Tsinghua University; Lanning Wang, Beijing Normal University; Guangwen Yang, Tsinghua University; and Weimin Zheng, Tsinghua University.

Innovations from advanced scientific computing have a far-reaching impact in many areas of science and society—from understanding the evolution of the universe and other challenges in astronomy, to complex geological phenomena, to nuclear energy research, to economic forecasting, to developing new pharmaceuticals. The annual SC conference brings together scientists, engineers and researchers from around the world for an outstanding week of technical papers, timely research posters, and tutorials.


https://www.acm.org/media-center/2016/november/gordon-bell-prize-2016

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Chip firm seeks to tap wider market*
2016-11-17 10:26, China Daily



An engineer shows off a Sunway TaihuLight chip. The newly developed supercomputer powered by SW26010 processors is more than twice as powerful as the previous No 1 on June 20, 2016.(Photo/Xinhua)

The Chinese chip designer behind the world's fastest supercomputer is eyeing wider commercial application for its chips, as the artificial-intelligence boom is spurring demand for processors that can deliver supercomputing power.

The National High Performance IC Design Center (Shanghai), which designed the semiconductors to power the Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer, is in discussions with domestic companies about the use of its chips in artificial-intelligence-enabled products.

Yao Li, technical director at the IC design center, said: "We are in discussions with both internet heavyweights and State-owned enterprises about possible cooperation."

The Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer at the Chinese Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, is the world's fastest supercomputer as of June, according to TOP500, an organization that ranks the 500 most-powerful computer systems twice a year.

The machine, which is more than twice as powerful as the previous winner, is powered by SW26010 processors, designed by the Shanghai IC design center.

Previous winners often came with chips made by U.S. companies, such as Intel Corp.

"But we developed a new architecture that enables our chips to deliver more capacity with low power consumption," said Yao.

According to him, the IC design center is now working on a new generation of processors to power China's next supercomputer, which is expected to run 10 times faster than the current fastest.

The center is part of China's efforts to reduce its reliance on foreign technology. In 2014, China spent more than $200 billion on importing chipsets -- more than it spent on oil imports in the same period.

Security concerns are also prompting State-owned enterprises and local governments to embrace homegrown IT products.

Separately, in addition to developing a new generation of supercomputer chips every three to five years, the Shanghai center also makes tailor-made chips for the military and the government.

"We are stepping up efforts to build an ecosystem where more software can run on hardware powered by our chips," says Yao.

Office software products, such as WPS and some data software, are now compatible with devices powered by its chips.

Roger Sheng, research director at Gartner Inc, said the computing power of the SW26010 processors is well recognized. "The business opportunity is there, but efforts are needed to promote its commercial applications."

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## TaiShang

*Chinese supercomputer project wins top int'l prize*
(Xinhua) 20:43, November 18, 2016






NANJING, Nov. 18 -- A Chinese team on Friday won the 2016 ACM Gordon Bell prize, a top honor in high-performance computing, for an application running on China's fastest supercomputer.

It is the first time a Chinese team has won the award.

The project, named "10M-Core Scalable Fully-Implicit Solver for Nonhydrostatic Atmospheric Dynamics," presents a method for calculating atmospheric dynamics, according to the Association for Computing Machinery, which presented the award at the International Supercomputing Conference in Salt Lake City in the United States.

"The application can help improve global climate simulation and weather prediction," said Yang Guangwen, director of the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi.

The center, also one of the application developers, is home to Sunway Taihulight, the supercomputer that runs the application.

The award shows that Taihulight not only excels in terms of speed, but can also be a powerful platform for a wide range of applications, said Yang.

Since its launch on June 20, Sunway Taihulight has helped research teams in both China and abroad make over 100 achievements in 19 different fields, including meteorology, oceanography, aerospace and biology, Yang said.

According to the International Supercomputing Conference, China has 171 of the world's top 500 supercomputers, tied for first place with the United States.

Established in 1987, the Gordon Bell Prize is awarded each year at the annual supercomputing conference. It recognizes outstanding achievements in high-performance computing applications.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Q&A: One of the Brains behind the China Brain Project [Video]*
_A leader of the recently announced effort describes its goal of helping the world’s aging population find desperately needed treatments for psychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases_

By Gary Stix on November 15, 2016
Renowned neuroscientist Mu-Ming Poo is playing a key role in China’s contribution to the push by national and regional governments to set up gargantuan neuroscience research endeavors. The China Brain Project has yet to put forward funding specifics. But Poo, who directs the Institute of Neuroscience of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and has held multiple academic posts at U.S. universities, is helping to shape the project’s 15-year timeline.

To circumvent the paucity of drugs for neurological illnesses, Poo’s own team wants to focus on finding solid evidence for video games and other behavioral training methods that might produce near-term cognitive benefits for China’s aging population. Poo talked to _Scientific American _recently about these plans.



--> Q&A: One of the Brains behind the China Brain Project [Video] - Scientific American

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## onebyone

*Material and plant samples retrieved from space experiments*
Source: Xinhua 2016-11-19 16:23:08 






BEIJING, Nov. 19 (Xinhua) -- Samples from space material and plant growth experiments carried out on China's space lab Tiangong-2 are in good condition and have been delivered to scientists for further research, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) said Saturday.

The material and plant samples were retrieved after the successful landing of the Shenzhou-11 spacecraft's reentry module Friday.

According to CAS, 12 out of 18 material samples sent to space via Tiangong-2 in September, including semiconductor, nano and thin film materials, were taken back for study, while the other six will remain in space to test their physical and chemical features in zero gravity for future development of material processing techniques.

Seeds of thale cress, a kind of flowering plant, have grown into pods after 48 days of cultivation in space, said CAS, adding that scientists will continue to grow the pods in the laboratory.


http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-11/19/c_135842572.htm


----------



## 艹艹艹

http://en.people.cn/n3/2016/1120/c90000-9144251.html
*EU to set up research and innovation center in Beijing*
(China Daily) 09:54, November 20, 2016





_　　(L-R) Tianjin Vice-Mayor Duan Chunhua, National Development and ReformCommission Vice-Minister Lin Nianxiu, Airbus President and CEO Fabrice Bregier andAviation Industry Corporation of China president Lin Zuoming lead a ground-breakingceremony for an A330 Completion and Delivery Center at Airbus Tianjin facilities inTianjin municipality, March 2, 2016. [Photo/IC]_

The European Commission will invest 3 million euros ($3.18 million) to set up a researchand innovation center in China as part of its efforts to deepen EU-China scientific andtechnological cooperation.

The European Research and Innovation Center of Excellence is the first EC-funded centerin China that focuses on research and development. It will be headquartered in Beijing, and have networks in other cities on the mainland.

Its services will range from organizing events to increasing exchanges between Chineseand European researchers, to producing reports about the situation in China on scientificand technological innovation.

It will also help private companies from European Union countries do research and seekdevelopment in China and find Chinese partners.

The project will start working from January 2017 and is expected to come into fulloperation as early as 2019.

"The aim is to establish a center here in China that can help European researchers on thefirst step toward the Chinese market, help them contact with Chinese companies and, atthe same time, enable Chinese researchers to interact better with the European side," saidSara Medina, member of the board of SPI, a Portugal-based consulting firm which focuseson promoting EU-China scientific and technological cooperation.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## cirr

*China successfully 3D printed its 1st pressure vessel cylinder prototype for a nuclear reactor*

Nov 18, 2016 | By Tess

With fast growing technologies like 3D printing, it seems that there is an exciting “first” almost every week. Today’s first comes from China, where the China Nuclear Power Research Institute and Nanfang Additive Manufacturing Technology Co. Ltd. (Nanfang-AM) have announced their first ever 3D printed pressure vessel cylinder prototype.

The prototype, an ACP100 pressure vessel cylinder, was 3D printed using a heavy metal additive manufacturing system developed by the China Nuclear Power Research Institute and Nanfang-AM. The 3D printed cylinder prototype marks an important step for the companies towards realizing a small pressure reactor made entirely from 3D printed parts.






The pressure vessel cylinder itself was 3D printed out of an undisclosed metal material and the prototype weighs an impressive 400 kg. According to the Chinese companies that developed the prototype, its chemical composition, as well as its material and mechanical properties meet the relevant international nuclear power regulatory requirements.

On a larger scale, the 3D printed ACP100 pressure vessel cylinder prototype has positive implications within the nuclear field on a whole, as it demonstrates the applicability and potentials of using 3D printing technology within it. Like in other industries and fields, the integration of additive manufacturing into the nuclear sector could lead to significantly shorter equipment manufacturing cycles, could reduce manufacturing and overall equipment costs, and could even improve equipment quality, efficiency, and safety due to the ability to 3D model more complex parts.






Importantly, the ability to 3D print such parts as a pressure vessel cylinder prototype has pushed forward the “Made in China 2025” initiative, which seeks to transform and upgrade Chinese industries, especially the manufacturing industries. Among the goals of the initiative are to expand innovation-driven manufacturing, emphasize quality over quantity, aspire to greener development, and more.

http://www.3ders.org/articles/20161...cylinder-prototype-for-a-nuclear-reactor.html

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *Synopsis: Ten Photons in a Tangle*
> November 15, 2016
> _An entangled polarization state of ten photons sets a new record for multiphoton entanglement._
> 
> 
> 
> 
> X.-L. Wang _et al_., Phys. Rev. Lett. (2016)​
> Quantum computing requires multiple qubits entangled together. So far, only a handful of qubits have been coupled together successfully. A new experiment raises the bar with the entangling of ten photons, two more than the previous photon record. While still a ways off from what’s needed to make quantum computers competitive with classical ones, the entanglement of this many photons might be sufficient for certain quantum error correction codes and teleportation experiments.
> 
> Entangling photons typically relies on a nonlinear crystal, which converts a small fraction of incoming photons into a pair of entangled photons. In the case of the -barium borate (BBO) crystal, the two photons have opposite polarizations—one being horizontal, the other vertical—and they are emitted in different directions. Researchers therefore use a variety of optical devices to collect the photon pair, which can then be entangled with pairs from other BBO crystals.
> 
> Previous multiphoton entanglement experiments had relatively low collection efficiencies of around 40%. Xi-Lin Wang from the University of Science and Technology of China and colleagues have developed a system with 70% collection efficiency. Rather than using a single BBO crystal to create pairs, they utilize two closely spaced BBO crystals separated by a polarization-rotating plate. This “sandwich” configuration generates entangled pairs of photons traveling in the same direction with the same polarization. The boost in efficiency from this output alignment means Wang and colleagues can achieve a high count rate with relatively low input power. To create ten-photon entanglement, the team placed five sandwich structures in a row and illuminated them all with a 0.57-W laser. They then used polarizing beam splitters to combine the photon pairs from each BBO crystal together.
> 
> This research is published in _Physical Review Letters_.
> 
> –Michael Schirber
> 
> *Paper: *Xi-Lin Wang, Luo-Kan Chen, W. Li, H.-L. Huang, C. Liu, C. Chen, Y.-H. Luo, Z.-E. Su, D. Wu, Z.-D. Li, H. Lu, Y. Hu, X. Jiang, C.-Z. Peng, L. Li, N.-L. Liu, Yu-Ao Chen, Chao-Yang Lu, and Jian-Wei Pan. "Experimental Ten-Photon Entanglement", _Phys. Rev. Lett._ (2016), DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.210502
> 
> 
> Physics - Synopsis: Ten Photons in a Tangle


18/11/2016
*Ten linked photons break entanglement record*

Particles that have linked quantum states, known as ‘entangled’ particles, can affect each other’s states even if they are physically separated. Now scientists have *set a record by entangling ten photons* — two more than in previous work.

Entangled particles should one day enable quantum computing and communications, but they are inefficient to produce. A team led by Jian-Wei Pan of the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei created the ten entangled photons by running five photon pairs through a series of four polarizing beam splitters. They also developed a laser light source that produced their photon batches about 100 times faster than did previous experiments.

Original Research
_Phys. Rev. Lett._ (2016) ​

http://www.nature.com/articles/n-11061996?WT.mc_id=TWT_NA_1611_RESEARCHIGHLIGHTS_PORTFOLIO

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Graphene Solar Absorber Could Enable Cheap Thermal Desalination*
By Dexter Johnson
Posted 21 Nov 2016 | 20:00 GMT

To those uninitiated to the costs of thermal desalination of water, the idea of simply vaporizing water to take out the impurities seems like it would offer a limitless supply of fresh water just by using it on the world’s oceans. However, the energy costs for thermal desalination has been estimated at around 80 megawatt-hours per megaliter of water produced, rendering it too costly for just about everyone except Gulf States rich in oil and desperate for fresh water.

One way around these high-energy costs has been thought to be solar-powered thermal desalination, which can help produce clean water in remote areas and developing countries. However, the solar approach to water desalination is rather limited in the amount of fresh water it can produce and is further hampered by the need for optical concentrators and for thermal insulation, both of which have limited the large-scale use of this approach.



--> Graphene Solar Absorber Could Enable Cheap Thermal Desalination - IEEE Spectrum

Xiuqiang Lia, Weichao Xua, Mingyao Tanga, Lin Zhoua, Bin Zhua, Shining Zhua and Jia Zhua. "Graphene oxide-based efficient and scalable solar desalination under one sun with a confined 2D water path", _PNAS_ (2016), DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1613031113.


*Significance*
Direct solar desalination, which produces desalinated water directly using solar energy with minimum carbon footprint, is considered a promising technology to address the global water scarcity. Here, we report a solar desalination device, with efficient two-dimensional water supply and suppressed thermal loss, which can enable an efficient (80% under one-sun illumination) and effective (four orders salinity decrement) solar desalination. The energy transfer efficiency of this foldable graphene oxide film-based device fabricated by a scalable process is independent of water quantity and can be achieved without optical or thermal supporting systems, therefore significantly improving the scalability and feasibility of this technology toward a complementary portable and personalized water solution.

*Abstract*
Because it is able to produce desalinated water directly using solar energy with minimum carbon footprint, solar steam generation and desalination is considered one of the most important technologies to address the increasingly pressing global water scarcity. Despite tremendous progress in the past few years, efficient solar steam generation and desalination can only be achieved for rather limited water quantity with the assistance of concentrators and thermal insulation, not feasible for large-scale applications. The fundamental paradox is that the conventional design of direct absorber−bulk water contact ensures efficient energy transfer and water supply but also has intrinsic thermal loss through bulk water. Here, enabled by a confined 2D water path, we report an efficient (80% under one-sun illumination) and effective (four orders salinity decrement) solar desalination device. More strikingly, because of minimized heat loss, high efficiency of solar desalination is independent of the water quantity and can be maintained without thermal insulation of the container. A foldable graphene oxide film, fabricated by a scalable process, serves as efficient solar absorbers (>94%), vapor channels, and thermal insulators. With unique structure designs fabricated by scalable processes and high and stable efficiency achieved under normal solar illumination independent of water quantity without any supporting systems, our device represents a concrete step for solar desalination to emerge as a complementary portable and personalized clean water solution.​

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## cirr

*Chinese Manufacturers Start Making OLED TVs*

By Adnan Farooqui on 11/21/2016 08:52 PST






The OLED TV market has more or less been cornered by Korean giants like LG and Samsung. Their display affiliates are the ones that are supplying OLED panels to other manufacturers so they basically have a virtual monopoly on the market. Chinese manufacturers have been trying to compete as well and they are now ready to push their homegrown OLED technology into the market.

BOE, one of the biggest display panel manufacturers in China, has teamed up with manufacturer Skyworth to introduce an indigenously produced OLED TV. The companies plan to launch this TV in both Chinese and European markets. They’re planning to carve a space for themselves in the OLED market that doesn’t have much competition right now.

Skyworth recently launched its OLED TV at the 18th HighTech Fair in Shenzhen. This is the first time that an OLED TV with a Chinese panel has been launched. Skyworth has been making OLED TVs since 2013 but it had been sourcing panels from LG Display for those televisions.

OLED TV panel suppliers from South Korea are likely to retain their lead for a couple of years as Chinese manufacturers will certainly require time to bring up the yield and cut down costs enough to compete with their Korean rivals.

The company is now planning to release the indigenously produced OLED TV in China and across Europe from next year. It’s unclear at this point in time if the U.S. market is on its radar as well, it may very well be, as Chinese companies are increasingly focusing on efforts to break into the lucrative U.S. market.

http://www.ubergizmo.com/2016/11/chinese-manufacturers-start-making-oled-tvs/

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## cirr

*中国首台2万瓦光纤激光器正式装机* 

22.11.2016

新华社武汉11月22日电（记者胡喆、黄艳）22日，在“武汉·中国光谷”激光技术与产业发展创新论坛上，中国航天科工集团公司有关负责人表示，我国首台全自主研发的2万瓦光纤激光器正式进入装机阶段，这一技术成果直接打破国外技术垄断，预计可使进口产品降价40%左右。

“目前，我国2万瓦光纤激光器只能依赖进口。”项目负责人之一、国家“千人计划”专家闫大鹏介绍，一台进口的2万瓦光纤激光器市场价格为600多万元，实现国产后，售价可降低40%。此前，中国航天科工集团四院已成功研发出1万瓦光纤激光器，成为继美国之后全球第二家掌握此核心技术的企业。

光纤激光器是继二氧化碳和半导体激光器之后的第三代产品，它由细如发丝的光纤来释放激光能量，可广泛应用于工业造船、飞机和汽车制造、航空航天以及3D打印等领域，与传统二氧化碳激光器相比，光纤激光器的耗电量仅为其1/5，体积只有其1/10，但速度快4倍，转换效率高20%，且没有污染。

我国高功率光纤激光器曾长期依赖进口，价格昂贵，供货周期长。经过多年努力，中国航天科工集团四院先后自主研发出国内首台脉冲全光纤激光器和首台连续全光纤激光器。

闫大鹏介绍，此前我国首台万瓦连续光纤激光器研制成功，打破国外垄断并使同类进口产品价格下降50%。如今2万瓦光纤激光器正式在武汉装机，明年即可整机试运行。

据悉，目前中国航天科工集团四院的相关技术和产能已跃居全国第一、全球第三。产品涵盖10W－100W脉冲光纤激光器、50W－10000W连续光纤激光器两大系列，占国内40%以上的市场份额，产品出口美洲、欧洲，韩国、日本等20多个国家和地区。





光纤激光器（资料图） 

据长江网报道，这台2万千瓦光纤激光器由中国航天科工四院所属武汉锐科光纤激光器技术有限责任公司研发，或将于2018年上半年问世并投入使用。 

2万瓦光纤激光器是湖北省182个重大技术创新专项项目之一正式启动。包括获得的重大技术创新专项资金100万元在内，锐科公司共投入788.9万元用于这一项目的研发。 

激光设备的核心部件是激光器，相当于汽车的发动机。据了解，光纤激光器是继二氧化碳和半导体激光器之后的第三代产品，它由细如发丝的光纤来释放激光能量，可广泛应用于工业造船、飞机和汽车制造、航空航天以及3D打印等领域，与传统二氧化碳激光器相比，光纤激光器的耗电量仅为其1/5，体积只有其1/10，但速度快4倍，转换效率高20%，且没有污染。 

2013年，武汉锐科公司已成功研发出我国首台1万瓦光纤激光器，成为继美国之后全球第二家掌握此核心技术的企业。这一技术是中国工业发展的重要里程碑，标志着中国光纤激光器自主研发能力已达到世界一流水平。如今2万瓦光纤激光器正式在武汉装机，明年即可整机试运行。 

“目前，美国还是对中国禁运一千瓦以上的大功率光纤激光器。”作为项目负责人之一，国家“千人计划”专家、锐科公司总工程师闫大鹏介绍，万瓦连续光纤激光器研制成功，打破国外垄断后，迫使进口产品价格由每台500万元降至300多万元。2万瓦光纤激光器实现国产后，将使进口产品售价从600多万元的水平上降低40%。 

2007年以前，我国高功率光纤激光器长期依赖美国进口，价格昂贵，供货周期长。锐科公司经过几年努力，先后自主研发出国内首台10瓦脉冲全光纤激光器、首台25瓦脉冲全光纤激光器、首台100瓦连续全光纤激光器和首台1000瓦连续全光纤激光器，打破国外垄断并迫使同类进口产品价格下降50%。 

目前，锐科公司的相关技术和产能已跃居全国第一、全球第三。产品涵盖10-100瓦脉冲光纤激光器、50瓦-10000瓦连续光纤激光器两大系列，占国内40%以上的市场份额，产品出口美洲、欧洲，韩国、日本等20多个国家和地区。 
观察者网综合新华社、长江网、湖北日报报道 

http://www.guancha.cn/Science/2016_11_22_381476.shtml

@Bussard Ramjet

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

22 November 2016
*Innovative Technique to Curtail Illegal Copying of Digital Media *
_A new method creates invisible optical watermarks to protect images, videos and books from counterfeit distribution _

WASHINGTON — In today’s digital world it can be challenging to prevent photos, videos and books from being illegally copied and distributed. A new light-based technique is making it more practical to create secure, invisible watermarks that can be used to detect and prosecute counterfeiting.

“In our research, we use a complex pattern of light, or diffraction pattern, as a unique watermark,” said Yishi Shi, from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, China. “The invisible watermark is embedded into the content we are trying to protect. Imperceptibility is one of the most significant advantages of optical watermarking.”

In The Optical Society's journal _Optics Express_, Shi and colleagues report a new approach that encodes the optical watermark in a single step. The new technique is faster and uses a less complex optical setup than other optical watermarking approaches previously pursued. The new technique can also be used to optically encrypt data or to hide information within images.

*Practical watermarking*
The new method is based on a technique called single-shot ptychography encoding (SPE) that uses multiple partially-overlapping beams of light to generate a diffraction pattern from a complex object. Unlike other methods, SPE can encode the optical watermark in a single exposure with no mechanical scanning. SPE is also less prone to error than other methods and uses a simpler optical setup.

In addition to conducting numerical simulations to test their method, the researchers carried out an optical experiment showing the usefulness of SPE. “Most methods for optical watermarking have only been demonstrated with simulations,” said Shi. “Our experiment shows that our method is suitable for practical optical watermarking.”

For the optical experiment, the researchers used SPE to create a complex watermark consisting of a diffraction pattern of multiple tiny spots. Prior to embedding the watermark into a host image, they used computer processing to remove any repeated data and to scramble the diffraction pattern, making it easier to embed the watermark and further improving its security. The spot size can be reduced to smaller than 10 microns, which helps prevent degradation of the host image.

Once a watermark is embedded into digital media, there are multiple ways to detect it to check for authenticity. If someone knows an optical watermark is present, it can be detected by subtracting the host image from the watermarked image and then using a special security key and extraction algorithm. For cases where the presence of a watermark is unknown, the watermark could be extracted using existing algorithm-based detection methods.

*Upping the complexity *
The researchers are now working to apply SPE to dynamic watermarking, which creates watermarks from objects that change quickly. For example, the variations that occur within a biological cell could be recorded and used to create a special watermark. They also plan to use SPE for multi-image watermarking and even 3D watermarking, while also working to further enhance the imaging quality of single-shot ptychography.

“The successful implementation of SPE will be a big breakthrough for optical security and could bring SPE-based optical watermarking and encryption closer to commercial application,” said Shi.

*Paper*: WenHui Xu, HongFeng Xu, Yong Luo, Tuo Li, and Yishi Shi, "Optical watermarking based on single-shot-ptychography encoding," Opt. Express 24, 27922-27936 (2016).


Innovative Technique to Curtail Illegal Copying of Digital Media | News Releases | The Optical Society

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*The science of friction on graphene*
_Sliding on flexible graphene surfaces has been uncharted territory until now. _

David L. Chandler | MIT News Office
November 23, 2016






Graphene, a two-dimensional form of carbon in sheets just one atom in thick, has been the subject of widespread research, in large part because of its unique combination of strength, electrical conductivity, and chemical stability. But despite many years of study, some of graphene’s fundamental properties are still not well-understood, including the way it behaves when something slides along its surface.

Now, using powerful computer simulations, researchers at MIT and elsewhere have made significant strides in understanding that process, including why the friction varies as the object sliding on it moves forward, instead of remaining constant as it does with most other known materials.

The findings are presented this week in the journal _Nature_, in a paper by Ju Li, professor of nuclear science and engineering and of materials science and engineering at MIT, and seven others at MIT, the University of Pennsylvania, and universities in China and Germany.


--> The science of friction on graphene | MIT News
*

Paper*: Suzhi Li, Qunyang Li, Robert W. Carpick, Peter Gumbsch, Xin Z. Liu, Xiangdong Ding, Jun Sun & Ju Li, "The evolving quality of frictional contact with graphene", _Nature _(2016), DOI: 10.1038/nature20135

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*World of viruses uncovered – not just unwanted house bugs*
24 November 2016
*Humans are surrounded by viruses in our daily lives*

1445 viruses have been discovered in the most populous animals – those without backbones such as insects and worms – in a _Nature_ paper that shows human diseases like influenza are derived from those present in invertebrates.

This re-writes the virology textbook by showing invertebrates carry far more viruses than we thought

A groundbreaking study of the virosphere of the most populous animals – those without backbones such as insects, spiders and worms and that live around our houses – has uncovered 1445 viruses, revealing people have only scratched the surface of the world of viruses – but it is likely that only a few cause disease.

The meta-genomics research, a collaboration between the University of Sydney and the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in Beijing, was made possible by new technology that also provides a powerful new way to determine what pathogens cause human diseases.

Professor Edward Holmes, from the Marie Bashir Institute for Infectious Diseases & Biosecurity and the School of Life and Environmental Sciences, who led the Sydney component of the project said although the research revealed humans are surrounded by viruses in our daily lives, these did not transfer easily to humans.

“This groundbreaking study re-writes the virology text book by showing that invertebrates carry an extraordinary number of viruses – far more than we ever thought,” Professor Holmes said.

“We have discovered that most groups of viruses that infect vertebrates – including humans, such as those that cause well-known diseases like influenza – are in fact derived from those present in invertebrates,” said Professor Holmes, who is also based at the University’s multidisciplinary Charles Perkins Centre.

The study suggests these viruses have been associated with invertebrates for potentially billions of years, rather than millions of years as had been believed, and that invertebrates are the true hosts for many types of virus.

The paper, “Redefining the invertebrate RNA virosphere,” is published today in _Nature_.

“Viruses are the most common source of DNA and RNA on earth,” Professor Holmes said.

The findings suggest viruses from ribonucleic acid, known as RNA – whose principal role is generally to carry instructions from DNA – are likely to exist in every species of cellular life.

“It’s remarkable that invertebrates like insects carry so very many viruses – no one had thought to look before because most of them had not been associated with human-borne illnesses.”

Although insects such mosquitoes are well-known for their potential to transmit viruses like zika and dengue, Professor Holmes stressed that insects should not generally be feared because most viruses were not transferable to humans and invertebrates played an important role in the ecosystem.

Importantly, the same techniques used to discover these invertebrate viruses could also be used to determine the cause of novel human diseases, such as the controversial ‘Lyme-like disease’ that is claimed to occur following tick bites.

“Our study utilised new techniques in meta-genomics, which we are also using to provide insights into the causes of human-borne diseases,” said Professor Holmes, who is also a National Health and Medical Research Council Australia Fellow.

“The new, expensive technologies available to researchers which have allowed us to do this landmark project, provide the ultimate diagnostic tool.”

Professor Holmes and his collaborators are conducting human studies using these new techniques to analyse Lyme-like disease and other clinical syndromes.


World of viruses uncovered in Nature - The University of Sydney

*Paper*: Mang Shi, Xian-Dan Lin, Jun-Hua Tian, Liang-Jun Chen, Xiao Chen, Ci-Xiu Li, Xin-Cheng Qin, Jun Li, Jian-Ping Cao, John-Sebastian Eden, Jan Buchmann, Wen Wang, Jianguo Xu, Edward C. Holmes & Yong-Zhen Zhang. "Redefining the invertebrate RNA virosphere". _Nature _(2016). DOI:10.1038/nature20167

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## 艹艹艹

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/techn...-google-home-the-linglong-dingdong/ar-AAkFuVT
*China’s Answer to Amazon Echo and Google Home: The LingLong DingDong*
Wired
Joshua D. Bateman11 hrs ago

The Amazon Echo is remarkably useful.Alexa, the digital personal assistant within the cylindrical black gadget, plays music, helps with recipes, and orders stuff online. One thing it cannot do, however, is speak Chinese.

The LingLong DingDong can.

The name may sound funny to you, but this gadget is no joke. It could introduce millions of people to the power of a voice-activated, cloud-based smart home speaker. And it could help introduce the Echo to China.

Companies likeAmazonandGooglewant their voice-enabled smart speakers front and center in your home. These clever devices are designed to be your primary interface to almost anything. Using nothing more than a wake word and a simple sentence, you can get the weather, set alarms or maintain a shopping list, and control your lights and locks. Whichever product and platform you choose becomes the focal point of your interaction with the internet. According to one report, China’s smart home market alone couldhit $22.8 billionby 2018. “We think that the voice is most natural way to connect,” says Charlie Liu, LingLong’s senior marketing manager. “You just need to say what you want. We think it is really a huge market.”

The DingDong, which costs the equivalent of $118, provides news, weather, and stock updates. It answers questions, manages schedules, provides directions, and plays music and audiobooks. It is the first product from Beijing LingLong Co., a $25 million joint venture between JD.com, China’s largest online retailer, and voice recognition powerhouse iFlytek.

The gadget weighs about 3 pounds and stands 9.5 inches tall. It is circular at the top and square on the bottom, and available in white, red, black, and purple. The shape symbolizes ti?nyuán dìf?ng—the notion that “heaven is round, Earth is square,” a concept that Liu says is central to LingLong’s design language. The colors also are imbued with meaning; white is associated with purity, and red with prosperity.

Three commands wake the device: DingDong DingDong, Xiaowei Xiaowei (a girl’s nickname), and BaiLing BaiLing (skylark). The DingDong comes in Mandarin and Cantonese versions (the engines required to understand the languages are too complex to include them both in one device). Most people speak Mandarin, and the myriad accents and dialects present a Herculean challenge. Still, the company claims the DingDong understands roughly 95 percent of the population.

If the DingDong sounds a lot like the Echo, that’s by design. Although work on the DingDong was well underway when the Echo arrived in 2014, engineers at LingLong took a long look at Amazon’s digital assistant. “Their launch influenced us a lot,” Liu says. No one at the company could get one, so they gleaned what they could from marketing materials and info online.




© Beijing LingLongBeijing LingLong
“It is a challenge to do on the R&D side,” says Lv Fang, head of sales and marketing. Even now, the product has a few kinks—some customers are having trouble connecting to Wi-Fi.

So far, customers primarily use the DingDong for music, drawing on a library of about 3 million songs. The limited feature set won’t change without far broader third-party support. “Echo is really great in this area,” Liu said. “[We have] 10 services like that, but Amazon announced that they have 4,000. It’s really a big gap.” To close that gap, the company recently made a voice service platform available to developers, and is offering tech support and other incentives to bring them aboard.

Although the DingDong can play any number of Chinese music, dramas, and the like, it was flummoxed by a request for Beyoncé when saying her name in English. It couldn’t provide a stock quote for JD.com because it is listed on the NASDAQ, not in China. And it can only provide one response per question or command. But the company plans to incorporate artificial intelligence to make DingDong smarter.

It also hopes to work with other companies to sharpen DingDong’s skills. Beyond creating a robust ecosystem of developers, LingLong is offering its technology to other smart speaker manufacturers. And it hopes to work with Amazon to introduce DingDong to Alexa—and vice-versa. “If they want to sell the Echo in China, maybe they will use our voice engine,” Fang says.

In fact, LingLong might be Jeff Bezos’s best chance to crack that market. “China is kind of a lost opportunity for these companies,” says Ashutosh Sharma, research director at Forrester. “China is very protective, it’s not as open as India is. The Chinese government also places a lot of requirements.” Alexa could work with DingDong to make inroads where Amazon alone cannot. So Alexa might one day speak Chinese after all.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Pangu

*重大突破：破解沙子土壤化密码 沙漠有望变绿洲*
点击：1230 作者：环球物理 来源：云创大数据 发布时间:2016-11-22 11:07:33


*我国科学家经过多年研究发现，土壤颗粒间存在一种特定的约束，并将这一原创力学理论运用于沙漠生态恢复，沙漠实地试验取得成功，科研成果在中国科学院权威刊物《中国科学》和中国工程院院刊《工程》（英文）发表。*

重庆交通大学力学教授易志坚科研团队首次发现并定义了*土壤颗粒间存在万向约束，正是这种约束使土壤施以温和的力“抱住”植物根系，维持植物稳定，并且保水、保肥和透气。而沙颗粒间不具备这种约束，找到了万向约束，就找到了沙子向土壤转换的密码。*

经过4年实验，科研团队研发出一种环保高效的万向约束引入方式——*向沙中添加一种植物性纤维黏合剂*。*经过改造，“一盘散沙”就能获得与自然土壤一样的生态－力学属性。易志坚说，这项技术可实现土壤沙化的逆过程，有望将沙漠“土壤化”，成为植物生长的理想载体。*

今年以来，科研团队将“沙漠土壤化”生态恢复技术用于内蒙古阿拉善盟乌兰布和沙漠25亩试验地中。经施工改造后的沙体当即固定，并表现出持久的抗风蚀能力。试验地种植了玉米、小麦、糜子、瓜果蔬菜、向日葵、观赏草、乔木灌木等70多种植物，长势旺盛，开花结果。狐狸、獾、野猫、蛙类、鸟类和许多昆虫在两个足球场大的沙漠绿洲中安了家。

据专家测算，*试验地作物种植与当地土壤中种植相比，浇水量相当，施肥量更少，农作物产量更高，沙地表面几个月就长出了藻类结皮。当地农民说，这种具有固沙和护种作用的藻类结皮在当地气候条件下要10年才能形成。*

易志坚介绍，*这项技术还具有成本低、易施工等特点，大规模改造成本约为每亩1500元至2700元。使用旋耕机操作，单台单日施工面积约30亩，一次改造后即可持续耕种，且后续种植对土质具有提升作用。*

中国工程院院士钟志华在实地考察后表示，运用力学原理实现沙向土壤性能的逆转，目前国际上还没有公开报道先例。*此项技术是治沙思路的重大创新，有望成为沙漠变绿洲的根本手段。*中国农技推广学会理事李加纳认为，沙漠中作物生长达到优质土壤效果，是一次重大突破，对治理沙漠具有重要价值。

视频：http://www.kunlunce.com/llyj/fl11111/2016-11-22/111326.html

*现场实况*








试验基地航拍图








“沙改土”过程








基地内70余种植物长势良好







基地内种植的玉米已经结果







观赏性很强的向日葵







种植的西瓜







实验基地里的青蛙

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## grey boy 2

Pangu said:


> *重大突破：破解沙子土壤化密码 沙漠有望变绿洲*
> 点击：1230 作者：环球物理 来源：云创大数据 发布时间:2016-11-22 11:07:33
> 
> 
> *我国科学家经过多年研究发现，土壤颗粒间存在一种特定的约束，并将这一原创力学理论运用于沙漠生态恢复，沙漠实地试验取得成功，科研成果在中国科学院权威刊物《中国科学》和中国工程院院刊《工程》（英文）发表。*
> 
> 重庆交通大学力学教授易志坚科研团队首次发现并定义了*土壤颗粒间存在万向约束，正是这种约束使土壤施以温和的力“抱住”植物根系，维持植物稳定，并且保水、保肥和透气。而沙颗粒间不具备这种约束，找到了万向约束，就找到了沙子向土壤转换的密码。*
> 
> 经过4年实验，科研团队研发出一种环保高效的万向约束引入方式——*向沙中添加一种植物性纤维黏合剂*。*经过改造，“一盘散沙”就能获得与自然土壤一样的生态－力学属性。易志坚说，这项技术可实现土壤沙化的逆过程，有望将沙漠“土壤化”，成为植物生长的理想载体。*
> 
> 今年以来，科研团队将“沙漠土壤化”生态恢复技术用于内蒙古阿拉善盟乌兰布和沙漠25亩试验地中。经施工改造后的沙体当即固定，并表现出持久的抗风蚀能力。试验地种植了玉米、小麦、糜子、瓜果蔬菜、向日葵、观赏草、乔木灌木等70多种植物，长势旺盛，开花结果。狐狸、獾、野猫、蛙类、鸟类和许多昆虫在两个足球场大的沙漠绿洲中安了家。
> 
> 据专家测算，*试验地作物种植与当地土壤中种植相比，浇水量相当，施肥量更少，农作物产量更高，沙地表面几个月就长出了藻类结皮。当地农民说，这种具有固沙和护种作用的藻类结皮在当地气候条件下要10年才能形成。*
> 
> 易志坚介绍，*这项技术还具有成本低、易施工等特点，大规模改造成本约为每亩1500元至2700元。使用旋耕机操作，单台单日施工面积约30亩，一次改造后即可持续耕种，且后续种植对土质具有提升作用。*
> 
> 中国工程院院士钟志华在实地考察后表示，运用力学原理实现沙向土壤性能的逆转，目前国际上还没有公开报道先例。*此项技术是治沙思路的重大创新，有望成为沙漠变绿洲的根本手段。*中国农技推广学会理事李加纳认为，沙漠中作物生长达到优质土壤效果，是一次重大突破，对治理沙漠具有重要价值。
> 
> 视频：http://www.kunlunce.com/llyj/fl11111/2016-11-22/111326.html
> 
> *现场实况*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 试验基地航拍图
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> “沙改土”过程
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 基地内70余种植物长势良好
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 基地内种植的玉米已经结果
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 观赏性很强的向日葵
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 种植的西瓜
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 实验基地里的青蛙



This is big, hopefully it will help to stop the desertification in China
Which will eventually providing more usable land mass for our future generations

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## 艹艹艹

grey boy 2 said:


> This is big, hopefully it will help to stop the desertification in China
> Which will eventually providing more usable land mass for our future generations


向沙漠进军，向沙漠要土壤

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Han Patriot

Pangu said:


> *重大突破：破解沙子土壤化密码 沙漠有望变绿洲*
> 点击：1230 作者：环球物理 来源：云创大数据 发布时间:2016-11-22 11:07:33


Actually I had been reading alot about Chinese anti-desertification technology and it is really impressive. The western media is still recycling the 90s news that the effort is useless and all the trees died.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Pangu

Han Warrior said:


> Actually I had been reading alot about Chinese anti-desertification technology and it is really impressive. The western media is still recycling the 90s news that the effort is useless and all the trees died.



If this is a sustainable development, Imagine the business it can generate when we export our expertise to the Mid-East? Big $$$ projects, hahahahaha....

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Han Patriot

Pangu said:


> If this is a sustainable development, Imagine the business it can generate when we export our expertise to the Mid-East? Big $$$ projects, hahahahaha....


These westerners keep thinking Chinese will not learn change and adapt.....but you and I know the truth

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## kuge

Pangu said:


> *重大突破：破解沙子土壤化密码 沙漠有望变绿洲*
> 点击：1230 作者：环球物理 来源：云创大数据 发布时间:2016-11-22 11:07:33
> 
> 种植的西瓜
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 实验基地里的青蛙


that frog is one of the most uplifting sight to behold in a healthy environment...when will the tech mass employ?

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* Environmentally-friendly graphene textiles could enable wearable electronics *

_A new method for producing conductive cotton fabrics using graphene-based inks opens up new possibilities for flexible and wearable electronics, without the use of expensive and toxic processing steps._

Wearable, textiles-based electronics present new possibilities for flexible circuits, healthcare and environment monitoring, energy conversion, and many others. Now, researchers at the Cambridge Graphene Centre (CGC) at the University of Cambridge, working in collaboration with scientists at Jiangnan University, China, have devised a method for depositing graphene-based inks onto cotton to produce a conductive textile. The work, published in the journal Carbon, demonstrates a wearable motion sensor based on the conductive cotton.

_Turning cotton fibres into functional electronic components can open to an entirely new set of applications from healthcare and wellbeing to the Internet of Things_
_Felice Torrisi_​
Cotton fabric is among the most widespread for use in clothing and textiles, as it is breathable and comfortable to wear, as well as being durable to washing. These properties also make it an excellent choice for textile electronics. A new process, developed by Dr Felice Torrisi at the CGC, and his collaborators, is a low-cost, sustainable and environmentally-friendly method for making conductive cotton textiles by impregnating them with a graphene-based conductive ink.

Based on Dr Torrisi’s work on the formulation of printable graphene inks for flexible electronics, the team created inks of chemically modified graphene flakes that are more adhesive to cotton fibres than unmodified graphene. Heat treatment after depositing the ink on the fabric improves the conductivity of the modified graphene. The adhesion of the modified graphene to the cotton fibre is similar to the way cotton holds coloured dyes, and allows the fabric to remain conductive after several washes.

Although numerous researchers around the world have developed wearable sensors, most of the current wearable technologies rely on rigid electronic components mounted on flexible materials such as plastic films or textiles. These offer limited compatibility with the skin in many circumstances, are damaged when washed and are uncomfortable to wear because they are not breathable.

“Other conductive inks are made from precious metals such as silver, which makes them very expensive to produce and not sustainable, whereas graphene is both cheap, environmentally-friendly, and chemically compatible with cotton,” explains Dr Torrisi.

Co-author Professor Chaoxia Wang of Jiangnan University adds: “This method will allow us to put electronic systems directly into clothes. It’s an incredible enabling technology for smart textiles.”






Electron microscopy image of a conductive graphene/cotton fabric. Credit: Jiesheng Ren​
The work done by Dr Torrisi and Prof Wang, together with students Tian Carey and Jiesheng Ren, opens a number of commercial opportunities for graphene-based inks, ranging from personal health technology, high-performance sportswear, military garments, wearable technology/computing and fashion.

“Turning cotton fibres into functional electronic components can open to an entirely new set of applications from healthcare and wellbeing to the Internet of Things,” says Dr Torrisi “Thanks to nanotechnology, in the future our clothes could incorporate these textile-based electronics and become interactive.”

Graphene is carbon in the form of single-atom-thick membranes, and is highly conductive. The group’s work is based on the dispersion of tiny graphene sheets, each less than one nanometre thick, in a water-based dispersion. The individual graphene sheets in suspension are chemically modified to adhere well to the cotton fibres during printing and deposition on the fabric, leading to a thin and uniform conducting network of many graphene sheets. This network of nanometre flakes is the secret to the high sensitivity to strain induced by motion. A simple graphene-coated smart cotton textile used as a wearable strain sensor has been shown to reliably detect up to 500 motion cycles, even after more than 10 washing cycles in normal washing machine.

The use of graphene and other related 2D materials (GRMs) inks to create electronic components and devices integrated into fabrics and innovative textiles is at the centre of new technical advances in the smart textiles industry. Dr Torrisi and colleagues at the CGC are also involved in the Graphene Flagship, an EC-funded, pan-European project dedicated to bringing graphene and GRM technologies to commercial applications.

Graphene and GRMs are changing the science and technology landscape with attractive physical properties for electronics, photonics, sensing, catalysis and energy storage. Graphene’s atomic thickness and excellent electrical and mechanical properties give excellent advantages, allowing deposition of extremely thin, flexible and conductive films on surfaces and – with this new method – also on textiles. This combined with the environmental compatibility of graphene and its strong adhesion to cotton make the graphene-cotton strain sensor ideal for wearable applications.

The research was supported by grants from the European Research Council’s Synergy Grant, the International Research Fellowship of the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China. The technology is being commercialised by Cambridge Enterprise, the University’s commercialisation arm.

_*Reference*
Ren, J. et al. Environmentally-friendly conductive cotton fabric as flexible strain sensor based on hot press reduced graphene oxide. Carbon; 19 Oct 2016; DOI: 10.1016/j.carbon.2016.10.045_​

Environmentally-friendly graphene textiles could enable wearable electronics | University of Cambridge

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## cirr

Super-secure quantum communication line gets its 1st extension from Hefei to Wuhan

*“量子保密通信京沪干线”将建设首条商业延伸线*

2016年11月27日 　来源：中国青年报

本报北京11月26日电 (中国青年报·中青在线记者 邱晨辉)作为国家量子保密通信骨干网，“量子保密通信京沪干线”将延伸至武汉，并建设该干线的首条商业延伸线。这是记者11月25日从中国航天科工集团获悉的消息。在近日举行的2016武汉·中国光谷激光技术与产业发展创新论坛上，该集团第四研究院与有关方面签署《量子保密通信“武合干线”项目框架协议》《武汉量子保密通信城域网项目合作框架性协议》。
　　
根据协议，“武合干线”(武汉－合肥量子保密通信干线)是国家“量子保密通信京沪干线”项目的首条商业延伸线，将是我国量子保密通信骨干网的重要组成部分，是实现量子保密通信服务与长江中游城市群和建设武汉城市圈节点的基础工程。
　　
协议还提到，“武汉量子保密通信城域网”将是首个采用量子－经典信道融合技术的商用城域网，将建设包括金融、政务、数据中心的量子保密通信城域网。项目前期以量子政务网为切入点，同时，整合和运营武汉市政府各部门数据资源，形成政务数据生态链，产生经济效益，带动武汉经济发展。
　　
根据航天科工集团四院副院长伍晓峰的说法，该院还将以量子通信城际干线和城域网的建设运营为平台，以武汉为中心，分步拓展到武汉“8＋1”城市圈和长江中游城市群等，建成中国第一个跨省市合作、技术先进、规模巨大的量子通信城域网集群。
　　
来源：中国青年报 ( 2016年11月27日 03 版)

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*China's 'missing girls' theory likely far overblown, study shows*
Tue, 11/29/2016

LAWRENCE — It's common for media and academics to cite the statistic that China's one-child policy has led to anywhere from 30 million to 60 million "missing girls" that has created a gender imbalance in the world's most populous nation.

But a University of Kansas researcher is a co-author of a study that has found those numbers are likely overblown and that a large number of those girls aren't missing at all — it was more of an administrative story that had to do with how births are registered at local levels in China.

"People think 30 million girls are missing from the population. That's the population of California, and they think they're just gone," said John Kennedy, associate professor of political science. "Most people are using a demographic explanation to say that abortion or infanticide are the reasons they don't show up in the census and that they don't exist. But we find there is a political explanation."

The 2010 Chinese census found the sex ratio at birth was 118 males for every 100 females. Globally the average is about 105 males to females. In 2015, Chinese state media announced all couples would be allowed to have two children, signaling the end of the controversial 35-year-old policy, but scholars and policymakers are examining how the ban could have lasting social influence in China on everything from elderly care to political stability.

Kennedy and co-author Shi Yaojiang, of Shaanxi Normal University in China, have analyzed statistics and found that a combination of late registration and unreported births explains a larger portion of the "missing girls" than previously reported in Chinese sex-ratio-at-birth statistics. Their findings are published this month in the journal China Quarterly.

The researchers believe local government officials informally worked with farmers and acknowledged that they couldn't fully enforce the one-child policy. Instead they made tacit agreements in allowing families to have extra children in exchange for social stability in their communities. The cadres, or local governments, would then under-report “out of plan” births that ultimately influenced the national population statistics.

"There is no coordination between cadres saying 'we're all in agreement,'" Kennedy said. "Actually it's just very local. The people who are implementing these policies work for the government in a sense. They are officials, but they are also villagers, and they have to live in the village where they are implementing policies."

Kennedy and his co-researcher's work began in 1996 when they interviewed a villager in the northern Shaanxi province and discovered that he had two daughters and a son. The farmer referred to the middle daughter as "the nonexistent one."

Kennedy said since the mid-1980s, villagers could legally have a second child if the firstborn was a girl. 

"We noticed that qualitatively when we interviewed villagers and higher- and lower-level officials everybody had a tacit understanding that yes, millions of girls and some boys, too, were allowed to be unregistered, and then these children appear in the population statistics as older cohorts at junior high school age and marriage age," said Kennedy, whose research focuses on social policy and change in China.

To supplement the qualitative data, the researchers then examined Chinese population data by cohort, and they compared the number of children born in 1990 with the number of 20-year-old Chinese men and women in 2010. In that cohort, they discovered 4 million additional people, and of those there were approximately 1 million more women than men.

"If we go over a course of 25 years, it's possible there are about 25 million women in the statistics that weren't there at birth," Kennedy said.

Much media coverage has focused on potential social problems stemming from a "marriage squeeze" where men sizably outnumber women.

"If 30 million women are truly missing, then there's going to be more males than females of marriageable age as they start looking for wives. There is nothing more socially unstable than a bunch of testosterone with nowhere to go," Kennedy said.

However, he said their findings about under-reported births at the local level seem to explain why the marriage squeeze may not be as pronounced as previous scholars suggest.

Otherwise, their study provides more insight into how local villages and cadres operated. Diplomatically people have likely viewed the Chinese negatively, thinking villagers would be willing to kill their daughters to comply with the law, but Kennedy said this explanation about under-reported births would make more sense.

As the government has moved to end its one-child policy, some believed the Chinese government might view their research findings as a positive spin, Kennedy said, but for about 15 years it was too politically sensitive to publish, especially for his co-researchers who lived in China.



China's 'missing girls' theory likely far overblown, study shows | The University of Kansas

*Journal Reference*:

Yaojiang Shi, John James Kennedy. *Delayed Registration and Identifying the “Missing Girls” in China*. _The China Quarterly_, 2016; 1 DOI: 10.1017/S0305741016001132
*Abstract
*
In 2010, according to the sixth Chinese census, the sex ratio at birth (SRB) was 118 males for every 100 females. The global SRB average is about 105. Thus, the gap between 118 and 105 is made up of “missing girls.” Scholars present three main explanations for the skewed SRB statistic: sex-selective abortion, infanticide and delayed or late registration. Most studies take a demographic and cultural approach to explain the high SRB. However, we believe the story of the “missing girls” is also an administrative one and adopt the street-level bureaucrat theory of policy implementation to explain the pervasiveness of late registration in rural China. We use descriptive statistics derived from the 1990, 2000 and 2010 census data to identify the “missing girls.” We believe the combination of late registration and unreported births may point to a larger proportion of “missing girls” than previously reported from the SRB statistic.

根据 2010 年第六次人口普查, 中国性别出生比为118, 即出生 118 个男孩对应出生 100 个女孩。全球平均性别出生比约为105。因此, 118 和 105 之间的差距即为 “失踪女孩”。现有研究认为主要有三种原因导致这一结果: 性别选择流产, 杀婴和晚登记。多数研究利用人口统计学方法或从文化角度解释高性别比。然而, 我们认为 “失踪女孩”也与行政管理因素有关。我们采用政策实施的街头官僚理论来解释中国农村极为常见的晚登记现象, 并且使用描述性统计数据以及来自 1990, 2000 和 2010 的普查数据组成的反向生存表来识别 “失踪女孩”。相比与之前的研究, 我们认为晚登记和未登记将可能从更大比例上解释 “失踪女孩”。​

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*Smart 'robot fish' invented to explore underwater world*
(People's Daily Online) 17:07, December 01, 2016





A robot fish inspects a pipeline. (Chinanews.com/Liu Yutao)​
A team at Lanzhou Petrochemical Polytechnic has invented a smart "robot fish" that can explore underwater realms, Chinanews.com reported on Nov. 30.

The robotic fish utilizes many advanced technologies, including mechanical electronics, sensors and artificial intelligence. It can be used for pipeline detection, hydrology, water quality monitoring, underwater rescue and more. The robot has won a number of prizes for its sophisticated craftsmanship and advanced technology.

According to Hong Zirong, supervisor of the team that built the robot, the majority of water pollution and logging problems are caused by pipeline ruptures or leakage. Research indicates that current pipeline detection technology has poor accuracy. This situation inspired Professor Hong and his students to develop a new technology that, unlike earlier technology, is able to examine pipelines from the inside.

The robot fish has high detection accuracy and sensitivity, but costs under 100,000 RMB. It can be controlled via both computer and mobile phone.






A student controls the robot fish with a mobile phone. (Chinanews.com/Liu Yutao)​
Ding Jiahui, one of the team's members, said that their professor's encouragement was very empowering. Gao Bo, head of the college, pointed out that the vocational education has overcome many of the shortcomings of traditional undergraduate education. Once the students enter the school, teachers guide them to grasp professional skills with a worker's attitude. Colleges then get feedback about students' post-graduation performance two to three years out, which supports a chain of quality education.

The college plans to introduce more technical teachers in the future to facilitate an environment of innovation and entrepreneurship, said Gao.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*How Rice Forms Resistant Starch*
_Good news for Asia’s rice-loving diabetics: scientists may have found a way to increase rice’s content of resistant-starch. _

Asian Scientist Newsroom | November 21, 2016 | In the Lab 

AsianScientist (Nov. 21, 2016) - Researchers in China have identified a genetic mutation that increases the production of resistant starch in rice. Their results have been published in the _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_. 

Resistant starch refers to starch and starch degradation products that escape from digestion in the small intestine of healthy individuals. Foods high in resistant starch could potentially protect against infection, diarrhea, inflammatory bowel disease and even diabetes, but the global average intake of resistant starch is dramatically lower than the levels recommended for beneficial health. Hot cooked rice, for example, typically contains less than three percent resistant starch. 

Improving the amounts and properties of resistant starch is an important goal for rice breeding, but strategies to increase resistant starch production in rice are limited due to a lack of knowledge of its molecular basis. 


--> How Rice Forms Resistant Starch | Asian Scientist Magazine | Science, Technology and Medicine News Updates From Asia

Paper: 
Zhou et al. (2016) Critical Roles of Soluble Starch Synthase SSIIIa and Granule-bound Starch Synthase Waxy in Synthesizing Resistant Starch in Rice.​

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists create flu vaccine from live virus using 'revolutionary' approach*
Xinhua | Updated: 2016-12-02 09:50

WASHINGTON - Chinese researchers said Thursday they may have found a simple, convenient and potentially "revolutionary" new approach to create effective vaccines by just genetically tweaking live viruses to make them capable of activating the immune system but unable to replicate in healthy cells.

In a proof-of-principle study, the vaccine they developed against flu proved effective in mice, guinea pigs and ferrets, the researchers reported in the U.S. journal Science.

"We believe our approach will become a general, simple and convenient approach for generation of live virus vaccines adapted to almost any viruses," Professor Deming Zhou of Peking University, who led the study, told Xinhua.

"This will help control pandemics of influenza and other life-threatening RNA viruses."

A major challenge for converting infectious viruses, such as those responsible for influenza, Ebola, Zika and AIDS pandemics, into live vaccines is to render them as avirulent as possible while maintaining their high infectivity to elicit sufficient immunity, Zhou said, noting achieving such a feat would "represent a revolution in vaccinology."

Traditionally, vaccines use either dead or weakened forms of viruses. Those containing weakened viruses retain some degree of ability to replicate and therefore still have toxic effects, he said.

In their study, Zhou and colleagues modified a three-consecutive-base-segment in the genome of influenza A virus, known as premature termination codon (PTC), and found their modified virus -- though still just as potent in terms of activating the immune system -- cannot replicate in regular cells.

The new vaccine was found to offer an antibody response comparable to an existing live-virus vaccine, and a second dose further increased the amounts of antibodies by a factor of six to eight.

Similar beneficial effects were seen when the viral vaccine was tested against several different strains of influenza, and tested in guinea pigs and ferrets.

"Vaccination with such live PTC viruses in animal model via the intranasal route elicited all aspects of immune responses including humoral, mucosal and T cell-mediated immunity against hyper-variable and even antigenically distinct influenza virus strains," said Zhou.

"Furthermore, multiple PTCs-harboring viruses are not only prophylactic but also therapeutic to existing infecting viruses," he noted.

Zhou said his team will continue the research on their whole new flu vaccine and test it in clinical trials as early as possible.



*Journal Reference*:

Longlong Si, Huan Xu, Xueying Zhou, Ziwei Zhang, Zhenyu Tian, Yan Wang, Yiming Wu, Bo Zhang, Zhenlan Niu, Chuanling Zhang, Ge Fu, Sulong Xiao, Qing Xia, Lihe Zhang, Demin Zhou. "Generation of influenza A viruses as live but replication-incompetent virus vaccines". _Science _(2016). DOI: 10.1126/science.aah5869

*Protecting by changing the code*
Live attenuated vaccines can be very potent, but their potential to revert to their pathogenic form limits their use. In an attempt to get around this, Si _et al._ expanded the genetic code of influenza A viruses. They propagated viruses that were mutated to encode premature termination codons (PTCs) in a cell line engineered to be able to express these flu proteins. Despite not being able to replicate in conventional cells, PTC-containing viruses were highly immunogenic and protected mice, guinea pigs, and ferrets against influenza challenge.

_Science_, this issue p. 1170

*Abstract*
The conversion of life-threatening viruses into live but avirulent vaccines represents a revolution in vaccinology. In a proof-of-principle study, we expanded the genetic code of the genome of influenza A virus via a transgenic cell line containing orthogonal translation machinery. This generated premature termination codon (PTC)–harboring viruses that exerted full infectivity but were replication-incompetent in conventional cells. Genome-wide optimization of the sites for incorporation of multiple PTCs resulted in highly reproductive and genetically stable progeny viruses in transgenic cells. In mouse, ferret, and guinea pig models, vaccination with PTC viruses elicited robust humoral, mucosal, and T cell–mediated immunity against antigenically distinct influenza viruses and even neutralized existing infecting strains. The methods presented here may become a general approach for generating live virus vaccines that can be adapted to almost any virus.​

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## cirr

*Record set for linked photons*

01 December 2016

Particles that have linked quantum states, known as 'entangled' particles, can affect each other's states even if they are physically separated. Now scientists have set a record by entangling ten photons — two more than achieved previously.

Entangled particles should one day enable quantum computing and communications, but they are inefficient to produce. A team led by Jian-Wei Pan of the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei created the ten entangled photons by running five photon pairs through a series of four polarizing beam splitters. They also developed a laser light source that produced their photon batches about 100 times faster than did previous tests.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v540/n7631/full/540011b.html

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## onebyone

Researchers working on a new system they hope will be more effective in hiding submarines from detection under the sea


PUBLISHED : Monday, 05 December, 2016, 9:05am
UPDATED : Monday, 05 December, 2016, 10:24am












Chinese scientists are developing a technique they hope will be able to make submarines invisible to sonar detection under the sea.

If successful, it would ultimately involve covering subs with special rings made of aluminium alloys.

The researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan in Hubei province experimented with rings about 14 cm across and with periodically etched grooves.

They found that sound waves were guided around the rings rather than bouncing back, which would allow them to be traced by sonar detectors.










The grooves were able to steer the sound waves in a set direction like cars travelling on an expressway.

The researchers published details of their work earlier this month in the scientific journal _Nature Communications_.

‘Underwater Great Wall’: Chinese firm proposes building network of submarine detectors to boost nation’s defence

The scientists were originally using the technology - called a topological insulator - to control the movement of electrons to reduce heating in computer chips, but they later realised it also had applications for sound waves.

Several rings could work together to direct sound waves in almost any direction, potentially hiding a submarine from sonar in the future.

Other researchers have been working on the technology, but the Beijing and Huazhong researchers said their system was the simplest.
A research team at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore constructed an array of cylinders creating similar effects last years, but they had to spin at high speed, about 400 revolutions per second, to keep the sound on a strict course.

The Singaporean team also claimed their technology could help submarines evade sonar detection, but planting a large number of spinning cylinders over the hull of the craft could prove an engineering nightmare.

“Our method is simpler. It does not require moving parts,” said one author of the Chinese paper, who asked not to be named.

However, he added that many problems remained to be solved before the technology can be used outside the laboratory on submarines or to reduce noise on aircraft.










Submarines now use used a rubber or plastic coating to absorb sound waves produced by sonar.

The anechoic tiles also reduce noises produced from inside the sub, but the technology is old, first used by the Germany navy in U-boats during the second world war.

New materials have been developed over the decades to increase the absorption rate, but a powerful and sensitive sonar system can still pick up traces of vessels.

China and US in silent fight for supremacy beneath waves of South China Sea

Yang Jing, associate professor of acoustics at Nanjing University, said the topological insulator could trigger a revolution in acoustic studies.

“It has borrowed many ideas from quantum physics, which shed new light on sound problems,” she said.

But the technology was still in its infancy with major problems remaining, said Yang, who was not involved in the rings research.

For instance, a submarine has to remain invisible from sonar beamed from different directions and at different frequencies.

The rings, however, are now only able to deflect sound waves coming from certain angles and within certain frequencies.

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/poli...arch-might-help-shield-submarines#add-comment

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography(EUVL), a long march indeed.

* 02专项“极紫外光刻关键技术研究”项目顺利完成验收前现场测试 *

2016-11-30 杨旺

2016年11月15日，由长春光机所牵头承担的国家科技重大专项02专项——“极紫外光刻关键技术研究”项目顺利完成验收前现场测试。在长春光机所、成都光电所、上海光机所、中科院微电子所、北京理工大学、哈尔滨工业大学、华中科技大学等参研单位的共同努力下，历经八年的戮力攻坚，圆满地完成了预定的研究内容与攻关任务，突破了现阶段制约我国极紫外光刻发展的核心光学技术，初步建立了适应于极紫外光刻曝光光学系统研制的加工、检测、镀膜和系统集成平台，为我国光刻技术的可持续发展奠定了坚实的基础。 

光刻技术是集成电路制造产业的核心，决定着集成电路的元件特征尺寸。伴随半导体产业摩尔定律延续，极紫外光刻（Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography, EUVL）被公认为是最具潜力的下一代光刻技术。 

极紫外光刻是一种以13.5nm的EUV光为工作波长的投影光刻技术，是传统投影光刻技术向更短波长的延伸，正处于产业化的临界点。作为工业制造领域尖端技术的融合，世界上只有少数几家研究机构及公司掌握此技术。目前，EUVL技术的国际垄断局面已经初步形成，对我国形成了技术封锁，将来的销售政策也难以预料。我国自上世纪九十年代起关注并发展EUVL技术，初期开展了EUV光源、EUV多层膜、超光滑抛光技术等基础性关键技术研究。2008年“极大规模集成电路制造装备及成套工艺”国家科技重大专项将EUVL技术列为下一代光刻技术重点攻关，《中国制造2025》将EUVL列为了集成电路制造领域的发展重点，并计划在2030年实现EUV光刻机的国产化。 

在02专项任务牵引下，长春光机所应光室的短波光学研究团队潜心钻研，艰苦奋战，在EUV光学系统协同设计、膜厚控制精度达原子量级的EUV多层膜技术、深亚纳米量级的超光滑非球面加工与检测技术、超高精度物镜系统波像差检测及集成技术等方面，突破了一系列EUVL工程化关键技术瓶颈；成功研制了小视场EUVL曝光光学系统，投影物镜波像差优于0.75nm(RMS)，构建了EUVL静态曝光装置，获得32nm线宽的光刻胶曝光图形；建立了EUVL关键技术验证及工艺测试平台。通过项目的实施，圆满地实现了极紫外成像光学技术的跨越，形成了一支具有国内领先、国际先进水平的研究队伍，为开展极紫外光刻曝光光学系统的工程研制奠定了坚实的人才与技术基础。 






验收测试会议现场 

http://www.ciomp.ac.cn/xwdt/zhxw/201611/t20161130_4713258.html

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## samsara

*Highlights of China's scientific and technological achievements in 2016*
Xinhua | English.news.cn (2016-12-08)





(1) A *J-20 stealth fighter* of China flies at the 11th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition in Zhuhai, south China's Guangdong Province, Nov. 1, 2016. China's domestic-built J-20 stealth fighter made its public debut during the exhibition.





(2) A *lithium-battery powered train* suspended from a railway line runs in Chengdu, capital of southwest China's Sichuan Province, Nov. 21, 2016. *China's first suspension railway line* has conducted two-month test run.





(3) Photo taken on Sept. 24, 2016 shows the *500-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in Pingtang County, southwest China's Guizhou Province.* The FAST, world's largest radio telescope, measuring 500 meters in diameter, was completed and put into use on Sept. 25. FAST, also called "China's eye of heaven," is *the world's largest and most sensitive radio telescope, and China holds the intellectual property rights to it.* Work on the nearly 1.2-billion-yuan (180 million U.S. dollars) project started in 2011, and the installation of the telescope's main structure -- a 4,450-panel reflector as large as 30 football pitches -- was finished in early July this year. FAST's tasks include survey of neutral hydrogen in the space, observation of pulsars as well as spacecraft tracking and communications.

(4) The screen at the Beijing Aerospace Control Center shows the two Chinese astronauts Jing Haipeng (L) and Chen Dong entering the space lab Tiangong-2, Oct. 19, 2016. After the launch of Shenzhou-11 on Oct. 17, the spacecraft docked two days later with China's first space lab, Tiangong-2, where the two astronauts lived for 30 days. *The two astronauts who completed China's longest-ever manned space mission* returned to Earth safely on Nov. 18.





(5) *An AG600, the China-made largest amphibious plane in the world*, is displayed for the 11th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition in Zhuhai, south China's Guangdong Province, Oct. 30, 2016. The 37-meter-long AG600 with a wingspan of 38.8 meters, about the size of a Boeing 737, could be used to fight forest fires and perform marine rescue missions.





(6) A high-speed train runs across farmland in Binyang County of Nanning, capital of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Oct. 16, 2016. *China's high-speed railways have exceeded 20,000 kilometers in length by September this year.*





(7) *A drone sprays pesticide* over cotton fields in Zhaoshou Village of Nangong City, north China's Hebei Province, July 6, 2016. Drone has been widely used in photography, fire extinguishing, agricultural control and other personal and commercial areas.

(8) *The Long March-2F carrier rocket* carrying China's Shenzhou-11 manned spacecraft blasts off from the launch pad at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Jiuquan, northwest China's Gansu Province, Oct. 17, 2016.

(9) Photo taken on June 20, 2016 shows Sunway-TaihuLight, a new Chinese supercomputer, in Wuxi, east China's Jiangsu Province. China's new supercomputing system, *Sunway-TaihuLight, was the world's fastest computer* at the International Supercomputing Conference in Germany on June 20, 2016. The massive supercomputer, built entirely using processors designed and made in China, dethroned the former champion, Tianhe-2, also a Chinese system but built based on Intel chips. TaihuLight is capable of performing 93 million billion calculations per second (petaflop/s). That's almost *three times as fast* as Tianhe-2.

(10) An experimenter of *Dark Matter Experiment "PandaX", which means Particle and Astrophysical Xenon Detector*, enters the *Jinping Underground Laboratory, located at 2,400 meters under the surface* of Jinping Hydropower Station, in southwest China's Sichuan Province, June 28, 2016. PandaX is designed to build and operate a ton-scale liquid xenon experiment to detect the dark matter, invisible material that scientists say makes up most of the universe's mass. The PandaX program, headed by China's Shanghai Jiao Tong University, was conducted in the Jinping lab, one of the world's deepest underground labs opened in December 2010. The Jinping lab provides a "clean" space for scientists to pursue the dark matter. Researchers said the extreme depth helps block most cosmic rays that mess with the observation.





(11) *An automatic driverless super truck* manufactured by Beijing-based automaker Foton Motor is shown on an intelligent connected vehicle expo in Shanghai, east China, Nov. 14, 2016.





(12) *China's unmanned submersible "Haidou-1"* prepares to dive into waters near the Mariana Trench in the West Pacific, the deepest area in the world, during a scientific expedition on July 1, 2016. During the trip, the submersible *dived to a depth of 10,767 meters*, setting a new record for the country. It is another milestone in China's maritime science journey after Jiaolong manned submersible. In June 2012, Jiaolong reached a depth of 7,062 meters at the Mariana Trench, the deepest of China's manned submersible.

More pics at below:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/photo/2016-12/08/c_135889958.htm

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## cirr

*Experts approve 3D printed nuclear reactor component in China*

Dec 7, 2016 | By Benedict

Less than a month ago, the China Nuclear Power Research Institute and Nanfang Additive Manufacturing Technology 3D printed a pressure vessel cylinder for an ACP100 nuclear reactor. That critical 3D printed part has now passed a technical appraisal from experts.






While 3D printing is becoming commonplace in industry, architecture, construction, and other sectors, the association between additive manufacturing and nuclear power has generally been regarded as distant—at best. However, exciting developments in China could see that relationship becoming a great deal closer. After the China Nuclear Power Research Institute and Nanfang Additive Manufacturing Technology *3D printed a pressure vessel cylinder for a nuclear reactor* in November, the two organizations moved quickly to gain industry approval of the 3D printed part. Now, a diverse group of nuclear power experts has given the green light to the 3D printed pressure vessel cylinder, suggesting that additive manufacturing could soon have a big role to play in developing nuclear power equipment.

The experts passing judgment on the 3D printed nuclear reactor component came from 13 research institutes, including the China Nuclear Power Institute, the National Nuclear Engineering Company, the Harbin University of Technology, and the Beijing Steel Research Institute. China Nuclear Power Research Institute called the development of the reactor part and its subsequent approval a major breakthrough, one that could signal a revolution in manufacturing that could massively shorten the production cycle for nuclear reactor components. All parties involved believe it now possible to intelligently manufacture large metal components for nuclear power stations, including reactor pressure containers.

*The project to create a 3D printed pressure vessel cylinder for a nuclear reactor began in October 2015, and involved the use of Nanfang-AM's large metal 3D printer capable of printing objects with a diameter of 5.6 meters and height of 9 meters.* China Nuclear Power Research Institute is currently the only large-scale comprehensive scientific research base for nuclear reactor engineering, research, design, testing, and small batch production. By 3D printing the reactor components, million-ton heavy-duty forging equipment is not needed. Furthermore, pressure vessels, which in the past have been welded, now can be printed in one print job with a higher performance than forged parts.






The China Nuclear Power Research Institute and Nanfang Additive Manufacturing Technology announced earlier this year that, using 3D printing technology, they had been able to fabricate certain CAP1400 fuel components. This achievement marked the first time that 3D printing technology had been used in the manufacture of nuclear fuel elements. The parties commented at the time that if additive manufacturing could be used in small-scale production, it could save manpower, improve the quality of nuclear fuel elements, and replace imported components with domestically produced ones.

With metal 3D printing technology seemingly on its way to making its mark in the Chinese nuclear power sector, one of the evaluators urged the industry to ensure that the gradual move to additive technologies be a smooth one. On this subject, nuclear power expert Liao Qi commented: “Only in combination with the transformation and upgrading of traditional manufacturing industry can [3D printing in the nuclear power sector] develop fully.”

http://www.3ders.org/articles/20161...inted-nuclear-reactor-component-in-china.html

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*China to build its 2nd overseas observatory in Chile*
(CRI Online) 15:18, December 10, 2016

China has signed an agreement to build an observatory in northern Chile, the best place in the world to observe the sky.

The agreement was signed by China's National Astronomical Observatories and the Catholic University of Chile in November, witnessed by Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Chilean counterpart Michelle Bachelet during Xi's week-long Latin America tour.

Thanks to the high altitude, sunny nights and dry air, Chile is believed to be the best observatory site on earth and has attracted many developed countries to build observatory bases there.

As early as 2013, China established an astronomical research center at the Catholic University of Chile. Under its framework experts and scholars of the two countries can share research and observatory results.

Observatories built by other countries in Chile provide 10 percent of its observation time to Chilean experts. As Chile's cooperation partner, Chinese astronomers can also share the 10 percent time in observatories built by other countries.

As the 10 percent time has become insufficient since astronomy is fast developing, China decided to build its own observatory at the site.

It is China's second overseas observatory following the one in Antarctic, and 30 kilometers from Chile's famous Paranal Observatory.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese Scientists Develop World's Largest Echelle Gratings*
Nov 24, 2016

Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics, and Physics (CIOMP) of Chinese Academy of Sciences announced on November 11 the development of a "large-scale high-precision diffraction grating ruling system" project, which will facilitate successful ruling of echelle gratings with the largest size (400mm×500mm) the world had ever seen.

The project was designed to develop grating ruling technology above global standards. Diffraction gratings and the way in which they are constructed with ridges or “rulings” are a vital component of any tool that needs to separate different wavelengths of light with high resolution.

Scientists spent eight years on the project resolving 18 key technologies and producing nine innovative achievements, and finally developed the world’s largest echelle (a type of diffraction grating) with a ruling area (ridged area) of 400mm×500mm. 

The completion of this project means that the precision machining technology in China is in world leading position.

CIOMP is the birthplace of grating design and construction in China. As early as 1958, CIOMP developed the first machine to manufacture grating rulings, as well as the first grating. The gratings were used in spectral devices for the first atomic bomb test in China.





The manufactured echelle with the ruling area (ridged area) of 400 mm x 500 mm (Image by CIOMP) ​


Chinese Scientists Develop World's Largest Echelle Gratings---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Beast

samsara said:


> *Highlights of China's scientific and technological achievements in 2016*
> Xinhua | English.news.cn (2016-12-08)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> (1) A *J-20 stealth fighter* of China flies at the 11th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition in Zhuhai, south China's Guangdong Province, Nov. 1, 2016. China's domestic-built J-20 stealth fighter made its public debut during the exhibition.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> (2) A *lithium-battery powered train* suspended from a railway line runs in Chengdu, capital of southwest China's Sichuan Province, Nov. 21, 2016. *China's first suspension railway line* has conducted two-month test run.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> (3) Photo taken on Sept. 24, 2016 shows the *500-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in Pingtang County, southwest China's Guizhou Province.* The FAST, world's largest radio telescope, measuring 500 meters in diameter, was completed and put into use on Sept. 25. FAST, also called "China's eye of heaven," is *the world's largest and most sensitive radio telescope, and China holds the intellectual property rights to it.* Work on the nearly 1.2-billion-yuan (180 million U.S. dollars) project started in 2011, and the installation of the telescope's main structure -- a 4,450-panel reflector as large as 30 football pitches -- was finished in early July this year. FAST's tasks include survey of neutral hydrogen in the space, observation of pulsars as well as spacecraft tracking and communications.
> 
> (4) The screen at the Beijing Aerospace Control Center shows the two Chinese astronauts Jing Haipeng (L) and Chen Dong entering the space lab Tiangong-2, Oct. 19, 2016. After the launch of Shenzhou-11 on Oct. 17, the spacecraft docked two days later with China's first space lab, Tiangong-2, where the two astronauts lived for 30 days. *The two astronauts who completed China's longest-ever manned space mission* returned to Earth safely on Nov. 18.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> (5) *An AG600, the China-made largest amphibious plane in the world*, is displayed for the 11th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition in Zhuhai, south China's Guangdong Province, Oct. 30, 2016. The 37-meter-long AG600 with a wingspan of 38.8 meters, about the size of a Boeing 737, could be used to fight forest fires and perform marine rescue missions.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> (6) A high-speed train runs across farmland in Binyang County of Nanning, capital of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Oct. 16, 2016. *China's high-speed railways have exceeded 20,000 kilometers in length by September this year.*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> (7) *A drone sprays pesticide* over cotton fields in Zhaoshou Village of Nangong City, north China's Hebei Province, July 6, 2016. Drone has been widely used in photography, fire extinguishing, agricultural control and other personal and commercial areas.
> 
> (8) *The Long March-2F carrier rocket* carrying China's Shenzhou-11 manned spacecraft blasts off from the launch pad at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Jiuquan, northwest China's Gansu Province, Oct. 17, 2016.
> 
> (9) Photo taken on June 20, 2016 shows Sunway-TaihuLight, a new Chinese supercomputer, in Wuxi, east China's Jiangsu Province. China's new supercomputing system, *Sunway-TaihuLight, was the world's fastest computer* at the International Supercomputing Conference in Germany on June 20, 2016. The massive supercomputer, built entirely using processors designed and made in China, dethroned the former champion, Tianhe-2, also a Chinese system but built based on Intel chips. TaihuLight is capable of performing 93 million billion calculations per second (petaflop/s). That's almost *three times as fast* as Tianhe-2.
> 
> (10) An experimenter of *Dark Matter Experiment "PandaX", which means Particle and Astrophysical Xenon Detector*, enters the *Jinping Underground Laboratory, located at 2,400 meters under the surface* of Jinping Hydropower Station, in southwest China's Sichuan Province, June 28, 2016. PandaX is designed to build and operate a ton-scale liquid xenon experiment to detect the dark matter, invisible material that scientists say makes up most of the universe's mass. The PandaX program, headed by China's Shanghai Jiao Tong University, was conducted in the Jinping lab, one of the world's deepest underground labs opened in December 2010. The Jinping lab provides a "clean" space for scientists to pursue the dark matter. Researchers said the extreme depth helps block most cosmic rays that mess with the observation.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> (11) *An automatic driverless super truck* manufactured by Beijing-based automaker Foton Motor is shown on an intelligent connected vehicle expo in Shanghai, east China, Nov. 14, 2016.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> (12) *China's unmanned submersible "Haidou-1"* prepares to dive into waters near the Mariana Trench in the West Pacific, the deepest area in the world, during a scientific expedition on July 1, 2016. During the trip, the submersible *dived to a depth of 10,767 meters*, setting a new record for the country. It is another milestone in China's maritime science journey after Jiaolong manned submersible. In June 2012, Jiaolong reached a depth of 7,062 meters at the Mariana Trench, the deepest of China's manned submersible.
> 
> More pics at below:
> http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/photo/2016-12/08/c_135889958.htm



I think CZ-5 rocket shall be mention...

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## samsara

Beast said:


> I think CZ-5 rocket shall be mention...


Yes, the Long March-5 (Chang Zheng-5) Heavy Carrier rocket was missed out, as well as some readers suggested: the revolutionary advances in graphene and quantum pair physics, and perhaps the advance in fusion nuclear research. I think Xinhua is too mean, it should have expanded the list to the Top-20 at least to cover all suggested here plus few others

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## samsara

*China’s latest scientific achievements | China Daily*

Editor’s note: China has planted its footprints high to the outer space and low to the bottom of oceans. Its projects stretch from the universe origin to the smallest particle. *Here we invite you to go with us to see how far China has gone.*


*FIGURES AND FACTS*

China’s investment in research and development is expected to reach 2.5% of GDP, and the contribution of scientific and technological advances toward economic growth should come to reach 60%.

_--- The 13th Five-Year Plan of China (2016-2020)_


The central government's commitment is aimed at making China a leading power in science and technology by the middle of the century, or around the 100th anniversary of the People's Republic of China.

_--- President Xi Jinping’s address at a biennial conference of the country's two top think tanks on May 31_


Three-step goals: To develop China into an innovation-oriented country by 2020, to place China among top innovation-oriented countries by 2030, and to turn China into a technological innovation powerhouse by 2025.

_--- Outline of the National Strategy of Innovation-Driven Development released by the Ministry of Science and Technology on May 23_


China is now decisively the second-largest performer of research and development.

_--- The US-based National Science Board that advises the President and Congress on science and engineering policy issues._


*Aerospace Probe*
*Homegrown Planes*
*Quantum Communication*
*500-Meter FAST (Radio Telescope)*
*Deep Sea Exploration*
*Neutrino Research*
*Health Biotech*
*Artificial Intelligence and Supercomputing*

Please visit below link to read over due to its much more comprehensive list of the China's latest scientific achievements within 2016:

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016latestscientficachievements/





More charts: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016cnsa/tb.html

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Transplanted Interneurons Can Help Reduce Fear: Mouse Study*
December 8, 2016

_Summary: Coupling training to reduce fear and transplanting embryonic interneurons into the amygdala of mice, researchers were able to reduce fear response, a new study reports._

_Source: Cell Press._

*The expression “once bitten, twice shy” is an illustration of how a bad experience can induce fear and caution. How to effectively reduce the memory of aversive events is a fundamental question in neuroscience. Scientists in China are reporting that by transplanting mouse embryonic interneurons into the brains of mice and combining that procedure with training to lessen fear, they can help to reduce the fear response. The study is being published December 8 in Neuron.*

“Anxiety and fear-related disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD] cause great suffering and impose high costs to society,” says Yong-Chun Yu, a professor at the Institutes of Brain Science at Fudan University in Shanghai and the study’s senior author. “Pharmacological and behavioral treatments of PTSD can reduce symptoms, but many people tend to relapse. There’s a pressing need for new strategies to treat these refractory cases.”


--> Transplanted Interneurons Can Help Reduce Fear: Mouse Study – Neuroscience News

*Original Research:* Abstract for “Fear Erasure Facilitated by Immature Inhibitory Neuron Transplantation” by Wu-Zhou Yang, Ting-Ting Liu, Jun-Wei Cao, Xuan-Fu Chen, Xiao Liu, Min Wang, Xin Su, Shu-Qing Zhang, Bin-Long Qiu, Wen-Xiang Hu, Lin-Yun Liu, Lan Ma, and Yong-Chun Yu in _Neuron_. Published online December 8 2016 doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2016.11.018

#####​*Scientists Publish Method to Block Fearful Memories*
Dec 13, 2016

Chinese scientists say they've found a new way to effectively inhibit a person's fear memory arising from traumatic events such as domestic violence, sexual assault and war.

Animal testing led by Yu Yongchun, a researcher at Fudan University's Institutes of Brain Science in Shanghai, found that fear can be effectively removed by transplanting a special kind of nerve cell into the brains of an adult mouse.

The findings are expected to shine new light on the treatment of severe mental conditions, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. The results were published online on Friday by Neuron, an influential journal in the field of neuroscience.

Yu's team noted that there are two types of neurons in the brain - excitory and inhibitory. Balanced activity between the two types of neurons allows the brain to function normally.

The part of the brain's nucleus known as the amygdala is a key area for processing fear information and developing fear memory.

"When receiving strong stimulus, the amygdala will be in a highly excited state, leading to a new excitory/inhibitory balance that may contribute to fear memory," Yu said.

Based on its analyses, Yu's team proposed that transplanting immature inhibitory neurons into a highly excited mature amygdala could not only inhibit the overexcitement of the amygdala, but also make the adult amygdala seem younger, thereby suppressing the recall of fear memory.

The hypothesis has been borne out in a series of experiments on mice, Yu said, but there's a long way to go before the treatment can be tried on humans in a clinical setting.

Yet the research is expected to help explore new strategies for treating PTSD, which is caused by indelible and traumatic memories like domestic violence, traffic accidents, hairy spiders, a nasty breakup or military combat.

Patients with PTSD often exhibit anxiety, depression, chronic pain, cardiovascular disease, metabolic disorders, drug abuse and alcohol addiction. Statistics show that about 80 percent of adults have experienced a traumatic event at least once in their lifetimes, while 5 to 10 percent have experienced severe psychological trauma that can be diagnosed as PTSD.

So far, the treatment of PTSD involves a combination of psychology and medication. However, mental symptoms often return after the treatment is stopped.


Scientists Publish Method to Block Fearful Memories---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Antarctic Site Promises to Open a New Window on the Cosmos*
Release No.: 2016-28
For Release: Monday, December 12, 2016 - 11:00am




*Cambridge, MA - *Antarctica might be one of the most inhospitable regions on the planet, but it is a mecca for astronomers. Its cold, dry air enables observations that can't be done elsewhere on Earth. The South Pole has hosted telescopes for decades. Now, researchers are eyeing a new location - Dome A, which offers a unique opportunity to study the universe at little-explored terahertz radio frequencies.

"Dome A is the best site we've found - very flat, very calm winds, and the driest place anywhere on the planet," says Qizhou Zhang of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), co-author of a new study appearing online in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Dome A is the highest point in Antarctica, with an elevation of more than 13,000 feet (4,000 meters), comparable to Maunakea in Hawaii. Unlike the South Pole, it isn't visited by aircraft. Instead, researchers must trek inland from the Antarctic coast, a journey of some 750 miles (1,200 km) that takes up to three weeks to complete.

As a reward for these herculean efforts, scientists can access a type of light known as terahertz radiation, which has frequencies higher than 1 trillion hertz (1,000 times greater than the frequency used by cell phones). This radiation comes from cold clouds of interstellar gas and dust. By studying it, we can gain new insights into the origins of stars and galaxies.

Because water vapor in Earth's atmosphere absorbs this radiation, few places on Earth are suited for terahertz observations. Instead astronomers have relied on aircraft and space missions, which are more costly and less flexible.

The solution is to find an extremely dry location. Zhang and CfA co-author Scott Paine joined with their colleagues at China's Purple Mountain Observatory, led by principal investigator Sheng-Cai Shi, to create and deploy instruments to measure the conditions at Dome A over a span of 19 months. The data gathered there will also help inform climate models.

"The water vapor in the Earth's atmosphere that obscures our view of the cosmos also blocks infrared radiation escaping from the Earth's surface towards space, which is the essence of the greenhouse effect," says Paine, who studies atmospheric radiation.

The team found Dome A is frequently so arid that if all the water vapor in a narrow column stretching straight up from the ground to the edge of space were condensed, it would form a film less than 100 microns thick. That's about 1/250th of an inch, or twice the width of a human hair, and about 10 times less than that over Maunakea, one of the world's best astronomical observing sites.

Moreover, Dome A offers a natural laboratory for studying the effects of water vapor on atmospheric absorption at extremely low temperatures. The cold Antarctic atmosphere provides direct access to conditions normally found in the Earth's upper troposphere.

Developing Dome A into a permanent observatory for astronomy and atmospheric science will involve significant challenges. In return, researchers stand to gain a unique location for conducting scientific research.



Antarctic Site Promises to Open a New Window on the Cosmos2016-28 | www.cfa.harvard.edu/

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

Posted: Dec 12, 2016
* Nanomedical anti-tumor strategy *

(_Nanowerk News_) Biocompatible nanocapsules, loaded with an amino acid and equipped with an enzyme now combine two anti-tumor strategies into a synergistic treatment concept. Researchers hope this increases effectiveness and decreases side effects. In the journal _Angewandte Chemie_ ("Glucose-Responsive Sequential Generation of Hydrogen Peroxide and Nitric Oxide for Synergistic Cancer Starving-Like/Gas Therapy"), the scientists explain the concept: tumor cells are deprived of their nutrient glucose as this is converted to toxic nitrogen monoxide (NO) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2).



Anti-Tumor Synergy - Nanomedical treatment concept combines NO gas therapy with starvation of tumor cells. (© Wiley-VCH)



--> Nanomedical anti-tumor strategy | Nanowerk

Wenpei Fan et al, "Glucose-Responsive Sequential Generation of Hydrogen Peroxide and Nitric Oxide for Synergistic Cancer Starving-Like/Gas Therapy", _Angewandte Chemie International Edition_ (2016). DOI: 10.1002/anie.201610682

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*New Type of Acoustic Topological Insulator Realized by Metamaterial Rings Array*
Dec 12, 2016

In the past decade, exploration for new types of topological insulators is substantively followed up in different subfields of physics, making a paradigm shift for topological states, from electronics to photonics, phononics as well as mechanics.

In photonics, the field of topological insulators is rapidly developing in the past few years, where one of most representative example should be the Floquet topological insulator, proposed in periodically driven systems.

Most recently, researchers from several universities and research institutes work together to have represented an important step in the implementation of a diverse family of topological structures and networks for sound with new properties and functionalities. They provide a fertile ground for novel wave manipulations, such as the unidirectional sound transports and robust sound transports against perturbations, and push forward the fundamental explorations of topological acoustics. Their research results have been published in Nature Communications.

Researchers have theoretically proposed and experimentally demonstrated the anomalous Floquet topological insulator for sound: a strongly coupled metamaterial ring lattice that supports one-way propagation of pseudo-spin-dependent edge states under T-symmetry. As well, researchers also demonstrate the formation of pseudo-spin-dependent interface states due to lattice dislocations and investigate the properties of pass band and band gap states.

The model of anomalous Floquet topological insulator is a 2D coupled metamaterial ring lattice, presented in Fig. 1. It can support topological edge states at sufficiently large coupling strength between neighboring lattice rings.

A pseudo-spin for acoustic waves is defined based on wave circulation direction in the lattice rings viz. pseudo-spin-up↔clockwise and pseudo-spin-down↔anti-clockwise. By purposely designing the lattice configuration, researchers have successfully constructed the acoustic anomalous Floquet topological insulator. It can support the pseudo-spin-dependent edge states, scattering immune to boundary abrupt variations or lattice dislocations.

The edge states with different pseudo-spins can propagate in opposite directions under T-symmetry at the same boundary, shown in Fig. 2. Researchers emphasize that the edge states with different pseudo-spins are regarded as decoupled due to nearly unitary coupling between neighboring rings, closing the time-reversed channels for backscatterings. In this case, the rings no longer act as resonators and the edge state is essentially a conventional waveguide mode.

For one specific pseudo-spin, there exists a pair of edge states propagating along the upper and lower boundaries, respectively, with opposite group velocities. The observations reveal that when the coupling strength between adjacent lattice rings surpasses a threshold, acoustic waves carrying a pseudo-spin in one lattice ring may tunnel into the neighboring coupling ring with the pseudo-spin flipped. And then, they go to another lattice ring with the pseudo-spin restored or conserved, rendering an interesting zigzag route.

Of interest will be the extension of this research into non-reciprocal acoustics regime by integrating time-varying (for example, rotating the metamaterial rings), shedding lights on the development of chiral acoustic metamaterials and Chern acoustic topological insulators with various intriguing non-reciprocal properties, such as one-way sound isolation.






Fig. 1 Photograph of the fabricated samples (Image by JIA Han et al.)





Fig. 2 The simulated (a, b) and measured (c, d) pressure amplitude distributions of one-way edge states (Image by JIA Han et al.)​*
*
New Type of Acoustic Topological Insulator Realized by Metamaterial Rings Array---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Yu-Gui Peng, Cheng-Zhi Qin, De-Gang Zhao, Ya-Xi Shen, Xiang-Yuan Xu, Ming Bao, Han Jia & Xue-Feng Zhu, "Experimental demonstration of anomalous Floquet topological insulator for sound", _Nature Communications _(2016), DOI: 10.1038/ncomms13368

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*World's first 3-D-printed blood vessel successfully functions in monkey's body*
(People's Daily Online) 15:10, December 13, 2016







The 3-D-printed blood vessel (Photo/People's Daily Overseas Edition)​
Kang Yujian, chief scientist and CEO of Chinese biotech company Revotek, recently announced a breakthrough in China's 3-D-printed blood vessel project. According to the announcement, the team has successfully transplanted 3-D-printed blood vessels into rhesus monkeys, and the vessels have achieved regeneration, the People's Daily Overseas Edition reported on Dec. 13.

Produced by a 3-D bio-printer with the company's own stem cell bio-ink technology, the blood vessels have been integrated into the monkeys' abdominal aortas. The structure and biological functions of the printed vessels are the same as those of real blood vessels.

According to Kang, Revotek has transplanted 3-D-printed vessels into 30 rhesus monkeys, and all the monkeys survived. The technology has yielded a method to achieve the endothelialization of artificial blood vessels, and will benefit about 1.8 billion patients with cardiovascular disease. The stem cell technology breakthrough will lead human beings into a new medical era featuring tissue manufacturing and organ repair.

Revotek signed a technology development contract with West China Hospital in May of this year, officially starting the blood vessel experiment. Researchers made bio-ink from the rhesus monkeys' own stem cells, and replaced a portion of their abdominal aortas with the 3-D-printed artificial blood vessels.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## 艹艹艹

http://www.wsj.com/articles/robo-advisory-services-grow-rapidly-in-china-1481511662
*Robo-Advisory Services Grow Rapidly in China*
Investment advice for the country’s digitally savvy has been slow to take off, but that’s changing





ENLARGE
China Merchants Securities estimates that the assets managed by robo advisers in China will reach 5.22 trillion yuan ($758 billion) by 2020.PHOTO:ISTOCKPHOTO/GETTY IMAGES

LIZA LIN
Updated Dec. 12, 2016 1:12 p.m. ET

When Chinese investorPu Gangwanted advice on diversifying his investments in July, the Beijing native turned to a source that’s increasingly popular in his country: a robot.

Mr. Pu put 500,000 yuan ($72,610) into an account on a wealth-advisory app run by Chinese fintech startup Xuanji, a unit of Pintec Group. Users answer a set of questions posed by the Xuanji app to assess their risk tolerance and investment goals, then the software puts together a portfolio of mutual funds matching those criteria.

“I wanted a wealth-management platform that would give me unbiased and strong recommendations,” says the 53-year-old sales executive. “It’s hard to get that from traditional Chinese private bankers, as they often consider both their own corporate sales goals along with your interests.”


Robo advisers are growing rapidly in China as savers shift money out of bank accounts and into accounts run by online services, often through smartphone apps. In the past, Chinese savers who weren’t ultrarich had few choices for investment advice.

Data on the amount of assets managed by robo advisers in China isn’t readily available, butChina Merchants SecuritiesCo.estimates the total will reach 5.22 trillion yuan ($758 billion) by 2020.

*Filling gaps*
Tech startups offering robo-advisory services, such as Betterment, have already shaken up the wealth-management industry in the U.S. Founded in 2008, Betterment has grown to manage more than $6 billion in investor assets. More-traditional banks and brokers likeCharles SchwabCorp.andWells Fargo& Co. have also begun offering customers robo-advisory services. Researcher Cerulli Associates estimates the U.S. robo-advisory business will grow to $385 billion in the next five years from $83 billion this year.

China’s state-run banks and brokerage firms have been slow to reach out to the country’s digitally savvy savers. That has created an opening for internet giantsAlibaba Group HoldingLtd.andTencent HoldingsLtd.to offer money-market funds through apps that offer higher interest rates and are easier to access than traditional bank accounts. Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial Services Group has attracted 152 million active users and manages 760 billion yuan ($110 billion) in assets through its Yu’e Bao wealth-management platform launched in June 2013.

Now, a new crop of tech firms like Xuanji are hoping to persuade investors to use their apps to invest in stocks and bonds, not just money-market funds. Part of the appeal of Xuanji and competitors like Beijing-based CreditEase, the parent of New York-listedYirendaiLtd., and Beijing-based startup MiCai is that their robo-advisory services are cheaper and more accessible than advice from traditional human brokers.





But some traditional brokers are finding a role in the robo trend. For example, Xuanji has a partnership with Minsheng Securities Co. Minsheng uses Xuanji’s technology to offer clients who invest at least 50,000 yuan the option of robo-advisory services, and clients pay a sales fee of 1% or less on funds recommended by the robo adviser. China Merchants Bank also introduced robo-advisory services for its clients last week,with a minimum investment threshold of 20,000 yuan.

“Domestic investors, especially the younger segment and white-collar professionals, are increasingly open to using robots to manage their money,” saysJin Kuihua,a vice president at Minsheng.

Last year’s stock-market plunge in China and the country’s economic slowdown helped pique investors’ interest in robo advisory, saysZheng Yudong,Xuanji’s Beijing-based chief executive. “High-yielding fixed-income products are starting to disappear,” he says, and many people are leery of investing in stocks on their own.

*Big potential*
There is no shortage of potential customers for robo advisers in China. The country is home to the world’s largest middle class, and its ranks of millionaires has reached 1.6 million, according to Credit Suisse Group.

That potential has attracted DriveWealth LLC, a New Jersey-based investment platform that has formed a partnership with CreditEase and the finance arm of Chinese e-commerce companyJD.comInc.to provide wealth-management technology and services to Asian customers. “As far as growth opportunities go” for robo advising, “there is China, there is a gap, and then there is the rest of the world,” saysMichael Fitzgerald,head of corporate strategy at DriveWealth.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientist Chen Zhu wins 2016 Ernest Beutler Prize for Clinical Science*
(People's Daily Online) 16:45, December 13, 2016




The American Society of Hematology recently honored Chen Zhu, a professor of molecular biology at the Shanghai Institute of Hematology, and Hugues de Thé, a professor of cellular and molecular oncology at the Collège de France and Hôspital Saint-Louis in Paris. Both scientists received the 2016 Ernest Beutler Lecture and Prize for their significant research in the area of acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL), Science and Technology Daily reported on Dec. 13.

APL used to be among the most dreaded and deadly forms of leukemia. Chen's team developed a novel targeted treatment strategy using all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) and arsenic trioxide (As2O3), and led the first clinical trial combining ATRA, As2O3 and chemotherapy. This therapy transformed APL from a highly fatal disease to the first curable acute myeloid leukemia.




Though arsenic is known for its toxicity, arsenic trioxide has long been used in traditional Chinese medicine. Called "pishuang" in Chinese, it is used to treat cancer and other conditions. Chen's research represents a typical combination of traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine.

The Ernest Beutler Lecture, named for a past president of ASH, is a two-part lectureship that recognizes major advances related to a single topic. The award honors two individuals, one who has enabled advances in basic science and another who has accomplished great things in clinical science or translational research.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*China establishes day for sci-tech workers *
Source: Xinhua | 2016-12-13 23:42:39 | Editor: huaxia

BEIJING, Dec. 13 (Xinhua) -- China's 81 million science and technology (S&T) workers are to have their own festival -- a sci-tech workers' day on May 30 each year.

The State Council, China's Cabinet, agreed to set the day from 2017, according to a statement by the China Association for Science and Technology and the Ministry of Science and Technology on Tuesday.

The date was chosen because an event conflating the national conference on S&T, the biennial conference of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), and the national congress of the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) was held on May 30, 2016.

During the event, the top leadership set the target of China becoming a world S&T power by the middle of this century.

The day will encourage all sci-tech workers to remember their mission, serve the country, play their roles in innovation and supporting the country's development to achieve the aim of building China into a world-leading S&T power, according to the statement.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## terranMarine

*Chinese officials say the country will start to build the first polar research icebreaker by itself before the end of December.*

State Oceanic Administration director Wang Hong announced the news at the National Marine Science and Technology Innovation Conference in Beijing on Tuesday, December 13.

Construction is expected to last for approximately two years.The new icebreaker will be 122.5 meters long, 34 meters wide, and with a full displacement of 13,000 tons.

It will have a range of 20,000 nautical miles and will be designed to travel for up to 60 days at a time, with a full crew, without refueling.

The ship is also be fitted with the latest global positioning technology and research equipment.

Jiangnan Shipyard Group has been contracted to build the vessel, signing an agreement with the Polar Research Institute of China on November 30 of this year.

Chinese research vessel Xuelong (Snow Dragon), which is currently on its 33rd Antarctic expedition, is China's only polar icebreaker right now.

Xuelong was built by Kherson Shipyard, a Ukrainian company, in 1993.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## cirr

*China panel makers making strong investments in OLED manufacturing*

Rebecca Kuo, Tainan; Adam Hwang

DIGITIMES [Tuesday 13 December 2016]

China-based panel makers are making big investments in OLED technology, with *EverDisplay Optronics (Shanghai)* kicking off construction of a 6th-generation (6G) AMOLED factory. In addition to EverDisplay Optronics, China-based display panel maker *BOE Technology *is constructing a 6G factory for flexible OLED panels in western China at an investment of *CNY46.5 billion*, and fellow makers *China Star Optoelectronics Technology*, *Tianma Micro-electronics*, *Truly Opto-Electronics*, *Royol* and *Visionox* set to invest in setting up or expanding AMOLED production capacities.

EverDisplay's construction of a 6th-generation (6G) AMOLED factory will have a monthly production capacity of 30,000 1,500mm x 1,850mm glass substrates (including flexible units) in Shanghai City, eastern China, at an estimated total investment of *CNY27.278 billion* (US$3.95 billion), with trial production to begin in January 2019 and full utilization of capacity to be reached in 2021, according to the company.

With a total floor space of 460,000 square meters (4.95 million square feet), the factory will have three main manufacturing processes - array, OLED evaporation and module assembly. The factory will produce 1- to 15-inch AMOLED panels and modules.

According to China-based Sigmaintell Consulting, there were 260 million smartphone-use AMOLED panels with a total area of 1.9 million square meters shipped globally in 2015 and the shipments will increase to 380 million units with a total area of 2.6 million square meters in 2016.






EverDispaly Optronics (Shanghai)'s groundbreaking ceremony
for its 6G AMOLED factory
Photo: Company

@Bussard Ramjet India??? I bet India has neither the technical know-hows nor the financial resources to play even a minor role in this important sub-sector of digital industry

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*Zika antibodies from infected patient thwart infection in mice*
December 14, 2016

Source: American Association for the Advancement of Science

Summary:
Researchers have identified neutralizing antibodies against Zika virus from an infected patient that fully protected mice from infection, adding to the current arsenal of antibodies in development for much needed antiviral therapies and vaccines.​

Zika antibodies from infected patient thwart infection in mice -- ScienceDaily

*Journal Reference*:

Q. Wang, H. Yang, X. Liu, L. Dai, T. Ma, J. Qi, G. Wong, R. Peng, S. Liu, J. Li, S. Li, J. Song, J. Liu, J. He, H. Yuan, Y. Xiong, Y. Liao, J. Li, J. Yang, Z. Tong, B. D. Griffin, Y. Bi, M. Liang, X. Xu, C. Qin, G. Cheng, X. Zhang, P. Wang, X. Qiu, G. Kobinger, Y. Shi, J. Yan, G. F. Gao. *Molecular determinants of human neutralizing antibodies isolated from a patient infected with Zika virus*. _Science Translational Medicine_, 2016; 8 (369): 369ra179 DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.aai8336

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*China to join top-3 semiconductor equipment spenders for first time, says SEMI*

Jessie Shen

DIGITIMES, Taipei [Wednesday 14 December 2016]

Worldwide sales of new semiconductor manufacturing equipment are projected to increase 8.7% to US$39.7 billion in 2016, according to SEMI. In 2017, another 9.3% growth is expected, resulting in a global semiconductor equipment market totaling US$43.4 billion.

For 2016, Taiwan and South Korea are projected to remain the largest spending regions, with China joining the top three for the first time, said SEMI. Rest of World (essentially Southeast Asia) will lead in growth with 87.7%, followed by China at 36.6% and Taiwan at 16.8%.

Wafer processing equipment, the largest product segment by dollar value, is anticipated to increase 8.2% in 2016 to total US$31.2 billion, SEMI indicated. The assembly and packaging equipment segment is projected to grow by 14.6% to US$2.9 billion in 2016 while semiconductor test equipment is forecast to increase by 16% to a total of US$3.9 billion.

*SEMI forecasts that in 2017, equipment sales in Europe will climb the most, 51.7%, to a total of US$2.8 billion, following a 10% contraction in 2016. In 2017, Taiwan, Korea and China are forecast to remain the top three markets, with Taiwan maintaining the top spot even with a 9.2% decline to total US$10.2 billion. Equipment sales to Korea are forecast at US$9.7 billion, while equipment sales to China are expected to reach US$7 billion.*

In a separate release, SEMI revealed 62 new front-end facilities are expected to begin operation between 2017 and 2020. The 62 facilities and lines range from R&D to high-volume fabs, with most of the newly operating facilities being volume fabs and only seven being R&D or pilot facilities.

*Between 2017 and 2020, 26 facilities and lines will begin operation in China, about 42% of the worldwide total currently tracked by SEMI*. The Americas region follows with 10 facilities, and Taiwan with nine facilities. By product type, 32% are foundries, 21% are memory, 11% LED, then power, MEMS, logic, analog and opto in decreasing order.

Between 2017 and 2020, five facilities are unconfirmed, 10 are planned, 11 are announced, 26 are in construction and 10 are equipping, SEMI indicated. These numbers include facilities and lines of all probabilities, including unconfirmed projects and projects which have been announced, but may have a low probability of completion.

The projects under construction, or soon to be under construction, will be key drivers in equipment spending for the industry over the next several years, with China expected to be the key spending market, according to SEMI.

@Bussard Ramjet Another sub-sector of the digital tomorrow that requires both know-hows and continuous massive massive massive investment. India???

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*BGI involved in publication of the first seahorse genome in Nature*
Publish Date: 2016-12-15

Whole genome of the tiger tail seahorse (Hippocampus comes) was sequenced for the first time and the latest study was published as a cover story in _Nature_.

The study was an international collaboration including researchers from South China Sea Institute of Oceanology of Chinese Academy of Sciences (China), University of Konstanz (Germany), BGI (China) and A*STAR (Singapore).

Seahorses (Family Syngnathidae) exhibit certain highly specialized phenotypes, such as a toothless tubular mouth, a body covered with bony plates, absence of caudal and pelvic fins, and a prehensile tail. They are also unique among vertebrates due to their ‘male pregnancy’ and an unusual sex-role reversal whereby males nourish developing embryos in a brood pouch until hatching and parturition occur.

In order to understand the genetic bases of their unique morphology and reproductive system, the research team sequenced the genome of the tiger tail seahorse and performed comparative analyses with genomes of other ray-finned fishes.

In this study, the researchers found that the seahorse genome is the fastest evolving one among the sequenced fishes so far, although the exact reasons still unknown. However, the higher evolutionary rate could have facilitated the emergence of proteins with more efficient or new functions, contributing to the unique body plan. In addition, compared to other teleosts the seahorse genome has lost a substantially higher number of potential cis-regulatory elements, which may play a major role in the evolutionary innovations of seahorses.

Male pregnancy is a unique evolutionary innovation of seahorses and pipefishes. In teleost fishes, the C6AST subfamily of astacin metalloproteases, including high choriolytic enzyme (HCE) and low choriolytic enzyme (LCE), are involved in lysing the chorion surrounding the eggs and leading to hatching of embryos. Another important member of this subfamily, patristacin (pastn), has undergone expansion in the seahorse; meanwhile, five pastn genes are highly expressed in the brood pouch during mid- and late-pregnancy, suggesting a possible common role of this gene for the male pregnancy of syngnathids.

T-box 4 (Tbx4) is a master control gene for limb development. The researchers observed that tbx4 has been lost in the assembled seahorse genome and hypothesized its association with disappearance of pelvic fins. Further knockout of tbx4 in zebrafish recapitulated the ‘pelvic fin-loss’ phenotype of seahorses. The result is a critical highlight of this study.

Meng Xu and Yulan Yang, two of the first authors from BGI, are in charge of genome assembly, annotation and comparative analysis. Prof. Qiong Shi, the vice president and the Chief Scientist of BGI Fisheries, is one of the corresponding authors. He has had co-launched the seahorse genome project with Prof. Qiang Lin from South China Sea Institute of Oceanology and Prof. Byrappa Venkatesh from A*STAR five years ago.

Since seahorses have been widely used for Chinese medicine and treated as vulnerable or endangered animal, the researchers also sequenced the lined seahorse (Hippocampus erectus), an important aquaculture species in China. These datasets will definitely be helpful for improvement of the artificial/molecular breeding and ecological protection of seahorses in the world.



BGI involved in publication of the first seahorse genome in Nature | BGI News Center

*Paper: *Qiang Lin, Shaohua Fan, Yanhong Zhang, Meng Xu, Huixian Zhang, Yulan Yang, Alison P. Lee, Joost M. Woltering, Vydianathan Ravi, Helen M. Gunter, Wei Luo, Zexia Gao, Zhi Wei Lim, Geng Qin, Ralf F. Schneider, Xin Wang, Peiwen Xiong, Gang Li, Kai Wang, Jiumeng Min, Chi Zhang, Ying Qiu, Jie Bai, Weiming He, Chao Bian, Xinhui Zhang, Dai Shan, Hongyue Qu, Ying Sun, Qiang Gao, Liangmin Huang, Qiong Shi, Axel Meyer, Byrappa Venkatesh. *The seahorse genome and the evolution of its specialized morphology*. _Nature_ (2016); DOI: 10.1038/nature2059

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## cirr

*China launches first project for primordial gravitational wave detection in northern hemisphere*

15.12.2016 | 09:54





The site of Project Ngari

BEIJING, 15 December (BelTA - People's Daily) - The China Institute of High-Energy Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced the official launch of Project Ngari on Dec. 13. The project team plans to build the Ngari 1 telescope and begin scientific observation within five years. Once constructed, it will be the first observatory for primordial gravitational wave detection in the northern hemisphere.

In fact, since the existence of gravitational waves was first predicted by Albert Einstein, no trace was captured in scientific research until Feb. 11, 2016, when the LIGO experimental group and U.S. National Science Foundation jointly declared that they had detected a gravitational wave produced by the merging of two black holes 1.3 billion years ago.

After humans first detected a trace of gravitational waves, exploration of primordial gravitational waves, produced as early as the universe came into being, became the next scientific target. Against this backdrop, the project for detection of primordial gravitational waves was finally implemented in China.

Zhang Xinmin, chief scientist for the project, disclosed that its aim is to establish an unprecedentedly sensitive experiment on primordial gravitational waves, and that the experiment may also make breakthroughs in other large scientific questions such as the evolution of the universe, dark matter and dark energy.

Sitting 5,000 meters above sea level in Tibet, the Ngari observatory will possess distinctive geographical, observational and infrastructural advantages, according to Guo Zhaolin, the senior consultant of the project.

With the construction of the Ngari observatory, China will obtain the most accurate observation data in the study of primordial gravitational waves. However, due to China's limited experience and technical capabilities in detecting the waves, Chinese scientists will cooperate closely with top American research universities and scientific institutes.

http://eng.belta.by/society/view/ch...-detection-in-northern-hemisphere-97206-2016/

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## cirr

*我国科学家在拉曼纳米激光研究方面取得重要进展*
*
2016-12-16 16:46:00* *央视网*

*央视网消息：* 据国家自然科学基金委网站消息，在国家自然科学基金项目（项目编号：51502175，61575129，11304206）资助下，深圳大学光电工程学院阮双琛教授团队在拉曼纳米激光研究方面取得重要进展，研究成果近期以“A Thresholdless Tunable Raman Nanolaser using a ZnO–Graphene Superlattice（基于氧化锌-石墨烯超晶格的无阈值拉曼纳米激光）”为题发表在Advanced Materials上。论文链接：http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.201604351/full。

随着纳米光技术如芯片级光通讯、生物医学成像的发展，人们对激光的研究进入到亚波长范围。亚波长激光如纳米激光的发展主要基于表面等离子体增强发射光技术。一般的纳米激光波长固定，限制了其应用，而拉曼光散射能将泵浦光转变为新的波长。发展新型拉曼纳米激光可以得到波长可调的纳米激光，有可能在应用上取得创新性的突破。

阮双琛教授团队采用空间限域生长法合成了一种新型石墨烯基超晶格材料，这种石墨烯基超晶格可以在从可见光到近红外光波段较宽的波长范围激发出表面等离子体，光激发该超晶格材料可以得到波长可调的拉曼纳米激光。该拉曼纳米激光具有无阈值、可室温操作、激光波长可调、激光波长覆盖范围广（波段从可见光到近红外光）等特点，有望在纳米光技术如生物医学成像等方面取得应用上的新突破。






图1（a）超晶格的X射线衍射谱，内图为超晶格侧面结构示意图；（b）超晶格表面高分辨电镜照片，晶面间距2.81 和1.87 可指标为ZnO层，内图为超晶格表面结构示意图；（c）超晶格纳米片侧面高分辨电镜照片；（d）超晶格选区电子衍射花样。






图2（a）ZnO的拉曼谱；（b-f）ZnO-石墨烯超晶格在不同泵浦光激发下的激光光谱，对应泵浦光波长分别为b）488nm，c）514.5nm，d）568nm，e）647nm，f）785nm，泵浦功率为3.2kW /cm2； (g) 拉曼散射过程的能级图，其中拉曼振动模V1-V4对应图（a）中的V1-V4，能级图中的四个散射光E1-E4对应拉曼激光中的E1-E4。






图3（a）在不同泵浦功率514.5nm激光激发下得到的激光光谱；（b）拉曼纳米激光功率密度随泵浦功率的变化曲线；（c）拉曼纳米激光峰E1-E4的线宽随泵浦功率的变化曲线；（d）不同温度下的拉曼纳米激光光谱；（e）不同泵浦功率密度514.5nm激光激发下E1-E4的激光光谱图。






图4（a）用于研究ZnO-石墨烯超晶格表面等离子共振的Kretschmann构造示意图；（b）Kretschmann构造得到的ZnO-石墨烯超晶格表面等离子共振反射率曲线，这是由原始数据经过四阶多项式拟合得到的曲线；（c）ZnO-石墨烯超晶格界面对拉曼振动模的高度方向选择性示意图，这是无阈值拉曼纳米激光产生的重要条件。

@Bussard Ramjet 

http://china.huanqiu.com/hot/2016-12/9822096.html

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## onebyone

The satellite that China launched into space last year to explore dark matter – thought to be the invisible part of the cosmos – has already detected 1.6 billion particles, officials said on Saturday. Scientists will now have to analyse the information gathered to try to understand what makes some matter five times more abundant than which is visible – composed of atoms – and thought to form the greater part of the universe, Efe news reported.

Scientists established the existence of dark matter in the 1970’s due to its gravitational effects on visible matter although their knowledge about it is very scarce. Head engineer of the satellite, Wu Jian, explained that researchers have reviewed the systems of calibrated devices to ensure maximum accuracy of their observations, reported the Times.


The satellite called Wukong was launched on December 17, 2015 and after almost a year in operation is currently in orbit at an altitude of 504 km, developing its operations normally. This satellite includes a space telescope – China’s first – which notes the direction, power and electrical load of high-energy space particles.

It is expected that during its first two years of operations, the telescope will look in all directions and after passing the first stage, focus its activity in areas where initial results look most promising. China Saturday also successfully launched into space a new meteorological satellite, Yunhai-1, from Jiuquan base in the Gobi desert, aboard the Long March-2D rocket.

This satellite, developed by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology, will be dedicated to atmospheric, marine and space observation, prevention of meteorological disasters along with carrying out scientific experiments.

http://tech.firstpost.com/news-anal...-billion-particles-of-dark-matter-346968.html

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## TaiShang

*
Goat with superfine wool cloned in China*

(CRI Online) December 19, 2016






_The photo of world's first cloned goat with superfine wool. [Photo: nmgnews.com]_

The world's *first cloned goat bearing superfine cashmere wool* was born in north China's* Inner Mongolia Region*, the Bayannur city government announced Sunday.

The goat was born and will be raised in a base for animal husbandry research conducted by experts from *agricultural universities and academies in Inner Mongolia and southwest China's Yunnan Province*.

The cashmere fiber from the goat is* less than 13.8 micrometers thick, much finer than the average of 15.8 micrometers grown by the famous Erlang Mountain goats in Inner Mongolia.*

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## JSCh

*New AI study claims to identify personality traits from looks alone*
By Tian Shi (People's Daily Online) 15:55, December 20, 2016




Chinese researchers claim to have taken facial recognition to the next stage - by predicting the personality traits of women based only on their looks. The accuracy of such predictions could reach 80 percent, according to the team's latest study.

Wu Xiaolin and his fellow researchers, all from Shanghai Jiaotong University, scoured Baidu search engine to collect 3,954 images of women, assigning each image either a positive word such as "sweet," "endearing," "elegant," "caring," or "cute," or a negative word such as "pretentious," "pompous," or "coquettish."

After being divided into separate groups, the images were fed into a convoluted neural network (CNN), with 2,000 images in the positive category S+ and 1,954 in negative category S-.

"The two classes of female face images in S+ and S- reflect the aesthetic preference and value judgments that prevail among young males in contemporary China," said Wu, in an interview with the Thepaper.cn.

Before using the data to train the neural network, the scientists asked 22 male Chinese graduate students to examine the labels on the images and say whether or not they were accurate. The answer was yes, up to 80 percent of the time.

The study, titled Automated Inference on Sociopsychological Impressions of Attractive Female Faces, was published by arXiv, an online open-sourced journal.

In late November, Wu created a controversy in the scientific community after claiming to be able to tell a criminal from a law-abiding citizen based on a computer algorithm.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Study identifies gastric cancer biomarker and possible treatment*
December 20, 2016 






Killer T cells surround a cancer cell. Credit: NIH​
Scientists at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Miami, and Shantou University Medical College in China, have shown that the hormone receptor GHRH-R could be a potential biomarker for gastric cancer, enabling earlier diagnoses and better staging. In addition, the team found that the GHRH-R antagonist MIA-602 inhibited gastric cancer in both cell lines and human xenografts. The research was recently published in the journal _PNAS_.



--> http://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-12-gastric-cancer-biomarker-treatment.html
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-12-gastric-cancer-biomarker-treatment.html
Jinfeng Gan et al. Growth hormone-releasing hormone receptor antagonists inhibit human gastric cancer through downregulation of PAK1–STAT3/NF-κB signaling, _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_ (2016). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1618582114

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## cirr

Bloody cool. A round of applause for those involved in this project of pioneering significance 

*中国领跑：发布世界首个商用高温气冷堆方案*

据《人民日报》12月21日报道，60万千瓦高温气冷堆核电站技术方案21日在清华大学发布。该项目标志着我国高温气冷堆技术从“863”时期的“跟跑”位置，到示范工程阶段的“领跑”位置，正式跨入商用阶段。建成后将成为国际首个商用高温气冷堆核电站。

高温气冷堆，是指用气体作冷却剂，出口温度高的核反应堆，是目前世界最安全的核反应堆堆型之一。由清华自主研发、我国具有完全自主知识产权的高温气冷堆是国际公认的第四代先进核能系统，具有安全性好、堆芯不会融毁及温度高、用途多等优势。2012年，在山东荣成开工建设了全球首座20万千瓦高温气冷堆核电站示范工程。






核电站

目前，示范工程已进入到设备安装调试阶段，力争2017年底前后并网发电。此次发布的60万千瓦设计方案，是在山东荣成的示范工程基础上设计的，将具有同样的固有安全性、同样的主设备设计和同样的运行参数。

60万千瓦高温气冷堆核电站采用6个反应堆模块连接1台蒸汽机轮机的设计方案，与常规压水堆核电站核岛厂房体积和占地面积相当。每个反应堆模块热功率为250兆瓦，机组的热功率将达到1500兆瓦，电功率可达655兆瓦，发电效率43.7%。

国家重大科技专项高温气冷堆核电站示范工程总设计师张作义介绍，设计研发60万千瓦高温气冷堆商业核电站意义重大。

首先，结构更加紧凑和优化，建筑面积显著低于示范工程。根据设计，该核电站的建造成本将接近压水堆核电站。“通过主设备标准化设计和扩大核燃料的生产规模，可以降低核电站的建造和运行成本，从而提高整个核电站的经济性。”张作义说。

“*目前我国大部分运行的燃煤电厂是60万千瓦的规模，而高温气冷堆的蒸汽参数与燃煤电厂一致，因此高温气冷堆核电站的常规岛可以很好地利用我国现有成熟的火电技术和建造能力。此外，高温气冷堆可以替代环境敏感区的燃煤及燃气发电。*”张作义介绍，高温气冷堆在燃煤替代、热电联产、核能制氢等方面有更广阔的前景。同时，它也是我国核电走出去战略的重要力量。目前我国已与沙特、印尼等国签署了高温气冷堆合作备忘录。

目前*我国已突破高温气冷堆的全部核心技术，并有多个世界首创*，如世界首个规模化陶瓷包覆颗粒球形燃料元件生产厂、首个电磁轴承主氦风机等。反应堆压力容器、蒸汽发生器等主设备也已完全国产化。

“在从20万千瓦到60万千瓦，从示范工程到商用的产业化实践中，通过发展高温气冷堆可以把国内多家核电设备制造商、建造商和运营商整合起来，打造成一个完整的高温气冷堆核电产业链。同时，还为后续建造60万千瓦高温气冷堆超临界发电机组奠定基础。”张作义介绍。

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Source of major pollutant in China's smog revealed *
Source: Xinhua | 2016-12-22 04:06:25 | Editor: huaxia



Photo taken on Dec. 17, 2016 shows buildings enveloped in smog in Beijing, capital of China. Beijing activated its first red alert for smog this winter on Friday. (Xinhua/Jin Liangkuai)

WASHINGTON, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Scientists said Wednesday they have solved the perplexing puzzle of how a major smog component, known as sulfate, forms during haze events in northern China, including Beijing.

The study, published in the U.S. journal Science Advances, identified reactive nitrogen chemistry and water particles in the air as the two missing pieces, suggesting that reducing nitrogen oxide (NOx) emission in particular may help curb China's air pollution.

The findings were based on an analysis of the January 2013 winter haze event in Beijing, one of the worst atmospheric pollution events ever recorded in China, which saw the daily concentration of fine particle called PM2.5 exceed the World Health Organization guideline value by 16 times.

At that time, researchers performed aerosol measurements on the roof of a Tsinghua University building in Beijing and analyzed data throughout the surrounding regions.

They identified a reaction pathway that could account for the missing source of sulfate, discovering that fine water particles in the air acted as an reactor, trapping sulfur dioxide (SO2) molecules and interacting with nitrogen dioxide (NO2) to form sulfate.

The reaction rate was further facilitated by stagnant weather in the 2013 haze event, which trapped NO2 near the Earth's surface, resulting in NO2 concentrations that were three fold higher than clean conditions.

This process, according to the researchers, was "self-amplifying," as increasing aerosol mass concentrations led to higher aerosol water content -- accelerating the accumulation of sulfate and causing more severe haze pollution.

"This study unfolds the unique sulfate formation mechanism in NCP (North China Plain) haze events, which differs from traditional scenarios," study author Guangjie Zheng of Tsinghua University said in an email to Xinhua.

"In cleaner environments such as the U.S. or Europe, sulfate is mainly formed through the traditional OH (hydroxide) reaction pathways in atmospheric gas phase, or the H2O2 (hydrogen peroxide) and O3 (Ozon) reaction pathways in cloud chemistry. In NCP haze events, however, the dominant sulfate formation pathway shifts into the NO2 reaction pathway in aerosol water."

Zheng said results in this research reveal "the complex nature" of haze pollution events in China.

"The SO2 comes mainly from power plants, NOx is from power plants and mobile vehicles, while the NH3 (ammonia) and mineral dusts, which serve as the neutralizing substances, are from both natural and anthropogenic emissions such as industry and fugitive dusts," she said.

"These pollutants from various sources were emitted in high intensity at the same time, resulting in the unique heavy haze conditions, and thus the shifting in the dominant sulfate formation pathway. The complexity of haze pollutions in NCP further illustrated the importance of scientific emission-reduction strategies."

For example, reductions of NO2 and nitric oxide, which can react in the air to become NO2, are expected to lower sulfate pollution levels much more than anticipated by traditional air quality models.

These results "will need to be considered in future air quality and pollutant emission control strategies in northern China, and perhaps also in other regions," the reseachers concluded in their paper.


*Paper: *

Yafang Cheng, Guangjie Zheng, Chao Wei, Qing Mu, Bo Zheng, Zhibin Wang, Meng Gao, Qiang Zhang, Kebin He, Gregory Carmichael, Ulrich Pöschl and Hang Su. "Reactive nitrogen chemistry in aerosol water as a source of sulfate during haze events in China", _Science Advances_ 21 Dec 2016; DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1601530

*Abstract*
Fine-particle pollution associated with winter haze threatens the health of more than 400 million people in the North China Plain. Sulfate is a major component of fine haze particles. Record sulfate concentrations of up to ~300 μg m−3 were observed during the January 2013 winter haze event in Beijing. State-of-the-art air quality models that rely on sulfate production mechanisms requiring photochemical oxidants cannot predict these high levels because of the weak photochemistry activity during haze events. We find that the missing source of sulfate and particulate matter can be explained by reactive nitrogen chemistry in aerosol water. The aerosol water serves as a reactor, where the alkaline aerosol components trap SO2, which is oxidized by NO2 to form sulfate, whereby high reaction rates are sustained by the high neutralizing capacity of the atmosphere in northern China. This mechanism is self-amplifying because higher aerosol mass concentration corresponds to higher aerosol water content, leading to faster sulfate production and more severe haze pollution.​

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*China releases world’s first commercial HTR plan*
(People's Daily Online) 16:56, December 22, 2016






Sectional drawing of a 600,000-kilowatt HTR nuclear power plant​
A plan for China's fourth-generation 600,000-kilowatt high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTR) was released by Tsinghua University on Dec. 21. Representing the first commercial HTR plan in the world, the development is of crucial significance.

The HTR scheme was independently developed by Tsinghua University and China-owned IPRs. Currently, the project is in the installation and commissioning stage; it is scheduled to achieve grid generation by the end of 2017.

Zhang Zuoyi, the chief architect of the project, claimed that HTR has broader prospect than coal-fired alternatives, as it combines heat, power and the production of nuclear hydrogen. In addition, it is a significant force behind China’s nuclear strategy.

China has made a number of breakthroughs in core HTR technologies. It has signed memoranda of understanding with Saudi Arabia and Indonesia relating to HTR.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*Researchers Uncover the Dolomitization Mechanisms of Camrbian Petroleum Reservoirs*
Dec 22, 2016

Deeply buried dolostone reservoirs of Cambrian and Precambrian ages are hot targets for present-day exploration in both the Tarim Basin and Sichuan Basin in China because of their great potential for future discoveries of petroleum resources. 

Understanding the origin, occurrence, and distribution of dolomites is of great importance in exploration and production planning in these reservoirs. 

Associate Prof. JIANG Lei and his colleagues from Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Scfiences, found that five stages of dolomitization were responsible for the formation of various types of dolomite in the deeply buried Cambrian unit in the Tarim Basin, northwest China. 

They further related the different dolomitization events to the origin of various types of pore space in these reservoirs. This work was published in Sedimentology. 

Dolomite samples were collected from well cores across the whole basin, and from several outcrops at the northwestern edge of the basin. 

A combination of petrology, fluid-inclusion microthermometry, and stable and radiogenic-isotopes was used to identify different types of dolomite and characterize the dolomitization fluids. Dolomitization occurred in a wide diagenetic range from syndepositional (at ~ 25 °C) to deeply burial environments (as high as 170 °C) in these reservoirs. 

Five stages of dolomitization are (listed in formation time order): microbial dolomitization (restricted to lagoon facies), reflux dolomitization (mostly in lagoon and sabkha facies, some in shoal and reef facies), seawater dolomitization (shoal and reef facies), burial dolomitization (shoal and reef facies, carbonate platform), hydrothermal dolomitization (fracture related). Intercrystalline, moldic, and breccia porosities are due to the early stages of dolomitization. Macroscopic, intergranular, vuggy, fracture and dissolution porosity are due to burial-related dissolution and regional hydrothermal events. 

This work has shown that old (i.e., Cambrian or even Precambrian) sucrosic dolostone associated with anhydrite, buried to as deep as 8,000 m, can still have a high potential for hosting substantial hydrocarbon resources and should be globally targeted for future exploration. 

The study entitled "Multiphase dolomitization of deeply buried Cambrian petroleum reservoirs, Tarim Basin, north-west China" was done in collaboration with University of Liverpool, University of Texas at Austin, and Tarim Oilfield Company, Petrochina. 

The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Special Major Project on Petroleum Study, and the Office of China Postdoctoral Council. 
*

*
Researchers Uncover the Dolomitization Mechanisms of Camrbian Petroleum Reservoirs---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese researchers treat male menopause using reprogrammed skin cells *
Source: Xinhua | 2016-12-25 01:00:27 | Editor: huaxia

WASHINGTON, Dec. 24 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers have developed a potential new and safe approach for treating male hypogonadism, popularly known as male andropause, by directly converting adult skin cells into testosterone-producing cells.

Male hypogonadism, a condition affecting almost a third of older men, occurs when the body does not produce enough of the testosterone hormone, primarily due to the dysfunction of testosterone-producing Leydig cells in the testes.

Testosterone replacement therapy can alleviate some symptoms resulting from Leydig cell failure, such as mood disturbances, sexual dysfunction and muscle weakening, but it may also increase the risk of prostate and cardiovascular complications, including the formation of blood clots, according to the new study published this week in the U.S. journal Stem Cell Reports.

Scientists then turned to an alternative type of treatment, which involved production of Leydig cells by differentiating stem cells of different sources, such as embryonic stem cells, but the stem cell-based method has ethical concerns and the risk of tumor occurrence.

In the new study, Yadong Huang and Zhijian Su of China's Jinan University reasoned that the direct conversion of adult skin cells into Leydig cells would be a safer regenerative medicine approach.

To test this idea, the researchers screened 11 so-called transcription factors that could affect the ability of Leydig cells to produce testosterone.

By genetically manipulating three of the transcription factors, they were able to directly reprogram mouse skin cells into functional Leydig-like cells, which showed normal gene activity and were capable of producing testosterone.

When transplanted into the testes of rats or mice with hypogonadism, these cells survived and restored normal testosterone levels.

"Our study is the first to report a method for generating Leydig cells by means of direct cell reprogramming," said Huang of Jinan University.

"This alternative source of Leydig cells will be of great significance for basic research and provides the attractive prospect of clinical application in the field of regenerative medicine."

The researchers suggested that future studies should aim to improve the efficiency of the approach to generate a pure population of cells that closely mimic adult Leydig cells

"In the end, we are hopeful that this research will pave the way for clinical trials testing a novel regenerative medicine approach to treat androgen deficiency in men," Su said.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## ahojunk

*China to establish comprehensive food safety standard system: report*
2016-12-24 10:13 | Xinhua | _Editor: Wang Fan_

China's food safety system will soon cover almost all kinds of food and major hazard factors, according to a report released Friday.

The report, on feedback to China's top legislature, said the health authority, the food and drug regulator, and the agricultural authority had jointly issued 926 national food safety standards, and another 130 items will follow.

The national food safety standard system will have almost 1,100 items with about 20,000 criteria, covering almost all kinds of food and major hazard factors, said Bi Jingquan, head of the China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA), when delivering the report to the National People' s Congress Standing Committee at its week-long bimonthly session.

The report was delivered at a plenary meeting of the NPC Standing Committee session. Zhang Dejiang, the top legislator, attended the meeting.

The report came after the NPC Standing Committee investigated enforcement of the Food Safety Law in the first half of this year, finding that despite the overall improvement, major problems still exist.

Bi added that the office of the State Council' s food safety commission is coordinating with other agencies on a medium to long-term strategy to improve food safety in five to 15 years.

Also on Friday, Zhang Dejiang presided over a meeting of the chairpersons of the NPC Standing Committee, hearing a series of reports.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## ahojunk

*China to beef up research of key components*
2016-12-27 09:52 | China Daily | _Editor: Feng Shuang_

China will ramp up investment to develop essential industrial components and materials next year, in a move to reduce reliance on foreign technology in key sectors including telecommunications and railways.

Miao Wei, minister of industry and information technology, said on Monday the ministry will channel more resources to help tackle technological bottlenecks in 20 industrial parts and 15 industrial materials.

The initiative is designed to promote homegrown parts related to telecommunications, the internet of things, railway equipment, machinery manufacturing and other sectors.

"Though China has emerged as one of the world's largest manufacturing powerhouses, we still have to import basic components from other countries. We need to change that," Miao said at a conference in Beijing.

The move is part of China's broad effort to boost the competitiveness of its manufacturing sector, by encouraging firms to embrace the internet, big data and other information technology.

According to the ministry's forecast, China's industrial output will expand 6 percent year-on-year in 2017, roughly the same growth rate as this year.

Wang Ying, an engineering expert at the Beijing-based China Center for Information Industry Development, said there is an urgent need to cultivate domestic firms' ability to mass-produce reliable industrial components.

"High-speed railways, for instance, embody China's technological prowess, but frankly speaking, several of their parts still rely on imports," Wang said.

Ding Zhilei, assistant president of Ninebot Inc, a Beijing-based maker of personal electric vehicles and robots, said the problem also exists in the country's booming robotics industry.

A robotic arm can be worth several million yuan, and most of that cost comes from foreign components, such as speed reducers and servomotors.

"The strong policy support will accelerate firms' research and development efforts, and inspire innovation in this cash-intensive industry," Ding said.

At the conference on Monday, the ministry also said it planned to set up an investment fund to advance the development of new materials such as heat-resistant alloys, lightweight materials, and graphene, which is reportedly 200 times stronger than the strongest steel.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*国产1.2万瓦工业级光纤激光器在天津问世*

12KW Single Mode Optical Fibre Laser 

27-12-2016

OFweek激光网讯：27日， 驻津央企中国电子科技集团公司光电研究院天津东方锐镭公司联合国防科学技术大学高能激光技术团队，成功研制出功率达1．2万瓦的工业级光纤激光器，*其综合性能指标达国际一流水准*。该产品的问世，彻底打破国内万瓦级光纤激光器依赖进口的局面，使得国产万瓦光纤激光器水平再上新台阶。

目前，高功率光纤激光器主要应用于厚板切割和焊接。万瓦级光纤激光器可快速切割厚度达40mm的碳钢、30mm的不锈钢以及15mm的铝和铜。在此基础上，可广泛应用于工业制造、汽车制造、航空航天等领域。

此前，高功率光纤激光器被国外少数几家企业垄断。锐镭公司1．2万瓦光纤激光器的问世，有效填补了高功率光纤激光器在国内市场的空白，更为我国在高端重型设备制造领域的快速转型升级提供了核心源动力，尤其对天津激光智能制造产业的推动奠定了坚实有力的基础。

http://m.laser.ofweek.com/2016-12/ART-240002-8120-30085206.html

@Taishang @Bussard Ramjet

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Dunhuang 24-hour solar plant online *
2016-12-27 21:02:37 Chinanews.cn 

A view of the molten salt concentrating solar power (CSP) plant in Dunhuang, Northwest China’s Gansu Province. The project, the first in Asia and third in the world, delivers electricity from solar energy to power 30,000 homes. Excess thermal energy is stored in the molten salt and can be used to generate power, including during the evening hours. It began connecting with the grid on Dec. 26.

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## JSCh

*Signing Ceremony on the Collaboration Research Agreement of "Direct, Nonoxidative Conversion of Methane to Olefin and Aromatics" Held in Dalian*
Dec 22, 2016

On Thursday December 22, the signing ceremony on the cooperative research and development agreement of "direct, nonoxidative conversion of methane to olefin and aromatics” was held in Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP), Dalian.

The joint research and development project was established by DICP of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and the Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC).

On behalf of the three parties, Prof. YANG Xueming, deputy director of DICP, Ms. WANG Xinge, General Manager of China Huanqiu Contracting & Engineering Corporation (a subsidiary of CNPC) and Dr. Atiah S. Al-Ghamdi, director of catalyst technology of SABIC signed on the cooperative research agreement.




Signing Ceremony on the Collaboration Research Agreement of "Direct, Nonoxidative Conversion of Methane to Olefin and Aromatics" (Image by LIU Wansheng)

The joint project was developed on the basis of the process of the direct and nonoxidative conversion of methane to olefin and aromatics, invented by the team led by Prof. BAO Xinhe.

By activating methane under anaerobic conditions and converting methane directly to olefins, aromatics and hydrogen, the process holds advantages over the conventional processes for natural gas conversion, which usually requires high energy consumption and produces high emission.

In addition to shortening the reaction route, the process developed by Prof. BAO’s team also does not emit carbon dioxide within the process and the carbon atom efficiency could reach approximately 100%.

The process was first reported in the journal, Science, in May 2014, and has since been studied systematically, with a focus on both fundamental scientific questions of the process and the development for industrial technology.

A series of breakthroughs have been made in improving the stability of the catalyst, methods for catalyst preparation and the design of new reactor. In March 2016, CNPC, SABIC and DICP have signed a memorandum of cooperation on the development of the process.

This official cooperative research and development agreement signed today marks the project has entered the stage for substantive cooperation. The tripartite cooperation could potentially accelerate the industrialization of the technology and thus make contribution to reform the petrochemical industry in China and even the world.
*
*
Signing Ceremony on the Collaboration Research Agreement of "Direct, Nonoxidative Conversion of Methane to Olefin and Aromatics" Held in Dalian---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

* Significant coal-to-liquid project in production in Ningxia*
Source: Xinhua 2016-12-28 20:35:02




​YINCHUAN, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) -- The world's biggest single coal-to-liquid (CTL) project went into production Wednesday in northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.

The project, undertaken by a subsidiary of the state-owned Shenhua Group, consists of homegrown technology, equipment and materials, breaking the longtime foreign monopoly in CTL core technology.

China has rich coal resources but lacks oil and gas. Currently more than 60 percent of its oil is imported.

The project drew an investment of about 55 billion yuan (7.9 billion U.S. dollars). It is able to turn more than 20 million tonnes of coal to 4 million tonnes of oil products annually, including 2.7 million tonnes of diesel, 980,000 tonnes of naphtha petroleum and 340,000 tonnes of liquefied gas, according to Yao Min, deputy general manager of Shenhua Ningxia Coal Industry Group Co. Ltd.

Byproducts include 200,000 tonnes of sulfur, 75,000 tonnes of mixed alcohol and 145,000 tonnes of ammonium sulphate, Yao said.

"If the oil products are promoted in first-tier cities like Beijing and Shanghai, they will help reduce car emissions and tackle the problem of smog," Yao added.




​

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## shadows888

JSCh said:


> * Significant coal-to-liquid project in production in Ningxia*
> Source: Xinhua 2016-12-28 20:35:02
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ​YINCHUAN, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) -- The world's biggest single coal-to-liquid (CTL) project went into production Wednesday in northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.
> 
> The project, undertaken by a subsidiary of the state-owned Shenhua Group, consists of homegrown technology, equipment and materials, breaking the longtime foreign monopoly in CTL core technology.
> 
> China has rich coal resources but lacks oil and gas. Currently more than 60 percent of its oil is imported.
> 
> The project drew an investment of about 55 billion yuan (7.9 billion U.S. dollars). It is able to turn more than 20 million tonnes of coal to 4 million tonnes of oil products annually, including 2.7 million tonnes of diesel, 980,000 tonnes of naphtha petroleum and 340,000 tonnes of liquefied gas, according to Yao Min, deputy general manager of Shenhua Ningxia Coal Industry Group Co. Ltd.
> 
> Byproducts include 200,000 tonnes of sulfur, 75,000 tonnes of mixed alcohol and 145,000 tonnes of ammonium sulphate, Yao said.
> 
> "If the oil products are promoted in first-tier cities like Beijing and Shanghai, they will help reduce car emissions and tackle the problem of smog," Yao added.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ​



woh, i didn't know you COULD do that!


----------



## JSCh

*Recombinant type-5 vector-based ebola vaccine safe*
December 27, 2016

(HealthDay)—For healthy adults from Sierra Leon, the recombinant type-5 vector-based Ebola vaccine is safe and immunogenic, according to a study published online Dec. 21 in _The Lancet_.

Feng-Cai Zhu, from the Jiangsu Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Nanjing, China, and colleagues recruited healthy HIV-negative adults aged 18 to 50 years, with no history of Ebola virus infection and no previous immunization with other Ebola candidate vaccines. Five hundred participants were randomized to receive high-dose vaccine (1.6 × 1011 viral particles; 250 participants), low-dose vaccine (8.0 × 1010 viral particles; 125 participants), or placebo (125 participants).

The researchers found that at least one solicited adverse reaction was reported by 53, 48, and 43 percent of participants in the high-dose, low-dose, and placebo groups, respectively, within seven days of vaccination; most were mild and self-limiting. Vaccine recipients more often had solicited injection-site adverse reactions (26 and 25 percent in the high- and low-dose groups, respectively, versus 17 percent in the placebo group; P = 0.0169). In the low- and high-dose groups, glycoprotein-specific antibody responses were detected from day 14 onward (geometric mean titer, 1,251.0 and 1,728.4, respectively); these peaked at day 28 and decreased rapidly in the following months.

"The recombinant adenovirus type-5 vector-based Ebola vaccine was safe and highly immunogenic in healthy Sierra Leonean adults, and 8.0 × 1010 viral particles was the optimal dose," the authors write.

Two authors are employees of Tianjin CanSino Biotechnology, a co-developer of the vaccine.



--> http://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-12-recombinant-type-vector-based-ebola-vaccine.html

Feng-Cai Zhu et al, "Safety and immunogenicity of a recombinant adenovirus type-5 vector-based Ebola vaccine in healthy adults in Sierra Leone: a single-centre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, phase 2 trial",_ The Lancet_ (2016), DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(16)32617-4

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*World’s First Set of 200kV DC Circuit Breaker Successfully Commissioned*
Dec 29, 2016

Beijing, China, December 29th, 2016 – The world’s first set of 200kV DC circuit breaker was successfully put into commercial operation on December 29, 2016. For this project, GEIRI, the technology owner and supporter, is responsible for the detailed design and complete type test. C-EPRI, China’s leading HVDC equipment manufacturer, is responsible for the manufacture and supply the breaker. The energization of the dc breaker has marked another successful collaboration of the two parties in addressing the challenges faced by HVDC industry.

To ensure a high-quality project, more than 20 test items were carried out before its delivery to site. During the heavy current interruption test, the breaker successfully interrupted a short circuit current up to 15.6KA, the performance and reliability of the breaker was thus fully verified. 

The deployment of the DC breaker will significantly improve the operational flexibility and security of the 5-terminal VSC-HVDC system and pave the way for further development of dc grid in both China and the rest of the world. The valuable experience obtained from project implementation will also offer important guidance for the upcoming ±500kV Zhangbei DC Grid Project.



World’s First Set of 200kV DC Circuit Breaker Successfully Commissioned_Press Release_Press release_C-EPRI

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

* "Artificial carpet" technology aides China's desert control*
Source: Xinhua 2017-01-01 17:17:15

LANZHOU, Jan. 1 (Xinhua) -- A microbial cultivation, known as "artificial carpet" is a feasible desert control measure after a two-year trial in China's Tengger Desert.

A scientific group led Li Xinrong, a researcher with the Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, used lab-cultured microbe agent to spray on straw checkerboard on the desert.

The microbes extracted from alga and moss can form a surface crust on the checkerboard that is made with wheat or rice straw.

"Our test shows that the checkerboard grown with the 'artificial carpet' technique are more consolidated and effective in fixing sand dunes," he said.

But he added that it takes five years to see the microbiotic crust take shape on checkerboard in mass.

Li's team has finished the basic study of the technique, and will use it in the desert area along with dry farming of desert plants on the checkerboard.

The Shapotou area in Tengger Desert, where Li and his colleagues are working gained a worldwide fame as a paradigm of successful sand control, where a huge grid of straw checkerboards each measuring 1 meter by 1 meter half buried in sand has formed a shelter belt to prevent the desert from expanding. The work has been going on since 1960s and has been extended to other desert areas.

Tengger Desert, the fourth largest in China, stretches 43,000 square kilometers, sprawling across Inner mongolia and Ningxia Hui autonomous regions and Gansu Province.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## ahojunk

*Researchers develop new anti-smog technology*
2016-12-28 09:13 | Global Times | _Editor: Li Yan_

Researchers from Xi'an Jiaotong University in Northwest China's Shaanxi Province have developed a way to eliminate air pollutants during the coal-burning process, which they hope would significantly address the country's smog problems.

Guo Liejin, head of the research team, said the technology called *"supercritical steaming coal" will generate water instead of sulfur dioxide, nitric oxide or PM2.5 particles in the oxidizing reaction process*, as it normally does, news portal nbd.com.cn reported Tuesday.

The technology is among the many that aim to curb air pollution in China. Another research team led by He Kebin from Tsinghua University has come up with a list of more than 700 kinds of pollutant sources to help evaluate the effectiveness of measures for controlling the smog, news site thepaper.cn reported.

Many cities even deploy vehicles equipped with a "mist canon," which can spray water mist up to 100 meters, in a bid to devour the smog.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*记西安电子科技大学电子信息学科群的“通信战士”*

3-1-2017






西安电子科技大学科研团队正在进行试验。 

*微波器件、赛博安全、国防领域、临近空间、深空通信……@Taishang*

76年前，毛泽东同志为中央军委无线电通信学校（西安电子科技大学前身）的院刊题词“你们是科学的千里眼顺风耳”；今天，在这所以信息与通信工程、电子科学与技术、控制科学与工程等学科为主的电子信息高等学府里，同样活跃着一群上天入地的“通信战士”。

*微波器件效率的世界纪录*

400亿元，这大约是移动、联通、电信等无线通信商一年的电费支出，全球无线通信网络耗电更是占到了全球总发电量的10%，而这主要花在了无线通信高塔基站的耗能大户微波功率器件上。一般情况下，这些器件只能把不超过40%的电能转变成有用的微波信号，其余的大部分都变成了热量耗散掉。

要是转化率能高一些该多好。经过近20年的努力，西安电子科技大学副校长、中国科学院院士郝跃带领的团队，将微波功率器件的效率提高到了当前国际最高纪录73%，这也几乎达到了半导体微波功率器件电能转换的极限。

早在1998年，郝跃就带领着团队开始针对新型氮化镓半导体材料与器件进行攻关，相继提出了一系列创新的高质量材料生长方法、新型的半导体材料与器件结构，其成果被评价为过去10多年该领域的三项里程碑成果之一，先后获得国家技术发明奖二等奖和国家科技进步奖二等奖各一项。

如今，这些高效率的微波功率器件已经实现了产品化，正通过华为、中兴等通信设备制造商，在世界各地的4G通信基站中大规模使用。

“比传统基站的电能消耗将降低一半以上，基站寿命将会大大延长，通信速率也会大大提高，我们每个人都会因此受益，得到性价比越来越高的无线通信服务。”郝跃说。

据介绍，这些高效率微波功率器件，不仅成功用到了民用领域，而且已经应用到我国的卫星通信、雷达、预警机等一大批国家重大工程中。

*赛博安全的智力对决*

GGH密码方案有多厉害？它是三个密码天才提出的全新方案，原本有望成为国际密码学研究的新技术。围绕GGH的密码设计与分析，是赛博安全领域近年来一场顶级的世界级智力较量。然而，这道曙光却在瞬间熄灭。

密码学专家、西安电子科技大学教授胡予濮在一年的时间里，完全沉浸在破解GGH方案的推导验算中，在尝试了50多种攻击方式都被喊“NG”之后，终于给出一记釜底抽薪的痛击，坐实了GGH方案漏洞的存在。

这项重要发现意义深远——人们可以不再继续花费时间精力基于GGH方案构建加密标准，拓展密钥交换使用场景，甚至将其应用于商业、金融、军事等系列领域。

“痴于学术谜题，羞于浅尝辄止，安于书呆子式。”——这是胡予濮以轻松口吻为自己画的自画像，也是一大批在现代通信领域潜心学术的西电学者的集体白描。

*国防领域的铸盾行动*

2016年国际军事领域有一个爆炸性新闻，中国研制的世界首个反隐身米波雷达，让美国最先进的F-22隐形战机无处遁形。

“这个米波雷达，其信号处理机使用的关键技术，就是西电的雷达研究团队提出的。”雷达信号处理国家重点实验室教授、国家自然科学基金创新研究群体学术带头人廖桂生说，“可以对F-22进行高可靠、高精度测量。”

西安电子科技大学是新中国最早创办雷达工程专业的院校。今天，在被称为雷达“裁判长”的中国科学院院士保铮的带领下，这里聚集着超过30位拥有长江、杰青、青拔、优青等国字号人才称号和教授职称的高层次团队，他们清一色从事雷达研究。

早在两年前，这个以雷达技术为主要研究方向、致力于打造中国版“林肯实验室”的创新体，就曾联合中国电子科技集团公司等单位，以行业产业类第一的成绩，正式通过了国家“2011计划”评审认定。

如今，面向国防领域的重大需求，这个雷达研究团队正源源不断地输出成果：提出了空时自适应动目标检测理论与方法，发明了高分辨雷达成像新技术，创新出雷达目标识别和图像解译方法……

*临近空间的大胆探索*

“黑障”—— 一个困扰全世界航天界几十年的难题，连美国这样的“航天大佬”也难以提出有效的解决方案。谢楷——教授、博导、系主任，西电空间科学与技术学院李小平教授团队的“80后”“科学怪人”。

“要啃就啃硬骨头！”这位不久前提出了一种缓解通信“黑障”新方法的小伙子，在2009年读博时就将研究方向瞄准了“黑障”这个世界级难题。

研究初期，那个国内外无人尝试过的在实验室环境下复现“黑障”的大胆方案，让李小平团队在申请经费和专利的道路上屡遭碰壁，理由便是——无法判断是否具有可行性。

“当时天空一定飘来了那五个字（那都不是事）！”谢楷笑言，当时幸亏没动摇，团队近乎全手工打造出了首台简陋的原理样机，设想基本成功，但它只工作了十几分钟，电极在高能离子轰击下融化了……

凭着一种“匠人精神”和创新，甚至创业的精神，团队接连参与了民口“973”计划课题、国家重大科技专项课题等。下一步，在中国科学院包为民院士指导下，*团队将在地面和空间全面验证克服“黑障”的方法*。

如今，这个团队又牵头申请成功了2016年信息学部唯一的国家重大仪器专项“临近空间高速目标等离子体电磁科学实验研究装置”，这也是基金委批准的4个项目之一。

*深空通信的瓶颈突破*

今年43岁，却已经在航天领域干了17年的长江学者、西安电子科技大学教授李云松，最近又因其团队研制的“星载图像压缩系统”再一次成功运用于“天宫二号”伴随卫星而无比欣喜。李云松解决的问题，是我国现阶段卫星图像数据传输和存储的瓶颈问题之一，也因此获得国家科技进步奖二等奖一项。

中国月球探测工程“绕、落、回”三大步中，都伴随着李云松在星载图像、视频压缩编码研究的每一小步前行。从第一次看到“嫦娥一号”回传图像时的欢呼雀跃，到如今经历多次重大任务后的平静与淡然，习以为常的超高航天要求已与这位年轻的“老江湖”难解难分。

“在‘嫦娥三号’的联试中，出现了一些图像方面的问题。一天24小时，一周七天，几个人轮换着盯着检测，最终圆满解决了问题。”这种强度的工作，只是李云松团队紧密围绕国家重大工程做研究、十余年不懈奋斗的缩影。

郝跃、胡予濮、廖桂生、谢楷和李云松，他们只是战斗在新时代电子信息相关学科领域“通信战士”的典型代表，而像这样的专家、教授，在西安电子科技大学还有很多。面对学科前沿的“珠峰”，迎难而上的西电勇士榜，没有句点。

http://news.sciencenet.cn/sbhtmlnews/2017/1/319341.shtm

@Bussard Ramjet You guys really really really need to get a move on!

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientist awarded 2017 Vega Medal*
(People's Daily Online) 16:26, January 03, 2017

On Dec. 26, the Sweden Society of Anthropology and Geography (SSAG) announced the winner of the 2017 Vega Medal, Chinese scientist Yao Tandong for his contributions to research on glaciers and the environment of the Tibetan Plateau, Thepaper.cn reported.

Yao, director of the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and director of the CAS Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences, is the first Asian scientist to receive the award. According to SSAG, Yao is "internationally acknowledged to be one of the most accomplished scientists in the field of cryospheris study."





(Yao Tandong/Tibet.cn)​
Over the past two decades, Yao's team has studied environmental changes and their influence on the Tibetan Plateau. Yao has collaborated with scientists from dozens of countries including the U.S., France, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Iceland, Russia, Pakistan, India, Nepal and Japan.

The Third Pole Environment (TPE), initiated by Yao, has engaged talents from all over the world and made important scientific findings. Yao's team concluded that we are presently living in the warmest time period in the past 2,000 years. Global warming and interaction between Indian monsoons and western-blowing wind are major reasons for the retreat of glaciers and regional differences within the Tibetan Plateau.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## dingyibvs

JSCh said:


> *Study identifies gastric cancer biomarker and possible treatment*
> December 20, 2016
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Killer T cells surround a cancer cell. Credit: NIH​
> Scientists at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Miami, and Shantou University Medical College in China, have shown that the hormone receptor GHRH-R could be a potential biomarker for gastric cancer, enabling earlier diagnoses and better staging. In addition, the team found that the GHRH-R antagonist MIA-602 inhibited gastric cancer in both cell lines and human xenografts. The research was recently published in the journal _PNAS_.
> 
> 
> 
> --> http://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-12-gastric-cancer-biomarker-treatment.html
> Jinfeng Gan et al. Growth hormone-releasing hormone receptor antagonists inhibit human gastric cancer through downregulation of PAK1–STAT3/NF-κB signaling, _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_ (2016). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1618582114



Exciting news! I used to be a student at Miami, and I've assisted in surgeries right in Sylvester, so it's especially exciting for me

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists develop fireproof, waterproof paper*
By CHENG YINGQI | China Daily | Updated: 2017-01-06 07:34




​In January 2015, a fire in one of Russia's largest university libraries damaged more than 1 million historical documents, an incident which some media described as a "cultural Chernobyl".

Important documents of our age can probably avoid the same fate in the future thanks to a new fire-resistant paper developed by a team of scientists at the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Zhu Yingjie, a researcher from the institute, and his team developed a set of methods to produce paper with a new material, hydroxyapatite, the inorganic constituent of tooth enamel and bone.

The invention was reported on ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, a peer-reviewed scientific journal of the American Chemical Society.

The inorganic material is both fire resistant and water resistant.

"Traditionally, paper is made of plant fibers, which are easily destroyed by liquid. Previous research attempts to produce waterproof paper found it was difficult to achieve fire retardancy and water repellency at the same time," Zhu said.

In 2013, a doctorate student of Zhu was preparing hydroxyapatite nanowires. While he wanted to filter out the water and continue the experiment, he found that instead of getting hydroxyapatite powder on the filter paper, a film formed on the paper.

The discovery inspired Zhu. He conducted more experiments to improve the material's physical properties.

"Traditional papermaking damages natural woods and damages the environment. Hydroxyapatite nanowires are an ideal building material for paper," Zhu said.

The newly published paper shows that the inorganic material behaves like paper, but with excellent thermal stability and with astonishing mechanical wear resistance, according to an anonymous referee of a peer reviewer of ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, which was provided to China Daily.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

* Two scientists win China's top science award*
Source: Xinhua 2017-01-09 12:57:47

BEIJING, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- Two Chinese scientists, physicist Zhao Zhongxian and pharmacologist Tu Youyou, won China's top science award Monday for their outstanding contributions to scientific and technological innovation.

Zhao is a leading scientist in superconductivity, while Tu won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her discovery of artemisinin to treat malaria.

The pair were presented the award at an annual ceremony held to honor distinguished scientists and research achievements.

Winners are each entitled to an award of 5 million yuan (around 722,000 U.S. dollars).

The winners were chosen by the State Council.

#####​*52 local projects and people win China’s science and technology awards*
Source: Shanghai Daily
By Cai Wenjun | January 9, 2017, Monday

A total of 52 projects and people from Shanghai won China’s science and technology awards, covering 18 percent of all the State Scientific and Technological Award handed out in Beijing today.

French scientist Jean-Raymond Abrial, who has been cooperated with local scientists on system and software engineering, won international science and technology cooperation award.

Shanghai received many innovative projects and technologies awards, such as remote sensing technology of key aerospace engineering developed by Tong Xiaohua team from Tongji University and unmanned measuring technology in complicated reef waters developed by Xie Shaorong team from Shanghai University. All these are extremely important for the national security, defense and key projects.

A total of 287 projects and people nationwide won this year’s award. Two scientists Zhao Zhongxian and Tu Youyou won the top science award for their outstanding contributions to scientific and technological development.

The pair each received 5 million yuan (US$735,294).

Tu, who won the 2015 Nobel Prize for her work using artemisinin to treat malaria, was the first female scientist won the top award, which was given since 2000. So far, 27 top scientists have received the honor.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## ahojunk

JSCh said:


> *Two scientists win China's top science award*
> Source: Xinhua 2017-01-09 12:57:47
> 
> BEIJING, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- Two Chinese scientists, physicist Zhao Zhongxian and pharmacologist Tu Youyou, won China's top science award Monday for their outstanding contributions to scientific and technological innovation.
> 
> Zhao is a leading scientist in superconductivity, while Tu won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her discovery of artemisinin to treat malaria.
> 
> The pair were presented the award at an annual ceremony held to honor distinguished scientists and research achievements.
> 
> Winners are each entitled to an award of 5 million yuan (around 722,000 U.S. dollars).
> 
> The winners were chosen by the State Council.


.




_Picture of the two scientists._

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese AI company plans to mine health data faster than rivals*
*iCarbonX believes its cutting-edge partners and generous funding give it the upper hand.*

David Cyranoski
10 January 2017
Shenzhen
One of China’s most intriguing biotechnology companies has fleshed out an earlier quixotic promise to use artificial intelligence (AI) to revolutionize health care.

The Shenzhen firm iCarbonX has formed an ambitious alliance with seven technology companies from around the world that specialize in gathering different types of health-care data, said the company’s founder, Jun Wang, on 5 January at the Digital Life Summit, which was hosted by iCarbonX.

The alliance will use algorithms to analyse reams of genomic, physiological and behavioural data and provide customized health and medical advice directly to consumers through an app.



--> Chinese AI company plans to mine health data faster than rivals : Nature News & Comment

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*Pen power: China closer to ballpoint success*

By Simon AtkinsonAsia Business Reporter

10 January 2017




It has sent rockets into space, produced millions of the world's smartphones and built high-speed trains. But until now, one bit of manufacturing had perhaps unexpectedly eluded China: the ballpoint pen.

A year ago Premier Li Keqiang went on national television and bemoaned the failure of his country to produce a good quality version of this seemingly-simple implement.

Locally-made versions felt "rough" compared to those from Germany, Switzerland and Japan, Mr Li complained.

*High precision*

The problem was not the body of the pen, but the tip - the tiny ball that dispenses ink as you write.

It might be something we take for granted, but making them requires high-precision machinery and very hard, ultra-thin steel plates.

Put simply, China's steel has not been good enough. And it has struggled to shape its pen tips accurately.




Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES
Image captionLi Keqiang has held a few pens in his time as Chinese Premier
Without that ability, China's 3,000 penmakers have had to import this crucial component from abroad, costing the industry a reported 120m yuan ($17.3m; £14.3m) a year.

But according to People's Daily, the state-owned Taiyuan Iron and Steel Co thinks it has cracked the problem, after five years of research.

The first batch of 2.3-millimetre ballpoint pen tips has recently rolled off its production lines, the paper says.

And once lab tests are completed, it's expected China could phase out pen tip imports completely within two years.

*Symbolic*
On one level, whether China can make a great pen is not hugely important in the scheme of things.

High-tech and innovative manufacturing lie at the heart of the central government's Made in China 2025 programme - designed to help domestic growth.

Relatively low-value items, like ballpoint pens, have not been a priority.

But the pen-conundrum _is_ a symbolic one.




Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES
Image captionEuropean firms have dominated the ballpoint pen industry at both the top and lower ends of the market
Despite producing more than half of the world's crude iron and steel, China has still heavily relied on imports for high-grade steel.

It was a failing that Mr Li said highlighted the need to upgrade China's manufacturing capabilities.

*Different culture*
"Historically, China has never been able to do precision engineering very well and the ballpoint pen is an example of that," says Professor George Huang, head of the University of Hong Kong's department of industrial and mechanical engineering.

"Its parts are so small and very precise, and it's not easy to solve this problem"

Precision engineering is thriving only in certain sectors such as aerospace and defence where the government has placed a high priority, says Prof Huang.

Even when it comes to smartphones and computers, the high end computer chips are usually imported from Japan and Taiwan.

Prof Huang says that China lacks a culture of excellence in precision engineering.

He uses the Mandarin term "fuzao" which describes something that is not 100% solid or reliable.

"The culture is different from the Japanese and Germans," he says, who are known for innovation in engineering.

"We Chinese are supposed to be craftsmen, but somehow the spirit is not as good."

_Additional reporting by the BBC's Tessa Wong._

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*New primate species identified in China, named after Star Wars character*
(CRI Online) 16:06, January 12, 2017





The "Star War gibbon" in China lives to the east of the Irrawaddy river. [Photo: Yun Shan]​
A new species of primate has been identified and named the "Skywalker hoolock gibbon" at the Gaoligongshan National Nature Reserve in southwest China.

While the animal has been studied for some time, it wasn't until recently that those gibbons inhabiting the forests of Yunnan province were found to actually be a completely different species.

Hoolock gibbons are found in Bangladesh, India, China and Myanmar, living in forest treetops.

However one research team from Sun Yat-sen University started to suspect that these animals they were observing were different from other hoolock gibbons, based on different markings and vocalizations, reported the BBC.

So the team decided to do a genetic comparison of these special gibbons with other hoolock gibbons, confirming these primates were in fact a different species.

The primates were then given the scientific name, "hoolock tianxing" meaning "heaven's movement" when translated from Chinese.

And because the scientists who made the discovery happened to be fans of the Star Wars movies, these "jungle Jedi" that live in the treetops were given the common name "Skywalker hoolock gibbon".

In response to the news, actor Mark Hamill - Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars movies - said on Twitter that he was so proud to have them named after his character.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* China eyes ocean renewable energy development*
Source: Xinhua 2017-01-12 18:05:29





BEIJING, Jan. 12 (Xinhua) -- China's maritime authority has issued a five-year plan on developing ocean renewable energy, stipulating measures to develop relevant technology and utilize island renewable energy.

The plan, issued by the State Oceanic Administration and made public on Thursday, said efforts will be made to promote the application of marine renewable energy and make better use of island renewable energy by carrying out evaluations and developing technology and equipment.

The plan also said basic research and innovations in key technology related to marine renewable energy will be encouraged.

The foundation for ocean energy development will be reinforced, and resource assessment and building of public service platforms in the South China Sea and island regions will be the focus, according to the plan.

The plan also mentioned opening-up and international cooperation measures in relevant fields.

According to the plan, ocean renewable energy includes energy generated from sea tides, waves, temperature differences and biomass.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *Dalian Coherent Light Source Produces Laser Output for the First Time*
> Oct 10, 2016
> 
> The installation process of the main body of the comprehensive experimental device based on tunable Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) coherent light source - Dalian Coherent Light Source (DCLS) has completed on September 24, 2016.
> 
> After strictly system installation project acceptance of relevant experts, the project experts began the free electron laser (FEL) amplifier light debugging at 21:30, the whole debugging process went very smoothly.
> 
> At 22:50, high-quality pulsed electron beams with more than 300 Mev energy passed through all the elements of the free electron laser amplifier, the first beam of ultraviolet light was emitted through the 18-meter wave oscillator array.
> 
> DCLS is the only user FEL facility operating exclusively in the EUV wavelength region in the world, and it is also the first free electronic laser large scientific user device of our country. After debugging, this device will produce the world's brightest EUV beam.
> 
> Each laser pulse of the light source can emit more than 10 trillion photons with wavelengths continuously adjustable from 50nm to 150nm, with complete coherence. This light source can be widely applied in chemical, physical, biological, energy, materials, environmental and other important scientific fields.
> 
> Figure 1. Dalian coherent light linear accelerator (Image by ZHANG Weiqing)
> 
> DCLS is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and jointly developed by Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics and Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. This project was launched in early 2012, and started building in October 22, 2014.
> 
> The main infrastructure projects and the main light source device development is completed in less than two years since the start, which creates a new record of the construction of similar large-scale scientific facilities.
> 
> This project also created a precedent for the successful cooperation between scientific research experts and experts in the development of large scientific devices.
> 
> Figure 2. Dalian coherent light source undulator (Image by ZHANG Weiqing)
> 
> DCLS team will cooperate closer on the basis of existing work, and manages to finish the parameter optimization and beam line station debugging in the near future, to achieve the design targets for scientific research to provide high-quality extreme ultraviolet light source as soon as possible.
> 
> Figure 3. The first beam of ultraviolet light of DCLS (Image from DCLS)
> 
> 
> 
> Dalian Coherent Light Source Produces Laser Output for the First Time---Chinese Academy of Sciences




























Public Release: 12-Jan-2017
* China develops world's brightest VUV free electron laser research facility *
Chinese Academy of Sciences Headquarters

A team of Chinese scientists announced on Jan. 13 that they have developed a new bright VUV FEL light source, the Dalian Coherent Light Source (DCLS), which can deliver world's brightest FEL light in an energy range from 8 to 24 eV, making it unique of the same kind that only operates in the VUV region.

Vacuum Ultra Violet (VUV) light sources are especially useful for sensitive detection of atoms, molecules and clusters. It can also be used to probe valence electronic structures of all kinds of materials.

The development of high gain free electron lasers (FEL) has captured great attentions in the scientific community in the last decade. It can provide by far the brightest light sources from VUV to X-ray region, where conventional laser technology cannot reach.

Recently, a series of high gain FEL light source facilities in the X-ray and soft X-Ray region have been successfully developed in the world (LCLS, USA; SACLA, Japan; FLASH, Germany; and FERMI, Italy), with a few others currently under development. The LINAC based Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center have given scientists large hopes to make new scientific discoveries in many frontier research areas with these facilities.

However, no dedicated high gain VUV FEL light source facility for basic research has been developed in the world thus far. Led by Prof. YANG Xueming (Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, DICP) and Profs. ZHAO Zhentang and WANG Dong (Shanghai Institute of Applied Source, SINAP), the team of scientists and engineers succeeded in developing the DCLS.

During the last two months, this team has successfully commissioned the new FEL facility operating in both HGHG and SASE. By applying the undulator tapering technology in the HGHG mode, a photon flux of 1.4x1014 photons per pulse was achieved. The project was started in early 2012 and was a close collaboration between research scientists and engineers from DICP and SINAP (Home Institute of the Shanghai Light Source), two CAS institutes.

"VUV FEL light sources have wide applications in the study of basic energy science, chemistry, physics and atmospheric sciences. We expect that the new facility will become a new machine for important scientific discoveries and international scientific collaborations," said YANG Xueming, a member of the CAS.

###​
Many institutions in China such as University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), Tsinghua University and Institute of High Energy Physic were involved in the development of this FEL facility. This project was funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China and Chinese Academy of Sciences.


China develops world's brightest VUV free electron laser research facility | EurekAlert! Science News

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

The remotely operated vehicle _Deep Discoverer_ exploring the Mariana Trench at a depth of 6000 meters in 2016. A new effort aims to understand the trench's unusual geodynamics. 

NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research​*Expedition probes ocean trench’s deepest secrets*
By Jane Qiu
Jan. 11, 2017 , 9:00 AM

*BEIJING—*The Mariana Trench “is a little crazy,” Jian Lin says. The scythe-shaped cleft in the western Pacific sea floor, 2550 kilometers long, plunges nearly 11 kilometers, deeper than any other place in the oceans. But what wows Lin, a marine geophysicist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, is the zany topography. The trench marks a subduction zone, where one slab of crust slides beneath another. But whereas many other subducting plates slope gradually downward, in the Mariana the Pacific Plate dives nearly vertically.

Scientists have long wondered what accounts for that precipitous dive, and why the massive earthquakes that generate long-ranging tsunamis at other subduction zones have not been recorded in the trench. Now, a Chinese-U.S. team has planted an array of seismometers on the Mariana’s slopes. By listening for seismic waves, says Lin, a project co-leader, the 5-year, $12 million Mariana Trench initiative aims to image in fine detail the warped rock layers in and around the trench, looking for clues as to what shapes them.


--> Expedition probes ocean trench’s deepest secrets | Science | AAAS

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Researchers develop environmentally friendly, soy air filter*
January 12, 2017

*By Tina Hilding, Voiland College of Engineering & Architecture*

PULLMAN, Wash. – Washington State University researchers have developed a soy-based air filter that can capture toxic chemicals, such as carbon monoxide and formaldehyde, that current air filters can’t.

The research could lead to better air purifiers, particularly in regions of the world that suffer from very poor air quality. The engineers have designed and tested the materials for the bio-based filter and report on their work in the journal Composites Science and Technology (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0266353816305796).

Working with researchers from the University of Science and Technology Beijing, the WSU team, including Weihong (Katie) Zhong, professor in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, and graduate student Hamid Souzandeh, used a pure soy protein along with bacterial cellulose for an all-natural, biodegradable, inexpensive air filter.

*Hazardous gases escape most filters*
Poor air quality causes health problems worldwide and is a factor in diseases such as asthma, heart disease and lung cancer. Commercial air purifiers aim for removing the small particles that are present in soot, smoke or car exhaust because these damaging particles are inhaled directly into the lungs.



​
With many sources of pollution in some parts of the world, however, air pollution also can contain a mix of hazardous gaseous molecules, such as carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, sulfur dioxide and other volatile organic compounds.

Typical air filters, which are usually made of micron-sized fibers of synthetic plastics, physically filter the small particles but aren’t able to chemically capture gaseous molecules. Furthermore, they’re most often made of glass and petroleum products, which leads to secondary pollution, Zhong said.

*Soy captures nearly all pollutants*
The WSU and Chinese team developed a new kind of air filtering material that uses natural, purified soy protein and bacterial cellulose – an organic compound produced by bacteria. The soy protein and cellulose are cost effective and already used in numerous applications, such as adhesives, plastic products, tissue regeneration materials and wound dressings.



​Soy contains a large number of functional chemical groups – it includes 18 types of amino groups. Each of the chemical groups has the potential to capture passing pollution at the molecular level. The researchers used an acrylic acid treatment to disentangle the very rigid soy protein, so that the chemical groups can be more exposed to the pollutants.

The resulting filter was able to remove nearly all of the small particles as well as chemical pollutants, said Zhong.

*Filters are economical, biodegradable*
Especially in very polluted environments, people might be breathing an unknown mix of pollutants that could prove challenging to purify. But, with its large number of functional groups, the soy protein is able to attract a wide variety of polluting molecules.

“We can take advantage from those chemical groups to grab the toxics in the air,” Zhong said.

The materials are also cost-effective and biodegradable. Soybeans are among the most abundant plants in the world, she added.

Zhong occasionally visits her native China and has personally experienced the heavy pollution in Beijing as sunny skies turn to gray smog within a few days.

“Air pollution is a very serious health issue,” she said. “If we can improve indoor air quality, it would help a lot of people.”

*Patents filed on filters, paper towels*
In addition to the soy-based filters, the researchers have also developed gelatin- and cellulose-based air filters. They are also applying the filter material on top of low-cost and disposable paper towel to reinforce it and to improve its performance. They have filed patents on the technology and are interested in commercialization opportunities.

The work is in keeping with WSU’s Grand Challenges, a suite of research initiatives aimed at large societal issues. It is particularly relevant to the challenge of sustaining health and its theme of healthy communities and interventions to sustain public health.


Researchers develop environmentally friendly, soy air filter | WSU News | Washington State University

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*China opens unique free electron laser facility*
By Dennis Normile
Jan. 15, 2017 , 6:00 PM

China is joining the elite club of countries that have equipped researchers with the potent sources of high-energy photons called free electron lasers (FELs). The Dalian Coherent Light Source, whose completion was announced today in Beijing, has a twist that makes it unique: It is the only large laser light source in the world dedicated to the particular range of short-wavelength light called vacuum ultraviolet, which makes it “a new tool for the detection and analysis of molecules undergoing chemical reactions,” says Alec Wodtke, a physical chemist at the University of Göttingen in Germany.

Scientists around the world have rushed to build FELs over the past decade because they produce vastly brighter light, in shorter pulses, than synchrotrons, the particle accelerators that have been the workhorses of protein crystallography and cell biology and materials science. In synchrotrons, electrons go whizzing around a storage ring a kilometer or more in circumference. As their paths bend, the electrons throw off photons that are formed into beams.

In contrast, FELs fire electrons from a linear accelerator into an undulator, in which magnets of alternating polarity push and pull the electrons along a sinuous path. As the electrons round each bend, they produce photons. Interactions between the electrons and the accumulating photons as they travel through the undulator generate coherent laser light (Science, 10 May 2002, p. 1008).



--> China opens unique free electron laser facility | Science | AAAS

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## ahojunk

*Chinese scientists reveal why giant pandas and red pandas evolve to eat bamboo*
2017-01-17 09:26 | Xinhua | _Editor: Gu Liping_

Chinese researchers said Monday they have uncovered the genetic basis of why giant pandas and red pandas have evolved independently to have shared features such as a bamboo-based diet and false thumb.

Despite being classified as carnivores, both giant pandas and red pandas, which separately evolved from meat-eating ancestors and diverged from each other more than 40 million years ago, subsist almost entirely on bamboo -- a phenomenon termed *convergent evolution*, where similar traits arise in two unrelated or distantly related species.

Additionally, both species possess a false thumb, which enables the animals to adroitly grasp bamboo.

To uncover the genetic basis of such convergence, Fuwen Wei and colleagues from the Institute of Zoology, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, sequenced the genome of a wild male red panda and compared it with the reassembled genome of the giant panda. Their findings were published in the recent issue of U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The results confirmed that giant pandas belong to the family Ursidae together with polar bears, whereas red pandas belong to the superfamily Musteloidea together with ferrets and that the two species separated 47.5 million years ago, slightly earlier than previous molecular-based estimate of 43 million years ago.

Genome analysis revealed signs of adaptive convergence in 70 genes, including two genes, known as DYNC2H1 and PCNT, that are involved in false thumb development.

Further, enzymes involved in dietary protein digestion and amino acid utilization as well as proteins involved in vitamin metabolism and absorption showed signs of adaptive convergence, suggesting that these genes may have similarly evolved to support and supplement a bamboo-based diet.

Giant and red panda genomes also share 10 pseudogenes, or "false" genes, which look like real genes but have no apparent function.

Notably, the TAS1R1 gene, which enables carnivores to taste meat's umami flavor, has been pseudogenized in both pandas, reflecting the animals' shift from carnivory to omnivory and, ultimately, herbivory.

"Our findings provide rich insights into genetic convergence mechanisms underlying phenotypic convergence and adaptation to a specialized bamboo diet in both pandas," the researchers wrote in their paper.

"These findings demonstrate that genetic convergence occurred at multiple levels spanning metabolic pathways, amino acid convergence, and pseudogenization, providing a fascinating example for genome-scale convergent evolution analysis of dietary shift and specialization."

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

January 18, 2017 | By Inga Kiderra and Anthony King
*Mandarin Makes You More Musical?*





Photo by iStock_DragonImages.​
Mandarin makes you more musical – and at a much earlier age than previously thought. That’s the suggestion of a new study from the University of California San Diego. But hold on there, overachiever parents, don’t’ rush just yet to sign your kids up for Chinese lessons instead of piano.

In a paper published in Developmental Science, an international team of researchers shows that among the preschool set – or young children between the ages of 3 and 5 – native speakers of Mandarin Chinese are better than their English-speaking counterparts at processing musical pitch.

The implications of the findings go beyond determining who may have a head-start in music, the researchers say. The work shows that brain skills learned in one area affect learning in another.

“A big question in development, and also in cognition in general, is how separate our mental faculties actually are,” said lead author Sarah Creel of the Department of Cognitive Science in UC San Diego’s Division of Social Sciences. “For instance, are there specialized brain mechanisms that just do language? Our research suggests the opposite – that there’s permeability and generalization across cognitive abilities.

The researchers conducted two separate experiments with similar groups of young Mandarin Chinese learners and English learners. They tested a total of 180 children on tasks involving pitch contour and timbre. Where the English and Mandarin speakers performed similarly on the timbre task, the Mandarin speakers significantly outperformed on pitch, aka tone.

Mandarin is a tone language. In a tone language, the tone in which a word is said not only conveys a different emphasis or emotional content, but an altogether different meaning. For instance, the syllable “ma” in Mandarin can mean “mother,” “horse,” “hemp” or “scold,” depending on the pitch pattern of how it’s spoken. Mandarin-language learners quickly learn to identify the subtle changes in pitch to convey the intended outcome, while “ma” in English can really only mean one thing: “mother.” It’s the linguistic attention to pitch that gives young Mandarin speakers an advantage in perceiving pitch in music, the authors conclude.





Sarah Creel.​
“Both language and music contain pitch changes, so if language is a separate mental faculty, then pitch processing in language should be separate from pitch processing in music,” Creel said. “On the other hand, if these seemingly different abilities are carried out by overlapping cognitive mechanisms or brain areas, then experience with musical pitch processing should affect language pitch processing, and vice versa.”

Co-author Gail Heyman, of UC San Diego’s Department of Psychology, who specializes in development, added: “Demonstrating that the language you speak affects how you perceive music –at such an early age and before formal training – supports the theory of cross-domain learning.”

Tone languages are common in parts of Africa, East Asia and Central America, with estimates that as much as 70 percent of world languages may be considered tonal. Other tonal languages besides Mandarin include Thai, Yoruba and Xhosa.

Creel and Heyman’s work follows on a hypothesis first put forth by Diana Deutsch, also of UC San Diego, that experience with a tonal language leads to enhanced pitch perception in music. Deutsch studied skilled adult students of music and tested them on absolute or “perfect” pitch. Absolute pitch is the relatively rare ability to recognize a musical note without reference to any other notes.

Relative pitch, or understanding the pitch relationships between notes, is the focus of the present study. Relative pitch allows you to sing in key and be in tune with other people around you.

“We show for the first time that tone-language experience is associated with advanced musical pitch processing in young children,” the study co-authors write. “There are far-reaching theoretical implications for neuroscience and behavior, and our research has important practical implications for designing early intervention programs, or ‘brain training’ regimes.’”

But that said, don’t ditch your child’s music lessons for language, or language lessons for music, Heyman and Creel caution. It’s still true that to succeed at music, you need to study music. And learning an additional language is a demonstrably good thing in itself, too – whether or not it makes you a better musician.

The other co-authors are: Mengxing Weng of Zhejiang Normal University, China; Genyue Fu of Hangzhou Normal University, China; and Kang Lee of Zhejiang Normal University, UC San Diego and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Canada.

Creel was supported by a National Science Foundation CAREER Award BCS-1057080. Lee and Fu were supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China grants 31371041 and 31470993 and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.


http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelease/mandarin_makes_you_more_musical

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
ACS News Service Weekly Press Pac: Wed Jan 18 10:17:11 EST 2017
*Toward a ‘smart’ patch that automatically delivers insulin when needed*

"H2O2-Responsive Vesicles Integrated with Transcutaneous Patches for Glucose-Mediated Insulin Delivery"
_ACS Nano_


Tiny, painless microneedles on a patch can deliver insulin in response to rising glucose levels.
Credit: American Chemical Society

Treatment for certain diabetes cases involves constant monitoring of blood-glucose levels and daily insulin shots. But scientists are now developing a painless “smart” patch that monitors blood glucose and releases insulin when levels climb too high. The report on the device, which has been tested on mice, appears in the journal _ACS Nano_.

People with Type 1 diabetes don’t make insulin — a hormone that regulates blood glucose, or sugar. Those with Type 2 diabetes can’t use insulin effectively. Either way, glucose builds up in the blood, which can lead to a host of health problems, including heart disease, stroke, blindness and amputation of toes, feet or legs. To avoid these outcomes, people with Type 1 or advanced Type 2 diabetes regularly prick their fingers to measure blood-sugar levels, and some patients must inject themselves with insulin when needed. But sometimes, despite a person’s vigilance, glucose levels can still get out of whack. Zhen Gu and colleagues wanted to come up with a simpler, more effective, shot-free way to manage diabetes.

The researchers developed a skin patch covered in painless microneedles that are loaded with tiny insulin-carrying pouches. The pouches are engineered to break apart rapidly and release the insulin in response to rising glucose levels. Diabetic mice wearing the patch maintained consistent concentrations of insulin in their blood. When these mice received a shot of glucose, their blood sugar levels spiked initially, but then fell to normal levels within two hours.

The authors acknowledge funding from the American Diabetes Association, National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.



Toward a ‘smart’ patch that automatically delivers insulin when needed - American Chemical Society

*Journal Reference*:

Xiuli Hu, Jicheng Yu, Chenggen Qian, Yue Lu, Anna R. Kahkoska, Zhigang Xie, Xiabin Jing, John B. Buse, Zhen Gu. *H2O2-Responsive Vesicles Integrated with Transcutaneous Patches for Glucose-Mediated Insulin Delivery*. _ACS Nano_, 2017; DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.6b06892

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

Sunday, January 22, 2017, 12:21
*China uses 3D printer in pediatric heart surgery*
By Xinhua


Surgeons prepare to perform operation on Yuanyuan in a hospital in Taiyuan, capital of north China's Shanxi Province, June 2, 2012. (Yan Yan / Xinhua)​
CHANGSHA - Chinese surgeons in a central China hospital have succeeded in performing two complex pediatric heart surgeries using *3D printing technology*.

The first patient was a 13-year-old girl suffering from hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy, which causes her heart muscle to grow abnormally thick. The second was a 3-year-old boy with severe left ventricular outflow tract obstruction, said Yang Yifeng, a cardiologist with the Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University in Hunan province.

Yang said the left ventricle is responsible for pumping oxygenated blood to tissues all over the body. Symptoms of left ventricular outflow tract obstruction include shortness of breath, sensation of rapid, fluttering heartbeats during exercise, chest pain, and fainting. 

In either of the two cases, because of the complexity involved, doctors decided to use a 3D printer to produce a 1:1 replica of the patient's heart. The model allows doctors to carefully study the disease and plan their surgery, Yang said.

It is the first time 3D printing technology is used in Hunan for pediatric cardiovascular surgery. It proves quite successful and the two patients are recovering well, Yang added.

3D printing is being embraced by doctors in China's major hospitals for surgeries and training, as the technology greatly improves surgery precision and helps doctors to discuss the ailment with their colleagues and sometimes their patients.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Data Mining Solves the Mystery of Your Slow Wi-Fi Connection*
Chinese researchers have worked out the reasons for why Wi-Fi can take so long to connect.

by Emerging Technology from the arXiv
January 20, 2017
Wi-Fi is one of the 21st century’s great liberators. The ability to connect wirelessly to the Internet in a huge variety of locations is the enabling technology for all kinds of flexible working arrangements. Indeed, it has turned the coffee shop into one of society’s more productive work places.

But anyone who regularly uses Wi-Fi will be aware of an embarrassing problem: it sometimes takes an age to connect to Wi-Fi and sometimes connections are not possible at all. The awful truth about Wi-Fi is that all too often, it simply does not work.

And that raises an important question: why? What is it about these state-of-the-art wireless networks and the devices that connect to them that so often fails?

Today we get an answer thanks to the work of Changhua Pei at Tsinghua University in China and a few pals who have measured how long it took for 400 million different Wi-Fi sessions to connect. And they’ve used their data to work out what typically goes wrong and how it can be avoided.

--> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/...es-the-mystery-of-your-slow-wi-fi-connection/


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists: Carbon Nanotubes Would Outperform Silicon Transistors at the Same Scale*
By Dexter Johnson
Posted 19 Jan 2017 | 19:00 GMT






Illustration: Peking University/Science
​The end appears nigh for scaling down silicon-based complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) transistors, with some experts seeing the cutoff date as early as 2020.

While carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have long been among the nanomaterials investigated to serve as replacement for silicon in CMOS field-effect transistors (FETs) in a postsilicon future, they have always been bogged down by some frustrating technical problems. But, with some of the main technical showstoppers having been largely addressed—like sorting between metallic and semiconducting carbon nanotubes—the stage has been set for CNTs to start making their presence felt a bit more urgently in the chip industry.

Peking University scientists in China have now developed carbon-nanotube field-effect transistors (CNT FETs) having a critical dimension—the gate length of just 5 nanometers—that would outperform silicon-based CMOS FETs at the same scale. The researchers claim in the journal _Science _that this marks the first time that carbon-nanotube CMOS FETs under 10 nanometers have been reported.

More important than just being the first, the Peking group showed that their CNT-based FETs can operate faster and at a lower supply voltage than their silicon-based counterparts.

At a 0.4-volt supply voltage, the current that flows through the CNT transistor is larger than what you’d get from the best silicon CMOS transistors at a 0.7-V supply voltage, according to Peking University’s Lian-Mao Peng in an email interview with _IEEE Spectrum_. (The “best” according to Peng is Intel’s 14-nm-node CMOS.) Because the gate’s capacitance is smaller for a carbon-nanotube transistor, even if the silicon devices were scaled down to the size of the CNT device, the latter would still switch faster, he says. The intrinsic delay caused by the gate capacitance for 10-nm CNT CMOS is about 70 femtoseconds, says Peng. That’s just one-third of the value (220 fs) of 14-nm silicon CMOS.

As with all the field-effect transistors, current flows through a channel between the source and drain under the control of voltage at the gate. In the Peking design, the channel through which the carriers move is made out of a single carbon nanotube and the source and drain are both graphene. This CNT channel is either _p_-type—conducting positive charge carriers, or holes—or _n_-type, which uses electrons. It is this combination of the _p_-type and _n_-type devices that constitutes the “complementary” of CMOS and keeps power consumption low when switching logic states.

Unlike most carbon-based and two-dimensional devices, the CNT FETs that the Chinese researchers have developed are not “back gated.” Back-gated devices—in which the gate electrode lies beneath a layer of insulation and the nanotube lies atop the insulation—are generally more difficult to integrate into complicated circuits.

Instead, the device Peng and colleagues constructed uses a gate that drapes over the top of the carbon-nanotube channel. “Top-gated FETs can provide higher gate efficiency than the back-gated devices since the CNT is almost surrounded by the top gate,” says Peng. “Also, top-gated FETs provide better stability than back-gated devices since the CNT channel is protected from influences of the outside world by the top gate.”

While the researchers concede that the use of individual single-walled carbon nanotubes to construct their devices is not suitable for producing large-scale integrated circuits, they are confident they can overcome this without changing much.

“Now that we have confirmed the potential of CNT CMOS transistors in the work, we can construct CMOS FETs with similar performance on aligned CNT arrays with high density and high semiconducting purity using the same fabrication process.”

With the ability to scale down silicon CMOS petering out in the coming years, there is some question as to whether there is enough time to replace silicon, or whether it is even worth the effort.

“We believe CNT electronics have a good chance to replace [silicon] CMOS technology at 5-nm nodes by 2022,” says Peng. As optimistic as Peng is, he remains cautious about the engineering challenges that they still face.

“While we can use the currently available CNTs…to fabricate large-scale CNT ICs, it still requires one to two years to get the ideal CNT form for ICs,” he says. Nonetheless, Peng believes that they will be able to make wafers full of ICs in the next few years using their process.


Scientists: Carbon Nanotubes Would Outperform Silicon Transistors at the Same Scale - IEEE Spectrum

*Paper: *
Chenguang Qiu, Zhiyong Zhang, Mengmeng Xiao, Yingjun Yang, Donglai Zhong, Lian-Mao Peng. "Scaling carbon nanotube complementary transistors to 5-nm gate lengths", _Science _(2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aaj1628

*Moving transistors downscale*
One option for extending the performance of complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) devices based on silicon technology is to use semiconducting carbon nanotubes as the gates. Qiu et al. fabricated top-gated carbon nanotube field-effect transistors with a gate length of 5 nm. Thin graphene contacts helped maintain electrostatic control. A scaling trend study revealed that, compared with silicon CMOS devices, the nanotube-based devices operated much faster and at much lower supply voltage, and they approached the limit of one electron per switching operation.
_Science_, this issue p. 271

*Abstract*
High-performance top-gated carbon nanotube field-effect transistors (CNT FETs) with a gate length of 5 nanometers can be fabricated that perform better than silicon complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) FETs at the same scale. A scaling trend study revealed that the scaled CNT-based devices, which use graphene contacts, can operate much faster and at much lower supply voltage (0.4 versus 0.7 volts) and with much smaller subthreshold slope (typically 73 millivolts per decade). The 5-nanometer CNT FETs approached the quantum limit of FETs by using only one electron per switching operation. In addition, the contact length of the CNT CMOS devices was also scaled down to 25 nanometers, and a CMOS inverter with a total pitch size of 240 nanometers was also demonstrated.​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

* Moth gut bacteria create antibiotic to defend their host: study*
Source: Xinhua 2017-01-20 05:14:53

WASHINGTON, Jan. 19 (Xinhua) -- Chinese and German researchers have found that some species of moths may have evolved an "ironic" strategy to resist microbial infections and flourish in microbe-rich environments.

In a study published Thursday in the U.S. journal Cell Chemical Biology, they reported for the first time that a bacterial species commonly found in the gut of the cotton leafworm and other insects secretes a powerful antimicrobial agent that kills off competing bacteria while defending its host against pathogens.

"It has long been proposed native gut bacteria are an important component of host defense, but until now, the responsible species and molecular mechanism have not been clearly demonstrated," first author Yongqi Shao of China's Zhejiang University, said in a statement.

"We show that the evolutionary success of insects is partially based on a symbiotic association with gut microbes, which co-evolved with their hosts over millions of years."

Insects are the largest group of animals on Earth, comprising over a million known species, nearly half of which are herbivores.

It's not uncommon that insect herbivores ingest a wide variety of potentially harmful microorganisms during a feast, yet they are remarkably resistant to infections.

"Increasing evidence in both vertebrates and invertebrates suggests that gut bacteria defend hosts against invading microbes," said Shao.

"But the species that exert this protective effect have rarely been identified, leaving the molecular mechanism of action unclear."

In the new study, Shao and senior study author Wilhelm Boland of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology looked at the cotton leafworm, Spodoptera littoralis, which is one of the most widespread insect herbivores in the temperate regions, causing substantial economic losses in crop production.

They found that the composition of gut microbes colonizing this pest changes dramatically during larval development.

Whereas young larvae were inhabited by a variety of virulent Enterococcus species, older larvae were dominated by E. mundtii, which has rarely been documented as a pathogen, Shao said.

Further research showed that E. mundtii inhibited the growth of other related bacterial species by secreting an antimicrobial peptide called mundticin KS.

While this toxin was undetectable in young larvae, it dramatically increased in abundance in older larvae due to expansion of the E. mundtii population, shaping the microbiome with surprising efficiency.

In other words, the antimicrobial provides a competitive advantage for E. mundtii, contributing to its dominance in the gut microbiome, while protecting the cotton leafworm against pathogens.

"We expect that protective associations with antibiotic-producing bacteria is a common strategy of insects against microbial invaders," Boland said.

The researchers said they will next examine whether similar mechanisms exist in other insect species, and look for additional toxic compounds that shape the microbiome during host development.

They believed that the findings could have widespread implications for agriculture and health.

For example, antimicrobial peptides could be used as food preservatives, and understanding the role of indigenous gut residents could contribute to the development of novel biocontrol strategies against herbivorous insect pests.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*China to invest ¥4.8b in world’s most powerful synchrotron light source*
Sprawling facility to explore properties of all sorts of matter under brilliant beams of light for applications ranging from medicine to new materials and defence

PUBLISHED : Monday, 23 January, 2017, 3:45pm
UPDATED : Monday, 23 January, 2017, 3:45pm




Josh Ye

China will invest 4.8 billion yuan (HK$5.4 billion) to build the world’s brightest synchrotron light source, state broadcaster CCTV reports.

A synchrotron is a source of brilliant light that scientists use to explore the structural and chemical properties of materials at the molecular level, according to the website of the Canadian Light Source synchrotron.

A synchrotron produces light by using radio frequency waves and powerful electromagnets to accelerate electrons to nearly the speed of light. Energy is added to the electrons as they accelerate so that, when the magnets alter their course, they naturally emit a very brilliant, highly focused light.

Different spectra of light such as infrared, ultraviolet, and X-rays, are directed down beamlines where researchers choose the desired wavelength to study their samples.

The researchers observe the interaction between the light and matter in their sample. The technology can probe matter and analyse a host of physical, chemical, geological, and biological processes.




Information obtained by scientists can help design new drugs, examine the structure of surfaces to develop more effective motor oils, build smaller, more powerful computer chips, develop new materials for safer medical implants to name just a few applications, Canadian Light Source says.

Construction of China’s newest synchrotron, its fourth, is expected to start in Beijing by November next year and take six years to complete, according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

China three operating synchrotron are located in Beijing, Shanghai and Hefei in Anhui province. But the academy said the new synchrotron is of a new generation would even outshine Sweden’s MAX IV, currently the world’s most advanced synchrotron light source, by 10 times.

Even with its three operating synchrotrons, China has made significant progress the field. Shanghai’s Synchrotron Radiation Facility, for example, has played a key role in revealing the inner mechanism of various cancers.

Dong Yuhui, a researcher at the academy, said the new Beijing synchrotron would contribute greatly to developing aerospace materials, which is crucial to national security, according to the CCTV report.


China to invest ¥4.8b in world’s most powerful synchrotron light source | South China Morning Post

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

24 January 2017
*CUHK Biophysicists Discover Hidden Order in Bacterial Collective Motion*
_Provides new direction of study on biomedicine and active matters_

An international team led by scientists at Physics Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) discovered a surprising form of biological collective motion: PhD students *Mr.* *Song Liu* and *Mr.* *Chong Chen* from the laboratory of *Prof.* *Yilin Wu*, a biophysicist and faculty member of CUHK Physics, revealed that millions of motile cells in dense bacterial suspensions can self-organize into highly robust collective oscillatory motion, while individuals move in an erratic manner. This ‘weak synchronization’ phenomenon presents a novel mechanism of oscillatory behavior in multicellular systems and constitutes a new type of ordered active matter. Experimental evidence, together with a mathematical model developed by theorists *Prof.* *Hugues Chaté* from CEA-Saclay in France and *Prof. Xia-qing Shi* from Soochow University in mainland China, demonstrate that the self-organized collective oscillatory motion may result from spontaneous symmetry breaking of bacterial motion mediated by purely local interactions between individual cells. The team’s work has just been published in the international scientific journal _Nature_.

These findings expand the knowledge of self-organized phenomena in biological systems. Collective oscillatory behavior is ubiquitous in nature and it plays a vital role in many biological processes, such as embryogenesis, organ development, and pace-making in neuron networks. Collective oscillations in multicellular systems studied to date often arise from long-range coupling between individual cells that display inherent oscillations. In stark contrast, the collective oscillation in dense bacterial suspension discovered by the team does not require long range coupling, or even inherent oscillation of individual cells. Instead, it emerges from averaging large numbers of erratic but weakly-coupled trajectories of single bacteria; as a result it is elusive and has been previously unnoticed. Many bacteria live in surface-associated communities known as biofilms that are important to ecology and human health. The uncovered collective oscillation may have profound effect on the formation and structure of bacterial biofilms. The researchers expect to see the unique mechanism of collective oscillation in other biological processes that involve a large population of cells and hope to foster biomedical research.

Apart from facilitating studies in microbiology and biomedicine, the reported phenomenon will provide new direction in studying active matter systems. As a fast-growing and interdisciplinary field, active matter science studies systems composed of units where energy is spent to produce motion. This includes all living organisms from cells to animals, the subcellular constituents driven by molecular motors, and synthetic materials resulting from the self-organization of active elements; self-organization principles learned from these systems may find applications in tissue engineering and in fabricating new bio-inspired devices or materials. The collective oscillations revealed here constitute the first known instance of weak synchronization of random trajectories. This provides new insights for understanding the physics of self-organization in non-equilibrium systems. The way this weak synchronization arises from local interactions may inspire new strategies for designing swarming robots that are able to perform collective tasks without central control.

Chong Chen, Song Liu, Xiaqing Shi, Hugues Chaté, Yilin Wu. Weak synchronization and large-scale collective oscillation in dense bacterial suspensions. _Nature_ (2017). doi:10.1038/nature20817.




CUHK Biophysicists Discover Hidden Order in Bacterial Collective Motion Provides new direction of study on biomedicine and active matters | CUHK Communications and Public Relations Office

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Bag-like sea creature was humans’ oldest known ancestor*
Published on 30/01/2017



Artist’s reconstruction of Saccorhytus coronarius, based on the original fossil finds. The actual creature was probably no more than a millimetre in size

Researchers have identified traces of what they believe is the earliest known prehistoric ancestor of humans – a microscopic, bag-like sea creature, which lived about 540 million years ago.

Named Saccorhytus, after the sack-like features created by its elliptical body and large mouth, the species is new to science and was identified from microfossils found in China. It is thought to be the most primitive example of a so-called “deuterostome” – a broad biological category that encompasses a number of sub-groups, including the vertebrates.

If the conclusions of the study, published in the journal Nature, are correct, then Saccorhytus was the common ancestor of a huge range of species, and the earliest step yet discovered on the evolutionary path that eventually led to humans, hundreds of millions of years later.

Modern humans are, however, unlikely to perceive much by way of a family resemblance. Saccorhytus was about a millimetre in size, and probably lived between grains of sand on the seabed. Its features were spectacularly preserved in the fossil record – and intriguingly, the researchers were unable to find any evidence that the animal had an anus.

The study was carried out by an international team of academics, including researchers from the University of Cambridge in the UK and Northwest University in Xi’an China, with support from other colleagues at institutions in China and Germany.

Simon Conway Morris, Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology and a Fellow of St John’s College, University of Cambridge, said: “We think that as an early deuterostome this may represent the primitive beginnings of a very diverse range of species, including ourselves. To the naked eye, the fossils we studied look like tiny black grains, but under the microscope the level of detail is jaw-dropping. All deuterostomes had a common ancestor, and we think that is what we are looking at here.”

Degan Shu, from Northwest University, added: “Our team has notched up some important discoveries in the past, including the earliest fish and a remarkable variety of other early deuterostomes. Saccorhytus now gives us remarkable insights into the very first stages of the evolution of a group that led to the fish, and ultimately, to us.”




Most other early deuterostome groups are from about 510 to 520 million years ago, when they had already begun to diversify into not just the vertebrates, but the sea squirts, echinoderms (animals such as starfish and sea urchins) and hemichordates (a group including things like acorn worms). This level of diversity has made it extremely difficult to work out what an earlier, common ancestor might have looked like.

The Saccorhytus microfossils were found in Shaanxi Province, in central China, and pre-date all other known deuterostomes. By isolating the fossils from the surrounding rock, and then studying them both under an electron microscope and using a CT scan, the team were able to build up a picture of how Saccorhytus might have looked and lived. This revealed features and characteristics consistent with current assumptions about primitive deuterostomes.

Dr Jian Han, of Northwest University, said: “We had to process enormous volumes of limestone – about three tonnes – to get to the fossils, but a steady stream of new finds allowed us to tackle some key questions: was this a very early echinoderm, or something even more primitive? The latter now seems to be the correct answer.”

In the early Cambrian period, the region would have been a shallow sea. Saccorhytus was so small that it probably lived in between individual grains of sediment on the sea bed.

The study suggests that its body was bilaterally symmetrical – a characteristic inherited by many of its descendants, including humans – and was covered with a thin, relatively flexible skin. This in turn suggests that it had some sort of musculature, leading the researchers to conclude that it could have made contractile movements, and got around by wriggling.

Perhaps its most striking feature, however, was its rather primitive means of eating food and then dispensing with the resulting waste. Saccorhytus had a large mouth, relative to the rest of its body, and probably ate by engulfing food particles, or even other creatures.

A crucial observation are small conical structures on its body. These may have allowed the water that it swallowed to escape and so were perhaps the evolutionary precursor of the gills we now see in fish. But the researchers were unable to find any evidence that the creature had an anus. “If that was the case, then any waste material would simply have been taken out back through the mouth, which from our perspective sounds rather unappealing,” Conway Morris said.

The findings also provide evidence in support of a theory explaining the long-standing mismatch between fossil evidence of prehistoric life, and the record provided by biomolecular data, known as the “molecular clock”.

Technically, it is possible to estimate roughly when species diverged by looking at differences in their genetic information. In principle, the longer two groups have evolved separately, the greater the biomolecular difference between them should be, and there are reasons to think this process is more or less clock-like.

Unfortunately, before a point corresponding roughly to the time at which Saccorhytus was wriggling in the mud, there are scarcely any fossils available to match the molecular clock’s predictions. Some researchers have theorised that this is because before a certain point, many of the creatures they are searching for were simply too small to leave much of a fossil record. The microscopic scale of Saccorhytus, combined with the fact that it is probably the most primitive deuterostome yet discovered, appears to back this up.

The findings are published in _Nature_. Reference: Jian Han, Simon Conway Morris, Qiang Ou, Degan Shu and Hai Huang. Meiofaunal deuterostomes from the basal Cambrian of Shaanxi (China). DOI: 10.1038/nature21072.

_Inset image: Photographs of the fossils show the spectacularly detailed levels of preservation which allowed researchers to identify and study the creature. Credit: Jian Han.

_
Bag-like sea creature was humans’ oldest known ancestor | St John's College, Cambridge


----------



## JSCh

* Academics build ultimate solar-powered water purifier *



From the top left corner, moving clockwise, the four images depict: University at Buffalo students performing an experiment, clean drinking water, water evaporating, and black carbon wrapped around plastic in water with evaporated vapor on top evaporated water. Credit: University at Buffalo.

 _The device could aid people lacking drinking water and those affected by natural disasters _
* http://www.buffalo.edu/news/about-us/staff/nealon.html*
*By Cory Nealon *
Release Date: January 30, 2017



A floating solar still prototype that researchers used for some of experiments. Credit: University at Buffalo.

BUFFALO, N.Y. — You’ve seen Bear Grylls turn foul water into drinking water with little more than sunlight and plastic.

Now, academics have added a third element — carbon-dipped paper — that may turn this survival tactic into a highly efficient and inexpensive way to turn saltwater and contaminated water into potable water for personal use.

The idea, which could help address global drinking water shortages, especially in developing areas and regions affected by natural disasters, is described in a study published online today (Jan. 30, 2017) in the journal Global Challenges.

“Using extremely low-cost materials, we have been able to create a system that makes near maximum use of the solar energy during evaporation. At the same time, we are minimizing the amount of heat loss during this process,” says lead researcher Qiaoqiang Gan, PhD, associate professor of electrical engineering in the University at Buffalo School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Additional members of the research team are from UB’s Department of Chemistry, Fudan University in China, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the lab of Gan, who is a member of UB’s New York State Center of Excellence in Materials Informatics and UB’s RENEW Institute, an interdisciplinary institute dedicated to solving complex environmental problems.

*Solar vapor generator*

To conduct the research, the team built a small-scale solar still. The device, which they call a “solar vapor generator,” cleans or desalinates water by using the heat converted from sunlight. Here’s how it works: The sun evaporates the water. During this process, salt, bacteria or other unwanted elements are left behind as the liquid moves into a gaseous state. The water vapor then cools and returns to a liquid state, where it is collected in a separate container without the salt or contaminants.

“People lacking adequate drinking water have employed solar stills for years, however, these devices are inefficient,” says Haomin Song, PhD candidate at UB and one of the study’s leading co-authors. “For example, many devices lose valuable heat energy due to heating the bulk liquid during the evaporation process. Meanwhile, systems that require optical concentrators, such as mirrors and lenses, to concentrate the sunlight are costly.”

The UB-led research team addressed these issues by creating a solar still about the size of mini-refrigerator. It’s made of expanded polystyrene foam (a common plastic that acts as a thermal insulator and, if needed, a flotation device) and porous paper coated in carbon black. Like a napkin, the paper absorbs water, while the carbon black absorbs sunlight and transforms the solar energy into heat used during evaporation.

The solar still coverts water to vapor very efficiently. For example, only 12 percent of the available energy was lost during the evaporation process, a rate the research team believes is unprecedented. The accomplishment is made possible, in part, because the device converts only surface water, which evaporated at 44 degrees Celsius.

*Efficient and inexpensive*

Based upon test results, researchers believe the still is capable of producing 3 to 10 liters of water per day, which is an improvement over most commercial solar stills of similar size that produce 1 to 5 liters per day.

Materials for the new solar still cost roughly $1.60 per square meter — a number that could decline if the materials were purchased in bulk. (By contrast, systems that use optical concentrators can retail for more than $200 per square meter.) If commercialized, the device’s retail price could ultimately reduce a huge projected funding gap — $26 trillion worldwide between 2010 and 2030, according to the World Economic Forum — needed for water infrastructure upgrades.

“The solar still we are developing would be ideal for small communities, allowing people to generate their own drinking water much like they generate their own power via solar panels on their house roof,” says Zhejun Liu, a visiting scholar at UB, PhD candidate at Fudan University and one the study’s co-authors.

The research was funded, in part, by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the National Science Foundation of China and the Chinese Scholarship Council.


Academics build ultimate solar-powered water purifier - University at Buffalo


Zhejun Liu, Haomin Song, Dengxin Ji, Chenyu Li, Alec Cheney, Youhai Liu, Nan Zhang, Xie Zeng, Borui Chen, Jun Gao, Yuesheng Li, Xiang Liu, Diana Aga, Suhua Jiang, Zongfu Yu, Qiaoqiang Gan. "Extremely Cost-Effective and Efficient Solar Vapor Generation under Nonconcentrated Illumination Using Thermally Isolated Black Paper". _Global Challenges_ (2017). DOI: 10.1002/gch2.201600003

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* Efficient air filters, hot off the press*
30 January 2017

Air filters that greatly reduce air pollution could be mass-produced using materials called metal–organic frameworks (MOFs).

MOFs are porous crystalline materials containing organic ‘struts’ and metal ions, and can capture large amounts of fine particulate matter electrostatically. Bo Wang and his colleagues at the Beijing Institute of Technology heated three kinds of MOF crystals and applied them individually to substrates including fabric, foam and plastic using two hot rollers. In lab tests, the resulting filters reduced the levels of hazardous 2.5- and 10-micrometre-wide particles in air by up to 99.5% at room temperature, with an efficiency drop of only a few per cent at 200 °C.

Potential applications for the filters include household vacuum-cleaner dust bags and vehicle exhaust pipes.


http://www.nature.com/articles/n-12026960?WT.mc_id=TWT_NA_1702_RESEARCHIGHLIGHTS_PORTFOLIO

Yifa Chen, Shenghan Zhang, Sijia Cao, Siqing Li, Fan Chen, Shuai Yuan, Cheng Xu, Junwen Zhou, Xiao Feng, Xiaojie Ma, Bo Wang. Roll-to-Roll Production of Metal-Organic Framework Coatings for Particulate Matter Removal. _Adv. Mater._ (2017). DOI: 10.1002/adma.201606221

*Abstract*




A powerful roll-to-roll hot-pressing strategy for mass production of metal-organic framework (MOF)-based filters (MOFilters) using various MOF systems with ranges of substrates is presented. Thus-obtained MOFilters show superior particulate matter removal efficiency under desired working temperatures. Such versatile MOFilters can be scaled up and purposely designed which endow MOFilters with great potentials in both residential and industrial pollution control.​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

FEB 02, 2017
* Artificial intelligence can diagnose congenital cataract *
Nature Biomedical Engineering

Researchers from China have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) platform that can diagnose congenital cataracts as accurately as ophthalmologists.

In a study published in _Nature Biomedical Engineering_ last month, the researchers say that their platform could be applied to other rare diseases in which missed or mistaken diagnoses are common, especially in developing countries with large populations such as China.

Using a database collected under the Childhood Cataract Program of the Chinese Ministry of Health, researchers trained the AI platform, CC-Cruiser, with a dataset of 410 images of congenital cataracts and 476 control healthy eyes, each independently labelled by 2 experienced ophthalmologists.

CC-Cruiser was tested in several complex, real-world settings, including a multihospital clinical trial, a website-based test and a comparative performance test with ophthalmologists.

The comparative test involved 50 cases of various challenging clinical situations, evaluated independently by CC-Cruiser and ophthalmologists with 3 levels of expertise: expert, competent and novice.

The CC-Cruiser successfully diagnosed all congenital cataract cases, while ophthalmologists at all expertise levels missed several cases and misdiagnosed several false positives. The device also successfully suggested treatment, correctly identifying all the patients in need of surgery, with just 5 false positives.

"Humans tend to be [either] somewhat conservative or radical due to their own experience and personality, and the machine's advantage is its objectivity," said coauthor, Professor Lin Haotian of Sun Yat-Sen University. "We [believe] that deep learning results collaborating with human analysis will achieve a better health care quality and efficiency."

Encouraged by the results, Lin and his team have built a collaborative cloud platform that can be accessed by doctors at hospitals around the country, allowing them to upload patient images into the system. CC-Cruiser will benefit from the continued data collection, further improving the AI platform with a larger dataset.

"The limited resources of patients and the isolation of the data in individual hospitals represent a bottleneck in data usage," Lin said. "Building a collaborative cloud platform for data integration and patient screening is an essential step."


Artificial intelligence can diagnose congenital cataract - American Academy of Ophthalmology

Erping Long et al. An artificial intelligence platform for the multihospital collaborative management of congenital cataracts, _Nature Biomedical Engineering_ (2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41551-016-0024



​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## 艹艹艹



Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

* British, Chinese scientists make breakthrough in 21st century killers research*
Source: Xinhua 2017-02-09 03:07:06

LONDON, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- Scientists in Manchester revealed Wednesday they and their Chinese colleagues had found a new avenue to explore in the search for the causes of neurodegenerative diseases that are becoming big killers in the 21st century.

Disabling a part of brain cells that act as a tap to regulate the flow of proteins has been shown to cause neurodegeneration, a new study has found, the University of Manchester reported.

Lead researcher Professor Martin Lowe told Xinhua: "Our findings provide new insight into the mechanisms that cause death of nerve cells within the brain, and are relevant for our understanding of neurodegenerative diseases such as ataxia, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's disease."

"This improved understanding may be exploited in the future to develop novel therapies for these devastating conditions," Lowe said.

He said that turning off the protein tap in the brain provided a new clue to neurodegenerative diseases.

The study was carried out by the University of Manchester and the Shilai Bao lab at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

The research, which was carried out in mice, focused on the Golgi apparatus, a compartment inside all cells in the body that control the processing and transport of proteins. It is fundamental for the growth of the cell membrane and also for the release of many types of proteins such as hormones, neurotransmitters, and the proteins that make up human skeletons.

Working with Chinese colleagues, the Manchester researchers examined the role of the Golgi apparatus in brain cells and found that mice in which the apparatus was disabled suffered from developmental delay, severe ataxia, and postnatal death.

Ataxia is a term for a group of disorders that affect co-ordination, balance and speech. Any part of the body can be affected, but people with ataxia often have difficulties with balance and walking, speaking, swallowing, tasks such as writing and eating, and vision. It can be inherited, brought on through incidents such as a stroke, or through old age.

"Although the function of the Golgi apparatus, named after its Italian discoverer, is well understood, it has not been previously been shown to have a role in neurodegeneration. With these results, the scientists think they may have found a new avenue to explore in the search for the causes of some neurodegenerative diseases," Lowe said.

"Our results, combined with previous work, suggest that during the cellular changes that occur, loss of the Golgi function could be an important intermediary step that contributes to cell death," Lowe added. "Our findings suggest that in certain neurodegenerative diseases the loss of function of the Golgi apparatus may contribute to the pathology that is occurring."

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Catch wave power in floating nets*

Zhong Lin Wang
08 February 2017
*Zhong Lin Wang proposes a radically different way to harvest renewable energy from the ocean using nanogenerator networks.*

Nature provides three sources of energy for free: sunlight, air and gravity. Solar and wind power are increasingly exploited, gravity less so. Hydraulic power plants harvest energy from flowing rivers. Tidal energy can be gathered along some inlets and coasts. But few places are suitable for dams or barrages, which can also damage the environment.

By contrast, oceans cover about 70% of Earth’s surface. Wave energy is plentiful day and night, whatever the weather. Capturing it requires little land and raises few safety or security concerns. Yet hardly any of this ‘blue energy’ is being generated. Today’s wave farms produce no more than 1–10 megawatts at any one time, enough to power a town. No commercial wave farms currently exist.

The reason is mainly technological. Today’s wave-energy collectors are based on big, heavy electromagnetic generators that are made up of propellers, magnets and metal coils1. Constructing towers on the ocean floor to support electromagnets or fixing them to the sea bed is expensive and technically difficult. Surface floats can be tethered to pumps on the sea floor to drive a generator on the shore, but cannot be used in deep water or the open ocean. More fundamentally, waves involve slow flows and oscillations in random directions — conditions under which electromagnetic generators function poorly.

We need radically different ways to capture wave power. I believe that we should draw inspiration from emerging technologies that harness energy from human movements, which, like waves, are relatively slow.

My research group is developing such devices. These range from medical sensors driven by heartbeats to mats that generate electricity for lighting, health care and security2, 3. They draw on the static charges that build up when some materials are rubbed together — such as when a plastic comb is dragged across wool. We have found that collecting electricity from friction is more efficient and cheaper than from alternatives such as piezoelectric materials, which create a current when they are pressed.

I believe that scaling up and multiplying similar, motion-based devices could transform the collection of wave energy within a decade. My blue-energy dream is at an early stage; I offer this vision knowing that many technical hurdles have to be overcome. These include: improving the efficiency and durability of generator materials and designs; connecting them into large networks that work in the open ocean; and collecting the electricity and transporting it to land.

*Energy nets*
When materials that conduct electricity poorly — paper, glass and plastics — are rubbed together, they create static electrical charges on their surfaces. This ‘triboelectricity’ can be drawn off using electrodes. Moving two strips of dielectric material (that can hold opposing charges on their surfaces) together or apart causes a pulse of current to flow.

We have used this principle since 2011 to make ‘triboelectric nanogenerators’, millimetres to metres in size, for a range of uses from lighting to mobile-phone charging. They are as efficient as electromagnetic generators, converting 50% of the mechanical energy from motions into electricity2. Piezoelectric methods convert only around 10%.

To capture wave energy, the nanogenerators need to be incorporated into watertight floats. We have made spherical ones, about the size of an orange4. A ball made of one type of dielectric material rolls inside a sphere of another type to build up charges as it moves (see ‘Blue-energy dream’). It is partially filled with air to ensure it floats.






Claire Welsh/_Nature_​
The nanogenerators are straightforward to manufacture. They use cheap, conventional materials, such as polytetrafluoroethylene, rubber, polydimethylsiloxane, silicon, fluorinated ethylene propylene, Kapton (a polyimide film) and metal foils (aluminium, copper or steel). Such materials should last for ten years in a sealed unit in the ocean, after which they’d need to be retrieved and recycled to avoid adding to marine pollution.

Power is generated according to how fast the nanogenerator moves with the waves4. The direction does not matter. If agitated two or three times per second, each unit produces a little power — around 1–10 milliwatts. Many devices can be linked with conducting cables to generate more. So far, we have demonstrated that the concept works by connecting 400 nanogenerators over 4 square metres. And we are working to develop the concept further.

Even on a small scale, I believe that networks of triboelectric nanogenerators could contribute useful quantities of power to local generating plants or the electricity grid. In theory, 1,000 devices spaced at 10-centimetre intervals in a cubic metre would power a lightbulb. A square kilometre could generate enough electricity for a town5. The world’s energy consumption today could be met by covering an ocean area the size of the US state of Georgia with a 3D nanogenerator network of devices spaced every 10 centimetres and stretching 10 metres deep beneath the surface.

The electricity produced would need to be conveyed to land through cables or used locally on a floating platform. The power might be used to split water molecules to produce hydrogen fuel, or to purify saline water or remove pollutants. It could power lights or navigation systems. Solar panels and wind turbines could be installed alongside the nanogenerator network in a combined renewable power plant (see ‘Blue-energy dream’).

*Technical challenges*
There are obstacles to implementing this technology on a wide scale. I believe that most can be overcome.

The main limitation is likely to be the durability of the nanogenerators. The organic materials used in their manufacture degrade in salty water and sunlight. The devices stop working if water enters the spheres, so new waterproofing materials, such as highly adhesive substances used for underwater cables, might be needed to fill cracks and joints. The cabling also needs to be robust enough to withstand storms.

The locations and sizes of blue-energy nets would need to be carefully considered to minimize disruption to the public, marine life and shipping. Putting them in the deep ocean away from shipping lanes and coasts would stop them interfering with people’s livelihoods and leisure. But it would be difficult to transport the power to land from such remote sites. The nets might need to be fixed to islands or underwater mountains to avoid being washed or blown away, and they must not trap fish or other marine life.

Just how feasible large networks of nanogenerators will prove in practice remains to be seen. Will they compete with existing power plants and solar and wind technologies, which have been developed over decades? Because the output of solar and wind farms fluctuates between day and night or in different weather, I argue that we will need many ways to generate energy in the future. Developing countries will also have to meet their growing energy needs. Blue energy is affordable and constant, and could be a valuable part of the mix.

*Realizing the dream*
Developing nanogenerators will involve research by industrial and academic labs across many disciplines. Materials scientists will be required to design robust materials, including ones that generate charge efficiently. Mechanical engineers will have to model and optimize the behaviour of the networks in the ocean, while electrical engineers must discover the best ways to manage and transport power. Environmental scientists and marine biologists will need to assess the environmental impact of the networks. Establishing a research institute dedicated to blue energy would speed up the development of this clean, sustainable technology.

The first phase of technological development will need government support of between US$50 million and $100 million. Private investors and major energy companies could help to fund the demonstration and testing stages. Small pilot networks will have to be developed, perhaps as distributed power sources for islands, small generating plants or villages. Commercial opportunities abound, from the supply of materials and technologies for power management, to endpoints such as pollutant removal or water splitting. With sufficient investment and technological support, I hope blue-energy networks6 could one day become cheaper than solar panels or wind turbines.


Nature 542, 159–160 (09 February 2017) doi:10.1038/542159a

Catch wave power in floating nets : Nature News & Comment

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Q&A with Bingfang Wu, Head of Digital Agriculture Division, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences *
31 January 2017




_In the face of climate change, many developing countries need better technology to help them predict crop yields to ensure secure sources of food. The Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth offers a solution with "wall-to-wall" measurements of agronomic and climatic conditions - all made available through its CropWatch web service. The scientist who runs it, Bingfang Wu, visited the UN's Commission on Science and Technology for Development, convened by UNCTAD in Geneva, Switzerland on 23-25 January, to discuss what the service has to offer._

*Q: Could you give us a brief introduction to the technology of remote sensing?*

*A:* Actually remote sensing is a methodology that provides unique observation of the Earth's surface. Before, we used conventional measurements to obtain data from a few points but remote sensing can provide "wall-to-wall" measurements in the field, so it gives you more information to understand the dynamic changes on the ground at the Earth's surface.

*Q: Could you tell us about your global crop monitoring system CropWatch?*

*A:* We developed CropWatch for global users to monitor the crop situation all over the world. You see, food security is the essential issue for the human being. Food prices have been volatile over the past 10 years. One of the reasons is that people lack information on food productivity and people are nervous about the availability of food. There is sufficient food supply but people lack information. This gives rise to an opportunity to speculate on the market, which hurts human welfare. So we provide transparent, reliable information for the world, but particularly for China.

We use satellite and in-situ data to evaluate the global agro-climate situation to see how it affects global production and monitor cropping intensity and stress in different regions, monitoring disease and water supply and so on. We also monitor crop condition and production for 31 countries representing 80% of global grain production. This information can help developing countries to know what the situation is. We provide this information but also the methodology so that developing countries can use CropWatch the same as we do.

*Q: How can remote sensing contribute to early warning systems?*

*A:* Crop production depends on two things: how many hectares you have planted and the yields of the crops. For both we can provide information at early stages. It can provide information that the land is used properly for the crops at early stages of the cropping season.

*Q: How can the United Nations, either through the Committee on Science and Technology for Development or UNCTAD, contribute to international efforts on remote sensing and early warning systems?*

*A:* We provide a service to United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) regional drought mechanisms by training people from developing countries and providing services if requested. UNESCAP has sent them to my office, and we are working together to develop methodologies and customize systems for the local conditions of their countries. We train them to operate, calibrate and validate the systems so that they are capable of putting into place their own early warning systems. This could also be made available through the CSTD. We are happy to work with the Committee on CropWatch and the early warning systems. We would be happy to work with countries in Africa or the Middle East through the CSTD.



unctad.org | Q&A with Bingfang Wu, Head of Digital Agriculture Division, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## ahojunk

*Survey finds 'Jurassic Park' in east China*
2017-02-13 08:38 | Xinhua | _Editor: Gu Liping_

East China's Zhejiang Province was a "Jurassic Park" with a wide variety of dinosaurs during the Cretaceous period, according to findings of a six-year survey.

A total 82 dinosaur fossil sites, with at least six dinosaur species and 25 types of fossil dinosaur eggs, were confirmed during the survey by a joint team of experts from the Zhejiang Institute of Hydrogeology and Engineering Geology and Zhejiang Museum of Natural History, between 2006 and 2013.

The research recently won a second-class award from the Ministry of Land and Resources.

Scientists identified eight new species among the fossils.

The survey covered an area of 11,000 square kilometers in Zhejiang,

Scientists have used various research techniques ranging from geology, paleobiology to chronostratigraphy, combined with site inspections and excavations in their study, making it the most comprehensive research on dinosaur fossils in the province to date.

"It has been proved that a large quantity of dinosaurs lived in Zhejiang during the Cretaceous period, about 65 million to 145 million years ago," said Jin Xingsheng, deputy curator of Zhejiang Museum of Natural History. "Compare with other southeastern provinces, Zhejiang has the largest amount of dinosaur fossils."

Their discoveries also give evidence to the general thought that a comet or asteroid impact caused the mass extinction of dinosaurs.

Scientists found that sedimentary rocks, where most dinosaur fossils were unearthed, were sanwiched between two layers of volcanic rocks, indicating vegetation was lush and suitable for dinosaurs in the early and middle Cretaceous period.

The evidence showed a catastrophe in the late Cretaceous period might have ended the age of prehistoric creatures. Scientists believed the hit of an asteroid was the most likely reason as it can result in a series of sudden climate changes such as volcanic eruptions, crustal faults and generate radioactive substances that cause the dinosaurs to die out.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*China discovers pregnant sea monster that gave birth to live babies rather than laying eggs*

FEBRUARY 15, 20178:10AM





This unusually long-necked marine reptile gave birth to live young 245 million years ago — the only known member of the dinosaur, bird and croc family to not lay eggs, researchers said. Picture: AFP

News Corp Australia Network

AN extraordinary fossil unearthed in southwestern China shows a pregnant long-necked marine reptile that lived millions of years before the dinosaurs with a developing embryo, indicating this creature gave birth to live babies rather than laying eggs.

Scientists say the fossil of the unusual fish-eating reptile called Dinocephalosaurus, which lived about 245 million years ago during the Triassic Period, changes the understanding of the evolution of vertebrate reproductive systems.

Mammals and some reptiles including certain snakes and lizards are viviparous, meaning they give birth to live young.

Dinocephalosaurus is the first member of a broad vertebrate group called archosauromorphs that includes birds, crocodilians, dinosaurs and extinct flying reptiles known as pterosaurs known to give birth this way, paleontologist Jun Liu of China’s Hefei University of Technology said.

It boasted one of the longest necks relative to body size of any animal that ever existed. Dinocephalosaurus, unearthed in Yunnan Province, was an estimated 4m long, including a slender neck roughly 1.7m long, Liu said. It had paddle-like flippers, a small head and a mouth with teeth, including large canines, perfect for snaring fish.

“I think you’d be amazed to see it, with its tiny head and long snaky neck,” said University of Bristol paleontologist Mike Benton, who also participated in the research published in the journal Nature Communications. Its body plan was similar to plesiosaurs, long-necked marine reptiles akin to Scotland’s mythical Loch Ness monster that thrived later during the dinosaur age, though they were not closely related.

Not laying eggs provided advantages to Dinocephalosaurus, the researchers said. It indicated the creature was fully marine, not having to leave the ocean to lay eggs on land like sea turtles, exposing the eggs or hatchlings to land predators.

Many animal fossils have been found with the stomach contents intact, for example whole fish. Several factors showed this embryo was the female Dinocephalosaurus’ baby, not its breakfast.

Liu said it was found in a curled posture typical for vertebrate embryos. The embryo faces forward relative to the mother, while swallowed animals generally face backward because a predator will gulp prey head-first to help it get down the throat.

Montana State University evolutionary biologist Chris Organ said while some reptiles such as crocodiles determine the sex of their babies through the temperature inside the nest, Dinocephalosaurus determined its offspring’s sex genetically as mammals and birds do.

http://www.news.com.au/world/asia/c...s/news-story/d7741e5c464f6b5395329cec0239c6cc

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Keel

*China's scientific innovation gains momentum in 2016*
Source: Xinhua 2017-01-08 18:58:02 




BEIJING, Jan. 8 (Xinhua) -- From the Internet to space missions, scientific innovation picked up speed in China last year, as the country has its sights set becoming an innovative nation by 2020.

Thanks to mobile broadband systems developed by Chinese scientists, the Internet became affordable for more people in 2016. By the end of November, China had a total of 730 million 4G mobile users and nearly 300 million broadband users.

In June, China's new supercomputer Sunway-TaihuLight was named the world's fastest at an international supercomputing conference in Germany. It is already being used in meteorology, aviation and medicine.

China also had successes in other areas including deep-sea research and spaceflight.

In January, unmanned submersible Qianlong-2 completed its maiden dive in the southwest Indian Ocean and is now capable of diving to a depth of 4,500 meters.

In August, unmanned submersible Haidou-1 reached a depth of 10,767 meters in the Mariana Trench, a new Chinese record. China is only the third country, after Japan and the United States, to build submersibles capable of reaching depths in excess of 10,000 meters

In the field of spaceflight, Shenzhou-11 was launched on Oct. 17 and docked two days later with China's first space lab Tiangong-2 where two astronauts lived for 30 days, another Chinese record.

These achievements were only possible with strong support from the government.

The budget for national natural science stood at 24.8 billion yuan (about 3.6 billion U.S. dollars) in 2016, an 11.9 percent increase from 2015.

As China has embarked on an innovation-driven journey of development, it is ready to make even bigger strides in the future.

"Fundamental research and international influence are gradually improving," said Tian Gang, a professor with Peking University school of mathematical sciences.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-01/08/c_135964399.htm

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*University of Science and Technology of China : USTC Scientists Get Fuel from CO2 Hydrogenation with High Efficiency*

02/20/2017 | 02:38am CET

Recently, the research group led by Prof. ZENG, has applied quantum confinement and alloy effect in CO2 hydrogenation to improve the efficiency of fuel composition via achieving remarkable catalytic activity by fabricating RhW Nanocrystals as a catalyst. The breakthrough mitigates global warming and fossil fuel shortage at the same time.

The fixation and reduction of CO2 into useful chemicals and fuels have attracted tremendous interest to meet current energetic and environmental demands. Considering the high stability of a CO2 molecule, activation of CO2 plays a pivotal role in the chemical transformation of CO2. This process can be realized through heterogeneous catalysis where the catalytic performance is largely determined by the electronic properties of the surface. Based on theoretical studies, tuning the dimension of nanostructures represents an effective strategy to engineer the surface electronic properties by varying the spatial distribution of electrons. Another strategy for electronic modification is to form an alloy by adding another metal; charge transfer will then occur owing to the different electro negativities of the constituent metals.

Herein, researchers combined these two strategies to tune the electronic properties of Rh-based nanocrystals in order to enhance the catalytic activity towards CO2 hydrogenation. During CO2 hydrogenation, RhW nanosheets exhibited remarkable catalytic activity with the turnover frequency (TOF) number of 592 h-1, which was 5.9, 4.0, and 1.7 times as high as that of Rh nanoparticles, Rh nanosheets, and RhW nanoparticles, respectively. Mechanistic studies reveal that the remarkable activity of RhW nanosheets derives from the integration of quantum confinement and alloy effect. This approach paves the effective way to modulate the electronic properties of catalysts to achieve superior catalytic performance.

Fig. RhW nanocrystals and their catalytic performance (By ZENG Jie)

This work has been published on _Nano Letters_ (Nano Lett. 2017, 17, 788-793) with the title of 'Integration of Quantum Confinement and Alloy Effect to Modulate Electronic Properties of RhW Nanocrystals for Improved Catalytic Performance toward CO2 Hydrogenation'. The research group is from Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale & School of Chemistry and Materials Science. And master student ZHANG Wenbo and doctor student WANG Liangbing contributed equally to this work. This work was supported by MOST of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, etc.

Contact:

Prof. ZENG Jie

zengj@ustc.edu.cn

Publication link: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b03967.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Embryonic woolly mammoth cells restored by Chinese scientists*
By Sun Wenyu (People's Daily Online) 16:23, February 20, 2017




Chinese scientists have restored the cellular function of woolly mammoth cells, and also successfully cultured embryonic cells, announced Xu Xun, executive director of China National GeneBank in Shenzhen on Feb. 19. Xu told Technology Daily that the woolly mammoth could theoretically be brought back from extinction once a qualified surrogate is found.

Xu, also the president of Beijing Genomics Institute, said that scientists have inserted a mammoth cell nucleus, which was obtained from the complete remains of a mammoth cub in Siberia in 2013, into the cells of an Asian elephant. With the restoration of the cells' function, a complete embryo could be cultivated.

However, according to Xu, creating a live woolly mammoth would be a complicated task, as the surrogate could very well reject the cells.

"The embryonic cell could die before organs form," Xu acknowledged.

The 4.7 percent genomic variation between woolly mammoths and Asian elephants might prevent the development of the embryo. Therefore, the surrogacy would be dependent on an artificial uterus, Xu explained.

Resurrection of extinct animals is an undeniably controversial issue. Proponents of the action believe it would be a breakthrough in terms of protecting endangered species, while opponents hold that human interference in natural selection is a violation of the laws of nature.

"It's impossible to resurrect the woolly mammoth," said Yuan Xunlai, a research fellow at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The technology would only endow Asian elephants with more characteristics of the woolly mammoth, and its offspring would never be able to survive in the wild, Yuan added.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Keel

*Nobel laureate, Turing Award winner become Chinese citizens*
Source: Xinhua 2017-02-21 14:11:21 




BEIJING, Feb. 21 (Xinhua) -- Nobel laureate Chen Ning Yang and Turing Award-winning computer scientist Andrew Chi-Chih Yao have given up their foreign citizenship and become Chinese citizens, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) announce Tuesday.

The two scientists were formally hired as foreign academicians in accordance with the academy's regulations.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-02/21/c_136073494.htm











*Yang Zhenning* (simplified Chinese: 杨振宁;traditional Chinese: 楊振寧)
won the Nobel Prize in Physics with compatriot Chinese (American) Physicist *Tsung-Dao Lee* (*T. D. Lee*; Chinese: 李政道; pinyin: _Lǐ Zhèngdào_)
in 1957
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen-Ning_Yang





https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsung-Dao_Lee







Professor Yao, AM Turing Award winner 2000
http://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/yao_1611524.cfm

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

* Green light for China's first high security bio lab*
Source: Xinhua 2017-02-24 19:38:18

BEIJING, Feb. 24 (Xinhua) -- China's first high level biosafety laboratory has been accredited and will be fully operational soon, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) said Friday.

The certificate was issued by the China National Accreditation Service for Conformity Assessment, according to the CAS.

The lab in Wuhan, capital city of central China's Hubei Province, will be used to study class four pathogens (P4) -- the most virulent viruses that pose a high risk of aerosol transmission.

P4 is the highest biosafety level.

The lab in Wuhan will help China prevent and control outbreaks of infectious diseases and aid research and development of antiviral drugs and vaccines, said Zhang Yaping, vice president of the CAS.

All the air from the lab will go through two advanced filters before being discharged, while solid and liquid waste will also be properly processed, according to the CAS.

The Wuhan lab has undergone a trial operation since its construction was completed at the end of 2014. Some of the core research team have been trained in France and the United States.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Biologists propose to sequence the DNA of all life on Earth*
By Elizabeth Pennisi
Feb. 24, 2017 , 1:15 PM

*WASHINGTON, D.C.—*When it comes to genome sequencing, visionaries like to throw around big numbers: There’s the UK Biobank, for example, which promises to decipher the genomes of 500,000 individuals, or Iceland’s effort to study the genomes of its entire human population. Yesterday, at a meeting here organized by the Smithsonian Initiative on Biodiversity Genomics and the Shenzhen, China–based sequencing powerhouse BGI, a small group of researchers upped the ante even more, announcing their intent to, eventually, sequence “all life on Earth.”

Their plan, which does not yet have funding dedicated to it specifically but could cost at least several billions of dollars, has been dubbed the Earth BioGenome Project (EBP). Harris Lewin, an evolutionary genomicist at the University of California, Davis, who is part of the group that came up with this vision 2 years ago, says the EBP would take a first step toward its audacious goal by focusing on eukaryotes—the group of organisms that includes all plants, animals, and single-celled organisms such as amoebas.

That strategy, and the EBP’s overall concept, found a receptive audience at BioGenomics2017, a gathering this week of conservationists, evolutionary biologists, systematists, and other biologists interested in applying genomics to their work. “This is a grand idea,” says Oliver Ryder, a conservation biologist at the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research in California. “If we really want to understand how life evolved, genome biology is going to be part of that.”


--> Biologists propose to sequence the DNA of all life on Earth | Science | AAAS

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Get Ya Wig Split

*World's longest single axis bridge swings into place *

*












*

A bridge is swung into place to connect with roads on both ends in Shijiazhuang City, the capital of North China’s Hebei Province, March 2, 2017. The bridge is 242.6 meters long and has six lanes in both directions. The structure was built separately and then rotated into place on an axis. It’s said to be the longest bridge ever swung into place on a single axis in the world. (Photo: China News Service/Zhai Yujia)

Chinanews



















The airport is scheduled to come on stream in 2019

News Xinhuanet

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Ancient skulls may belong to elusive humans called Denisovans*

By Ann Gibbons
Mar. 2, 2017 , 2:00 PM

Since their discovery in 2010, the extinct ice age humans called Denisovans have been known only from bits of DNA, taken from a sliver of bone in the Denisova Cave in Siberia, Russia. Now, two partial skulls from eastern China are emerging as prime candidates for showing what these shadowy people may have looked like.

In a paper published this week in Science, a Chinese-U.S. team presents 105,000- to 125,000-year-old fossils they call “archaic _Homo_.” They note that the bones could be a new type of human or an eastern variant of Neandertals. But although the team avoids the word, “everyone else would wonder whether these might be Denisovans,” which are close cousins to Neandertals, says paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London.

The new skulls “definitely” fit what you’d expect from a Denisovan, adds paleoanthropologist María Martinón-Torres of the University College London—“something with an Asian flavor but closely related to Neandertals.” But because the investigators have not extracted DNA from the skulls, “the possibility remains a speculation.”

Back in December 2007, archaeologist Zhan-Yang Li of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing was wrapping up his field season in the town of Lingjing, near the city of Xuchang in the Henan province in China (about 4000 kilometers from the Denisova Cave), when he spotted some beautiful quartz stone tools eroding out of the sediments. He extended the field season for two more days to extract them. On the very last morning, his team discovered a yellow piece of rounded skull cap protruding from the muddy floor of the pit, in the same layer where he had found the tools.

The team went back for another six seasons and managed to find 45 more fossils that fit together into two partial crania. The skulls lack faces and jaws. But they include enough undistorted pieces for the team to note a close resemblance to Neandertals. One cranium has a huge brain volume of 1800 cubic centimeters—on the upper end for both Neandertals and moderns—plus a Neandertal-like hollow in a bone on the back of its skull. Both crania have prominent brow ridges and inner ear bones that resemble those of Neandertals but are distinct from our own species, _Homo sapiens_.

However, the crania also differ from the western Neandertals of Europe and the Middle East. They have thinner brow ridges and less robust skull bones, similar to early modern humans and some other Asian fossils. “They are not Neandertals in the full sense,” says co-author Erik Trinkaus, a paleoanthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis in Missouri.



Two ancient crania were unearthed about 4000 kilometers from Denisova Cave at the site of Lingjing in Henan province in China.
Adapted by A. Cuadra/Science

Nor are the new fossils late-occurring representatives of other archaic humans such as _H. erectus _or _H. heidelbergensis_, two species that were ancestral to Neandertals and modern humans. The skulls are too lightly built and their brains are too big, according to the paper.

The skulls do share traits with some other fossils in east Asia dating from 600,000 to 100,000 years ago that also defy easy classification, says paleoanthropologist Rick Potts of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Those features include a broad cranial base where the skull sits atop the spinal column and a low, flat plateau along the top of the skull. The Lingjing crania also resemble another archaic early human skull that dates to 100,000 years ago from Xujiayao in China’s Nihewan Basin 850 kilometers to the north, according to co-author Xiu-Jie Wu, a paleoanthropologist at IVPP.

Wu thinks those fossils and the new skulls “are a kind of unknown or new archaic human that survived on in East Asia to 100,000 years ago.” Based on similarities to some other Asian fossils, she and her colleagues think the new crania represent regional members of a population in eastern Asia who passed local traits down through the generations in what the researchers call regional continuity. At the same time, resemblances to both Neandertals and modern humans suggest that these archaic Asians mixed at least at low levels with other archaic people.

To other experts, the Denisovans fit that description: They are roughly dated to approximately 100,000 to 50,000 years ago, and their DNA shows that after hundreds of thousands of years of isolation, they mixed both with Neandertals and early modern humans. “This is exactly what the DNA tells us when one tries to make sense of the Denisova discoveries,” says paleoanthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. “These Chinese fossils are in the right place at the right time, with the right features.”

But Wu and Trinkaus say they can’t put fossils in a group defined only by DNA. “I have no idea what a Denisovan is,” Trinkaus says. “Neither does anybody else. It’s a DNA sequence.”

The only way to truly identify a Denisovan is with DNA. IVPP paleogeneticist Qiaomei Fu says she tried to extract DNA from three pieces of the Xuchang fossils but without success.

Regardless of the new skulls’ precise identity, “China is rewriting the story of human evolution,” Martinón-Torres says. “I find this tremendously exciting!”

Ancient skulls may belong to elusive humans called Denisovans | Science | AAAS



*Paper:* Li, Z.Y., Wu, X.J., Zhou, L.P., Liu, W., Gao, X., Nian, M.N., Trinkaus, E. _"_Late Pleistocene archaic human crania from Xuchang, China". _Science_ (2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aal2482

*Morphological mosaics in early Asian humans*
Excavations in eastern Asia are yielding information on human evolution and migration. Li _et al._ analyzed two fossil human skulls from central China, dated to 100,000 to 130,000 years ago. The crania elucidate the pattern of human morphological evolution in eastern Eurasia. Some features are ancestral and similar to those of earlier eastern Eurasian humans, some are derived and shared with contemporaneous or later humans elsewhere, and some are closer to those of Neandertals. The analysis illuminates shared long-term trends in human adaptive biology and suggests the existence of interconnections between populations across Eurasia during the later Pleistocene.

_Science_, this issue p. 969

*Abstract*
Two early Late Pleistocene (~105,000- to 125,000-year-old) crania from Lingjing, Xuchang, China, exhibit a morphological mosaic with differences from and similarities to their western contemporaries. They share pan–Old World trends in encephalization and in supraorbital, neurocranial vault, and nuchal gracilization. They reflect eastern Eurasian ancestry in having low, sagittally flat, and inferiorly broad neurocrania. They share occipital (suprainiac and nuchal torus) and temporal labyrinthine (semicircular canal) morphology with the Neandertals. This morphological combination reflects Pleistocene human evolutionary patterns in general biology, as well as both regional continuity and interregional population dynamics.​
*****###*****​
Public Release: 3-Mar-2017
* New finds from China suggest human evolution probably of regional continuity *
Chinese Academy of Sciences Headquarters



The Xuchang 1 (A, superior view) and 2 (B, posterior view) crania. 
Credit: Image by WU Xiujie

The period between about 200,000 and 50,000 years ago saw the amplification of regional diversity in human biology. Given the fragmentary nature of that human fossil record, the nature of these late Middle and early Late Pleistocene humans in the more northern portions of eastern Eurasia has been unclear. In their recent study, paleontologists from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and their collaborators reported two early Late Pleistocene (~105,000- to 125,000-year-old) crania from Lingjing, Xuchang, China. They exhibit a morphological mosaic with differences from and similarities to their western contemporaries. This morphological combination reflects Pleistocene human evolutionary patterns in general biology, as well as both regional continuity and interregional population dynamics.

The Xuchang 1 and 2 crania, excavated in situ in the Lingjing site in Xuchang County of Henan Province between 2007 and 2014, exhibit a distinctive morphological pattern combined with paleobiological trends that appear to have been pan-Old World. They reflect eastern Eurasian ancestry in having low, sagittally flat, and inferiorly broad neurocrania. They share occipital (suprainiac and nuchal torus) and temporal labyrinthine (semicircular canal) morphology with the Neandertals.

The Xuchang 1 and 2 crania were found broken, each cranium dispersed within a circumscribed horizontal area. They were associated with a diverse macromammalian faunal assemblage, rich in Equus, Bos, Megaloceros, Procapra, Cervus, and Coelodonta. The layer contains a Middle Paleolithic lithic industry, along with bone tools on diaphyseal splinters, and it has produced a consistent series of optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) ages, placing the human remains at about 105,000 to 125,000 years, and the overlying layers have provided ages of about 100,000 and 90,000 years. The human crania are therefore securely dated to marine isotope stage (MIS) 5, within MIS 5e or 5d.

The Xuchang early Late Pleistocene archaic human crania exhibit a mosaic morphological pattern. They exhibit features that are ancestral and reminiscent particularly of early Middle Pleistocene eastern Eurasian humans, and derived and shared by earlier Late Pleistocene humans elsewhere, whether morphologically archaic or modern. In common with other early Late Pleistocene humans (whether morphologically archaic or modern), they share neurocranial expansion and gracilization. The endocranial volume (ECV) of Xuchang 1, about 1800 cm3, is at the high end of Neandertal and early modern human variation, and its neurocranium closely approximates the shape of those of Middle Pleistocene humans, especially eastern Eurasians.

In combination with these derived and ancestral features, the Xuchang crania also display two complexes that primarily align them with the Neandertals. They share occipital (suprainiac and nuchal torus) and temporal labyrinthine (semicircular canal) morphology with the Neandertals.

"This morphological combination, particularly the presence of a mosaic not known among early Late Pleistocene humans in the western Old World, suggests a complex interaction of directional paleobiological changes and intra- and interregional population dynamics", said Dr. WU Xiujie of the IVPP, project designer and co-corresponding author of the study.

"From their fossil record, eastern Asian late archaic humans have been interpreted to resemble their Neandertal contemporaries to some degree, with considerations of whether the fragmentary remains of the former exhibit features characteristic of the latter. Yet it is only with the discovery of two human crania (plus additional elements) from the Lingjing site in Xuchang County of Henan Province, China, that the nature of these eastern Eurasian early Late Pleistocene archaic humans is becoming clear", said Dr. WU Xiujie.

"The overall cranial shape, especially the wide cranial base, and low neurocranial vault, indicate a pattern of continuity with the earlier, Middle Pleistocene eastern Eurasian humans. Yet the presence of two distinctive Neandertal features -- one (iniac and nuchal morphology) unknown among earlier eastern crania, and the other (labyrinthine proportions) evident in only one similarly aged eastern Eurasian fossil -- argue for populational interactions across Eurasia during the late Middle and early Late Pleistocene", said study co-correponding author Dr. Erik Trinkaus from the Department of Anthropology of Washington University in St. Louis, "Similar interactions can be inferred from the presence of Neandertal ancient DNA in western Siberia and in the Tianyuan 1 early modern human from northern China. These data therefore argue both for substantial regional continuity in eastern Eurasia into the early Late Pleistocene and for some level of east-west population interaction across Eurasia".

The Xuchang crania therefore provide an important window into the biology and population history of early Late Pleistocene eastern Eurasian people. As such, they are a critical piece in our understanding of the human evolutionary background to the subsequent establishment of modern human biology across the Old World, a process that was already underway in eastern Africa and (apparently) further south in eastern Asia.

###​
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).


New finds from China suggest human evolution probably of regional continuity | EurekAlert! Science News

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Get Ya Wig Split

*Economic Watch: China's corporate sector wins big as economy improves*

BEIJING, March 3 (Xinhua) -- Chinese e-commerce giant JD made headlines on Thursday after reporting impressive financial performance in 2016.

One of the country's leading e-commerce platforms, JD raked in 1 billion yuan (14.5 million U.S. dollars) in net profits last year, compared with a heavy loss in 2015, according to the company's financial statement.

Rising profits from the company's online shopping mall and increasing transaction volume were the main contributors to the platform's improved earnings, with gross transaction volume rising by 47 percent year on year, according to the financial statement.

The robust growth means that Chinese consumers are looking for more high-quality products and services, said Richard Liu, CEO of JD.

China has the world's largest e-commerce market, and online retail sales rose 26.2 percent to hit 5.2 trillion yuan in 2016.

Small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs) also earned more compared with 2015.

Companies listed on the Shenzhen SME board pocketed about 220.4 billion yuan in profit, up by about 37 percent year on year.

Among them was SF Express, one of Chinese leading delivery firms, which saw its net profits more than double in 2016 thanks to booming delivery demand.

The total number of packages delivered increased 51.4 percent year on year in 2016 to more than 31 billion.

Meanwhile, start-ups listed on China's NASDAQ-style ChiNext board witnessed their fastest profit growth in nearly five years of 38.15 percent.

Their focus on innovation helped improve corporate financial performance, according to a statement released by the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.

The computer, software and IT services, and pharmaceutical sectors were among the best performers in terms of profit growth last year, it added.

On the other hand, China's state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are also catching up with their private counterparts.

The country's industrial SOEs turned from losses for two consecutive years to profit in 2016 with overall profit growth of 6.7 percent, the fastest pace since 2012.

"That reflects that reform efforts in destocking, deleveraging and reducing costs are paying off," said Li Jin, deputy head with China Enterprise Reform and Development Society.

Led by electronics, electrical machinery and medicine, the manufacturing sector gained the most compared with SOEs in coal, electricity and other energy sectors.

China's economic structure is changing with rapid growth of advanced manufacturing and the service sector, consolidating the steady expansion of the world's second-largest economy, said Shen Ying, chief accountant of the country's top SOE regulator.

Total profits of centrally owned enterprises continued the momentum by growing 24.5 percent year on year in January.

Latest signs show that the Chinese economy is firming up, with both the official and private factory activity index posting steady growth.

Corporate profits, cargo volume and machinery sales are all sensitive to market changes and are more difficult to whitewash as indicators of economic expansion, said Shen Jianguang, chief economist with Mizuho Securities Asia Limited.

Rail freight volume rose for the sixth month in January while sales of excavators rose more than 50 percent year on year in January despite the Spring Festival holiday during the month.

These impressive micro indicators point to stronger-than-expected economic recovery, Shen added.

Xinhua

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Get Ya Wig Split

*Made in China: the world’s largest and most advanced ultra-deep-water semi-submersible drilling rig*


 People's Daily, China
Published on Mar 4, 2017

“Blue Whale 1,” the world’s largest and most advanced ultra-deep-water semi-submersible drilling rig was built by Yantai CIMC Raffles Offshore Limited in east China's Shandong Province. The 42000-ton oil platform has cost $700 million, equal to the cost of two Airbus A380. “Blue Whale 1” is as tall as a 37-floor building. 

With the operational depth up to 3658 meters (12,000 feet) and drilling depth to 15,240 meters (50,000 feet), “Blue whale 1”can be operated in all global water areas. Compared with traditional drilling rig, “Blue whale 1” increases efficiency by 30% and saves 10% fuel energy consumption as well. In two weeks, “Blue whale 1” will be operated to carry out offshore drilling tasks.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

World recorders created by construction equipment "made in China"
Source: Xinhua | 2017-03-06 05:44:03 | Editor: huaxia



CONEXPO-CON/AGG 2017, one of the three most influential international exhibitions on construction machinery, will be held on March 7-11, 2017 in Las Vegas. A total of 13 machines will be exhibited by ZOOMLION, the world's leading equipment manufacturer. (Photo from ZOOMLION )

LAS VEGAS, March 5 (Xinhua) -- As the largest manufacturing country of construction equipment in the world, China has sent a dream team to show in 2017 CONEXPO-CON/AGG, the largest international trade show for the construction industries all around world that takes place every three years.

Chinese companies will prove they are all-round champion in the industry to 130,000 professionals joined the event from March. 7 to 11 as the country has created many world records in recent years. Here are some examples.

5200 tonne meters

Zoomlion developed the largest upper swivel horizontal boom tower crane with lifting torque of 5200 tonne meters in the world in 2010, which played critical role in the construction of a number of bridges over the Yangtze River.

4000 tonnes of crawler crane

In 2012 XCMG developed 4000 tonnes of crawler cranes, the largest crawler crane in the world, for the construction of nuclear power plants.

101 meters

In 2012, Zoomlion developed the carbon fiber boom concrete pump with highest boom of 101 meters in the world.

621 meters

On September 7, 2015, Sany created the world record of concrete pumping height of 621 meters in Tianjin.

3640 tonne meters

Yongmao Building Machinery developed the largest topless tower crane with maximum lifting torque of 3640 tonne meters in the world in 2016.

12 tonne wheel loader

The largest 12 tonne class wheel loader in China was developed by XCMG and Liugong.

400 tonne crawler excavator

The largest 400 tonne crawler excavator in China was developed by XCMG.

900 horsepower bulldozer

The largest 900 horsepower bulldozer in China was developed by Santui.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Satellite radar system used to help preserve Angkor Wat temple*
March 2, 2017 by Bob Yirka



Monument collapsing in Angkor due to decay. Credit: F.Chen from the Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences

(Tech Xplore)—A team of researchers from several institutions in China and one in Cambodia has used a new type of satellite radar system to assess the likelihood of damage to the iconic Angkor Wat temple from higher amounts of water being extracted from the ground in the area. In their paper published in the journal _Science Advances_, the team describes the new technology, how it was used and offers opinions on how best to protect the ancient stone structure and those around it.

The Angkor Wat temple in Cambodia (built during the Khmer Empire between the 9th and 15th centuries) and other ancient stone buildings around it have been designated as a World Heritage site by Unesco—unfortunately, the buildings are all suffering from varying amounts of decay causing officials to worry that some are close to collapsing. Adding to the fears are worries that increased water extraction from the ground from nearby areas in recent years might be causing the ground beneath the buildings to shift more, causing even more problems. To find out if this is the case, the researchers turned to a new type of satellite radar system called synthetic aperture radar interferometry (InSAR).

With InSAR, two satellites are used to make very precise measurements of the same ground location over time using advanced radar techniques. The spacing of the satellites allows for tracking ground movement—in this new effort, measurements were made over the period 2011 through 2013. The researchers calculated that the ground around the Angkor monuments shifted less than 3 millimeters—which they suggest indicates that it is unlikely that increased water extraction has sped up the decay of the stone buildings. Instead, they note, the steady decline of the structures is due almost entirely to erosion, temperature fluctuations and seasonal changes to the water table due to cyclical dry and wet seasons. They suggest officials instead focus their efforts on mitigating damage due to climate change as some models have suggested the area might experience longer dry periods as the planet heats up.



Annual deformation rates (millimeters per year) on the Angkor Wat Temple. The pink arrows mark vulnerable monuments. Credit: Chen et al. Sci. Adv. 2017;3:e1601284 

The researchers note that InSAR could be used to help understand conditions around other important ancient structures, offering those charged with protecting them a new tool as well.
​

Cracks and countermeasures on the second gallery of the Angkor Wat Temple. Credit: F.Chen from the Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences 

*More information:* Fulong Chen et al. Radar interferometry offers new insights into threats to the Angkor site, _Science Advances_ (2017). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1601284

*Abstract*
The conservation of World Heritage is critical to the cultural and social sustainability of regions and nations. Risk monitoring and preventive diagnosis of threats to heritage sites in any given ecosystem are a complex and challenging task. Taking advantage of the performance of Earth Observation technologies, we measured the impacts of hitherto imperceptible and poorly understood factors of groundwater and temperature variations on the monuments in the Angkor World Heritage site (400 km2). We developed a two-scale synthetic aperture radar interferometry (InSAR) approach. We describe spatial-temporal displacements (at millimeter-level accuracy), as measured by high-resolution TerraSAR/TanDEM-X satellite images, to provide a new solution to resolve the current controversy surrounding the potential structural collapse of monuments in Angkor. Multidisciplinary analysis in conjunction with a deterioration kinetics model offers new insights into the causes that trigger the potential decline of Angkor monuments. Our results show that pumping groundwater for residential and touristic establishments did not threaten the sustainability of monuments during 2011 to 2013; however, seasonal variations of the groundwater table and the thermodynamics of stone materials are factors that could trigger and/or aggravate the deterioration of monuments. These factors amplify known impacts of chemical weathering and biological alteration of temple materials. The InSAR solution reported in this study could have implications for monitoring and sustainable conservation of monuments in World Heritage sites elsewhere.
​Satellite radar system used to help preserve Angkor Wat temple | Tech Xplore

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* China's deep-sea robot sets new underwater gliding depth record*
Source: Xinhua 2017-03-06 15:51:00

BEIJING, March 6 (Xinhua) -- China's domestic underwater glider reached a depth of 6,329 meters during a mission in the Mariana Trench, breaking the previous record of 6,000 meters held by a U.S. vessel, according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

Codenamed Haiyi, which means sea wings in Chinese, the underwater glider was developed by the Shenyang Institute of Automation under CAS, and is used to monitor the deep-sea environment in vast areas.

The Haiyi, carried by deep-sea submersible mother ship Tansuo-1, dived down 12 times and traveled over 130 kilometers during its four-day mission, collecting high-resolution data for scientific research.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> * China's deep-sea robot sets new underwater gliding depth record*
> Source: Xinhua 2017-03-06 15:51:00
> 
> BEIJING, March 6 (Xinhua) -- China's domestic underwater glider reached a depth of 6,329 meters during a mission in the Mariana Trench, breaking the previous record of 6,000 meters held by a U.S. vessel, according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
> 
> Codenamed Haiyi, which means sea wings in Chinese, the underwater glider was developed by the Shenyang Institute of Automation under CAS, and is used to monitor the deep-sea environment in vast areas.
> 
> The Haiyi, carried by deep-sea submersible mother ship Tansuo-1, dived down 12 times and traveled over 130 kilometers during its four-day mission, collecting high-resolution data for scientific research.


*Records broken at ocean's lowest depth*
By Zhang Zhihao | China Daily | Updated: 2017-03-07 07:59

Amid deputies attending the annual meetings of the top legislature and the top political advisory body, Chinese scientists have broken two world records at the ocean's lowest depth - the Mariana Trench, a scythe-shaped clef in the western Pacific Ocean seafloor that plunges nearly 11 kilometers deep.

China became the first country to collect the artificial seismic stratigraphy of the Challenger Deep, the deepest section of the trench measured at more than 10 kilometers, the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Geology and Geophysics said on Friday. The stratigraphy is used to study the Earth's movement, layers and geologic history.

China also set a new world diving record for underwater gliders at 6,329 meters with Hai Yi, a glider designed by the academy's Institute of Automation in Shenyang, Liaoning province, the academy said on Sunday. The previous recorder holder was a US glider at 6,000 meters.

"These experiments prove that China's deep-sea exploration technologies have reached an advanced level," the academy said in a statement.

"Data collected from these experiments are invaluable to the study of continental movement and its transformation," said Qiu Xuelin, a researcher at the academy's South China Sea Institute of Oceanology.

Both experiments were carried out by Chinese scientists onboard the academy's Explorer-I TS03 scientific surveying ship. They departed Sanya, Hainan province, en route to the Mariana Trench on Jan 15.

Upon arrival, they deployed 60 ocean-bottom seismometers to collect data for the stratigraphy on Jan 25. Some seismometers had sunk to 10,027 meters, the academy said, which is enough to submerge Qomolangma (8,850 meters), known as Mount Everest in the West.

These instruments can capture sound waves generated by earthquakes or human activities. These waves, combined with the motions of the Earth, can provide details about the geometry of the Earth's structure, said Wang Yuan, an engineer at the academy's Institute of Geology and Geophysics.

The glider is an autonomous underwater vehicle designed to survey marine conditions, such as temperature, salinity and currents, across large bodies of water.

Apart from breaking the world record, Hai Yi also completed 12 observation missions across 130 kilometers of water. The data it collected from the abyssal sea is "valuable for oceanologists studying the region", the academy said.

It took Chinese scientists 13 years to design and build the Hai Yi and its variants, it said, adding that there are more than two-dozen types, covering use in shallow sea, deep sea and abyssal sea.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*China aims to take lead in brain science by 2030*
(People's Daily Online) 16:58, March 07, 2017

China hopes to become a leading power in brain science by the end of 2030, with a primary focus on brain disease prevention and treatment, as well as artificial intelligence.

“The research on brain science and artificial intelligence is at a crucial stage. Chinese scientists should seize the opportunity to make substantial contributions,” Zhang Xu, an academician with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told Science and Technology Daily.

According to Zhang, China’s brain project will integrate brain science and brain-inspired intelligence technology, focusing mainly on diagnosis and intervention for brain diseases, as well as on the development of new AI computation methods and devices.

“Neuroscience and artificial intelligence should not be separated. The country that can boost the integrated development of the two fields will be the true winner in future brain science,” said Zhang.

There is now clear recognition by the international scientific community that brain science is an important frontier. The U.S., Europe and Japan have all announced massive projects to map the brain, giving them a potential advantage over China.

According to statistics from Science and Technology Daily, the U.S. and Germany have 24,624 and 7,328 neuroscience research groups respectively, while China has only 4,938. Though government investment in brain science increased from 348 million RMB in 2010 to 500 million RMB in 2013, financial constraints still hinder the development of brain science in China.

In response to the current problems, Zhang suggested that the country attract more scientists and experts from abroad to come work in China. He also hopes to see more efficient cooperation between scientists with different backgrounds to promote interdisciplinary research.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Mar. 09 2017
*Chinese Famine Data Show No Long-term Health Effects Except for Schizophrenia*

Meta-analysis raises questions about the design and analysis of current studies
A new systematic re-analysis of all previous studies of long-term health effects of prenatal exposure to the Chinese Famine of 1959-61 by researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health shows no increases in diabetes, high blood pressure and other chronic conditions among famine births except for schizophrenia. The analyzed studies reported that these conditions were more common among famine births compared to control groups born after the famine. In the re-analysis, the Columbia researchers compared outcomes in famine births to control groups combining births from before and after the famine. The findings raise fundamental questions about the design of existing Chinese famine studies.

“Significant improvements are needed in the design and analysis of these studies for more reliable estimates of the long-term impact of the famine,” said L. H. Lumey, MD, PhD, professor of Epidemiology at the Mailman School and senior author. This is the first systematic review and meta-analysis of available studies, including different designs and analytical methods. Findings are published online in the _International Journal of Epidemiology._

“The results of our analysis were unexpected and point to an unrecognized flaw in common famine reports. Using only controls born after the famine, famine births will be older than controls and this will make them less healthy than controls,” said Dr. Lumey. To neutralize the age effect, control groups born before the famine were therefore added from each study by the Columbia researchers.

Earlier studies showed that overweight, type 2 diabetes, hyperglycemia, the metabolic syndrome and schizophrenia were more elevated in adults born in China who were exposed to the Forward Famine of 1959-1961 during early life. Because many studies differed in study design and analytical methods and were carried out in different regions in China, the Columbia researchers undertook a systematic review and meta-analysis of available reports to summarize the data, generate estimates of homogeneity of reported famine effects, consider possible implications for public health, and formulate suggestions for future studies.

The researchers used several databases including PubMed, Embase, Chinese Wanfang Data, and Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure to conduct the review. More than 13,000 records of long-term health conditions were initially reviewed for those exposed and unexposed to the Famine. The number of events that were analyzed ranged from 1029 for hyperglycemia to 8973 for hypertension. Most Chinese over age 55 today have been exposed to the famine at some point of their early life.

“Beyond age effects, we were also interested in health outcomes comparing births in rural and urban areas and in regions with extreme and less severe famine -- whichsome studies had reported – and we did not find any systematic differences. We think that better indicators of famine exposure are needed,” noted Chihua Li, doctoral candidate in the Department of Epidemiology and the study’s first author.

Reliable estimates of the long-term impact of the Chinese famine are important because the famine experience could have substantially increased the risk of major chronic diseases in later life among the Chinese population. “As a next step, we will therefore continue with systematic analyses of study results from ongoing health surveys in China for more reliable estimates of long term famine effects” says Dr. Lumey.



Chinese Famine Data Show No Long-term Health Effects Except for Schizophrenia | Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health


----------



## JSCh

*Researchers Assemble Five New Synthetic Yeast Chromosomes*
March 9, 2017 (2:00PM)

A global research team has built five new synthetic yeast chromosomes, meaning that 30 percent of a key organism’s genetic material has now been swapped out for engineered replacements. This is one of several findings of a package of seven papers published March 10 as the cover story for _Science_.

Led by NYU Langone geneticist Jef Boeke, PhD, and a team of more than 200 authors, the publications are the latest from the Synthetic Yeast Project (Sc2.0). By the end of this year, this international consortium hopes to have designed and built synthetic versions of all 16 chromosomes—the structures that contain DNA—for the one-celled microorganism Baker’s yeast, known as _S. cerevisiae_.

Like computer programmers, scientists add swaths of synthetic DNA to—or remove stretches from—human, plant, bacterial, or yeast chromosomes in hopes of averting disease, manufacturing medicines, or making food more nutritious. Baker’s yeast have long served as an important research model because their cells share many features with human cells, but are simpler and easier to study.

“This work sets the stage for completion of designer, synthetic genomes to address unmet needs in medicine and industry,” says Dr. Boeke, director of NYU Langone’s Institute for Systems Genetics. “Beyond any one application, the papers confirm that newly created systems and software can answer basic questions about the nature of genetic machinery by reprogramming chromosomes in living cells.”

In March 2014, Sc2.0 successfully assembled the first synthetic yeast chromosome (synthetic chromosome 3, or _synIII_) comprising 272,871 base pairs, the chemical units that make up the DNA code. The new round of papers consists of an overview and five papers describing the first assembly of synthetic yeast chromosomes _synII_, _synV_, _synVI_, _synX_, and _synXII_. A seventh paper provides a first look at the three-dimensional structures of synthetic chromosomes in the cell nucleus.

Many technologies developed in Sc2.0 serve as the foundation for the Genome Project-write (GP-write), a related initiative aiming to synthesize complete sets of human and plant chromosomes (genomes) in the next 10 years. GP-write will hold its next meeting in New York City on May 9-10, 2017.

*Global Production*
To begin synthesizing a yeast chromosome, researchers must first plan thousands of changes, some of which empower them to move around pieces of chromosomes in a kind of fast, high-powered evolution. Other changes remove stretches of DNA code found to be unlikely to have a functional role by past efforts. Libraries of altered yeast strains can then be screened to see which have the most useful features.

With the edits made, the team starts to assemble edited, synthetic DNA sequences into ever larger chunks, which are finally introduced into yeast cells, where cellular machinery finishes building the chromosome. A major innovation captured in the current round of papers involves this last step.

Previously, researchers were required to finish building one piece of a chromosome before they could start work on the next. Sequential requirements are bottlenecks, says Boeke, which slow processes and increase cost. The current round of papers features several efforts to “parallelize” the assembly of synthetic chromosomes.

Labs around the globe each synthesized different pieces in strains of yeast that were then mated, or crossed, to quickly yield thriving yeast, not just with an entire synthetic chromosome, but in some instances with more than one. Specifically, a paper led by author Leslie Mitchell, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow from Dr. Boeke’s lab at NYU Langone, described the construction of a strain containing three synthetic chromosomes.

“Steps can be accomplished at the same time in many locales and then assembled at the end, like networking laptops to create a global super computer,” says Mitchell.

Along the way, the global team honed a number of innovations and came to understand yeast biology better. A team at Tsinghua University, for instance, led an effort where six teams built in pieces synthetic chromosome XII (_synXII_), which was then assembled into a final molecule more than a million base pairs, called a megabase, in length. This largest synthetic chromosome to date is still 1/3,000 of what would be needed to build a human genome molecule, so new techniques will be needed.

In addition, experiments demonstrated that drastic changes can be made to the genomes of yeast without killing them, says Dr. Boeke. Yeast strains, for instance, survived experiments where sections of DNA code were moved from one chromosome to another, or even swapped between yeast species, with little effect. Genetically pliable, or plastic, organisms make good platforms for the dramatic engineering that may be needed for future applications.

The package of 7 newly published papers had authors from 10 universities in several countries, including NYU Langone and Johns Hopkins University; Tianjin University and Tsinghua University in China; the Institut Pasteur and Sorbonne Universités in France; and the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Other authors were from key industry partners that included BGI, the leading Chinese genomics organization; the U.S.–China-based Genescript; and WuXi Qinglan Biotechnology, Inc.

Led by the School of Chemical Engineering and Technology at Tianjin University, the paper describing the synthesis of _synV_ is noteworthy in that it was done by undergraduate students as part of “Build-a-Genome China,” a class first taught in the U.S. at Johns Hopkins, where Dr. Boeke worked before coming to NYU Langone. This is part of an emerging global network of “chromosome foundries,” says Dr. Boeke, “which is building the next generation of synthetic biologists along with chromosomes.”

In addition to Dr. Boeke and Dr. Mitchell, lead organizers for the current studies included Ying-Jin Yuan of Tianjin University and Junbiao Dai of Tsinghua University; Joel Bader from Johns Hopkins; Romain Koszul at the Institut Pasteur; Yizhi Cai at the University of Edinburgh; and Huanming Yang at BGI. The U.S. studies were supported principally by the National Science Foundation. Other key funding sources were the China National High Technology Research and Development Program, Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China, National Natural Science Foundation of China, UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, and ERASynBio.


Researchers Assemble Five New Synthetic Yeast Chromosomes | NYU Langone Medical Center


*****###*****​

*Biology team makes breakthrough in synthetic yeast project*
March 9, 2017

Led by Tianjin University Professor Ying-Jin Yuan, TJU's synthetic biology team has completed the synthesis of redesigned yeast chromosomes synV and synX with the two studies published in _Science_ on March 10, 2017.

The publications are part of the effort to chemically synthesize the designer yeast genome (Sc 2.0), in collaboration with NYU and John Hopkins in the US, Tsinghua University, BGI-Shenzhen in China, the University of Edinburgh in the UK, and the Institut Pasteur and Sorbonne Universités in France, as well as industry partners.

--> Biology team makes breakthrough in synthetic yeast project | phys.org


*Paper: *

"Bug mapping and fitness testing of chemically synthesized chromosome X," _Science_ (2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf4706
"'Perfect' designer chromosome V and behavior of a ring derivative," _Science_ (2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf4704

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*China becomes first nation to acquire world’s deepest seismic profile data*
March 10, 2017
By Liu Junguo from People's Daily

China has become the world’s first country to acquire 10,000-meter-deep marine artificial seismic profile data.

The Chinese-made Ocean Bottom Seismometers (OBS) self-developed by Institute of Geology and Geophysics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IGGCAS) has been successfully applied for the Challenger Deep, the deepest section of the Mariana Trench measured at more than 10 kilometers, according to IGGCAS.

China has also completed the task of probing the underwater electromagnetic waves with a domestically-developed instrument, proving the country's deep-sea exploration technologies have reached a 10,000-meter-deep level.

On January 15, 2017, the Shenyuan deep-sea expedition team of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), on board the Tansuo-1 scientific research ship, set sail from Sanya in Hainan Province for the Mariana Trench and Yap Trench, aiming at carrying out deep-sea scientific exploration and testing of high-tech equipment.

The expedition team reportedly placed 60 OBS in the Trench area with 56 of them successfully retrieved on February 28. The maximum depth reached by the 56 reclaimed OBS was said to be 10,027 meters and 10,026 meters, with actual operation length of the profile reaching 669 kilometers.

Experts noted that data collected from these experiments are invaluable. According to experts, OBS plays a vital role in oceanic survey. The devices record the earth's motion under oceans thus providing information for the deep structure of the earth's crust and upper mantle in offshore areas.


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *Researchers Assemble Five New Synthetic Yeast Chromosomes*
> March 9, 2017 (2:00PM)
> 
> A global research team has built five new synthetic yeast chromosomes, meaning that 30 percent of a key organism’s genetic material has now been swapped out for engineered replacements. This is one of several findings of a package of seven papers published March 10 as the cover story for _Science_.
> 
> Led by NYU Langone geneticist Jef Boeke, PhD, and a team of more than 200 authors, the publications are the latest from the Synthetic Yeast Project (Sc2.0). By the end of this year, this international consortium hopes to have designed and built synthetic versions of all 16 chromosomes—the structures that contain DNA—for the one-celled microorganism Baker’s yeast, known as _S. cerevisiae_.
> 
> Like computer programmers, scientists add swaths of synthetic DNA to—or remove stretches from—human, plant, bacterial, or yeast chromosomes in hopes of averting disease, manufacturing medicines, or making food more nutritious. Baker’s yeast have long served as an important research model because their cells share many features with human cells, but are simpler and easier to study.
> 
> “This work sets the stage for completion of designer, synthetic genomes to address unmet needs in medicine and industry,” says Dr. Boeke, director of NYU Langone’s Institute for Systems Genetics. “Beyond any one application, the papers confirm that newly created systems and software can answer basic questions about the nature of genetic machinery by reprogramming chromosomes in living cells.”
> 
> In March 2014, Sc2.0 successfully assembled the first synthetic yeast chromosome (synthetic chromosome 3, or _synIII_) comprising 272,871 base pairs, the chemical units that make up the DNA code. The new round of papers consists of an overview and five papers describing the first assembly of synthetic yeast chromosomes _synII_, _synV_, _synVI_, _synX_, and _synXII_. A seventh paper provides a first look at the three-dimensional structures of synthetic chromosomes in the cell nucleus.
> 
> Many technologies developed in Sc2.0 serve as the foundation for the Genome Project-write (GP-write), a related initiative aiming to synthesize complete sets of human and plant chromosomes (genomes) in the next 10 years. GP-write will hold its next meeting in New York City on May 9-10, 2017.
> 
> *Global Production*
> To begin synthesizing a yeast chromosome, researchers must first plan thousands of changes, some of which empower them to move around pieces of chromosomes in a kind of fast, high-powered evolution. Other changes remove stretches of DNA code found to be unlikely to have a functional role by past efforts. Libraries of altered yeast strains can then be screened to see which have the most useful features.
> 
> With the edits made, the team starts to assemble edited, synthetic DNA sequences into ever larger chunks, which are finally introduced into yeast cells, where cellular machinery finishes building the chromosome. A major innovation captured in the current round of papers involves this last step.
> 
> Previously, researchers were required to finish building one piece of a chromosome before they could start work on the next. Sequential requirements are bottlenecks, says Boeke, which slow processes and increase cost. The current round of papers features several efforts to “parallelize” the assembly of synthetic chromosomes.
> 
> Labs around the globe each synthesized different pieces in strains of yeast that were then mated, or crossed, to quickly yield thriving yeast, not just with an entire synthetic chromosome, but in some instances with more than one. Specifically, a paper led by author Leslie Mitchell, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow from Dr. Boeke’s lab at NYU Langone, described the construction of a strain containing three synthetic chromosomes.
> 
> “Steps can be accomplished at the same time in many locales and then assembled at the end, like networking laptops to create a global super computer,” says Mitchell.
> 
> Along the way, the global team honed a number of innovations and came to understand yeast biology better. A team at Tsinghua University, for instance, led an effort where six teams built in pieces synthetic chromosome XII (_synXII_), which was then assembled into a final molecule more than a million base pairs, called a megabase, in length. This largest synthetic chromosome to date is still 1/3,000 of what would be needed to build a human genome molecule, so new techniques will be needed.
> 
> In addition, experiments demonstrated that drastic changes can be made to the genomes of yeast without killing them, says Dr. Boeke. Yeast strains, for instance, survived experiments where sections of DNA code were moved from one chromosome to another, or even swapped between yeast species, with little effect. Genetically pliable, or plastic, organisms make good platforms for the dramatic engineering that may be needed for future applications.
> 
> The package of 7 newly published papers had authors from 10 universities in several countries, including NYU Langone and Johns Hopkins University; Tianjin University and Tsinghua University in China; the Institut Pasteur and Sorbonne Universités in France; and the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Other authors were from key industry partners that included BGI, the leading Chinese genomics organization; the U.S.–China-based Genescript; and WuXi Qinglan Biotechnology, Inc.
> 
> Led by the School of Chemical Engineering and Technology at Tianjin University, the paper describing the synthesis of _synV_ is noteworthy in that it was done by undergraduate students as part of “Build-a-Genome China,” a class first taught in the U.S. at Johns Hopkins, where Dr. Boeke worked before coming to NYU Langone. This is part of an emerging global network of “chromosome foundries,” says Dr. Boeke, “which is building the next generation of synthetic biologists along with chromosomes.”
> 
> In addition to Dr. Boeke and Dr. Mitchell, lead organizers for the current studies included Ying-Jin Yuan of Tianjin University and Junbiao Dai of Tsinghua University; Joel Bader from Johns Hopkins; Romain Koszul at the Institut Pasteur; Yizhi Cai at the University of Edinburgh; and Huanming Yang at BGI. The U.S. studies were supported principally by the National Science Foundation. Other key funding sources were the China National High Technology Research and Development Program, Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China, National Natural Science Foundation of China, UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, and ERASynBio.
> 
> 
> Researchers Assemble Five New Synthetic Yeast Chromosomes | NYU Langone Medical Center
> 
> 
> *****###*****​
> 
> *Biology team makes breakthrough in synthetic yeast project*
> March 9, 2017
> 
> Led by Tianjin University Professor Ying-Jin Yuan, TJU's synthetic biology team has completed the synthesis of redesigned yeast chromosomes synV and synX with the two studies published in _Science_ on March 10, 2017.
> 
> The publications are part of the effort to chemically synthesize the designer yeast genome (Sc 2.0), in collaboration with NYU and John Hopkins in the US, Tsinghua University, BGI-Shenzhen in China, the University of Edinburgh in the UK, and the Institut Pasteur and Sorbonne Universités in France, as well as industry partners.
> 
> --> Biology team makes breakthrough in synthetic yeast project | phys.org
> 
> 
> *Paper: *
> 
> "Bug mapping and fitness testing of chemically synthesized chromosome X," _Science_ (2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf4706
> "'Perfect' designer chromosome V and behavior of a ring derivative," _Science_ (2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf4704


* Chinese scientists create 4 synthetic yeast chromosomes*
Source: Xinhua 2017-03-10 13:02:41





Chinese scientists have assembled four synthetic yeast chromosomes, making China the second country capable of designing and building eukaryotic genomes following the United States.

The findings were published in Friday's edition of journal Science, marking a step closer to building synthetic life.

In the study, researchers with Tianjin University, Tsinghua University and BGI-Shenzhen construct the synthetic active eukaryotic chromosomes through exactly matching the synthetic genome with the designed sequence for the first time.

"If genome sequencing is reading the code of life, then genome synthesizing is writing the code of life. From reading to writing, it is a breakthrough," said Yang Huanming, an academic with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In 2010, U.S. scientists succeeded in implanting a synthetic genome in a prokaryotic bacterium, marking the first step in chemical synthesis of live organisms.

"The latest study has addressed fundamental problems in synthesizing unicelluar eukaryotic organisms, laying a foundation for future design and building of more complex cells of multicelluar organisms, including animals, plants and fungi," said Yuan Yingjin, a professor with Tianjin University.

The new effort is part of a larger project to redesign and reengineer yeast chromosomes, called the Synthetic Yeast Genome Project, which several research institutes participated in, including those in China and the United States.

Brewer's yeast has long served as an important research model because their cells share many features with human cells, but are simpler and easier to study.

"Synthetic yeast chromosomes will facilitate studies on chromosome abnormity and repair of the genome, providing models for research and treatment of present medical challenges such as epilepsy, cancer, mental disability and aging," Yuan said.

According to the researchers, synthetic biology will provide solutions to global problems, including energy shortages and pollution.

For example, with development in technology, modified brewer's yeast with synthetic chromosomes will help produce food and energy of various kinds and lower cost through fermentation one day, Yang said. (Updated)


----------



## cirr

CCTV2: China to mass-produce 5nm plasma etching machine by the end of this year, among many other things:

http://tv.cctv.com/2017/03/11/VIDE7vfLJyz6TTUWvI4woZt4170311.shtml



@Bussard Ramjet


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

cirr said:


> CCTV2: China to mass-produce 5nm plasma etching machine by the end of this year, among many other things:
> 
> http://tv.cctv.com/2017/03/11/VIDE7vfLJyz6TTUWvI4woZt4170311.shtml
> 
> 
> 
> @Bussard Ramjet



Forgive me, but what does this mean?


----------



## cirr

*China builds Big data centre for children's health*

PTI

PublishedMar 13, 2017, 8:12 am IST
UpdatedMar 13, 2017, 8:13 am IST

The collection will expand to 300 hospitals by 2017 and 1,000 by 2020.





(Representational image)

China's first big data research centre for children, which has already collected information on over 200,000 children, has been set up in the central Hubei Province to improve their health.

The centre, established by Wuhan University and a Beijing-based paediatric technology firm in Wuhan, capital of Hubei, aims to develop a more complete medical care system for children in disease prevention, diagnosis and personalised treatment, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

It has collected information on more than 200,000 children in 70 hospitals across the seven provinces of Shandong, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu, Anhui and Sichuan.

The collection will expand to 300 hospitals by 2017 and 1,000 by 2020.

The research centre said it will develop into a national cloud platform for children's health information, offering standards on personalised medical care and clinical treatment.

http://www.deccanchronicle.com/tech...lds-big-data-centre-for-childrens-health.html

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* Premier Li calls for more research efforts on smog formation *
Updated: Mar 10,2017 9:26 AM english.gov.cn

Premier Li Keqiang called for all out efforts to overcome challenges and find out how smog is formed during a meeting with delegation from Shaanxi province on March 9.

Zhou Weijian, an academician and head of the Institute of Earth Environment of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, presented her statement and suggested muti-disciplinary efforts to research the causes, development trends, impact on the environment, and control of smog that has become a major problem in north China.

In the Government Work Report delivered by Premier Li on March 5, he stressed efforts to make skies blue again, strengthen scientific studies on the formation of smog, thus producing accurate scientific targeted measures to deal with the problem, Zhou said.

“We have sent a letter on this issue to Premier Li,” she added.

“Here is the letter which I have approved!” said the Premier holding the letter high in his hand.

Zhou said that although many studies have been conducted on air pollution and general haze phenomenon, no specific study team for China’s haze pollution has been set up.

China’s haze pollution incident covers more areas and it is different from the haze pollution historically seen in London or Los Angeles, she said, adding that the composition of China’s haze is also complicated. The pollution problem in China has seasonal characteristics, meaning its intensity varies season to season.

She said their research has shown that besides coal consumption, automobile exhaust and burning of biomasses, the use of nitrogen fertilizer in North China Plain should also be controlled to decrease PM 2.5.

“You mentioned an important, but seldom raised point. The form of haze is not only affected by coal consumption, automobile exhaust and dust, but also related to agricultural pollutants, such as the overuse of nitrogen fertilizer. Is there any proof for the claim?” the Premier asked.

“We have conducted simulation experiments, proving that ammonia released by nitrogen fertilizer contributes 20 percent or more to the smog pollution,” said Zhou.

”Great importance should be attached to the study,” said Premier Li. “We have taken many measures to fight smog in the past years, mainly concerning fire coal, automobile exhaust and dust, but did not pay equal attention to the usage of nitrogen fertilizer,” he added.

We need to carry out more in-depth study on the formation of haze. Only then, smog can be more effectively controlled, said the Premier.

The ultimate goal of our development is to ensure people’s livelihood, which needs not only more efforts from medical and educational sectors but also coordinated progress of ecological construction as well as social and economic development, he said.

“Now we have got enough to eat and we hope to live well,” said the Premier. “It means we not only need to improve our food quality but also breathe good air,” he added.

“I have said at the executive meetings of the State Council a few times that if any research and development teams can study and clearly analyze the formation and harm of smog and offer effective targeted measures, we are willing to reward them with the Premier reserve fund. This is an urgent problem concerning people’s livelihood. We must thoroughly study this issue at any costs.”

Following his words, the meeting room resounded with applause. Academician Zhou nodded her head and raised her two thumbs to the Premier.

Premier Li said that the public is looking forward to tackling the smog issue and seeing more blue sky days, which needs the concerted efforts of the whole society.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese mountain observatory to probe cosmic-ray origins*
_The massive project will intercept γ-ray showers in an unexplored energy band._

David Cyranoski
15 March 2017

Haizi mountain, near Daocheng in the Sichuan province of China, will host an observatory designed to detect ultra-high-energy γ-rays.

Set high on a mountain plain in China, an ambitious observatory will offer a unique perspective on the origins of cosmic rays, high-energy particles that rain down on Earth. Construction has started on the project, which will probe, for the first time, ultra-high-energy γ-rays — bursts of radiation thought to be produced alongside cosmic rays in our Galaxy, but whose origins are easier to track.

The 1.3-square-kilometre site near Daocheng in Sichuan, close to Tibet, received the go-ahead in January, after an environmental report convinced the government that construction would not harm the threatened white-lipped deer (_Cervus albirostris_) and other animals in a nearby nature reserve. Now, contractors are installing infrastructure for the 1.2-billion-yuan (US$174-million) Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO).

“This will be the leading project to clarify questions of cosmic-ray physics,” says Giuseppe Di Sciascio, a particle physicist at the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) in Rome. Di Sciascio, along with researchers from a number of countries, including Switzerland, Russia and Thailand, hopes to collaborate on the project. Chief among the physics questions that LHAASO will investigate is what accelerates cosmic rays — charged particles such as protons or atomic nuclei — to such high energies. Some cosmic rays that hit Earth have energies millions of times greater than the energies produced by the most powerful human-made particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland. Scientists have proposed certain celestial phenomena, such as black holes or supernovae, as origins, but no one has confirmed this conclusively.



IHEP
China's high altitude observatory will have four different arrays to detect γ- and cosmic rays.



--> Chinese mountain observatory to probe cosmic-ray origins : Nature News & Comment

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Paper test determines blood type in 30 seconds: study *
Source: Xinhua | 2017-03-16 08:11:07 | Editor: huaxia




Image of a new paper blood test that determines both forward (F) and reverse (R) blood types at the same time. (Xinhua/Credit: H. Zhang et al., Science Translational Medicine)

WASHINGTON, March 15 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers said Wednesday they have developed a cheap but accurate and easy-to-use paper test that can determine a patient's blood type in as fast as 30 seconds.

In a study published in the U.S. journal Science Translational Medicine, Hong Zhang and his colleagues from China's Third Military Medical University said there is a need to develop "a simple and economical strategy" for fast blood grouping.

That's because conventional approaches, dominated by microplate or gel-column tests, are "encumbered by long turnaround times, labor-intensive operation, and technical training requirements."

Unlike conventional methods, the new paper-based test, however, classified samples into the common ABO and Rh blood groups in less than 30 seconds, Zhang said.

To create the test, the researchers took advantage of chemical reactions between blood serum proteins and a widely-available dye called bromocreosol green.

Each test paper strip was also equipped with antibodies that recognized different blood type markers, such as A or B antigens, which can be found on the surface of red blood cells.

When a drop of blood was applied, the results appeared as visual color changes in the observation window of the paper strip: teal if a blood group antigen was present in a sample and brown if not.

The presence of A or B antigens or both indicates a patient's blood type is A, or B, or AB, while the absence of both A and B antigens indicates blood type O, Zhang said.

The paper-based test was also able to detect antibodies in blood plasma, which can help determine a patient's blood type in full details and only took about two minutes to complete.

After analyzing 3,550 clinical blood samples, the test demonstrated more than a 99.9 percent accuracy rate, and the only inconsistencies occurred in trials with highly uncommon blood types.

"This assay not only provides a new strategy for blood grouping but can also be used in time- and resource-limited situations, such as war zones, in remote areas, and during emergencies," said the study,

"Characterized by an intensified and streamlined workflow capability, the proposed blood-grouping assay may be further developed into highly compact and fully automatic platforms that are highly efficient and economical, making large-scale manufacturing possible."

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Dungeness

JSCh said:


> *Paper test determines blood type in 30 seconds: study *
> Source: Xinhua | 2017-03-16 08:11:07 | Editor: huaxia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Image of a new paper blood test that determines both forward (F) and reverse (R) blood types at the same time. (Xinhua/Credit: H. Zhang et al., Science Translational Medicine)
> 
> WASHINGTON, March 15 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers said Wednesday they have developed a cheap but accurate and easy-to-use paper test that can determine a patient's blood type in as fast as 30 seconds.
> 
> In a study published in the U.S. journal Science Translational Medicine, Hong Zhang and his colleagues from China's Third Military Medical University said there is a need to develop "a simple and economical strategy" for fast blood grouping.
> 
> That's because conventional approaches, dominated by microplate or gel-column tests, are "encumbered by long turnaround times, labor-intensive operation, and technical training requirements."
> 
> Unlike conventional methods, the new paper-based test, however, classified samples into the common ABO and Rh blood groups in less than 30 seconds, Zhang said.
> 
> To create the test, the researchers took advantage of chemical reactions between blood serum proteins and a widely-available dye called bromocreosol green.
> 
> Each test paper strip was also equipped with antibodies that recognized different blood type markers, such as A or B antigens, which can be found on the surface of red blood cells.
> 
> When a drop of blood was applied, the results appeared as visual color changes in the observation window of the paper strip: teal if a blood group antigen was present in a sample and brown if not.
> 
> The presence of A or B antigens or both indicates a patient's blood type is A, or B, or AB, while the absence of both A and B antigens indicates blood type O, Zhang said.
> 
> The paper-based test was also able to detect antibodies in blood plasma, which can help determine a patient's blood type in full details and only took about two minutes to complete.
> 
> After analyzing 3,550 clinical blood samples, the test demonstrated more than a 99.9 percent accuracy rate, and the only inconsistencies occurred in trials with highly uncommon blood types.
> 
> "This assay not only provides a new strategy for blood grouping but can also be used in time- and resource-limited situations, such as war zones, in remote areas, and during emergencies," said the study,
> 
> "Characterized by an intensified and streamlined workflow capability, the proposed blood-grouping assay may be further developed into highly compact and fully automatic platforms that are highly efficient and economical, making large-scale manufacturing possible."




Are they the first to come up with this idea?


----------



## JSCh

Dungeness said:


> Are they the first to come up with this idea?


Yes, I would have expect that to be the case.


*Paper: *
Hong Zhang, Xiaopei Qiu, Yurui Zou1, Yanyao Ye, Chao Qi, Lingyun Zou, Xiang Yang, Ke Yang, Yuanfeng Zhu, Yongjun Yang, Yang Zhou and Yang Luo. "A dye-assisted paper-based point-of-care assay for fast and reliable blood grouping". _Science Translational Medicine _(2017). DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.aaf9209

*Finding the right type*
Blood type matching is important for pregnancy, blood transfusion, and bone marrow transplantation. Zhang _et al._ developed a blood typing assay based on the color change that occurs when a common pH indicator dye reacts with blood. Red blood cells (RBCs) and plasma were separated from small volumes of whole, uncentrifuged blood samples using antibodies immobilized on paper test strips. The assays performed forward grouping (detecting A and/or B antigens on RBCs) and reverse grouping (monitoring the agglutination between RBCs and anti-A and/or anti-B antibodies in plasma) within 2 min and could also perform Rhesus and rare blood typing. A machine-learning algorithm grouped human blood samples automatically on the basis of spectral analysis of the colorimetric assay readouts. This economical and robust assay is useful for time- and resource-limited environments.

*Abstract*
Fast and simultaneous forward and reverse blood grouping has long remained elusive. Forward blood grouping detects antigens on red blood cells, whereas reverse grouping identifies specific antibodies present in plasma. We developed a paper-based assay using immobilized antibodies and bromocresol green dye for rapid and reliable blood grouping, where dye-assisted color changes corresponding to distinct blood components provide a visual readout. ABO antigens and five major Rhesus antigens could be detected within 30 s, and simultaneous forward and reverse ABO blood grouping using small volumes (100 μl) of whole blood was achieved within 2 min through on-chip plasma separation without centrifugation. A machine-learning method was developed to classify the spectral plots corresponding to dye-based color changes, which enabled reproducible automatic grouping. Using optimized operating parameters, the dye-assisted paper assay exhibited comparable accuracy and reproducibility to the classical gel-card assays in grouping 3550 human blood samples. When translated to the assembly line and low-cost manufacturing, the proposed approach may be developed into a cost-effective and robust universal blood-grouping platform.​
*****###*****​*A new test can detect your blood type with color-changing paper *
_It could be crucial in emergency situations and remote areas_

By Claire Maldarelli posted Mar 15th, 2017 at 4:41pm




H. Zhang et al, Science Translational Medicine 2017​The paper turns teal or brown, depending on whether the right combination of antigens and antibodies are present.


Knowing a person’s blood type is crucial in medicine. If a traumatic injury leaves you in need of a donor's blood, an infusion from the wrong blood type can result in a life-threatening reaction. But not everyone knows their blood type off the top of their head (I don’t, and I am a self-proclaimed hypochondriac). Blood typing is typically a lengthy process that requires a lab and all the equipment that comes with it. But in a report out this week in the journal _Science Translational Medicine_, researchers have come up with a better method: A paper-based test that identifies a person’s type with just a few drops of blood. They say this test could be most helpful in emergency and remote areas, where conventional blood typing isn’t feasible.

Traditional blood typing requires the use of a centrifuge, which spins the blood and separates it into its different components. Since most remote locations don’t have this type of equipment, the holy grail of blood type detection has been to design a process that doesn’t need a centrifuge.

The researchers worked around the need for a lab by finding a common dye—bromocresol green—that interacts with blood. What makes people have different blood types—A, B, AB, and O (as well as some other rare types)—is that each has different antigens and antibodies. Antigens are specialized proteins that sit on the outside of red blood cells, and antibodies are proteins that your body produces to fend off invaders. If a person has blood type A, they will have A-type antigens and B-type antibodies. The opposite is true for people with blood type A.

The device looks like a long thermometer with two ends. One the left end the user would place a solution containing antibody A and on the right end she would place a solution with antibody B. Then a drop of blood would be placed in the center, followed by a drop of the dye. The solution would travel down the paper and reach both antibody solutions. If the blood type was A, then the left solution—with a combination of antibody A, antigen A, and dye—would turn brown, and the right solution—with a combination of antibody B, antigen A, and dye—would turn teal. If the blood type were B, the left solution would be teal and the right solution would be brown. Type AB, in which both antigens are found on red blood cells, would turn both solutions teal, and type O, with no antigens at all, would turn both solutions brown.

The color change happens within 30 seconds, which is much faster than traditional testing which takes hours or days in a lab. The researchers tested 3,550 blood samples and had an accuracy rate of 99.9 percent. Further, because the result relies on a simple color change (which people who have red-green color blindness can also detect), it's easy for first responders or people in remote areas to use.

While the results seem promising, the work is still in its proof-of-concept stage. More testing is needed to ensure the test can hold up in a variety of settings. The researchers also want to expand its ability to identify rarer blood types, or ones where the interaction between the antigens and the antibodies isn’t as strong. The current test also can’t distinguish blood from other fluids, which could contain antigens that produce color changes. Nevertheless, if this test makes it out into the real world, it could be a game-changer for remote or point-of-care medicine.



A new test can detect your blood type with color-changing paper | Popular Science

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## Dungeness

JSCh said:


> Yes, I would have expect that to be the case.
> 
> 
> *Paper: *
> Hong Zhang, Xiaopei Qiu, Yurui Zou1, Yanyao Ye, Chao Qi, Lingyun Zou, Xiang Yang, Ke Yang, Yuanfeng Zhu, Yongjun Yang, Yang Zhou and Yang Luo. "A dye-assisted paper-based point-of-care assay for fast and reliable blood grouping". _Science Translational Medicine _(2017). DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.aaf9209
> 
> *Finding the right type*
> Blood type matching is important for pregnancy, blood transfusion, and bone marrow transplantation. Zhang _et al._ developed a blood typing assay based on the color change that occurs when a common pH indicator dye reacts with blood. Red blood cells (RBCs) and plasma were separated from small volumes of whole, uncentrifuged blood samples using antibodies immobilized on paper test strips. The assays performed forward grouping (detecting A and/or B antigens on RBCs) and reverse grouping (monitoring the agglutination between RBCs and anti-A and/or anti-B antibodies in plasma) within 2 min and could also perform Rhesus and rare blood typing. A machine-learning algorithm grouped human blood samples automatically on the basis of spectral analysis of the colorimetric assay readouts. This economical and robust assay is useful for time- and resource-limited environments.
> 
> *Abstract*
> Fast and simultaneous forward and reverse blood grouping has long remained elusive. Forward blood grouping detects antigens on red blood cells, whereas reverse grouping identifies specific antibodies present in plasma. We developed a paper-based assay using immobilized antibodies and bromocresol green dye for rapid and reliable blood grouping, where dye-assisted color changes corresponding to distinct blood components provide a visual readout. ABO antigens and five major Rhesus antigens could be detected within 30 s, and simultaneous forward and reverse ABO blood grouping using small volumes (100 μl) of whole blood was achieved within 2 min through on-chip plasma separation without centrifugation. A machine-learning method was developed to classify the spectral plots corresponding to dye-based color changes, which enabled reproducible automatic grouping. Using optimized operating parameters, the dye-assisted paper assay exhibited comparable accuracy and reproducibility to the classical gel-card assays in grouping 3550 human blood samples. When translated to the assembly line and low-cost manufacturing, the proposed approach may be developed into a cost-effective and robust universal blood-grouping platform.​
> *****###*****​*A new test can detect your blood type with color-changing paper *
> _It could be crucial in emergency situations and remote areas_
> 
> By Claire Maldarelli posted Mar 15th, 2017 at 4:41pm
> 
> 
> 
> H. Zhang et al, Science Translational Medicine 2017​The paper turns teal or brown, depending on whether the right combination of antigens and antibodies are present.
> 
> 
> Knowing a person’s blood type is crucial in medicine. If a traumatic injury leaves you in need of a donor's blood, an infusion from the wrong blood type can result in a life-threatening reaction. But not everyone knows their blood type off the top of their head (I don’t, and I am a self-proclaimed hypochondriac). Blood typing is typically a lengthy process that requires a lab and all the equipment that comes with it. But in a report out this week in the journal _Science Translational Medicine_, researchers have come up with a better method: A paper-based test that identifies a person’s type with just a few drops of blood. They say this test could be most helpful in emergency and remote areas, where conventional blood typing isn’t feasible.
> 
> Traditional blood typing requires the use of a centrifuge, which spins the blood and separates it into its different components. Since most remote locations don’t have this type of equipment, the holy grail of blood type detection has been to design a process that doesn’t need a centrifuge.
> 
> The researchers worked around the need for a lab by finding a common dye—bromocresol green—that interacts with blood. What makes people have different blood types—A, B, AB, and O (as well as some other rare types)—is that each has different antigens and antibodies. Antigens are specialized proteins that sit on the outside of red blood cells, and antibodies are proteins that your body produces to fend off invaders. If a person has blood type A, they will have A-type antigens and B-type antibodies. The opposite is true for people with blood type A.
> 
> The device looks like a long thermometer with two ends. One the left end the user would place a solution containing antibody A and on the right end she would place a solution with antibody B. Then a drop of blood would be placed in the center, followed by a drop of the dye. The solution would travel down the paper and reach both antibody solutions. If the blood type was A, then the left solution—with a combination of antibody A, antigen A, and dye—would turn brown, and the right solution—with a combination of antibody B, antigen A, and dye—would turn teal. If the blood type were B, the left solution would be teal and the right solution would be brown. Type AB, in which both antigens are found on red blood cells, would turn both solutions teal, and type O, with no antigens at all, would turn both solutions brown.
> 
> The color change happens within 30 seconds, which is much faster than traditional testing which takes hours or days in a lab. The researchers tested 3,550 blood samples and had an accuracy rate of 99.9 percent. Further, because the result relies on a simple color change (which people who have red-green color blindness can also detect), it's easy for first responders or people in remote areas to use.
> 
> While the results seem promising, the work is still in its proof-of-concept stage. More testing is needed to ensure the test can hold up in a variety of settings. The researchers also want to expand its ability to identify rarer blood types, or ones where the interaction between the antigens and the antibodies isn’t as strong. The current test also can’t distinguish blood from other fluids, which could contain antigens that produce color changes. Nevertheless, if this test makes it out into the real world, it could be a game-changer for remote or point-of-care medicine.
> 
> 
> 
> A new test can detect your blood type with color-changing paper | Popular Science



It is going to be a really big deal if they are the first.

Did some digging, and apparently some Americans reported their trial in 2010 on Science Daily, not sure if they actually come to any conclusion.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100602121200.htm

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Watch a special paper tool that can determine your blood type in seconds*

By Lindzi Wessel
Mar. 15, 2017 , 2:00 PM

Knowing a patient’s blood type is critical before a transfusion, but current techniques are time consuming and require expensive equipment. Now, researchers have proposed a new paper-based method for quickly and inexpensively determining blood type, published today in Science Translational Medicine. The method relies on a special dye that shows up brown when mixed with whole blood, but turns teal when mixed with plasma that has been separated from red blood cells. To make that separation happen, scientists employed antibodies that force red blood cells to clump. Blood cells are dotted with markers that can be recognized by antibodies produced by the immune system—type A blood has A markers, type B has B markers, type AB has both, and type O has neither. To test the blood, researchers place a droplet in the center of a paper-based chip that holds anti-A antibodies to the left, and anti-B antibodies to the right. As blood absorbs and moves through the paper membrane toward the ends of the chip, it hits the regions of antibodies, clumping or not, depending on what markers it carries. If the red blood cells clump, only the plasma will make it through, causing the dye to turn teal and indicating that the corresponding marker (A on the left and B on the right) is present. If the marker isn’t there, the blood won’t clump and the dye will be brown. The process takes about 30 seconds and can be modified for rare blood types. The researchers hope the tests will be useful in regions with limited resources and during emergencies.


Watch a special paper tool that can determine your blood type in seconds | Science | AAAS

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*China’s first wastewater plant using radiation opens in Zhejiang*
By Zhang Huan (People's Daily Online) 15:50, March 16, 2017


Electron beam technology is used to clean industrial wastewater at a textile dyeing facility in Jinhua city, 300 kilometers south of Shanghai. (Photo: Nuclear and Energy Technology Institute, Tsinghua University, Beijing.)

Recently, China debuted its first wastewater treatment facility to use electron beams, ushering in a new era for radiation technology, according to an IAEA press realease.

Bacteria are the workhorses of wastewater treatment, as they digest and break down pollutants. Wastewater from textile dyeing, however, contains molecules that cannot be treated with bacteria. To color textiles, compounds with large, long and complex chains are used, meaning that wastewater from the industry can contain more than 70 complex, hard-to-degrade chemicals.

Nevertheless, by irradiating the waste that flows into the water supply using electron beams, scientists are able to break these complex chemicals into smaller molecules, which can in turn be treated and removed using normal biological processes. Irradiation is done using short-lived reactive radicals than can interact with and break down a wide range of pollutants.

“The radiation treatment technology does not add additional chemical reagents, and is listed as the main research direction of Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy of the Century by [the International Atomic Energy Agency], as it offers a rapid response and high efficiency,” said Yu Jiang, general manager of CGN Dasheng Electron Accelerator Technology Co. Ltd., which cooperates on the project with the Nuclear and Energy Technology Institute at Beijing's Tsinghua University.

“Despite advances in conventional wastewater treatment technology in recent years, radiation remains the only technology that can treat the most stubborn colorants in wastewater,” said Sunil Sabharwal, Radiation Processing Specialist at the IAEA. “The problem is that the technology exists in developed countries, while most of the need now is in the developing world.”

To bridge the knowledge gap, the IAEA ran a coordinated research project on the technology, including its transfer to several countries, mostly in Asia.

At present, the new plant, which is located in the city of Jinhua, 300 kilometers south of Shanghai, treats 1,500 cubic meters of wastewater on a daily basis. Chinese researchers are also considering the use of electron beam technology to treat residue from pharmaceutical plants, paper mills, chemical plants and other industrial parks with complex water treatment needs.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*China creates world's first coal-to-ethanol production line*
By Zhang Zhihao | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2017-03-17 16:06

China has successfully created the world's first production line to turn coal into ethanol, or drinking alcohol, the Chinese Academy of Sciences said on Friday.

Created by Shaanxi Yanchang Petroleum and the academy's Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics in Liaoning province, the production line went into operation in January and has the capacity to make more than 100,000 metric tons of pure ethanol every year, according to Liu Zhongmin, the institute's deputy director.

By 2020, China will build a factory capable of producing 1 million tons of ethanol each year using the same technology, he said.

The country currently produces 7 million tons of ethanol each year using other methods, which can "hardly satisfy" its industrial and energy needs, according to Liu.

"Most countries produce ethanol using food, such as corn or sugar cane, but this is not a viable option for China given its massive population," he said.

"By turning China's abundant coal resources into ethanol, the technology will help safeguard our energy and food security,"

Moreover, ethanol is a green fuel and versatile ingredient. "Utilizing it could reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, and make our industrial production and energy structure more environmental friendly," Liu said.

In addition to alcoholic beverages, ethanol can be used to produce thousands of everyday products from plastics to detergents. It can also replace more toxic ingredients, such as methanol, during industrial production.

Other uses include mixing it with petroleum to increase its fuel efficiency and reduce pollution. An abundant supply of ethanol would also make ethanol-fueled vehicles more viable, Liu said.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

Dungeness said:


> It is going to be a really big deal if they are the first.
> 
> Did some digging, and apparently some Americans reported their trial in 2010 on Science Daily, not sure if they actually come to any conclusion.
> 
> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100602121200.htm


The full paper is here -->

A dye-assisted paper-based point-of-care assay for fast and reliable blood grouping | Science Translational Medicine

excerpt from the paper,

Paper-based assays, which are rapid, convenient, and inexpensive, hold promise for point-of-care (POC) blood grouping with a readout visible to the naked eye (_11_, _12_). However, the previously reported approaches depend on either the recognition of red blood cell (RBC) clots (_13_, _14_) or the distance gap of wicking between RBCs and plasma after separation (_15_, _16_), which prevents accurate discrimination between nonblood solutions that resemble type O blood because specific RBC membrane antigens are absent in both types of samples.

.....

Reference 13, 14, 15 and 16 from top to bottom.


T. Arbatan, L. Li, J. Tian, W. Shen, Liquid marbles as micro-bioreactors for rapid blood typing. Adv. Healthc. Mater. 1, 80–83 (2012).
M. Li, J. Tian, M. Al-Tamimi, W. Shen, Paper-based blood typing device that reports patient’s blood type "in writing". Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Engl. 51, 5497–5501 (2012).
M. S. Khan, G. Thouas, W. Shen, G. Whyte, G. Garnier, Paper diagnostic for instantaneous blood typing. Anal. Chem. 82, 4158–4164 (2010).
D. R. Ballerini, X. Li, W. Shen, An inexpensive thread-based system for simple and rapid blood grouping. Anal. Bioanal. Chem. 399, 1869–1875 (2011).
Paper no. 15 is the one reported in Science Daily. You will notice W. Shen is in that papers and is the corresponding author for all later paper. He/She is from Monash U and all the researcher are from Australia.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## Dungeness

JSCh said:


> The full paper is here -->
> 
> A dye-assisted paper-based point-of-care assay for fast and reliable blood grouping | Science Translational Medicine
> 
> excerpt from the paper,
> 
> Paper-based assays, which are rapid, convenient, and inexpensive, hold promise for point-of-care (POC) blood grouping with a readout visible to the naked eye (_11_, _12_). However, the previously reported approaches depend on either the recognition of red blood cell (RBC) clots (_13_, _14_) or the distance gap of wicking between RBCs and plasma after separation (_15_, _16_), which prevents accurate discrimination between nonblood solutions that resemble type O blood because specific RBC membrane antigens are absent in both types of samples.
> 
> .....
> 
> Reference 13, 14, 15 and 16 from top to bottom.
> 
> 
> T. Arbatan, L. Li, J. Tian, W. Shen, Liquid marbles as micro-bioreactors for rapid blood typing. Adv. Healthc. Mater. 1, 80–83 (2012).
> M. Li, J. Tian, M. Al-Tamimi, W. Shen, Paper-based blood typing device that reports patient’s blood type "in writing". Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Engl. 51, 5497–5501 (2012).
> M. S. Khan, G. Thouas, W. Shen, G. Whyte, G. Garnier, Paper diagnostic for instantaneous blood typing. Anal. Chem. 82, 4158–4164 (2010).
> D. R. Ballerini, X. Li, W. Shen, An inexpensive thread-based system for simple and rapid blood grouping. Anal. Bioanal. Chem. 399, 1869–1875 (2011).
> Paper no. 15 is the one reported in Science Daily. You will notice W. Shen is in that papers and is the corresponding author for all later paper. He/She is from Monash U and all the researcher are from Australia.




It looks like the idea itself is not new and others tried before, but the Chinese team is the only one that comes close enough to make it commercially feasible. Good Job.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

Dungeness said:


> It looks like the idea itself is not new and others tried before, but the Chinese team is the only one that comes close enough to make it commercially feasible. Good Job.



It is more like being an increment on the present technology. 

Also, I don't understand, why did they publish it when they could have patented it?


----------



## KediKesenFare3

Dungeness said:


> It looks like the idea itself is not new and others tried before, but the Chinese team is the only one that comes close enough to make it commercially feasible. Good Job.


You are right. The concept is nothing new or special but I guess the Chinese made it for an affordable price. 
https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/turk...f-detecting-cancer-with-drop-of-blood.475234/

Congratulations.


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese hackers win 2017 world hacking contest *
By Xie Zhenqi
2017-03-18 14:00 GMT+8

‍The three-day Pwn2Own 2017 World Hacking Contest has just finished. Qihoo's 360 Security team from China ranked first among the competitors with a total score of 63, receiving the “Master of Pwn” championship cup.

Pwn2Own, hosted by the Pentagon's network security service Zero Day Initiative (ZDI), is a worldwide computer hacking contest held annually at the CanSecWest Applied Security Conference in Vancouver, Canada. Pwn2Own 2017 is held from March 14 to 17.

The scale this year is the largest ever since the game began in 2007, with the largest number of registrations, the most entries and the highest prizes in history. 






360 Security team. /360 Photo​
Teams from the US, Germany, China and more participated in the game, aiming to hack the latest products from Microsoft, Google, Apple, Adobe, VMware and other technology companies. Contestants are challenged to exploit widely used software and mobile devices with previously unknown vulnerabilities. 

The 360 Security team successfully exploited MacOS, Safari, Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash and Windows 10 during the first two days. On the last day, it chose to challenge the so-called "hardest in history" serial hacking, and they managed to take down Microsoft Edge and escape a virtual machine VMware to boot in only 90 seconds, achieving a score of 27, the highest in history on a single entry. 

Microsoft Edge is a type confusion in the Windows kernel, and an uninitialized buffer in VMware Workstation for a complete virtual machine escape.






List of standing ranked by total scores received after day three. /360 Photo​
Hacking contests have long been dominated by Western teams, but Chinese teams start to outperform in recent years. According to ZDI, the 360 Security team has been rewarded with a sum of more than 280,000 US dollars. The two other Chinese teams sent from Tencent Security and Chaitin Security received second and third place in the race. 

All purchased bugs were privately disclosed to the vendors. Pwn2Own will continue working with them as they develop security patches. 

The battle between cyber attack and defensive activities is endless, and only through constant innovation and improvements can experts explore the most effective security solutions.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Keel

JSCh said:


> *Chinese hackers win 2017 world hacking contest *
> By Xie Zhenqi
> 2017-03-18 14:00 GMT+8
> 
> ‍The three-day Pwn2Own 2017 World Hacking Contest has just finished. Qihoo's 360 Security team from China ranked first among the competitors with a total score of 63, receiving the “Master of Pwn” championship cup.
> 
> Pwn2Own, hosted by the Pentagon's network security service Zero Day Initiative (ZDI), is a worldwide computer hacking contest held annually at the CanSecWest Applied Security Conference in Vancouver, Canada. Pwn2Own 2017 is held from March 14 to 17.
> 
> The scale this year is the largest ever since the game began in 2007, with the largest number of registrations, the most entries and the highest prizes in history.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 360 Security team. /360 Photo​
> Teams from the US, Germany, China and more participated in the game, aiming to hack the latest products from Microsoft, Google, Apple, Adobe, VMware and other technology companies. Contestants are challenged to exploit widely used software and mobile devices with previously unknown vulnerabilities.
> 
> The 360 Security team successfully exploited MacOS, Safari, Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash and Windows 10 during the first two days. On the last day, it chose to challenge the so-called "hardest in history" serial hacking, and they managed to take down Microsoft Edge and escape a virtual machine VMware to boot in only 90 seconds, achieving a score of 27, the highest in history on a single entry.
> 
> Microsoft Edge is a type confusion in the Windows kernel, and an uninitialized buffer in VMware Workstation for a complete virtual machine escape.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> List of standing ranked by total scores received after day three. /360 Photo​
> Hacking contests have long been dominated by Western teams, but Chinese teams start to outperform in recent years. According to ZDI, the 360 Security team has been rewarded with a sum of more than 280,000 US dollars. The two other Chinese teams sent from Tencent Security and Chaitin Security received second and third place in the race.
> 
> All purchased bugs were privately disclosed to the vendors. Pwn2Own will continue working with them as they develop security patches.
> 
> The battle between cyber attack and defensive activities is endless, and only through constant innovation and improvements can experts explore the most effective security solutions.



Congrats! 
So a clean sweep!

"_*The two other Chinese teams sent from Tencent Security and Chaitin Security received second and third place in the race*. "_

Chinese programmers continue to cement our position among the world's elites by producing top results consistently ... not by bragging!






Again well done Chinese programmers!
Though we did not do too well at the 2017 All-England; but the following should be a consolation wining 4 out of 5 titles and we just keep moving on

http://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1048317/lin-wins-all-chinese-final-at-bwf-swiss-open

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

Keel said:


> Congrats!
> So a clean sweep!
> 
> "_*The two other Chinese teams sent from Tencent Security and Chaitin Security received second and third place in the race*. "_
> 
> Chinese programmers continue to cement our position among the world's elites by producing top results consistently ... not by bragging!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Again well done Chinese programmers!
> Though we did not do too well at the 2017 All-England; but the following should be a consolation wining 4 out of 5 titles and we just keep moving on
> 
> http://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1048317/lin-wins-all-chinese-final-at-bwf-swiss-open




Why are you bringing badminton in here? 

And, Swiss is actually a very small tournament. 
You won 4 titles there because you showed up, no other strong players were there.


----------



## shadows888

Bussard Ramjet said:


> Why are you bringing badminton in here?
> 
> And, Swiss is actually a very small tournament.
> You won 4 titles there because you showed up, no other strong players were there.



well, i guess showing up is half the battle. that's why Americans are TWO TIMES BACK TO BACK WORLD WAR CHAMPS!!


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists use remote sensing technology to detect underground Great Wall remains*
(People's Daily Online) 16:37, March 20, 2017





(Photo/WeChat of RADI)​
More than 1,000 years ago, several dotted, flake-shaped sections of the Great Wall stood in Xinjiang, protecting the border and the trade road. Recently, researchers from the China Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth (RADI) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) analyzed the distribution of ancient Great Wall sections in Xinjiang using remote sensing technology. They also used the technology to "restore" the wall's appearance.





(Photo/WeChat of RADI)​
Remote sensing archaeology entails the use of electromagnetic waves and other sensors for long-distance observation and detection of surface and underground remains. Aerospace development, and especially the increased resolution of remote sensing satellites, has provided greater precision and a more efficient platform for remote sensing archaeology.

Nie Yueping, a researcher at RADI, explained that electromagnetic waves produced by vegetation, soil and geomorphology are different from those of historical sites. Such differences cannot be seen by the naked eye. However, special equipment can obtain electromagnetic wave data via remote sensing platforms such as space shuttles, satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles. Archaeological information then can be extracted from the data through computer processing.





(Photo/WeChat of RADI)​
So far, more than 600 ancient remnants of the Great Wall have been found. Yu Lijun, an associate researcher at RADI, said that the team has outlined a Great Wall resource distribution line, and are working to "restore" images of the ancient Great Wall. Through virtual reality technology, people may soon be able to take an online tour of the remains in Xinjiang.

Compared with traditional archaeological methods, remote sensing has many advantages. With the popularization of satellite technology, remote sensing data can be obtained under all weather conditions. Moreover, the cost of using the technology is relatively low, and causes little damage to ancient remains.





(Photo/WeChat of RADI)​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Keel

shadows888 said:


> well, i guess showing up is half the battle. that's why Americans are TWO TIMES BACK TO BACK WORLD WAR CHAMPS!!



*U.S. developers have the numbers, but China and Russia have the skills*

*A report from HackerRank finds that while the U.S. and India have lots of developers, Chinese and Russian programmers are the most talented*



By Paul Krill

Editor at Large, InfoWorld | AUG 29, 2016






Credit: Thinkstock

While the United States and India may have lots of programmers, China and Russia have the most talented developers according to a study by HackerRank, which administers coding tests to developers worldwide.

The study looked at the results of 1.4 million of HackerRank's coding test submissions, called "challenges," during the last few years. *"According to our data, China and Russia score as the most talented developers. Chinese programmers outscore all other countries in mathematics, functional programming, and data structures challenges, while Russians dominate in algorithms, the most popular and most competitive arena," said Ritika Trikha, a blogger at HackerRank.*

*The United States and India provide the majority of competitors on HackerRank but only manage to rank 28th and 31st, respectively. "If we held a hacking Olympics today, our data suggests that China would win the gold, Russia would take home a silver, and Poland would nab the bronze," Trikha said. "Though they certainly deserve credit for making a showing, the United States and India have some work ahead of them before they make it into the top 25."*

HackerRank's coding challenges cover aspects of computing ranging from languages to algorithms, security and distributed systems. Developers are scored based on a combination of accuracy and speed. The algorithms category has nearly 40 percent of developers competing, featuring tests on sorting data, dynamic programming, keyword searches and other logic-based tasks. Following algorithms were Java and data structure tests, with 10 percent of developers participating. Distributed systems and security were the least popular tests, although thousands still took them.

To determine which nation had the highest-scoring programmers, HackerRank looked at each country's average score across domains. Data was restricted to the top 50 countries with the most developers on HackerRank. *Following China and Russia with the top developers were Poland, Switzerland, Hungary, Japan, Taiwan, France, Czech Republic, and Italy.*

"*Since China scored the highest, Chinese developers sit at the top of the list with a score of 100*," Trikha said. *The 100 score does not mean Chinese developer had a perfect score on the tests but represents the country's being first in the rankings. *"But China only won by a hair. Russia scored 99.9 out of 100, while Poland and Switzerland round out the top rankings with scores near 98. Pakistan scores only 57.4 out of 100 on the index, (ranking 50th)."

Poland was tops in Java testing, France led in C++, Hong Kong in Python, Japan in artificial intelligence, and Switzerland in databases. Ukrainian programmers led in security, while Finland was top in Ruby coding challenges.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/31...ers-but-china-and-russia-have-the-skills.html








https://blog.hackerrank.com/which-country-would-win-in-the-programming-olympics

*Published*
*August 25, 2016*

*in Programming*
*Which Country Would Win in the Programming Olympics?*
*5.5k*
Shares






_Update: This article has been picked up by the Washington Post, Business Insider, eWeek and InfoWorld._

Which countries have the best programmers in the world?

Many would assume it’s the United States. After all, the United States is the home of programming luminaries such as Bill Gates, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Donald Knuth. But then again, India is known as the fastest growingconcentration of programmers in the world and the hackers from Russia are apparently pretty effective. Is there any way to determine which country is best?

We decided to examine our data to answer this question: which countries do the best at programming challenges on HackerRank?

At HackerRank, we regularly post tens of thousands of new coding challenges for developers to improve their coding skills. Hundreds of thousands of developers from all over the world come to participate in challenges in a variety of languages and knowledge domains, from Python to algorithms to security to distributed systems. Our community is growing everyday, with over 1.5 million developers ranked.
Developers are scored and ranked based on a combination of their accuracy and speed.

According to our data, China and Russia score as the most talented developers. Chinese programmers outscore all other countries in mathematics, functional programming, and data structures challenges, while Russians dominate in algorithms, the most popular and most competitive arena. While the United States and India provide the majority of competitors on HackerRank, they only manage to rank 28th and 31st.



***We began our analysis by looking at which test types are most popular among developers. HackerRank developers can choose to participate in 15 different domains, but some are more popular than others. The following table shows the proportion of completed tests that come from each domain.








The most popular domain by far is algorithms, with nearly 40% all developers competing. This domain includes challenges on sorting data, dynamic programming, and searching for keywords and other logic-based tasks. For algorithms tests, developers can use whichever language they choose, which may partially explain why it’s so popular. Algorithms are also crucial for coding interviews, so it could explain why more coders would practice algorithm challenges. At a distant second and third, Java and data structures coming in at about 10% each. Distributed systems and security are our least popular tests, though we still receive thousands of completed challenges in those areas.

So based on these tests, which country has the programmers that score the highest?

In order to find out, we looked at each country’s average score across all domains. We standardized the scores for each domain (by subtracting the mean from each score and then dividing by the standard deviation; also known as a z-score) before finding the average. This allows us to make an apples-to-apple comparison of individual scores across different domains, even if some domains are more challenging than others. We then converted these z-scores into a 1-100 scale for easy interpretation.

*We restricted the data to the 50 countries with the most developers on HackerRank. Here’s what we found:*







Since China scored the highest, Chinese developers sit at the top of the list with a score of 100. But China only won by a hair. Russia scored 99.9 out of 100, while Poland and Switzerland round out the top rankings with scores near 98. Pakistan scores only 57.4 out of 100 on the index.

The two countries that contribute the greatest number of developers, India and the United States don’t place in the top half. India ranks 31st, with an overall score of 76 and the United States falls in at 28th, with a score of 78.


Though China outperformed everyone else on average, they didn’t dominate across the board. Which country produces the best developers in particular skill areas? Let’s take a look at the top countries in each domain.





China did quite well in a number of domains. Chinese developers beat out the competition in data structures, mathematics, and functional programming. On the other hand, Russia dominates in algorithms, the domain with the most popular challenges. Coming next, Poland and China nearly tie for second and third place, respectively.
What explains the different performance levels of different countries across domains? One possible explanation is that Russians are just more likely to participate in algorithms and therefore get more practice in that domain, while Chinese developers are disproportionately drawn to data structures.

Software engineer Shimi Zhang is one such programmer who ranked among the top 10 programmers in our Functional Programming domain. He hails from China’s city of Chongqing, and moved to the US just two years ago to get his master’s in computer science before coming to work at HackerRank.
*
On the greatness of Chinese programmers, from top-rankedChinese competitive programmer Shimi Zhang:*

In universities and colleges, education resources are relatively fewer in comparison with many other countries, so students have less choices in their paths to programming. Many great students end up obsessed with competitive programming since it’s one of the few paths.



*China even has a big population of students who started programming in middle school and high school. They’re trying to solve some hard challenges only few people in this world can solve.


They even host national programming contests for young programmers, like NOIp (national olympiad in informatics in provinces) andNOI (national olympiad in informatics). And after CTSC (China Team Selection Contest), 4 geniuses go to IOI (international olympiad in informatics), and at least 3 have won a gold medal this year. This has been the trend for nearly 10 years.*


*It’s an even greater achievement considering a special rule: if you had won a gold medal once, you won’t be selected for future IOI team, that means, most IOI team member from China won gold medal with their first try.*


Next up, we also compared how the developers in each country split their time up amongst different challenge types and then compared these domain preferences to those of the average HackerRank user. This allowed us to figure out which countries are more likely than the rest to take a test in a particular domain—and which countries are less likely than the rest.





As the table above shows, China participated in mathematics competitions at a much higher rate than would be expected given the average developer’s preferences. This might help explain how they were able to secure the top rank in that domain. Likewise, Czech developers showed an outsized preference for shell competitions, a domain in which they ranked number one.

But beyond these two examples, there seems to be little relationship between a country’s preference for a particular challenge type and its performance in that domain. We also wanted to know whether countries have specific preferences when it comes to programming languages. Are Indians more interested in C++? Do Mexicans code in Ruby?

The following chart breaks down the proportion of tests taken in each language by country.

*

*

In general, developers of different nationalities participate in Java challenges more than tests in any other programming language (with a few notable exceptions like Malaysia and Pakistan, where users prefer C++, and Taiwan, where Python is king). Sri Lanka comes in at number one in its preference for Java. India, which supplies a big portion of HackerRank developers, ranks 8th.




*** While Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nigeria are currently toward the bottom of the hacker rankings, they can look to Switzerland’s steadfast developers for inspiration. When a HackerRank developer gives up on a challenge before making any progress, they earn a score of zero. Switzerland has the lowest percentage of nil scoring users, which make Swiss coders the Most Tenacious Programmers in the World.








***Every day, developers around the world compete with each other to become the next Gates or Knuth.


If we held a hacking Olympics today, our data suggests that China would win the gold, Russia would take home a silver, and Poland would nab the bronze. Though they certainly deserve credit for making a showing, the United States and India have some work ahead of them before they make it into the top 25.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Keel

https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/tencents-fine-art-wins-computer-go-uec-cup.484560/

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*Laser and navigation take the top prizes in technology awards*

2017-03-23 09:19

Shanghai Daily _Editor: Huang Mingrui_





_Award winners and representatives attend the meeting for Shanghai Science and Technology Awards. (Chen Zhengbao)_

Shanghai Science and Technology Awards — the city's highest awards for science and technology achievements — were handed to 265 projects and individuals yesterday.

For the first time, there were two winners of the top award, one involving a material developed for China's super laser facility, the other a new BeiDou location technology.

*Hu Lili, director of the R&D Center of High Power Laser Optical Components of the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, won the top prize for developing technologies for mass production of a large-size phosphate laser glass that can amplify the energy of a laser.*

Hu and his team spent 12 years developing key technologies for the full flow of mass production for "Nd-doped" phosphate glass, including continuous melting, fine annealing, cladding of the laser glass and high-accuracy testing.

The second top award winner is *Yu Wenxian*, professor of School of Electronic Information and Electrical Engineering of Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

He and his team have *made a series of breakthroughs on location applications to produce a satellite navigation system to make tracking more accurate.*

The technology developed has helped to create China's largest indoor map database, which is used by Internet companies including Tencent and the country's largest map service provider Amap.

"Most indoor map models still rely on manual data collection, which is of rather low efficiency," Yu said. "However, the demand for indoor maps is increasing, which requires making and updating the maps faster."

The international cooperation awards went to Michail Vladimirovich Ivanov from Russia and Jun Chen from the United States.

Zhang Jianhua, 45, from Shanghai University, is one of the 10 laureates of the Youth with Outstanding Science and Technology Contribution.

Cooperating with two local companies, her project on a manufacturing technique and application of the latest high resolution display technology also won the first prize of the Science and Technology Progress Awards.

The project has resolved several bottlenecks with the development of "AM OLED," a display technology used in devices including mobile phones and laptops.

"The companies need time to scale up the production and make it available for the public, while the researchers must go one step forward on the most frontier technology so that they can serve the industry at the best time," Zhang said.

Health and environmental protection projects were among the leading awards.

A physical therapy for patients with terminal pancreatic cancer through artery injection of chemo-medicine developed by Dr Li Maoquan from Shanghai No.10 People's Hospital has benefited more than 5,000 patients.

"The therapy has prolonged patients' survival period from 6.7 months to 13.8 months and improved their life quality," Li said.

http://www.ecns.cn/2017/03-23/250331.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

Volume 95 Issue 13 | p. 4 | News of The Week
Issue Date: March 27, 2017 | Web Date: March 22, 2017

*New process for generating hydrogen fuel*
_Catalyst produces hydrogen from methanol and water at relatively low temperatures_
By Stu Borman



Atomically dispersed Pt on MoC particles catalyzes the “reformation” of CH3OH and H2O to form H2. Reaction intermediates shown on particle surface. H is white, C is gray, O is red, Pt is blue, and Mo is cyan. 
Credit: Courtesy of Ding Ma

A sustainable, cleaner-burning alternative to gasoline could help shrink the carbon footprint of cars and trucks. One option is to use methanol by catalytically releasing hydrogen from the liquid to power a hydrogen fuel cell.

Ding Ma of Peking University, Beijing, and coworkers report a new catalyst to do so: atomically dispersed platinum over molybdenum carbide particles that drive the efficient and relatively low-temperature “reforming” of CH3OH and water to form H2 (_Nature_ 2017, DOI: 10.1038/nature21672).

The process is about five times as efficient as the previous H2-from-methanol champ, a ruthenium-catalyzed dehydrogenation developed by Matthias Beller of the University of Rostock and coworkers (_Nature_ 2013, DOI: 10.1038/nature11891).

The new Pt/MoC catalyst works at relatively low temperatures, 150 to 190 °C—cooler than the 200 °C or more traditionally used to reform CH3OH vapor, but considerably hotter than Beller’s process, which works at 65 to 95 °C. But the new process has advantages over the Beller technique: It avoids the use of caustic hydroxide, and the Pt/MoC catalyst is heterogeneous, which makes it cheaper and easier to recycle than the homogeneous ruthenium catalyst.

Ma calculates that a 50-L tank of CH3OH and catalyst with 6 to 10 g of Pt—about the weight of a wedding ring—could power a Toyota Mirai, a hydrogen fuel cell concept car, for about 690 km. The CH3OH would cost about $15 and the Pt about $320, but the catalyst is potentially recyclable.

Pt is relatively rare and expensive compared with other metal catalysts, but Ma points out that automobile catalytic converters now contain 1 to 4 g of recyclable noble metals, “so 8 g Pt is not a big number.”

Reaction engineer Dion Vlachos of the University of Delaware comments that the new process “has a technological edge in terms of reaction rate,” but improving long-term catalyst stability, developing means for catalyst regeneration, and finding alternatives to noble metals “are important future directions for widespread commercialization.”

Beller calls Ma’s catalyst “a major breakthrough,” noting that this type of catalyst might also be useful for other aqueous-phase reforming processes, such as those involving biowaste or ethanol.

Chemical & Engineering News
ISSN 0009-2347
Copyright © 2017 American Chemical Society

New process for generating hydrogen fuel | March 22, 2017 Issue - Vol. 95 Issue 13 | Chemical & Engineering News

Lili Lin, Wu Zhou, Rui Gao, Siyu Yao, Xiao Zhang, Wenqian Xu, Shijian Zheng, Zheng Jiang, Qiaolin Yu, Yong-Wang Li, Chuan Shi, Xiao-Dong Wen & Ding Ma. "Low-temperature hydrogen production from water and methanol using Pt/α-MoC catalysts". _Nature_ (2017). DOI: 10.1038/nature21672

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

JSCh said:


> Volume 95 Issue 13 | p. 4 | News of The Week
> Issue Date: March 27, 2017 | Web Date: March 22, 2017
> 
> *New process for generating hydrogen fuel*
> _Catalyst produces hydrogen from methanol and water at relatively low temperatures_
> By Stu Borman
> 
> 
> 
> Atomically dispersed Pt on MoC particles catalyzes the “reformation” of CH3OH and H2O to form H2. Reaction intermediates shown on particle surface. H is white, C is gray, O is red, Pt is blue, and Mo is cyan.
> Credit: Courtesy of Ding Ma
> 
> A sustainable, cleaner-burning alternative to gasoline could help shrink the carbon footprint of cars and trucks. One option is to use methanol by catalytically releasing hydrogen from the liquid to power a hydrogen fuel cell.
> 
> Ding Ma of Peking University, Beijing, and coworkers report a new catalyst to do so: atomically dispersed platinum over molybdenum carbide particles that drive the efficient and relatively low-temperature “reforming” of CH3OH and water to form H2 (_Nature_ 2017, DOI: 10.1038/nature21672).
> 
> The process is about five times as efficient as the previous H2-from-methanol champ, a ruthenium-catalyzed dehydrogenation developed by Matthias Beller of the University of Rostock and coworkers (_Nature_ 2013, DOI: 10.1038/nature11891).
> 
> The new Pt/MoC catalyst works at relatively low temperatures, 150 to 190 °C—cooler than the 200 °C or more traditionally used to reform CH3OH vapor, but considerably hotter than Beller’s process, which works at 65 to 95 °C. But the new process has advantages over the Beller technique: It avoids the use of caustic hydroxide, and the Pt/MoC catalyst is heterogeneous, which makes it cheaper and easier to recycle than the homogeneous ruthenium catalyst.
> 
> Ma calculates that a 50-L tank of CH3OH and catalyst with 6 to 10 g of Pt—about the weight of a wedding ring—could power a Toyota Mirai, a hydrogen fuel cell concept car, for about 690 km. The CH3OH would cost about $15 and the Pt about $320, but the catalyst is potentially recyclable.
> 
> Pt is relatively rare and expensive compared with other metal catalysts, but Ma points out that automobile catalytic converters now contain 1 to 4 g of recyclable noble metals, “so 8 g Pt is not a big number.”
> 
> Reaction engineer Dion Vlachos of the University of Delaware comments that the new process “has a technological edge in terms of reaction rate,” but improving long-term catalyst stability, developing means for catalyst regeneration, and finding alternatives to noble metals “are important future directions for widespread commercialization.”
> 
> Beller calls Ma’s catalyst “a major breakthrough,” noting that this type of catalyst might also be useful for other aqueous-phase reforming processes, such as those involving biowaste or ethanol.
> 
> Chemical & Engineering News
> ISSN 0009-2347
> Copyright © 2017 American Chemical Society
> 
> New process for generating hydrogen fuel | March 22, 2017 Issue - Vol. 95 Issue 13 | Chemical & Engineering News
> 
> Lili Lin, Wu Zhou, Rui Gao, Siyu Yao, Xiao Zhang, Wenqian Xu, Shijian Zheng, Zheng Jiang, Qiaolin Yu, Yong-Wang Li, Chuan Shi, Xiao-Dong Wen & Ding Ma. "Low-temperature hydrogen production from water and methanol using Pt/α-MoC catalysts". _Nature_ (2017). DOI: 10.1038/nature21672




I hope they focus on commercializing these catalysts.


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese 'wearable robot' could help disabled people walk again*
(CNTV) 16:46, March 24, 2017




Could a "wearable robot" one day help paraplegics and disabled people walk in the same way shortsighted people simply put on a pair of glasses to correct their vision? That is the hope of one Chinese company which is designing exoskeletons that people can wear.

A commercial exoskeleton robot, Fourier X1, was recently independently developed by Chinese manufacturing company Fourier Intelligence and released in Shanghai. The promotional material for the robot, which includes a video released online, shows the robot mainly being used for patients with lower body paralysis.

The company says the "wearable robot" can help a person sit, stand, walk, and go up or down the stairs etc.

The robot is also meant to be able to "perceive" the changes in a person's posture and "think about" their intentions, with the help of 19 different sensors and 11 distributed CPU modules.

The company has also stressed the safety aspects of the device, stating that if the person's center of gravity deviates beyond the pre-set range, the robot will shut down automatically, give an alarm, and take other security measures. The person will then be kept in a fixed state , without falling down after the robot stops.

Fourier Intelligence boasts that a person wearing the exoskeleton can walk continuously for about 7 hours before needing to recharge the device.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

Mar 23, 2017
*Stable grain boundaries toughen up metallic nanograins*

Conventional metals become harder with decreasing grain size but this is not the case for some nanograined metals that become softer. Researchers in China and France have now discovered that they can adjust hardness in fine nanograined metals by tailoring the stability of grain boundaries in these materials. The technique could be used to produce novel nanograined metals with extraordinary properties.

Conventional polycrystalline materials become harder with decreasing grain size, according to the classical Hall–Petch relationship – with the increase in strength being reversely proportional to the square root of the grain size. The strengthening occurs thanks to dislocation pileups at grain boundaries that then prevent the dislocations from moving. Plastic deformation therefore becomes more difficult at smaller grains as the density of the grain boundaries increases. The situation can be different in certain nanograined materials, however, and researchers have already observed softening, rather than hardening, when grain sizes are smaller than 10 to 30 nm in size.

A team of researchers, led by Ke Lu of Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, the Institute of Metal Research at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Nanjing University of Science and Technology, has now found that the mechanical behaviour and plastic deformation mechanisms can fundamentally differ in extremely-fine nanograined metals with the same grain size. Here, the nature of their grain boundaries becomes more important instead. “With more stable grain boundaries, these materials can be extremely hard (even as hard as ceramics),” explains Lu, “while for less stable grain boundaries, they can be soft thanks to grain boundary migration. This finding is important since it provides us with an alternative way to tailor the properties of nanograined metals along with grain size.”

*Different plastic deformation mechanisms at play*
In their previous studies on the mechanical behaviour of nanograined metals, Lu and colleagues observed grain boundary migration-induced softening in a number of samples. In their new work, they designed an experiment to stabilize grain boundaries in nanograined nickel by segregating molybdenum at the metal grain boundaries. They did this by synthesizing nanograined Ni-Mo samples using a technique called electrodeposition and then thermally annealing them to segregate the Mo into the Ni grain boundaries.

“We found a pronounced hardening effect upon annealing, and the smaller the grains, the higher the hardness increase,” Lu tells _nanotechweb.org_. “Thanks to detailed structural and compositional characterization of the as-deposited and as-annealed nanograined Ni-Mo samples, we discovered that there are very different plastic deformation mechanisms at play. Grain boundary migration dominates deformation in as-deposited nanograined samples while extended partial deformation with the formation of multiple through-grain stacking faults dominates in the as-annealed ones. The two samples thus have very different hardness.”

*Advanced materials with novel properties and performance*
“Since the stability of grain boundaries governs hardening and softening in extremely-fine nanograined samples, we could synthesize extremely hard versions of these materials by decreasing grain size and stabilizing grain boundaries,” he adds.

The team, which includes researchers from UNIROUEN in France, says that it will now exploit this technique to develop advanced materials with novel properties and performance.

The researchers detail their present work in Science doi: 10.1126/science.aal5166.

*About the author*
Belle Dumé is contributing editor at _nanotechweb.org_


Stable grain boundaries toughen up metallic nanograins - nanotechweb.org


J. Hu, Y. N. Shi, X. Sauvage, G. Sha, K. Lu. "Grain boundary stability governs hardening and softening in extremely fine nanograined metals". _Science_ (2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aal5166

*Nanograined metals avoid going soft*
The Hall-Petch relationship links a metal's increasing hardness with decreasing grain size, but it breaks down when grains become very small. This is unfortunate because nanograined metals could otherwise be extremely hard. Hu _et al._ found a way to circumvent this problem in a set of nickel-molybdenum alloys. They altered the molybdenum composition and annealed the samples at just the right temperature, which stabilized the grain boundaries in their nanograined samples. This allowed hardness to keep increasing with decreasing grain size, which could provide a route for designing superhard coatings.

_Science_, this issue p. 1292

*Abstract*
Conventional metals become harder with decreasing grain sizes, following the classical Hall-Petch relationship. However, this relationship fails and softening occurs at some grain sizes in the nanometer regime for some alloys. In this study, we discovered that plastic deformation mechanism of extremely fine nanograined metals and their hardness are adjustable through tailoring grain boundary (GB) stability. The electrodeposited nanograined nickel-molybdenum (Ni–Mo) samples become softened for grain sizes below 10 nanometers because of GB-mediated processes. With GB stabilization through relaxation and Mo segregation, ultrahigh hardness is achieved in the nanograined samples with a plastic deformation mechanism dominated by generation of extended partial dislocations. Grain boundary stability provides an alternative dimension, in addition to grain size, for producing novel nanograined metals with extraordinary properties.​


----------



## JSCh

*China building world's largest multifunctional nano research facility*
(Xinhua) 13:04, March 28, 2017

NANJING, March 28 -- Chinese scientists are building the world's largest multifunctional research platform for nano-science and nano-technology that could help develop more powerful computers and more intelligent robots.

The Vacuum Interconnected Nano-X Research Facility in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, integrates the state-of-art capabilities of material growth, device fabrication and testing in one ultra-high vacuum environment, said Ding Sunan, deputy director of the project.

"We are exploring a new technology route of nano-scale devices production on the platform, which simulates the ultra-high vacuum environment of space," said Ding, a researcher at the Suzhou Institute of Nano-Tech and Nano-Bionics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Nano-X has received initial funding of 320 million yuan (about 46.5 million U.S. dollars), and will eventually have a budget of 1.5 billion yuan.

Construction on the first stage began in 2014 and is expected to be completed in 2018. It comprises 100-meter-long ultra-high vacuum pipelines connecting 30 pieces of equipment. Ultimately the facility will have ultra-high vacuum pipelines of about 500 meters, connecting more than 100 large pieces of equipment, Ding said.

Nano-X is designed as a complete system for materials growth, device fabrication and testing. All samples can be transferred accurately, quickly and smoothly among all tools in an ultra-high vacuum environment.

The facility can prevent surface contamination from the air, keeping a material's intrinsic properties unchanged and realizing quantum manipulation and control, said Ding.

Experts say it will help make breakthroughs in common and critical problems in materials science and device technology, and develop new manufacturing technologies of nano-materials and core devices in the fields of energy and information.

Nano-X is expected to be incorporated into China's national research infrastructure system, and become a world-class open platform for research and development in nano-science and nano-technology, providing advanced technical support for the national strategy of high technologies.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## خره مينه لګته وي

*Chinese tech giant Tencent signs $4.65 billion loan deal*





*Logo of Tencent is displayed at a news conference in Hong Kong, China March 22, 2017. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu*

*By Carol Zhong and Sijia Jiang | HONG KONG
*
Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings has signed a $4.65 billion loan deal, Basis Point reported, amid a flurry of fund-raising by China's internet giants.

Tencent, which had an original target of about $2 billion for the loan, inked the deal on March 24 following commitments from a dozen banks, Thomson Reuters publication Basis Point reported, citing sources.

The loans for general corporate purposes comprise a $2.79 billion term loan and a $1.86 billion revolving credit. Citigroup was the coordinator, mandated lead arranger and bookrunner of the facility.

Tencent, best known for its WeChat mobile app, has been on an investment drive in a wide array of sectors such as gaming, entertainment, cloud computing and online financing.

It reported net profit of 41.1 billion yuan ($5.97 billion) last year on Wednesday, up 43 percent, on revenue that rose 48 percent to 151.94 billion yuan.

Tencent raised $7.94 billion in two syndicated loans in the past nine months, including $3.5 billion in October to back a deal for a majority stake in Finnish mobile game developer Supercell Oy.

Tencent did not immediately respond to requests for comment when contacted by Reuters.



*(Reporting by Carol Zhong and Sijia Jiang; Writing by Sijia Jiang; Editing by Stephen Coates)*

http://www.reuters.com

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Keel

In the midst of the loan deal, Tencent keeps surging, closing @HKD 226/share today


----------



## JSCh

*New method heats up ultrasonic approach to treating tumors*
_Researchers apply new modeling tools to improve acoustic simulations and design a new focusing method for potential clinical treatments_

Date:
March 28, 2017​Source:
American Institute of Physics​Summary:
High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) is a breakthrough therapeutic technique used to treat tumors. The principle of this noninvasive, targeted treatment is much like that of focusing sunlight through a lens, using an ultrasonic transducer like a convex lens to concentrate ultrasound into a small focal region. Researchers have now designed a transducer for potential application in HIFU that can generate a steady, standing-wave field with a subwavelength-scale focal region and extremely high ultrasound intensity.​

--> New method heats up ultrasonic approach to treating tumors: Researchers apply new modeling tools to improve acoustic simulations and design a new focusing method for potential clinical treatments -- ScienceDaily


----------



## Keel

Keel said:


> In the midst of the loan deal, Tencent keeps surging, closing @HKD 226/share today



HK$228/share at today's closing

Keep going Tencent!


----------



## JSCh

*Soil restoration projects proposed*
By Zhang Zhihao and Zheng Jinran | China Daily | Updated: 2017-03-30 07:34 



A researcher adjusts a sediment collection vessel in Changsha, Hunan province, in June, as part of efforts to monitor and restore the cadmium-tainted soil.[Photo/Xinhua]

*Contamination called 'alarming' for endangering food security *

China's leading scientific institute will invest 20 million yuan ($2.9 million) over the next 18 months in projects that tackle heavy metal pollution in soil, as part of efforts to safeguard food and water security, the Chinese Academy of Sciences said on Wednesday.

The soil restoration projects, spearheaded by the academy's Institute of Soil Science in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, will establish regional standards for cadmium, nickel, arsenic and other toxic heavy metals.

Two pollution control demonstration zones - one focused on mercury and the other on cadmium - will be built in Tongren, Guizhou province, and the Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan area in Hunan province respectively.

Moreover, there will be a national research network for technologies such as extracting heavy metal using plants and making heavy metals less toxic.

The institute will also build a regional surveillance platform and industrialization park to monitor and recycle heavy metals during soil restoration projects, said Yan Qing, head of the academy's bureau of science and technology for development.

A 2014 survey by the ministries of environmental protection, and land and resources found that 36.3 percent of soil samples were polluted. China will conduct thorough surveys of soil pollution to get a clearer picture, Chen Jining, minister of environmental protection, said earlier this month.

China has 122 million hectares of arable land, but is losing 400,000 hectares of mostly fertile land each year to construction, pollution and natural disasters, said Shen Renfang, director of the Institute of Soil Sciences.

Soil pollution is "a very alarming matter" because "food security is unsustainable if we keep losing arable land to pollution, and polluted crops, like rice laced with cadmium, could undermine consumer trust and public health," Shen said.

In May, the State Councill, China's Cabinet, issued a national plan to improve the prevention and control of soil pollution, including strictly prohibiting the setting up of industries and farms that fail to meet standards.

"Local officials will now think twice when establishing an economically rewarding, but polluting, industry," said Zhou Dongmei, a researcher at the institute. "Sadly, there is no quick solution to cleaning up soil pollution on a large, cost-effective scale."

The short-term goals should focus on risk control and ensuring the safety of agricultural goods, as well as researching new solutions, Zhou said. "But the hardest part is balancing economic growth with ecological protection, especially at the local level."

The soil restoration projects are one of 11 major science programs planned this year. The programs, costing a total of 190 million yuan, aim to promote economic and social growth, Yan said.

"Previous pollution control projects were often on a case-by-case basis, because each area has its own complex geographical makeup and causes of pollution," Yan said. "The new projects will tackle the issue in a more wide-ranging, systematic manner, so the emerging standards and solutions are more universally applicable and effective on a greater scale."


----------



## JSCh

* Chinese science academy to invest 190 mln yuan in major programs*
Source: Xinhua 2017-03-29 18:35:25

BEIJING, March 29 (Xinhua)-- The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) said Wednesday it would fund 11 major programs in various fields including agricultural science, technology and biotechnology this year, with a total investment of 190 million yuan (about 27.6 million U.S. dollars).

CAS hopes that the programs will boost the transformation and upgrading of related industries and generate direct economic and social benefits.

The move includes a program on the prevention and control of biological invasion at the the country's borders, including the establishment of a system to rapidly inspect, quarantine and identify species. A total of 10 million yuan will be invested in the program over an 18 month period.

The funds will also cover environmental and hi-tech programs, including one on natural disaster risk assessment and disaster reduction solutions in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, and another on the fifth-generation chips for the latest generation of mobile telecommunications.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists explore all-weather solar cells*
(Xinhua) 09:54, April 03, 2017




A photovoltaic revolution is taking place with the emergence of all-weather solar cells, according to a Chinese scientist.

"Solar cell research is mainly focused on elevating photoelectric conversion efficiency upon direct sunlight until new light has been shed on persistent high-efficiency power generation in poor light conditions such as rain, fog, haze and night," said Tang Qunwei, a professor with Ocean University of China.

Tang's team and one led by Yang Peizhi, a professor with Yunnan Normal University, developed a solar cell using a crucial material called long persistent phosphor (LPP), which can store sunlight energy in the day and harvest it in darkness.

"Only partially visible light can be absorbed by light absorbers and then converted into electricity. But solar energy from unabsorbed visible and near-infrared light can be stored in LPP, releasing monochromatic visible light at night,' Tang said. "The released light is re-absorbed by light absorbers to convert it into electricity, realizing persistent power generation in the day and in the dark."

The work of Tang and Yang was recently published in an academic journal published by the American Chemistry Society, ACS Nano, and the publication Nano Energy.

Tang has published in Chemistry - A European Journal, where he wrote that the physical proof of all-weather solar cells would open the door for an upcoming photovoltaic revolution.

"All-weather solar cells could indicate that the global solar industry will bring down the cost of energy harvesting," Tang said.


----------



## JSCh

*Mutations may reveal how Tibetans can live on world’s highest plateau *

By Michael Price
Apr. 3, 2017 , 3:00 PM
It’s not easy living thousands of meters above sea level. The air holds less oxygen, there’s more harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun, and food supplies vary dramatically from season to season. But that doesn’t stop nearly 5 million people from living on the Tibetan Plateau, the world’s highest at an average of 4000 meters. Now, scientists working with the largest-ever sample of Tibetan genomes have discovered seven new ways in which Tibetan genes have been tweaked to cope with high altitude, resulting in higher body mass index (BMI) and a boost in the body’s production of the vitamin folate.

Scientists have long known how the people of the Tibetan Plateau, including Nepal’s famous mountain-climbing Sherpa, deal with oxygen levels up to 40% less than those at sea level. Unlike most mountain climbers, whose bodies acclimatize to higher elevations by temporarily boosting hemoglobin—a blood protein that carries oxygen throughout the body—Tibetans have evolved a suite of other biochemical adaptations that let their bodies use oxygen extremely efficiently. That’s good news for the Tibetans, because too much hemoglobin makes the blood harder to pump and likelier to clot, increasing the chances of stroke and heart disease.

But the details of Tibetans’ adaptations have been a mystery. Previous studies have suggested that two genes, _EPAS1 _(inherited from ancient hominins known as Denisovans) and _ELGN1_, play roles in reducing hemoglobin and boosting oxygen use. To find out whether other genes are involved, a team of scientists led by Jian Yang at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and Zi-Bing Jin at Wenzhou Medical University in China compared the genomes of 3008 Tibetans and 7287 non-Tibetans.

The team looked for common variants among the Tibetan genomes; they then computed whether those variants likely spread throughout the population by chance or by natural selection. _EPAS1_ and _ELGN1_ predictably popped out as strong candidates for evolutionary adaptations, they report today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. So did seven additional genes: _MTHFR, RAP1A, NEK7, ADH7, FGF10, HLA-DQB1_, and _HCAR2._

In Tibetans, the _ADH7_ gene variant is associated with higher weight and BMI scores, which could help the body store energy during particularly lean times on the hardscrabble plateau. The _MTHFR_ variant also helps with nutrient deficiency: It boosts production of the vitamin folate, important for pregnancy and fertility. Folate breaks down when exposed to high levels of UV radiation, so high folate levels would compensate for their increased UV exposure. And _HLA-DQB1_ belongs to a family of genes that regulates proteins critical to the immune system, particularly important given that extreme living conditions like malnutrition can make people more susceptible to disease, Yang says. What the other four gene variants do is less clear, but they could be an evolutionary response to selective pressures besides high altitude.

The team also used its analysis to pin down a likely date for the split between Tibetans and the closely related Han Chinese population: approximately 4725 years ago, or some 189 generations back. That’s about 2000 years earlier than suggested by previous studies focusing on a different, more selective set of genes known as the exome, but it’s in line with recent archaeological findings that point to distinctly Tibetan permanent settlements appearing between 3600 and 5200 years ago, Yang says.

Lynn Jorde, a geneticist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City who also studies high-altitude genetics, says the study’s large size lends credence to the findings. Such a large data set would help researchers detect more significant variants and weed out false positives. It could also explain why previous studies, including several by Jorde’s team, haven’t noticed these genes before.

But it will take more than just genomic studies to convince him and others in the field that any particular gene really is an evolutionary adaptation, he says. “I think statistical results, while very important, will only take us so far in searching for signatures of natural selection,” Jorde says. “We need to follow up with functional studies, such as in animal models or at least in vitro systems, to pinpoint and validate the biological basis for selection.”


Mutations may reveal how Tibetans can live on world’s highest plateau | Science | AAAS



Jian Yang et al. Genetic signatures of high-altitude adaptation in Tibetans, _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_ (2017). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1617042114

*Significance*
The origin of Tibetans and the mechanism of how they adapted to the high-altitude environment remain mostly unknown. We conduct the largest genome-wide study in Tibetans to date. We detect signatures of natural selection at nine gene loci, two of which are strongly associated with blood phenotypes in present day Tibetans. We further show the genetic relatedness of Tibetans with other ethnic groups in China and estimate the divergence time between Tibetans and Han. These findings provide important knowledge to understand the genetic ancestry of Tibetans and the genetic basis of high-altitude adaptation.

*Abstract*
Indigenous Tibetan people have lived on the Tibetan Plateau for millennia. There is a long-standing question about the genetic basis of high-altitude adaptation in Tibetans. We conduct a genome-wide study of 7.3 million genotyped and imputed SNPs of 3,008 Tibetans and 7,287 non-Tibetan individuals of Eastern Asian ancestry. Using this large dataset, we detect signals of high-altitude adaptation at nine genomic loci, of which seven are unique. The alleles under natural selection at two of these loci [methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (_MTHFR_) and _EPAS1_] are strongly associated with blood-related phenotypes, such as hemoglobin, homocysteine, and folate in Tibetans. The folate-increasing allele of rs1801133 at the _MTHFR_ locus has an increased frequency in Tibetans more than expected under a drift model, which is probably a consequence of adaptation to high UV radiation. These findings provide important insights into understanding the genomic consequences of high-altitude adaptation in Tibetans.​


----------



## JSCh

*New Measurements Suggest "Antineutrino Anomaly" Fueled by Modeling Error*
Apr 05, 2017

*Analysis indicates missing particles problem may stem from uranium isotope*

Results from a new scientific study may shed light on a mismatch between predictions and recent measurements of ghostly particles streaming from nuclear reactors—the so-called “reactor antineutrino anomaly,” which has puzzled physicists since 2011.

The anomaly refers to the fact that scientists tracking the production of antineutrinos—emitted as a byproduct of the nuclear reactions that generate electric power—have routinely detected fewer antineutrinos than they expected. One theory is that some neutrinos are morphing into an undetectable form known as “sterile” neutrinos.

But the latest results from the Daya Bay reactor neutrino experiment, located at a nuclear power complex in China, suggest a simpler explanation—a miscalculation in the predicted rate of antineutrino production for one particular component of nuclear reactor fuel.

Antineutrinos carry away about 5 percent of the energy released as the uranium and plutonium atoms that fuel the reactor split, or “fission.” The composition of the fuel changes as the reactor operates, with the decays of different forms of uranium and plutonium (called “isotopes”) producing different numbers of antineutrinos with different energy ranges over time, even as the reactor steadily produces electrical power.

The new results from Daya Bay—where scientists have measured more than two million antineutrinos produced by six reactors during almost four years of operation—have led scientists to reconsider how the composition of the fuel changes over time and how many neutrinos come from each of the decay chains.

The scientists found that antineutrinos produced by nuclear reactions that result from the fission of uranium-235, a fissile isotope of uranium common in nuclear fuel, were inconsistent with predictions. A popular model for uranium-235 predicts about 8 percent more antineutrinos coming from decays of uranium-235 than what was actually measured.

In contrast, the number of antineutrinos from plutonium-239, the second most common fuel ingredient, was found to agree with predictions, although this measurement is less precise than that for uraninum-235.

If sterile neutrinos—theoretical particles that are a possible source of the universe’s vast unseen or “dark” matter—were the source of the anomaly, then the experimenters would observe an equal depletion in the number of antineutrinos for each of the fuel ingredients, but the experimental results disfavor this hypothesis.

The latest analysis suggests that a miscalculation of the rate of antineutrinos produced by the fission of uranium-235 over time, rather than the presence of sterile neutrinos, may be the explanation for the anomaly. These results can be confirmed by new experiments that will measure antineutrinos from reactors fueled almost entirely by uranium-235.

The work could help scientists at Daya Bay and similar experiments understand the fluctuating rates and energies of those antineutrinos produced by specific ingredients in the nuclear fission process throughout the nuclear fuel cycle. An improved understanding of the fuel evolution inside a nuclear reactor may also be helpful for other nuclear science applications.

Situated about 32 miles northeast of Hong Kong, the Daya Bay experiment uses an array of detectors to capture antineutrino signals from particle interactions occurring in a series of liquid tanks. The Daya Bay collaboration involves 243 researchers at 41 institutions in the U.S., China, Chile, Russia and the Czech Republic.

A complete list of funding agencies for the experiment can be found in the scientific paper: “_Evolution of the Reactor Antineutrino Flux and Spectrum at Daya Bay._”


New Measurements Suggest "Antineutrino Anomaly" Fueled by Modeling Error---Chinese Academy of Sciences

New Particle Physics Study Says Modeling Error Could Explain 'Antineutrino Anomaly' | Berkeley Lab

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 5-Apr-2017
* Seaweed: From superfood to superconductor *
American Chemical Society




Scientists have created porous 'egg-box' structured nanofibers using seaweed extract.
*Credit: *American Chemical Society

SAN FRANCISCO, April 5, 2017 -- Seaweed, the edible algae with a long history in some Asian cuisines, and which has also become part of the Western foodie culture, could turn out to be an essential ingredient in another trend: the development of more sustainable ways to power our devices. Researchers have made a seaweed-derived material to help boost the performance of superconductors, lithium-ion batteries and fuel cells.

The team will present the work today at the 253rd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS, the world's largest scientific society, is holding the meeting here through Thursday. It features more than 14,000 presentations on a wide range of science topics.

"Carbon-based materials are the most versatile materials used in the field of energy storage and conversion," Dongjiang Yang, Ph.D., says. "We wanted to produce carbon-based materials via a really 'green' pathway. Given the renewability of seaweed, we chose seaweed extract as a precursor and template to synthesize hierarchical porous carbon materials." He explains that the project opens a new way to use earth-abundant materials to develop future high-performance, multifunctional carbon nanomaterials for energy storage and catalysis on a large scale.

Traditional carbon materials, such as graphite, have been essential to creating the current energy landscape. But to make the leap to the next generation of lithium-ion batteries and other storage devices, an even better material is needed, preferably one that can be sustainably sourced, Yang says.

With these factors in mind, Yang, who is currently at Qingdao University (China), turned to the ocean. Seaweed is an abundant algae that grows easily in salt water. While Yang was at Griffith University in Australia, he worked with colleagues at Qingdao University and at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the U.S. to make porous carbon nanofibers from seaweed extract. Chelating, or binding, metal ions such as cobalt to the alginate molecules resulted in nanofibers with an "egg-box" structure, with alginate units enveloping the metal ions. This architecture is key to the material's stability and controllable synthesis, Yang says.

Testing showed that the seaweed-derived material had a large reversible capacity of 625 milliampere hours per gram (mAhg-1), which is considerably more than the 372 mAhg-1 capacity of traditional graphite anodes for lithium-ion batteries. This could help double the range of electric cars if the cathode material is of equal quality. The egg-box fibers also performed as well as commercial platinum-based catalysts used in fuel-cell technologies and with much better long-term stability. They also showed high capacitance as a superconductor material at 197 Farads per gram, which could be applied in zinc-air batteries and supercapacitors. The researchers published their initial results in _ACS Central Science_ in 2015 and have since developed the materials further.

For example, building on the same egg-box structure, the researchers say they have suppressed defects in seaweed-based, lithium-ion battery cathodes that can block the movement of lithium ions and hinder battery performance. And recently, they have developed an approach using red algae-derived carrageenan and iron to make a porous sulfur-doped carbon aerogel with an ultra-high surface area. The structure could be a good candidate to use in lithium-sulfur batteries and supercapacitors.

More work is needed to commercialize the seaweed-based materials, however. Yang says currently more than 20,000 tons of alginate precursor can be extracted from seaweed per year for industrial use. But much more will be required to scale up production.


Seaweed: From superfood to superconductor | EurekAlert! Science News

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

* China develops hot water drill to facilitate Antarctic expedition *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-04-06 16:59:12_|_Editor: Xiang Bo_

CHANGCHUN, April 6 (Xinhua) -- China on Wednesday announced it had completed controlled tests on its first hot-water drill, which is capable of drilling through 1,500 meters of ice and will be used for Antarctic research.

This is the fourth test on the drill, it was conducted at Jilin University in northeast China's Jilin Province.

The drill, which uses pressurized hot water to melt and bore into the ice, is capable of drilling 1,500 meters into the Amery Ice Shelf in Antarctica, the assessment panel announced after an on-site review.

"The drill will be invaluable to China's Antarctic scientific exploration," said Zhao Yue, head of the review panel and a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences.

The panel agreed to further testing and said the equipment should be used during China's upcoming 34th Antarctic expedition in November, he said.

Once it passes the Antarctic test, China will be the third country to have mastered hot water drilling deeper than 1,000 meters after the United States and Australia.

Our drill can go deeper than the Australian one, and has more functions than the American one, said Li Yuansheng, head of the research team and a researcher with Polar Research Institute of China.

Li said that drilling helps with the detection of ice shelves.

Ice shelves are floating ice platforms between glaciers and the ocean surface. According to Li, the freeze-thaw underneath ice shelves has an important effect on the continental ice sheets, and water masses and ocean currents.

Scientists worldwide know little about how ice shelves affect the ocean, especially given global warming, Li said. Hot water drilling may help.

The aim is to install detectors in the drilled holes, and link them to a central monitoring system.

It will help Chinese arcticologists capture more data on not only ice shelves but also global warming, said the expert.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*All rGO-on-PVDF-nanofibers Based Self-powered Electronic Skins Manufactured*
Apr 06, 2017

As bionics science and robotics science developing, electronic skins, which can mimic human skins and organs to sense physical environment, monitor human activity and personal healthy, are drawing extensive attentions and boosting rapidly in recent years. To mimic the comprehensive properties of human skins, the artificial electronic skins (E-skins) are required to integrate diverse sensing modules that can simultaneously differentiate among various physical stimuli including strain, twist, temperature, light, humidity and the environmental gases. 

Besides, the power units are also required to be integrated into the multifunctional E-skins to form into self-powered systems, which are especially favorable for next-generation multifunctional E-skins.

Recently, Prof. SHEN Guozhen's Group in Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, with their collaborators in University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chinese PLA General Hospital and University of Science and Technology Beijing, have manufactured an All rGO-on-PVDF-nanofibers based self-powered electronic skins. 

Based on their previous studies on physical and chemical properties of graphene and advanced engineering of composite graphene materials, four kinds of planar devices namely micro-supercapacitors, pressure sensor, photodetector and gas sensor were modularly manufactured, all with graphene oxide encapsulated PVDF nanofibers as the functional materials. 

They were integrated into a single pixel to form a self-powered multifunctional electronic skin system, to detect the environmental conditions and physiological signs of health. 

They also found that the flexible supercapacitor modules, with an energy density of 0.071 mWh/cm3, could provide stable current output for the system; the pressure sensor could sense external touch, wrist pulse, throat sound and heartbeat; the photodetector could sense the brightness of the environment; and the gas sensor can detect the concentration of certain toxic organic gases.

The technology developed in this work is quite simple and efficient, which can in principle be scaled-up to fabricate more compact and higher performance e-skins for applications in wearable electronics or bionics field. 

This work entitled “All rGO-on-PVDF-nanofibers based self-powered electronic skins" was recently published in _Nano Energy_. 

It was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Beijing Natural Science Foundation and the Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences, CAS. 

*



*​Figure 1. All rGO-on-PVDF-nanofibers based self-powered electronic skins (Image by Prof. SHEN Guozhen) 


All rGO-on-PVDF-nanofibers Based Self-powered Electronic Skins Manufactured---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*A flexible faster swimming manta-ray like robot*
April 6, 2017 by Bob Yirka



Something’s fishy about this manta-ray-like robot. Perhaps it’s the fact that it uses water as a conductor for dangerously high-voltage electrical energy? This system safely bent the robot’s flexible layer and helped it flap its fins. Credit: Li et al. 2017;3:e1602045

(Phys.org)—A team of researchers at Zhejiang University in China has created a small, soft-bodied robot able to swim twice as fast as others of its kind. In their paper published in the journal _Science Advances_, the team describes how they came up with a unique way to power the robot, how well it works, and likely applications for it.


--> A flexible faster swimming manta-ray like robot | Tech Xplore

Tiefeng Li et al. Fast-moving soft electronic fish, _Science Advances_ (2017). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1602045

*Abstract*
Soft robots driven by stimuli-responsive materials have unique advantages over conventional rigid robots, especially in their high adaptability for field exploration and seamless interaction with humans. The grand challenge lies in achieving self-powered soft robots with high mobility, environmental tolerance, and long endurance. We are able to advance a soft electronic fish with a fully integrated onboard system for power and remote control. Without any motor, the fish is driven solely by a soft electroactive structure made of dielectric elastomer and ionically conductive hydrogel. The electronic fish can swim at a speed of 6.4 cm/s (0.69 body length per second), which is much faster than previously reported untethered soft robotic fish driven by soft responsive materials. The fish shows consistent performance in a wide temperature range and permits stealth sailing due to its nearly transparent nature. Furthermore, the fish is robust, as it uses the surrounding water as the electric ground and can operate for 3 hours with one single charge. The design principle can be potentially extended to a variety of flexible devices and soft robots.​

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

April 6, 2017
*Salk scientists expand ability of stem cells to regrow any tissue type*

*The new technique, which allows scientists to generate both embryonic and non-embryonic tissues from cultured stem cells, is a step toward growing donor organs and replacement tissues to combat aging and diseases*

LA JOLLA—When scientists talk about laboratory stem cells being totipotent or pluripotent, they mean that the cells have the potential, like an embryo, to develop into any type of tissue in the body. What totipotent stem cells can do that pluripotent ones can’t do, however, is develop into tissues that support the embryo, like the placenta. These are called extra-embryonic tissues, and are vital in development and healthy growth.



Human EPS cells (green) can be detected in both the embryonic part (left) and extra-embryonic parts (placenta and yolk sac, right) of a mouse embryo.
Credit: Salk Institute

Now, scientists at the Salk Institute, in collaboration with researchers from Peking University, in China, are reporting their discovery of a chemical cocktail that enables cultured mouse and human stem cells to do just that: generate both embryonic and extra-embryonic tissues. Their technique, described in the journal _Cell_ on April 6, 2017, could yield new insights into mammalian development that lead to better disease modeling, drug discovery and even tissue regeneration. This new technique is expected to be particularly useful for modeling early developmental processes and diseases affecting embryo implantation and placental function, possibly paving the way for improved in vitro fertilization techniques.

“During embryonic development, both the fertilized egg and its initial cells are considered totipotent, as they can give rise to all embryonic and extra-embryonic lineages. However, the capture of stem cells with such developmental potential in vitro has been a major challenge in stem cell biology,” says Salk Professor Juan Carlos Izpisua Bemonte, co–senior author of the paper and holder of Salk’s Roger Guillemin Chair. “This is the first study reporting the derivation of a stable stem cell type that shows totipotent-like bi-developmental potential towards both embryonic and extra-embryonic lineages.”

Once a mammalian egg is fertilized and begins dividing, the new cells segregate into two groups: those that will develop into the embryo and those that will develop into supportive tissues like the placenta and amniotic sac. Because this division of labor happens relatively early, researchers often can’t maintain cultured cell lines stably until cells have already passed the point where they could still become either type. The newly discovered cocktail gives stem cells the ability to stably become either type, leading the Salk team to dub them extended pluripotent stem (EPS) cells.

“The discovery of EPS cells provides a potential opportunity for developing a universal method to establish stem cells that have extended developmental potency in mammals,” says Jun Wu, a senior scientist at Salk and one of the paper’s first authors. “Importantly, the superior interspecies chimeric competency of EPS cells makes them especially valuable for studying development, evolution and human organ generation using a host animal species.”

To develop their cocktail, the Salk team, together with the team from Peking University, first screened for chemical compounds that support pluripotency. They discovered that a simple combination of four chemicals and a growth factor could stabilize the human pluripotent stem cells at a developmentally less mature state, thereby allowing them to more efficiently contribute to chimera (a mix of cells from two different species) formation in a developing mouse embryo. They also applied the same factors to mouse cells and found, surprisingly, that the newly derived mouse stem cells could not only give rise to embryonic tissue types but also differentiate into cells from the extra-embryonic lineages. Moreover, the team found that the new mouse stem cells have a superior ability to form chimeras and a single cell could give rise to an entire adult mouse, which is unprecedented in the field, according to the team.

“The superior chimeric competency of both human and mouse EPS cells is advantageous in applications such as the generation of transgenic animal models and the production of replacement organs,” adds Wu. “We are now testing to see whether human EPS cells are more efficient in chimeric contribution to pigs, whose organ size and physiology are closer to humans.” Human EPS cells, combined with the interspecies blastocyst complementation platform as reported by the same Salk team in _Cell_ in January 2017, hold great potential for the generation of human organs in pigs to meet the rising demand for donor organs.

“We believe that the derivation of a stable stem cell line with totipotent-like features will have a broad and resounding impact on the stem cell field,” says Izpisua Belmonte.

Other authors included: Takayoshi Yamauchi, Atsushi Sugawara and Zhongwei Li of Salk; Yang Yang, Bei Liu, Jun Xu, Jinlin Wang, Cheng Shi, Yaxing Xu, Jiebin Dong, Chengyan Wang, Weifeng Lai, Jialiang Zhu, Liang Xiong, Dicong Zhu, Xiang Li, Chen Li, Aibin He, Yaqin Du, Ting Wang, Chaoran Zhao, Haibo Li, Hongquan Zhang, Xiaochun Chi, and Huan Shen of Peking University; Weifeng Yang and Ming Yin of Beijing Vitalstar Biotechnology; Fangyuan Sun and Xiangyun Li of Hebei University; Yifang Liu of Tsinghua University; Cheng Li of Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences; Shuguang Duo of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The work was funded by: the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFA0100100), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31521004), the Guangdong Innovative and Entrepreneurial Research Team Program (2014ZT05S216), the Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangdong Province, China (2014B020226001), the Science and Technology Program of Guangzhou, China (2016B030232001), the Ministry of Education of China (111 Project), the BeiHao Stem Cell and Q9 Regenerative Medicine Translational Research Institute, the Joint Institute of Peking University Health Science Center, University of Michigan Health System, Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences, the National Science and Technology Support Project (2014BAI02B01), the CAS Key Technology Talent Program, the G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Charitable Foundation, and The Moxie Foundation.


PUBLICATION INFORMATION
*
JOURNAL*
_Cell_

*TITLE*
 _Derivation of pluripotent stem cells with in vivo embryonic and extraembryonic potency _

*AUTHORS*
Yang Yang, Bei Liu, Jun Xu, Jinlin Wang, Jun Wu, Cheng Shi, Yaxing Xu, Jiebin Dong, Chengyan Wang, Weifeng Lai, Jialiang Zhu, Liang Xiong, Dicong Zhu, Xiang Li, Weifeng Yang, Takayoshi Yamauchi, Atsushi Sugawara, Zhongwei Li, Fangyuan Sun, Xiangyun Li, Chen Li, Aibin He, Yaqin Du, Ting Wang, Chaoran Zhao, Haibo Li, Xiaochun Chi, Hongquan Zhang, Yifang Liu, Cheng Li, Shuguang Duo, Ming Yin, Huan Shen, Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, and Hongkui Deng


Salk scientists expand ability of stem cells to regrow any tissue type - Salk Institute for Biological Studies

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* Chinese science academy invests in deep learning processor *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-04-09 13:04:57_|_Editor: ZD_

BEIJING, April 9 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has earmarked 10 million yuan (1.4 million U.S. dollars) for the research and development of an advanced AI processor.

The deep learning processor chip, the "Cambrian," is expected to be the world's first processor that simulates human nerve cells and synapses to conduct deep learning, according to a statement issued by CAS.

The program is named after the Cambrian Period, which marked a rapid diversification of lifeforms on earth. Scientists are expecting the processor to spearhead a new era in AI.

The statement said that the investment would be used in basic research areas to explore the structure and algorithm for the next generation of AI, which will lay the foundations for China's ambition in the global chip market.

The funds will also be used to promote the Cambrian.

The Cambrian research team is led by Chen Yunji and Chen Tianshi from the CAS Institute of Computing Technology.

Google's AI program AlphaGo needs huge power and large servers to operate, but the Cambrian aims to perform at the same level and use just one watt of power and be the size of a smartphone or a watch, according to Chen Yunji.

AlphaGo scored a 4-1 victory over Korean Go master Lee Se-dol last year.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* Chinese scientists discover compound to tackle obesity *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-04-09 17:41:18_|_Editor: Tian Shaohui_

XIAMEN, April 9 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have extracted a medicinal compound from the natural herb, thunder god vine, which targets cell metabolism and could help tackle obesity.

Celastrol, extracted from thunder god vine, and artemisinin, developed from sweet wormwood, are among five herbal compounds listed by the scientific journal Cell to have the most potential to treat illnesses where no cure has been discovered, such as cancer.

The discovery of artemisinin won Chinese scientist Tu Youyou a Nobel Prize in 2015.

The research team led by Zhang Xiaokun, professor with the College of Medicine at Xiamen University, found that celastrol from the thunder god vine could clear inflamed mitochondria from cells to alleviate inflammation.

Mitochondria plays an integral role in cell death, immunity and inflammation. By affecting inflamed mitochondria, celastrol can help control cell metabolism.

The team carried out the research on mice, and found that celastrol could effectively control weight increases in mice feeding on high fat food.

The research paper was published in science journal Molecular Cell on April 6.

Zhang said his team would continue to research how celastrol regulates metabolism to explore new drugs, with low toxicity and high efficiency, to help people lose weight.

His research has been supported by the National Nature and Science Foundation and Xiamen South Sea Center.

Like sweet wormwood, thunder god vine is native to China though it also grows in other East Asian countries. The herb has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for treating arthritis and autoimmune diseases.

However, the whole plant is extremely toxic. It must undergo a lot of processing to reduce toxicity before being used in traditional medicine. In modern research, the plant has been used in clinical trials on AIDS treatment. Its compounds have been found to have the potential to treat joint pain and rheumatoid arthritis.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

* Chinese scientists pioneer new method to absorb oil spills *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-04-07 15:03:19_|_Editor: ying_

HEFEI, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have found that graphene-wrapped sponges provide an effective and fast way to absorb spilled crude oil when heated with an applied electric current.

A research team led by Yu Shuhong, a professor at the University of Science and Technology of China, published the study in Nature Nanotechnology on April 3, according to an article released on the university's website.

The team wrapped porous material with a thin, waterproof graphene layer, put the coated sponge in water mixed with crude oil, and applied an electric current to the graphene to warm it up. The process reduces the viscosity of crude oil, thus speeding up the oil-absorption time, the website said.

Crude oil spills in oceans have been frequent in recent years, damaging the environment and affecting the economy. The spilled oil is hard to collect and clean up via traditional technology. It is believed that the new study may be widely used to treat oil spills in the future.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese underwater rescue robot reaches 3,000 meters *
By Gao Yun
2017-04-10 15:33 GMT+8




China successfully completed its five-day sea trial of the remote operated vehicle (ROV) undertaken by China's Yantai Salvage of Ministry of Transport on Sunday, marking China’s capability of deep-water salvage at 3,000 meters.

The offshore supply ship De Mei, which carried this ROV, set sail for the scheduled place in the South China Sea on April 5. The ROV was launched twice on April 6-7 with a maximum depth of 1,180 and 2,951 meters. The resistance to pressure and stability had also been tested.



The ROV is being launching into the water. /Photo from Ministry of Transport

The ROV had the third sea trial on Saturday and successfully reached the seabed with the depth of 2,735 meters. It then flied 600 meters underwater as scheduled.

At the same time, technicians operated the high precision manipulator to put the sign of “China Rescue and Salvage” at the bottom of South China Sea. Main sensors, auxiliary equipment, mechanical hydraulic system, telecommunication transmission system, and automatic control system had all been examined and showed normal performance and parameters.



The sign of “China Rescue and Salvage” is put at the bottom of South China Sea /Photo from Ministry of Transport 

The ROV of Yantai Salvage is one of the country’s key investments in equipment. Its spindle power reaches 200 horsepower and has an operating depth 3,000 meters. Equipped with advanced facilities, it is capable of various deep-water salvage and search work as well as ocean engineering assignments.

It will be put into service later, according to technicians from China Yantai Salvage.

The successful completion of this underwater trial has created a new diving record of Yantai Salvage, and set a new step Yantai Salvage makes for enhancing China’s marine power.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Would Solid State Lithium Battery Work at Bottom of Mariana Trench?*
Apr 11, 2017

Human never stop nature exploration especially under extreme conditions. The Mariana Trench is the deepest part (10,994 m) of the world's oceans, located in the western Pacific Ocean. The development of full ocean depth expedition equipments requires high energy density power sources. In recent years, China has made remarkable achievements in the field of deep-sea power batteries. The silver-zinc battery with oil-filled pressure system has been successfully demonstrated in the manned submersible Jiaolong for sustainable period of six hours under depth of 7,000 m. However, the silver-zinc battery has a relatively low energy density (less than 60 Wh/kg) and a short cycling life (50 times), which cannot meet the requirements of long endurance and full ocean depth applications (11,000 m).

Compared with the silver-zinc batteries, lithium batteries show a significant advantages in energy density (180 Wh/kg), cycling life (500-1,000 times) and safety. However, the volatile flammable organic electrolyte in traditional lithium batteries may lead to thermal runaway or even explosion, due to being overcharged or internal short circuit. These issues are more prominent in the 3,000 meters under the sea. The solid state electrolytes with enhanced safety can be compatible to lithium metal as the anode of the battery, increasing the battery energy density up to 400 Wh/kg (double that of the commercial lithium-ion battery, and six times that of silver-zinc battery). Such solid state electrolyte based batteries can provide adequate power output for deep-sea space station and deep-sea robot.

A research team headed by Prof. CUI Guanglei from the Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology (QIBEBT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has been focusing on high-performance and high-safety lithium batteries by using "Rigid-flexible Coupling" type of solid electrolyte system. The optimum coupling of ion transport mechanism and pressure has been realized through finely tuning the molecular structure of electrolytes and ionic conductivity. This system possesses several features, such as high safety, long cycling life, and improved working depth. The team also innovated the lithium metal interface modification technology and in-situ interface repair technology for the solid state lithium batteries tested in the Mariana Trench recently. 

From Jan 15 to Mar 23, 2017, the solid state battery system (namely QIBEBT-I) as the only power supply was assembled on the lander Wanquan (Figure 1) and brought to the Mariana Trench by the CAS deep-sea expedition team. The lander realized nine times of successful dives, of which six times down to 10,000 m depth (maximum dive depth of 10,901 m). The cumulative working time and the longest continuous running time of QIBEBT-I were 134 hours and 20 hours, respectively.

Nowadays, the team at QIBEBT is moving forward to solid state lithium battery with better performance for deep-sea expedition.

*



*​Figure 1. The solid state battery system (namely QIBEBT-I) assembled on the lander Wanquan (Image by QIBEBT)

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* China to start pilot-scale production of graphene-copper composite film *
New China TV
Published on Apr 12, 2017

Pilot-scale production of graphene-copper composite film to start in #Shanghai in July, which will be used for cooling smartphones.

#####​* Beijing sets up innovation center to accelerate graphene industrialization *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-04-11 23:01:02_|_Editor: An_

BEIJING, April 11 (Xinhua) -- A graphene industry innovation center was established Tuesday in Beijing, aiming to become a world-class graphene composite technology research and industrial incubator hub.

Graphene is a flat sheet of one-atom-thick carbon with the carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb lattice. Since it was first successfully isolated in 2004, it has been lauded for its outstanding potential in fields such as energy, high-tech materials, sensors, and optoelectronic devices.

Beijing Graphene Industry Innovation Center will take the advantage of Beijing's innovative resources to research and develop cutting-edge new materials. It hopes to speed up the transformation of scientific research achievements and enhance the graphene industry.

In China, which has substantial graphite deposits, more than 500 companies already specialize in graphene products.

China expects to establish a comprehensive graphene industry system by 2020, according to a plan drafted by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Science and Technology in 2015.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *A flexible faster swimming manta-ray like robot*
> April 6, 2017 by Bob Yirka
> 
> 
> 
> Something’s fishy about this manta-ray-like robot. Perhaps it’s the fact that it uses water as a conductor for dangerously high-voltage electrical energy? This system safely bent the robot’s flexible layer and helped it flap its fins. Credit: Li et al. 2017;3:e1602045
> 
> (Phys.org)—A team of researchers at Zhejiang University in China has created a small, soft-bodied robot able to swim twice as fast as others of its kind. In their paper published in the journal _Science Advances_, the team describes how they came up with a unique way to power the robot, how well it works, and likely applications for it.
> 
> 
> --> A flexible faster swimming manta-ray like robot | Tech Xplore
> 
> Tiefeng Li et al. Fast-moving soft electronic fish, _Science Advances_ (2017). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1602045
> 
> *Abstract*
> Soft robots driven by stimuli-responsive materials have unique advantages over conventional rigid robots, especially in their high adaptability for field exploration and seamless interaction with humans. The grand challenge lies in achieving self-powered soft robots with high mobility, environmental tolerance, and long endurance. We are able to advance a soft electronic fish with a fully integrated onboard system for power and remote control. Without any motor, the fish is driven solely by a soft electroactive structure made of dielectric elastomer and ionically conductive hydrogel. The electronic fish can swim at a speed of 6.4 cm/s (0.69 body length per second), which is much faster than previously reported untethered soft robotic fish driven by soft responsive materials. The fish shows consistent performance in a wide temperature range and permits stealth sailing due to its nearly transparent nature. Furthermore, the fish is robust, as it uses the surrounding water as the electric ground and can operate for 3 hours with one single charge. The design principle can be potentially extended to a variety of flexible devices and soft robots.​






* Fish-like soft robot "swims" faster *
New China TV
Published on Apr 12, 2017

A soft and transparent robot that resembles ray fish! Without motors but swimming faster, it can record temperature and salinity of the sea, or detect pollutants.


----------



## cirr

13 APRIL 2017

*Paper-powered generator for portable devices*

*A lightweight cut-paper lattice uses your body movements to recharge a battery, writes Andrew Masterson.*





The need to plug in to charge may one day be a thing of the past.
MURIEL DE SEZE / GETTY

Many everyday electronic devices, such as remote controls and watches, require only tiny amounts of energy to operate, so the notion of powering them through rechargeable batteries that ultimately draw down from the electricity grid seems decidedly inelegant.
Now, however, researchers led by Hengyo Guo from the Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems in China have developed a proof-of-concept portable structure that can power low-demand devices using the energy generated simply by quotidian body movements.

The charger, described in the journal _ACS Nano_, is inspired by the venerable Chinese and Japanese art of precision paper cutting.

It takes the form of a wallet-sized paper-based lattice, coated with gold, graphite and fluorinated ethylene propylene film to create what the researchers call a “triboelectric nanogenerator” (or TENG).





A researcher shows the paper lattice at the heart of the new device.
AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY

Pressing and releasing the TENG for just a couple of minutes – in the same way that would occur if it was, say, stashed in a coat pocket while the wearer was walking – accumulates a charge of one volt.

This, write the scientists, makes it “a sustainable power source for driving wearable and portable electronic devices such as a wireless remote control, electric watch, or temperature sensor”.

Guo’s team has been active in developing TENGs for several years, but the paper-based design represents a significant improvement in both construction and materials. Previous models have been made of acrylic, which makes them heavy, and required to several hours of motion and pressure to build up sufficient charge to operate a low-energy device.

The new version, dubbed, unromantically, “a cut-paper-based self-charging power unit”, has evident and obvious commercial application.

“The development of lightweight, super-portable, and sustainable power sources has become an urgent need for most modern personal electronics,” the researchers note.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/technology/paper-powered-generator-for-portable-devices


----------



## JSCh

*Ten superconducting qubits entangled by physicists in China*
Apr 13, 2017

A group of physicists in China has taken the lead in the race to couple together increasing numbers of superconducting qubits. The researchers have shown that they can entangle 10 qubits connected to one another via a central resonator – so beating the previous record by one qubit – and say that their result paves the way to quantum simulators that can calculate the behaviour of small molecules and other quantum-mechanical systems much more efficiently than even the most powerful conventional computers.


--> Ten superconducting qubits entangled by physicists in China - physicsworld.com


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 13-Apr-2017
* A battery prototype powered by atmospheric nitrogen *
Cell Press




This is an artistic illustration of Zhang and colleagues' proof-of-concept experiment, which successfully implements a reversible nitrogen cycle based on rechargeable Li-N2 batteries with promising electrochemical faradic efficiency.
Credit: Zhang et. al. 

As the most abundant gas in Earth's atmosphere, nitrogen has been an attractive option as a source of renewable energy. But nitrogen gas -- which consists of two nitrogen atoms held together by a strong, triple covalent bond -- doesn't break apart under normal conditions, presenting a challenge to scientists who want to transfer the chemical energy of the bond into electricity. In the journal _Chem_ on April 13, researchers in China present one approach to capturing atmospheric nitrogen that can be used in a battery.

The "proof-of-concept" design works by reversing the chemical reaction that powers existing lithium-nitrogen batteries. Instead of generating energy from the breakdown of lithium nitride (2Li3N) into lithium and nitrogen gas, the researchers' battery prototype runs on atmospheric nitrogen in ambient conditions and reacts with lithium to form lithium nitride. Its energy output is brief but comparable to that of other lithium-metal batteries.

"This promising research on a nitrogen fixation battery system not only provides fundamental and technological progress in the energy storage system but also creates an advanced N2/Li3N (nitrogen gas/lithium nitride) cycle for a reversible nitrogen fixation process," says senior author Xin-Bo Zhang, of the Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. "The work is still at the initial stage. More intensive efforts should be devoted to developing the battery systems."

###​
This work is financially supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.



A battery prototype powered by atmospheric nitrogen | EurekAlert! Science News

Jin-Ling Ma, Di Bao, Miao-Miao Shi, Jun-Min Yan, Xin-Bo Zhang. *Reversible Nitrogen Fixation Based on a Rechargeable Lithium-Nitrogen Battery for Energy Storage*. _Chem_, 2017; 2 (4): 525. DOI: 10.1016/j.chempr.2017.03.016


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists Visualize the "Annual Rings" in Human Genome*
Apr 17, 2017

Aging, the major risk factor for a wide range of chronic diseases, is determined by both genetic and epigenetic factors. Accurate technology to track the chromatin dynamics in live cells is required for understanding the deeper mechanisms of aging process.

So far, several technologies, including fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH), TALE and CRISPR/dCas9 system, have been utilized to image specific loci in human genome. However, they are limited by non-live cell imaging, low signal to noise ratio and transfection efficiencies, as well as the formation of non-specific protein aggregates in the transfected cells.

In a study published in _Cell Research_ as a cover story, researchers from Institute of Biophysics (IBP) of Chinese Academy of Sciences and their partners developed a new 3D genome imaging technique named TTALE (by fusing thioredoxin to TALE) by which precisely visualizing specific genomic repetitive-sequence loci became possible.

Conventional TALEs are discovered to be prone to form insoluble aggregates, hampering their utility for precise genomic imaging in all human cell lines examined. To overcome this barrier, researchers screened a panel of peptides/proteins that are known to facilitate the expression of insoluble proteins in E. coli and fused them to TALE. They found that the fusion of the thioredoxin to TALE (designated as TTALE) effectively eliminated the aggregate-like signals from conventional TALE.

TTALEs were tested in a variety of cellular contexts, including human cancer cell lines, human embryonic stem cells, iPSCs and differentiated cells, as well as mouse cells in vitro or in vivo. "TTALEs can be applied to various human cell types and mouse cells, with imaging quality comparable to 3D-FISH and transfection efficiency better than the CRISPR/dCas9 system.” said LIU Guanghui, a professor from IBP.

Besides, using this technique, researchers for the first time precisely visualized the location of 28S rDNA inside nucleolus in live cells by TTALE system, which may provide a powerful tool for exploring the function of ribosomal DNA and nucleolus in different biological processes.

MUC4 as a protein-coding gene locus can also be precisely labeled by TTALE in human cells. "Their success with this latter locus (MUC4) emphasizes the potential utility of the TTALE system for a wide range of experimental questions.” said Brian Kennedy, the President and CEO of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, California.

Chromatin disorganization has been linked to human aging and age-related diseases. Although telomere shortening has been known as a hallmark of aging, repeat sequences known as the dark matter in human genome were rarely studied for their function to regulate biological processes including aging.

This study identified rDNA attrition as a hallmark of aging in three models of human mesenchymal stem cell aging, as well as in the peripheral blood cells isolated from aged human individuals. “These initial findings open the possibility that the rDNA repeats may be a common source of genome instability and a driver of aging across diverse eukaryotes.” said Brian Kennedy.

Although the findings in this study focused on the ability of TTALEs to explore the chromatin dynamics with age, the application of TTALEs could be extended far beyond, such as studying the single nucleotide polymorphisms-induced pathologies like autism-related disorders and detecting the chromosomal or cell cycle aberrations in cancer.

"TTALEs promise to provide a robust platform for imaging chromatin dynamics under physiological conditions, as well as a potential tool for genome editing in therapeutic approaches to various pathologies.” said Brian Kennedy.

This work was supported by National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing Natural Science Foundation, National High Technology Research and Development Program of China, National Natural Science Foundation of China, etc.



Figure: TTALE-based precise imaging of 28S rDNAs in nucleolar organizer region (left), and the cover of Cell Research (right). (Image by IBP)



Scientists Visualize the "Annual Rings" in Human Genome---Chinese Academy of Sciences


----------



## JSCh

*AIOFM's Rapid Online Monitoring LIDAR System Steps into Its Industrialization*
Apr 17, 2017

With support from special project of national major scientific apparatus “R&D and Application of LIDAR System for Spatial-Temporal Detection of Atmospheric Fine Particle and Ozone”, Anhui Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics (AIOFM), Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, announced they have successfully developed a rapid online LIDAR system for spatial-temporal detection of atmospheric fine particle and ozone, and which is to step into its industrialization.

The new system made several broke through in multiple generic key technologies to provide reliable technological means for real-time monitoring capacity and data analysis.

Precisely the system effectively improves its cognition and changes the situation that most of high-end LIDAR devices in China are imported abroad. And the industrialization process and production line has been established in Wuxi CAS Photonics Co.,Ltd.

In order to meet different demands of targeted clients, multiple lidar models have also been developed which offer important means and high-end devices for the research on dust-haze and photo-chemical pollution in China.

Since its establishment in 2013, stereoscopic monitoring network of LIDAR for atmospheric fine particle and ozone has taken on its responsibility in Jing-Jin-Ji area.

The apparatus provides air quality guarantee and effective evaluation of emission reduction for various national activities such as Nanjing Youth Olympic Games, APEC Meeting in Beijing, Military Parade of “9.3 Victory Day” in Beijing and G20 Summit in Hangzhou, etc, as well as offers important scientific basis for governmental environmental decisions and management.





Comparison result between airborne telemetry and vehicle-mounted cruising. Particulate pollution layer was detected at 0.7km~1.3km (Image by FAN Guangqiang)





Multiple configurations are available for mobile LIDAR based on actual demands (Image by FAN Guangqiang)





Construction of Production line (Image by FAN Guangqiang)​

AIOFM's Rapid Online Monitoring LIDAR System Steps into Its Industrialization---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*ANU will work with Chinese scientists on fusion energy*
12 April 2017



The Joint European Torus (seen here with a superimposed image of plasma) is one of the machines helping to unlock fusion power. Image: Wikimedia Commons, Flickr.

ANU will work with the University of South China (USC) on fusion energy research, with the prospect of Australia providing China with its first plasma Stellarator device.

Energy pundits see nuclear fusion, which powers our sun and all stars in the Universe, as the Holy Grail - it has the potential to provide sustainable, zero-emission and relatively cheap power to grids.

Dr Cormac Corr, Director of the Australian Plasma Fusion Research Facility at ANU, said the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with USC was an important step towards developing a future energy source for the world.

"We're working towards making fusion a viable baseload power source by 2050, and Australia working closer with China on this technology will help to make this a reality," Dr Corr said.

After years of funding support from the Australian Government, ANU has developed strong technical expertise in a type of plasma fusion device called a stellarator, one of the two fusion devices that are most likely to be viable power sources.

ANU and USC will sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Wednesday 12 April that will underpin a new fusion research relationship between Australia and China.

Dr Corr said Australia was poised to provide China with its first stellarator device.

"Australia will benefit from enhanced national investment, and for China the relationship will form the core of China's first stellarator program," he said. 

"The agreement will be finalised in the next few months and will start with significant exchange of technical and academic personnel between the two institutions."

Professor Hanqing Wang, Chairman of the Council of USC and Professor Xueyu Gong, leader of the fusion program at USC are at ANU for the MoU signing.

China, the European Union, India, Korea, Russia, Japan and the United States are jointly funding the construction of the $30 billion ITER nuclear fusion demonstration facility in France that will start producing 500 megawatts of power by the late 2020s.

In September 2016, Australia became the first non-member state to enter a formal collaborative agreement with ITER.


ANU will work with Chinese scientists on fusion energy | ANU

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

* Pakistani couple cultivate rapeseed flowers in 13 colors in E China *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-04-18 16:57:51_|_Editor: An_



Lin Qing (R) and Ma Ke pose for a photo in the test field of rapeseed flowers at Jiangxi Agricultural University in Nanchang, capital of east China's Jiangxi Province, March 14, 2017. Pakistani couple Hira Khanzada and Ghulam Mustafa Wassan, who gave themselves Chinese names Lin Qing and Ma Ke, are doctoral students major in genetics and breeding in Jiangxi Agricultural University. Sharing common interests on plants, they fell in love in Islamabad, and came to China together for further education in 2010. Now they have cultivated rapeseed flowers in 13 colors under the lead of supervisor Fu Donghui, among which seven colors are in stable condition. (Xinhua/Zhou Mi)





​Combo photo taken on March 9, 2017 shows rapeseed flowers in different colors cultivated by Lin Qing and Ma Ke (not in the picture) at Jiangxi Agricultural University in Nanchang, capital of east China's Jiangxi Province.





​Lin Qing checks seedlings of rapeseed flowers at a laboratory of Jiangxi Agricultural University in Nanchang, capital of east China's Jiangxi Province, March 14, 2017.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
ACS News Service Weekly Press
Pac: Wed Apr 19 09:24:00 EDT 2017
*Degradable electronic components created from corn starch*

"Degradable Poly(lactic acid)/Metal-Organic Framework Nanocomposites Exhibiting Good Mechanical, Flame Retardant, and Dielectric Properties for the Fabrication of Disposable Electronics"_
Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research_

As consumers upgrade their gadgets at an increasing pace, the amount of electronic waste we generate continues to mount. To help combat this environmental problem, researchers have modified a degradable bioplastic derived from corn starch or other natural sources for use in more eco-friendly electronic components. They report their development in ACS’ journal _Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research_.

In 2014, consumers around the world discarded about 42 million metric tons of e-waste, according to a report by the United Nations University. This poses an environmental and human threat because electronic products are made up of many components, some of which are toxic or non-degradable. To help address the issue, Xinlong Wang and colleagues sought to develop a degradable material that could be used for electronic substrates or insulators.

The researchers started with polylactic acid, or PLA, which is a bioplastic that can be derived from corn starch or other natural sources and is already used in the packaging, electronics and automotive industries. PLA by itself, however, is brittle and flammable, and doesn’t have the right electrical properties to be a good electronic substrate or insulator. But the researchers found that blending metal-organic framework nanoparticles with PLA resulted in a transparent film with the mechanical, electrical and flame retardant properties that make the material a promising candidate for use in electronics.


Degradable electronic components created from corn starch - American Chemical Society

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Synopsis: Neutrons On-Demand from Laser Fusion*
April 19, 2017

_A new laser-driven fusion method could lead to a robust and efficient way to generate neutrons for use in materials science, geology, and other fields.
_





G. Ren/IAPCM and J. Yan/LFRC​Neutron sources have many uses: from probing the interior of a material to locating underground mineral resources. Laser-driven fusion reactions are one way to produce neutrons, but current techniques are either inefficient or unreliable. Jie Liu of the Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics in China and colleagues have developed a robust new scheme that uses lasers to induce fusion reactions in a capsule containing heavy hydrogen fuel. In preliminary tests, this method produced around a billion neutrons per laser shot, which is a factor of 100 better than similar methods.

Several neutron sources, such as high-energy accelerators and fission reactors, provide high-intensity beams for materials studies. However, the desire for smaller-scale sources has focused attention on laser-based techniques. One scheme involves shining a laser pulse on clusters of hydrogen isotopes. The clusters are ionized and subsequently collide, inducing fusion reactions that release neutrons, but the yields are generally too low for many applications.

The new method from Liu and colleagues is a variation on inertial confinement fusion (ICF), which aims for self-sustaining fusion reactions through the laser bombardment of hydrogen fuel pellets. Being developed at the National Ignition Facility and elsewhere, ICF can produce very high neutron yields, but it has been plagued by instabilities. The Chinese group avoids these problems by adopting a different target geometry. Rather than a pellet, they use a spherical capsule whose inner surface is lined with a thin fuel layer. Incoming laser light heats the fuel, causing it to implode and fuse in the center of the capsule. Experiments with 6.3-kilojoule laser pulses produced up to a few billion neutrons, but a stronger laser and more neutron-rich fuel could increase the yield by a factor of 1000 or more.

This research is published in _Physical Review Letters._

–Michael Schirber


Physics - Synopsis: Neutrons On-Demand from Laser Fusion


Neutron Generation by Laser-Driven Spherically Convergent Plasma Fusion
G. Ren, J. Yan, J. Liu, K. Lan, Y. H. Chen, W. Y. Huo, Z. Fan, X. Zhang, J. Zheng, Z. Chen, W. Jiang, L. Chen, Q. Tang, Z. Yuan, F. Wang, S. Jiang, Y. Ding, W. Zhang, and X. T. He
Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 165001 (2017)
Published April 19, 2017​
*Abstract *
We investigate a new laser-driven spherically convergent plasma fusion scheme (SCPF) that can produce thermonuclear neutrons stably and efficiently. In the SCPF scheme, laser beams of nanosecond pulse duration and 1014–1015  W/cm2 intensity uniformly irradiate the fuel layer lined inside a spherical hohlraum. The fuel layer is ablated and heated to expand inwards. Eventually, the hot fuel plasmas converge, collide, merge, and stagnate at the central region, converting most of their kinetic energy to internal energy, forming a thermonuclear fusion fireball. With the assumptions of steady ablation and adiabatic expansion, we theoretically predict the neutron yield Yn to be related to the laser energy EL, the hohlraum radius Rh, and the pulse duration τ through a scaling law of Yn∝(EL/Rh1.2τ0.2)2.5. We have done experiments at the ShengGuangIII-prototype facility to demonstrate the principle of the SCPF scheme. Some important implications are discussed.​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists call for construction of world’s first underwater vacuum tube train*
(People's Daily Online) 15:12, April 25, 2017




China is now capable of building the world’s first underwater vacuum tube train, a futuristic form of transportation that can achieve supersonic speed and reduce airborne noise, according to Chinese academics and scholars.

“In order to build an underwater vacuum tunnel, [China] must bring forth new ideas...about submerged floating tunnels, maglev trains and vacuum techniques. Currently, the country’s technologies are sufficient to carry out such a program,” Sun Jun, an academician with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the Science and Technology Daily.

The vacuum tube train is a magnetic levitation line that utilizes evacuated tubes or tunnels. Due to reduced air resistance, the train could hit a theoretical speed of 2,000 kilometers per hour using relatively little power, and its operation would not be affected by weather.

The China Railway Tunnel Survey & Design Institute has finished a tentative research survey on the possibility of building a 10-kilometer underwater vacuum tunnel in Zhoushan, Zhejiang province. Once built, it would become China’s longest underwater tunnel, as well as the world’s first underwater vacuum tunnel, cutting the travel time between Fujian and Taipei - located 180 kilometers apart - to just 13 minutes.

The program has been welcomed by many scholars and experts, who note that China has built over 500 underwater tunnels over the past 20 years, gaining rich experience and refined technologies. Sun, along with two other academicians, has called for Chinese authorities to approve and support the program.


----------



## TaiShang

*Chinese scientists call for construction of world’s first under water vacuum tube train*
(People's Daily Online) 15:12, April 25, 2017







*China is now capable of building the world’s first underwater vacuum tube train*, a futuristic form of transportation that can achieve supersonic speed and reduce airborne noise, according to Chinese academics and scholars.

“In order to build an underwater vacuum tunnel, [China] must bring forth new ideas... about submerged floating tunnels, maglev trains and vacuum techniques.* Currently, the country’s technologies are sufficient to carry out such a program*,” Sun Jun, an academician with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the Science and Technology Daily.

The vacuum tube train is a magnetic levitation line that utilizes evacuated tubes or tunnels. Due to reduced air resistance, the train could hit a theoretical speed of 2,000 kilometers per hour using relatively little power, and its operation would not be affected by weather.

The China Railway Tunnel Survey & Design Institute has finished a tentative research survey on the possibility of *building a 10-kilometer underwater vacuum tunnel in Zhoushan, Zhejiang province*. Once built, it would become China’s longest underwater tunnel, as well as the world’s first underwater vacuum tunnel, cutting the travel time between Fujian and Taipei - located 180 kilometers apart - to just 13 minutes.

*The program has been welcomed by many scholars and experts, who note that China has built over 500 underwater tunnels over the past 20 years, gaining rich experience and refined technologies.* Sun, along with two other academicians, has called for Chinese authorities to approve and support the program.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

*Oldest evidence of patterned silk loom found in China*
_The technology fed the Silk Road trade_

By Bruce Bower
7:00am, April 25, 2017



*LOOM ROOM* Excavation of a roughly 2,100-year-old tomb in southern China uncovered four small-scale models of pattern looms, including these two shown where they were found alongside several wooden figurines. These discoveries represent the earliest clues to a weaving technique that transformed silk production.

Tao Xie, Feng Zhao _et al_/_Antiquity _2017​
An ancient tomb in southern China has provided the oldest known examples, in scaled-down form, of revolutionary weaving machines called pattern looms. Four immobile models of pattern looms illuminate how weavers first produced silk textiles with repeating patterns. The cloths were traded across Eurasia via the Silk Road, Chinese archaeologists report in the April _Antiquity_. The models, created between 2,200 and 2,100 years ago, predate other evidence of pattern looms by several hundred years.

Red and brown silk threads still clung to the model looms. The largest stood half a meter tall. A reconstruction of that model includes two foot pumps connected to beams, shafts and other parts. A full-scale device with moving parts would have woven repeating geometric designs on clothing and other items made of silk, a technique that transformed the textile’s production.

These 2013 discoveries, made of wood and bamboo, supply the first direct evidence that pattern looms were invented in ancient China. Such looms are mentioned in ancient Chinese texts, but actual examples of the loom technology were lacking. Pattern looms influenced the design of another type of weaving machine that appeared in China within the next few hundred years and then spread to Persia, India and Europe, the researchers suspect. 



After studying models of pattern looms found in an ancient Chinese tomb, researchers made this full-size reconstruction of what the specialized weaving machine probably looked like. ~~ Bo Long, Yingchong Xia, Feng Zhao et al/Antiquity 2017

*Citations*
F. Zhao et al. The earliest evidence of pattern looms: Han Dynasty tomb models from Chengdu, China. _Antiquity_. Vol. 91, April 2017, p. 360. doi:10.15184/aqy.2016.267.​

Oldest evidence of patterned silk loom found in China | Science News

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## TaiShang

*Baidu, UNDP partner to use innovation for public good *
Xinhua, April 26, 2017

Chinese tech giant Baidu and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) have further collaborated on technological innovations to tackle social issues.

Baidu President Zhang Yaqin and UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in China Nicholas Rosellini on Tuesday called on the public to join their Global Responsibility Innovation Programme to open resources like technology to bring innovative solutions for sustainable development.

The two parties launched the Global Responsibility Innovation Programme last December to encourage innovative proposals from the public to answer increasing development challenges. The first open design challenge was held Tuesday.

The contest received over 2,000 proposals from China and abroad, mostly on environmental protection and poverty alleviation.

*The top prize went to student teams from Tsinghua University and Beihang University*, who proposed using deep learning technologies to turn sign language into voice to help the hearing-impaired communicate.

Baidu will grant outstanding applicants and teams access to its technology, to help address public concerns via technologies, and contribute to U.N. Sustainable Development Goals.

Cooperation between Baidu and the UNDP goes back a long way. In 2014, the Baidu-UNDP Big Data Joint Lab was started, aiming to find big data solutions on environmental protection and other human development challenges. Together they developed Baidu Recycle to promote responsible consumption and production.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Smartphone-controlled cells release insulin on demand in diabetic mice*
_Diabetes: There’s literally an app for that_

By Sarah Fecht posted Apr 26th, 2017 at 2:15pm



Shao et al./Sci. Trans. Med. 2017​A push of a button causes the cells implanted in this mouse's back to start making insulin. Here, the mouse is standing inside a coil that powers the implant. Future versions would need to be battery operated in order to work in humans.

A push of a button causes the cells implanted in this mouse's back to start making insulin. Here, the mouse is standing inside a coil that powers the implant. Future versions would need to be battery operated in order to work in humans.

People with diabetes often need to inject themselves with insulin on a daily or weekly basis. But a new device, tested in mice, might one day eliminate the need for needles.

In a study published today in _Science Translational Medicine_, Chinese researchers used a smartphone app to switch on insulin-producing cells implanted in a small group of diabetic mice. Less than two hours after the cells were switched on, the animals’ blood sugar stabilized, without making them hypoglycemic.

The most advanced version of this device uses a coin-sized hydrogel capsule, implanted under a mouse’s skin. Inside the capsule are LED lights and cells that are engineered to release insulin in response to far infrared light. When the mouse’s blood sugar gets too high, buttons on a custom-made Android app switch on the LEDs, triggering the cells to release insulin.

The app allows the user to determine how bright the LEDs should shine, and for how long, to control how much insulin the cells make. A Bluetooth transmitter attached to a regular glucometer can notify the smartphone app when the mouse’s blood sugar is high, automatically prompting the insulin production.



Shao et al./Sci. Trans. Med. 2017​HydrogeLED disks contain cells that are engineered to produce insulin when LED lights shine on them. When implanted in diabetic mice, they helped stabilize the animals' high blood sugar within two hours.

HydrogeLED disks contain cells that are engineered to produce insulin when LED lights shine on them. When implanted in diabetic mice, they helped stabilize the animals' high blood sugar within two hours.

As promising as the results are, the system is not ready for primetime yet. The smartphone app actually communicates with a server, sort of like a smart home hub, that switches on an electromagnetic field coil surrounding the mice. The electromagnetic field powers the LED lights in the implant—so it only works when the mice are standing within a small ring, which would a problem for any diabetic who wants to occasionally leave their home. In addition, the current design still necessitates using a needle to test blood sugar.

Future versions of the HydrogeLED, as the researchers are calling the device, would hopefully solve both problems. Study author Haifeng Ye envisions a built-in glucometer that monitors the patient’s blood sugar 24 hours a day, automatically triggering the battery-operated LEDs when insulin is needed.

There’s still a long way to go before the HydrogeLED could make it into human trials. Ye and his colleagues need to test it in more animals (this version was tested in only five or six animals), and particularly in larger animals such as dogs or monkeys, and over periods longer than the 15 days of this preliminary study. They’ll also need to make sure all the materials are safe, and that they don’t spur an immune response or rejection.

“How soon should we expect to see people on the street wearing fashionable LED wristbands that irradiate implanted cells engineered to produce genetically encoded drugs under the control of a smartphone?” asks University of Wyoming biologist Mark Gomelsky in a commentary accompanying the paper. “Not just yet, but [this work] provides us with an exciting glimpse into the future of smart cell-based therapeutics.”


Smartphone-controlled cells release insulin on demand in diabetic mice | Popular Science

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Tsinghua University Wins ASC17 Championship Big Time*
April 28, 2017
Sponsored Content by Inspur

On April 28, the final round of the 2017 ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge (ASC17) ended in Wuxi. Tsinghua University stood out from 20 teams from around the world after a fierce one-week competition, becoming grand champion and winning the e Prize.





_Tsinghua University secured ASC17 Champion_​
As the world’s largest supercomputing competition, ASC17 received applications from 230 universities around the world, 20 of which got through to the final round held this week at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi after the qualifying rounds. During the final round, the university student teams were required to independently design a supercomputing system under the precondition of a limited 3000W power consumption. They also had to operate and optimize standard international benchmark tests and a variety of cutting-edge scientific and engineering applications including AI-based transport prediction, genetic assembly, and material science. Moreover, they were required to complete high-resolution maritime simulation on the world’s fastest supercomputer, “Sunway TaihuLight.

The grand champion, team Tsinghua University, completed deep parallel optimization of the high-resolution maritime data simulation mode MASNUM on TaihuLight, expanding the original program up to 10,000 cores and speeding up the program by 392 times. This helped the Tsinghua University team win the e Prize award. MASNUM was nominated in 2016 for the Gordon Bell Prize, the top international prize in the supercomputing applications field.

The runner-up, Beihang University, gave an outstanding performance in the popular AI field. After constructing a supercomputing system which received massive training based on past big data of transportation provided by Baidu, their self-developed excellent deep neural network model yielded the most accurate prediction of road conditions during the morning peak.

The first-time finalist, Weifang University team, constructed a highly optimized advanced heterogeneous supercomputing system with Inspur’s supercomputing server, and ran the international HPL benchmark test, setting a new world record of 31.7 TFLOPS for float-point computing speed. The team turned out to be the biggest surprise of the event and won the award for best computing performance.

Moreover, Ural Federal University, National Tsing Hua University, Northwestern Polytechnical University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University won the application innovation award. The popular choice award was shared by Saint-Petersburg State University and Zhengzhou University.

“It is great to see the presence of global teams in this event,” Jack Dongarra, the Chairman of the ASC Expert Committee, founder of the TOP500 list that ranks the 500 most powerful supercomputer systems in the world, and professor at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory of the United States and the University of Tennessee, said in an interview. “This event inspired students to gain advanced scientific knowledge. TaihuLight is an amazing platform for this event. Just imagine the interconnected computation of everyone’s computer in a gymnasium housing 100,000 persons, and TaihuLight’s capacity is 100 times of such a gym. This is something none of the teams will ever be able to experience again.”

According to Wang Endong, initiator of the ASC competition, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and the chief scientist of Inspur Group, the rapid development of AI at the moment is significantly changing human society. At the core of such development are computing, data and algorithms. With this trend, supercomputers will become an important infrastructure for intelligent society in the future, and their speed of development and standards will be closely related to social development, improvement in livelihood, and progress of civilization. ASC competition is always committed to cultivating future-oriented, inter-disciplinary supercomputing talents to extend the benefits to the greater population.

ASC17 is jointly organized by the Asian Supercomputing Community, Inspur Group, the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, and Zhengzhou University. Initiated by China, the ASC supercomputing challenge aims to be the platform to promote exchanges among young supercomputing talent from different countries and regions, as well as to groom young talent. It also aims to be the key driving force in promoting technological and industrial innovations by improving the standards in supercomputing applications and research.


https://www.hpcwire.com/2017/04/28/tsinghua-university-wins-asc17-championship-big-time/


----------



## JSCh

*China Builds World's Largest Kinase-based Whole-cell Screening Library*
Apr 28, 2017

After five years of hard work, China has completed the world’s largest kinase-based whole-cell screening library for high-throughput drug assay.

The cell library is located in Hefei, capital of Anhui Province, and includes over 150 cell lines. The library covers more than 70 different kinases and mutations that are involved in human tumorigenesis and have been targeted through clinical treatment.

*Targeted Therapy*

The kinase-specific screening library, which is the first of its type for drug screening in China, will provide enormous support for anti-cancer drug development in the country, due to the nature of many types of cancer.

Specifically, many cancers are induced by mutations that activate aberrant cell proliferation, resulting in uncontrolled cell growth. Many of these mutations involve kinases and can be inhibited through well-designed small molecule inhibitors.

Targeted therapy against these kinases has an advantage over traditional treatment methods since it is highly specific for oncogenic targets and cells. As a result, it spares normal cells, thus causing fewer side effects and toxicity.

After more than a decade of effort, targeted therapy has made significant progress with more than 30 drugs in clinical use.

However, these drugs cover less than 10 cancer subtypes and are not available for most cancers. Even worse, the rapid appearance of drug resistance has dramatically increased the difficulty of new drug development.

*“Patients in Test Tubes”*

To address these problems, Dr. LIU Qingsong’s research team at the High Magnetic Field Laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CHMFL) set up the library, which was built “from scratch” using genetic engineering and a mouse prototype cell line.

Since the library’s cell lines depend on a single active kinase mutation, they are extremely sensitive to compounds targeting these specific kinases and ideal for high-throughput drug screening.

Dr. WANG Wenchao, a leading researcher on the project and CHMFL scientist, likened the cell library to “patients in test tubes” since the cell lines can “mimic clinical patients in drug sensitivity evaluation at the cellular level.”

To further improve the efficiency of cells in drug screening, LIU’s team also set up a state-of-the-art high-throughput platform with automatic sample handling and data processing capabilities in 2013.

With the platform now in place, the team can finish over 10,000 drug assays in just one day and has already served more than 100 industrial and academic groups involved in drug research.


----------



## JSCh

*Rare earth colorants to start production*
By Meng Fanbin in Beijing and Yuan Hui in Hohhot | China Daily USA | Updated: 2017-04-27 07:08

_Nontoxic properties enable agent to be used to replace existing dyes_

Nontoxic colorant from rare earths is expected to be put into full production in the current year in Baotou, the biggest city in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, following a decision by the local government to upgrade the rare earths industry to value-added processes against previously mining the raw materials.

"Due to its perfect coloring and nontoxic properties the coloring agent, mainly for plastics and leathers, can replace most existing dyes in the market," said Zhang Hongjie, inventor of the colorant and member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

There are currently two kinds of coloring agent in the Chinese market: organic compounds releasing toxic gases with high temperatures and inorganic compounds containing heavy metal elements like lead and cadmium.

The research findings were very important, because China's plastic output is the second biggest in the world and plastic products have been criticized a great deal by Western countries for containing harmful materials, Zhang said.

The move to produce the colorant follows plans by private company Century Zhongtian (Beijing) Investment Co Ltd and the Baotou Rare Earth Research Center to form Zhongke Century Technology Co Ltd. That was in the wake of the research center successfully manufacturing the nontoxic tolerant in November.

Baotou-based Zhongke Century, which aims to be the world's biggest rare earth colorant research center, plans to invest 1 billion yuan ($14.5 million) and build two production lines with respective annual output of 50 metric tons and 100 tons, worth a combined 10 billion yuan each year.

"The preparation work at early stage of the project is under way," said Geng Biao, general manager of the investment company.

"Currently site selection and fundraising is taking place," Geng added.

Estimates are that rare earths reserves in Baotou account for 83 percent of the total in China and 30 percent of world reserves.

The local government is promoting the upgrade of its rare earths industry from previously exploiting the raw materials, to developing comprehensive processing technologies with higher added value.

Around 5.9 million yuan in special funds were allocated by the Office of Science and Technology in Inner Mongolia, to financially support the construction of a production demonstration line at the Baotou Rare Earth Research Center.

"Technologies for producing colorant from rare earths and sulfides are one of the most import improvements in developing rare earth in the downstream chain," said Chi Jianyi, director of the Baotou Rare Earth Research Center.

The technology was listed in a list of prescribed alternatives to toxic and harmful materials, issued by Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Environmental Protection.

Widely used in the fields of plastics, paints, inks and leathers, the coloring agent has huge potential in market demand, said Chi.

"Without toxicity, the coloring agent we produce is totally environmentally friendly and can even be used in lipstick manufacturing."

Based on three patented technologies, the green dyestuff is a synthetic product of rare earth elements including lanthanum, cerium and sulfides.

Research into the rare earth colorant began in 2003, when scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences worked with experts from Russia, who used traditional methods to produce the rare earth agent.

"The traditional method is not only sophisticated but also very costly, so it can not be used in large-scale production," said colorant inventor Zhang Hongjie.

The start of production of the colorant will be the result of more than 10 years of successful research by the laboratory. Zhang said scientists had invented a totally new method of producing colorant from rare earths and sulfides which was simple and practical, without using hydrogen sulfides and other toxic materials.

The patented technology will also see large-scale production of the staining material.

At the moment studies on rare earth sulfide synthetics, especially on their application, remain at the early stage.


----------



## cirr

*Tianma Micro-electronics starts production at 6G AMOLED factory*

Joan Wei, Taipei; Adam Hwang, DIGITIMES [Tuesday 25 April 2017]

China-based Tianma Micro-electronics has begun production of rigid and flexible AMOLED panels based on LTPS (low-temperature poly-Si) backplanes at a new 6G AMOLED line in Wuhan, central China, according to industry sources.

Tianma started construction of the plant in January 2016 and it is the first 6G AMOLED one in China as well as the world's first 6G fab producing both rigid and flexible AMOLED panels, the sources said.

Tianma set up a 4.5G AMOLED trial production line for R&D of AMOLED technology and manufacturing process in 2010 and a 5.5G AMOLED factory in 2013, with the factory beginning shipments to vendors of smart terminal devices in 2016.

@Bussard Ramjet BOE will start volume production at its Chengdu 6G AMOLED facility in Q4 2017, followed by production in 2019 at its 2nd 6G AMOLED fab in Mianyang。 India？

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

cirr said:


> *Tianma Micro-electronics starts production at 6G AMOLED factory*
> 
> Joan Wei, Taipei; Adam Hwang, DIGITIMES [Tuesday 25 April 2017]
> 
> China-based Tianma Micro-electronics has begun production of rigid and flexible AMOLED panels based on LTPS (low-temperature poly-Si) backplanes at a new 6G AMOLED line in Wuhan, central China, according to industry sources.
> 
> Tianma started construction of the plant in January 2016 and it is the first 6G AMOLED one in China as well as the world's first 6G fab producing both rigid and flexible AMOLED panels, the sources said.
> 
> Tianma set up a 4.5G AMOLED trial production line for R&D of AMOLED technology and manufacturing process in 2010 and a 5.5G AMOLED factory in 2013, with the factory beginning shipments to vendors of smart terminal devices in 2016.
> 
> @Bussard Ramjet BOE will start volume production at its Chengdu 6G AMOLED facility in Q4 2017, followed by production in 2019 at its 2nd 6G AMOLED fab in Mianyang。 India？




*China Starts Production of 6th-generatin OLEDs*



China has started production of the 6th-generation flexible OLED.
SEOUL,KOREA
27 April 2017 - 6:30pm
Cho Jin-young
China has started the chase of South Korea to dominate the organic light-emitting diode (OLED) market. China’s Tianma has started production of the 6th-generation flexible OLED, which is used in smartphones, for the second time in the world after Samsung Display.

According to foreign media including Taiwan’s DigiTimes on April 26, Tianma Micro-electronics Co., a China-based display producer, recently began production of the 6th-generation flexible OLED panel for smartphone at the Wuhan plant. The company planned to mass produce the panel from the second half of this year at first but it moved up the operation date three months ahead. Using the backplane process using low-temperature polycrystalline silicon (LTPS), Tianma will produce 30,000 OLED panels a month. It is the first Chinese company producing the 6th-generation flexible OLED panel.




As Tianma mass produces the 6th-generation flexible OLED early, not only Samsung Display, the largest supplier in the market, but also LG Display feel pressured. This is because more and more smartphone makers are using OLED panels for their displays and the Chinese industry is now targeting the market earlier than expected. LG Display plans to start mass production of the 6th-generation flexible OLED panel at the E5 plant in Gumi from June this year with a monthly production of 15,000 units. However, Tianma is one step ahead in terms of production date and production capacity.

In particular, Tianma plans to produce flat and flexible panels at the 6th-generation facility at the same time and supply them to Chinese smartphone manufacturers, such as Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo, which are LG Display’s customers. As Apple, which pursues “multi-vendor” strategy, is now seeking for a smaller OLED supplier, Tianma can emerge as a potential competitor of LG Display, which will supply OLED panels to the iPhone 8 from next year.

It is also the pressure for Samsung Display which monopolizes the small and mid-size OLED market. Samsung Display currently produces 55,000 units of the 4.5th-generation OLED panel a month at the A1 plant in Cheonan, 180,000 units of the 5.5th-generation panel a month at the A2 plant in Asan and 27,000 units of the 6th-generation panel a month at the A3 plant in Asan. The company outplays Tianma in terms of quantities but it is not happy to have a new competitor in the market. China’s BOE will start mass production of the 6th-generation OLED with a monthly production of 50,000 units from later this year in Chengdu, while China Star Optoelectronics Technology (CSOT) will produce 45,000 units a month in Wuhan from the first half of 2020.

The question is how much Chinese companies can raise the quality of small and mid-size OLED panels. An official from the electronics industry, who requested anonymity, said, *“Tianma has developed the small and mid-size OLED for years but its quality is not so good. Even LG Display, which is a strong player in the large OLED market, is deliberate in the quality of small and mid-size panels when mass producing. When every company joins into the small and mid-size OLED market, only high quality products will be survived in the market.” 
*
@cirr

Anybody with enough capital outlay can produce OLED. You can license the tech, buy the equipment, poach some talent, and then produce OLEDs technically.

However, I don't see Tianma being a Samsung or even LG display anytime soon. Samsung is an active company that owns all the tech, is active in research, and is the highest standard in OLED right now.

http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/engl...g-china-starts-production-6th-generatin-oleds


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists use drop of blood to detect cancer *
By Xie Zhenqi
2017-05-01 15:08 GMT+8

Scientists around the world are striving for effective detection of cancer in the early stages, and a Chinese scientist may have found a quick way of knowing whether malignant tumors exist in a patient's body, with just one drop of blood. 

Luo Yongzhang and his team in Tsinghua University's School of Life Sciences in Beijing have successfully invented a reagent test kit of Hsp90α for clinical use, which can diagnose multiple kinds of cancer by analyzing a drop of human blood. 




Luo and his team members in a lab. / CCTV Photo

Malignant tumors in early phases can be cured but once they have spread all over the patient's body there is no way to save the person's life. 

However, it's extremely difficult to be aware of cancer in its early stages, as patients don't show obvious symptoms and thus it can only be found in its later stages, which is already too late, so to detect cancer early remains a global challenge for scientists. 



Scientists around the globe are working to find ways to detect cancer in its early stage. / VCG Photo

Back in 1989, scientists have found a kind of heat shock proteins (HSP), named Hsp90α, which existed in human bodies and can be used as a cancer biomarker detection kit. 

Scientists around the globe have been working on it since then, and more than 10,000 journals have been published on accredited magazines, yet no one has actually turned their research results into medical products. 

However, Luo and his team seemed to have cracked the code, after working on the problem since 2009. The team has produced an artificial Hsp90α protein that gains structural stability by regrouping proteins. This means they are able to "create" the protein, in any quantity, and at any time ‍they wish to. 

The kit has since been used in clinical trials involving 2,347 patients at eight hospitals in China. It was the first clinical trial in the world to test if the protein could be a useful tumor biomarker for lung cancer, and it succeeded.

Now, the kit has been certified to enter the Chinese and European markets, 24 years after Hsp90α was discovered.



The final product that has been approved by government and ready to enter markets in China and Europe. / CCTV Photo

Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. 

In 2015, about 90.5 million people had cancer in the world, with roughly 14.1 million new cases occurring each year. Approximately 8.8 million human deaths, or 15.7 percent of all deaths in the world, are caused by cancer. 

In China alone, 4.29 million people were detected as having cancer in 2015, and 2.8 million of them died in that year.


----------



## TaiShang

*Chinese scientists use drop of blood to detect cancer*
CGTN | Updated: 2017-05-02





A group of Chinese scientists have invented a reagent test kit which can diagnose multiple kinds of cancer by analyzing a drop of human blood. [Photo/CGTN]


Scientists around the world are striving for effective detection of cancer in the early stages, and a Chinese scientist may have found a quick way of knowing whether malignant tumors exist in a patient's body, with just one drop of blood.

*Luo Yongzhang and his team in Tsinghua University's School of Life Sciences in Beijing have successfully invented a reagent test kit of Hsp90α for clinical use, which can diagnose multiple kinds of cancer by analyzing a drop of human blood.*

Malignant tumors in early phases can be cured but once they have spread all over the patient's body there is no way to save the person's life.

However, it's extremely difficult to be aware of cancer in its early stages, as patients don't show obvious symptoms and thus it can only be found in its later stages, which is already too late, so to detect cancer early remains a global challenge for scientists.

Back in 1989, scientists have found a kind of heat shock proteins (HSP), named Hsp90α, which existed in human bodies and can be used as a cancer biomarker detection kit.

Scientists around the globe have been working on it since then, and more than 10,000 journals have been published on accredited magazines, yet no one has actually turned their research results into medical products.

*However, Luo and his team seemed to have cracked the code, after working on the problem since 2009. The team has produced an artificial Hsp90α protein that gains structural stability by regrouping proteins. This means they are able to "create" the protein, in any quantity, and at any time they wish to.*

The kit has since been used in clinical trials involving 2,347 patients at eight hospitals in China. It was the first clinical trial in the world to test if the protein could be a useful tumor biomarker for lung cancer, and it succeeded.

*Now, the kit has been certified to enter the Chinese and European markets, 24 years after Hsp90α was discovered.*

Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body.

In 2015, about 90.5 million people had cancer in the world, with roughly 14.1 million new cases occurring each year. Approximately 8.8 million human deaths, or 15.7 percent of all deaths in the world, are caused by cancer.

In China alone, 4.29 million people were detected as having cancer in 2015, and 2.8 million of them died in that year.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

* China Focus: Factory farms the future for Chinese scientists *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-04-30 09:06:29_|_Editor: Yamei_

XIAMEN, Fujian Province, April 30 (Xinhua) -- In a factory in eastern China, farming is becoming like scientific endeavor, with leafy vegetables embedded neatly on stacked layers, and workers in laboratory suits tending the plants in cleanrooms.

The factory, with an area of 10,000 square meters, is in Quanzhou, Fujian Province. Built in June 2016, the land is designed to be a "plant factory," where all environmental factors, including light, humidity, temperature and gases, can be controlled to produce quality vegetables.

The method is pursued by Sananbio, a joint venture between the Institute of Botany under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IBCAS) and Sanan Group, a Chinese optoelectronics giant. The company is attempting to produce more crops in less space while minimizing environmental damage.

Sananbio said it would invest 7 billion yuan (about 1.02 billion U.S. dollars) to bring the new breed of agriculture to reality.

*NEW FARMING*

Plant factories, also known as a vertical farms, are part of a new global industry.

China now has about 80 plant factories, and Sananbio has touted its Quanzhou facility as the world's largest plant factory.

In the factory, leafy greens grow in six stacked layers with two lines of blue and red LED lights hung above each layer. The plants are grown using hydroponics, a method that uses mineral nutrient solutions in a water solvent instead of soil.

"Unlike traditional farming, we can control the duration of lighting and the component of mineral solutions to bring a higher yield," said Pei Kequan, a researcher with IBCAS and director of R&D in Sanabio. "The new method yields ten-times more crops per square meter than traditional farming."

From seedling to harvesting, vegetables in the farm usually take 35 days, about 10 days shorter than greenhouse plants.

To achieve a higher yield, scientists have developed an algorithm which automates the color and duration of light best for plant growth, as well as different mineral solutions suitable for different growth stages.

The plant factory produces 1.5 tonnes of vegetables every day, most of which are sold to supermarkets and restaurants in Quanzhou and nearby cities.

The world's population will bloat to 9.7 billion by 2050, when 70 percent of people will reside in urban areas, according to the World Health Organization.

Pei said he believes the plant factory can be part of a solution for potential future food crises.

In the factory, he has even brought vertical farming into a deserted shipping container.

"Even if we had to move underground someday, the plant factory could help ensure a steady supply of vegetables," he said.

*HEALTHIER FUTURE*

Before entering the factory, Sananbio staff have to go through strict cleanroom procedures: putting on face masks, gloves, boots, and overalls, taking air showers, and putting personal belongings through an ultraviolet sterilizer.

The company aims to prevent any external hazards that could threaten the plants, which receive no fertilizers or pesticides.

By adjusting the mineral solution, scientists are able to produce vegetables rich or low in certain nutrients.

The factory has already been churning out low-potassium lettuces, which are good for people with kidney problems.

Adding to the 20 types of leafy greens already grown in the factory, the scientists are experimenting on growing herbs used in traditional Chinese medicine and other healthcare products.

Zheng Yanhai, a researcher at Sananbio, studies anoectohilus formosanus, a rare herb in eastern China with many health benefits.

"In the plant factory, we can produce the plants with almost the same nutrients as wild anoectohilus," Zheng said. "We tested different light, humidity, temperature, gases and mineral solutions to form a perfect recipe for the plant."

The factory will start with rare herbs first and then focus on other health care products, Zheng said.

*GROWING PAINS*

Currently, most of the products in the plant factory are short-stemmed leafy greens.

"Work is in progress to bring more varieties to the factory," said Li Dongfang, an IBCAS researcher and Sananbio employee.

Some are concerned about the energy consumed with LED lights and air-conditioning.

"Currently, it takes about 10 kwh of electricity to produce one kilogram of vegetables," said Pei, who added that the number is expected to drop in three to five years, with higher LED luminous efficiency.

In a Yonghui superstore in neighboring Xiamen city, the vegetables from the plant factory have a specially designated area, and are sold at about a 30 percent premium, slightly higher than organic and locally produced food.

"Lettuce from the plant factory is a bit expensive, at least for now, there are many other healthy options," said Wang Yuefeng, a consumer browsing through the products, which are next to the counter for locally produced food.

Sananbio said it plans to expand the factory further to drive down the cost in the next six months. "The price will not be a problem in the future, with people's improving living standards," Li said.


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 2-May-2017
* Scientists develop efficient multifunctional catalyst for CO2 hydrogenation to gasoline *
Chinese Academy of Sciences Headquarters



This is a CO2 hydrogenation to gasoline-range hydrocarbons over Na-Fe3O4/Zeolite multifunctional catalyst.
*Credit : *Image by WEI Jian

Converting CO2 from a detrimental greenhouse gas into value-added liquid fuels not only contributes to mitigating CO2 emissions, but also reduces dependence on petrochemicals. However, since CO2 is a fully oxidized, thermodynamically stable and chemically inert molecule, the activation of CO2 and its hydrogenation to hydrocarbons or other alcohols are challenging tasks. Most research to date, not surprisingly, is focusing on selective hydrogenation of CO2 to short-chain products, while few studies on long-chain hydrocarbons, such as gasoline-range (C5-C11) hydrocarbons. The key to this process is to search for a high efficient catalyst.

The research team led by Dr. SUN Jian and Prof. GE Qingjie in Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, has succeeded in preparing a high efficient, stable, and multifunctional Na-Fe3O4/HZSM-5 catalyst for the direct production of gasoline from CO2 hydrogenation. This catalyst exhibited 78% selectivity to C5-C11 as well as low CH4 and CO selectivity under industrial relevant conditions. And gasoline fractions are mainly isoparaffins and aromatics thus favoring the octane number. Moreover, the multifunctional catalyst exhibited a remarkable stability for 1,000 h on stream, which definitely has the potential to be a promising industrial catalyst for CO2 utilization to liquid fuels.

In-depth characterizations indicate that this catalyst enables RWGS over Fe3O4 sites, olefin synthesis over Fe5C2 sites and oligomerization/aromatization/isomerization over zeolite acid sites. The concerted action of the active sites calls for precise control of their structures and proximity. This study paves a new path for the synthesis of liquid fuels by utilizing CO2 and H2. Furthermore, it provides an important approach for dealing with the intermittency of renewable sources (sun, wind and so on) by storing energy in liquid fuels.

###​
This work was recently published on _Nature Communications_ (DOI: 10.1038/ncomms15174). This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the Hundred-Talent Program of DICP, Chinese Academy of Sciences.


Scientists develop efficient multifunctional catalyst for CO2 hydrogenation to gasoline | EurekAlert! Science News

Jian Wei, Qingjie Ge, Ruwei Yao, Zhiyong Wen, Chuanyan Fang, Lisheng Guo, Hengyong Xu & Jian Sun (2017) “Directly converting CO2 into a gasoline fuel” _Nature Communications_ (2017). DOI: 10.1038/ncomms15174


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists make quantum leap in computing*
(Xinhua) 10:54, May 03, 2017

CHINESE scientists have built world's first quantum computing machine that goes beyond the early classical -- or conventional -- computers, paving the way to the ultimate realization of quantum computing beating classical computers.

Scientists announced their achievement at a press conference in the Shanghai Institute for Advanced Studies of University of Science and Technology of China on Wednesday.

Many scientists believe quantum computing could in some ways dwarf the processing power of today's supercomputers. The manipulation of multi-particle entanglement is the core of quantum computing technology and has been the focus of international competition in quantum computing research.

Recently, Chinese leading quantum physicist Pan Jianwei, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and his colleagues -- Lu Chaoyang and Zhu Xiaobo, of the University of Science and Technology of China, and Wang Haohua, of Zhejiang University -- set two international records in quantum control of the maximal numbers of entangled photonic quantum bits and entangled superconducting quantum bits.

Pan said quantum computers could, in principle, solve certain problems faster than classical computers. Despite substantial progress in the past two decades, building quantum machines that can actually outperform classical computers in some specific tasks -- an important milestone termed "quantum supremacy" -- remains challenging.

In the quest for quantum supremacy, Boson sampling, an intermediate (that is, non-universal) quantum computer model has received considerable attention, as it requires fewer physical resources than building universal optical quantum computers, Pan said.

Last year, Pan and Lu Chaoyang developed the world's best single photon source based on semiconductor quantum dots. Now, they are using the high-performance single photon source and electronically programmable photonic circuit to build a multi-photon quantum computing prototype to run the Boson sampling task.

The test results show the sampling rate of this prototype is at least 24,000 times faster than international counterparts, according to Pan's team.

At the same time, the prototype quantum computing machine is 10 to 100 times faster than the first electronic computer, ENIAC, and the first transistor computer, TRADIC, in running the classical algorithm, Pan said.

It is the first quantum computing machine based on single photons that goes beyond the early classical computer, and ultimately paves the way to a quantum computer that can beat classical computers. This achievement was published online in the latest issue of Nature Photonics this week.

#####​Hui Wang, Yu He, Yu-Huai Li, Zu-En Su, Bo Li, He-Liang Huang, Xing Ding, Ming-Cheng Chen, Chang Liu, Jian Qin, Jin-Peng Li, Yu-Ming He, Christian Schneider, Martin Kamp, Cheng-Zhi Peng, Sven Hoefling, Chao-Yang Lu, Jian-Wei Pan. High-efficiency multiphoton boson sampling. _Nature Photonics _(2017). DOI:10.1038/nphoton.2017.63


----------



## JSCh

*Mini nuclear reactor now ready to be built*
By ZHENG XIN | China Daily | Updated: 2017-05-03 07:22



Visitors watch the models of ACP 100 nuclear reactor at an expo in Beijing, April 29, 2017. [Photo provided to China Daily]

*Smaller, safer source of energy set for construction on pilot basis in Hainan*

The first pilot project to use China National Nuclear Corporation's cutting-edge third-generation ACP100 nuclear reactor has completed its preliminary design stage and is qualified for construction in Hainan province.

The company said that the ACP100, China's first small reactor developed by CNNC for practical use, which the company calls the Linglong One, is expected to be built at the end of this year in the Changjiang Li autonomous county of Hainan.

All research, development and design procedures have been completed, and work will proceed on the feasibility study, soil and water conservation research, environmental impact assessment, construction land geological disaster risk assessment and seismic safety assessment following the issuing of the relevant permits by the end of next month.

Qian Tianlin, general manager of China Nuclear New Energy Investment, said earlier that small-scale nuclear reactor technology has reached a stage at which it can be used on a pilot basis.

It can be used to generate heat for a residential district replacing coal-fired boilers, he said.

According to Qian, small modular reactors are defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency as advanced reactors producing up to 300 megawatts of power that can largely be built in factories and shipped to utilities and end users.

They were widely promoted in the 1990s, thanks to their enhanced level of security and flexible use, including providing heat and sea desalination, he said.

China is highly supportive of small modular reactors, and the company's Linglong One is the first reactor of its kind in the world to have passed the safety review by the IAEA, a remarkable breakthrough in global small multipurpose modular reactor development.

Qian said he expects mass production of the small modular reactors after the pilot project in Hainan is up and running, and for the technology to be exported globally.

Many countries, including Pakistan, Iran, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Mongolia, Brazil, Egypt and Canada, have shown a keen interest in potential use of the technology, it said.

Wan Gang, head of the China Institute of Atomic Energy, said small modular reactors are safe amid growing public concern over nuclear safety following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.

According to CNNC, compared with million-kilowatt reactor nuclear power plants, the Linglong One features low and controllable core temperatures and is economically superior to other power supply modes and is more environmentally friendly.


----------



## cirr

*China has a $1.45B plan to build up its biotech hubs — and officials are moving fast*





_by _john carroll

May 3, 2017 09:02 AM EDT

Updated: 07:02 PM

When the Chinese government sets its sights on a 5-year business development plan, you can always be sure that officials are willing to invest heavily in infrastructure to make things happen.

And they don’t waste time.

Earlier this week, Zhang Zhaofeng, a director of social development in China’s Ministry of Science and Technology (appropriately abbreviated to MOST) was quoted extensively in China’s media with his outline of a plan to build 10 to 20 new biotech research centers in the country — by 2020.

The _People’s Daily_ put the price tag on that as 10 billion RMB ($1.45 billion). And drug research will be mixed with ag biotech and environmental sciences.

There are some problems that the country wants to address in biotech, including a shortage of original R&D work, too few disruptive plays (same thing) and a problem with execution. But the country says it’s second in the world on patents and published papers, so with some assistance from the government, Zhang believes the country is on the right path.

There’s no question that the amount of biotech news out of Shanghai and other biotech hubs in China is swelling. Just a couple of months ago BeiGene announced plans to build a $330 million facility in China, with government economic development officials chipping in the lion’s share of the money.

About the same time Richard Wang, the former site chief for GSK in Shanghai, took the CEO’s job at Fosun Kite, a joint venture established by Kite Pharma and Shanghai Fosun to advance Kite’s CAR-T $KITE to the market. And Shanghai-based *Chi-Med* scored positive overall survival and progression-free survival in a *Phase III study of fruquintinib*, its lead oncology drug, in colon cancer, putting it on track with Eli Lilly to seek marketing approval in China.

https://endpts.com/china-has-a-1-45...s-biotech-hubs-and-officials-are-moving-fast/

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Neutron research can facilitate stress tests of vehicles, enhancing safety *
Source:Global Times Published: 2017/5/3 17:23:39

The construction of the China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS), or "super microscope," has been finished in Dongguan, South China's Guangdong Province and the equipment is now being installed and tested, China's top science academy said. 

The CSNS is expected to produce its first neutron beam - a stream of subatomic particles - in autumn and will be open to users in March 2018, said Chen Hesheng, director of the CSNS project and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), according to a statement posted on the WeChat account of CAS on Tuesday.

After it is put into use, China will be the fourth country to have obtained such a neutron source after the US, Japan and the UK, according to CAS. 

In simple terms, the CSNS is a tool to observe objects at the most detailed level, a "super microscope" that manipulates neutrons to help scientists study the microstructures of substances such as "DNA, crystalline materials and polymerized substances," CAS said.

The project will provide an advanced research platform for scientific and industrial fields, including material science, life science, physics, chemistry, environmental engineering as well as new energy, the report said. 

In terms of specific application, the spallation neutron source could be used to test the remaining stress on tracks of high-speed rails and wings of planes to make the transportation safer and more comfortable. The stress level can determine the service life and safety of transport vehicles, but it could not be seen or touched, so its study could help avoid accidents, according to CAS.

While there are nuclear reactors in China that provide neutrons for researchers - such as the China Advanced Research Reactor in Beijing - the country has previously lacked this kind of "spallation" neutron source, according to the official website of CAS. Among the advantages that spallation offers over nuclear neutron generation is that it is cheaper and does not require dangerous nuclear material.

The CSNS was one of the two large-scale scientific facilities included in China's 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15) and is the first of its kind in a developing country, with a budget of 2.2 billion yuan ($319 million), according to a statement of CAS in October 2014.

The CSNS project is based in Dalang township, about 85 kilometers from Guangzhou and about 125 kilometers from Hong Kong. The CSNS will be the first large scientific facility in South China and is expected to boost its scientific and high-tech development.

According to a CAS report in October 2016, one challenge facing China in this field is that its neutron community is relatively small. This is being addressed via training schemes to boost the numbers of scientists and students who will be able to use neutrons for their research. In 2013, the Chinese Physical Society also set up a neutron scattering group to help in this endeavor.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Banglar Bir

01:01 PM, May 04, 2017 / LAST MODIFIED: 01:38 PM, May 04, 2017
*Chinese scientists create first photon quantum computer*
China Daily, China


Chinese scientists have built the world's first quantum computing machine that goes far beyond the early classical -- or conventional -- computers, paving the way to the ultimate realization of quantum computing.

Scientists announced their achievement at a press conference in the Shanghai Institute for Advanced Studies of University of Science and Technology of China on Wednesday.

Scientists believe quantum computing could in some ways dwarf the processing power of today's supercomputers. One analogy to explain the concept of quantum computing is that it is like being able to read all the books in a library at the same time, whereas conventional computing is like having to read them one after another.

Pan Jianwei, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a leading quantum physicist, said quantum computing exploits the fundamental quantum superposition principle to enable ultra-fast parallel calculation and simulation capabilities.

In normal silicon computer chips, data is rendered in one of two states: 0 or 1. However, in quantum computers, data could exist in both states simultaneously, holding exponentially more information.

The computing power of a quantum computer grows exponentially with the number of quantum bits that can be manipulated. This could effectively solve large-scale computation problems that are beyond the ability of current classical computers, Pan said.

For example, a quantum computer with 50 quantum bits would be more powerful in solving quantum sampling problems than today's fastest supercomputer, Sunway TaihuLight, installed in the National Supercomputing Center of China.

Due to the enormous potential of quantum computing, Europe and the United States are actively collaborating in their research. High-tech companies, such as Google, Microsoft and IBM, also have massive interests in quantum computing research.

The research team led by Pan is exploring three technical routes: systems based on single photons, ultra-cold atoms and superconducting circuits.

Recently, Pan Jianwei and his colleagues -- Lu Chaoyang and Zhu Xiaobo, of the University of Science and Technology of China, and Wang Haohua, of Zhejiang University -- set two international records in quantum control of the maximal numbers of entangled photonic quantum bits and entangled superconducting quantum bits.

Pan explained that manipulation of multi-particle entanglement is the core of quantum computing technology and has been the focus of international competition in quantum computing research.

In the photonic system, his team has achieved the first 5, 6, 8 and 10 entangled photons in the world and is at the forefront of global developments.

Pan said quantum computers could, in principle, solve certain problems faster than classical computers. Despite substantial progress in the past two decades, building quantum machines that can actually outperform classical computers in some specific tasks -- an important milestone termed "quantum supremacy" -- remains challenging.

In the quest for quantum supremacy, Boson sampling, an intermediate (that is, non-universal) quantum computer model, has received considerable attention, as it requires fewer physical resources than building universal optical quantum computers, Pan said.

Last year, Pan and Lu Chaoyang developed the world's best single photon source based on semiconductor quantum dots. Now, they are using the high-performance single photon source and electronically programmable photonic circuit to build a multi-photon quantum computing prototype to run the Boson sampling task.

The test results show the sampling rate of this prototype is at least 24,000 times faster than international counterparts, according to Pan's team.

At the same time, the prototype quantum computing machine is 10 to 100 times faster than the first electronic computer, ENIAC, and the first transistor computer, TRADIC, in running the classical algorithm, Pan said.

It is the first quantum computing machine based on single photons that goes beyond the early classical computer, and ultimately paves the way to a quantum computer that can beat classical computers. This achievement was published online in the latest issue of Nature Photonics this week.

In the superconducting quantum circuit system, a research team from Google, NASA and the University of California at Santa Barbara announced a high-precision manipulation of 9 superconducting quantum bits in 2015.

Now the Chinese team led by Pan, Zhu Xiaobo and Wang Haohua have broken that record. They independently developed a superconducting quantum circuit containing 10 superconducting quantum bits and successfully entangled the 10 quantum bits through a global quantum operation.

Chinese scientists aim to realize manipulation of 20 entangled photons by the end of this year, and will try to design and manipulate 20 superconducting quantum bits. They also plan to launch a quantum cloud computing platform by the end of this year.

_Copyright: China Daily/ Asia News Network_
http://www.thedailystar.net/bytes/t...m_medium=newsurl&utm_term=all&utm_content=all

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## beijingwalker

China: Shenzhen shames jaywalkers by beaming their FACES onto giant screen


----------



## phancong

China’s first nuclear submarine was a joke. Launched in the 1970s and now an exhibit in a museum, it was loud, couldn’t fire missiles while submerged, and exposed its crew to high levels of radiation.

But it got the ball rolling. The nation’s modern subs make the US nervous with their technical advances, and China is now constructing the world’s largest submarine factory.

It isn’t just the subs. While China still lags the US badly in some areas, and its exported weapons have had reliability issues, signs abound that its military hardware is either catching up or becoming good enough to pose a real challenge in a potential conflict. A military modernization program pushed by Chinese president Xi Jinping is spurring things along.

*“A ship that can fly”*
Last week the world’s largest amphibious aircraft made its first taxiing test. The AG600, made by the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China, is about the size of the Boeing 737 and is designed for marine takeoff and landing (or it can use conventional airstrips). One of its designers describes it as a “ship that can fly.”

The company says the plane will be used for marine rescue missions and fighting forest fires—it can scoop up 12 metric tons (13.2 tons) of water in 20 minutes. But given Beijing’s maritime ambitions in the South China Sea and elsewhere, the plane, with room for 50 passengers and a range of 4,500 km (2,800 miles), can also servethe People’s Liberation Army nicely, including via maritime patrols and troop and supplies transport—in other words, power projection. The hefty plane’s maiden flight over land is scheduled for this month, and over water later this year.

*A made-in-China aircraft carrier*
For years China has had just one operational aircraft carrier—hardly befitting an emerging maritime power. To make matters worse the Liaoning CV-16 was refitted from a laughably outdated Soviet-era Ukrainian ship. Last week China unveiled its first domestically built carrier at the northeast port of Dalian (see top image). The as-yet-unnamed vessel, to be fully operational in a few years, is technologically well behind its US counterparts. For instance it lacks a catapult to boost planes off the runway (making for inefficient operations) and uses conventional rather than nuclear power. But like China’s early subs, it’s a stepping stone to greater things. A third carrier is already under construction—one that more closely resembles a US carrier.

*Stealthy fighter jets*
China is making real progress in fighter jets, as evidenced by the J-20 that went into service in March. The supersonic aircraft packs stealth technology, advanced radar and sensor capabilities, and a nifty 360-degree helmet display that lets the pilot see “through” the aircraft itself. It’s also bigger than the US’s F-22 Raptor—to which it’s often compared—allowing it to hold more fuel and travel farther. While it might be stealthy from the front, however, it probably isn’t from the side. But China is testing another advanced fighter jet (the J-31) that does better in the stealth department and will possibly operate from aircraft carriers.





Somewhat stealthy. (EPA/YhC)
*A new spy ship*
China launched in January a new electronic spy ship. The CNS Kaiyangxing, or Mizar, is capable of conducting all-weather, round-the-clock reconnaissance on multiple targets. During its unveiling, China shared an unusual amount of detail about the ship and the rest of its small intelligence fleet, now at about a half dozen vessels (the US has at least 15). That openness was probably for the deterrence factor: Beijing wants other navies know to that, should they operate in disputed waters, its forces will be able to detect them. Vessels like this one lack firepower but can be more dangerous than warships.

*A (really) long-range air-to-air missile*
Being able to hit enemy aircraft in a combat zone is expected. From well outside that zone? That’s a useful bonus. In January the state-run China Daily reported on a new, long-range air-to-air missile that could, a Chinese military researcher speculated, hit high-value targets like early-warning aircraft from up to 400 km (249 miles) away. That would be far better than China’s current range of less than 100 km for such missiles. It would also outdo US capabilities in that department—one where China might actually be in the lead.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## TaiShang

Peaceful rise and development. 

This is all about China's continuing qualitative growth in many fields. 

They should have already read the article by Zheng Bijin, published in Foreign Affairs in 2005. Peaceful Rise and Development is a fairly well-established IR theory now.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## beijingwalker

Big scientific and technological breakthroughs coming out almost every week.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

*China Focus: China stepping closer to "innovative nation"*
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-05 23:43:46|Editor: Mu Xuequan





BEIJING, May 5 (Xinhua) -- China's first home-grown large passenger jet C919 made its maiden flight on Friday.

In the same week, Chinese scientists announced they had built world's first quantum computing machine, paving the way for the ultimate realization of quantum computing overtaking classical computers. China's manned submersible Jiaolong conducted its fourth dive in the South China Sea.

In April, China launched its first domestically built aircraft carrier and the Tianzhou-1 cargo spacecraft docked with Tiangong-2 space lab and completed their first in-orbit refueling.

Such a string of achievements in science and technology shows the strategy of innovation-driven development beginning to pay off.

Innovation is at the core of the 13th five-year plan which has the objective of becoming an "innovative nation" by 2020, an international leader in innovation by 2030, and a world powerhouse of scientific and technological innovation by 2050.

PROGRESS AND HURDLES

The innovation strategy is key to supply-side structural reform which will shape China's economic policies in 2017 and beyond, but only once a major obstacle is surmounted.

Far too few of China's workforce are involved in research and development (R&D). Not enough money is spent on R&D and incentives are poor.

*Of course. Chinese patenting applications have increased dramatically, but few are of any real quality. Most represent small improvements in existing products or mere design ideas. There are very few of the fully-fledged inventions which could inspire a whole generation of innovators. There is no Tesla, no transistor, no mousetrap.*

While China is the world's largest consumer of computer chips, it imports most of them. To address the issue, universal chips were listed as a key scientific and technological project of national importance, but that was back in 2014.

The 13th five-year plan talks about breakthroughs in key areas by 2030, including aviation engines, quantum teleportation, intelligent manufacturing and robots, deep space and deep sea probes, new materials, brain science and health.

These projects are designed to break free from external dominance in these areas and create new directions and areas for development and growth.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE WORLD

As China makes advances in science and technology, other countries are seeking partnership.

Cisco Systems (China) invested 20 billion yuan in the Cisco (Guangzhou) Smart City project, aiming to build the largest platform of Internet R&D and intelligent operations, outside the United States.

"The project offers a great opportunity to present an innovative example to the world," said Chuck Robbins, Cisco Global CEO.

In addition to the Smart City project, hi-tech hubs in Shanghai, Beijing and many other cities are offering foreign investors ample opportunities of cooperation.

Honeywell Aerospace Asia-Pacific is one of the suppliers of the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC), manufacturer of the C919.

Michel Merluzeau, director of AirInsightResearch, an aerospace & defence market analysis and consulting group, anticipates that by the mid-2030s, COMAC will be an important partner in the global aerospace supply chains, owing to growth in China, partnerships and the size of the market.

"We are so proud that we have made and stuck to the right strategic choice," said Steven Lien, president of Honeywell Aerospace Asia-Pacific.

China is also attracting foreign personnel to grow its stock of high-quality workers. In 2016, 1,576 foreigners became permanent Chinese residents, an increase of 163 percent on the previous year, according to the Ministry of Public Security.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-05/05/c_136260598.htm

@cirr @AndrewJin @wanglaokan 

Just a reminder, this is not me saying it. This is Xinhua saying it. 

And this is completely correct. Huawei despite its patents still has to pay huge sums of money on royalties to other companies.


----------



## cirr

05 May 2017

*Petrol created from carbon dioxide*

*A catalytic process could help to mitigate greenhouse-gas emissions.*

Burning petrol makes carbon dioxide that can be converted back to petrol hydrocarbons when it is treated with hydrogen and catalysts. But current catalysts are inefficient and yield unwanted by-products such as methane. A team led by Jian Sun and Qingjie Ge of the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics in China added sodium to an iron-based nanocatalyst, and combined it with a porous, nanocrystalline solid called a zeolite. This added hydrogen to CO2 to produce petrol directly, without creating intermediary products. 

Under industrial conditions, the catalyst achieved a conversion rate of 22%. Nearly 80% of the resulting hydrocarbons were petrol — thought to be the highest reported rate so far — with only 4% ending up as methane.

http://www.nature.com/articles/n-12267180

@Bussard Ramjet You are a chemistry student, right?

PUBLIC RELEASE: 2-MAY-2017

*Scientists develop efficient multifunctional catalyst for CO2 hydrogenation to gasoline*

CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HEADQUARTERS



IMAGE: THIS IS A CO2 HYDROGENATION TO GASOLINE-RANGE HYDROCARBONS OVER NA-FE3O4/ZEOLITE MULTIFUNCTIONAL CATALYST.view more 

CREDIT: IMAGE BY WEI JIAN

Converting CO2 from a detrimental greenhouse gas into value-added liquid fuels not only contributes to mitigating CO2 emissions, but also reduces dependence on petrochemicals. However, since CO2 is a fully oxidized, thermodynamically stable and chemically inert molecule, the activation of CO2 and its hydrogenation to hydrocarbons or other alcohols are challenging tasks. Most research to date, not surprisingly, is focusing on selective hydrogenation of CO2 to short-chain products, while few studies on long-chain hydrocarbons, such as gasoline-range (C5-C11) hydrocarbons. The key to this process is to search for a high efficient catalyst.

The research team led by Dr. SUN Jian and Prof. GE Qingjie in Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, has succeeded in preparing a high efficient, stable, and multifunctional Na-Fe3O4/HZSM-5 catalyst for the direct production of gasoline from CO2 hydrogenation. This catalyst exhibited 78% selectivity to C5-C11 as well as low CH4 and CO selectivity under industrial relevant conditions. And gasoline fractions are mainly isoparaffins and aromatics thus favoring the octane number. Moreover, the multifunctional catalyst exhibited a remarkable stability for 1,000 h on stream, which definitely has the potential to be a promising industrial catalyst for CO2 utilization to liquid fuels.

In-depth characterizations indicate that this catalyst enables RWGS over Fe3O4 sites, olefin synthesis over Fe5C2 sites and oligomerization/aromatization/isomerization over zeolite acid sites. The concerted action of the active sites calls for precise control of their structures and proximity. This study paves a new path for the synthesis of liquid fuels by utilizing CO2 and H2. Furthermore, it provides an important approach for dealing with the intermittency of renewable sources (sun, wind and so on) by storing energy in liquid fuels.

###

This work was recently published on _Nature Communications_ (DOI: 10.1038/ncomms15174). This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the Hundred-Talent Program of DICP, Chinese Academy of Sciences.


----------



## Han Patriot

Bussard Ramjet said:


> *China Focus: China stepping closer to "innovative nation"*
> Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-05 23:43:46|Editor: Mu Xuequan
> 
> 
> 
> 
> .


What's your point? Small improvement on existing technologies are innovations. Certain chips used by Huawei are imported, this is inevitable. You think the thousands of patents filed yearly are all revolutionary technologies? Panasonic filed thousands of patents too, it is mostly improvement in process and existing technology. The same goes for IBM and all MNCs. The key here is to safeguard ideas, innovations and technology.

However, this does not mean China should not improve on it's technological output. Patents does not equal technological output. It is a tool to safeguard interests.


----------



## TaiShang

*Minor planet named after Chinese aerospace scientist*
Xinhua, May 8, 2017

Minor Planet No. 456677 was named after Chinese aerospace scientist Ye Peijian at a ceremony on Monday.

Ye is active in the country's lunar probe and deep space missions, and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

*The minor planet was discovered by a Chinese team at the Purple Mountain Observatory in east China's Nanjing on Sept. 11, 2007.*

The naming suggestion was approved by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center on Jan. 12, 2017.

http://www.china.org.cn/china/2017-05/08/content_40772035.htm

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Place Of Space

Ye Peijian, What the letters stand for?


----------



## TaiShang

Place Of Space said:


> Ye Peijian, What the letters stand for?



叶培建，中国空间飞行器总体、信息处理专家。绕月探测工程、嫦娥一号卫星系统总指挥兼总设计师，他熟练掌握英语和法语，撰写过多份重要工程技术报告，在国内外发表论文60余篇，培养了一批博士生、硕士生。 江苏泰兴人。中国空间技术研究院研究员，中科院院士，瑞士科学博士学位。曾任我国第一代传输型侦察卫星系列总设计师兼总指挥，为我国第一代长寿命传输型对地观测卫星的研制，做出了系统的、创造性的成就和贡献，并任太阳同步轨道平台首席专家；任嫦娥一号卫星总设计师兼总指挥，为首次绕月探测工程的成功研制做出了重大贡献，现任嫦娥系列各型号总指挥、总设计师顾问，嫦娥三号首席科学家；总装国防973和探索项目顾问专家组成员，清华等高校兼职教授。荣获国家科技进步奖特等奖、一等奖等多项奖励和全国“五·一”劳动奖章。2014年作为团队带头人获得国家科技进步创新团队奖。





His full bio:

http://baike.baidu.com/link?url=KX1...DJEsXZkEOE2XwlNkZHE0IbVEjZOEXlD8u1fieuSozCXN0

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Place Of Space

TaiShang said:


> 叶培建，中国空间飞行器总体、信息处理专家。绕月探测工程、嫦娥一号卫星系统总指挥兼总设计师，他熟练掌握英语和法语，撰写过多份重要工程技术报告，在国内外发表论文60余篇，培养了一批博士生、硕士生。 江苏泰兴人。中国空间技术研究院研究员，中科院院士，瑞士科学博士学位。曾任我国第一代传输型侦察卫星系列总设计师兼总指挥，为我国第一代长寿命传输型对地观测卫星的研制，做出了系统的、创造性的成就和贡献，并任太阳同步轨道平台首席专家；任嫦娥一号卫星总设计师兼总指挥，为首次绕月探测工程的成功研制做出了重大贡献，现任嫦娥系列各型号总指挥、总设计师顾问，嫦娥三号首席科学家；总装国防973和探索项目顾问专家组成员，清华等高校兼职教授。荣获国家科技进步奖特等奖、一等奖等多项奖励和全国“五·一”劳动奖章。2014年作为团队带头人获得国家科技进步创新团队奖。
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> His full bio:
> 
> http://baike.baidu.com/link?url=KX1...DJEsXZkEOE2XwlNkZHE0IbVEjZOEXlD8u1fieuSozCXN0



Thanks, now I am capable of searching his story.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## F-22Raptor

China frequently makes news for being at the forefront of peer-review scandals like this one and this one. And data appears to bear that out, showing China contributed well over half of the papers retracted for compromised peer review from 2012 to 2016, according to data obtained by Quartz.

Peer review by scientists in the same field as someone trying to publish research is supposed to help journals and their readers make sense of how credible and important the work is. Problems with peer review taint that process, and can extend the gamut from reviews that are carried out by someone affiliated with the researcher to entirely made-up reviews.

Over the past five years, a total of 498 papers have been retracted over peer-review issues, according to the US blog Retraction Watch (papers can also be retracted for other reasons, but those papers aren’t included here). The blog used the nationalities of corresponding authors to reach its tally, since they are responsible for paper submissions. The breakdown by country below totals 502, reflecting papers counted twice because of corresponding authors with affiliations in multiple countries.

Retracted papers for fake peer review by country from 2012 to 2016






While the blog’s co-founder Ivan Oransky notes that while list isn’t comprehensive, the blog does track scientific and medical publishing very closely, including with a researcher who “is constantly scanning those databases,” making the numbers a good indicator. “I am confident that we capture most retractions for fake peer review,” said Oransky.

China has the worst performance on peer-review integrity even when compared with the top five countries (see chart below) for scientific publishing in the last five years, using Nature Index, which tracks publications in nearly 70 journals as an indicator of a nation’s high-quality research output. The index’s data covers a 12-month rolling window, with the latest numbers covering February 2016 through January 2017.

Part of the problem is that Chinese researchers, who have been publishing in ever greater numbers—last year Nature Index showed China published 9,721 research articles, up from 6,587 in 2012—often rely on third-party companies to help translate, format and submit their work to journals, and sometimes this outsourcing results in efforts to game the system.

Last month, over 100 papers from Chinese researchers published between 2012 to 2016 in Tumor Biology, a cancer-research journal, were linked to review fabrications. Meanwhile, Germany had one retraction over peer review in the past five years, and Japan, which published some 4,000 papers last year, hasn’t seen any papers retracted for these problems.

“Many scientists in Japan write fluently in English, and those that don’t have help from university translation services,” says Oransky, “There doesn’t seem to be the demand for such services that created a market for unscrupulous third-party companies.”

https://qz.com/978037/china-publish...-peer-review-than-everyone-else-put-together/

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Build AI like the human brain, say experts in Beijing*
By Zhang Zhihao | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2017-05-08 16:28

Brain specialists and experts in artificial intelligence should work together to create AI as complex as the human brain, a top scientist said at a Beijing seminar on Monday.

Poo Mu-ming, director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Neuroscience, said AI should be able to learn quickly, be versatile and be energy efficient.

"The human brain is the most complex object in the universe," he said. "Both the brain and AI involve big data training, but the brain develops its neural network organically with significant structural changes over decades, whereas AI's learning structure is static and requires a huge amount of data and energy."

The brain's ability to rewire and adapt to changing environments is called plasticity, and this may hold the "key to overcoming the current limits of machine learning", he said.

Most AI research focuses on imitating and maximizing a small part of the brain's function, such as sensory recognition. However, higher cognitive functions like language and emotions are still too complex for computers, said Guo Aike, a biophysicist with the academy.

"Machines excel in activities that have clearly defined rules and straightforward goals, such as video or board games, but they struggle to perform tasks in environments that involve many changing variables," Guo said when talking about a match scheduled this month between world Go champion Ke Jie and AlphaGo, an AI program developed by Google.

He said computer scientists can learn from neuroscientists about how the brain stores and processes information, to develop AI that can learn dynamically, transferring skills learned from one task to new ones, while keeping its energy requirement low.

There should be more platforms and opportunities for computer scientists and brain specialists to work together and share their findings, Guo said.

One application of a brain-inspired AI technology is self-driving cars, which rely heavily on sensors and a massive quantity of live and preprogrammed data, according to Li Deyi, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

No matter how meticulously programmed, "self-driving cars still encounter problems when faced with challenging road conditions", Li said. One solution, he added, is to materialize a human driver's cognition by mimicking human brain activities, and to build this "mechanical driving brain" into self-driving cars.


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientist plans mass experiment of sea-rice*
(People's Daily Online) 17:20, May 08, 2017

Yuan Longping, China’s “father of hybrid rice,” is planning experiments on expanding the production of sea-rice to 300 kilograms per mu at the newly-founded Sea-Rice Research and Development Center in Qingdao, China News reported. The center was established and opened on May 7.

Sea-rice, sometimes found in saline-alkaline soil, is resistant to pests, diseases, salt, and alkali; and does not need fertilizer. The Qingdao research center will use gene sequencing to cultivate new strains of sea-rice that will yield more rice and grow with saline water.

Mr. Yuan expects the yield of such sea-rice to reach at least 300 kilograms per mu (0.07 hectares) by 2020. China would gain another 30 billion kilograms of grains if the country gains 100 million mu of fertile land on mud flats. This would meet the need of about 80 million people on a yearly basis.

According to the center, the sea-rice to be developed has several advantages, including high yield, good quality, and tolerance to saline-alkaline conditions. The first generation of sea-rice is projected to be available this November.

The rice research and development center was established in 2016 by Yuan Longping, the Qingdao Municipal Government, and the China National Hybrid Rice Engineering Technology Research Center. The field trial is underway and the labs will be put into use in June or July this year.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*This Chinese telescope team is making a 7,000 mile journey to the eclipse*
_An optical telescope built by the Chinese researchers starts its journey to 2017’s Great American Solar Eclipse_

By Cici Zhang | Published: Tuesday, May 9, 2017



​It is only during total solar eclipses that the Sun’s corona and its highly ionized iron lines can be observed.
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Flickr, CC BY 2.0

On August 21, 2017, the town of Lincoln City, Oregon, like many locales in the path of that date's total solar eclipse, will have its big day in the Sun, then in the Sun's shadow, and then back in the Sun again.

Eclipse-chasing tourists are expected to flood in. But one team of Sun-watchers and their telescope might stand out: They will have traveled near seven thousand miles from China to do science here.

“Our telescope is the most advanced in the world regarding solar eclipse observation, especially looking at the corona (the Sun’s outmost layer),” says team leader Zhongquan Qu. Qu is a professor of solar physics at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences Yunnan Observatory in Kunming, and a member of the IAU Working Group on Solar Eclipses.

The Sun’s corona is usually visible only during solar eclipses, so this summer’s event affords many heliophysicists a rare observational opportunity, one that Qu’s team refuses to miss. They decided against Oregon’s capital Salem — which is also on the totality path — because many tourists there might be taking photos with their flashes turned on nearby, creating scattered and stray light that can ruin scientific observations. Lincoln is off the beaten path, and should draw smaller crowds.

*THE TOTAL ECLIPSE CHASER*

What makes Qu’s telescope special lies in its name: Fiber Arrayed Solar Optical Telescope, or FASOT for short. Using the innovative design of an optical fiber array, FASOT can not only obtain spectrographs from individual fibers but it can also re-construct images of the corona using the spectral signal and location information in each fiber. In an initial evaluation for a funding application to the National Natural Science Foundation of China, FASOT was also described as “the first major instrument that introduces the use of optical fibers for high-precision field spectro-polarimetry.” Spectro-polarimetry measures the polarization property of light, which enables scientists to obtain additional information about the source of that light (i.e. the corona), such as its magnetic field and geometry.

The imaging and spectrograph data from FASOT, says Qu, will allow researchers to know more about the detailed structure of corona, its magnetic field, and the formation of coronal mass ejection (solar flares). Together this set of knowledge will ultimately contribute to the understanding of solar mysteries like why the corona is so much hotter than the Sun’s photosphere and other areas closer to the center of the Sun.

FASOT’s last eclipse-chasing adventure landed the team in Gabon, Africa in November 2013. Qu and his colleagues have analyzed the data collected there and are about to publish the results in the journal _Solar Physics_. Highlights of that trip include the first green coronal line _Fe XIV_ 530.3nm that has ever been observed since the 1930s, according to Qu. That line is the strongest one in coronal spectral lines.

For the upcoming total solar eclipse in the U.S., Qu’s team will focus on more coronal lines, such as a red coronal line, which is 637.4nm in wavelength. They also plan to use FASOT to see the most observed line in the solar spectrum, hydrogen-alpha 656.3nm. 

Nevertheless, at least one scientist has reservations about FASOT the solar telescope, especially its reliability.

Having supported FASOT in its funding proposal — a quote from his written evaluation notes that “[it] may open the door to a new class of telescope facilities in solar physics” — Jan Olof Stenflo, a retired professor at the ETH and the University of Zurich, now expresses disappointment over the slow development of this instrument.

*MORE TESTING NEEDED *

Stenflo is an expert in solar magnetic fields and high-precision spectro-polarimetry. During a lecturing tour in China in 2011, he met Qu and offered a positive written assessment of FASOT to support its funding application. “More than five years later, I still have not seen any concrete demonstrations that the prototype can achieve its goals and be able to map solar magnetic fields (the reported eclipse observations are unsuited to serve that purpose),” says Stenflo in an email.

Stenflo suggests that the team still needs to prove the reliability of observations made by FASOT. He has doubts over the reliability “because the corona during a solar eclipse is much more difficult to observe than the million times brighter spectrum from the solar disk outside an eclipse, and it has never been demonstrated by disk observations that FASOT has been able to eliminate the various spurious polarization effects that can arise.”

Among the established telescopes in the solar physics field, FASOT is still new in town. When the final model — a 60 cm $1-million-dollar telescope upgraded from the current 30 cm $5000 version — is built in western China in five years, FASOT’s job will be to watch the Sun’s photosphere and chromosphere all year long: no more globetrotting to chase solar eclipses for corona observations. But the total solar eclipse in 2017 is on the horizon. If you happen to be in Lincoln City, Oregon on August 21, you might get a glimpse of the solar corona, and maybe you’ll also run into a telescope team from China trying to make the most out of the 116-second total solar eclipse. 


This Chinese telescope team is making a 7,000 mile journey to the eclipse | Astronomy.com

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* Asia’s first automated container terminal, at Port of Qingdao, China *


New China TV
*Streamed live 7 hours ago*
Live: You can see machines here and there, and no man ever appears! Join us to explore Asia’s first fully automated container terminal at the Port of Qingdao in east China’s Shandong Province. Questions and comments are welcome.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Antiproton count hints at dark matter annihilation*
_New analyses of data from Space Station’s AMS experiment show signs of elusive cosmic mass_

By Emily Conover 5:27pm, May 11, 2017 



*ANTIPROTON ODDITY* Two teams of researchers report possible signs of dark matter in data from the AMS experiment on the International Space Station (shown). Some of the antiprotons detected by AMS could have come from dark matter particles annihilating one another in space.
NASA​
Whiffs of dark matter may be blowing in on a cosmic ray breeze. Antiprotons streaming down on Earth from space could be hinting at the existence of the invisible substance, two teams of researchers suggest.

Particles known as cosmic rays are constantly whizzing through space. These particles include protons and their antimatter partners, antiprotons. While antiprotons are produced in run-of-the-mill processes like particle collisions, additional ones could theoretically be birthed when dark matter particles annihilate one another.

In two papers in the May 12 _Physical Review Letters,_ the two teams — one from Germany; the other from China and Taiwan — analyzed antiprotons detected by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, located on the International Space Station. When dark matter’s contribution was included in predictions of the numbers of antiprotons expected, the calculations better matched the data, hinting that some of the antiprotons might come from dark matter annihilation.

The results agree with another potential glimmer of dark matter: a glut of high-energy radiation, known as gamma rays, seen in the center of the Milky Way. “That could just be a coincidence,” says theoretical astrophysicist Dan Hooper of Fermilab in Batavia, Ill., who was not involved with the new analyses. But “it does look pretty encouraging to me for that reason." Other physicists, however, have recently questioned the gamma rays’ link to dark matter (_SN Online: 4/24/17_).

AMS previously spotted another potential dark matter hint: an overabundance of positrons, or antimatter electrons (_SN: 5/4/13, p. 14_). But some physicists believe that excess can be explained by more mundane sources, like spinning stars called pulsars.

*Citations*
M.-Y. Cui et al. Possible dark matter annihilation signal in the AMS-02 antiproton data. _Physical Review Letters_. Vol. 118, May 12, 2017, p. 191101.

A. Cuoco, M. Krämer, and M. Korsmeier. Novel dark matter constraints from antiprotons in light of AMS-02. _Physical Review Letters_. Vol. 118, May 12, 2017, p. 191102.


Antiproton count hints at dark matter annihilation | Science News


----------



## JSCh

*China racing ahead to beat cancer with CRISPR*
*Joshua Barlow*@DCdeBoerlo
Published May 11, 2017 at 11:10 AM
Updated May 11, 2017 at 11:39 AM

For the second time in a year, doctors in China have used the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technique for treating cancer. It is also only the second time that researchers have used it on human subjects anywhere in the world.

The latest round of trials took place April 28 at Nanjing University’s Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital. The patient, who remains anonymous, suffers from late-stage nasopharyngeal carcinoma, a form of head and neck cancer.

CRISPR stands for “Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats.” It’s a snippet of DNA that helps bacteria protect themselves from viral attack. Cas9 is a protein that turns CRISPR into a low-cost and highly precise tool to hack DNA, the code of life.

The technology has enabled scientists to slice and dice the genome of all living things, from bacteria to humans.

*WATCH: CRISPR-Cas9 explained*

A visualization from the McGovern Institute at MIT explains the science and approach of CRISPR-Cas9.






Here in the U.S., its potential has invited flights of hyperbolic language. The magazine, Wired, called CRISPR-Cas9 the “Genesis Engine” because it promises to confer almost God-like power to improve the human condition. Chinese scientists have already used it to repair genetic mutations in human embryos.

They didn’t stop there. China has already pressed ahead with human trials to cure cancer. Using the CRISPR-Cas9 technique, Chinese doctors injected the patient with his own modified cells. The modifications instruct new cells to snip out pieces of the patient’s DNA that interfere with the body’s ability to fight cancer.

Dr. Jia Wei, who is a leader on the project and serves as vice-director of Nanjing University’s Clinical Cancer Institute, told the Wall Street Journal “The first patient has received cell infusion just now, and it’s going well”.

An additional 20 patients with lymphoma, gastric cancer and nasopharyngeal carcinoma will participate in this clinical trial, which is scheduled to conclude sometime in 2018. China reports a high incidence of these types of cancer.

As CRISPR-Cas9 technology advances, scientists hope they will be able to someday snip out genes from genetically inherited diseases, such as cancer, sickle-cell anemia, Parkinson’s disease before they have the chance to manifest in the body.

The first human trials using CRISPR-Cas9 took place last fall at West China Hospital in Chengdu. In that trial a team led by oncologist Lu You used the technology to inject gene altered cells into a patient with highly aggressive lung cancer.




Chinese scientists first to use CRISPR gene-editing in humans

A Chinese team has become the first to use gene splicing technology on a human being with lung cancer. If successful, it may unlock powerful options in the fight against genetically inherited disea…​
Last year, scientists at the University of Massachusetts Medical School were able to use CRISPR-Cas9 to isolate proteins in human cells that enable the Zika virus to replicate.

CRISPR-Cas9 has also been used for more dramatic – sometimes controversial – research, such as Salk Institute’s recent creation of a human/pig hybrid by introducing human genes into the DNA of a pig embryo. The aim is to one day grow spare human organs in pigs for transplant.

In 2016, the University of Pennsylvania received approval to be the first U.S. based hospital to get approval for human trials using CRISPR-Cas9. Those trials, which are focused on patient T cells for immunity, are due to begin sometime this year.

Dr Lu You, who led the very first human CRISPR-Cas9 trials at West China Hospital last fall, told the Wall Street Journal results from those treatments should be available sometime in 2017.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*A holey graphene electrode framework that enables highly efficient charge delivery*
May 12, 2017 by Bob Yirka 

(Phys.org)—A team of researchers affiliated with institutions in the U.S., China and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has developed a new type of porous graphene electrode framework that is capable of highly efficient charge delivery. In their paper published in the journal _Science_, the group describes how they overcame traditional conflicts arising between tradeoffs involving density and speed to produce an electrode capable of facilitating rapid ion transport. Hui-Ming Cheng and Feng Li with the Chinese Academy of Sciences offer a Perspective piece on the work done by the team in the same journal issue, and include some opinions of their own regarding where such work is likely heading.

--> A holey graphene electrode framework that enables highly efficient charge delivery

*More information:* Hongtao Sun et al. Three-dimensional holey-graphene/niobia composite architectures for ultrahigh-rate energy storage, _Science_ (2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aam5852


----------



## JSCh

*Electroplating delivers high-energy, high-power batteries*
May 12, 2017 2:00 pm by Liz Ahlberg 




Illinois professor Paul Braun and Hailong Ning, the director of research and development at Xerion Advanced Battery Corporation, led a research team that developed a method for directly electroplating lithium-ion battery cathodes.
Photo by L. Brian Stauffer

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The process that makes gold-plated jewelry or chrome car accents is now making powerful lithium-ion batteries.

Researchers at the University of Illinois, Xerion Advanced Battery Corporation and Nanjing University in China developed a method for electroplating lithium-ion battery cathodes, yielding high-quality, high-performance battery materials that could also open the door to flexible and solid-state batteries.



​An electron micrograph cross-section shows aluminum foil plated with lithium cobalt oxide, a common material in lithium-ion batteries.
Image courtesy of Hailong Ning and Jerome Davis III, Xerion Advanced Battery Corp.

“This is an entirely new approach to manufacturing battery cathodes, which resulted in batteries with previously unobtainable forms and functionalities,” said Paul V. Braun, a professor of materials science and engineering and director of the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Lab at Illinois. He co-led the research group that published its findings in the journal Science Advances.

Traditional lithium-ion battery cathodes use lithium-containing powders formed at high temperatures. The powder is mixed with gluelike binders and other additives into a slurry, which is spread on a thin sheet of aluminum foil and dried. The slurry layer needs to be thin, so the batteries are limited in how much energy they can store. The glue also limits performance.

“The glue is not active. It doesn’t contribute anything to the battery, and it gets in the way of electricity flowing in the battery,” said co-author Hailong Ning, the director of research and development at Xerion Advanced Battery Corporation in Champaign, a startup company co-founded by Braun. “You have all this inactive material taking up space inside the battery, while the whole world is trying to get more energy and power from the battery.”

The researchers bypassed the powder and glue process altogether by directly electroplating the lithium materials onto the aluminum foil.



​Electroplating can be applied to textured, three-dimensional or flexible substrates, opening the door to new battery designs. The right side of this quarter was plated with lithium cobalt oxide.
Image courtesy of Hailong Ning and Jerome Davis III, Xerion Advanced Battery Corp.

Since the electroplated cathode doesn’t have any glue taking up space, it packs in 30 percent more energy than a conventional cathode, according to the paper. It can charge and discharge faster as well, since the current can pass directly through it and not have to navigate around the inactive glue or through the slurry’s porous structure. It also has the advantage of being more stable.

Additionally, the electroplating process creates pure cathode materials, even from impure starting ingredients. This means that manufacturers can use materials lower in cost and quality and the end product will still be high in performance, eliminating the need to start with expensive materials already brought up to battery grade, Braun said.

“This method opens the door to flexible and three-dimensional battery cathodes, since electroplating involves dipping the substrate in a liquid bath to coat it,” said co-author Huigang Zhang, a former senior scientist at Xerion who is now a professor at Nanjing University.



​The electroplating method could enable flexible, three-dimensional battery designs. This plated aluminum foil rolled up without cracking.
Image courtesy of Hailong Ning and Jerome Davis III, Xerion Advanced Battery Corp.

The researchers demonstrated the technique on carbon foam, a lightweight, inexpensive material, making cathodes that were much thicker than conventional slurries. They also demonstrated it on foils and surfaces with different textures, shapes and flexibility.

“These designs are impossible to achieve by conventional processes,” Braun said. “But what’s really important is that it’s a high-performance material and that it’s nearly solid. By using a solid electrode rather than a porous one, you can store more energy in a given volume. At the end of the day, people want batteries to store a lot of energy.”

The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science supported this work at the U. of I. Materials science and engineering professor Jian-Min Zuo also was part of the Illinois team.

The paper “Electroplating lithium transition metal oxides” is available online. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1602427



https://news.illinois.edu/blog/view/6367/500138

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Han Patriot

Guys, anybody know about this news? Apparently, AMEC is rolling out 5nm tools end of this year to compete with 7nm tools. Please get me the full video for this please, all I could get from youtube was this short clip.
@Bussard Ramjet

Naura Technology (formerly Beijing Sevenstar Electronics) has started shipping ion etch equipment for the manufacture of 14nm chips to chipmakers, while Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment (AMEC) is being engaged in the development of etch tools for the production of 5nm chips, according to industry sources.

Naura has also secured continued orders from Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC), the largest China-based pure-play foundry, said the sources. SMIC has become an important client of Naura, which has already obtained orders for advanced-node manufacturing from the foundry's 12-inch fabs, the sources indicated.

SMIC plans to enhance its 28nm process variants to meet customers' various needs, while expanding production capacity at its 12-inch facilities. With China pusing its self-sufficiency rate for production of chipmaking equipment, Naura and other China-based fab toolmakers are being pinpointed as the major beneficiaries of SMIC's 12-inch fab expansion, the sources said.

Naura CEO Zhao Jinrong was quoted in previous reports as saying China's semiconductor equipment industry growth will be driven by the development of the country's homegrown IC industry supply chain. China's self-sufficiency rate for production of semiconductor equipment is still lower than 10%, but the proportion is expected to reach 30% within the next three years, according to Zhao.

Naura's sales generated from the semiconductor sector grew to CNY810 million (US$117 million) in 2016 from CNY520 million in 2015 - a 56.2% jump. The company expects to continue enjoying impressive revenue growth in 2017 driven by new orders.

AMEC is also among SMIC's major equipment suppliers in China. AMEC has been engaged in the development of 5nm etching tools for five years, and is expected to roll out the new product line at the end of 2017, according to industry sources. The availability of AMEC's 5nm etch equipment will be a milestone for China's homegrown chipmaking equipment industry.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*China sets up national lab developing brain-like AI technology*
(Xinhua) 20:44, May 14, 2017




China's first national laboratory for brain-like artificial intelligence (AI) technology was inaugurated Saturday in Hefei, capital of east China's Anhui Province, to pool the country's top research talent and boost the technology.

Approved by the National Development and Reform Commission in January, the lab, based in China University of Science and Technology (USTC), aims to develop a brain-like computing paradigm and applications.

The university, known for its leading role in developing quantum communication technology, hosts the national lab in collaboration with a number of the country's top research bodies such as Fudan University, Shenyang Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences as well as Baidu, operator of China's biggest online search engine.

Wan Lijun, president of USTC and chairman of the national lab, said the ability to mimic the human brain's ability in sorting out information will help build a complete AI technology development paradigm.

The lab will carry out research to guide machine learning such as recognizing messages and using visual neural networks to solve problems. It will also focus on developing new applications with technological achievements.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*YMTC 64-layer 3D NAND technology ready for mass production in 2019, says acting chairman*

Josephine Lien, Taipei; Jessie Shen, DIGITIMES 

[Monday 8 May 2017]

Yangtze River Storage Technology's (YMTC) 64-layer 3D NAND technology will be ready for mass production in 2019, according to Charles Kau, company acting chairman and executive VP of Tsinghua Unigroup.

*YMTC plans to offer samples of its 32-layer 3D NAND products at the end of 2017, and expects to be capable of entering mass production of 64-layer NAND chips in 2019, said Kau. By 2020, YMTC will narrow the technology gap with its bigger rival Samsung Electronics to two years*, Kau claimed.

YMTC has been enhancing its patent portfolio, and is confident its 3D NAND technology will outperform several rivals' over the next two to three years, Kau indicated.

Kau also urged China- and Taiwan-based chipmakers to work together in the memory-chip market, where their bigger Korea-based rivals dominate. Since Taiwan-based memory chipmakers do not have their own proprietary technology, they should consider improving the situation, Kau said.

In response to reports indicating Micron Technology has actively taken legal actions against its former employees stationed in Taiwan who allegedly stole the company's trade secrets and technologies to help China-based firms develop DRAM, Kau noted that all new employees are required not to bring any confidential documents and information with them to the company.

YMTC's goal is to attract talent to join it, and the company will not allow its employees to steal their former companies' trade secrets, according to Kau.

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20170505PD207.html

@Bussard Ramjet

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Han Patriot

cirr said:


> *YMTC 64-layer 3D NAND technology ready for mass production in 2019, says acting chairman*
> 
> Josephine Lien, Taipei; Jessie Shen, DIGITIMES
> 
> [Monday 8 May 2017]
> 
> Yangtze River Storage Technology's (YMTC) 64-layer 3D NAND technology will be ready for mass production in 2019, according to Charles Kau, company acting chairman and executive VP of Tsinghua Unigroup.
> 
> *YMTC plans to offer samples of its 32-layer 3D NAND products at the end of 2017, and expects to be capable of entering mass production of 64-layer NAND chips in 2019, said Kau. By 2020, YMTC will narrow the technology gap with its bigger rival Samsung Electronics to two years*, Kau claimed.
> 
> YMTC has been enhancing its patent portfolio, and is confident its 3D NAND technology will outperform several rivals' over the next two to three years, Kau indicated.
> 
> Kau also urged China- and Taiwan-based chipmakers to work together in the memory-chip market, where their bigger Korea-based rivals dominate. Since Taiwan-based memory chipmakers do not have their own proprietary technology, they should consider improving the situation, Kau said.
> 
> In response to reports indicating Micron Technology has actively taken legal actions against its former employees stationed in Taiwan who allegedly stole the company's trade secrets and technologies to help China-based firms develop DRAM, Kau noted that all new employees are required not to bring any confidential documents and information with them to the company.
> 
> YMTC's goal is to attract talent to join it, and the company will not allow its employees to steal their former companies' trade secrets, according to Kau.
> 
> http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20170505PD207.html
> 
> @Bussard Ramjet


Even with 32 layer DRAM, we are still behing Hynix, they are going to unveil 48 layer. Anyway, it's not that we can't develop the technology, the problem is we can't develop it fast enough, consumer electronics is extremely fast moving unlike military tech.


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese Scientists Realize On-site Drug Detection*
May 16, 2017

_Chinese scientists developed a portable kit for identification and detection of drugs which may realize rapid and reliable on-site detection of drug in human urine._





Simulation diagram of the portable kit (Image by DONG Ronglu) ​
Chinese Scientists at Institute of Intelligent Machines(IIM), Hefei Institutes of Physical Science works closely with Anhui Provincial Public Security Bureau narcotics Corps, Evidence Identification Center of Anhui Public Security Bureau and Anhui CAS-SAFER Technology Limited Company (CASA) to create a portable kit for identification and detection of drugs which has been proved to applicable in rapid and reliable on-site detection of drug in human urine.

Previously, the team conducted a series of innovative work to exploit pretreatment methods and design Raman spectrometer including differential confocal microscopy, integrating enhanced Surface-enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) substrate.

Now, the portable kit has been completed, which mainly consists of four parts, including pretreatment module, enhanced chip module, intelligent identification module and spectrometer module.

In the field of core technology, the portable kit uses SERS as a kind of spectrum detection technology, and can realize rapid and accurate detection in trace analysis owing to fingerprint identification of SERS. In the aspect of instrument software, researchers have developed reliable data processing systems.

To date, a large number of experiments have been carried out on the real drug samples of human urine by using the portable kit to verify the accuracy of the results.

However, the components are complex in human urine, making it important to overcome the interference problem in the rapid detection process. Hence, the pre-treatment methods will be further optimized.

Meanwhile, the database of drugs will be established completely as soon as possible. In the near future, the assembled ultra-sensitive portable kit will be better applied to the on-site analysis of drugs.

''In view of the prevalence of heroin, methamphetamine and new-type drugs, the portable kit will step into its practical use in Anhui Province firstly, however we plan to promote the device in the public security system around the whole country ultimately", pointed out Prof. YANG Liangbao, the leader of the research team as well as a scientist of IIM.


Chinese Scientists Realize On-site Drug Detection---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*World’s first full-body PET-CT scanner unveiled at medical equipment fair in Shanghai *
(People's Daily Online) 16:24, May 17, 2017



​
A new PET-CT scanner has been unveiled at the China International Medical Equipment Fair in Shanghai. It is the world’s first full-body dynamic scanner.

The scanner, named uExplorer, is 2 meters long and can scan the entire body. Its creators are now applying for approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and it is expected to hit the market by the end of 2018, according to Shanghai United Imaging Healthcare, one of its designers.

The uExplorer boasts milestone significance in the field of medical imaging, as it is 40 times more sensitive than most scanners that were previously available, and can shorten scan times to less than 30 seconds. Radiation impact has also been decreased to about one-fortieth of average scanners, making it safe for pregnant patients and infants, Thepaper.cn reported. The equipment can even present images in four dimensions.

Li Hongdi, CEO of Shanghai United Imaging Healthcare’s U.S. subsidiary, told reporters that the scanner is “mind-blowing.”

“It means doctors can see the full body scan at the same time, and the imaging is dynamic. We can work to find out how our brains give orders to different organs, to name one example,” Li said, adding that preliminary research and development of the scanner cost some $15.5 million.

The uExplorer could also speed up pharmaceutical development for new medicines targeting specific diseases, making treatments more precise and effective. Given its high sensitivity, the scanner can also detect more minor indicators at an earlier time.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Han Patriot

@Bussard Ramjet
SMART CHINA, documentary by DISCOVERY CHANNEL on Chinese technology, in English, watch the whole series.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Stars as random number generators could test foundations of physics*
May 16, 2017 by Lisa Zyga



​The proposed Bell test uses stars and quasars as random number generators to address the freedom-of-choice loophole and show that the quantum world does not obey local realism. Credit: Wu et al. ©2017 American Physical Society 

(Phys.org)—Stars, quasars, and other celestial objects generate photons in a random way, and now scientists have taken advantage of this randomness to generate random numbers at rates of more than one million numbers per second. Generating random numbers at very high rates has a variety of applications, such as in cryptography and computer simulations.

But the researchers in the new study are also interested in using these cosmic random number generators for another purpose: to test the foundations of physics by progressively addressing another loophole in the Bell tests. While Bell tests show that quantum particles are correlated in ways that cannot be explained by classical physics, the results may not be reliable if parts of these tests manage to take advantage of any kind of loophole.

The researchers, led by Jian-Wei Pan, at the University of Science and Technology of China in Shanghai, have published a paper on using cosmic sources to generate random numbers in a recent issue of _Physical Review Letters_.


--> https://phys.org/news/2017-05-stars-random-foundations-physics.html

*More information:* Cheng Wu et al. "Random Number Generation with Cosmic Photons." _Physical Review Letters_. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.140402


----------



## Han Patriot

JSCh said:


> *Stars as random number generators could test foundations of physics*
> May 16, 2017 by Lisa Zyga
> 
> 
> 
> ​The proposed Bell test uses stars and quasars as random number generators to address the freedom-of-choice loophole and show that the quantum world does not obey local realism. Credit: Wu et al. ©2017 American Physical Society
> 
> (Phys.org)—Stars, quasars, and other celestial objects generate photons in a random way, and now scientists have taken advantage of this randomness to generate random numbers at rates of more than one million numbers per second. Generating random numbers at very high rates has a variety of applications, such as in cryptography and computer simulations.
> 
> But the researchers in the new study are also interested in using these cosmic random number generators for another purpose: to test the foundations of physics by progressively addressing another loophole in the Bell tests. While Bell tests show that quantum particles are correlated in ways that cannot be explained by classical physics, the results may not be reliable if parts of these tests manage to take advantage of any kind of loophole.
> 
> The researchers, led by Jian-Wei Pan, at the University of Science and Technology of China in Shanghai, have published a paper on using cosmic sources to generate random numbers in a recent issue of _Physical Review Letters_.
> 
> 
> --> https://phys.org/news/2017-05-stars-random-foundations-physics.html
> 
> *More information:* Cheng Wu et al. "Random Number Generation with Cosmic Photons." _Physical Review Letters_. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.140402


@Bussard Ramjet Another paper this month? I guess it's menial work again, non theoretical work I guess.


----------



## JSCh

Wenchao Ma, Bin Chen, Ying Liu, Mengqi Wang, Xiangyu Ye, Fei Kong, Fazhan Shi, Shao-Ming Fei, and Jiangfeng Du, "Experimental Demonstration of Uncertainty Relations for the Triple Components of Angular Momentum", _Phys. Rev. Lett._ (2017), DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.180402

*Abstract 
*
The uncertainty principle is considered to be one of the most striking features in quantum mechanics. In the textbook literature, uncertainty relations usually refer to the preparation uncertainty which imposes a limitation on the spread of measurement outcomes for a pair of noncommuting observables. In this work, we study the preparation uncertainty for the angular momentum, especially for spin-1/2. We derive uncertainty relations encompassing the triple components of angular momentum and show that, compared with the relations involving only two components, a triple constant 2/3 often arises. Intriguingly, this constant is the same for the position and momentum case. Experimental verification is carried out on a single spin in diamond, and the results confirm the triple constant in a wide range of experimental parameters.​


----------



## JSCh

*Tongji’s diabetes breakthrough*
By Yang Meiping | 00:01 UTC+8 May 18, 2017




DIABETES patients can look forward to an easier way of controlling their blood glucose levels.

Instead of injecting insulin and taking antidiabetic medicines several times a day, they will be able to use a “nano-sized sugar sponge.”

It has been developed by a team from Tongji University.

The sugar sponge, which has been tested on mice, is actually a lectin-bound glycopolymersome. The lectin will bind and store the glucose from its surrounding solution when the glucose concentration is too high, and release the glucose when the glucose concentration is too low, according to the university’s Professor Du Jianzhong.

_*Paper:* _Yufen Xiao, Hui Sun, and Jianzhong Du. "Sugar-Breathing Glycopolymersomes for Regulating Glucose Level". _J. Am. Chem. Soc._ (2017). DOI: 10.1021/jacs.7b03219


----------



## JSCh

*China develops new technique to produce graphene from corn cobs*
By Zhang Huan (People's Daily Online) 16:27, May 18, 2017

A Chinese expert has developed a new technique to produce biomass graphene material from the cellulose in corn cobs. The technology has already been put into mass production, creating a considerable output value, Science and Technology Daily reported on May 16.

The new technique, developed by a team from Heilongjiang University, revolutionizes traditional methods, which are hindered by long production periods and limited production capacity, in addition to producing environmental pollutants. The graphene material extracted from biomass is high quality and performs well in electrical conductivity.

Early in 2014, the team, led by Professor Fu, established the world’s first line for mass production of graphene with an annual output of 20 tons. It was expanded to 100 tons annually in 2016.

In China, the yearly output of corn cobs among all biomass can reach as much as 100 million tons, most of which comes from northeast China, Shandong province and Hebei province. The product line, supported by biomass graphene materials with a yearly output of 100 tons, can create an output value of 300 to 500 million RMB (between $43.6 million and $72.7 million).


----------



## JSCh

*Key Diabetes Receptor Structure Determined by International Collaboration—Shanghai Led Consortium Produces High Resolution 3D map of GLP-1R*


*SHANGHAI, May 17, 2017* — An international team led by the iHuman Institute, ShanghaiTech University has determined the 3-dimensional molecular structure of the human glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor (GLP-1R) drug binding domain. The work reveals molecular mechanisms of allosteric regulation in class B G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). The results, described in a paper entitled “Human GLP-1 receptor transmembrane domain structure in complex with allosteric modulators”, is published online on May 17, 2017 in the journal _Nature._ This paper is published simultaneously with a companion paper led by colleagues at the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica (SIMM) describing the full-length glucagon receptor in the same journal.

Secreted by the gut, glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) exerts its glucose control on the human body by binding to GLP-1R that is expressed on the surfaces of specific cells (e.g., pancreatic β cells). GLP-1R is a well-recognized drug target for type 2 diabetes, exemplified by several peptidic therapeutic agents on the market, with combined sales of several billions of dollars each year. Although effective, the peptide therapeutics are not orally available and many have side effects. Worldwide, the costs associated with treating diabetes and its complications are estimated to exceed $200bn a year. The number of patients with diabetes is growing at an alarming rate throughout the world, with the most significant and recent growth occurring in China.

The high resolution GLP-1R structure was determined in complex with two negative allosteric modulators (NAMs), respectively. Both structures are in an inactive conformation with each NAM bound in a similar pocket but distinctly different binding modes on the external surface of the receptor. Molecular modeling and mutation analysis suggest that agonist positive allosteric modulators (PAMs) target the same general region, but in a distinct sub-pocket. While the NAMs block the activation of GLP-1R by inserting into the cavity between helices VI and VII, PAMs binds mainly to the space between helices V and VI enabling the activation. “This structure is one of the holy grails of GPCR drug discovery” said Professor Raymond Stevens at the iHuman Institute, ShanghaiTech University who co-led the study.

Since most peptide drugs are administrated via non-oral routes, orally available GLP-1 or its small molecule surrogates have been vigorously sought after by many of the multi-national pharmaceutical companies. Determination of the three-dimensional structure of GLP-1R is thus helpful to better design and develop new therapeutics targeting the receptor. “GPCRs that bind peptides can be particularly challenging for small molecule drug discovery given multiple points of connection between the peptide and receptor. With the atomic resolution data, we can now see the atoms in the binding site and design safer next generation small molecule therapeutics” said iHuman Associate Professor Gaojie Song.

“This major undertaking started in 2002 when we were looking for small molecule GLP-1R agonists.” said Professor Ming-Wei Wang of Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica and Fudan University who co-led the study. “Our failed efforts in making the first orally active GLP-1R agonist Boc5 led us to conclude that high resolution structural biology is the preferred solution to druggability. Our research collaboration with the Stevens laboratory in Shanghai has been extremely rewarding and productive. We have made several significant discoveries that are impacting and will continue to impact the drug discovery field for many years to come. In the end, the biggest winner will be the patients ill with metabolic disorders.”

The team effort was also co-led by iHuman Institute Professor and Deputy Director Zhi-Jie Liu. Other contributors in this study include Yuxia Wang, Qingtong Zhou, Kaiwen Liu, Dongsheng Liu, Suwen Zhao, Yiran Wu, and Wu Fan from ShanghaiTech University, Dehua Yang, Xiaoqing Cai, Antai Dai, Guangyai Lin, and Beili Wu from Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Shanshan Jiang and Li Ye from Fudan University, Chris de Graaf from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Gye Won Han from University of Southern California, Jesper Lau from Novo Nordisk, and Michael A. Hanson from GPCR Consortium. Financial support for this work comes from, in part, Shanghai Municipal Government, ShanghaiTech University, National “1000 Talents Program for Foreign Experts”, Shanghai “Pujiang Talents” grant, GPCR Consortium, National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Health and Family Planning Commission, Ministry of Science and Technology of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Shanghai Science and Technology Development Fund.


iHuman Institute of ShanghaiTech – Key Diabetes Receptor Structure Determined by International Collaboration—Shanghai Led Consortium Produces High Resolution 3D map of GLP-1R

#####​
*A First Full-length Class B GPCR Crystal Structure Reveals Novel Receptor Activation Mechanisms *
Update time： 2017-05-18

_Structure of the full-length human glucagon receptor ignites new excitement in GPCR research_

A team of scientists from Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica (SIMM), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has determined the high-resolution atomic structure of a full-length class B G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) that plays a key role in glucose homeostasis. This structure reveals, for the first time, the structural framework of different domains of a class B GPCR at high resolution and unexpectedly discloses many exciting molecular features, greatly deepening the understanding of signaling mechanisms of class B GPCRs.

In an article published online in Nature on May 17, 2017 (18:00PM, London time) titled “Structure of the full-length glucagon class B G protein-coupled receptor”, scientists at SIMM, in collaboration with several groups based in China (ShanghaiTech University, Zhengzhou University and Fudan University), United States (University of Southern California, The Scripps Research Institute, Arizona State University and GPCR Consortium), the Netherlands (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) and Denmark (Novo Nordisk), provided a detailed molecular map of the full-length human glucagon receptor (GCGR) in complex with a negative allosteric modulator (NNC0640) and the antigen-binding fragment of an inhibitory antibody (mAb1). This study is published together in_ Nature_ with a companion paper led by colleagues at the iHuman Institute, ShanghaiTech University describing the glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor (GLP-1R).

Class B GPCRs are essential to numerous physiological processes and serve as important drug targets for many human diseases such as type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, osteoporosis, migraine, depression and anxiety. According to team leader and SIMM professor Dr. WU Beili, “The GCGR structure provides a clear picture of a full-length class B GPCR at high resolution, and helps us understand how different domains cooperate in modulating the receptor function at the molecular level.” Class B GPCR receptors consist of an extracellular domain (ECD) and a transmembrane domain (TMD), both of which are required to interact with their cognate peptide ligands and to regulate downstream signal transduction. Due to difficulties in high-quality protein preparation, structures of full-length class B GPCRs remained elusive, thus limiting a comprehensive understanding of molecular mechanisms of receptor action.

This study gives some valuable insights into the structure of GCGR. The most exciting finding is that the linker region connecting the ECD and TMD of the receptor, termed the “stalk”, works together with an extracellular loop of the TMD to regulate peptide binding through conformational changes, serving like a modulator in receptor activation. “Although the stalk region only contains 12 amino acids, it acts as a ‘switch’ to turn on or turn off the receptor,” said Dr. WU. “It is amazing to observe how a GPCR regulates its function in such a precise and efficient way.”

Based on the full-length GCGR structure, the researchers performed a series of functional studies using hydrogen-deuterium exchange, disulfide cross-linking, competitive ligand binding and cell signaling assays as well as molecular dynamics simulations. The results are in support of the GCGR structure and confirm the interactions between different domains in modulating its functionality via conformational alterations. “This study was carried out in a team effort with experts from different fields and different countries. International collaboration is of paramount importance in solving major problems in science nowadays,” said Dr. JIANG Hualiang, director general of SIMM.

“The full-length GCGR structure not only expands our knowledge about GPCR signaling mechanisms, but also offers new opportunities in drug discovery targeting class B GPCRs,” said Dr. Ming-Wei Wang, Director of the National Center for Drug Screening. “With the information gained from this structure, we are in a better position to devise new therapeutic strategies involving both GCGR and glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor for obesity and type 2 diabetes.”

In addition to Drs. WU, WANG and JIANG, other study investigators included Dr. ZHAO Qiang, Dr. YANG Dehua and two graduate students (ZHANG Haonan and QIAO Anna) from SIMM, Dr. YAND Linlin of Zhengzhou University and Dr. Raymond Stevens from the iHuman Institute, ShanghaiTech University. The study was funded by the National Basic Research Programs, the National Health and Family Planning Commission, the National Natural Science Foundation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai Science and Technology Development Fund, GPCR Consortium and National Institutes of Health (U.S.A.).



Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica (SIMM) - A First Full-length Class B GPCR Crystal Structure Reveals Novel Receptor Activation Mechanisms

*Journal Reference:*

Gaojie Song et al. Human GLP-1 receptor transmembrane domain structure in complex with allosteric modulators, _Nature_ (2017). DOI: 10.1038/nature22378

Haonan Zhang et al. Structure of the full-length glucagon class B G-protein-coupled receptor. _Nature_ (2017). DOI: 10.1038/nature22363
#####​More information on the research,

*Improving drugs for type 2 diabetes*
Date: May 17, 2017
Source: Arizona State University

Type 2 diabetes, a prolific killer, is on a steep ascent. According to the World Health Organization, the incidence of the condition has grown dramatically from 108 million cases in 1980 to well over 400 million today. The complex disease occurs when the body's delicate regulation of glucose, a critical metabolite, is disrupted, creating a condition of elevated blood sugar known hyperglycemia. Over time, the condition can damage the heart, blood vessels, eyes, kidneys, and nerves.

In a new study, Wei Liu and his colleagues at The Biodesign Institute join an international team, led by Beili Wu from the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica (SIMM), Chinese Academy of Sciences, to explore a central component in glucose regulation. Their findings shed new light on the structure of the glucagon receptor, a highly promising target for diabetes drug development.


--> Improving drugs for type 2 diabetes -- ScienceDaily


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists Engineer Disease-Resistant Rice Without Sacrificing Yield*
By Guest
On May 17, 2017



Researchers have developed a way to make rice more resistant to bacterial blight and other diseases without reducing yield. Photo by Max Pixel.

Researchers have successfully developed a novel method that allows for increased disease resistance in rice without decreasing yield. A team at Duke University, working in collaboration with scientists at Huazhong Agricultural University in China, describe the findings in a paper published May 17, 2017 in the journal Nature.

Rice is one of the most important staple crops, responsible for providing over one-fifth of the calories consumed by humans worldwide. Diseases caused by bacterial or fungal pathogens present a significant problem, and can result in the loss of 80 percent or more of a rice crop.

Decades of research into the plant immune response have identified components that can be used to engineer disease-resistant plants. However, their practical application to crops is limited due to the decreased yield associated with a constantly active defense response.

“Immunity is a double-edged sword, ” said study co-author Xinnian Dong, professor of biology at Duke and lead investigator of the study. “There is often a tradeoff between growth and defense because defense proteins are not only toxic to pathogens but also harmful to self when overexpressed,” Dong said. “This is a major challenge in engineering disease resistance for agricultural use because the ultimate goal is to protect the yield.”


---> Scientists Engineer Disease-Resistant Rice Without Sacrificing Yield – Duke Research Blog

#####​*Rice plant engineered with a ‘tunable’ immune system could fight multiple diseases at once*
By Ryan Cross. May. 18, 2017 , 5:00 PM

Farmers are constantly spraying pesticides on their crops to combat an array of viral, bacterial, and fungal invaders. Scientists have been trying to get around these chemicals for years by genetically engineering hardy plants resilient to the array of diseases caused by microbial beasties. Most attempts so far confer protection against a single disease, but now researchers have developed a rice plant that fights multiple pathogens at once—without loss to the crop yield—by hooking up a tunable amplifier to the plant’s immune system.

“For as long as I have been in this field, people have been scratching their heads about how to activate a defense system where and when it is needed,” says Jonathan Jones, who studies plant defense mechanisms at the Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich, U.K. “It is among the most promising lines of research in this field that I have seen.”

Plants don’t have a bloodstream to circulate immune cells. Instead, they use receptors on the outsides of their cells to identify molecules that signal a microbial invasion, and respond by releasing a slew of antimicrobial compounds. Theoretically, identifying genes that kick off this immune response and dialing up their activity should yield superstrong plants.

Plant biologist Xinnian Dong at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, has been studying one of these genes for 20 years—a “master regulator,” she says, of plant defense. The gene, called _NPR1 _in the commonly studied thale cress plant (_Arabidopsis thaliana_)—a small and weedy plant topped with white flowers—has been a popular target for scientists trying to boost immune systems of rice, wheat, apples, tomatoes, and more. But turning up _NPR1_ works too well and “makes the plants miserable, so it is not very useful for agriculture,” Dong says.

To understand why, consider the human immune system. Just as sick people aren’t very productive at work when their fever is high, plants grow poorly when their own immune systems are overloaded. Likewise, keeping the _NPR1_ gene turned on all the time stunts plant growth so severely there is no harvest for the farmers.

To make _NPR1_ useful, researchers needed a better control switch—one that would crank up the immune response only when the plant was under attack, but otherwise would turn it down to let the plants grow. Two papers published in Nature this week from Dong’s team at Duke, in collaboration with researchers at Huazhong Agricultural University in Wuhan, China, describe the discovery and application of such a mechanism.

While investigating an immune system-activating protein called TBF1 in _Arabidopsis_, Dong discovered an intricate system that speedily instigates an immune response. It works by taking ready-to-go messenger RNA molecules that encode TBF1, and quickly translating these molecules into TBF1 proteins, which then kick-start an array of immune defenses. Dong quickly recognized that a segment of DNA, which she calls the “TBF1 cassette,” was acting as a control switch for this plant immune response, so she copied that TBF1 cassette from the _Arabidopsis_ genome and pasted it alongside and in front of the _NPR1_ gene in rice plants.

The result is a strain of rice that can rapidly and reversibly ramp up its immune system in bursts that are strong enough to fend off offending pathogens but short enough to avoid the stunted growth seen in previously engineered crops.

The researchers demonstrated that their rice was superior compared with regular rice by inoculating their leaves with the bacterial pathogens that cause rice blight (_Xanthomonas oryzae _pv. _oryzae_) and leaf streak (_X. oryzae _pv. _oryzicola_), as well as the fungus responsible for blast disease (_Magnaporthe oryzae_). Whereas the infections spread over the leaves of the wild rice plants, the engineered plants readily confined the invaders to a small area. “These plants perform very well in the field, and there is no obvious fitness penalty, especially in the grain number and weight,” Dong says.

The research could be a boon for farmers in developing countries someday, says Jeff Dangl, an expert on plant immunity at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, who was not involved in the study. For instance, rice blast disease, which the plants effectively combatted, causes an estimated 30% loss of the annual rice crop worldwide. “In the developing world, when farmers that can’t afford fungicide get the disease in their fields, they can lose their whole crop,” Dangl says.

Julia Bailey-Serres, a plant biologist at the University of California, Riverside, is excited about the study too. “They haven’t done large trials yet to show how robust it will be, but our back of the envelope calculation shows that this really could have a big impact,” she says. “It could easily be applicable to multiple species of crops,” she says, adding that “it is impressive that it worked across two kingdoms” of fungal and bacterial pathogens.

But all are careful to note that it is still early days for immune-boosted crops. For one, the particular kind of uplift conferred by _NPR1_ is unlikely to provide protection against plant-munching insects. A second caveat is that the study only tested the rice’s response to microbes that parasitize living host cells; their defense against a different class of pathogens that kill cells for food is still untested. “I would keep the champagne on ice until there are a few more pathogen systems tested in the field,” Jones says.

Still, Jones says he’s hopeful the work—and more like it—could eventually lead to the end of pesticides. “I like to imagine in 50 years’ time my grandchildren will say, ‘Granddad, did people really use chemicals to control disease when they could have used genetics?’ And I’ll say, ‘Yeah, they did.’ That’s where we want to get to.”


Rice plant engineered with a ‘tunable’ immune system could fight multiple diseases at once | Science | AAAS



*Journal Reference: *

Guoyong Xu, George H. Greene, Heejin Yoo, Lijing Liu, Jorge Marqués, Jonathan Motley & Xinnian Dong. Global translational reprogramming is a fundamental layer of immune regulation in plants, _Nature_ (2017). DOI: 10.1038/nature22371
Guoyong Xu, Meng Yuan, Chaoren Ai, Lijing Liu, Edward Zhuang, Sargis Karapetyan, Shiping Wang & Xinnian Dong. uORF-mediated translation allows engineered plant disease resistance without fitness costs, _Nature_ (2017). DOI: 10.1038/nature22372


----------



## JSCh

*Trial approved for blood protein cultivated in rice*
(China Daily) 10:07, May 19, 2017




_A researcher shows a bottle of human serum albumin cultivated from rice seeds. Photo by Ren Yong /For China Daily_

WUHAN - China's food and drug authority has approved a clinical trial of human blood protein cultivated in transgenic rice seeds, which could lead to large-scale production of much-needed blood plasma.

Plasma is widely used in surgeries as a temporary blood replacement. It contains human serum albumin, a protein that is naturally produced in the liver.

Now a Chinese research team, led by bioengineer Yang Daichang, has come up with a way to use rice seeds to synthesize plasma.

Yang's team transplanted human serum albumin into rice seeds. The seed continue to generate the protein as they grow.

Wuhan Healthgen Biotechnology Corp, a Chinese company specializing in animal-free pharmaceuticals, has invested 200 million yuan ($29 million) in the research.

The company, based in Wuhan, Hubei province, is eyeing large-scale production of human serum albumin from rice.

The albumin will be put into clinical trials in August, and can be expected to hit the market in four to five years.

There is a major shortage of human serum albumin in China, estimated at 100 metric tons a year. About 60 percent of the country's yearly demand of 420 tons is imported.

Safety is also a concern with plasma from human donors, as blood diseases such as HIV and hepatitis pose a threat.

The China Food and Drug Administration's Center for Drug Evaluation said that the human blood protein generated in rice is "safe and effective".

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Astronomers make the largest map of the Universe yet*
May 18, 2017



​A slice through largest-ever three-dimensional map of the Universe. Earth is at the left, and distances to galaxies and quasars are labelled by the lookback time to the objects (lookback time means how long the light from an object has been traveling to reach us here on Earth). The locations of quasars (galaxies with supermassive black holes) are shown by the red dots, and nearer galaxies mapped by SDSS are also shown (yellow).

The right-hand edge of the map is the limit of the observable Universe, from which we see the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) – the light “left over” from the Big Bang. The bulk of the empty space in between the quasars and the edge of the observable universe are from the “dark ages”, prior to the formation of most stars, galaxies, or quasars. Click on the image for a larger version. 
*Image Credit:* Anand Raichoor (École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland) and the SDSS collaboration

Astronomers with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) have created the first map of the large-scale structure of the Universe based entirely on the positions of quasars. Quasars are the incredibly bright and distant points of light powered by supermassive black holes.

“Because quasars are so bright, we can see them all the way across the Universe,” said Ashley Ross of the Ohio State University, the co-leader of the study. “That makes them the ideal objects to use to make the biggest map yet.”

The amazing brightness of quasars is due to the supermassive black holes found at their centers. As matter and energy fall into a quasar’s black hole, they heat up to incredible temperatures and begin to glow. It is this bright glow that is detected by a dedicated 2.5-meter telescope here on Earth.

“These quasars are so far away that their light left them when the Universe was between three and seven billion years old, long before the Earth even existed,” said Gongbo Zhao from the National Astronomical Observatories of Chinese Academy of Sciences, the study’s other co-leader.

To make their map, scientists used the Sloan Foundation Telescope to observe an unprecedented number of quasars. During the first two years of the SDSS’s Extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS), astronomers measured accurate three-dimensional positions for more than 147,000 quasars.


--> Astronomers make the largest map of the Universe yet | SDSS | Press Releases

Preprint -> [1705.06373v1] The clustering of the SDSS-IV extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey DR14 quasar sample: First measurement of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations between redshift 0.8 and 2.2

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*World’s thinnest hologram paves path to new 3D world*
18 May 2017

_An Australian-Chinese research team has created the world’s thinnest hologram, paving the way towards the integration of 3D holography into everyday electronics like smart phones, computers and TVs._
 




 ​Interactive 3D holograms are a staple of science fiction – from _Star Wars_ to _Avatar – _but the challenge for scientists trying to turn them into reality is developing holograms that are thin enough to work with modern electronics.

Now a pioneering team led by RMIT University’s Distinguished Professor Min Gu has designed a nano-hologram that is simple to make, can be seen without 3D goggles and is 1000 times thinner than a human hair.

“Conventional computer-generated holograms are too big for electronic devices but our ultrathin hologram overcomes those size barriers,” Gu said.

“Our nano-hologram is also fabricated using a simple and fast direct laser writing system, which makes our design suitable for large-scale uses and mass manufacture.

“Integrating holography into everyday electronics would make screen size irrelevant – a pop-up 3D hologram can display a wealth of data that doesn’t neatly fit on a phone or watch.

"From medical diagnostics to education, data storage, defence and cyber security, 3D holography has the potential to transform a range of industries and this research brings that revolution one critical step closer.”

Conventional holograms modulate the phase of light to give the illusion of three-dimensional depth. But to generate enough phase shifts, those holograms need to be at the thickness of optical wavelengths.

The RMIT research team, working with the Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT), has broken this thickness limit with a 25 nanometre hologram based on a topological insulator material – a novel quantum material that holds the low refractive index in the surface layer but the ultrahigh refractive index in the bulk.

The topological insulator thin film acts as an intrinsic optical resonant cavity, which can enhance the phase shifts for holographic imaging.

Dr Zengji Yue, who co-authored the paper with BIT’s Gaolei Xue, said: “The next stage for this research will be developing a rigid thin film that could be laid onto an LCD screen to enable 3D holographic display.

“This involves shrinking our nano-hologram’s pixel size, making it at least 10 times smaller.

“But beyond that, we are looking to create flexible and elastic thin films that could be used on a whole range of surfaces, opening up the horizons of holographic applications.”

The research is published in the journal _Nature Communications_ (DOI 10.1038/NCOMMS15354) on 18 May.


World’s thinnest hologram paves path to new 3D world - RMIT University

Zengji Yue, Gaolei Xue, Juan Liu, Yongtian Wang & Min Gu. "Nanometric holograms based on a topological insulator material". _Nature Comm._ (2017). DOI: 10.1038/NCOMMS15354

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*This week, everyone gets a chance to say '520' to science*
By Zhang Zhihao | China Daily | 2017-05-22 07:42






Students control robot combatants in an attempted to pop each other's balloons at the Cultural Palace of Nationalities in Beijing on Saturday as the 17th National Science Week began.[Photo/Xinhua]

From new underwater drones to preserved roses that have helped lift villagers out of poverty, China's newest technologies and their applications were showcased at the launch of the 17th National Science Week on Saturday in Beijing.

China also will open more than 3,000 universities and scientific facilities during the week for free tours. More than 500,000 visitors are expected to attend the 116 facilities founded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences alone, the academy said on Saturday.

"This year's theme is building a strong nation with science and fulfilling dreams with innovations," Vice-Premier Liu Yandong said at the Cultural Palace of Nationalities in Beijing, where some exhibitions are being held.

Science Week is the largest, longest and most participated in annual science event in China, she said. Since 2001, more than 1.5 billion people have participated in the extravaganza.

More than 260 exhibitions and 22 events will be held in the palace, covering five major fields including life science, new material, information technology, smart manufacturing and deep sea and space exploration, the event calendar says.

May 20, Saturday, also was the "day of love"－the pronunciation of "520" is a homophone for "I Love You" in Chinese.

"It is a great day for science lovers to interact and learn about technologies," said Gu Qingyi, a researcher at the academy's Institute of Automation. "As people are having fun, we hope they get interested in the science behind all the cool gadgets."



A man experiences newest technologies at the Cultural Palace of Nationalities in Beijing on Saturday as the 17th National Science Week began.[Photo provided to China Daily]

At the palace's science interaction section, adults and children played games on virtual and augmented reality headsets. For those who prefer hands on activities, they can learn in simulators how to operate Jiaolong－China's manned deep-sea research submersible－or a 360-degree rotating pilot training pod. For relaxation, they can touch a live starfish or a horseshoe crab in a fish tank or color a flowerpot using mineral pigments.

"Seeing knowledge from textbooks come alive really helps students become interested in science," said Chen Hongcheng, a teacher at Beijing Yu Cai School, who led a group of elementary students there. "These events can be a relaxing and learning experience, especially seeing how technologies has benefited society."

In the middle of the palace lies the exhibition on how science has helped China's poverty-alleviation effort. It is packed with products from honey made in high-tech beehives to high yielding wheat grown from dry soil.

Zhu Lunfeng, a villager from the mountainous Zhashui county in Shaanxi province, said the provincial science department helped them build a 250 million yuan ($36 million) preserved flower industry that has lifted more than 700 villagers, mostly from Zhujiawan village, out of poverty.

"Preserved flowers are generally very dry and bleak, but scientists helped us create ones that have more humidity and longer shelf life," he said. "Our county is 90 percent mountain and forests, so having a product that is competitive really helps."

Most of the 700 villagers are earning more than 8,000 yuan per year, some even earn 20,000 yuan, which is much higher than the national poverty line, he said.

"Science has changed the fate of my people," he said. "It is '520', so I brought preserved roses from my hometown to show visitors my love for science and the country."



​Students experience newest technologies at the Cultural Palace of Nationalities in Beijing on Saturday as the 17th National Science Week began.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Floating graphene cooks up clean water*
By Katrina Krämer, 18 May 2017





_Graphene aerogel converts sunlight into heat to produce water vapour at room temperature_

A sunlight-harvesting graphene film can produce steam without boiling the water. The material, which has been made by Chinese scientists, could convert sea or wastewater into drinking water in places where fuel or access to electricity is limited.

Desalinating seawater to make drinking water usually means boiling it, and then collecting and condensing the steam. Heating water to its boiling point, however, requires a great deal of energy either in the form of fuel or electricity. There are solar stills that desalinate water using only sunlight, but they’re slow and not always efficient enough to provide sufficient drinking water for a person’s daily needs.

Xianbao Wang and colleagues from Hubei University have now made a graphene aerogel film capable of producing water vapour at room temperature using only sunlight. The aerogel floats on the surface, where it heats up only a small section of the water column, ‘while the temperature of the bulk water is far below the boiling point’, as Wang explains.






Source: American Chemical Society​
The researchers tested how the addition of different materials affected the heating of water in simulated sunlight, including reduced graphene oxide (rGO), graphene oxide (GO), graphene oxide aerogel membrane (GOAM) and the graphene aerogel (GA) that performed best of all

Under simulated sunlight, the aerogel could heat up 100ml of water to 45°C – 13°C higher than water without the aerogel. The material’s porous structure pumps the generated steam away from the surface, allowing water to evaporate 13 times faster than it would without the aerogel.

While other steam-generating materials are based on expensive raw materials such as gold, the basis for Wang’s aerogel is powdered graphite – a cheap and widely available resource. ‘In the context of solar steam generation, the current work has a major contribution in fabricating an efficient sunlight absorber in a simple method, which is scalable,’ comments Satoshi Ishii, a photonics nanoengineering researcher at the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan.

Generating solar steam with the graphene aerogel could be more efficient than using electricity from a photovoltaic cell. ‘The efficiencies of commercial photovoltaic cells are 10–20%, such that the efficiencies of generating steam using photovoltaic cells cannot exceed 20%,’ explains Ishii. Wang’s floating graphene has an efficiency of 54%, reaching up to 83% under focused sunlight.

However, if the material is to be used in a desalination device, Wang’s team will need to improve the material’s toughness – it is easily broken when picked up. ‘I do not see fundamental difficulties in bringing the current technology into real-life applications, although much more feasibility studies should be done,’ adds Ishii.

*References*
Y Fu _et al_,_ ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng._, 2017, DOI: 10.1021/acssuschemeng.6b03207​

Floating graphene cooks up clean water | Research | Chemistry World

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*New graphene sensor to improve hepatitis diagnosis*
Last Updated: 22 May 2017

_A new UK-China collaborative project is developing a sensor to provide an easy, low-cost method of diagnosing hepatitis on the spot using graphene – an advanced 2D material known for its high electrical conductivity. The sensor will be the first to simultaneously test for three types of hepatitis – A, B and C – out of the five types that exist. The multi-partner project, supported by the UK's Newton Fund and led by Biovici, will bring together the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the University of Chongqing, Swansea University, and industry partner CTN, to develop this new diagnostic technology._

Hepatitis is a huge global health problem, with nearly 400 million people worldwide affected, resulting in over 1.4 million deaths per year. The World Health Organisation has reported that 257 million people are infected with hepatitis B alone. Those affected with hepatitis suffer chronic infection, resulting in one million deaths per annum from liver cirrhosis and cancer, with 40% of those deaths occurring in China. Funded by the UK's Newton Fund, which aims to promote the economic development and social welfare of partner countries by strengthening science and innovation capacity, this project aims to help tackle the incidence of hepatitis in China. Hepatitis B in particular is endemic in China, with one-third of the 350 million infected individuals worldwide residing in China.

Blood tests are currently used as the diagnostic method for hepatitis, but there are challenges associated with this. With blood tests, results can take five to seven days, during which patients are still contagious and therefore a risk to the non-infected. Moreover, the technique is invasive and expensive, as it requires medical personnel.

Graphene is a 2D material with unique electrical and mechanical properties, which derive from its one-atom-thick structure. The material's exceptional electronic characteristics, surface sensitivity and selectivity make it ideal for sensor applications, including those used for medical diagnosis. To date, graphene electrochemical biosensors exist for diagnosing one type of hepatitis. This project, however, will develop sensors for the detection of three hepatitis types at a time, by using three graphene sensors, each tailored to identify the antibodies associated with a certain strain of hepatitis, integrated in a single test. Unlike conventional blood tests, this sensor will provide a non-invasive, quick and less expensive screening method. The ease and speed of this method will be beneficial for bulk testing of the food, agriculture and education workforces in China, over 300 million people, for whom tests are obligatory.

The team's approach is to use the graphene sensor technology to develop a point of care diagnostic for early detection and monitoring of multiple salivary or serum-based hepatitis biomarkers. This will be a novel, real-time monitoring sensor technology, based on chemically-modified graphene, that simultaneously monitors for hepatitis A, B and C. The test will be simple, low-cost and rapid, similar to a blood glucose sensor or pregnancy test, but testing saliva instead. This two-year project will develop a prototype, and establish the reliability, stability and sensitivity of the sensor in preparation for its commercialisation. It is estimated that if the sensor is produced in large quantities, each device could cost as little as £1 GBP.

While each of the five partners involved in the project has a different role, all of their activities are required in combination for the effective development of this new technology. The two Chinese partners, CTN and Chongqing University, are responsible for graphene device production and manufacturing. On the characterisation side, NPL is carrying out electrical characterisation and testing, whilst Swansea University is conducting chemical characterisation. Lastly, Biovici, who develops next-generation POC diagnostic devices, is responsible for packaging and commercialisation.

Dr Olga Kazakova, Principle Research Scientist in Advanced Materials at NPL, said: "Graphene's unique characteristics mean it has great potential to be used in a variety of sensing applications. In addition to hepatitis, it could be used in other similar tests, including allergen sensors, pollutant identification and other life sciences applications. It is imperative for us to understand the exact characteristics of the material to be able to assess how it can be manufactured and used in these different applications. This is a key focus for us and the National Graphene Metrology Centre at NPL supports the commercialisation and application of the advanced material by conducting world-leading research into its measurement and characterisation. Through this research, we are working to develop international standards for graphene which will help to unlock new applications for the incredible material."

Paul Morgan, Chief Executive at Biovici, said: "This collaboration between NPL, Swansea University's Centre for NanoHealth and our partners in China opens a unique opportunity to develop a low-cost, affordable test, which will bring major benefits to the global fight against the spread of this highly infectious disease. Many people associate hepatitis as a problem that happens elsewhere and not in their home country. However, hepatitis is a global epidemic which is rapidly affecting parts of the UK, throughout Europe and the USA."

Professor Owen Guy, Director (Engineering) at the Centre for NanoHealth at Swansea University, said: "Using semiconductor process technology applied to graphene enables us to make low-cost sensors. With the right lab-on-chip technology, there is the potential to develop sensors for a host of diagnostic and screening applications."


New graphene sensor to improve hepatitis diagnosis : News : News + Events : National Physical Laboratory

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

* China partner with Australia to open state of the art ocean research center in Tasmania *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-05-23 10:26:15_|_Editor: An_





HOBART, Australia, May 23 (Xinhua) -- China and Australia have partnered together to open a state of the art ocean research facility in Hobart in Australia's Tasmania state.

The Centre for Southern Hemisphere Oceans Research (CSHOR) is a vital collaboration, in which China's Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (QNLMST) will work alongside Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) to enhance scientific understanding of the globe's future climate.

"Although we are not geographically close, the southern hemisphere's oceans can have a huge impact on the climate of Asia and can also affect rainfall in China," QNLMST director Wu Lixin told Xinhua at the launch Monday.

Scientists have known for a long time that warmer ocean cycles in the Pacific, referred to as El Nino events, often bring drought to the Australian mainland.

Similarly, when the ocean cycles are cooler and a La Nina event is in effect, the cycle can cause heavy rain and flooding.

But due to recent advances in research, scientists have now discovered the Indian Ocean also experiences such a phenomenon, and according to Steve Rintoul, a climate scientist at the CSIRO, "when those two events interact it can have devastating effects in Australian and on the South East Asian climate."

"Our work at the centre will target how the Indian Ocean, the Pacific Ocean and the Southern Ocean interact to drive climate and also what changes are occurring with sea level rising," Rintoul said.

The facility is set to be a ground-breaking collaboration for marine research, and the relationship between China and the CSIRO is nothing new.

In fact, the long-standing partnership has lasted 40 years, with scientists from China and Australia leading the world in research cooperation.

"Last year we had a global ocean summit, following the G20 conference in China, and we got all the leaders from marine science around the world in our lab to discuss about how to build a global partnership," Wu said.

"We all reached a consensus that we should work together and this new centre is a follow-up to that meeting."

The facility will receive 20 million Australian dollars (14.88 million U.S. dollars) in funding over five years and will be split evenly between the two countries, who will work closely with University of Tasmania and the University of New South Wales.

"All our research will be made public and will act to inform government," Rintoul said.

"We both believe that we should share things widely and as quickly as we can because then we all benefit."

With such an expansive area to study, Rintoul believes cooperation is the best way to maximise resources.

"We will be looking at the tropics right down to Antarctica," Rintoul said.

"China is a rapidly developing and powerful research force in many, many fields, they have things that we don't have and we have things that they don't have, so that will make our partnership a really valuable one," Rintoul said.

Wu echoed these sentiments and emphasised his belief that "global interaction and collaboration is integral to overcoming scientific challenges."

Wu also laid out plans for four more ocean research centres across the world.

"QNLMST is hoping to build five centres, the first is here in Hobart, we plan for two more in the United States and also Russia and Germany," Wu said.

CSIRO chief executive, Larry Marshall also wants a greater connection around the world and hopes the CSHOR "will act as a magnate to bring in more and more partners and make our research even stronger."

"The CSIRO is working towards becoming a hub for more global collaboration like this," Marshall said.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*A self-healing structural color hydrogel inspired by nature*
May 23, 2017 by Bob Yirka




​A set of self-healing hydrogel films with different structural colors. Credit: Yuanjin Zhao.

(Phys.org)—A team of researchers at Southeast University in China has developed a self-healing structural hydrogel with a wide variety of applications. In their paper published in _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_, the group describes their hydrogel and how it was inspired by healing they observed in animals.

It has been noted for several years that one area where humanoid robots are lacking is skin tone—most robots have a pasty white complexion, which is both disturbing and likely to lead to social problems once robots become mainstream. Most artificial skin is not able to heal itself, which means that robots need skin replacement if it gets damaged or accidentally colored in undesirable ways. There is also the issue of colors fading. When materials such as rubbers or plastics are colored, it is generally done through the use of pigments, which, like clothes, tend to fade over time.

For that reason, robot scientists would like to use other types of coloring options, one of which is structural colors—materials that have their color due to surface nanostructures rather than pigments. As an example, animals such as birds and fish are immune to fading due to structural coloring on scales and feathers. The problem with using such coloring, the researchers note, has been figuring out how to make them strong enough to handle real-world problems like running into things. In this new effort, the researchers report that they looked to nature to overcome this problem.



​Chinese Taiji hydrogel with green background. Credit: Yuanjin Zhao

The new hydrogel they developed is actually double layered—one layer holds the structural colors, the other offers self-healing. When the hydrogel is cut into two pieces, it can not only heal itself, it maintains the original color while doing so. The end result, the team reports, is a very tiny scar. The group has conducted extensive testing of the material and has found that it is capable of withstanding real-world conditions.

It is not yet clear if the material could actually be used as a robot skin, but the researchers suggest it could be used for many different applications.

*More information:* Fanfan Fu et al. Bio-inspired self-healing structural color hydrogel, _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_ (2017). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1703616114


https://phys.org/news/2017-05-self-healing-hydrogel-nature.html

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Solar cells more efficient thanks to new material standing on edge*
_
Researchers from Lund University in Sweden and from Fudan University in China have successfully designed a new structural organization using the promising solar cell material perovskite. The study shows that solar cells increase in efficiency thanks to the material’s ability to self-organise by standing on edge. 
_


The illustration shows sheets of perovskite, side view. The coloured pattern represents perovskite and the grey lines symbolise the water-repelling surfaces.

Published on May, 23, 2017 

The current research study deals with perovskite, a new and promising material in the context of solar cells. However, in its regular form, the material is very sensitive to moisture. It simply dissolves in contact with water, and even normal humidity deteriorates the material within hours or minutes. Now the researchers appear to have overcome that problem.

“We have succeeded in producing thin sheets with a water-repelling surface, making the whole construction much more stable. In addition, we have succeeded in orienting the sheets so as to obtain acceptable solar cells, with an efficiency of ten per cent”, says Tönu Pullerits, professor of chemical physics at Lund University.

Tönu Pullerits sees great development potential for solar cells based on perovskite, thanks to the outcome of the current study. The researchers not only built thin sheets out of the material to achieve water-repelling surfaces but also discovered, to their surprise, that these perovskite sheets self-organised in a way that clearly increased efficiency.

Since the sheets are so thin, many need to be layered on top of each other in order for the absorption of sunlight to be sufficient. A problem arises at this point in that the water-repelling surfaces do not allow electrons to circulate freely within the material. It becomes difficult for the electrons to jump from one sheet to another, which reduces efficiency in the solar cells.

The researchers first tested two different water-repelling surfaces. They expected one version to give better results, enabling the electrons to jump more easily from one sheet to another. Instead, the outcome was the opposite – the second version gave much better results. This surprised the researchers, who then started new experiments in order to understand why.

“Here, our laser experiments were crucial. We could show that the sheets with the second surface material self-organised in such a way as to stand on edge instead of lying flat against one another”, says Tönu Pullerits.

Thanks to the self-organising structure of the sheets, the electrons were able to move freely between the contacts, considerably increasing the efficiency of converting the solar energy to electricity. Tönu Pullerits sees the result as an important step on the way to constructing stable and efficient solar cells out of perovskite.

“Stability is a key issue for solar cells”, he says.

_The current study is a collaboration between Lund University and Fudan University in Shanghai. The study was recently published in the journal Advanced Energy Materials._

*Publication: *Tailoring Organic Cation of 2D Air-Stable Organometal Halide Perovskites for Highly Efficient Planar Solar Cells


Solar cells more efficient thanks to new material standing on edge | Lund University

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## onebyone

This sprawling, floating solar power plant could change the way other nations design city centers.

China has announced that the largest floating photovoltaic (PV) facility on earth has finally been completed and connected to the local power grid. Long reviled for its carbon emission record, this is the Chinese government’s latest achievement in its ongoing effort to lead the world in renewable energy adoption.

Located in the city of Huainan in the Anhui province, the 40-megawatt facility was created by PV inverter manufacturer Sungrow Power Supply Co. Ironically, the floating grid itself was constructed over a flooded former coal-mining region.

Floating solar farms are becoming increasingly popular around the world because their unique design addresses multiple efficiency and city planning issues. These floating apparatuses free up land in more populated areas and also reduce water evaporation. The cooler air at the surface also helps to minimize the risk of solar cell performance atrophy, which is often related to long-term exposure to warmer temperatures.





This is just the first of many solar energy operations popping up around China. In 2016, the country unveiled a similar 20MW floating facility in the same area. China is also home to the Longyangxia Dam Solar Park, a massive 10-square-mile, land-based facility touted as the largest solar power plant on earth.

This transition to solar is in large part due to the rapidly plummeting cost of the technology itself. By 2020, China could reduce prices offered to PV developers by more than a third with solar power plants projected to rival coal facilities within a decade. The nation has also announced plans to increase its use of non-fissile fuel energy sources by 20 percent.

An annual report released by NASA and NOAA determined that 2016 was the warmest year on record globally, marking the third year in a row in which a new record was set for global average surface temperatures. That said, if we as a species hope to reverse this dire trend, initiatives like this and others will need to be adopted around the globe.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/china-floating-solar-power-plant/

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## onebyone

*This transition to solar is in large part due to the rapidly plummeting cost of the technology itself. By 2020, China could reduce prices offered to PV developers by more than a third with solar power plants projected to rival coal facilities within a decade. The nation has also announced plans to increase its use of non-fissile fuel energy sources by 20 percent.*

*This is just the first of many solar energy operations popping up around China. In 2016, the country unveiled a similar 20MW floating facility in the same area. China is also home to the Longyangxia Dam Solar Park, a massive 10-square-mile, land-based facility touted as the largest solar power plant on earth.*

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## samsara

Watch following fascinating DOCUMENTARY of China's enormous scientific research efforts in the ANTARCTIC, with full English subtitles!

Memory of a Nation 20170525 - Episode 4 - The Series of Exploration of the Highest Point of Antarctic (i.e. the Dome A) - CCTV-4
《国家记忆》 20170525 《征战南极》系列 第四集 探寻冰盖最高点 - CCTV-4

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Researchers regenerate bone using 3D printed clay hydrogel*
May 23, 2017
Beau Jackson
 
Researchers in China have released a manuscript detailing a 3D printable material specially designed to support the growth of bone cells. Matter grown with the support of this polymer/clay nanocomposite could be used in the treatment of bone defects caused by trauma, deformities, or the removal of tumors. It has also been tested in vivo with positive results.



Diagram of the process developed by researchers at Tianjin University, Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Hong Kong. Image via ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering, May 2017


---> Researchers regenerate bone using 3D printed clay hydrogel - 3D Printing Industry

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Shanghai scientists find gene responsible for men’s infertility*
By Cai Wenjun | 15:10 UTC+8 May 26, 2017 



Liu Mofang (r) from the Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology observes mice in a lab. -- Ti Gong 

LOCAL scientists are the first in the world to detect the mutations of one gene called Piwi is responsible for some men’s infertility, as the mutation can result in an extreme reduction of sperm quantity and the loss of sperm’s vitality. Scientists also found the measure to recover sperm’s vitality in animal experiments.

The discovery can help clinical specialists to study the treatment for human’s infertility.

It was published by world-leading journal Cell today and received high recognition in international science field.

The infertility is rising in the world and the reduced sperm quality is one of the leading causes.

Researchers found men in many countries suffered a drop of sperm quantity and quality in the past years. In China, it dropped by almost 30 percent since 1983. However, the reason and mechanism of sperm problems remained largely unknown, restricting clinical diagnosis and treatment.

A team led by Liu Mofang from the Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, spent years to study the subject. They targeted Piwi, a gene mainly on male’s reproductive cells. Through studying the mouse, they found that mutations in the D-box element on Piwi can result in male mouse’s fertility.

They also found similar condition on human with such mutations and confirmed that the gene problem is one of the genetic reasons for male’s infertility.

In addition to locate the mutated gene, Liu’s team also found out the mechanism of the mutations and successfully treated the problem in laboratory on mouse. “By blocking the effect of the mutations, mouse’s sperm regains vitality,” she said. “The solution can provide a new solution to the treatment of human in clinical practice.”


----------



## JSCh

*China approves undersea observing networks for oceanic research*

Published : 2017-05-27 23:42
Last Modified : 2017-05-27 23:43
China has recently approved a billion-yuan program to build the country’s first undersea observing networks for advancing oceanic studies and other areas such as national defense.

Listed as one of China’s major scientific infrastructural programs, the networks will be built in the East China Sea and South China Sea respectively to conduct around-the-clock, real-time, high-definition, multiple interface, and three-dimensional observations.

The networks will also serve as a platform to provide long-term observation data and support experiments in the research of the maritime environments of the two seas. Meanwhile, a monitoring and data center will also be set up in Shanghai to monitor the networks and process the data collected by the networks.

The program is expected to advance China’s research in cutting-edge areas of earth system science and global climate change, and also meet the needs in other areas such as national defense, and disaster warning.

Scientists say that building the networks bears great significance for China.

"The devices will be placed down on the seabed through optical cables, in other words, build a laboratory undersea to collect and send data back to us. China is an ocean power; it should have done more in oceanic studies in the past. An ocean power must be able to go to the high seas and go global," said Jian Zhimin, dean of the School of Marine and Earth Sciences, Tongji University.

"After its establishment, this system can also have some radiation effects in other sectors, such as mining, mapping or ocean rights protection and national defense in addition to scientific research. We hope different governmental departments can work together to work out stricter regulations and measures on the protection of these undersea facilities, so as to ensure the long-term operation of this system," said Zhou Huaiyang, a professor with the School of Marine and Earth Sciences, Tongji University

The networks cost approximately two billion yuan with a planned construction period of five years.


----------



## JSCh

*Rice first domesticated in China at about 10,000 years ago: study *
Source: Xinhua | 2017-05-30 06:05:35 | Editor: huaxia




Farmers transplant riceseedlings into paddy field in Dawa District of Panjin, northeast China's Liaoning Province, May 18, 2017. (Xinhua/Long Lei) 

WASHINGTON, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Rice, one of the world's most important staple foods sustaining more than half of the global population, was first domesticated in China about 10,000 years ago, a new study suggested Monday.

"Such an age for the beginnings of rice cultivation and domestication would agree with the parallel beginnings of agriculture in other regions of the world during a period of profound environmental change when the Pleistocene was transitioning into the Holocene," Lu Houyuan, professor of the Institute of Geology and Geophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who led the study, said.

The research, published in the U.S. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was done in collaboration with Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Relics and Archaeology and the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Questions surrounding the origin and domestication of rice have led to a lot of debate in the last decade.

Rice remains have previously been recovered from the Shangshan site in the Lower Yangtze of China and recognized as the earliest examples of rice cultivation.

However, the age of the rice fossils was derived through radiocarbon dating of organic matter in pottery shards, which can be contaminated with older carbon sources, Lu said.

To constrain the age of the phytoliths, the researchers developed new ways of isolating rice phytoliths from carbon sources, such as clays and carbonate, and dated the samples directly using radiocarbon dating.

It turned out that phytoliths retrieved from the early stage of the Shangshan site are about 9,400 years old.

Further studies showed that approximately 36 percent of rice phytoliths at Shangshan had more than nine fish-scale decorations, less than the approximately 67 percent counted from modern domesticated rice, but larger than the approximately 17 percent found in modern wild rice.

That means that rice domestication may have begun at Shangshan at about 10,000 years ago during the beginning of the Holocene, when taking into account the distance between phytolith samples and the lowest bottom of cultural strata of the site as well as a slow rate of rice domestication, Lu said.

The time coincided with the domestication of wheat in the Near East and maize in northern South America, both of which are also believed to have occurred at about 10,000 years ago, when the global climate experienced dramatic changes from cold glacial to warm interglacial.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Trials of embryonic stem cells to launch in China*
_Studies to treat vision loss and Parkinson’s disease are the first to proceed under new regulations._

David Cyranoski
31 May 2017
In the next few months, surgeons in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou will carefully drill through the skulls of people with Parkinson’s disease and inject 4 million immature neurons derived from human embryonic stem cells into their brains. Then they will patch the patients up, send them home and wait. 

This will mark the start of the first clinical trial in China using human embryonic stem (ES) cells, and the first one worldwide aimed at treating Parkinson’s disease using ES cells from fertilized embryos. In a second trial starting around the same time, a different team in Zhengzhou will use ES cells to target vision loss caused by age-related macular degeneration.

The experiments will also represent the first clinical trials of ES cells under regulations that China adopted in 2015, in an attempt to ensure the ethical and safe use of stem cells in the clinic. China previously had no clear regulatory framework, and many companies had used that gap as an excuse to market unproven stem-cell treatments. 

“It will be a major new direction for China,” says Pei Xuetao, a stem-cell scientist at the Beijing Institute of Transfusion Medicine who is on the central-government committee that approved the trials. Other researchers who work on Parkinson’s disease, however, worry that the trials might be misguided.

Both studies will take place at the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University in Henan province. In the first, surgeons will inject ES-cell-derived neuronal-precursor cells into the brains of individuals with Parkinson’s disease. The only previous trial using ES cells to treat Parkinson’s began last year in Australia; participants there received stem cells from parthenogenetic embryos — unfertilized eggs that are triggered in the lab to start embryonic development.

In the other Zhengzhou trial, surgeons will take retinal cells derived from ES cells and transplant them into the eyes of people with age-related macular degeneration. The team will follow a similar procedure to that of previous ES-cell trials carried out by researchers in the United States and South Korea.

Qi Zhou, a stem-cell specialist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Zoology in Beijing, is leading both efforts. For the Parkinson’s trial, his team assessed hundreds of candidates and have so far have picked ten who best match the ES cells in the cell bank, to reduce the risk of the patients’ bodies rejecting the cells.

---> Trials of embryonic stem cells to launch in China : Nature News & Comment

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

* Xinhua Insight: China's AI business ready to lead the world *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-06-01 11:08:02_|_Editor: Hou Qiang_





BEIJING, June 1 (Xinhua) -- Over the past week, the Internet has yet again been buzzing about the future of artificial intelligence (AI).

And once again, the heat was generated by AlphaGo, Google's AI program, which completed a 3-0 clean sweep Friday over Ke Jie, the current world No.1 Go player.

In contrast to the generally negative reactions to AlphaGo's 4-1 victory over South Korean master Lee Se-dol in March last year, people are now more optimistic towards the future of AI.

"AlphaGo was not designed just to play Go," said Qian Jianlun, a Go teacher in east China's Zhejiang Province. "As an AI project, it will change a lot of aspects of our lives."

*FULL SPEED AHEAD*

Qian's words echoed the overall positivity shown by the status quo of China's AI industry.

According to data from iiMedia Research, a major research institution, China's AI industry increased by 43.3 percent in 2016, surpassing 10 billion yuan (1.47 billion U.S. dollars), and is expected to reach 15.21 billion and 34.43 billion yuan in 2017 and 2019 respectively.

The numbers were driven by a boom in the amount of research taking place in the industry. China has applied for 15,745 AI patents, ranking second worldwide, according to Liu Lihua, vice minister of industry and information technology.

Favorable policies came as a consequence. Over 40 robotics industry parks have now been or are currently being set up around the country, and for the first time ever, AI was included in the government work report Premier Li Keqiang presented to the Fifth Session of the 12th National People's Congress in March.

"We will accelerate research and development, and commercialization of new materials, artificial intelligence [...] and develop industrial clusters in these fields," the report read.

"AI has become a key driving force behind Chinese companies," said Zhang Yaqin, president of Baidu, China's Internet giant.

"In the AI era, China can innovate not only in products, but also in technologies," he added.

*DATA SET THE BASE*

For insiders, the further development of China's AI industry will continue to count largely on data.

"The core of AI development lies in the massive amounts of data," said Li Kaifu, chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures, a venture capital company aiming to create successful Chinese start-ups.

"In China, we have a huge database, and it has proved to be quite valuable for us," he continued.

Bai Chunli, president of Chinese Academy of Sciences, agreed. "By 2020, China will hold 20 percent of the global data, which is expected to reach 44 trillion gigabytes," he stated at an expo on big data Monday.

AI has been playing a bigger role in people's everyday lives. For example, an AI system monitoring vehicles to intelligently control traffic was applied in east China's Hangzhou, and increased vehicle passing speeds by up to 11 percent during its trial last year.

"China is already leading the world in fields such as computer vision and automatic speech recognition," Liu Lihua added.

"We believe that AI presents the most favorable opportunity for us to lead the world," Li resonated.

*BUSINESS YET TO UNITE*

However, for some, what has been transpiring in the industry is not enough for it to successfully achieve sustainable development.

Despite predicting that China's AI market will enjoy a 50-percent annual increase, way above the global rate of 20 percent, McKinsey and Company, a worldwide management consulting firm, also noted that less than 25 percent of the AI industry insiders in China have over ten years of experience in the business, while in the United States that number is 50 percent.

Also, the country's AI companies are yet to join forces.

"There's been a lack of technical collaboration in our AI industry," said Wen Xiaojun from CCID Wise, a major Chinese think tank. "The inter-connectibility of products is poor, and there is no efficient coordination between upstream and downstream producers."

He believes an industry service platform needs to be set up to boost functions including research and development, application and product examining.

"We need such an incubation center for AI to prosper," he added.


----------



## JSCh

* Interview: China-Australia research team develops new software for early cancer detection *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-05-31 13:49:55_|_Editor: Hou Qiang_






Image provided by CSIRO shows comparison of the enhanced blood vessel prior to skeletonisation (LHS) (left) and after the end-point skeletonisation process (RHS) (right). A team of Australian and Chinese scientists have developed sophisticated new software which could play a key role in the early detection of cancer. Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) released a statement on Wednesday saying the partnership has developed an algorithm which detected the formation of new blood vessels, known to precede the growth of cancers, in mice. (Xinhua/CSIRO)

CANBERRA, May 31 (Xinhua) -- A team of Australian and Chinese scientists have developed sophisticated new software which could play a key role in the early detection of cancer.

Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) released a statement on Wednesday saying the partnership has developed an algorithm which detected the formation of new blood vessels, known to precede the growth of cancers, in mice.

CSIRO's Data61 researchers joined forces with researchers at the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences to analyse images of the brains and livers of mice at different stages of cancer growth.

Together, the team looked at high-resolution 3D micro-CT images produced by the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SSRF) of 26 mice.

These images helped the researchers develop the algorithm which discovered the formation of new blood vessels. The scientists are hopeful that earlier detection of blood vessel growth could lead to a faster diagnosis of malignant tumor growth, a key factor in successful treatment and patient survival.

"In the past people were just able to get a rough idea but, with new technology, we are able to see the microvasculature which are very fine structures," Dr Wang Dadong, lead researcher on the project, told Xinhua on Wednesday.

While the research marks a significant step forward in cancer detection, the Shanghai Synchrotron Beamline used to produce the images generates radiation levels not safe for humans.

Wang told Xinhua he was unsure how long it will take before this new detection method is safe for human application.

"The technology is moving forward very fast, but we are still looking for a safe life source for human trial. Our software is being packaged, and it's ready for trial, we're just looking for partners to do the trials," Wang said.

In order to progress clinical trials on humans, the researchers are looking for 3D imaging technologies and partnering with a hardware manufacturer that can produce high-resolution images with levels of radiation safe for humans.

"But we are very hopeful, and currently looking for collaborators and partners to take the technology to the next stage," said Wang.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*A material that can switch between multiple phases that have distinct electronic, optical and magnetic properties*
June 1, 2017 by Bob Yirka 

(Phys.org)—A large team of researchers with members from China, the U.K., the U.S. and Japan has developed a material that can switch between multiple phases with distinct electronic, optical and magnetic properties. In their paper published in the journal _Nature_, the team describes how they made their material, how it can be caused to switch properties and possible uses for it. Shriram Ramanathan, with Purdue University offers a _News & Views_ piece on the work done by the team in the same journal issue and adds some additional background on the search for functional materials.

---> https://phys.org/news/2017-06-material-multiple-phases-distinct-electronic.html

Nianpeng Lu, Pengfei Zhang, Qinghua Zhang, Ruimin Qiao, Qing He, Hao-Bo Li, Yujia Wang, Jingwen Guo, Ding Zhang, Zheng Duan, Zhuolu Li, Meng Wang, Shuzhen Yang, Mingzhe Yan, Elke Arenholz, Shuyun Zhou, Wanli Yang, Lin Gu, Ce-Wen Nan, Jian Wu, Yoshinori Tokura & Pu Yu. Electric-field control of tri-state phase transformation with a selective dual-ion switch, _Nature_ (2017). DOI: 10.1038/nature22389.

*Abstract*

Materials can be transformed from one crystalline phase to another by using an electric field to control ion transfer, in a process that can be harnessed in applications such as batteries, smart windows and fuel cells. Increasing the number of transferrable ion species and of accessible crystalline phases could in principle greatly enrich material functionality. However, studies have so far focused mainly on the evolution and control of single ionic species (for example, oxygen, hydrogen or lithium ions). Here we describe the reversible and non-volatile electric-field control of dual-ion (oxygen and hydrogen) phase transformations, with associated electrochromic2 and magnetoelectric11 effects. We show that controlling the insertion and extraction of oxygen and hydrogen ions independently of each other can direct reversible phase transformations among three different material phases: the perovskite SrCoO3−δ, the brownmillerite SrCoO2.5, and a hitherto-unexplored phase, HSrCoO2.5. By analysing the distinct optical absorption properties of these phases, we demonstrate selective manipulation of spectral transparency in the visible-light and infrared regions, revealing a dual-band electrochromic effect that could see application in smart windows. Moreover, the starkly different magnetic and electric properties of the three phases—HSrCoO2.5 is a weakly ferromagnetic insulator, SrCoO3−δ is a ferromagnetic metal, and SrCoO2.5 is an antiferromagnetic insulator—enable an unusual form of magnetoelectric coupling, allowing electric-field control of three different magnetic ground states. These findings open up opportunities for the electric-field control of multistate phase transformations with rich functionalities.​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## TaiShang

*Solar-powered craft can drone on for months, reaches new high*
By Zhao Lei | China Daily | Updated: 2017-06-02 






The Caihong drone flew over 20,000 meters high. [Photo provided to China Daily]

*China's largest and most advanced solar-powered unmanned aircraft has set a domestic record for flight ceiling by reaching an altitude of over 20,000 meters*, according to its designer.

The Caihong, or Rainbow, solar-powered drone, developed by the China Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics, set the record during a test flight last week at an unidentified airport in Northwest China. *It flew at an altitude of 20,000 meters long enough for the flight to be classified as a success, Shi Wen, head of unmanned aircraft development at the academy, said in an exclusive interview on Thursday.*

He said the drone took off in the morning and flew back to the airport late at night. *It will take several years for designers and engineers to improve and test the aircraft before it is delivered to users.*

The aircraft is able to fly above a large area and features flexibility and good economy. *Future improvements will enable it to remain aloft several months or even several years. *Potential buyers mainly will be government departments and companies involved in communications, internet, Earth observation, emergency response and marine survey and inspection, according to Shi.

He declined to reveal the size of the drone, but earlier reports said a similar type aircraft developed by his team was 14 m long with a 45 m wingspan.

The designer explained that normally, a fuel-powered military drone can fly to a maximum altitude of up to 8,000 m while a handful of top surveillance drones like the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk in the United States are capable of reaching altitudes of 18,000 m.

In the category of solar-powered drones, Chinese institutes have developed some experimental models, but they are smaller and technologically unsophisticated compared with the Caihong, and their highest operational altitudes are at thousands of meters, Shi said.

His comments were echoed by Wang Yangzhu, president of Beihang University's Unmanned System Institute and a senior drone expert. Wang said Beihang University in Beijing, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in Jiangsu province and Northwestern Polytechnical University in Shaanxi province had made experimental, solar-powered drones to verify technologies and their types "could hardly fly any higher than 10,000 m".

"Therefore, the Caihong has made a remarkable achievement," Wang noted.

Shi said the higher a solar-powered drone can fly, the longer it is able to remain in the sky because there are no clouds 20,000 m above the ground and the airflow there is stable. Thus, the drone can fully use its solar cells to generate power. As long as the solar power system works well, the aircraft can stay in the air as long as the controllers wish.

Previously, the US and United Kingdom developed solar-powered drones capable of flying as high as 20,000 m. The altitude record for a solar-powered drone, 29,524 m, was made by the US Helios Prototype, developed by AeroVironment Inc in California, in August 2001.

Drones made by the China Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics have been used in more than 10 foreign countries, according to the academy.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/tech/2017-06/02/content_29585157.htm

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## cirr

It is about time for Shi to bring out his first stealth drone. 

A promise is a promise.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## simple Brain

*Solar-powered craft can drone on for months*



1 Comment(s)






China's largest and most advanced solar-powered unmanned aircraft has set a domestic record for flight ceiling by reaching an altitude of over 20,000 meters, according to its designer. The Caihong, or Rainbow, solar-powered drone, developed by the China Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics, set the record during a test flight last week at an unidentified airport in Northwest China. It flew at an altitude of 20,000 meters long enough for the flight to be classified as a success, Shi Wen, head of unmanned aircraft development at the academy, said in an exclusive interview on June 1, 2017. He said the drone took off in the morning and flew back to the airport late at night. It will take several years for designers and engineers to improve and test the aircraft before it is delivered to users. (Photo/Weibo account of CCTV)















http://china.org.cn/photos/2017-06/02/content_40947595.htm

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*New ceramic nanofiber ‘sponges’ could be used for flexible insulation, water purification*
June 2, 2017 Contact: Kevin Stacey 401-863-3766

_Ceramic materials tend to shatter when deformed, but new research shows a way of using ultra-thin ceramic nanofibers to make squishy, heat-resistant sponges with a wide variety of potential uses._


*PROVIDENCE, R.I.* [Brown University] — Researchers have found a way to make ultralight sponge-like materials from nanoscale ceramic fibers. The highly porous, compressible and heat-resistant sponges could have numerous uses, from water purification devices to flexible insulating materials.

“The basic science question we tried to answer is how can we make a material that’s highly deformable but resistant to high temperature,” said Huajian Gao, a professor in Brown University’s School of Engineering and a corresponding author of the research. “This paper demonstrates that we can do that by tangling ceramic nanofibers into a sponge, and the method we use for doing it is inexpensive and scalable to make these in large quantities.”

The work, a collaboration between Gao’s lab at Brown and the labs of Hui Wu and Xiaoyan Li at Tsinghua University in China, is described in the journal Science Advances.

As anyone who has ever dropped a flower vase knows well, ceramics are brittle materials. Cracks in ceramics tend to propagate quickly, leading to catastrophic failure with even the slightest deformation. While that’s true for all traditional ceramics, things are different at the nanoscale.

“At the nanoscale, cracks and flaws become so small that it takes much more energy to activate them and cause them to propagate,” Gao said. “Nanoscale fibers also promote deformation mechanisms such as what is known as creep, where atoms can diffuse along grain boundaries, enabling the material to deform without breaking.”

Because of those nanoscale dynamics, materials made from ceramic nanofibers have the potential to be deformable and flexible, while maintaining the heat resistance that make ceramics useful in high-temperature applications. The problem is that such materials aren’t easy to make. One often-used method of making nanofibers, known as electrospinning, doesn’t work well with ceramics. Another potential option, 3-D laser printing, is expensive and time-consuming.






So the researchers used a method called solution blow-spinning, which had been developed previously by Wu in his lab at Tsinghua. The process uses air pressure to drive a liquid solution containing ceramic material through a tiny syringe aperture. As the liquid emerges, it quickly solidifies into nanoscale fibers that are collected in a spinning cage. The collected material is then heated, which burns away the solvent material leaving a mass of tangled ceramic nanofibers that looks a bit like a cotton ball.

The researchers used the method to create sponges made from a variety of different types of ceramics and showed that the materials had some remarkable properties.

For example, the sponges were able to rebound after compressive strain up to 50 percent, something that no standard ceramic material can do. And the sponges can maintain that resilience at temperatures up to 800 degrees Celsius.

The research also showed that the sponges had a remarkable capacity for high-temperature insulation. In one experiment, the researchers placed a flower petal on top of 7-millimeter-thick sponge made from titanium dioxide (a common ceramic material) nanofibers. After heating the bottom of the sponge to 400 degrees Celsius for 10 minutes, the flower on top barely wilted. Meanwhile, petals placed on other types of porous ceramic materials under the same conditions were burnt to a crisp.

The sponges’ heat resistance and its deformability make them potentially useful as an insulating material where flexibility is important. For example, Gao says, the material could be used as an insulating layer in firefighters’ clothing.



Ceramic nanofiber sponges retain the heat resistance that makes ceramics useful in high-temperature applications. They even outperform other ceramic materials (Al2O3) in insulating at temperature around 400 degrees C.

Another potential use could be in water purification. Titanium dioxide is a well-known photocatalyst used to break down organic molecules, which kills bacteria and other microorganisms in water. The researchers showed that a titanium dioxide sponge could absorb 50 times its weight in water containing an organic dye. Within 15 minutes, the sponge was able to degrade the dye under illumination. With the water wrung out, the sponge could then be reused — something that can’t be done with the titanium dioxide powders normally used in water purification. 

In addition to these, there may be other applications for ceramic sponges that the researchers haven’t yet considered.

“The process we used for making these is extremely versatile; it can be used with a great variety of different types of ceramic starting materials,” said Wu, one of the corresponding authors from Tsinghua. “So we think there’s huge prospect for potential applications.”

The work was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Chinese Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University and the U.S. National Science Foundation (CMMI-1634492).


New ceramic nanofiber ‘sponges’ could be used for flexible insulation, water purification | News from Brown


Wang, H., Zhang, X., Wang, N., Li, Y., Feng, X., Huang, Y., Zhao, C., Liu, Z., Fang, M., Ou, G., Gao, H., Li, X., Wu, H. "Ultralight, scalable, and high-temperature–resilient ceramic nanofiber sponges". _Science Advances_ (2017). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1603170

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

* Chinese scientists find possible cell therapy for multiple myeloma *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-06-06 05:03:09_|_Editor: yan_





CHICAGO, June 5 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists presented a possible cell therapy for multiple myeloma at the 2017 annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) held here in Chicago on Monday.

Data collected by Chinese scientists in an early clinical trial show that the therapy, called chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell immunotherapy, could be a safe and effective way to treat relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma.

The ongoing early-phase clinical trial of the therapy conducted at the Second Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University in Xi'an, China, shows that 33 out of 35 patients who have their multiple myeloma relapsed on previous treatments reported clinical remission within two months after receiving experimental CAR T-cell products targeting B-cell maturation protein (BCMA).

The first 35 patients enrolled in the ongoing clinical trial have received three split doses of 20 percent, 30 percent and 50 percent, respectively, over a week, and the first signs of treatment efficacy appeared as early as 10 days after the initial injection.

During clinical trial, Chinese researchers have followed 19 patients for more than four months, a consensus criteria time for full efficacy assessment set by the International Myeloma Working Group (IMWG), and found that 14 reached stringent complete response (sCR) criteria, which means there is no detectable plasma cells in the patient's bone marrow or myeloma proteins in the serum or urine; one reached partial response; and four achieved very good partial remission criteria (VgPR) in efficacy.

There has not been a single case of relapse among the 14 patients who reached sCR criteria, and of the five out of the 14 patients that have been followed for over a year, all remain at sCR status.

Clinical trial also found that cytokine release syndrome (CRS), a common and potentially dangerous side effect of ACR T-cell, occurred in 85 percent of patients receiving the therapy, though the symptoms were mild and manageable in majority of the cases.

Michael S. Sabel, fellow of the America College of Surgeons, called the trial of the therapy and the science behind it "revolutionary". "I think this really opens up the door for using the sort of precision immunotherapy to expand the potential of immunotherapy to a wider net of patients," Sabel said.

Wanhong Zhao, a main organizer of the current study on CAR T-cell and associate director of hematology at the Second Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, compared the cancer to a ball, saying the therapy in the past was to use one hand to catch the ball, which is prone to fail.

"The new therapy enables us to use two hands to grasp the ball," which can hold the ball tight and then kill it, Zhao said.

Frank Fan, chief scientific officer and founder of Legend Biotech, told Xinhua that this new therapy his company developed in the past three years is a unique one in the world, and Legend Biotech claims full intellectual property right over it.

Multiple myeloma is a cancer of plasma cells from bone marrow. It is not really responding to standard chemotherapies. Nearly 86,000 patients are diagnosed with myeloma each year, and the number may continue to increase as the world population is aging. The disease usually occurs above 60 years old and is more common in men than women.

#####​*Durable remissions with BCMA-specific chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-modified T cells in patients with refractory/relapsed multiple myeloma.*

Author(s): Frank (Xiaohu) Fan, Wanhong Zhao, Jie Liu, Aili He, Yinxia Chen, Xingmei Cao, Nan Yang, Baiyan Wang, Pengyu Zhang, Yilin Zhang, Fangxia Wang, Bo Lei, Liufang Gu, Xugeng Wang, Qiuchuan Zhuang, Wanggang Zhang; Nanjing Legend Biotech, Nanjing, China; Hematology, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China

*Abstract:*
*
Background:* Chimeric antigen receptor engineered T cell (CAR-T) is a novel immunotherapeutic approach for cancer treatment and has been clinically validated in the treatment of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Here we report an encouraging breakthrough of treating multiple myeloma (MM) using a CAR-T designated LCAR-B38M CAR-T, which targets principally BCMA. *Methods:* A single arm clinical trial was conducted to assess safety and efficacy of this approach. A total of 19 patients with refractory/relapsed multiple myeloma were included in the trial. The median number of infused cells was 4.7 (0.6 ~ 7.0) × 10e6/ kg. The median follow-up times was 208 (62 ~ 321) days. *Results:* Among the 19 patients who completed the infusion, 7 patients were monitored for a period of more than 6 months. Six out of the 7 achieved complete remission (CR) and minimal residual disease (MRD)-negative status. The 12 patients who were followed up for less than 6 months met near CR criteria of modified EBMT criteria for various degrees of positive immunofixation. All these effects were observed with a progressive decrease of M-protein and thus expected to eventually meet CR criteria. In the most recent follow-up examination, all 18 survived patients were determined to be free of myeloma-related biochemical and hematologic abnormalities. One of the most common adverse event of CAR-T therapy is acute cytokine release syndrome (CRS). This was observed in 14 (74%) patients who received treatment. Among these 14 patients there were 9 cases of grade 1, 2 cases of grade 2, 1 case of grade 3, and 1 case of grade 4 patient who recovered after treatments. *Conclusions:* A 100% objective response rate (ORR) to LCAR-B38M CAR-T cells was observed in refractory/relapsed myeloma patients. 18 out of 19 (95%) patients reached CR or near CR status without a single event of relapse in a median follow-up of 6 months. The majority (14) of the patients experienced mild or manageable CRS, and the rest (5) were even free of diagnosable CRS. Based on the encouraging safety and efficacy outcomes, we believe that our LCAR-B38M CAR-T cell therapy is an innovative and highly effective treatment for multiple myeloma.


Durable remissions with BCMA-specific chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-modified T cells in patients with refractory/relapsed multiple myeloma. | 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting Abstracts

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## onebyone

A Chinese hospital announced on Tuesday that doctors have recreated a breast for a cancer patient using "4D" printing.

The surgery was performed on August 8, 2016, and the printed breast has grown well with the patient's own tissue, said Ling Rui, a vascular surgery doctor with Xijing Hospital of the Fourth Military Medical University in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province. 

The patient underwent a mastectomy for her left breast last year, before having the surgery.





A doctor (L) showing the material used for breast stuffing, with the patient (R) who successfully undertook the surgery. /Xinhua Photo

"Compared with three-dimensional printing, 4D printing adds time as another dimension," said Ling.

Doctors collected data on the size of her tumor and original breast, and reconstructed a bio-degradable breast.

The implant was developed by the hospital with a national lab of Xi'an Jiaotong University.





A researcher from the team explains how a breast can be reconstructed using 4D printing. /Xinhua Photo

"It is sufficiently strong, and will degrade in designed period of time, which is in the patient's case one to two years," said Zhang Juliang, an assistant professor in Xijing Hospital who participated in the surgery.

Its porous nature allows human tissue to grow into the implant and ultimately replace it, Zhang said. 

"In the 10 months since the surgery, the implant has grown well, and the patient's veins and tissue have started to grow back," Ling said.





A doctor showing the material used for breast reconstruction. /Xinhua Photo

Compared to existing methods of breast reconstruction, the method has fewer side effects, Ling said.

(Source: Xinhua)


https://news.cgtn.com/news/3d63544e3445444e/share_p.html

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## Han Patriot

onebyone said:


> A researcher from the team explains how a breast can be reconstructed using 4D printing. /Xinhua Photo
> 
> "It is sufficiently strong, and will degrade in designed period of time, which is in the patient's case one to two years," said Zhang Juliang, an assistant professor in Xijing Hospital who participated in the surgery.
> 
> Its porous nature allows human tissue to grow into the implant and ultimately replace it, Zhang said.
> 
> "In the 10 months since the surgery, the implant has grown well, and the patient's veins and tissue have started to grow back," Ling said.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A doctor showing the material used for breast reconstruction. /Xinhua Photo
> 
> Compared to existing methods of breast reconstruction, the method has fewer side effects, Ling said.
> 
> (Source: Xinhua)
> 
> 
> https://news.cgtn.com/news/3d63544e3445444e/share_p.html


These guys look like military doctors.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## AndrewJin

Han Patriot said:


> These guys look like military doctors.


They are, No.4 military medical university, in Xi'an.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## I S I

Can i get one implanted on my left hand?

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## damm1t

So for years I am 4D printing stuff at my home with this. Width, lenght, depth and " time "


----------



## I S I

damm1t said:


> So for years I am 4D printing stuff at my home with this. Width, lenght, depth and " time "


Don't tell me you puts your D inside some chemicals.


----------



## XDescendantX

He who can create breast controls the World!


----------



## MultaniGuy

Congratulations to China

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## kris

What dress is the doctor wearing in the pic??


----------



## Nike

can into to reconstruct of limbs someday?


----------



## JSCh

*Most complete nestling preserved in amber reveals details of ancient birds*
(Xinhua) 13:06, June 08, 2017




BEIJING, June 8 -- An international team of scientists have identified the most complete hatchling specimen found so far encased in a Burmese amber, which provides a detailed look at young birds that lived nearly 99 million years ago.

According to Xing Lida from China University of Geosciences, who is leading the research, the 9-centimeter-long specimen included most of the skull and neck, a partial wing and hindlimb, and soft tissue of the tail.




Xing said the proportions of body parts and form of the feathers indicated it was a very young and highly advanced hatchling, adding that the unusually detailed feathers revealed unexpected diversity in primitive birds.

"Many people thought it was a lizard. But the scales, thread-like feathers and sharp claws on the feet were so noticeable that I thought they must belong to a bird," said Chen Guang, owner of the specimen and curator of a museum in Yunnan, the province that borders Myanmar.




"There were no obvious signs of struggle. The overall posture of the bird resembled hunting, with its lifted body, open claws and beak and spread wings," said Tseng Kuowei with the University of Taipei. "It was possibly engulfed by falling resin at the exact moment it was hunting."

The paper titled "A mid-Cretaceous enantiornithine (Aves) hatchling preserved in Burmese amber with unusual plumage," co-authored by a group of Chinese, Canadian and American scientists, was published by Gondwana Research this month.




(Photos from Beijing Youth Daily Weibo account)

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | May 24, 2017*
*Feather-light metal cathodes for stable lithium-oxygen batteries*

"Nanoengineered ultralight and robust all-metal cathode for high-capacity, stable lithium–oxygen batteries"
_ ACS Central Science_



Nanoporous nickel cathodes for lithium oxygen batteries are ultralight, shown here balanced on flower stamens.
Credit: American Chemical Society 

Lithium-oxygen systems could someday outperform today’s lithium-ion batteries because of their potential for high energy density. However, a number of important issues, such as their poor electrochemical stability must be addressed before these systems can successfully compete with current rechargeable batteries. Today, in _ACS Central Science_, researchers report a new type of cathode, which could make lithium-oxygen batteries a practical option.

Xin-Bo Zhang and colleagues note that most of the problems associated with lithium-oxygen battery systems arise from two highly reduced oxygen species that react readily with the electrolyte and the cathode. Carbon is a common strong-performing cathode, but it is unstable in these systems. So, the team hypothesized that the key to unlocking lithium-oxygen batteries’ potential could be to create cathodes that are unreactive to the reduced oxygen species, but that still have the same highly conductive, low-weight, porous characteristics of carbon cathodes. The researchers succeeded in creating an ultralight all-metal cathode.

The design incorporated three forms of nickel including a nanoporous nickel interior and a gold-nickel alloy surface directly attached to nickel foam. Compared to carbon cathodes, the system has much higher capacity and is stable for 286 cycles, which is amongst the best for lithium-oxygen systems, and is nearly competitive with current commercial lithium-ion systems. Further experimentation showed that the stability and performance arise from both the metal used and its nanoporous structure, and that both these aspects could be optimized to further improve performance.

The authors acknowledge funding from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China, Technology and Industry for National Defense of the People's Republic of China, National Natural Science Foundation of China and Jilin Province Science and Technology Development Program.


Feather-light metal cathodes for stable lithium-oxygen batteries - American Chemical Society

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*The New Type of Graphene Films: Super Flexible, Highly Conductive*
By Babak Mostaghaci
Posted on May 19, 2017

In solid materials, heat is carried by acoustic phonons and electrons. The thermal conductivity (_K_) of metals is mainly attributed to high concentration of transport electrons. In this context, silver has the maximum thermal conductivity with a _K_ value around 429 W m-1 K-1 at room temperature. To reach higher thermal conductivity, the only option is to use non-metallic materials, as their heat conduction is usually dominated by phonons, the particle-core vibrations in a crystal lattice, as in the cases of diamond and semi-metallic graphite. For the same material, _K_ is mainly scaled with the size of crystal domain but limited by the concentration of defects, such as interfaces, boundaries, impurities, and holes. Therefore, a prominent thermal conductive material is usually pure, highly crystallized and defect-free, which in turn inevitably leads to brittleness because of the strong bonding and close-packed three-dimensional structure. Hence, prominent _K_ and exceptional flexibility are hard to be integrated into one macroscopic material.

In a recent paper published in Advanced Materials, Prof. Chao Gao and colleagues in Zhejiang University report an ultra-high thermal conductive yet super-flexible graphene film. They fold the atomic thin crystals of neat large-sized graphene into micro-folds. Using a debris-free giant graphene oxide to reduce defective grain boundaries and extremely high-temperature annealing process to obtain defect-free graphene sheets results in a super high _K_ of 1940 ± 113 W m−1 K−1, which is around five times more than copper’s thermal conductivity. On the other hand, they press semi-fullerene-like micro-gasbags into micro-folds to accommodate large elongation (16%) under external tension and provide enough deformation freedom, for more than 100,000 cycles of bending and 6,000 cycles of ultimate folding.

This design concept and experimental technique strategy can be extended to other two-dimensional nanomaterials such as BN, MoS2, graphdiyne, and black phosphorus, without fundamental obstacles. Various large-area multifunctional two-dimensional materials can be integrated into flexible devices in the real world, spanning from the aerospace industry to smartphones.


The New Type of Graphene Films: Super Flexible, Highly Conductive - Advanced Science News

Li Peng, Zhen Xu, Zheng Liu, Yan Guo, Peng Li, Chao Gao. Ultrahigh Thermal Conductive yet Superflexible Graphene Films. _Advanced Materials _(2017). DOI: 10.1002/adma.201700589

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Technological breakthrough raises nuclear fuel utilization rate: below 1% to 95%*
(People's Daily Online) 13:36, June 09, 2017

Chinese scientists have made a technological breakthrough in the country's nuclear energy program. The new accelerator-driven system (ADS) is able to raise the utilization rate of uranium to 95 percent, a great leap forward from less than 1 percent using the current technology, paving way for a safer, greener nuclear future, said the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) at a press conference on June 8.

The new system means that fission energy could be sustainable for roughly 10, 000 years. It’s also more environmentally friendly, as it can shorten the radioactive life of used nuclear fuel to less than 500 years, and the volume of disposed nuclear waste can be reduced to less than 4 percent of the conventional amount.

Xu Hushan, vice director of the Institute of Modern Physics under CAS, said the achievement in advanced fission energy is the result of six years of research by the institute. The disappointingly low utilization rate of nuclear fuel and its safe disposal have been key challenges for the nuclear power industry.









25MeV连续波超导质子直线加速器
25MeV continuous wave superconducting proton linear accelerator​

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Solving systems of linear equations with quantum mechanics*
June 9, 2017 by Lisa Zyga

 




(Left) False color photomicrograph and (right) simplified circuit diagram of the superconducting quantum circuit for solving 2 × 2 linear equations. The method uses four qubits, marked Q1 to Q4, with four corresponding readout resonators, marked R1 to R4. Credit: Zheng et al. © 2017 American Physical Society​
(Phys.org)—Physicists have experimentally demonstrated a purely quantum method for solving systems of linear equations that has the potential to work exponentially faster than the best classical methods. The results show that quantum computing may eventually have far-reaching practical applications, since solving linear systems is commonly done throughout science and engineering.

The physicists, led by Haohua Wang at Zhejiang University and Chao-Yang Lu and Xiaobo Zhu at the University of Science and Technology of China, along with their coauthors from various institutions in China, have published their paper on what they refer to as a "quantum linear solver" in a recent issue of _Physical Review Letters_.

"For the first time, we have demonstrated a quantum algorithm for solving systems of linear equations on a superconducting quantum circuit," Lu told _Phys.org_. "[This is] one of the best solid-state platforms with excellent scalability and remarkable high fidelity."

The quantum algorithm they implemented is called the Harrow, Hassidim, and Lloyd (HHL) algorithm, which was previously shown to have the ability, in principle, to lead to an exponential quantum speedup over classical algorithms. However, so far this has not been experimentally demonstrated.

In the new study, the scientists showed that a superconducting quantum circuit running the HHL algorithm can solve the simplest type of linear system, which has two equations with two variables. The method uses just four qubits: one ancilla qubit (a universal component of most quantum computing systems), and three qubits that correspond to the input vector *b* and the two solutions represented by the solution vector *x* in the standard linear system A*x* = *b*, where A is a 2 x 2 matrix.

By performing a series of rotations, swappings of states, and binary conversions, the HHL algorithm determines the solutions to this system, which can then be read out by a quantum nondemolition measurement. The researchers demonstrated the method using 18 different input vectors and the same matrix, generating different solutions for different inputs. As the researchers explain, it is too soon to tell how much faster this quantum method might work since these problems are easily solved by classical methods.

"The whole calculation process takes about one second," Zhu said. "It is hard to directly compare the current version to the classical methods now. In this work, we showed how to solve the simplest 2 x 2 linear system, which can be solved by classical methods in a very short time. The key power of the HHL quantum algorithm is that, when solving an 's-sparse' system matrix of a very large size, it can gain an exponential speed-up compared to the best classical method. Therefore, it would be much more interesting to show such a comparison when the size of the linear equation is scaled to a very large system."

The researchers expect that, in the future, this quantum circuit could be scaled up to solve larger linear systems. They also plan to further improve the system's performance by making some straightforward adjustments to the device fabrication to reduce some of the error in its implementation. In addition, the researchers want to investigate how the circuit could be used to implement other quantum algorithms for a variety of large-scale applications.

"Our future research will focus on improving the hardware performance, including longer coherence times, higher precision logic gates, larger numbers of qubits, lower crosstalk, better readout fidelity, etc.," Wang said. "Based on the improvement of the hardware, we will demonstrate and optimize more quantum algorithms to really show the power of the superconducting quantum processor."

*More information:* Yarui Zheng et al. "Solving Systems of Linear Equations with a Superconducting Quantum Processor." _Physical Review Letters_. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.210504. Also at arXiv:1703.06613 [quant-ph]


https://phys.org/news/2017-06-linear-equations-quantum-mechanics.html

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## cirr

*Scientists create ultrastrong carbon material that's elastic like rubber*

2017-06-11 06:47

Xinhua _Editor: Gu Liping_

Scientists have developed a form of ultrastrong, lightweight carbon that is hard as a diamond yet elastic like rubber and electrically conductive.

"In simple terms, the material combines the best properties of graphitic- and diamond-like forms of carbon," study co-lead author Zhisheng Zhao, professor at Yanshan University, China, said in an email to Xinhua.

"This combination of properties is useful for many potential applications, such as military armor and aerospace."

The findings were published this week by the U.S. journal Science Advances.

Carbon is an element of seemingly infinite possibilities. This is because it has the flexibility to form different types of chemical bonds, which allows it to exhibit a variety of fascinating structures.

According to Zhao, pressure is an effective tool to control this chemical bonding and induce so-called phase transformations.

For example, under high-pressure conditions, soft graphite transforms into diamond, the hardest material known.

In the new study, scientists pressurized and heated a structurally disordered form of carbon called glassy carbon to create the new form of carbon.

"The process is similar to converting graphite into diamond, however, in our new approach, the temperature used is not high enough to produce diamond," Zhao said.

"The resulting compressed glassy carbon exhibits exceptional hybrid properties in that it is lightweight, ultrastrong, very hard, elastic and electrically conductive."

Specifically, the compressed glassy carbon is more than two times stronger than commonly used carbon fibers, cemented diamond, silicon carbide and boron carbide ceramics.

It also has high hardness compared with commonly used ceramics, is electrically conducting and simultaneously exhibits a robust elastic recovery that's higher than shape-memory alloys and organic rubber.

"Our future work will continue to develop this methodology and create new structural materials with high strength, hardness and elasticity," said Zhao. "Our ultimate goal is to obtain the extremely strong and superhard materials with superelasticity."

The findings also included researchers from Carnegie Institution of Washington, and Shanghai-based Center for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research, the University of Chicago and the Pennsylvania State University.

http://www.ecns.cn/2017/06-11/261001.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Array could help solve cosmic puzzle*
By ZHANG ZHIHAO | China Daily | Updated: 2017-06-12 06:56

*



*​*
Editor's note: In the run-up to the 19th Communist Party of China National Congress, China Daily will cover a series of key projects and advanced equipment of national importance, showcasing the country's huge improvement and relentless efforts at innovation.

Observatory being built in Sichuan to discover what makes gamma rays tick *

Imagine an explosion that can release 10 times the energy the sun radiates in its 10-billion-year life. It's called a hypernova, one of the brightest and most powerful stellar events.

Scientists suspect such an explosion would produce a large amount of cosmic rays, highly energetic particles blazing across the universe at close to the speed of light. These cosmic bullets pack so much energy they can cause electronics problems in satellites, planes and other devices on Earth after traveling for billions of years.

First discovered in 1912, cosmic rays continue to baffle scientists as to exactly where and how they are made. But China is spending more than 1.2 billion yuan ($176.53 million) to build the world's largest cosmic ray observatory for gamma ray astronomy to crack this mystery, and possibly to learn how to recreate the high-energy particles on Earth.

The installation is called Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory－a 136-hectare telescope array spreading across Haizi Mountain in Daocheng county, Sichuan province. It consists of more than 6,300 detectors and 12 telescopes, and is located 4.4 kilometers above sea level, making it one of the highest cosmic ray observatories in the world.

Construction of the roads and basic groundwork around the observatory started last year, and work on the detectors is set to begin this year, said Li Kunpeng, the senior engineer for the project from the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of High Energy Physics. By the end of next year, 25 percent of the observatory will be operational and able to receive data. The entire project is scheduled to be finished by about January 2021.

The observatory will be the world's most sensitive detector of ultrahigh-energy cosmic gamma rays carrying more than 10 trillion electron volts－a unit of energy－and is able to detect charged cosmic rays up to 10 quintillion (1 followed by 18 zeros) electron volts. This scale dwarfs the energy level from the sun's cosmic rays, which is typically measured in millions and up to billions, said Cao Zhen, the project's chief scientist.

"Ultrahigh-energy particles could be the remnants and messengers of major cosmic events that could have happened billions of years ago in distant galaxies," he said, adding that they are a million times stronger than the most energetic particle created by the world's most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.

"By studying their origin and how they accelerate, we will have a better understanding of the early days of the universe, and, if possible, we can emulate their acceleration mechanism for research, leading to new discoveries beyond the limits of our current equipment," he said.

Such discoveries include new properties or laws in high-energy radiation, star formation, dark matter as well as other fundamental fields, Cao said. This can lead to new applications such as the new-generation gamma knife, in which highly energetic photon particles are used to kill brain tumors, or better materials to protect astronauts and electronics from cosmic rays.

Catching these space travelers is no simple task. Even if they reach the Earth, the atmosphere absorbs most of them. So the ideal method is to use satellites equipped with telescopes and detectors to intercept them in space, like NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and China's Dark Matter Particle Explorer.

However, the more energy a particle has, the rarer it becomes. Some ultrahigh-energy particles occur only once a year within a 1-square-kilometer surface, Cao said.

As a result, it is more common and cost-efficient to lay out the massive detectors array－what scientists call a sky net－on mountains or below ground to reduce interference from air.

Similar installations are the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica, which is under ice, the ARGO-YBJ International Observatory in the Tibetan Plateau, and later the planned Cherenkov Telescope Array.

"The LHAASO will complement these existing observatories, and will become an advanced platform for scientists around the world from astronomy to nanotechnology to work together in unraveling the mystery of the universe," said He Huihai, the project's chief technologist.

Scientists from France, Italy, Russia, Switzerland, Thailand and other countries will also collaborate in the project along with Chinese scientists from more than 20 institutions and universities, he added.

What makes the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory unique is its way of catching the cosmic rays. When a high-energy particle enters the atmosphere, it ionizes－sheds one or more electrons－and charges the molecules in the air, and the ionized molecules continue to bump into other molecules, he said.

After a dozen rounds, this creates a shower of secondary molecules spreading across a large area, "the LHAASO will catch parts of the shower within nanoseconds, analyze their data, and find the one particle that started it all", he added.

Once a particle is located, scientists can estimate the direction it came from and order telescopes to look in that area to see what happened.

Coupled with lightwave analysis and different types of telescopes, scientists can even deduce the chemical makeup of the situation and possibly figure out how the particles got so fast.

"Given its extreme difficulty, such a task is only possible through global effort," He said. "This is the best part of studying the cosmos, it unites scientists across nations and fields together under one purpose－to learn about the universe."

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Physicists use quantum memory to demonstrate quantum secure direct communication*
June 12, 2017 by Lisa Zyga



​Experimental set-up of quantum secure direct communication with quantum memory. Credit: Zhang et al. ©2017 American Physical Society

For the first time, physicists have experimentally demonstrated a quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) protocol combined with quantum memory, which is essential for storing and controlling the transfer of information. Until now, QSDC protocols have used fiber delay lines as a substitute for quantum memory, but the use of quantum memory is necessary for future applications, such as long-distance communication over secure quantum networks.

The researchers, Wei Zhang et al., from the University of Science and Technology of China and Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, have published a paper on their experimental demonstration in a recent issue of _Physical Review Letters_.

QSDC is one of several different types of quantum communication methods, and has the ability to directly transmit secret messages over a quantum channel. Unlike most other quantum communication methods, QSDC does not require that the two parties communicating share a private key in advance. Similar to other kinds of quantum communication, the security of the method relies on some of the basic principles of quantum mechanics, such as the uncertainty principle and the no-cloning theorem.

As the physicists explain, a quantum memory is necessary for QSDC protocols in order to effectively control the transfer of information in future quantum networks. However, experimentally realizing quantum memory with QSDC is challenging because it requires storing entangled single photons and establishing the entanglement between separated memories.

In their experiments, the researchers demonstrated most of the essential steps of the protocol, including entanglement generation; channel security; and the distribution, storage, and encoding of entangled photons. Due to the difficulty of decoding entangled photons in the optimal way (which requires distinguishing between four quantum states), the researchers used an alternative decoding method that is easier to implement.

In the future, the researchers expect that it will be possible to demonstrate QSDC across distances of 100 km or more in free space, similar to the recent demonstrations of quantum key distribution, quantum teleportation and entanglement distribution over these distances. Achieving this goal will mark an important step in realizing satellite-based long-distance and global-scale QSDC in the future.

*More information:* Wei Zhang et al. "Quantum Secure Direct Communication with Quantum Memory." _Physical Review Letters_. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.220501


https://phys.org/news/2017-06-physicists-quantum-memory.html

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## onebyone




----------



## JSCh

*New Approach to Convert CO2 Directly into Gasoline*
Jun 14, 2017

The research team has found a new approach to convert carbon dioxide directly into gasoline by using a bifunctional catalyst contained a reducible oxide (In2O3) and a zeolite (HZSM-5), which will not only help to alleviate the global warming caused by increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration, but also offer a solution to replace dwindling fossil fuels. 

The paper by a joint research team from CAS Key Laboratory of Low-Carbon Conversion Science and Engineering of Shanghai Advanced Research Institute (SARI) and SARI-ShanghaiTech University Joint Lab was published in the leading scientific journal _Nature Chemistry_. 

"Because carbon dioxide is extremely inert, previous recycling was mainly on converting it to chemicals like methanol. But our findings are able to convert the greenhouse gas into value-added chemicals with two or more carbons like gasoline directly. And the conversion is of very high efficiency due to the newly developed catalyst." said ZHONG Liangshu, one of the project researchers. 

Currently, CO2-based Fischer–Tropsch synthesis (FTS) route over modified Fe-based catalysts can be used for the production of hydrocarbons. According to Anderson–Schulz–Flory distribution, however, the chain growth probability of FTS limits the proportion of desired C5–C11 hydrocarbons only with 48% at maximum of C5–C11 selectivity. 

In addition, the degree of hydrogenation of surface-adsorbed intermediates in CO2-based FTS is higher due to the slower adsorption rate of CO2 when compared to CO hydrogenation, leading to more readily formation of methane with a decrease in chain growth. 

In the present work, the bifunctional catalyst exhibits excellent performance for the direct production of long-chain hydrocarbons from CO2 hydrogenation with high selectivity. 

The C5+ selectivity in hydrocarbons distribution (carbon atom-based) reached up to 78.6% with only 1% CH4 at a CO2 conversion of 13.1%. There was no obvious catalyst deactivation over 150 h, and much better performance was observed with internal gas recycling. Such results suggest a promising potential for its industrial application.



Direct conversion of CO2 into liquid fuels with high selectivity over a bifunctional catalyst (Image by SARI) 

China is the world's biggest carbon emitter and much attention has been paid to cut emissions. Chinese President Xi Jinping made the pledge that China would peak CO2 emissions by around 2030 in his speech at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Paris. If CO2 can be directly and efficiently converted into liquid fuels, the dream toward cycling carbon by mimicking nature will come true. 

Thanks to the support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), the Shanghai Science and Technology Committee (STCSM) and Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the research team has published the results on direct production of lower olefins from syngas in _Nature_ last year.
The results are highlights for the integration of research and education between SARI and ShanghaiTech and have laid a solid foundation for the development of Zhangjiang Comprehensive National Science and Technology Center.


New Approach to Convert CO2 Directly into Gasoline---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Plants Transfer Lipids to Sustain Colonization by Mutualistic Mycorrhizal and Parasitic Fungi*
Jun 12, 2017

Arbuscular mycorrhiza (AM) formation is a widespread symbiotic interaction between 80-90% of land plants and soil fungi. The plant benefits from enhanced inorganic nutrient supply mediated by the fungal hyphae network in the soil. In return, from the plant, the fungi draw organic nutrients which are thought to be supplied primarily in the form of sugars. However, within the fungus, most carbon is stored in lipids that are transported throughout the mycelium.

Prof. WANG Ertao and his colleagues at Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) reported that the AM fungus _Rhizophagus irregularis_ is a fatty acid auxotroph and fatty acids synthesized in the host plant are transferred to the fungus during AM symbiosis. The study was published online in _Science_.

Researchers found that the transfer is dependent on the Required for Arbuscular Mycorrhization 2 (RAM2) and peri-arbuscular membrane-localized ATP binding cassette (ABC) transporter-mediated plant lipid export pathway. They further proved that fatty acids synthesized in plants also can be transferred to the pathogenic fungus _Golovinomyces cichoracerum_ and plants defective in fatty acid biosynthesis are impaired in AM symbiosis and show defects in colonization by the pathogenic _G. cichoracerum_.

Overall, this novel mechanism of the mutualistic mycorrhizal revealed that pathogenic fungi similarly recruit the fatty acid biosynthesis program to facilitate host invasion, and regulating fatty acid availability to fungus might provide an effective tool to control pathogenic fungus infection in crops.

The study was supported by the 973 National Key Basic Research Program in China, the Ministry of Agriculture of China for Transgenic Research, the Natural Science Foundation of China, and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation.




Figure: A new model shows that host plants synthesize fatty acid and transfer to AM fungus by STR/STR2 transporter. (Image by Dr. WANG’s lab)



Yina Jiang, Wanxiao Wang, Qiujin Xie, Na Liu, Lixia Liu, Dapeng Wang, Xiaowei Zhang, Chen Yang, Xiaoya Chen, Dingzhong Tang, Ertao Wang. Plants transfer lipids to sustain colonization by mutualistic mycorrhizal and parasitic fungi. _Science_ (2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aam9970

Plants Transfer Lipids to Sustain Colonization by Mutualistic Mycorrhizal and Parasitic Fungi---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Han Patriot

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2017-06/15/content_29752320_7.htm
*7 'firsts' in China's sci-tech achievements in 2012-17*

*1. World's first artificial cornea
*
In a move expected to benefit millions of patients suffering from corneal blindness, the world's first artificial bioengineering cornea created and developed domestically by China went into production in May 2015.

The cornea, of which China has complete intellectual property right, is the first and the only cornea in the world that has completed clinical trials. The artificial bioengineering cornea is expected to bring light to the Chinese patients and 60 million patients overseas soon.
*
2. World's largest single-aperture telescope
*
China officially put into operation the world's largest single-aperture telescope in September 2016.

The Five-Hundred Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) is 500 meters in diameter and equals the size of 30 soccer fields. It has the potential to unlock the secrets of the origin of the universe and boost the search for extraterrestrial life, an expert said.
*
3. World's first quantum communication satellite
*
China successfully launched the world's first quantum satellite in August 2016. The 600-plus-kilogram satellite is nicknamed "Micius," after a Chinese philosopher and scientist.

The satellite is designed to establish "hack-proof" quantum communications by transmitting uncrackable keys from space to the ground, and provide insights into the strangest phenomenon in quantum physics - quantum entanglement.
*
4. World's first prototype exascale supercomputer
*
Chinese researchers said in May 2017 that they were working on the Tianhe-3 supercomputer designed as the world's first prototype exascale supercomputer.

The supercomputer will be applied in such fields as the analysis of smog distribution, airplane designs, oil surveying and the development of artificial intelligence.
*
5. World's first photon quantum computer
*
Chinese scientists unveiled the world's first photon quantum computer in early May 2017. The prototype quantum computer is the first quantum computing machine based on single photons.

Scientists say it will analyze and simulate weather forecasts, medicine, commerce and other data intensive fields at an unprecedented speed and scale.
*
6. World's largest shockwave hypersonic wind tunnel
*
In May 2012, China opened the JF12 shockwave hypersonic wind tunnel. Known internationally as the "Hyper Dragon", JF12 is a 265-metre-long tunnel that can replicate flying conditions at an altitude of 25 to 50 km.

As wind tunnel is the basic research that decides how advanced aircraft may be developed, the achievement is a new scientific breakthrough in China's aeronautics and astronautics industry
*
7. World's first 100-meter iron-based superconducting wire
*
Chinese scientists said in September 2016 that they have successfully developed the world's first 100-meter, iron-based superconducting wire, which is a milestone in the research of iron-based superconducting materials.

The successful development of this improved superconducting wire means that China possesses intellectual property that can be applied to medicine, national defense and many other industries.

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## JSCh

* Germ cell breakthrough paves way to infertility treatment *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-06-13 15:49:25_|_Editor: Song Lifang_





BEIJING, June 13 (Xinhua) -- Scientists at Tsinghua University have led the world in inducing in-vitro differentiation of human embryonic stem cells into follicle-like cells. The breakthrough is expected to help the study of premature ovarian failure and improve assisted reproductive technology.

The achievement of the research team led by Professor Kehkooi Kee was published in the latest issue of the academic journal Nature Communications online: http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15680

The research showed the differentiation of human embryonic stem cells into follicle-like cells can be achieved under the combined action of two RNA-binding proteins specifically expressed in germ cells, DAZL and BOULE,and growth factors GDF9 and BMP15.

Kee, a Malaysian Chinese scientist, said that unlike somatic cells, germ cells can transmit the genetic chromosomes of the father and mother to the next generation. In the genetic process, germ cells undergo unique meiosis and genetic recombination.

How do the germ cells regulate this process? How do they keep the balance between passing the genes to the next generation and creating a diverse genome? "That is the most interesting question for me in this field of study," said Kee.

However, scientists must overcome difficulties in this field of research. Although they can obtain some human germ cell samples by patient agreement, the sample size is far from enough for molecular experiments and cell experiments.

"We needed to build an in-vitro platform to study the various mechanisms during the process of human germ cell development. So we chose human embryonic stem cells to differentiate into germ cells, including sperms and eggs," said Kee.

In 2009, he and his colleagues used human embryonic stem cells to create human primordial germ cells and sperm-like cells for the first time. They published their research in the academic journal Nature.

Although other scientists have conducted similar experiments, none has made human germ cells differentiate into such a mature state.

After successfully culturing human sperm-like cells in-vitro, Kee's team tried to culture follicle-like cells.

"A follicle is composed of an oocyte and many granulosa cells around it. At first we thought inducing the formation of granulosa cells would be a challenge," Kee said.

But they found growth factors GDF9 and BMP15 could promote the development of follicles.

"We have compared the in-vitro cultured cells with in-vivo cells, and found they have many similar characteristics. But we can only call the in-vitro cells follicle-like, because we can't prove they are exactly the same until we conduct functional experiments," Kee said.

"We hope to improve the efficiency of our experiment, and culture more mature antral follicles to test their function."

Helping the infertile is the aim of the research team.

"Some women cannot have babies because of premature ovarian failure. We might study whether this is caused by gene mutations by conducting in-vitro germ cell experiments, and then develop treatments," said Kee.

The team is also attempting to induce the differentiation of human embryonic stem cells into germ cells on China's first cargo spacecraft, Tianzhou-1 to study the effects of the space environment on human reproduction.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

What I was interested to hear however was that China let Yan Nieng, another strong Nobel Contender get away. A real loss!


----------



## JSCh

*U.S.-China collaboration makes excellent start in optimizing lithium to control fusion plasmas*
By John Greenwald
June 13, 2017



Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (photo courtesy of Institute of Plasma Physics Chinese Academy of Science).

For fusion to generate substantial energy, the ultra-hot plasma that fuels fusion reactions must remain stable and kept from cooling. Researchers have recently shown lithium, a soft, silver-white metal, to be effective in both respects during path-setting U.S.-Chinese experiments on the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) in Hefei, China. Leading the U.S. collaboration is the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), together with co-principal investigators Los Alamos and Oak Ridge National Laboratories, with Johns Hopkins University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Scientists from General Atomics also participate via a separate grant.

Seven U.S. researchers traveled to EAST in December, 2016, to participate in the experiments. They deployed lithium in the Chinese tokamak in three different ways: through a lithium powder injector, a lithium granule injector, and a flowing liquid lithium limiter (FLiLi) that delivered the element in liquid form to the edge of EAST plasmas.

The research showed excellent progress in all three areas. The form of the experiments and their results included:


*The first use of the lithium powder injector* in EAST discharges that exhausted hot plasma through the tokamak’s tungsten divertor. The injected powder successfully eliminated periodic instabilities known as edge localized modes (ELMs) that could damage the divertor. The results compared well with the use of powdered lithium in the carbon divertor in previous EAST experiments, in previous National Spherical Torus Experiments (NSTX) research at PPPL, and in the DIII-D National Fusion Facility that General Atomics operates for the DOE in San Diego, indicating a basic compatibility between tungsten and lithium. Such compatibility will be needed for future power plant designs that consider tungsten to be the substrate for liquid lithium plasma-facing components.
*Use of the lithium granule injector* showed that a threshold exists for the minimum size of the granules that are large enough to trigger ELMs — an alternative procedure that causes the instabilities to be smaller, more frequent and less detrimental to plasma-facing components. The observed threshold showed similarities to the minimum size of ELM-triggering granules in recent DIII-D experiments.
*Use of a second-generation FLiLi device* sharply reduced the amount of deuterium at the edge of the plasma that recycled back into the core of the plasma and cooled it off during high-confinement experiments. Loss of heat caused by recycling can halt fusion reactions. The FLiLi device was inserted at the outer midplane of the EAST device. Fast-camera images of EAST experiments, performed with and without limiter insertion, showed potentially damaging lithium recycling without the limiter, compared with neutral and ionized lithium with the limiter in place. In addition, researchers observed for the first time several improved phases of energy confinement with the use of FLiLi.
The DOE Office of Science (FES) supported U.S. collaboration on these experiments on EAST, which is hosted at the Institute for Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The experiments were enabled by strong collaboration between the U.S. participants and Chinese colleagues, in particular Professors J.S. Hu, S. Zhen, and G. Zuo. The Chinese participants were supported by the National Magnetic Fusion Science Program, the National Nature Science Foundation, and the A3 Foresight Program in the field of Plasma Physics.


U.S.-China collaboration makes excellent start in optimizing lithium to control fusion plasmas | Princeton Plasma Physics Lab

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## LeGenD

Han Patriot said:


> http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2017-06/15/content_29752320_7.htm
> *7 'firsts' in China's sci-tech achievements in 2012-17*
> 
> *1. World's first artificial cornea*
> 
> In a move expected to benefit millions of patients suffering from corneal blindness, the world's first artificial bioengineering cornea created and developed domestically by China went into production in May 2015.
> 
> The cornea, of which China has complete intellectual property right, is the first and the only cornea in the world that has completed clinical trials. The artificial bioengineering cornea is expected to bring light to the Chinese patients and 60 million patients overseas soon.
> 
> *2. World's largest single-aperture telescope*
> 
> China officially put into operation the world's largest single-aperture telescope in September 2016.
> 
> The Five-Hundred Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) is 500 meters in diameter and equals the size of 30 soccer fields. It has the potential to unlock the secrets of the origin of the universe and boost the search for extraterrestrial life, an expert said.
> 
> *3. World's first quantum communication satellite*
> 
> China successfully launched the world's first quantum satellite in August 2016. The 600-plus-kilogram satellite is nicknamed "Micius," after a Chinese philosopher and scientist.
> 
> The satellite is designed to establish "hack-proof" quantum communications by transmitting uncrackable keys from space to the ground, and provide insights into the strangest phenomenon in quantum physics - quantum entanglement.
> 
> *4. World's first prototype exascale supercomputer*
> 
> Chinese researchers said in May 2017 that they were working on the Tianhe-3 supercomputer designed as the world's first prototype exascale supercomputer.
> 
> The supercomputer will be applied in such fields as the analysis of smog distribution, airplane designs, oil surveying and the development of artificial intelligence.
> 
> *5. World's first photon quantum computer*
> 
> Chinese scientists unveiled the world's first photon quantum computer in early May 2017. The prototype quantum computer is the first quantum computing machine based on single photons.
> 
> Scientists say it will analyze and simulate weather forecasts, medicine, commerce and other data intensive fields at an unprecedented speed and scale.
> 
> *6. World's largest shockwave hypersonic wind tunnel*
> 
> In May 2012, China opened the JF12 shockwave hypersonic wind tunnel. Known internationally as the "Hyper Dragon", JF12 is a 265-metre-long tunnel that can replicate flying conditions at an altitude of 25 to 50 km.
> 
> As wind tunnel is the basic research that decides how advanced aircraft may be developed, the achievement is a new scientific breakthrough in China's aeronautics and astronautics industry
> 
> *7. World's first 100-meter iron-based superconducting wire*
> 
> Chinese scientists said in September 2016 that they have successfully developed the world's first 100-meter, iron-based superconducting wire, which is a milestone in the research of iron-based superconducting materials.
> 
> The successful development of this improved superconducting wire means that China possesses intellectual property that can be applied to medicine, national defense and many other industries.


Impressive developments there.

This is the kind of China I expect; renowned for scientific accomplishments and original works.

However, China is very conservative in the matters of global connectivity. It is difficult to find and access Chinese sources and reports (of high value) in English language.


----------



## Han Patriot

LeGenD said:


> Impressive developments there.
> 
> This is the kind of China I expect; renowned for scientific accomplishments and original works.
> 
> However, China is very conservative in the matters of global connectivity. It is difficult to find and access Chinese sources and reports (of high value) in English language.


That's the problem, China don't like to publish in English sources, sometimes advanced achievements are only published in Chinese.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* China's two supercomputers still world's fastest as U.S. squeezed out of 3rd place *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-06-19 15:46:44_|_Editor: Mengjie_





WASHINGTON, June 19 (Xinhua) -- China's Sunway TaihuLight and Tianhe-2 are still the world's fastest and second fastest machines, but America's Titan was squeezed into fourth place by an upgraded Swiss system, according to the latest edition of the semiannual T0P500 list of supercomputers released Monday.

Sunway TaihuLight, described by the T0P500 list as "far and away the most powerful number-cruncher on the planet," maintained the lead since last June, when it dethroned Tianhe-2, the former champion for the previous three consecutive years.

It means that a Chinese supercomputer has topped the rankings maintained by researchers in the United States and Germany for nine times in a row.

What's more, Sunway TaihuLight, with a performance of 93 petaflops, was built entirely using processors designed and made in China.

"It highlights China's ability to conduct independent research in the supercomputing field," Haohuan Fu, deputy director of the National Supercomputing Center, where Sunway TaihuLight was installed, told Xinhua.

"China is simultaneously developing hardware and software technologies of supercomputers," Fu said. "It is expected that rapid development in homegrown hardware technologies, supported by homegrown software, will lead to a stronger research and engineering test capacity in many fields, thus promoting an industrial upgrading and, eventually, a sustainable development of China's homegrown supercomputing industry."

Tianhe-2, capable of performing 33.9 petaflops, was based on Intel chips, something banned by the U.S. government from selling to four supercomputing institutions in China since 2015.

In the latest rankings, the new number three supercomputer is the upgraded Piz Daint, a system installed at the Swiss National Supercomputing Center.

Its current performance of 19.6 petaflops pushed Titan, a machine installed at the U.S. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, into fourth place. Titan's performance of 17.6 petaflops has remained constant since it was installed in 2012.

"This is the second time in the 24-year history of the TOP500 list that the United States has failed to secure any of the top three positions," the TOP500 organizers said in a statement.

The only other time this occurred was in November 1996, when three Japanese systems captured the top three spots.

"Nevertheless, the U.S. still claims five of the top 10 supercomputers, which is more than any other nation," they said.

Fu called the upgraded Swiss system "really a surprise," saying that "it reflects the increased investment in large-scale supercomputers in Europe."

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*China realizes world's longest real-time transmission of deep-sea data*
(Xinhua) 08:37, June 20, 2017

Chinese scientists announced Monday they had realized the real-time transmission of deep-sea data for more than 190 straight days, a world record.



Chinese scientists announced Monday they had realized the real-time transmission of deep-sea data for more than 190 straight days, a world record. [File Photo: qingdaochina.org]

During an expedition to the west Pacific at the end of last year, researchers with the Institute of Oceanology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences realized the real-time transmission of deep-sea data after improving the subsurface buoy observation network.

They put a floating body on the sea, which was connected to a submersible buoy. The submersible buoy transmits data to the floating body, which then sends them to a satellite. Researchers then receive the data through the satellite, according to Wang Fan, director of the institute, based in Qingdao, eastern China's Shandong Province.

The real-time deep-sea data includes the condition of the subsurface buoy, the flowing speed, direction and pressure of seawater.

"Real-time transmission of deep-sea data provides important technical support for research on ocean environment and global climate," Wang said, adding that the data could enhance the precision in ocean climate and environment forecasts.

The previous world record for real-time transmission of deepwater data was about 90 days, according to the institute.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Han Patriot

JSCh said:


> *China realizes world's longest real-time transmission of deep-sea data*
> (Xinhua) 08:37, June 20, 2017
> 
> Chinese scientists announced Monday they had realized the real-time transmission of deep-sea data for more than 190 straight days, a world record.
> 
> 
> 
> Chinese scientists announced Monday they had realized the real-time transmission of deep-sea data for more than 190 straight days, a world record. [File Photo: qingdaochina.org]
> 
> During an expedition to the west Pacific at the end of last year, researchers with the Institute of Oceanology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences realized the real-time transmission of deep-sea data after improving the subsurface buoy observation network.
> 
> They put a floating body on the sea, which was connected to a submersible buoy. The submersible buoy transmits data to the floating body, which then sends them to a satellite. Researchers then receive the data through the satellite, according to Wang Fan, director of the institute, based in Qingdao, eastern China's Shandong Province.
> 
> The real-time deep-sea data includes the condition of the subsurface buoy, the flowing speed, direction and pressure of seawater.
> 
> "Real-time transmission of deep-sea data provides important technical support for research on ocean environment and global climate," Wang said, adding that the data could enhance the precision in ocean climate and environment forecasts.
> 
> The previous world record for real-time transmission of deepwater data was about 90 days, according to the institute.


Anybody seeing what I am seeing?


----------



## GS Zhou

JSCh said:


> China realizes world's longest real-time transmission of deep-sea data


is it possible to send such data to a sub in real time, but without reveal the position of the sub? If yes, this will give a big capability boost to PLAN sub fleet.


----------



## Dungeness

JSCh said:


> *China realizes world's longest real-time transmission of deep-sea data*
> (Xinhua) 08:37, June 20, 2017
> 
> Chinese scientists announced Monday they had realized the real-time transmission of deep-sea data for more than 190 straight days, a world record.
> 
> 
> 
> Chinese scientists announced Monday they had realized the real-time transmission of deep-sea data for more than 190 straight days, a world record. [File Photo: qingdaochina.org]
> 
> During an expedition to the west Pacific at the end of last year, researchers with the Institute of Oceanology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences realized the real-time transmission of deep-sea data after improving the subsurface buoy observation network.
> 
> They put a floating body on the sea, which was connected to a submersible buoy. The submersible buoy transmits data to the floating body, which then sends them to a satellite. Researchers then receive the data through the satellite, according to Wang Fan, director of the institute, based in Qingdao, eastern China's Shandong Province.
> 
> The real-time deep-sea data includes the condition of the subsurface buoy, the flowing speed, direction and pressure of seawater.
> 
> "Real-time transmission of deep-sea data provides important technical support for research on ocean environment and global climate," Wang said, adding that the data could enhance the precision in ocean climate and environment forecasts.
> 
> The previous world record for real-time transmission of deepwater data was about 90 days, according to the institute.




I failed to find any technical breakthrough in this "world record" setting event. A floating antenna wired to a submerged buoy, so what is special?


----------



## cirr

*Chinese scientists discover new type of fermion: Nature*

2017-06-21 09:10

Xinhua _Editor: Gu Liping_

Chinese scientists have discovered a new type of fermion that opens up a way of exploring the interplay between unconventional fermions in condensed-matter systems.

The research team was led by scientists with the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), whose findings were published in the online version of the academic journal "Nature Communications" on Monday.

In quantum field theory, Lorentz invariance leads to three types of fermion -- Dirac, Weyl and Majorana. The existence of Dirac and Weyl fermions in condensed-matter systems has been confirmed experimentally, and that of Majorana fermions is supported by various experiments.

In condensed-matter systems, however, fermions in crystals are "constrained by the symmetries of the crystal space groups rather than by Lorentz invariance," giving rise to the possibility of finding other types of fermionic excitation that have no counterparts in high-energy physics.

The CAS scientists used a technique to observe the distribution of electrons, called angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, which demonstrated the existence of a "triply degenerate point in the electronic structure of crystalline molybdenum phosphide," -- a brand new discovery in field of fermion research.

They have also observed pairs of Weyl points in the bulk electronic structure of the crystal that coexist with the three-component fermions.

http://www.ecns.cn/2017/06-21/262248.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* Chinese scientists discover new type of fermion: Nature *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-06-20 19:47:45_|_Editor: Mengjie_





BEIJING, June 20 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have discovered a new type of fermion that opens up a way of exploring the interplay between unconventional fermions in condensed-matter systems.

The research team was led by scientists with the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), whose findings were published in the online version of the academic journal "Nature Communications" on Monday.

In quantum field theory, Lorentz invariance leads to three types of fermion -- Dirac, Weyl and Majorana. The existence of Dirac and Weyl fermions in condensed-matter systems has been confirmed experimentally, and that of Majorana fermions is supported by various experiments.

In condensed-matter systems, however, fermions in crystals are "constrained by the symmetries of the crystal space groups rather than by Lorentz invariance," giving rise to the possibility of finding other types of fermionic excitation that have no counterparts in high-energy physics.

The CAS scientists used a technique to observe the distribution of electrons, called angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, which demonstrated the existence of a "triply degenerate point in the electronic structure of crystalline molybdenum phosphide," -- a brand new discovery in field of fermion research.

They have also observed pairs of Weyl points in the bulk electronic structure of the crystal that coexist with the three-component fermions.

###​I don't know why the article above from xinhua said that it is published in "Nature Communications", but it is actually "Nature" proper.

_Paper: _
B. Q. Lv, Z.-L. Feng, Q.-N. Xu, X. Gao, J.-Z. Ma, L.-Y. Kong, P. Richard, Y.-B. Huang, V. N. Strocov, C. Fang, H.-M. Weng, Y.-G. Shi, T. Qian & H. Ding."Observation of three-component fermions in the topological semimetal molybdenum phosphide". _Nature_ (2017). DOI: 10.1038/nature22390​


----------



## JSCh

GS Zhou said:


> is it possible to send such data to a sub in real time, but without reveal the position of the sub? If yes, this will give a big capability boost to PLAN sub fleet.


The technology is developed for research project. As to speculation on military application, see Does China’s deep-sea tech upgrade point to submarine signals network under Pacific? | South China Morning Post



Dungeness said:


> I failed to find any technical breakthrough in this "world record" setting event. A floating antenna wired to a submerged buoy, so what is special?


The communications from the submerged to floating buoy is wireless. Also see the SCMP article above on what is notable.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

JSCh said:


> * Chinese scientists discover new type of fermion: Nature *
> _ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-06-20 19:47:45_|_Editor: Mengjie_
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> BEIJING, June 20 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have discovered a new type of fermion that opens up a way of exploring the interplay between unconventional fermions in condensed-matter systems.
> 
> The research team was led by scientists with the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), whose findings were published in the online version of the academic journal "Nature Communications" on Monday.
> 
> In quantum field theory, Lorentz invariance leads to three types of fermion -- Dirac, Weyl and Majorana. The existence of Dirac and Weyl fermions in condensed-matter systems has been confirmed experimentally, and that of Majorana fermions is supported by various experiments.
> 
> In condensed-matter systems, however, fermions in crystals are "constrained by the symmetries of the crystal space groups rather than by Lorentz invariance," giving rise to the possibility of finding other types of fermionic excitation that have no counterparts in high-energy physics.
> 
> The CAS scientists used a technique to observe the distribution of electrons, called angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, which demonstrated the existence of a "triply degenerate point in the electronic structure of crystalline molybdenum phosphide," -- a brand new discovery in field of fermion research.
> 
> They have also observed pairs of Weyl points in the bulk electronic structure of the crystal that coexist with the three-component fermions.
> 
> ###​I don't know why the article above from xinhua said that it is published in "Nature Communications", but it is actually "Nature" proper.
> 
> _Paper: _
> B. Q. Lv, Z.-L. Feng, Q.-N. Xu, X. Gao, J.-Z. Ma, L.-Y. Kong, P. Richard, Y.-B. Huang, V. N. Strocov, C. Fang, H.-M. Weng, Y.-G. Shi, T. Qian & H. Ding."Observation of three-component fermions in the topological semimetal molybdenum phosphide". _Nature_ (2017). DOI: 10.1038/nature22390​




To be accurate, it is published neither in Nature or Nature Communications. It has been published as an AOP- Advanced Online Publication. 

Let's see where it appears. 

If it is an extremely important research, it will appear in Nature, else Nature Communications.


----------



## JSCh

Bussard Ramjet said:


> To be accurate, it is published neither in Nature or Nature Communications. It has been published as an AOP- Advanced Online Publication.
> 
> Let's see where it appears.
> 
> If it is an extremely important research, it will appear in Nature, else Nature Communications.


Well, all the media (including xinhua) report in mandarin say "Nature".
Even the main researcher, Institute of Physics of Chinese academy of science own website has a press release that say published online in "Nature".

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/877195105110814721


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

JSCh said:


> Well, all the media (including xinhua) report in mandarin say "Nature".
> Even the main researcher, Institute of Physics of Chinese academy of science own website has a press release that say published online in "Nature".
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/877195105110814721



Yeah, but it is not Nature, the main journal, is it. It is published weekly, and the most recent edition didn't have this article.

The specific word is that it was published online by Nature, as AOP, on its site. 

Now where does it appear in print, is another question entirely.


----------



## JSCh

*China’s genomics giant to make stock-market debut*
_Once the world's biggest DNA sequencer for research, BGI is now looking to medical applications to boost profits._

David Cyranoski
21 June 2017
BGI in Shenzhen has shifted its focus from serving researchers to medical applications of genome sequencing.

China’s genomics giant BGI, once the world leader in DNA sequencing for basic science, is going public — capping off a dramatic transformation into a mainly biomedical firm with a focus on reproductive health.

A financial prospectus document released to support the initial public offering (IPO) details how BGI, squeezed by its rivals and the plummeting cost of sequencing, has been drawn to more-profitable pursuits, such as prenatal genetic testing, in China’s expanding medical market. The shift is also in line with the Chinese government’s multibillion-yuan drive to promote precision medicine, an effort to use the reams of genomic and other medical data being created to tailor treatments.

BGI is currently working out the details of the IPO, which was years in the making and approved by China’s financial regulators in late May. The IPO is expected within a month and the firm hopes to raise 1.7 billion yuan (US$250 million).

As the first genomics company to be listed in China, BGI will be a pioneer in the country’s precision-medicine market, which is estimated to be worth 20 billion yuan by 2020. “It's a milestone for both BGI and the field,” says Ruiqiang Li, who used to work for BGI and is now chief executive of competing genomics firm Beijing-based Novogene, which Li hopes to take public.

*Income shift*
BGI was established in 1999 as the Beijing Genomics Institute and the force behind China’s contribution to the Human Genome Project — it sequenced a small, but symbolic, 1% of the genome.

Over the next decade, it produced a series of high-profile sequencing breakthroughs, including the genomes of rice, the giant panda, the cucumber, an ancient human and more than 1,000 species of gut bacteria. In 2010 — now based in Shenzhen and known simply as BGI — the company purchased 128 of the world’s most-advanced genome-sequencing machines. Overnight it became the industry’s most prolific player.

The firm gained a reputation as a genome factory. The number of studies based on BGI-sequenced genomes — paid for by scientists from all over the world, who acknowledged BGI scientists’ contributions by making them co-authors — jumped from a handful to hundreds per year.

But that number has plateaued, and it looks set to drop this year. According to the prospectus, BGI’s income from research-driven sequencing dropped by more than one-quarter between 2014 and 2016, and now accounts for less than 20% of its business, down from 40% in 2014. Reproductive-health screening makes up the lion’s share of the company's income, at 55% (see ‘Focus on health’). Services related to complex diseases — those caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors — brings in 23%.







Source: BGI IPO prospectus​
The company would not comment on its operations, citing a “quiet” period mandated by the financial regulator before its stock-market debut. But its prospectus says that the move away from research-based sequencing is the result of the falling price of sequencing machines, which has allowed research institutes to set up their own facilities.

Li says, however, that even though some institutions are trying to build their own facilities, the market for third-party research sequencing is growing. “It’s not efficient and cost effective to maintain a small-scale sequencing lab,” he says. “Most such labs in China decided to discontinue their own platform operation and outsource sequencing to centralized sequencing centres.” 

Still, sequencing for researchers isn’t the business it used to be. The prospectus points out that in the early days, there was more low-hanging fruit — sequencing the whole genome of a plant or animal, for example, were large projects with big profit margins. Now, projects are smaller and less lucrative. And competition has intensified from companies such as Novogene, which says it has the largest sequencing capacity in the world.

*Prenatal testing*
“This shift seems to be market driven,” says Dorret Boomsma of the VU University Amsterdam, who has used BGI sequences in studies of Dutch twins. “Apparently facilities for large-scale research sequencing are available on a more-competitive pricing, or nearer by, elsewhere.”

BGI’s ability to keep pace in the research was also affected by its failure to develop an advanced sequencer based on technology that it bought in 2013 from Complete Genomics in Mountain View, California. It also suffered after the departure of its chief executive Jun Wang, who spearheaded many of BGI’s research projects, but left in 2015 to start his own company.

Clinical sequencing in China, however, is booming, fuelled by the country’s growing middle class, expanding health-care system and focus on precision medicine. Sales of BGI’s non-invasive prenatal testing kit, NIFTY — which screens maternal blood to determine whether a fetus has chromosomal abnormalities such as Down’s syndrome — passed the million mark in March 2016. And China’s move from a one-child to two-child policy in 2016 increased the birth rate among NIFTY’s target demographic: women in their late 30s who are considered to be high risk for chromosomal abnormalities. According to an analysis by Chinese investment bank CITIC Securities, BGI has nearly 50% of the prenatal screening market in China, far ahead of its closest competitor.

With the money raised from its IPO, the firm hopes to improve its reproductive and cancer-diagnosis technologies, and add other, similar, sequencing-based diagnostic services for other health conditions. It also plans to expand genetic consulting services and establish cloud-computing platforms to crunch genomic data for precision medicine. Earlier this year, BGI struck a deal with Foxconn — the Taiwanese company that manufactures iPhones at its base in Shenzhen — to mass-produce sequencers, which BGI plans to sell to hospitals throughout China.

Other sequencing companies will be watching closely to see how BGI fares in the nascent market. “We don’t know the level of interest from investors. The industry is still relatively small, but it’s fast growing and has a lot of potential,” says Li.


China’s genomics giant to make stock-market debut : Nature News & Comment

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Han Patriot

Bussard Ramjet said:


> Yeah, but it is not Nature, the main journal, is it. It is published weekly, and the most recent edition didn't have this article.
> 
> The specific word is that it was published online by Nature, as AOP, on its site.
> 
> Now where does it appear in print, is another question entirely.


Bro, can you just let it go. What is your point of this argument? Whether it's important? It's a new discovery regardless of its significance in your eyes, and it was published in Nature, online or not who cares. If it was an Indian discovering it, i would still say it's a good achievement.


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

Han Patriot said:


> Bro, can you just let it go. What is your point of this argument? Whether it's important? It's a new discovery regardless of its significance in your eyes, and it was published in Nature, online or not who cares. If it was an Indian discovering it, i would still say it's a good achievement.



Not every new discovery is worthy of equal respect. There are new kinds of insects, bacteria, and other organisms being discovered basically every other day. 

My field is not physics, so I can't access the importance of this finding until I know how much attention it gets, where it is published, and how much citation it receives in next 5 years. 

Here, the place where the study is published comes into play. Nature is (along with Science) the most premier journal in the world. Nature Communications is significantly less recognized. It is usually called the graveyard of Nature, or the dumping post of Nature. Articles not chosen for main Nature end up being published in Nature Communications. This doesn't mean they are not good. Nature Communications in absolute sense is an outstanding journal in its own right. 

But nature is just different. 

An example is the recent publication by Pan Jianwei, on the success of transfer of entangled photons via the quantum satellite. 

It was not only chosen to be published in Science. It was in fact on the *cover page* of Science for that issue. In fact, even a scientific commentary accompanied the science journal issue.



Han Patriot said:


> Bro, can you just let it go. What is your point of this argument? Whether it's important? It's a new discovery regardless of its significance in your eyes, and it was published in Nature, online or not who cares. If it was an Indian discovering it, i would still say it's a good achievement.



It is no doubt a good achievement. But that's what I'm trying to access. 

If it is published in Nature, the probability is high that it is an extremely big achievement. 

If it is published in Nature Comm. then it means that it is probably a big achievement. (But not an extremely big achievement)


----------



## Han Patriot

Bussard Ramjet said:


> Not every new discovery is worthy of equal respect. There are new kinds of insects, bacteria, and other organisms being discovered basically every other day.
> 
> My field is not physics, so I can't access the importance of this finding until I know how much attention it gets, where it is published, and how much citation it receives in next 5 years.
> 
> Here, the place where the study is published comes into play. Nature is (along with Science) the most premier journal in the world. Nature Communications is significantly less recognized. It is usually called the graveyard of Nature, or the dumping post of Nature. Articles not chosen for main Nature end up being published in Nature Communications. This doesn't mean they are not good. Nature Communications in absolute sense is an outstanding journal in its own right.
> 
> But nature is just different.
> 
> An example is the recent publication by Pan Jianwei, on the success of transfer of entangled photons via the quantum satellite.
> 
> It was not only chosen to be published in Science. It was in fact on the *cover page* of Science for that issue. In fact, even a scientific commentary accompanied the science journal issue.
> 
> 
> 
> It is no doubt a good achievement. But that's what I'm trying to access.
> 
> If it is published in Nature, the probability is high that it is an extremely big achievement.
> 
> If it is published in Nature Comm. then it means that it is probably a big achievement. (But not an extremely big achievement)


I personally do not think this is a great discovery. i think it's just a good discovery.


----------



## JSCh

* China's 3rd exascale supercomputer prototype set for 2018 launch *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-06-22 16:12:24_|_Editor: Mengjie_





JINAN, June 22 (Xinhua) -- China is developing a third prototype exascale computing machine -- also known as a super supercomputer -- and plans to launch it by June 2018, according to the developers.

The Sunway exascale computer prototype is being developed by the National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering and Technology (NRCPC) and the National Supercomputing Center in Jinan, east China's Shandong Province.

The NRCPC led the team that developed Sunway TaihuLight, crowned the world's fastest computer two years in a row at both the 2016 and 2017 International Supercomputing Conferences held in Frankfurt, Germany.

An exascale computer is able to execute a quintillion calculations per second, around eight times faster than Sunway TaihuLight. The increase in computational speed will advance research in climate change, space science, medicine and oceanology among others.

China and the United States are currently leading exascale computer development. In China, prototypes are being developed by three teams led by the NRCPC, Dawning Information Industry C. (Sogon), and National University of Defense Technology (NUDT).

The three have been spear-heading China's supercomputer efforts with their respective brands: Sunway, Sogon, and Tianhe.

The NUDT, partnering the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin, announced in January that their prototype will be ready by the end of 2017.

Sogon said it had begun developing the prototype late last year.

After the prototypes have been developed, exascale supercomputers are expected to hit the market by 2020.

Sunway supercomputer's developers said they are eyeing applications in fields such as high performance numerical simulation in marine environments, to be used by State Oceanic Administration's First Institute of Oceanography in Qingdao. The city is at the forefront of China's marine scientific research as the base for the deep-sea manned submersible Jiaolong.


----------



## JSCh

*Inspur “Champion Server” helps Tsinghua University achieve its 8th championship in international supercomputing competitions*
June 22, 2017
_Sponsored Content by Inspur_

FRANKFURT, Germany , June 21, 2017–The 2017 International Supercomputing Conference (ISC17) came to its end successfully. Tsinghua University defeated 12 teams , and won the championship of this year’s ISC Student Cluster Competition. It is the third-time that Tsinghua University won the ISC-SCC (Student Cluster Competition ) championship, and its eighth championship at ISC, ASC and SC, aka the three biggest international college student supercomputing competitions. In the mean time, Inspur server, known as “champion server”, Inspur has help China’s college student supercomputing teams to win the world championship for 13 times.



​Tsinghua University won the championship of ISC2017

A total of 12 colleges/universities around the world have participated in this year’s ISC-SCC. The Competition requirement is total power of no more than 3000W. The supercomputing system should run for specified 48 hours consecutively, and finish six tests, including the high performance computing international benchmark HPL and HPCG, the partial differential equation solver FEniCS, the application of modeling material MiniDFT, the artificial intelligence learning system TensorFlow and the mysterious application announced at scene.




the Tsinghua University team​
Jidong Zhai, advisor of the Tsinghua University team was thrilled when informed of the championship. He believes that the team will continue to achieve excellent results through joint efforts. The team is serious about this competition and is fully prepared, which is the internal effort; while Inspur, as the sponsor, provides efficient and reliable servers, which is served as an important external effort.




Inspur NF5280M4​
Tsinghua University applied eight-computer-eight-card system design in the competition, and used Inspur NF5280M4 as host computers of the competition, withstanding all harsh tests of the finals. Its stability, reliability and excellent performance enable the team to focus on the competition itself. NF5280 is the classic server series of Inspur, and has accompanied China’s college student supercomputing teams for 8 years when attending the three biggest supercomputing competitions globally. After several technical iterations, its excellent quality has helped to win the “Champion Server” title. NF5280M4 uses Intel Xeon E5V4 series processors, supports 24 DIMMs, with DDR4 memory as well as the latest disk controller technology. In terms of power consumption, it uses the design of low power consumption components with high efficiency power supply, which is of the industry’s highest conversion efficiency, saving up to 20% energy. Meanwhile, the conversion efficiency of its option of titanium high-energy-efficiency hot-swappable redundant power supply is over 96%.



​At the same time, BEIHANG University supported by Inspur won the third place in this year’s ISC Student Cluster Competition.


https://www.hpcwire.com/2017/06/22/...ip-international-supercomputing-competitions/


----------



## JSCh

*New Efficient, Low-Temperature Catalyst for Converting Water and CO to Hydrogen Gas and CO2*
_Low-temperature "water gas shift" reaction produces high levels of pure hydrogen for potential applications, including fuel cells_

June 22, 2017



​Brookhaven Lab chemists Ping Liu and José Rodriguez helped to characterize structural and mechanistic details of a new low-temperature catalyst for producing high-purity hydrogen gas from water and carbon monoxide.

UPTON, NY—Scientists have developed a new low-temperature catalyst for producing high-purity hydrogen gas while simultaneously using up carbon monoxide (CO). The discovery—described in a paper set to publish online in the journal _Science_ on Thursday, June 22, 2017—could improve the performance of fuel cells that run on hydrogen fuel but can be poisoned by CO.

“This catalyst produces a purer form of hydrogen to feed into the fuel cell,” said José Rodriguez, a chemist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory. Rodriguez and colleagues in Brookhaven’s Chemistry Division—Ping Liu and Wenqian Xu—were among the team of scientists who helped to characterize the structural and mechanistic details of the catalyst, which was synthesized and tested by collaborators at Peking University in an effort led by Chemistry Professor Ding Ma.

Because the catalyst operates at low temperature and low pressure to convert water (H2O) and carbon monoxide (CO) to hydrogen gas (H2) and carbon dioxide (CO2), it could also lower the cost of running this so-called “water gas shift” reaction.

“With low temperature and pressure, the energy consumption will be lower and the experimental setup will be less expensive and easier to use in small settings, like fuel cells for cars,” Rodriguez said.

*The gold-carbide connection*
The catalyst consists of clusters of gold nanoparticles layered on a molybdenum-carbide substrate. This chemical combination is quite different from the oxide-based catalysts used to power the water gas shift reaction in large-scale industrial hydrogen production facilities.

“Carbides are more chemically reactive than oxides,” said Rodriguez, “and the gold-carbide interface has good properties for the water gas shift reaction; it interacts better with water than pure metals.”



​Wenqian Xu and José Rodriguez of Brookhaven Lab and Siyu Yao, then a student at Peking University but now a postdoctoral research fellow at Brookhaven, conducted operando x-ray diffraction studies of the gold-molybdenum-carbide catalyst over a range of temperatures (423 Kelvin to 623K) at the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) at Brookhaven Lab. The study revealed that at temperatures above 500K, molybdenum-carbide transforms to molybdenum oxide, with a reduction in catalytic activity.

“The group at Peking University discovered a new synthetic method, and that was a real breakthrough,” Rodriguez said. “They found a way to get a specific phase—or configuration of the atoms—that is highly active for this reaction.”

Brookhaven scientists played a key role in deciphering the reasons for the high catalytic activity of this configuration. Rodriguez, Wenqian Xu, and Siyu Yao (then a student at Peking University but now a postdoctoral research fellow at Brookhaven) conducted structural studies using x-ray diffraction at the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) while the catalyst was operating under industrial or technical conditions. These _operando_ experiments revealed crucial details about how the structure changed under different operating conditions, including at different temperatures.

With those structural details in hand, Zhijun Zuo, a visiting professor at Brookhaven from Taiyuan University of Technology, China, and Brookhaven chemist Ping Liu helped to develop models and a theoretical framework to explain why the catalyst works the way it does, using computational resources at Brookhaven’s Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN).

“We modeled different interfaces of gold and molybdenum carbide and studied the reaction mechanism to identify exactly where the reactions take place—the active sites where atoms are binding, and how bonds are breaking and reforming,” she said.

Additional studies at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences (CNMS), the Advanced Light Source (ALS) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and two synchrotron research facilities in China added to the scientists’ understanding.

“This is a multipart complex reaction,” said Liu, but she noted one essential factor: “The interaction between the gold and the carbide substrate is very important. Gold usually bonds things very weakly. With this synthesis method we get stronger adherence of gold to molybdenum carbide in a controlled way.”

That configuration stabilizes the key intermediate that forms as the reaction proceeds, and the stability of that intermediate determines the rate of hydrogen production, she said.

The Brookhaven team will continue to study this and other carbide catalysts with new capabilities at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II), a new facility that opened at Brookhaven Lab in 2014, replacing NSLS and producing x-rays that are 10,000 times brighter. With these brighter x-rays, the scientists hope to capture more details of the chemistry in action, including details of the intermediates that form throughout the reaction process to validate the theoretical predictions made in this study.

The work at Brookhaven Lab was funded by the U.S. DOE Office of Science.

Additional funders for the overall research project include: the National Basic Research Program of China, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China, and the U.S. National Science Foundation.

NSLS, NSLS-II, CFN, CNMS, and ALS are all DOE Office of Science User Facilities.

BNL Newsroom | New Efficient, Low-Temperature Catalyst for Converting Water and CO to Hydrogen Gas and CO2

Siyu Yao, Xiao Zhang, Wu Zhou, Rui Gao, Wenqian Xu, Yifan Ye, Lili Lin, Xiaodong Wen, Ping Liu, Bingbing Chen, Ethan Crumlin, Jinghua Guo, Zhijun Zuo, Weizhen Li, Jinglin Xie, Li Lu, Christopher J. Kiely, Lin Gu, Chuan Shi, José A. Rodriguez, Ding Ma. "Atomic-layered Au clusters on α-MoC as catalyst for the low-temperature water-gas shift reaction". _Science _(2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aah4321

Abstract
The water-gas shift (WGS) reaction (CO+H2O=H2+CO2) is an essential process for hydrogen generation and CO removal in various energy-related chemical operations. This equilibrium-limited reaction is favored at a low working temperature. Potential application in fuel cells also requires a WGS catalyst to be highly active, stable and energy-efficient and match the working temperature of on-site hydrogen generation and consumption units. We synthesized Au layered clusters on an α-MoC substrate to create an interfacial catalyst system for the ultra-low-temperature WGS reaction. Water was activated over α-MoC at 303 Kelvin (K), while CO adsorbed on adjacent Au sites is apt to react with surface hydroxyl groups formed from water splitting, leading to a high WGS activity at low-temperatures.​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*USTC Professor Honored with Fresnel Prize*
*Pub Date:*17-06-23 11:19 
*Source:*www.cnanhui.org

Lu Chaoyang, a physicist from the University of Science and Technology of China(USTC), was awarded the European Physical Society's Fresnel Prize on June 27 at the European Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics in Munich, Germany.

The prize is named after Augustin-Jean Fresnel, a leading physicist in the 19th century. It is regarded as the highest global honor for scientists under the age of 35 in the field of quantum electronics and optics. Every two years, two young scientists under the age of 35 would be awarded, one in the field of basic research and the other in the field of applied research.

Pan Jianwei who has won Fresnel Prize in 2005, is the first Chinese scientist to receive the award. Eight years later, Chen Yuao won the honor. In 2017, Lu Chaoyang became the third Chinese scientist to receive the award for his outstanding contribution to quantum computation and quantum optics.

Lu has published over 40 papers on first-class international important academic journals, including _Nature _and _Science_. In 2015, His work on quantum teleportation was highlighted by Physics World of Institute of Physics(IOP) as “Breakthrough of the Year”. In 2016, his achievement was rated as “Significant Progress in International Optics” by Optical Society of America(OSA). In 2017, based on the research of multi-particle entanglement, Lu demonstrated the application of quantum computation internationally. (by Jiang Xueting)


----------



## Shotgunner51

*This $3B Chinese Tech Company Wants To Bend, Curve And Roll The World Up*
Nina Xiang June 22, 2017 — 17:08 HKT

*



*
*If Thomas Friedman argued that "the world is flat," Royole founder Bill Liu's mission is to bend, curve and roll up that world.*

Millions of ambitious young people wake each morning wanting to "change the world," but few have as ambitious a goal as Bill Liu, founder of Chinese flexible display company Royole Corporation. If Thomas Friedman argued that "the world is flat," then Bill Liu's mission is to bend, curve and roll up that world.

Liu founded Royole in 2012 after gaining a Ph.D in electrical engineering from Stanford University at age 26. Five years later, the company provides flexible display solutions to various industries and has launched several consumer products, including a smartphone that can be rolled into a bracelet, the first of its type readily available to consumers.

"Flexible display electronics are a very new way for people to interact with consumer and electronics information," Liu, now 34, told China Money Network during an exclusive interview at the company's headquarters in Shenzhen. "I believe flexible displays could be everywhere in the future, because it is convenient, easy to use, and provides more robust design possibilities."

Royole is venturing into a new market with high potential. If any type of digital display, from computers, to phones and TVs, can be bent or rolled up, then everything from wristwatches to car dashboards can be completely re-imagined.

Watch China Money TV's Visit To Royole's Shenzhen Headquarters:






This alternate, flexible future is also exciting tech giants like Samsung and LG. Both are mass producing flexible displays for use on their mobile phones, the Galaxy S7 Edge and the LG G Flex 2. Apple, reportedly, may be buying around 100 million flexible panels for its future iPhones.

"Flexible display is a huge business opportunity enabling industries worth hundreds of billions of dollars," said a tech venture investor who preferred to remain anonymous. "Its applications in wearable devices, healthcare, Internet-of-Things (IoT) and fashion are exciting. Think about the possibilities if smartphones can wrap around your wrist and brands can display ads on your T-shirt."

That potential has made Royole a magnet for venture investors, and as a result it is currently the world's most valuable tech start-up focused exclusively on this frontier industry. The company has raised over RMB2 billion, or nearly US$300 million, in five financing rounds since 2012, with its latest valuation at a hefty US$3 billion. The company already has over 700 intellectual properties under its name in the field of flexible displays.

Royole's challenge, however, will be to turn ideas into breakthrough products, then into a scaleable and profitable businesses. It remains to be seen whether Royole's products can win over consumers. The company has one showroom in Beijing – with another opening in Shenzhen in October – where consumers can view its rollable mobile phone, called the FlexPhone, as well as a transparent keyboard that can be rolled into a pen-size container, and a foldable 3D virtual mobile theater in the form of a headset. Some of the products, such as the headset, are also sold online.

Liu would not disclose details on how sales are trending, but he said people are looking forward to new technologies and products, and he is confident his company is building momentum.

Royole's business-to-business segment also faces major hurdles, one of which is the protection of its IP. Liu explained during a TV show last month that Royole decided to build its own factory partly to meet growing demand, and partly over difficulty in finding a manufacturing partner with proper business terms to secure solid protection of its IP.

The B2B business also depends on its clients' ability to apply the new technology into their own products. The company has signed strategic partnership agreements with Chinese sports goods retailer Li Ning Co., Ltd., Shenzhen Bus Group, China Southern Airlines, and the Shenzhen subsidiary of China Mobile, to explore how flexible displays could be utilized to create new products.

But the research and development required to put new flexible displays into aerospace and automobile industries, for example, could take years. As such, Royole will need to raise a lot more capital to support the R&D and scalability of its products.

The spirited entrepreneur, however, is not daunted. Since first conceiving the idea while lying on a plush lawn at Stanford, he has built one of the world's fastest-growing tech unicorns, with almost 1,000 employees.

The company's new Shenzhen factory, costing US$1.7 billion to build, will be fully operational in the third quarter of this year and will have an annual production capacity of over 50 million flexible displays, making it one of the largest flexible display manufacturing facilities in the world.

"Our mission is to use our own technology innovation to improve the way people interact with the world," Liu said. "What we need to do is just keep innovating, keep developing great products for the consumers, and solve the problem for the industry."

Read the full article at https://www.chinamoneynetwork.com/2...any-wants-to-bend-curve-and-roll-the-world-up


----------



## cirr

23 June 2017 at 8:54pm
*How China's facial recognition technology is changing daily life*

DEBI EDWARD CHINA CORRESPONDENT



Play 

video http://www.itv.com/news/2017-06-23/how-chinas-facial-recognition-technology-is-changing-daily-life/

When you are introduced to China’s facial recognition technology in a public toilet, it loses some of its futuristic allure. Nonetheless it does illustrate the extent to which Chinese engineers are frantically working to introduce the technology into every part of our daily lives.

It was introduced at the Temple of Heaven toilets in southern Beijing in order to ration the amount of paper people use. After a scan of your face machines will issue around half of metre of paper and only after 9 minutes can you get second helping, if required.

At Beijing Shifan University the technology has been installed in the women's dormitories to add an extra layer of security. The female students we spoke to told us they feel safer and want to see it rolled out across their campus and others.

*Almost every week there’s a new technological development in China* and it’s facial recognition in particular which is being rolled out at an extraordinary rate.





Facial recognition is even being used to ration toilet paper at this Beijing tourist spot.
The fast food giant KFC is currently trialling it at one of their branches in Beijing and next month the e-payment giant Alipay will introduce it for its customers.

The rapid pace of development comes after the Chinese Government made Artificial Intelligence a state priority. Billions of pounds is being ploughed into the research and development of facial recognition, speech recognition, robots, deep learning and 3D printing. In the field of e-payment the country has already left the rest of the world in its wake; the market here is 50 times larger than the United States.

We visited one of the hundreds of start-ups which is benefiting from Government incentives. At the offices of Megvil you don’t need a fob or card to get in the door, is all controlled by facial recognition technology. We saw the faces of employees flash up on a screen, along with their age and gender, as they walked in. Their office was full of young entrepreneurs working on the next big thing in facial recognition.





The technology has been installed at women's dormitories at a university in Beijing.
They are proud that some police forces have adopted their system and that it has helped catch thousands of criminals but it’s the consumer market which most excites them.

*They say it is just a matter of months, not years, before we will be able to leave our wallets and keys because our face will be able to do everything from open our front door to pay for goods at the supermarket. They claim using the 83 point facial recognition is even safer than fingerprint technology.*

There have been some concerns raised amid this rapid roll out. In Southern china pedestrians were left angered and embarrassed after their personal details were flashed up on big screens at an intersection. They were being picked out, named and shamed for jay walking.





Facial recognition has helped catch thousands of criminals in China.
Robots are of course part of this revolution and in warehouses and factories across China humans are being replaced with machines which can do the heavy lifting and sorting.

In Southern China the home delivery company STO express is now using hundreds of robots to sort the packages at their distribution centre. The floor of the centre looks like a massive game of tetras.

China is desperate to shrug off its reputation for cheap consumer goods and electronics. It watched as the United States and Europe invented software and led the digital age, now it wants to dominate in Artificial Intelligence, described as the next frontier.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Has China developed the world’s most powerful submarine detector?*
_Major breakthrough in magnetic detection technology brings unprecedented accuracy in finding metallic objects hidden deep underground and in the water, Shanghai scientists say_

PUBLISHED : Saturday, 24 June, 2017, 8:31am
UPDATED : Saturday, 24 June, 2017, 8:31am
Stephen Chen
Chinese scientists claim to have made a major breakthrough in magnetic detection technology that could bring unprecedented accuracy to the process of finding hidden metallic objects – from minerals to submarines.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences, the country’s largest research institute, said in an article on its website on Wednesday that a “superconductive magnetic anomaly detection array” has been developed in Shanghai and passed inspection by an expert panel.

The experts were quoted as saying that the device, which works from the air, could be used to pinpoint the location of minerals buried deep beneath the earth in Inner Mongolia, for example, with a level of precision as high as anything currently available around the world.

The device could also be used on civilian and military aircraft as a “high performance equipment and technical solution to resources mapping, civil engineering, archaeology and national defence”, the article said.

China’s military may soon adopt the technology, if it hasn’t already, said Professor Zhang Zhi, an expert in remote sensing with the Institute of Geophysics and Geomatics, China University of Geosciences in Wuhan, Hubei.

“The technology could be used to detect minerals on land, and in the ocean to nail down submarines,” said Zhang, who was not involved in the project.

Anti-submarine aircraft have been equipped with magnetic anomaly detectors, or MAD, since World War II. The devices monitor the small disturbances metallic objects cause to the Earth’s magnetic field, analyse the data and use complex algorithms to calculate the object’s position.

Precise locations are often difficult to obtain, however, because the strength of a magnetic signal drops rapidly as the distance from the source increases.

Aircraft have to fly low, and the submarine has to be operating sufficiently close to surface for the device to register it. The power of the signal can be reduced by other factors, too, such as if the submarine is made from less ferromagnetic materials.

Dr Lei Chong, an assistant researcher studying MAD technology at the Department of Micro/Nano Electronics, Shanghai Jiaotong University, said the Chinese device was different from conventional designs in at least two ways.

The first is the large number of probes the device uses. With this “array”, it can collect much more data than traditional detectors, which tend to use just one antenna, said Lei, who was not involved in the project.

The new MAD also uses a superconductive computer chip cooled by liquid nitrogen. This super-cool environment significantly increases the device’s sensitivity to signals that would be too faint for traditional devices to spot.

“I am surprised they made such an announcement,” Lei said. “Usually this kind of information is not revealed to the public because of its military value.”

The superconductive MAD array was developed over four years by a research team led by Professor Xie Xiaoming from the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, according to the CAS article.

Xie could not immediately be reached for comment.

Chinese research teams have also recently completed the development of eight other types of magnetic detectors, some of which are small and sensitive enough to be used on satellites, the article said.

The academy said that due to the difficulties involved in developing such equipment, most countries, including the United States, don’t yet have it. Germany is the rare exception, it said.

Despite the article’s claims, Lei said it was too early to say whether China was leading the world in MAD technology.

“The US military might have developed similar equipment but kept their lips sealed about it,” he said.

“It’s impossible, therefore, to compare one country to another on this kind of sensitive technology based only on openly available information.

“Converting a mineral detector to a MAD for submarines requires a lot of extra work. Military users have very different requirements to those in the civilian sector,” he said.


Has China developed the world’s most powerful submarine detector? | South China Morning Post

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

* Makers of TaihuLight Supercomputer Offer Commercial Version *
* Michael Feldman | June 23, 2017 18:33 CEST *

One of the more unusual pieces of news at this year’s ISC High Performance conference was the announcement by the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi that it will be offering a cut-down version of the Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer for more mainstream HPC users.

TaihuLight is the reigning champ on the TOP500 list, delivering a whopping 93 petaflops on the Linpack benchmark. Besides being the number one system, it’s other big claim to fame is that it is constructed almost entirely from Chinese-made componentry. In particular, the system is powered by the 260-core ShenWei processor, known as the SW26010. Each of TaihuLight’s 40,960 ShenWei chips delivers three teraflops of peak performance.

The commercial version they announced at ISC is called the Sunway Micro and is based a dual-socket SW26010 server node. The system is aimed at a broad spectrum of industrial and research applications including “deep learning, oil & gas exploration, climate modeling, etc.”
​





*Source: National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi*​
The two-processor design means each node delivers a very respectable six peak teraflops. Unlike the TaihuLight supercomputer, whose single-socket nodes were outfitted with a scant 32 GB of memory, the Sunway Micro can be equipped with 64 GB to 256 GB. That gives Micro buyers the option to have lot more local memory to feed these high-flying ShenWei chips. Each node is also equipped with 12 GB of local storage of undefined type and origin.

While talking with some of the folks at the Wuxi booth during the ISC exhibition, they revealed that the Micro nodes can be clustered together via a network based on InfiniBand technology, which apparently is similar, but not identical to the TaihuLight network implementaion. Given that these servers will be used in relatively small clusters, they didn’t have to develop a network for supercomputer-level scalability.

One of the most unusual aspects of the Sunway Micro is that it is being sold by the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi. That might seem like an odd thing for a supercomputing center to do, given its public mission. But since the center supplies the system software and developer toolset for these ShenWei-based machines, they basically act as system integrators for the commercial offering. As for the TaihiLight, the Micro was developed by the National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering & Technology (NRCPC).

Software support includes C/C++ and Fortran compilers for the ShenWie, as well as supporting runtime libraries. For parallel software development, Wuxi includes MPI, OpenACC and Athread implementations targeted to the ShenWei platform. An integrated development environment, with a debugger and performance monitor, are also included.

Besides selling the standard version of the Micro, the Wuxi center will also provide customized solutions. Pricing for the system was not made public.


Makers of TaihuLight Supercomputer Offer Commercial Version | TOP500 Supercomputer Sites

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*A 100-year-old physics problem has been solved at EPFL*





_23.06.17 - EPFL researchers have found a way around what was considered a fundamental limitation of physics for over 100 years. They were able to conceive resonant systems that can store electromagnetic waves over a long period of time while maintaining a broad bandwidth. Their study, which has just been published in Science, opens up a number of doors, particularly in telecommunications._

At EPFL, researchers challenge a fundamental law and discover that more electromagnetic energy can be stored in wave-guiding systems than previously thought. The discovery has implications in telecommunications. Working around the fundamental law, they conceived resonant and wave-guiding systems capable of storing energy over a prolonged period while keeping a broad bandwidth. Their trick was to create asymmetric resonant or wave-guiding systems using magnetic fields.

The study, which has just been published in _Science_, was led by Kosmas Tsakmakidis, first at the University of Ottawa and then at EPFL’s Bionanophotonic Systems Laboratory run by Hatice Altug, where the researcher is now doing post-doctoral research.

This breakthrough could have a major impact on many fields in engineering and physics. The number of potential applications is close to infinite, with telecommunications, optical detection systems and broadband energy harvesting representing just a few examples.

*Casting aside reciprocity*
Resonant and wave-guiding systems are present in the vast majority of optical and electronic systems. Their role is to temporarily store energy in the form of electromagnetic waves and then release them. For more than 100 hundred years, these systems were held back by a limitation that was considered to be fundamental: the length of time a wave could be stored was inversely proportional to its bandwidth. This relationship was interpreted to mean that it was impossible to store large amounts of data in resonant or wave-guiding systems over a long period of time because increasing the bandwidth meant decreasing the storage time and quality of storage.

This law was first formulated by K. S. Johnson in 1914, at Western Electric Company (the forerunner of Bell Telephone Laboratories). He introduced the concept of the _Q_ factor, according to which a resonator can either store energy for a long time or have a broad bandwidth, but not both at the same time. Increasing the storage time meant decreasing the bandwidth, and vice versa. A small bandwidth means a limited range of frequencies (or ‘colors’) and therefore a limited amount of data.

Until now, this concept had never been challenged. Physicists and engineers had always built resonant systems – like those to produce lasers, make electronic circuits and conduct medical diagnoses – with this constraint in mind.

But that limitation is now a thing of the past. The researchers came up with a hybrid resonant / wave-guiding system made of a magneto-optic material that, when a magnetic field is applied, is able to stop the wave and store it for a prolonged period, thereby accumulating large amounts of energy. Then when the magnetic field is switched off, the trapped pulse is released.

With such asymmetric and non-reciprocal systems, it was possible to store a wave for a very long period of time while also maintaining a large bandwidth. The conventional time-bandwidth limit was even beaten by a factor of 1,000. The scientists further showed that, theoretically, there is no upper ceiling to this limit at all in these asymmetric (non-reciprocal) systems.

“It was a moment of revelation when we discovered that these new structures did not feature any time-bandwidth restriction at all. These systems are unlike what we have all been accustomed to for decades, and possibly hundreds of years», says Tsakmakidis, the study’s lead author. "Their superior wave-storage capacity performance could really be an enabler for a range of exciting applications in diverse contemporary and more traditional fields of research.” Hatice Altug adds. 

*Medicine, the environment and telecommunications*
One possible application is in the design of extremely quick and efficient all-optical buffers in telecommunication networks. The role of the buffers is to temporarily store data arriving in the form of light through optical fibers. By slowing the mass of data, it is easier to process. Up to now, the storage quality had been limited.+

With this new technique, it should be possible to improve the process and store large bandwidths of data for prolonged times. Other potential applications include on-chip spectroscopy, broadband light harvesting and energy storage, and broadband optical camouflaging (“invisibility cloaking”). “The reported breakthrough is completely fundamental – we’re giving researchers a new tool. And the number of applications is limited only by one’s imagination,” sums up Tsakmakidis.

-----

Source: Breaking Lorentz reciprocity to overcome the time-bandwidth limit in physics and engineering

Cover image capture: _Generic image illustrating wave-interference and resonant energy transfer from one source to another distant source or object, pertaining to the fundamental concept of resonances._

Study conducted by:

Kosmas Tsakmakidis, lead author, former researcher at the University of Ottawa and currently an EPFL Fellow in EPFL's Bionanophotonic Systems Laboratory
Linfang Shen and collaborators, Institute of Space Science and Technology, Nanchang University, Nanchang, China and State Key Laboratory of Modern Optical Instrumentation, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
Prof. Robert Boyd and collaborators, University of Ottawa
Prof. Hatice Altug, director of EPFL's Bionanophotonic Systems Laboratory
Prof. Alexandre Vakakis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Author:Laure-Anne Pessina



A 100-year-old physics problem has been solved at EPFL

K. L. Tsakmakidis, L. Shen, S. A. Schulz, X. Zheng, J. Upham, X. Deng, H. Altug, A. F. Vakakis, R. W. Boyd. "Breaking Lorentz reciprocity to overcome the time-bandwidth limit in physics and engineering". _Science_ (2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aam6662

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*  New form of carbon discovered that is harder than diamond but flexible as rubber  *
June 24, 2017 1.40am AEST
Timothy Strobel




Scientists have found a way to make carbon both very hard and very stretchy by heating it under high pressure. This “compressed glassy carbon”, developed by researchers in China and the US, is also lightweight and could potentially be made in very large quantities. This means it might be a good fit for several sorts of applications, from bulletproof vests to new kinds of electronic devices.

Carbon is a special element because of the way its atoms can form different types of bonds with each other and so form different structures. For example, carbon atoms joined entirely by “sp³” bonds produce diamond, and those joined entirely by “sp²” bonds produce graphite, which can also be separated into single layers of atoms known as graphene. Another form of carbon, known as glassy carbon, is also made from sp² and has properties of both graphite and ceramics.

But the new compressed glassy carbon has a mix of sp³ and sp² bonds, which is what gives it its unusual properties. To make atomic bonds you need some additional energy. When the researchers squeezed several sheets of graphene together at high temperatures, they found certain carbon atoms were exactly in the right position to form sp³ bonds between the layers.






Bond, sp³ bond. Timothy Strobel​By studying the new material in detail, they found that just over one in five of all its bonds were sp³. This means that most of the atoms are still arranged in a graphene-like structure, but the new bonds make it look more like a large, interconnected network and give it greater strength. Over the small scale of individual graphene sheets, the atoms are arranged in an orderly, hexagonal pattern. But on a larger scale, the sheets are arranged in a disorderly fashion. This is probably what gives it the combined properties of hardness and flexibility.

The researchers made the compressed glassy carbon using a relatively simple method that could be reproduced on a large scale easily and cheaply. In simple terms, they used a sort of machine press that applies high-pressure loads to the carbon. But this must have involved several tricks to control the pressure and temperature in exactly the right way. This would have been a time-consuming process but should still be achievable for other people replicate the results.

*New surprises*
Carbon materials are continually surprising us – and the emphasis of research has been to find or cook things in between its natural forms of diamond and graphite. This new form is the latest of what seem like limitless ways you can bond carbon atoms, following on from the discovery of graphene, cylindrical carbon nanotubes and spherical buckminsterfullerene molecules.

A material like this – that is strong, hard, lightweight and flexible – will be in high demand and could be used for all sorts of applications. For example, military uses could involve shields for jets and helicopters. In electronics, lightweight, cheaply manufactured materials with similar properties to silicon that could also have new abilities could provide a way to overcome the limitations of existing microchips.

The dream is to find a carbon material that could replace silicon altogether. What is needed is something that allows electrons to move through it quickly and whose electrons can easily be placed into an excited state to represent the on and off functions of a transistor. The researchers behind glassy carbon haven’t studied these properties in the new material so we don’t yet know how suitable it might be. But it might not be that long until another of carbon is found. So far, decades of hunting hasn’t turned up what we need, but maybe we just have to look deep down to find it.

http://theconversation.com/new-form...der-than-diamond-but-flexible-as-rubber-79879

Meng Hu, Julong He, Zhisheng Zhao, Timothy A. Strobel, Wentao Hu, Dongli Yu, Hao Sun, Lingyu Liu, Zihe Li, Mengdong Ma, Yoshio Kono, Jinfu Shu, Ho-kwang Mao, Yingwei Fei, Guoyin Shen, Yanbin Wang, Stephen J. Juhl, Jian Yu Huang, Zhongyuan Liu, Bo Xu and Yongjun Tian. Compressed glassy carbon: An ultrastrong and elastic interpenetrating graphene network. _Science Advances_, June 2017 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1603213

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Clutch



Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## cirr

*China’s genomics giant to make stock-market debut*

*Once the world's biggest DNA sequencer for research, BGI is now looking to medical applications to boost profits.*

David Cyranoski

21 June 2017





Daniele Mattioli/Anzenberger/eyevine
BGI in Shenzhen has shifted its focus from serving researchers to medical applications of genome sequencing.

China’s genomics giant BGI, once the world leader in DNA sequencing for basic science, is going public — capping off a dramatic transformation into a mainly biomedical firm with a focus on reproductive health.

A financial prospectus document released to support the initial public offering (IPO) details how BGI, squeezed by its rivals and the plummeting cost of sequencing, has been drawn to more-profitable pursuits, such as prenatal genetic testing, in China’s expanding medical market. The shift is also in line with the Chinese government’s multibillion-yuan drive to promote precision medicine, an effort to use the reams of genomic and other medical data being created to tailor treatments.





China’s bid to be a DNA superpower

BGI is currently working out the details of the IPO, which was years in the making and approved by China’s financial regulators in late May. The IPO is expected within a month and the firm hopes to raise 1.7 billion yuan (US$250 million).

As the first genomics company to be listed in China, BGI will be a pioneer in the country’s precision-medicine market, which is estimated to be worth 20 billion yuan by 2020. “It's a milestone for both BGI and the field,” says Ruiqiang Li, who used to work for BGI and is now chief executive of competing genomics firm Beijing-based Novogene, which Li hopes to take public.

*Income shift*

BGI was established in 1999 as the Beijing Genomics Institute and the force behind China’s contribution to the Human Genome Project — it sequenced a small, but symbolic, 1% of the genome.






Over the next decade, it produced a series of high-profile sequencing breakthroughs, including the genomes of rice, the giant panda, the cucumber, an ancient human and more than 1,000 species of gut bacteria. In 2010 — now based in Shenzhen and known simply as BGI — the company purchased 128 of the world’s most-advanced genome-sequencing machines. Overnight it became the industry’s most prolific player.

The firm gained a reputation as a genome factory. The number of studies based on BGI-sequenced genomes — paid for by scientists from all over the world, who acknowledged BGI scientists’ contributions by making them co-authors — jumped from a handful to hundreds per year.

But that number has plateaued, and it looks set to drop this year. According to the prospectus, BGI’s income from research-driven sequencing dropped by more than one-quarter between 2014 and 2016, and now accounts for less than 20% of its business, down from 40% in 2014. Reproductive-health screening makes up the lion’s share of the company's income, at 55% (see ‘Focus on health’). Services related to complex diseases — those caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors — brings in 23%.

The company would not comment on its operations, citing a “quiet” period mandated by the financial regulator before its stock-market debut. But its prospectus says that the move away from research-based sequencing is the result of the falling price of sequencing machines, which has allowed research institutes to set up their own facilities.





China embraces precision medicine on a massive scale

Li says, however, that even though some institutions are trying to build their own facilities, the market for third-party research sequencing is growing. “It’s not efficient and cost effective to maintain a small-scale sequencing lab,” he says. “Most such labs in China decided to discontinue their own platform operation and outsource sequencing to centralized sequencing centres.”

Still, sequencing for researchers isn’t the business it used to be. The prospectus points out that in the early days, there was more low-hanging fruit — sequencing the whole genome of a plant or animal, for example, were large projects with big profit margins. Now, projects are smaller and less lucrative. And competition has intensified from companies such as Novogene, which says it has the largest sequencing capacity in the world.

*Prenatal testing*

“This shift seems to be market driven,” says Dorret Boomsma of the VU University Amsterdam, who has used BGI sequences in studies of Dutch twins. “Apparently facilities for large-scale research sequencing are available on a more-competitive pricing, or nearer by, elsewhere.”

BGI’s ability to keep pace in the research was also affected by its failure to develop an advanced sequencer based on technology that it bought in 2013 from Complete Genomics in Mountain View, California. It also suffered after the departure of its chief executive Jun Wang, who spearheaded many of BGI’s research projects, but left in 2015 to start his own company.

Clinical sequencing in China, however, is booming, fuelled by the country’s growing middle class, expanding health-care system and focus on precision medicine. Sales of BGI’s non-invasive prenatal testing kit, NIFTY — which screens maternal blood to determine whether a fetus has chromosomal abnormalities such as Down’s syndrome — passed the million mark in March 2016. And China’smove from a one-child to two-child policy in 2016 increased the birth rate among NIFTY’s target demographic: women in their late 30s who are considered to be high risk for chromosomal abnormalities. According to an analysis by Chinese investment bank CITIC Securities, BGI has nearly 50% of the prenatal screening market in China, far ahead of its closest competitor.

With the money raised from its IPO, the firm hopes to improve its reproductive and cancer-diagnosis technologies, and add other, similar, sequencing-based diagnostic services for other health conditions. It also plans to expand genetic consulting services and establish cloud-computing platforms to crunch genomic data for precision medicine. Earlier this year, BGI struck a deal with Foxconn — the Taiwanese company that manufactures iPhones at its base in Shenzhen — to mass-produce sequencers, which BGI plans to sell to hospitals throughout China.

Other sequencing companies will be watching closely to see how BGI fares in the nascent market. “We don’t know the level of interest from investors. The industry is still relatively small, but it’s fast growing and has a lot of potential,” says Li.

Nature 546,461 22 June 2017) doi:10.1038/546461

http://www.nature.com/news/china-s-genomics-giant-to-make-stock-market-debut-1.22171

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

This has already been posted in Science and Technology thread. 

I think we can discuss here the failure of BGI to get into the sequencing equipment business. That is dominated by Illumina. In fact it seems its acquisition of Complete Genomics was a waste.


----------



## Keel

What has the report above missed out on?

How about combustible ice?
The discovery of new materials harder than diamond but as bouncy as rubber!
How about making artificial cornea?
How about genome techniques to improve infertility?

How about the heavy lift rocket CZ-5; capable of lifting 14T material/spacecraft/satellites to GTO and 8T+ to GEO (lifting our Shijian 17 precisely into GEO on first try!)
http://spaceflight101.com/cz-5-maiden-flight/shijian-17-settles-in-geostationary-orbit/

Our research and discovery in fighting cancer:

http://www.nature.com/news/chinese-scientists-to-pioneer-first-human-crispr-trial-1.20302
http://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/healt...l-chinese-medicine-have-role-helping-patients
http://www.collective-evolution.com...ls-12000-cancer-cells-for-every-healthy-cell/
http://www.cpr.cuhk.edu.hk/en/press_detail.php?id=2486

*Chinese researchers achieve major breakthrough in nuclear energy*
chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2017-06-09 
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2017-06/09/content_29686492.htm

and plenty plenty more ...and forthcoming!!
Search and read the contributions from @JSCh et al to get an idea here

https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/china-science-technology-forum.249386/page-101

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Han Patriot

Bussard Ramjet said:


> This has already been posted in Science and Technology thread.
> 
> I think we can discuss here the failure of BGI to get into the sequencing equipment business. That is dominated by Illumina. In fact it seems its acquisition of Complete Genomics was a waste.


Can you explain to me the failure and why it is a waste?


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

Han Patriot said:


> Can you explain to me the failure and why it is a waste?



It is a failure because it has won no commercial success. Even novogene the company founded by ex BGI people uses Illumina machines.


----------



## Shotgunner51

*Week In Review: Shenzhen's BGI Plans $250 Million China IPO To Support Genomics Operations*
Jun. 25, 2017 11:02 AM ET
ChinaBio Today






*Deals and Financings*

*BGI Genomics*, the contract sequencing and diagnostics divisions of China genomic company BGI, is edging closer to an IPO. The company expects to raise $250 million on Shenzhen's Chi-Next Exchange sometime in July, following all-but-final approvals from China's Securities Regulatory Commission. Known as a world leader in basic science sequencing, BGI Genomics now generates 55% of its income from clinical genomic tests, especially its NIFTY prenatal test for hereditary illnesses such as Down's syndrome. The business is very profitable: BGI's IPO prospectus puts gross profit margin for reproductive services at 76%.

*ShangPharma * will merge its Shanghai *ChemPartner* division, which includes all of the company's CRO/CMO operations, into *Quantum Hi-Tech China Biological (SZE: 300149)*. The transaction, a reverse merger, allows ChemPartner access to China's capital markets rather than spending years waiting for the China IPO approval. ShangPharma said ChemPartner will continue to operate as a stand-alone company even after the merger. Quantum, which is listed on the Shenzhen exchange with a market capitalization of $1.2 billion, produces fructooligosaccharide products as a probiotic for nutritional snacks. Specific terms, including ChemPartner's merger valuation, were not disclosed.

Sanovas, a Bay-Area medical device maker, will start a venture capital fund in Suzhou's *BioBay park*, which will invest "upwards" of $75 million in Suzhou technologies. Sanovas makes innovative micro-invasive devices, and its fund will seek investments in procedures that treat unmet medical conditions at affordable prices. The company will establish an Innovation Center in the *Suzhou Institute of Nano-Tech and Nano-Bionics (SINANO)*. Sanovas' Suzhou center will also serve as a sales/learning base for China.

GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE:GSK) will form a big data partnership with *Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Diseases (GIRD)* to develop a respiratory disease management system that will target both asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (see story). The goal will be to optimize care plans, especially for rural settings. The studies will include reimbursement systems, and they will also pay attention to China's tiered healthcare system, apparently allocating specific tasks to the appropriate levels.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/40...million-china-ipo-support-genomics-operations

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Speeder 2

Japan's Science&Technology Ministry just published a new research paper concluding that global science & technology has stepped into the era of Sino-American competition.

This Japanese govenment research has ranked top 10% of globally quoted sci-tech research papers as a measure of one's sci-tech research quality,therefore one's future sci-tech powess, from the global top 6 industrial powers, namely America, UK, France, Germany, China and Japan (not in a particular order).

The ranking results are that China and America together lead in all 8 key basic industries, with each holding 1st place in 4 industries, ahead of the rest --

China (1st place):
Computer Science and Mathematics,
Chemistry,
Materials Science,
Engineering

America (1st place):
Physics,
The Environment and Earth science,
Basic Life Sciences,
Clinical Medicine

Paper also states that China is very likely to become world's centre in the field of Particle Physics - the very forefront of Physics Science.

The paper reasecher states that it has caught him by surprise to have found out that China has surpassed America in many areas.

The paper concludes that China's rapid development of science and technology has been assisted by 2 major factors: abundant capital & talents.

科研論文是技術創新的源泉，日本文部科學省下屬的科學技術振興機構實施的調查顯示，在計算機科學與數學、化學等4個領域，中國的論文數量位居全球首位，在主要8大領域中與美國平分秋色，進入了「中美兩強」時代。擴充研究經費和人才招攬政策等發揮了功效。

該機構此次以被其他論文引用次數為指標對其影響力進行了調查。根據被引用次數排名前10%的論文來評價美國、英國、德國、法國、中國和日本等國的研究人員水平。中國在計算機科學與數學、化學、材料科學、工學4個領域排在首位。美國在物理學、環境與地球科學、基礎生命科學、臨床醫學4個領域排在第一。連續3年獲得諾貝爾物理學獎的日本只排在5～６位。






( America: Blue lines. China: Red lines. Japan: Black lines)


中國進步神速的象徵是計算機科學領域。在這個領域，中國被引用次數排名前10%的論文所佔的比例2000年時為3%，但2015年達到了21%。中國超級計算機的性能也從2013年起保持世界第一。2016年還獨攬前兩位。

在美國擅長的物理領域，中國也正在加速追趕。中國投入了60億美元以上建設全球最大的加速器，在最前端的粒子物理學領域，中國也有可能成為世界的中心。

帶動中國科研飛快發展的是充裕的資金和人才爭奪戰略。在研究經費方面，2000年前後中國政府和企業合計投入5萬億日元左右，但到2014年迅速擴大到了38萬億日元。相當於一直徘徊在18萬億～19萬億日元左右的日本的2倍，緊追美國的46萬億日元。除了積極呼籲在已開發國家求學的中國研究人員回國之外，還通過留學和派遣等，來構築海外的研究人脈和豐富的渠道。

日本的科學技術振興機構的研究員伊藤裕子指出，「中國在多個領域超過美國，實屬意料之外」。美國總統川普日前提出大幅削減科技預算的方針，中國的存在感估計會日漸增強。

https://zh.cn.nikkei.com/industry/scienceatechnology/25550-2017-06-13-00-42-11.html


Finally, China is catching up on quality and innovation!

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## Dungeness

Bussard Ramjet said:


> This has already been posted in Science and Technology thread.
> 
> I think we can discuss here the failure of BGI to get into the sequencing equipment business. That is dominated by Illumina. In fact it seems its acquisition of Complete Genomics was a waste.



Just a request, can you start an India S/T thread so we can appreciate India's achievements beyond MoM and 104, which have been cited by almost every PDF Indian members repeatedly? Thanks.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## Han Patriot

Bussard Ramjet said:


> It is a failure because it has won no commercial success. Even novogene the company founded by ex BGI people uses Illumina machines.


But why there is no commercial success? Is it because it was not advanced enough? Buying that company led BGI to gain valuable IPs. Its too early to call it a failure. I think it's good to have competition. At least China is trying to change the status quo instead of just importing like India.

https://www.wired.com/2017/05/chinese-genome-giant-sets-sights-uitimate-sequencer/



> In 2013, BGI purchased Illumina’s main competitor: Complete Genomics in Mountain View, California. Its first attempt was a flop. BGI suspended sales after just three orders. The next machine, a sequencer called the BGISEQ-500, launched in late 2015, and according to BGI, can now sequence an entire human genome for $600. That’s about 40 percent cheaper than the going street price on the Illumina platform.





Dungeness said:


> Just a request, can you start an India S/T thread so we can appreciate India's achievements beyond MoM and 104, which have been cited by almost every PDF Indian members repeatedly? Thanks.


True, I have not seen any grounbreaking research from Supapowans. Maybe it's time to create such a thread for us to appreciate the geniusity.


----------



## JSCh

*Harnessing Cancer’s Methylation Footprint for More Precise Diagnosis and Prognosis *
 _A bit of basic genetic machinery could help identify malignant tumors more easily and with greater accuracy_ 
June 27, 2017 | Scott LaFee

In a new study, published online in the July 26 issue of _PNAS_, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, with colleagues in Xijing Hospital and Sun Yat-sen Cancer Center in China, report that DNA methylation can provide effective markers for at least four major cancers, not only correctly differentiating malignant tissues from normal, but also providing information on prognosis and survival.



DNA methylation occurs when methyl groups — one carbon atom bonded to three hydrogen atoms — attach to DNA molecules, changing gene function without changing DNA sequence.

“Choosing the proper cancer treatment with the best chance of recovery and survival depends greatly upon accurately diagnosing the specific type or subtype of cancer,” said Kang Zhang, MD, PhD, founding director of the Institute for Genomic Medicine and co-director of biomaterials and tissue engineering at the Institute of Engineering in Medicine, both at UC San Diego School of Medicine. “If you can do that using a minimally invasive biopsy, it has significant implications for cancer science and medicine. Using DNA methylation markers may be a new and more effective a way forward.”

DNA methylation involves methyl groups — one carbon atom bonded to three hydrogen atoms — attaching to DNA molecules. It is a fundamental epigenetic process that regulates gene function without changing the DNA sequence of a gene, essential to normal development and associated with numerous key processes, including initiation and progression of cancer.

Zhang and colleagues looked at DNA methylation for differentiating tumor tissue and normal tissue for the four most common cancers (lung, breast, colon and liver) in three different databases: a training cohort of 1,619 tumor samples and 173 matched adjacent normal tissue samples; a testing cohort of 791 tumor samples from The Cancer Genome Atlas and 93 matched adjacent normal tissue samples and another independent testing Chinese cohort of 394 tumor samples; and 324 matched adjacent normal tissue samples.

They found that DNA methylation analysis could predict cancer versus normal tissue with more than 95 percent accuracy in the three cohorts, comparable to typical diagnostic methods, according to Zhang.

In addition, the analysis correctly identified 97 percent colorectal cancer metastases to the liver and 94 percent colorectal cancer metastases to the lung. “Since 10 percent of cancers present as metastatic lesions or cancers of unknown primary origin, identification of tissue of origin is critical for choosing a correct therapy. This new simple method will be of great value to pinpoint the primary source of the tumor,” said Michael Karin, co-senior author of the study and Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology, also at UC San Diego School of Medicine.

Zhang suggested DNA methylation has the potential to improve outcomes by providing more accurate diagnoses, particularly of relatively indolent or aggressive tumors that may require more or less aggressive treatment.

“Although we focused on just four common cancers here, we expect that DNA methylation analysis could be easily expanded to aid diagnoses of a much larger number of cancers,” said Zhang. “A great benefit is that this approach requires only a small amount of tissue to obtain adequate DNA for analysis, potentially allowing the use of less invasive biopsies or biopsies of metastatic lesions where the tumor is of unknown primary cancer type.”

He said more studies have been planned to fully explore the clinical applications and potential of DNA methylation and its role in future personalized cancer care.

Co-authors include: Xiaoke Hao, Fourth Military Medical University, Xi’an, China; Huiyan Luo and Rui-hua Xu, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, Guangzhou, China; Michal Krawczyk, Wei Wei, Ken Flagg, Jiayi Hou, Shaohua Yi, Maryam Jafari, Danni Lin, Christopher Chung, Bennett A. Caughey, William Shi, Jie Zhu, Xin Fu, Edward Zhang, Charlotte Zhang, and Debanjan Dhar, UC San Diego; Heng Zhang, Lianghong Zheng, and Rui Hou, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China; and Gen Li and Liang Zhao, Guangzhou Youze Biological Pharmaceutical Technology Company, Guangzhou, China.

Funding for this research came, in part, from the Carol and Dick Hertzberg Fund, the Richard Annesser Fund and the Michael Martin Fund.


https://health.ucsd.edu/news/releas...on-footprint-for-diagnosis-and-prognosis.aspx

Xiaoke Hao et al, DNA methylation markers for diagnosis and prognosis of common cancers, _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_ (2017). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1703577114

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*New research may be cure to Huntington’s Disease *
By Meng Yaping
2017-06-28 09:52 GMT+8

There may be new hope for those suffering from a fatal brain disorder called Huntington’s Disease. Researchers at Emory University, are using a groundbreaking gene editing tool called CRISPR-Cas9 to provide new insight into how the disease works, and possible ways to reverse its devastating effects.

Huntington’s Disease is a genetically inherited condition that leads to nerve cell destruction in the brain. Symptoms which usually appear in mid-life, include uncontrolled muscle movement, balance issues, mood swings and cognitive decline. 

While there is no known cure for Huntington’s, a recent study by Chinese scientists at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia is showing promise. Early results suggest possible treatments for the disease and a path to preventing its occurrence in the first place.



Emory School of Medicine /emory.edu Photo‍

The research is part of an ongoing medical collaboration between the US National Institute of Health (NIH) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China. Under this program, both the US and China contribute funds and scientists for research in both countries.

Using the revolutionary gene editing technique known as CRISPR-Cas9, researchers at Emory were able to reverse the effects of Huntington’s in test mice. The mice had been genetically modified to carry a human version of the huntingtin gene that causes the disease. While considered essential for nervous system development in early life, a mutated huntingtin gene can also produce toxic proteins that cause neural generation.

After nine months, when the mice developed the animal version of Huntington’s Disease, researchers used CRISPR-Cas9 to replace the mutant gene with a normal one and then reintroduce the repaired DNA into mice.



CRISPR is a technology that employs a DNA-splitting enzyme along with a highly focused molecular guide that tell those enzymes where to split. /McGovern Institute Photo

Weeks after treatment, the brain-damaging proteins had almost disappeared and motor functions of the mice dramatically improved, though not to the same level in healthy control mice in which Huntington’s hadn’t been induced.

While the results show promise for future human trials involving humans, clinical trials remain a long way off. The long term effectiveness and safety of CRISPR-Cas9 are still under review.

The study’s senior author Dr. Li Xiaojiang, PhD, is optimistic. “The findings open up an avenue for treating Huntington’s as well as other inherited neurodegenerative diseases, although more testing of safety and long-term effects is needed,” said Li.

In addition to developing a treatment for victims of Huntington’s, the Sino-US research group hopes to develop ways to reduce the risk for people who are genetically predisposed to developing Huntington’s.

Last year, the same group of Emory researchers found they could delete the huntingtin gene in mice older than four months without any known adverse effects. Younger mice without this gene developed fatal pancreatitis. The findings suggest it may someday be possible to safely shut off the gene in adult humans, as well.

Full results of the group’s research were published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation on June 19, 2017.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*New photoacoustic technique detects gases at parts-per-quadrillion level*
June 27, 2017 Media contact: Kevin Stacey 401-863-3766
_The technique enables the detection of gases, such as atmospheric pollutants, present in extremely small quantities that are otherwise difficult or impossible to detect._



*Detection device* Using a new technique a device can detect gases, such as environmental pollutants, in extremely minute concentrations. _Gerald Diebold_

*PROVIDENCE, R.I.* [Brown University] — A team of researchers has found a way to detect trace gases down to concentrations at the parts-per-quadrillion level using a new variation on the photoacoustic effect, a technique that measures the sound generated when light interacts with molecules.

“In many ways, the photoacoustic effect is already the most practical method available for detecting pollutants in the atmosphere,” said Gerald Diebold, a professor of chemistry at Brown University and coauthor of a new paper describing his lab’s research. “But when the concentration of the molecules you’re trying to detect gets down to the parts-per-trillion level, the signal become too weak to detect. We’ve developed a new photoacoustic technique that boosts the signal and enables us to get down to the parts-per-quadrillion level, which to our knowledge is a record.”

The study, which was a collaboration between Diebold’s lab at Brown and the lab of Fapeng Yu at Shandong University in China, is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The photoacoustic effect takes place when a beam of light is absorbed by a gas, liquid or solid causing it to expand. The expansion is a mechanical motion that results in the launching of a sound wave. The effect was first discovered by Alexander Graham Bell in the 1880s but was of little practical value until the invention of the laser, which — as a result of its typically narrow linewidth and high power — made photoacoustic signals large enough to be easily detectable.

Photoacoustic detectors work by zapping a material with a laser tuned to a wavelength that is absorbed by the molecule of interest. In a typical photoacoustic experiment, the laser beam is switched on and off at a frequency that can be detected by a sensitive microphone to listen for any sound waves produced. Different molecules absorb light at different frequencies, so by adjusting the frequency of the laser, it’s possible to fine-tune a detector for specific substances. So to look for ammonia in air, for example, the laser would be tuned to the specific absorption frequency of ammonia molecules. One would then zap an air sample, and if the microphone picks up sound waves, that means the sample contains ammonia.

But the smaller the concentration of the target substance, the quieter the signal. So Diebold and his colleagues used an unconventional technique to boost the signal amplitude.

“What we’ve done is devise a method that relies on three different resonances,” Diebold said. “The signal gets bigger with each resonance.”

Instead of a single laser beam, Diebold and his colleagues combine two beams at a specific frequency and angle. The joining of the beams creates a grating — a pattern of interference between the two beams. When the laser frequencies are tuned just right, the grating travels in a detection cell at the speed of sound, creating an amplification effect at each of the peaks in the grating.

The second resonance is created by a piezoelectric crystal used in the experiment, which vibrates precisely at the frequency of the combined laser beams. The small compressive forces in the pressure waves gradually induce motion in a crystal much in the same way that small, repeated pushes of a playground swing eventually lead to a large amplitude motion of the swing.

The third resonance is generated by adjusting the length of the cavity in which the crystal is mounted so that it resonates when an integral number of half wavelengths of the sound exactly matches the cavity length. The output of the crystal, which is piezoelectric so that it generates a voltage proportional to its oscillatory motion, is sent to amplifiers and sensitive electronic devices to record the acoustic signal.

“One of the reasons that the moving grating method worked so well is that Professor Yu’s group at Shandong University grew a special crystal that gives very large signals in response to the pressure waves,” Diebold said. “We were told that it took them three months to synthesize the crystal.”

In their experiments, the researchers showed that by using those three resonances, they were able to detect the gas sulfur hexafluoride in amounts down to the parts per quadrillion.

Diebold thinks the technique will be useful in developing detectors that are sensitive to very low pollutant gas concentrations, or for detecting molecules that have weak absorptions that make them inherently difficult to detect.

Diebold noted that in carrying out the experiments, he and his colleagues were “amazed to find that because the frequencies are so high — in the hundreds of kilohertz range — that there is virtually no background interference, either from electrical pickup or from acoustic sources such as room noise, wind or vibrations of a building. That means we can do experiments in an open cavity without having to block outside noise. So if you have a landfill and you’re trying to detect methane, for example, you just take this detector, sit it there in the open air and continuously monitor the output.”

There remains some work on engineering a compact instrument before this technique can be used outdoors, but this study offers a convincing proof of concept, the researchers say.

Diebold’s coauthors on the paper were Brown graduate students Lian Xiong and Wenyu Bai, along with Feifei Chen, Xian Zhao and Fapeng Yu from Shandong University in China. The research was funded in part by the U.S. Department of Energy (DE-SC0001082).


New photoacoustic technique detects gases at parts-per-quadrillion level | News from Brown

Lian Xiong et al, Photoacoustic trace detection of gases at the parts-per-quadrillion level with a moving optical grating, _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_ (2017). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1706040114

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*China airlines introduce facial recognition at airport*

2017-06-29 14:35

Xinhua _Editor: Mo Hong'e_

China Southern Airlines became the country's first carrier to use facial recognition, with the technology put into use Wednesday at Jiangying Airport in Nanyang City, Henan Province.

Passengers did not have to get a boarding pass at check-in, as cameras verified their faces with their passport photos.

Also at the boarding gates, the system again confirmed their identity.

Hou Kan, a member of International Air Transport Association, said e-tickets, e-invoices and facial recognition would simplify check-in. Chinese airlines are keen to introduce new systems for the convenience of air travellers.

Before the smart boarding system was launched, China Southern Airlines had notified passengers to download the airlines' app and upload a head shot before going to the airport to check-in.

The system verifies images on the app with passengers' ID photos and their real-time images at the airport. Its takes just one second.

The airline developed the system with Baidu and GRG Banking.

Huang Wenqiang, general manager of the airline's e-commerce division, said the smart-boarding system involved multiple encryption measures, which would prevent personal information theft.

The airline will apply the system later at Beijing's new airport and other airports, said Han Wensheng, deputy general manager of China Southern Airlines.

With a fleet of over 700 aircraft, China Southern operates more than 2,000 flights linking 224 destinations in over 40 countries and regions. Its passenger throughput reached 150 million in 2016.

http://www.ecns.cn/2017/06-29/263464.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Bussard Ramjet said:


> Yeah, but it is not Nature, the main journal, is it. It is published weekly, and the most recent edition didn't have this article.
> 
> The specific word is that it was published online by Nature, as AOP, on its site.
> 
> Now where does it appear in print, is another question entirely.


The 29 June 2017 edition of Nature magazine is out.
The paper is in there ,

*Observation of three-component fermions in the topological semimetal molybdenum phosphide*

B. Q. Lv,
Z.-L. Feng,
Q.-N. Xu,
X. Gao,
J.-Z. Ma,
L.-Y. Kong,
P. Richard,
Y.-B. Huang,
V. N. Strocov,
C. Fang,
H.-M. Weng,
Y.-G. Shi,
T. Qian
& H. Ding

Affiliations
Contributions
Corresponding authors
*Nature*
* 546,*
*627–631*
*(29 June 2017)*
doi:10.1038/nature22390
Received
22 November 2016
Accepted
19 April 2017
Published online
19 June 2017
​

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

JSCh said:


> The 29 June 2017 edition of Nature magazine is out.
> The paper is in there ,
> 
> *Observation of three-component fermions in the topological semimetal molybdenum phosphide*
> 
> B. Q. Lv,
> Z.-L. Feng,
> Q.-N. Xu,
> X. Gao,
> J.-Z. Ma,
> L.-Y. Kong,
> P. Richard,
> Y.-B. Huang,
> V. N. Strocov,
> C. Fang,
> H.-M. Weng,
> Y.-G. Shi,
> T. Qian
> & H. Ding
> 
> Affiliations
> Contributions
> Corresponding authors
> *Nature*
> * 546,*
> *627–631*
> *(29 June 2017)*
> doi:10.1038/nature22390
> Received
> 22 November 2016
> Accepted
> 19 April 2017
> Published online
> 19 June 2017
> ​View attachment 407243​




Cool.


----------



## Han Patriot

Bussard Ramjet said:


> Cool.


This is just some normal physics discovery, nothing groundbreaking.


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

Han Patriot said:


> This is just some normal physics discovery, nothing groundbreaking.



Enough to get published in Nature though.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* NIST ‘Noise Thermometry’ Yields Accurate New Measurements of Boltzmann Constant *
_New results will contribute to international effort to redefine measurement unit for temperature. _

June 29, 2017



This quantum voltage noise source (QVNS) provides a fundamentally accurate voltage signal that can be compared to the voltage noise from electrons in a resistor. Measuring the voltage noise enabled researchers to determine the Boltzmann constant, which relates an energy of a system to its temperature. Credit: Dan Schmidt/NIST

By measuring the random jiggling motion of electrons in a resistor, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have contributed to accurate new measurements of the Boltzmann constant, a fundamental scientific value that relates the energy of a system to its temperature. NIST made one measurement in its Boulder, Colorado, laboratory and collaborated on another in China.

These results will contribute to a worldwide effort to redefine the kelvin, the international unit of temperature, and could lead to better thermometers for industry.

Accurate temperature measurement is critical to any manufacturing process that requires specific temperatures, such as steel production. It’s also important for nuclear power reactors, which require precise thermometers that are not destroyed by radiation and do not need to be regularly replaced by human workers.

“We live with temperature every day,” said Samuel Benz, group leader of the NIST research team involved with the new results. “The current measurements that define the kelvin are 100 times less accurate than measurements defining the units for mass and electricity.” The kilogram is known to parts per billion, while the kelvin is only known to a part in a million.

In late 2018, representatives from nations around the world are expected to vote on whether to redefine the international system of units, known as the SI, at the General Conference on Weights and Measures in France. When implemented in 2019, the new SI would no longer rely upon physical objects or substances to define measurement units. Instead, the new SI would be based on constants of nature such as the Boltzmann constant, which depends fundamentally on quantum mechanics, the theory that describes matter and energy at the atomic scale.

To define the kelvin, scientists currently measure the triple point of water in a sealed glass cell. The triple point is the temperature at which water, ice and water vapor exist in equilibrium. This corresponds to 273.16 kelvins (0.01 degrees Celsius or 32.0 degrees Fahrenheit). The kelvin is defined as 1/273.16 of the measured temperature value.

This method has drawbacks. For example, chemical impurities in the water can slowly lower the cell’s temperature over time. Researchers must also make corrections due to the presence of different isotopes of water (i.e., having the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons). And measurements at temperatures higher or lower than the triple point of water are inherently less precise.

“By defining the kelvin in terms of the Boltzmann constant, you don’t have to have these variations in uncertainty, and you can use quantum-mechanical effects,” said Nathan Flowers-Jacobs, lead author of the paper on the new NIST measurement, accepted for publication in the journal _Metrologia_.

For the Boltzmann constant to be good enough to redefine the kelvin, there are two requirements established by the international group in charge of the issue, known as the Consultative Committee on Thermometry of the International Committee for Weights and Measures. There must be one experimental value with a relative uncertainty below 1 part per million—and at least one measurement from a second technique with a relative uncertainty below 3 parts per million.

So researchers have been pursuing a variety of methods for measuring the Boltzmann constant. The most accurate method remains measurements of the acoustical properties of a gas. A 1988 NIST result yielded a value known to better than 2 parts per million, and more recent measurements have achieved less than 1 part per million. Scientists around the world have devised a variety of other techniques, including ones that measure other properties of gases.

“It’s important to do this measurement with multiple methods that are completely different,” said Benz. “It’s also important that for each method you do multiple measurements.”

A completely different approach is a technique that does not rely on ordinary gases but instead mainly on electrical measurements. The technique measures the degree of random motion—“noise”—of electrons in a resistor. This “Johnson noise” is directly proportional to the temperature of electrons in the resistor—and the Boltzmann constant. Past measurements of Johnson noise were plagued by the problem of measuring tiny voltages with parts-per-million accuracy; this problem is exacerbated by the Johnson noise of the measurement equipment itself.

To address this issue, the NIST researchers in 1999 developed a “quantum voltage noise source” (QVNS) as a voltage reference for Johnson Noise Thermometry (JNT). The QVNS uses a superconducting device known as a Josephson junction to provide a voltage signal that is fundamentally accurate, as its properties are based on the principles of quantum mechanics. The researchers compare the QVNS signal to the voltage noise created by the random motions of electrons in the resistor. In this way, the researchers can accurately measure Johnson noise—and the Boltzmann constant.

In 2011, the group began publishing Boltzmann constant measurements with this technique and has made improvements since then. Compared to the 2011 measurements, the new NIST results are 2.5 times more accurate, with a relative uncertainty of approximately 5 parts per million.

According to Flowers-Jacobs, the improvement came from better shielding of the experimental area from stray electrical noise and upgrades to the electronics. The researchers performed careful “cross-correlation” analysis in which they made two sets of measurements each of the Johnson noise and the quantum voltage noise source to reject other noise sources from the measurement. Other factors included increasing the size of the resistor for a larger source of Johnson noise and better shielding between the different measurement channels for the two sets of measurements.

NIST also contributed expertise as well as a quantum voltage noise source to a new Boltzmann measurement at the National Institute of Metrology in China. Thanks in part to excellent isolation from noise sources, this measurement has a relative uncertainty of 2.8 parts per million, satisfying the second requirement for a redefined kelvin. This new result has also been accepted for publication in _Metrologia_.

“It’s been a very collaborative, international effort,” Benz said. Germany has also begun an effort to develop Johnson noise thermometry for disseminating a primary standard for thermometry.

“All the data will be included” in determining a new Boltzmann constant value, said Horst Rogalla, leader of the NIST Johnson Noise Thermometry Project. “The important point is the condition for redefining the kelvin has been fulfilled.”

Beyond the new SI, devices based on Johnson thermometry have potential for being used directly in industry, including in nuclear reactors.

“At the moment, we are using it to define the kelvin, but afterwards, we will use it as an excellent thermometer,” Rogalla said.

*Papers:*

N.E. Flowers-Jacobs, A. Pollarolo, K.J. Coakley, A.E. Fox, H. Rogalla, W. Tew and S. Benz, A Boltzmann constant determination based on Johnson noise thermometry. _Metrologia_. Accepted manuscript posted online 23 June 2017. Link: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1681-7575/aa7b3f

J. Qu, S. Benz, K. Coakley, H. Rogalla, W. Tew, D. White, K. Zhou and Z. Zhou, An improved electronic determination of the Boltzmann constant by Johnson noise thermometry. _Metrologia_. Accepted manuscript posted online 8 June 2017. Link: http://iopscience.iop.org.nist.idm.oclc.org/article/10.1088/1681-7575/aa781e​

NIST ‘Noise Thermometry’ Yields Accurate New Measurements of Boltzmann Constant | NIST

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese researchers create antioxidant-rich purple rice to combat cancer, other diseases *
Source: Xinhua | 2017-07-03 03:10:32 | Editor: huaxia



Farmers in Yuyao, Zhejiang were doing experiments on cultivating rice of various colors. Senior Agricultural technician Li Minzheng was the main impetus to this project. Picture shows the grains of rice in black, purple, red, yellow, and green colors. (Xinhua file Photo)

WASHINGTON, July 2 (Xinhua) -- Researchers in China have successfully created genetically modified purple rice that is rich in antioxidants and thus has the potential to reduce the risk of cancer and other diseases, according to the study published this week in the journal Molecular Plant.

The added health benefits of the new rice came from high levels of anthocyanins, a group of antioxidant-boosting pigments that also provide the purple, red or blue colors of many fruits and vegetables.

Consumption of rice rich in anthocyanins can benefit human health, decreasing the risk of certain cancers, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and other chronic disorder, said the journal Molecular Plant.

However, previous attempts to engineer anthocyanin production in rice have failed because the underlying biosynthesis pathway is highly complex.

To address this challenge, Yao-Guang Liu of the South China Agricultural University and his colleagues first set out to identify the genes related to anthocyanin production in different rice varieties.

The team also pinpointed the defective genes in japonica and indica, subspecies that do not produce anthocyanins.

Then, the researchers developed what they called "a highly efficient, easy-to-use transgene stacking system" and used it to insert eight genes needed to produce anthocyanin into the japonica and indica rice varieties.

As expected, the resulting purple rice had high anthocyanin levels and antioxidant activity.

"This is the first demonstration of engineering such a complex metabolic pathway in plants," Liu said in a statement.

In the future, the researchers believed that their strategy could be used for the production of many other important nutrients and medicinal ingredients.

The researchers now planned to evaluate the safety of the new purple rice as biofortified food, and they will also try to engineer the biosynthesis of anthocyanins in other crops to produce more purple cereals.

"Our research provides a high-efficiency vector system for stacking multiple genes for synthetic biology and makes it potentially feasible for engineering complex biosynthesis pathways in the endosperm of rice and other crop plants such as maize, wheat, and barley," Liu said.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## EndangeredSpecies

Keel said:


> How about the heavy lift rocket CZ-5; capable of lifting 14T material/spacecraft/satellites to GTO and 8T+ to GEO (lifting our Shijian 17 precisely into GEO on first try!)
> http://spaceflight101.com/cz-5-maiden-flight/shijian-17-settles-in-geostationary-orbit/


How about the latest in Chinese heavy lift rockets?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-space-idUSKBN19N0KZ
*China's new heavy-lift rocket launch fails in flight*






China's launch of a new heavy-lift rocket, the Long March-5 Y2, carrying what the government said was its heaviest ever satellite, failed on Sunday, official news agency Xinhua said.

The same rocket type had been expected to take China's latest lunar probe to the Moon this year and to return with samples. It is not clear how the timetable for that mission could be affected by the failed launch.

President Xi Jinping has prioritized advancing China's space program to strengthen national security and defense, and the government has stressed it is a purely peaceful initiative.

"An anomaly occurred during the flight of the rocket," Xinhua said after the rocket blasted off early evening from the southern island province of Hainan.

"Further investigation will be carried out," it said, without elaborating.

China's space program has largely operated without many major hitches, though it still has a way to go to catch up with the United States and Russia.

In late 2013, China's Jade Rabbit moon rover landed on the Moon to great national fanfare, but ran into severe technical difficulties.

The U.S. Defense Department has highlighted China's increasing space capabilities, saying it was pursuing activities aimed at preventing other nations from using space-based assets in a crisis.

China is preparing to send a man to the Moon, state media cited a senior space official as saying last month.

In 2003, it became the third country to put a man in space with its own rocket after the former Soviet Union and the United States.


----------



## JSCh

*Scientific findings open door for new weight-loss drug*
By China Daily | China Daily USA | Updated: 2017-07-03 07:02

Overweight and obese people might be able to start losing weight by consuming beneficial bacteria after a discovery by scientists at a top medical institution in Shanghai, who aim to use the findings to develop a new weight-loss drug.

Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, or BT, a bacteria that resides in and dominates the human intestinal tract, was found to be able to lower fat content in the diet and slow down weight gain, according to researchers from the Shanghai National Clinical Research Center for Endocrine and Metabolic Diseases at Shanghai Ruijin Hospital.

The discovery, published online by the scientific journal Nature Medicine, has opened the door for further studies on the bacteria's employment in food and drugs that are expected to help lose weight, though more research still needs to be done to test its safety and efficiency.

"In the past, genetic and environmental factors have been cited as the main causes of obesity," said Ning Guang, chairman of the center and an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

"But the microbes living in the intestinal tract are the first to 'taste' food and serve as the leading cause of weight gain," he said.

The findings have been released at a time when the number of obese people in China - already the largest number worldwide - continues to rise and poses an increased health risk given the improved living standards and prevalence of modern sedentary lifestyles.

Worldwide, more than 2 billion people, or one-third of the global population, are now overweight or obese, according to a new study by The New England Journal of Medicine.

The study found that obesity numbers have tripled in children and young adults in countries like China, Brazil and Indonesia. Those numbers are particularly troubling because it means more young people are on track to become obese and develop health problems.

But the scientists at Ruijin Hospital discovered that BT has the capability to metabolize glutamate, the main ingredient in MSG - the intake of which could contribute to the high levels of overweight adults.

However, experts warned that the diet and genetic background of Chinese people are different to those of Westerners, and so are the microbes in their intestinal tract.

Therefore, the study results are more relevant to helping develop a new weight-loss drug for Chinese people, rather than their Western counterparts.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Han Patriot

EndangeredSpecies said:


> How about the latest in Chinese heavy lift rockets?
> 
> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-space-idUSKBN19N0KZ
> *China's new heavy-lift rocket launch fails in flight*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> China's launch of a new heavy-lift rocket, the Long March-5 Y2, carrying what the government said was its heaviest ever satellite, failed on Sunday, official news agency Xinhua said.
> 
> The same rocket type had been expected to take China's latest lunar probe to the Moon this year and to return with samples. It is not clear how the timetable for that mission could be affected by the failed launch.
> 
> President Xi Jinping has prioritized advancing China's space program to strengthen national security and defense, and the government has stressed it is a purely peaceful initiative.
> 
> "An anomaly occurred during the flight of the rocket," Xinhua said after the rocket blasted off early evening from the southern island province of Hainan.
> 
> "Further investigation will be carried out," it said, without elaborating.
> 
> China's space program has largely operated without many major hitches, though it still has a way to go to catch up with the United States and Russia.
> 
> In late 2013, China's Jade Rabbit moon rover landed on the Moon to great national fanfare, but ran into severe technical difficulties.
> 
> The U.S. Defense Department has highlighted China's increasing space capabilities, saying it was pursuing activities aimed at preventing other nations from using space-based assets in a crisis.
> 
> China is preparing to send a man to the Moon, state media cited a senior space official as saying last month.
> 
> In 2003, it became the third country to put a man in space with its own rocket after the former Soviet Union and the United States.


Do you really need to stoop so low?


----------



## JSCh

* Across China: Archeologists find 5,000-year-old giants *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-07-03 21:09:52_|_Editor: An_





JINAN, July 3 (Xinhua) -- Archeologists have found some people in east China 5,000 years ago to be unusually tall and strong.

Measurements of bones from graves in Shandong Province show the height of at least one man to have reached 1.9 meters with quite a few at 1.8 meters or taller.

"This is just based on the bone structure. If he was a living person, his height would certainly exceed 1.9 meters," said Fang Hui, head of Shandong University's school of history and culture.

From 2016, archeologists have been excavating the ruins of 104 houses, 205 graves and 20 sacrificial pits at Jiaojia village in Zhangqiu District, Jinan City, capital of Shandong.

The relics are from the Longshan Culture, a late Neolithic civilization in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, named after Mount Longshan in Zhangqiu.

"Already agricultural at that time, people had diverse and rich food resources and thus their physique changed, "said Fang.

Millet was the major crop and people raised pigs, according to Fang. Pig bones and teeth were found in some graves.

According to the findings, taller men were found in larger tombs, possibly because such people had a high status and were able to acquire better food.

Shandong locals believe height to be one of their defining characteristics. Confucius (551-479 B.C.), a native of the region, was said to be about 1.9 meters tall.

Official statistics back up the claim. In 2015, the average height of men aged 18 in Shandong was 1.753 meters, compared with a national average of 1.72 meters.

Ruins of rows of houses in the area indicate that people lived quite comfortable lives, with separate bedrooms and kitchens, according to the excavations.

Colorful pottery and jade articles have also been found, said Wang Fen, head of the Jiaojia excavation team.

The area was believed to the political, economic and cultural center of northern Shandong 5,000 years ago. Ruins of ditches and clay embankments were also found.

The Jiaojia ruins fill a cultural blank 4,500 to 5,000 years ago in the lower reaches of the Yellow River, said Wang Yongbo of the Shandong Provincial Institute of Archeology.

Archaeologists found obvious damage to the head and leg bones of some of the bodies and to pottery and jade articles in six large tombs. The damage may have been done not long after the burials and may be due to power struggles among high-ranking people.

Li Boqian, an archaeologist with Peking University, said the excavations showed Jiaojia in a transition phase, but proved the existence of ancient states 5,000 years ago in the basin of lower Yellow River.

The range of the Jiaojia site has been enlarged from an initial 240,000 square meters to 1 sq km. Currently, only 2,000 square meters has been excavated.

"Further study and excavation of the site is of great value to our understanding of the origin of culture in east China," said Zhou Xiaobo, deputy head of Shandong provincial bureau of cultural heritage.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## rendong

BOE Flexible OLED, 27" 8K, Bezel-less, foldable phone, AMQLED, 4K and more

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

* China to cooperate with Japan on stellarator *
By Leng Shumei Source:Global Times Published: 2017/7/4 22:33:39

China has reached an agreement with Japan to build its first quasi-axisymmetric stellarator, the latest move to explore nuclear energy.

Southwest Jiaotong University (STU) and National Institute for Fusion Science of Japan Monday signed a cooperation agreement in Chengdu, capital of Southwest China's Sichuan Province, read a statement sent by the university to the Global Times on Tuesday.

A working staffer at the university surnamed Chen, who is engaged with the project, told the Global Times that "the two sides are still negotiating the implementation of the project."

Nuclear fusion, which powers the sun and all stars in the universe, is regarded as the alternative way to provide sustainable, zero-emission and relatively cheap power to grids.

Stellarator and tokamak are the world's two most important devices to sustain nuclear fusion reaction with magnetic confinement as well as the two fusion devices that are most likely to be viable power sources.

According to the statement, stellarator, which imitates the function of the fixed star, requires more complex techniques to build than tokamak but can avoid large rupture caused by plasma current.

Tang Chuanxiang, director of the Department of Engineering Physics of Tsinghua University, told the Global Times on Tuesday that "China has achieved much progress in tokamak research, but is still at an early stage in stellarator research."

China launched studies in stellarator in the 1970s but failed. It is now one of the seven members of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor plan, together with the US and Russia, to build the world's first tokamak fusion reactor, the statement said, adding that cooperation between China and Japan would help create conditions for China to build large stellarator devices in the future.

SJU's move came less than one month after the University of South China (USC) signed a memorandum of understanding with Australian National University (ANU) with the ANU agreeing to provide the USC with its plasma stellarator device, hopefully by the end of this year, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

Working under the memorandum, China and Australia aim to jointly develop a future energy source for the world, making fusion a viable baseload power source by 2050.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists set global record with artificial sun*
chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2017-07-05 13:52



Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak in Hefei, East China's Anhui province. [Photo/CCTV.com]

Chinese scientists have successfully operated an experimental thermonuclear fusion reactor to achieve high-confinement plasma for more than 100 seconds, a new record length of time in the world.
The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) in Hefei, East China's Anhui province, has been dubbed as artificial sun since it replicates the energy-generating process of the sun.

In the latest experiment, the facility created steady-state high-constrained plasma-emitting for 101.2 seconds under a temperature of 50 million C. The facility set the record time of 60 seconds in November.

The achievement is expected to improve the development of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), the largest international program dedicated to thermonuclear fusion experiments.

China independently designed and constructed the EAST in 2006. The facility is 11 meters tall, with a diameter of 8 meters, and a weight of 400 tons. It is run by the Institute of Plasma Physics in Hefei. In 2012, its tungsten diverters and auxiliary heating system were upgraded.







东方超环实现的世界最长101.2秒高约束放电等离子体的基本参数 
（Ip=0.4MA, Bt=2.5T, PRF=3.0MW, ne=3.0x1019/m3, Te=4.0KeV, H98y2=1.1, USN）

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*EAST Achieves 100s World Record Steady-state High Performance Plasma*
2017-07-05

EAST superconducting tokamak made an exciting advance in achieving a stable 101.2 second steady-state high confinement plasma, creating a new world record in long-pulse H-mode operation on July 3rd night. 

The obtained high confinement mode features the edge localized modes (ELMs) with small perturbation amplitude under the condition of low-momentum injection with pure RF (LHCD, ICRF, ECRH) wave heating, actively cooled ITER-like monoblock tungsten divertor. With effective control of the divertor target heat load and tungsten impurity influx and the center chord average electron density being maintained at > 50% Greenwald density limit, EAST achieved a fully non-inductive current driven steady-state high-performance plasma with a confinement enhancement factor H98y2 greater than 1.1 for more than 100 seconds. All the plasma parameters, including recycling, particle and heat fluxes, reached truly steady-state after 20s, the wall saturate time for the W divertor and maintained stable to the end of discharge.

Excited about the results, Chief Operator Xianzu Gong immediately shared the good news with some of EAST domestic and international partners in midnight via social media. Having operating EAST since 2006, Gong has witnessed every advance made on the machine as well as its setbacks. This breakthrough, he believes, indicates EAST will “continue to play a key role on both physics and engineering fronts of steady-state operation, and has significant scientific implications for the International Thermonuclear Fusion Reactor (ITER) and the future China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR)”.

“It is a success of joint efforts,” added Gong. The EAST team has worked together with their collaborators at home and abroad over the past decade solving a series of key technical and physical issues closely related to the steady-state operation, and carried out in-depth scientific research on integrated operation scenarios with effective coupling of multi-scale physical processes.

EAST 2017 experimental campaign will go on for about one more month and the second round of experiment will start in autumn of this year.







Basic parameters of the world’s longest 101.2 s high confinement discharge achieved on EAST （Bt=2.5T, PRF=3.0MW, ne/neGW=0.55, Te=4.0KeV, H98y2=1.1, Upper single null configuration ）


EAST Achieves 100s World Record Steady-state High Performance Plasma----Institute of Plasma Physics Chinese Academy Of Scieneces

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Keel

JSCh said:


> *EAST Achieves 100s World Record Steady-state High Performance Plasma*
> 2017-07-05
> 
> EAST superconducting tokamak made an exciting advance in achieving a stable 101.2 second steady-state high confinement plasma, creating a new world record in long-pulse H-mode operation on July 3rd night.
> 
> The obtained high confinement mode features the edge localized modes (ELMs) with small perturbation amplitude under the condition of low-momentum injection with pure RF (LHCD, ICRF, ECRH) wave heating, actively cooled ITER-like monoblock tungsten divertor. With effective control of the divertor target heat load and tungsten impurity influx and the center chord average electron density being maintained at > 50% Greenwald density limit, EAST achieved a fully non-inductive current driven steady-state high-performance plasma with a confinement enhancement factor H98y2 greater than 1.1 for more than 100 seconds. All the plasma parameters, including recycling, particle and heat fluxes, reached truly steady-state after 20s, the wall saturate time for the W divertor and maintained stable to the end of discharge.
> 
> Excited about the results, Chief Operator Xianzu Gong immediately shared the good news with some of EAST domestic and international partners in midnight via social media. Having operating EAST since 2006, Gong has witnessed every advance made on the machine as well as its setbacks. This breakthrough, he believes, indicates EAST will “continue to play a key role on both physics and engineering fronts of steady-state operation, and has significant scientific implications for the International Thermonuclear Fusion Reactor (ITER) and the future China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR)”.
> 
> “It is a success of joint efforts,” added Gong. The EAST team has worked together with their collaborators at home and abroad over the past decade solving a series of key technical and physical issues closely related to the steady-state operation, and carried out in-depth scientific research on integrated operation scenarios with effective coupling of multi-scale physical processes.
> 
> EAST 2017 experimental campaign will go on for about one more month and the second round of experiment will start in autumn of this year.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Basic parameters of the world’s longest 101.2 s high confinement discharge achieved on EAST （Bt=2.5T, PRF=3.0MW, ne/neGW=0.55, Te=4.0KeV, H98y2=1.1, Upper single null configuration ）
> 
> 
> EAST Achieves 100s World Record Steady-state High Performance Plasma----Institute of Plasma Physics Chinese Academy Of Scieneces



Congrats! Still a long long way to go!


----------



## JSCh

*Using buoys, China builds tsunami monitoring network in South China Sea*
(People's Daily Online) 17:06, July 05, 2017



_Technicians deploy a tsunami detection buoy into the water. (file photo)_

The Manila Trench is associated with frequent earthquakes in the Pacific Ocean. Because of this, China has deployed two sets of tsunami detection buoys along the Trench for the first time, marking the completion of the country's tsunami monitoring buoys network in South China Sea, Science and Technology Daily reported on July 5.

The buoys are equipped with new technology, which has significantly improved their accuracy. They can detect as little as 5 millimeters in sea level rise caused by tsunamis. Once there is a tsunami earthquake, the subtle fluctuations are detected and that data is sent via satellites to the South China Sea branch of the China's State Oceanic Administration and the National Tsunami Early Warning Center.

The detection network is expected to provide a two-hour early warning for residents in China's coastal areas and countries in the South China Sea.

The two sets of tsunami detection buoys is an important component of China's tsunami monitoring and early warning system.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

06 July 2017
*Chances of hypersonic travel heat up with new materials discovery *
 


​ 
Researchers at The University of Manchester in collaboration with Central South University (CSU), China, have created a new kind of ceramic coating that could revolutionise hypersonic travel for air, space and defense purposes.

Hypersonic travel means moving at Mach five or above, which is at least five times faster than the speed of sound. When moving at such velocity the heat generated by air and gas in the atmosphere is extremely hot and can have a serious impact on an aircraft or projectile’s structural integrity. That is because he temperatures hitting the aircraft can reach anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 *°*C.

The structural problems are primarily caused by processes called oxidation and ablation. This is the when extremely hot air and gas remove surface layers from the metallic materials of the aircraft or object travelling at such high speeds. To combat the problem materials called ultra-high temperature ceramics (UHTCs) are needed in aero-engines and hypersonic vehicles such as rockets, re-entry spacecraft and defence projectiles.

But, at present, even conventional UHTCs can’t currently satisfy the associated ablation requirements of travelling at such extreme speeds and temperatures. However, the researchers at The University of Manchester’s and the Royce Institute, in collaboration with the Central South University of China, have designed and fabricated a new carbide coating that is vastly superior in resisting temperatures up to 3,000 *°*C, when compared to existing UHTCs.

Professor Philip Withers, Regius Professor from The University of Manchester, says: “Future hypersonic aerospace vehicles offer the potential of a step jump in transit speeds. A hypersonic plane could fly from London to New York in just two hours and would revolutionise both commercial and commuter travel.

“But at present one of the biggest challenges is how to protect critical components such as leading edges, combustors and nose tips so that they survive the severe oxidation and extreme scouring of heat fluxes at such temperatures cause to excess during flight.”





Future hypersonic aerospace vehicles offer the potential of a step jump in transit speeds. A hypersonic plane could fly from London to New York in just two hours and would revolutionise both commercial and commuter travel.
Professor Philip Withers​
So far, the carbide coating developed by teams in both University of Manchester and Central South University is proving to be 12 times better than the conventional UHTC, Zirconium carbide (ZrC). ZrC is an extremely hard refractory ceramic material commercially used in tool bits for cutting tools.

The much improved performance of the coating is due to its unique structural make-up and features manufactured at the Powder Metallurgy Institute, Central South University and studied in University of Manchester, School of Materials. This includes extremely good heat resistance and massively improved oxidation resistance.

What makes this coating unique is it has been made using a process called reactive melt infiltration (RMI), which dramatically reduces the time needed to make such materials, and has been in reinforced with carbon–carbon composite (C/C composite). This makes it not only strong but extremely resistant to the usual surface degradation.

Professor Ping Xiao, Professor of Materials Science, who led the study in University of Manchester explains: “Current candidate UHTCs for use in extreme environments are limited and it is worthwhile exploring the potential of new single-phase ceramics in terms of reduced evaporation and better oxidation resistance. In addition, it has been shown that introducing such ceramics into carbon fibre- reinforced carbon matrix composites may be an effective way of improving thermal-shock resistance.”

*Advanced Materials*

Advanced materials is one of The University of Manchester’s research beacons - examples of pioneering discoveries, interdisciplinary collaboration and cross-sector partnerships that are tackling some of the biggest questions facing the planet.

*Referecne:* "Ablation-resistant carbide Zr0.8Ti0.2C0.74B0.26 for oxidizing environments up to 3,000 °C" Yi Zeng, Dini Wang, Xiang Xiong, Xun Zhang, Philip J. Withers, Wei Sun, Matthew Smith, Mingwen Bai & Ping Xiao Article number: 15836 (2017) doi:10.1038/ncomms15836 


http://www.manchester.ac.uk/discove...-travel-heat-up-with-new-materials-discovery/

*Abstract*

Ultra-high temperature ceramics are desirable for applications in the hypersonic vehicle, rockets, re-entry spacecraft and defence sectors, but few materials can currently satisfy the associated high temperature ablation requirements. Here we design and fabricate a carbide (Zr0.8Ti0.2C0.74B0.26) coating by reactive melt infiltration and pack cementation onto a C/C composite. It displays superior ablation resistance at temperatures from 2,000–3,000 °C, compared to existing ultra-high temperature ceramics (for example, a rate of material loss over 12 times better than conventional zirconium carbide at 2,500 °C). The carbide is a substitutional solid solution of Zr–Ti containing carbon vacancies that are randomly occupied by boron atoms. The sealing ability of the ceramic’s oxides, slow oxygen diffusion and a dense and gradient distribution of ceramic result in much slower loss of protective oxide layers formed during ablation than other ceramic systems, leading to the superior ablation resistance.​

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Effective component in ginseng successfully cultivated*
By Cai Wenjun | 14:54 UTC+8 July 4, 2017 |



Online Edition 




LOCAL scientists said they are able to cultivate ginsenoside, an effective component in ginseng from yeast. This means the component can be produced in a professional workshop instead of growing on the land, free of threat from water and soil pollution and pesticide residue.

It is one of the new achievements of synthetic biology, which has attracted scientists all over the world, experts said during a forum on the subject launched in Shanghai.

“Synthetic biology is an interdisciplinary branch of biology and engineering. It has become a very popular topic in the science field,” said Wang Yong from the Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology and vice director of synthetic biology key laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “Our scientists have been able to cultivate special plants through the technology, thus reducing plant’s disease and boosting their production.”

According to Wang, the new technology can be very meaningful to traditional Chinese medicine, grain, new material development.

“Scientists have started to use bacteria to develop a protein the same with cobweb for clothing materials,” he said. “Local scientists also developed an intelligent diabetes management system with combination of biology and electric engineering.”

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*China’s quantum satellite adds two new tricks to its repertoire*
Era of ultrasecure communication inches closer

11:00am, July 7, 2017 
By Emily Conover 



*BEAM ME UP, SCOTTY* China’s quantum satellite has met two more milestones, performing quantum teleportation and transmitting quantum encryption keys through space. Scientists teleported the properties of photons, or particles of light, from a ground station in Tibet (shown in this composite photo) to the satellite.
Xinhua/Alamy​
A record-breaking quantum satellite has again blown away the competition, achieving two new milestones in long-distance quantum communications through space.

In June, Chinese researchers demonstrated that the satellite Micius could send entangled quantum particles to far-flung locations on Earth, their properties remaining intertwined despite being separated by more than 1,200 kilometers (_SN Online: 6/15/17_). Now researchers have used the satellite to teleport particles’ properties and transmit quantum encryption keys. The result, reported in two papers published online July 3 and July 4 at arXiv.org, marks the first time the two techniques have been demonstrated in space.

In quantum teleportation, the properties of one particle are transferred to another. The scientists first sent particles of light, or photons, from the ground to the satellite — a distance of up to 1,400 kilometers. When the researchers made particular measurements of other photons on the ground, the spacefaring particles took on the properties of the landlubbers, thanks to quantum entanglement between the earthbound and satellite-based particles. Although it’s a far cry from the _Star Trek_ variety of teleportation, the process is an important ingredient of quantum communication.

Quantum key distribution is a method of creating a secret string of random numbers that can be used to encrypt communications. The researchers beamed photons from the satellite to Earth over distances of up to 1,200 kilometers, using the photons’ polarization, the orientation of their electromagnetic waves, to transmit a string of random numbers with utmost security.

Quantum communication via satellite can reach greater distances than land-based transmission, because in space, particles don’t get absorbed by the atmosphere. The new results pave the way for a global quantum internet that would provide for ultrasecure communications and allow quantum computers to work together.

Citations
J.-G. Ren et al. Ground-to-satellite quantum teleportation. arXiv:1707.00934. Posted July 4, 2017.

S.-K. Liao et al. Satellite-to-ground quantum key distribution. arXiv:1707.00542. Posted July 3, 2017.
​China’s quantum satellite adds two new tricks to its repertoire | Science News

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 7-Jul-2017
* Strange silk: Why rappelling spiders don't spin out of control *
Dragline silk from golden orb weaver spiders dissipates energy to prevent spinning

American Institute of Physics



​The golden silk orb weaver (_Nephila pilipes_) creates dragline silk that prevents it from spinning while hanging from its web.
Credit: Kai Peng of Huazhong University of Science and Technology

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 7, 2017 -- The last time you watched a spider drop from the ceiling on a line of silk, it likely descended gracefully on its dragline instead of spiraling uncontrollably, because spider silk has an unusual ability to resist twisting forces.

In a new paper appearing this week in _Applied Physics Letters_, from AIP Publishing, researchers from China and the U.K. showed that unlike human hair, metal wires or synthetic fibers, spider silk partially yields when twisted. This property quickly dissipates the energy that would otherwise send an excited spider spinning on the end of its silk.

"Spider silk is very different from other, more conventional materials," said Dabiao Liu of Huazhong University of Science and Technology. "We find that the dragline from the web hardly twists, so we want to know why."

A greater understanding of how spider silk resists spinning could lead to biomimetic fibers that mimic these properties for multiple potential uses such as in violin strings, helicopter rescue ladders and parachute cords. "If we understood how spider silk achieves this, then maybe we could incorporate the properties into our own synthetic ropes," said David Dunstan of Queen Mary University of London.


---> Strange silk: Why rappelling spiders don't spin out of control | EurekAlert! Science News

###​
The article, "Peculiar torsion dynamical response of spider dragline silk," is authored by Dabiao Liu, Longteng Yu, Yuming He, Kai Peng, Jie Liu, Juan Guan and D. J. Dunstan. The article appeared in _Applied Physics Letters_ July 5, 2017 (DOI: 10.1063/1.4990676) and can be accessed at http://aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/1.4990676.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* Chinese city completes tests of quantum communication network *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-07-10 00:16:47_|_Editor: Mu Xuequan_





JINAN, July 9 (Xinhua) -- Quantum communication network, which boasts ultra-safe connection impenetrable to hackers, is expected to be put into commercial use in a Chinese city by the end of next month.

Jinan Institute of Quantum Technology announced Sunday that the network, connecting Communist Party and government bodies in Jinan, capital of east China's Shandong Province, had lately been tested and the designers were satisfied with its performance, especially in secured communications.

Liu Hong, a professor with Shandong University who was involved in the test, said the network has proved to be in a "very ideal" condition.

In the test, which involved over 50 programs, the network transmitted data with quantum encryption keys among nearly 200 terminals in the city. Between users, more than 4,000 keys were generated in just a second, said Zhou Fei, an assistant director of the institute.

Quantum communication uses quantum entanglement of photons to make sure that nobody taps into the line, for doing so would inevitably corrupt the signal.

In quantum communication, any interference is detectable. Two parties can exchange secret messages by sharing an encryption key encoded in the properties of entangled particles.

Zhou said the success of the test is a landmark in the development of quantum communication technology worldwide, paving the way for its commercial use first in government and then in finance, energy and other sectors.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*China's first unmanned lifeguard speedboat unveiled in Hefei *
By Wang Xueying
2017-07-10 11:25 GMT+8 




In China, lifeguards might soon join a growing list of professionals who will be replaced by robots or at least working with them in their jobs. The Institute of Intelligent Machines (IIM) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced recently that it has launched the country's first unmanned speedboat designed to save people from drowning.

The craft made its debut in Hefei, capital of east China's Anhui Province, to monitor swimmers and tourists at the Swan Lake, where drownings often occur, said the IIM.

The speedboat is equipped with cameras, GPS and infrared sensors to detect "moving targets" in the water, said Yu Yangdao, who led the unmanned craft's development. 

Once a swimmer crosses the danger line, the speedboat will locate him or her, calculate the risk of drowning, and send a signal to the command center. The rescue team will then be alerted to take actions at once for the swimmer in danger.



A model of the China-developed unmanned survey vessel on display. /VCG Photo

In fact, the use of driverless vessels in China has been restricted due to environmental factors for a long time. Yu said the unmanned lifeguard speedboat marked a breakthrough in China, whose unmanned vessels have been technologically inferior to the ones manufactured in the United Stated and Israel in the past.

In the future, the unmanned speedboat will be used to patrol rivers, reservoirs, lakes, and seas.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*China unlocks key technologies for wave power*
By Shan Xin (People's Daily Online) 13:53, July 11, 2017

A wave energy device developed by No. 38 Research Institute of CETC (CETC38) passed state acceptance criteria on July 10.

The institute has made important progress in key technologies, such as hydraulic conversion and control, as well as power inversion. Constant output can now be realized and power can be stored, even in a wave of less than 0.5 meters in height.

The institute has been testing the technology for three years. Smart integrated control and wide-range inverter technologies are used to improve the efficiency of power conversion. The results proved to be successful, as the device can float and absorb waves, thus storing and generating power.

The head of the project, Wang Zhen, introduced the highlights of the device: “The floater rides waves like a ship and can return to the shore if a major storm appears. Installed capacity of the device is 5 kilowatts, but more can be installed in the future. Standard electricity can be provided through a grid connection.”

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*CSNS RCS Proton Beam Accelerated to 1.6 GeV*
Jul 11, 2017

On July 7, 2017, scientists and technicians from the China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS) successfully accelerated a proton beam to 1.6 GeV in the Rapid Cycling Synchrotron (RCS), marking a key step in beam commissioning as well as an important milestone for the CSNS project.

The first round of RCS beam commissioning began on May 31, 2017, and ended with a successful beam accumulation and extraction to the R-Dump on June 5, 2017. The second round began on July 3, 2017, and the proton beam was accelerated to 1.6 GeV on July 7, 2017. Two days later, the beam transmission rate became very close to 100%, with barely any beam loss through the whole process.

The RCS at CSNS is the first rapid cycling synchrotron in China. There were many theoretical and technical challenges in the design, construction and beam commissioning, one of which was to complete injection, accumulation, acceleration and extraction of a proton beam within 20 ms. After much sustained effort, the CSNS team has successfully overcome these difficulties.

"We have worked on improving the accelerator technology for CSNS for many years. It is our joint effort that has made it successful,” said Professor WANG Sheng, deputy director of the Accelerator Division of CSNS.


CSNS RCS Proton Beam Accelerated to 1.6 GeV---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## ashok321

BMW opens R&D in China, largest outside Germany







BEIJING: BMW motors on Thursday opened a new research and development (R&D) centre in China, the largest outside of Germany. 

The new R&D centre, covering an area of over 40,000 sq.metres, is located in Shenyang, capital of Liaoning province, reports Xinhua news agency. 

It is an extension of the original one built in 2012, and is five times larger than the first-stage project. 

About 75 per cent of the 800-plus research personnel are Chinese, the company said, adding that the centre will focus on new energy technology to establish a complete R&D and production chain in China. 


China has become the largest single market for BMW automotive vehicles. Earlier in May, the BMW assembly plant in Shenyang's Dadong district began operations. 

Last January, an engine plant also began production in Shenyang.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*Chinese scientists crack secret of 'winner effect'*

2017-07-14 09:23

Xinhua _Editor: Gu Liping_

Chinese researchers may have revealed the secret of why animals increase their probability of victory after previous winnings, a phenomenon known as the "winner effect."

In a study published Thursday in the U.S. journal, Professor Hailan Hu's research group from Zhejiang University in China reported identifying for the first time a neural circuit in the brains of mice that plays a role in social dominance.

Stimulating brain cells in this circuit, known as dorsalmedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), significantly boosted a mouse's chance of becoming the "winner" during aggressive encounters with other mice.

"Getting to the top of social hierarchy is often not a matter of body size or brute strength, but rather determined by intrinsic mental factors such as grit, as well as extrinsic factors such as history of winning. For example, social dominance can be reinforced by a phenomenon known as the 'winner effect,'" Hu said. "However, the neural mechanism that mediates these intrinsic and extrinsic factors was poorly understood."

For the study, Hu's team performed a standard social dominance test that put male mice in a tube to face each other. Usually the subordinate animal would retreat and back out of the tube.

Then, the researchers recorded how much each one engages in certain behaviors such as push initiation, push-back, resistance, retreat, or stillness.

By monitoring individual brain cells in the dmPFC during such tests, they found a particular subset became more active during both push and resistance behaviors.

In mice with an established social rank, the researchers inhibited this subset of dominance brain cells using a drug and found within hours, these mice engaged in significantly fewer and shorter pushes and push-backs, but in more retreats.

Next the researchers used optogenetics to stimulate the dmPFC cells continuously during a social dominance encounter.

This instantaneously induced winning against previously dominant opponents with a 90 percent success rate, without affecting the motor performance or anxiety level.

"Importantly, dmPFC activation does not seem to boost dominance by enhancing basal aggression level or physical strength, but rather by initiating and maintaining more effortful behaviors during social competition," Hu said.

The findings could have important implications for treating psychiatric diseases, the researchers said.

"Considering that an excess or lack of dominance drive is associated with many personality disorders and mental problems, our results might shed light on the treatment of these psychiatric diseases," the study said.

http://www.ecns.cn/2017/07-14/265363.shtml


----------



## cirr

*China’s third science center to take shape by 2020*

By Zhang Huan (People's Daily Online) 

July 13, 2017





The science center in Zhangjiang, Shanghai (file photo)

China’s third comprehensive national science center in Huairou, Beijing, is to take shape by 2020 and become world-renowned by 2030. The projections are based on the construction plan and outlook of the center as disclosed at the first international seminar on comprehensive science centers held on July 12, Xinhuanet.com reported.

The science center will focus on key scientific areas, including physical science, space science and geosciences, in order to give full support to innovation of core technologies in relation to development of national economy and emerging industries.

Meanwhile, construction of the centre’s first five interdisciplinary platforms is underway according to plans.

Approved by China’s National Development and Reform Commission as well as the Ministry of Science and Technology in May, the center is China’s third after those in Zhangjiang, Shanghai and Hefei, Anhui province. 

http://en.people.cn/n3/2017/0713/c90000-9241399.html

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Brain activity helps build an alpha male *
*Experiments with dueling mice locate a brain region that helps them jump the pecking order*


 By Laurel Hamers
2:00pm, July 13, 2017
Boosting the activity of certain brain cells can help a mouse climb the social ladder.

Nerve cells in a region called the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex appear to control whether male mice are dominant or submissive to other males, researchers report in the July 14 _Science_. The finding adds to previous evidence that this brain region is involved in social interactions in mammals.

Like men flexing muscles or flaunting sports cars to win status, male mice compete to establish a social pecking order. When every mouse knows his place, there can be less social conflict in the long run, says James Curley, a neurobiologist at the University of Texas at Austin who wasn’t part of the study.

In dominance tests, researchers pitted mice head-to-head in a plastic tube too narrow for the animals to pass each other. With no way forward, the lower-ranking mouse eventually retreats, pushed out of the tube by the more dominant mouse.

Researchers recorded the activity of individual nerve cells, or neurons, in mice’s brains while they engaged in the tube test. A group of neurons in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex fired faster when mice were pushing forward to claim space in the tube, and fired more slowly as the mice retreated, says study coauthor Hailan Hu, a neuroscientist at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China.

Hu’s team then manipulated the activity of those neurons and once again measured the mice’s performance in the tube. Mice with these neurons inactivated via druglike small molecules didn’t try as hard on the tube task and were more likely to lose the competition, the researchers found. Mice with those neurons amped up with light, on the other hand, won against opponents who had previously beaten them. If those mice won enough times in one day, they’d even keep their newly elevated status for two or three days.

_Story continues below video_




*ALPHA MOUSE * Researchers put male mice head-to-head in a tube and observed their behavior to determine dominance. The bars along the top of the screen tracks each mouse’s behavior moment by moment — whether he’s pushing, resisting or retreating. Eventually, the dominant mouse pushes the subordinate one out of the tube. T. Zhou et al/_Science_ 2017 

Other studies have also suggested a role for the prefrontal cortex in controlling social dynamics in several species, including humans, Curley says. The new study adds detail by allowing the researchers to track how neural firing influences behavior immediately and then follow the effect over time.

However, the tube experiment measures dominance dynamics in pairs of mice, Curley points out, rather than in larger groups. “Whether the same mechanism underlies social dominance under all contexts is yet to be discovered,” he says.

Other factors, such as an animal’s size, can also influence its ability to win a fight. But Hu says that persistence is key, and that this group of neurons appears to affect that quality. “In risk tests, what's important is how much effort you want to put into the competition,” she says. “Some mice quit easily.”

Mouse studies like this one don’t translate directly to humans. But they allow scientists to study the neurobiology of dominance behaviors in levels of detail that aren’t possible in human subjects.

The study tested only male mice. In the future, Hu wants to find out whether a similar brain mechanism holds for female mice, too.

Citations

T. Zhou et al. History of winning remodels thalamo-PFC circuit to reinforce social dominance. _Science._ Vol. 357, July 14, 2017, p. 162. doi: 10.1126/science.aak9726.​

Brain activity helps build an alpha male | Science News


----------



## JSCh

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 11, 2017
RELEASE NO: NOAO 17-03
*Distant Galaxies ‘Lift the Veil’ on the End of the Cosmic Dark Ages*

Astronomers studying the distant Universe have found that small star-forming galaxies were abundant when the Universe was only 800 million years old, a few percent of its present age. The results suggest that the earliest galaxies, which illuminated and ionized the Universe, formed at even earlier times.

Long ago, about 300,000 years after the beginning of the Universe (the Big Bang), the Universe was dark. There were as yet no stars and galaxies, and the Universe was filled with neutral hydrogen gas. At some point the first galaxies appeared, and their energetic radiation ionized their surroundings, the intergalactic gas, illuminating and transforming the Universe.

While this dramatic transformation is known to have occurred sometime in the interval between 300 million years and 1 billion years after the Big Bang, determining when the first galaxies formed is a challenge. The intergalactic gas, which is initially neutral, strongly absorbs and scatters the ultraviolet light emitted by the galaxies, making them difficult to detect.

To home in on when the transformation occurred, astronomers take an indirect approach. Using the demographics of small star-forming galaxies to determine when the intergalactic gas became ionized, they can infer when the ionizing sources, the first galaxies, formed. If star forming galaxies, which glow in the light of the hydrogen Lyman alpha line, are surrounded by neutral hydrogen gas, the Lyman alpha photons are readily scattered, much like headlights in fog, obscuring the galaxies. When the gas is ionized, the fog lifts, and the galaxies are easier to detect.

A new study taking this approach has discovered 23 candidate Lyman alpha emitting galaxies (LAEs) that were present 800 million years after the Big Bang (at a redshift of z~7), the largest sample detected to date at that epoch. The study, “Lyman-Alpha Galaxies in the Epoch of Reionization” (LAGER), was carried out by an international team of astronomers from China, the US, and Chile using the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the CTIO 4-m Blanco telescope.

While the study detected many LAEs, it also found that LAEs were 4 times less common at 800 million years than they were a short time later, at 1 billion years (at a redshift of z~5.7). The results imply that the process of ionizing the Universe began early and was still incomplete at 800 million years, with the intergalactic gas about half neutral and half ionized at that epoch. The low incidence rate of LAEs at 800 million years results from the suppression of their Lyman alpha emission by neutral intergalactic gas.

The study shows that “the fog was already lifting when the universe was 5% of its current age”, explained Sangeeta Malhotra (Goddard Space Flight Center and Arizona State University), one of the co-leads of the survey.

Junxian Wang (USTC), the organizer of the study, further explained, “Our finding that the intergalactic gas is 50% ionized at z ~ 7 implies that a large fraction of the first galaxies that ionized and illuminated the universe formed early, less than 800 million years after the Big Bang.”

For Zhenya Zheng (Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, CAS), the lead author of the paper describing these results, “800 million years is the current frontier in reionization studies.” While hundreds of LAEs have been found at later epochs, only about two dozen candidate LAEs were known at 800 million years prior to the current study. The new results dramatically increase the number of LAEs known at this epoch.

“None of this science would have been possible without the widefield capabilities of DECam and its community pipeline for data reduction,” remarked coauthor James Rhoads. “These capabilities enable efficient surveys and thereby the discovery of faint galaxies as well as rare, bright ones.”

To build on these results, the team is “continuing the search for distant star forming galaxies over a larger volume of the Universe”, said Leopoldo Infante (Pontificia Catolica University of Chile and the Carnegie Institution for Science), “to study the clustering of LAEs.” Clustering provides unique insights into how the fog lifts. The team is also investigating the nature of these distant galaxies.

Reference: 
“First Results from the Lyman Alpha Galaxies in the Epoch of Reionization (LAGER) Survey: Cosmological Reionization at z ~ 7,” Zhenya Zheng et al. 2017, Astrophysical Journal Letters, 842, 22.
Preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.02985​
Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory is managed by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy Inc. (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. 


National Optical Astronomy Observatory Press Release: Distant Galaxies ‘Lift the Veil’ on the End of the Cosmic Dark Ages

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *China’s genomics giant to make stock-market debut*
> _Once the world's biggest DNA sequencer for research, BGI is now looking to medical applications to boost profits._
> 
> David Cyranoski
> 21 June 2017
> BGI in Shenzhen has shifted its focus from serving researchers to medical applications of genome sequencing.
> 
> China’s genomics giant BGI, once the world leader in DNA sequencing for basic science, is going public — capping off a dramatic transformation into a mainly biomedical firm with a focus on reproductive health.
> 
> A financial prospectus document released to support the initial public offering (IPO) details how BGI, squeezed by its rivals and the plummeting cost of sequencing, has been drawn to more-profitable pursuits, such as prenatal genetic testing, in China’s expanding medical market. The shift is also in line with the Chinese government’s multibillion-yuan drive to promote precision medicine, an effort to use the reams of genomic and other medical data being created to tailor treatments.
> 
> 
> China’s genomics giant to make stock-market debut : Nature News & Comment


* China's genomics company BGI makes stock market debut *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-07-14 14:12:25_|_Editor: ZD_





BEIJING, July 14 (Xinhua) -- China's genomics giant BGI made its initial public offering (IPO) Friday on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, with shares surging by the upper limit shortly after its debut.

With an initial offering price of 13.64 yuan (2 U.S. dollars), the company's share jumped more than 32 percent shortly after the market opening, triggering a temporary suspension on trading, before the share prices jumped again to reach the upper limit of 19.64 yuan after trading resumed.

According to market rules, share prices of stocks on their first day of trading on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange should not exceed 144 percent of the initial offering price.

Founded in 1999, the gene sequencing firm offers a wide portfolio of genetic testing products across major diseases, enabling medical providers and patients worldwide to realize the promise of genomics-based diagnostics and personalized healthcare.

BGI's services and solutions are available in more than 60 countries and regions around the world, according to the company's website.

In 2016, the company made revenues of 1.71 billion yuan (about 252 million U.S. dollars) and net profits of 332.69 million yuan, according to filings on the exchange.

According to TF Securities, China's gene sequencing market has seen rapid growth and the market size has reached around 5.4 billion yuan in 2016, and will likely exceed 10 billion yuan by 2020.

The compound annual growth rate of the industry will be around 20 to 25 percent, among the fastest rates around the world, it said.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Han Patriot

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2017-07/17/content_30134522.htm



> The marine resources survey ship will be 98 meters long and 17 m wide and will have a displacement of 4,000 tons. It will be driven by *an advanced electric propulsion system*.



See the little hint given out. People were saying Chinese electric propulsion is light years away.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Focus: Graphene Sliding on Graphene*
July 17, 2017• _Physics_ 10, 81
Creating a bulge in a graphene sheet offers the first measurement of the shear forces between graphene layers, an essential factor in many graphene-based devices.



​L. Liu, C. Weng, & G. Wang/NCNST
*Bubble wrap.* This cutaway shows the bulging that occurs when air is pumped through a hole underneath a graphene sheet. Researchers estimated the shear resistance by measuring the stretching in the sheet around the hole. The stretching for bilayer graphene (blue) is much larger than that for monolayer graphene (yellow). 

Graphene, the single-atom-thick, sheet-like super-material of the past decade is now being used in multiple layers as part of high-strength composites and a range of electronic devices. One important challenge for this developing industry is the lack of information on the stickiness between layers of graphene or between graphene and another surface. A new experiment measured the maximum sticking force, or shear resistance, between two layers by determining the shape of the bulge produced by an air bubble blown up from beneath the surface. The analysis found that graphene layers adhere to each other very weakly—40 times less than they do to an underlying surface of silicon dioxide.

A single layer of graphene is composed of carbon atoms arranged in a two-dimensional honeycomb pattern. When stacked on top of another layer or surface, the graphene forms only a weak attachment, which is why it is often used as a lubricant [1]. Knowing precisely graphene’s stickiness is crucial for the new crop of multilayer graphene products, such as battery anodes, transistors, and displays, says Zhong Zhang from the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology (NCNST) in Beijing. For example, nanocomposites made from a combination of graphene and plastic can potentially fail if graphene layers suddenly slip away from each other.

To measure the shear resistance between two materials, one might apply a shear stress by creating a sandwich of the two and pulling the top material sideways while holding the bottom one still. The shear resistance would correspond to the force (per unit of contact area) required to start the materials slipping away from each other. Such a test is inconceivable for graphene, Zhang says, because there’s no easy way to grab and pull individual sheets. Instead, he and his collaborators developed a shear measurement technique based on a so-called blister test.

To demonstrate the method, the researchers placed a single graphene sheet on top of a surface of silicon dioxide in which several micrometer-sized holes had been etched. The team was able to increase the air pressure inside the holes, causing the graphene “lid” to bulge upward. This bulging created an inward pull on the sheet, which was countered by the sticking force of the sheet to the surface. In order to study graphene-graphene stickiness, the researchers performed two sets of experiments: one with monolayer graphene and the other with bilayer graphene. In both cases, the bulge shape was measured with an atomic force microscope, and the amount of stretching in the carbon bonds was determined by recording the frequency shift in laser light scattered off the graphene surface (Raman spectroscopy technique).

The data showed that—for an equal bulge shape—the bilayer graphene exhibited a larger region of stretched atomic bonds beyond the dome than did the monolayer case. The explanation is that more carbon atoms get pulled inward by the bulge when they feel a weaker attachment to the layer below—as is the case for graphene on graphene. The team measured the change in the stretching area with increasing air pressure and determined a value of 40 kilopascals for the shear resistance between graphene layers with so-called AB-stacking, in which the honeycomb patterns are offset.

Zhang and his colleagues imagine that their new measurement technique could be used with other 2D materials. For example, graphene can be combined with boron nitride layers to create photodetectors. By applying strain to such devices, one can potentially tune their response to light, Zhang explains, so measuring the interlayer sticking force in these hybrid materials will be important.

The work “presents an elegant and novel technique to measure interface properties between 2D layers and substrates,” says mechanical engineering professor Horacio Espinosa from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He thinks it will give researchers new opportunities for the design of devices and materials. Material scientist Roland Bennewitz from the Leibniz Institute for New Materials in Saarbrücken, Germany, applauds the work for finally providing a quantitative basis for graphene’s superior lubrication properties. “Atomistic modeling can now be benchmarked against a reliable experimental result, and the surprising effectiveness of graphene in lubrication can be better understood,” Bennewitz says.

This research is published in _ Physical Review Letters_.

–Michael Schirber
Michael Schirber is a Corresponding Editor for _Physics _based in Lyon, France.

Measuring Interlayer Shear Stress in Bilayer Graphene
Guorui Wang, Zhaohe Dai, Yanlei Wang, PingHeng Tan, Luqi Liu, Zhiping Xu, Yueguang Wei, Rui Huang, and Zhong Zhang
Phys. Rev. Lett. *119*, 036101 (2017)
Published July 17, 2017​

Physics - Focus: Graphene Sliding on Graphene

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientist develops world's most accurate 3rd-gen sequencer*
(People's Daily Online) 16:11, July 19, 2017




_He Jiankui shows a "gene book". (Southcn.com/Zhu Hongbo)_

GenoCare, a new class of third-generation sequencing platform, designed and made by Chinese company Direct Genomics, is capable of directly measuring DNA and RNA sequencings at the single-molecule level without amplification, an article from biochemical sciences journal BioRxiv revealed on July 13, Science and Technology Daily reported.

Chinese and American scientists used the new GenoCare single molecule sequencing platform to resequence the E. coli genome. Results show that the accuracy of the new platform reached 99.71 percent, making it the most accurate sequencing platform in the world.

He Jiankui, born in 1980s, is the leading scientist of the research and development of the automated desktop sequencer GenoCare and a professor from Southern University of Science and Technology. At present, GenoCare is the only reliable third-generation sequencing platform with strong potential for clinical applications in the world, said He.



_A researcher debugs a GenoCare sample third-generation single-molecule sequencer. (Nanfang Daily/Zhu Hongbo)_

According to He, the first-generation DNA sequencing technology completed the first human genome mapping in 2001. The mapping process took three years, and cost billions of US dollars. The second-generation sequencing technology shortened the time to less than one week and shrunk the cost to $1,000. The latest technology is able to complete the work in 24 hours for only $100.

The core technology of the GenoCare platform is single-molecule fluorescence sequencing. The GenoCare detects single-molecule fluorescence by employing total internal reflection microscopy, together with sequencing-by-synthesis chemistry. The technology has greatly improved accuracy and lowered cost.

Yu Jun, a researcher at the Beijing Institute of Genomics, pointed out that the third-generation sequencer can be applied in both research and clinical fields, and has unlimited commercial prospects.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

JSCh said:


> *Chinese scientist develops world's most accurate 3rd-gen sequencer*
> (People's Daily Online) 16:11, July 19, 2017
> 
> 
> 
> _He Jiankui shows a "gene book". (Southcn.com/Zhu Hongbo)_
> 
> GenoCare, a new class of third-generation sequencing platform, designed and made by Chinese company Direct Genomics, is capable of directly measuring DNA and RNA sequencings at the single-molecule level without amplification, an article from biochemical sciences journal BioRxiv revealed on July 13, Science and Technology Daily reported.
> 
> Chinese and American scientists used the new GenoCare single molecule sequencing platform to resequence the E. coli genome. Results show that the accuracy of the new platform reached 99.71 percent, making it the most accurate sequencing platform in the world.
> 
> He Jiankui, born in 1980s, is the leading scientist of the research and development of the automated desktop sequencer GenoCare and a professor from Southern University of Science and Technology. At present, GenoCare is the only reliable third-generation sequencing platform with strong potential for clinical applications in the world, said He.
> 
> 
> 
> _A researcher debugs a GenoCare sample third-generation single-molecule sequencer. (Nanfang Daily/Zhu Hongbo)_
> 
> According to He, the first-generation DNA sequencing technology completed the first human genome mapping in 2001. The mapping process took three years, and cost billions of US dollars. The second-generation sequencing technology shortened the time to less than one week and shrunk the cost to $1,000. The latest technology is able to complete the work in 24 hours for only $100.
> 
> The core technology of the GenoCare platform is single-molecule fluorescence sequencing. The GenoCare detects single-molecule fluorescence by employing total internal reflection microscopy, together with sequencing-by-synthesis chemistry. The technology has greatly improved accuracy and lowered cost.
> 
> Yu Jun, a researcher at the Beijing Institute of Genomics, pointed out that the third-generation sequencer can be applied in both research and clinical fields, and has unlimited commercial prospects.



Let me know when they actually start selling machines, and have some market share. 

In terms of market, Illumina rules big! 

I have heard such reports earlier as well, when BGI boasted of its own sequencers, both under production and development; but nothing came off it.

Also, the company is not even new. It is in operation since 2014. 

It released GenoCare in 2015. 

Can't see anyone really using its machines yet. It is Illumina's monopoly all the way.


----------



## Keel

JSCh said:


> *Chinese scientist develops world's most accurate 3rd-gen sequencer*
> (People's Daily Online) 16:11, July 19, 2017
> 
> 
> 
> _He Jiankui shows a "gene book". (Southcn.com/Zhu Hongbo)_
> 
> GenoCare, a new class of third-generation sequencing platform, designed and made by Chinese company Direct Genomics, is capable of directly measuring DNA and RNA sequencings at the single-molecule level without amplification, an article from biochemical sciences journal BioRxiv revealed on July 13, Science and Technology Daily reported.
> 
> Chinese and American scientists used the new GenoCare single molecule sequencing platform to resequence the E. coli genome. Results show that the accuracy of the new platform reached 99.71 percent, making it the most accurate sequencing platform in the world.
> 
> He Jiankui, born in 1980s, is the leading scientist of the research and development of the automated desktop sequencer GenoCare and a professor from Southern University of Science and Technology. At present, GenoCare is the only reliable third-generation sequencing platform with strong potential for clinical applications in the world, said He.
> 
> 
> 
> _A researcher debugs a GenoCare sample third-generation single-molecule sequencer. (Nanfang Daily/Zhu Hongbo)_
> 
> According to He, the first-generation DNA sequencing technology completed the first human genome mapping in 2001. The mapping process took three years, and cost billions of US dollars. The second-generation sequencing technology shortened the time to less than one week and shrunk the cost to $1,000. The latest technology is able to complete the work in 24 hours for only $100.
> 
> The core technology of the GenoCare platform is single-molecule fluorescence sequencing. The GenoCare detects single-molecule fluorescence by employing total internal reflection microscopy, together with sequencing-by-synthesis chemistry. The technology has greatly improved accuracy and lowered cost.
> 
> Yu Jun, a researcher at the Beijing Institute of Genomics, pointed out that the third-generation sequencer can be applied in both research and clinical fields, and has unlimited commercial prospects.



Great going! Keep it up!


----------



## Han Patriot

Bussard Ramjet said:


> Let me know when they actually start selling machines, and have some market share.
> 
> In terms of market, Illumina rules big!
> 
> I have heard such reports earlier as well, when BGI boasted of its own sequencers, both under production and development; but nothing came off it.
> 
> Also, the company is not even new. It is in operation since 2014.
> 
> It released GenoCare in 2015.
> 
> Can't see anyone really using its machines yet. It is Illumina's monopoly all the way.


----------



## JSCh

Bussard Ramjet said:


> Let me know when they actually start selling machines, and have some market share.
> 
> In terms of market, Illumina rules big!
> 
> I have heard such reports earlier as well, when BGI boasted of its own sequencers, both under production and development; but nothing came off it.
> 
> Also, the company is not even new. It is in operation since 2014.
> 
> It released GenoCare in 2015.
> 
> Can't see anyone really using its machines yet. It is Illumina's monopoly all the way.


FYI, according to chinese media, the machine went commercial beginning of 2017. So far till July, approx. 700 units were sold.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Discovery could lead to fewer side effects, better results for cancer patients*
Published: July 19, 2017 • By Lisa Marshall

More than half of cancer patients undergo radiotherapy, in which high doses of radiation are aimed at diseased tissue to kill cancer cells. But due to a phenomenon known as radiation-induced bystander effect (RIBE), in which irradiated cells leak chemical signals that can travel some distance to damage unexposed healthy cells, many suffer side effects such as hair loss, fatigue and skin problems. This bystander effect may also make targeted cells resistant to radiation treatment, research suggests.

A CU Boulder study published today in the journal _Nature_ sheds new light on the precise mechanism behind RIBE, identifying both a protein released by irradiated cells and the pathway it takes to influence healthy ones. Ultimately, researchers hope it could lead to a medication patients could take before radiation treatment.

“Inhibiting RIBE would allow doctors to kill two birds with one stone,” said lead author Ding Xue, a professor of molecular, cellular, and developmental biology at CU Boulder who collaborated with colleagues in China, Taiwan and Japan for the study. “We could minimize the bad effects of radiotherapy on healthy bystander cells, and at the same time, enhance cancer cell killing by radiotherapy.”

Nine years in the making, the study used a translucent, 1,000-cell worm called _C. elegans _as a model to study the bystander effect in action.

First, to be sure RIBE occurred in _C. elegans_, researchers exposed a population of the worms to radiation, then took a medium secreted by the _C. elegans _cells and bathed healthy _C. elegans_ in it. The once-healthy animals began to show increased embryo deaths and other signs of RIBE.

The researchers then systematically treated the medium with agents designed to destroy proteins, DNA, and RNA, in order to determine which may be a key compound at play in RIBE. When the medium was treated with a protease, which breaks down proteins, _C. elegans_ exposed to it did not show signs of RIBE.



_C. elegans _under the microscope. The area in red has been exposed to radiation. Credit: Ding Xue

Once researchers discovered that the agent causing RIBE was a protein, they used a technique called mass spectrometry to establish which proteins present in the medium were at play. A protein called CPR-4—the _C. elegans _version of a human protease called cathepsin B—emerged as the prime candidate. Cathepsin B is known to be a biomarker in several types of cancer.

Then researchers studied which biological pathway enabled CPR-4 to signal changes in healthy cells that were never exposed to radiation. They identified a pathway mediated by the insulin-like growth factor receptor DAF-2.

To confirm these findings, they irradiated the heads of _C. elegans_ who either lacked the gene that codes for CPR-4 or lacked the gene that codes for insulin-like growth factor receptor DAF-2. The bystander effect was blunted, with cells elsewhere in the body remaining healthy.

The study also found that a tumor suppressor gene called P53 may be at play in RIBE, prompting cells to produce more of the damaging CPR-4 protein when a cell is exposed to radiation.

“This is basically the first comprehensive study to identify the factor and mechanisms behind this radiation-induced bystander effect in animals,” said Xue, who hopes to work with other researchers in the future to identify other RIBE factors and mechanisms and help develop drugs that inhibit them.

“We are excited about these findings and believe they could have broad implications for patients as well as other important areas such as radiation protection and radiation safety,” he said.



Discovery could lead to fewer side effects, better results for cancer patients | CU Boulder Today | University of Colorado Boulder

Yu Peng, Man Zhang, Lingjun Zheng, Qian Liang, Hanzeng Li, Jeng-Ting Chen, Hongyan Guo, Sawako Yoshina, Yu-Zen Chen, Xiang Zhao, Xiaoqi Wu, Bin Liu, Shohei Mitani, Jau-Song Yu & Ding Xue. *Cysteine protease cathepsin B mediates radiation-induced bystander effects.* _Nature_ (2017). DOI: 10.1038/nature23284

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 19-Jul-2017
* Dundee-China linkup uncovers secrets of our cellular 'energy sensor' *
_'Fructose-1,6-bisphosphate and aldolase mediate glucose sensing by AMPK'_
University of Dundee

A scientific collaboration between researchers in Scotland and China has uncovered a new kind of `energy sensor' in our cells, changing our understanding of how the body monitors glucose levels and switches on the supply of alternative `fuels'.

It is thought the research, published in the journal _Nature_, could have particular implications for diabetes, in which the level of glucose in the blood is abnormally high.

The research focused on the activity of a protein called AMPK. Professor Grahame Hardie, of the School of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee, first identified AMPK in the 1990s as a key player in energy production in our bodies, and is one of the world's leading experts on how it works.

The AMPK enzyme is switched on when energy levels in the cell fall, and drives processes which stimulate energy production, while preventing energy-consuming processes.

Working with the group of Professor Shengcai Lin, at the University of Xiamen in China, they have now made a new breakthrough in understanding how this happens.

"Glucose is the primary fuel that cells `burn' to sustain life," said Professor Hardie. "My work in the 1990s showed that AMPK was switched on when the cell's energy state (carried by the chemicals ATP, ADP and AMP, which form a kind of "rechargeable battery") was running low.

"AMPK is important because it enables the body to start burning other `fuels'. For example, during exercise, when the demand for energy is dramatically increased in muscle, AMPK switches on the uptake and metabolism of glucose and fats to provide the required energy.

"It has been known for years that starving cells of glucose switches on AMPK, but everyone had assumed that this worked via the known ability of AMPK to sense changes in the cell's energy status.

"We have now shown that cells can actually sense glucose by a completely different mechanism, in which AMPK is recruited to structures called lysosomes. It is by doing this that cells can switch on pathways for metabolism of alternative fuels, such as fats, when glucose becomes scarce but before cellular energy declines."

Professor Hardie said more work would be needed to understand the full implications of this for human health. However, given the extremely prominent role of glucose in diabetes it is likely to be of significant value in understanding more about the disease.

AMPK is thought to be implicated in other conditions and diseases, including obesity and cancer.

Professor Hardie said the project had combined excellent science from both the UK and China. "Shengcai Lin made the initial exciting findings for this and it has been very rewarding to work with his group in China to sort out how it works," said Professor Hardie.

Professor Shengcai Lin said, "We, the Xiamen team, are very grateful for the fruitful collaboration with Professor Hardie, pioneer of AMPK. I believe the main implication of the work is not only the delineation of the sensing mechanism for glucose levels, but also its enabling us to think glucose is a status signal, the decline of which causes cells to switch off synthetic pathways by inhibiting pro-synthetic activities mediated by another master metabolic regulator called mTORC1."



Dundee-China linkup uncovers secrets of our cellular 'energy sensor' | EurekAlert! Science News

Chen-Song Zhang, Simon A. Hawley, Yue Zong, Mengqi Li, Zhichao Wang, Alexander Gray, Teng Ma, Jiwen Cui, Jin-Wei Feng, Mingjiang Zhu, Yu-Qing Wu, Terytty Yang Li, Zhiyun Ye, Shu-Yong Lin, Huiyong Yin, Hai-Long Piao, D. Grahame Hardie & Sheng-Cai Lin. *Fructose-1,6-bisphosphate and aldolase mediate glucose sensing by AMPK*, _Nature_ (2017). DOI: 10.1038/nature23275

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists Design Promising New Cathode for Sodium-based Batteries*
July 20, 2017
By Stephanie Kossman



Xiao-Qing Yang (left) and Enyuan Hu (center) of Brookhaven's Chemistry Department, pictured with beamline physicist Eli Stavitski (right) at the ISS beamline at NSLS-II.

Scientists have designed a new type of cathode that could make the mass production of sodium batteries more feasible. Batteries based on plentiful and low-cost sodium are of great interest to both scientists and industry as they could facilitate a more cost-efficient production process for grid-scale energy storage systems, consumer electronics and electric vehicles. The discovery was a collaborative effort between researchers at the Institute of Chemistry (IOC) of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Lithium batteries are commonly found in consumer electronics such as smartphones and laptop computers, but in recent years, the electric vehicle industry also began using lithium batteries, significantly increasing the demand on existing lithium resources.

“Just last year, the price of lithium carbonate tripled, because the Chinese electric vehicle market started booming,” said Xiao-Qing Yang, a physicist at the Chemistry Division of Brookhaven Lab and the lead Brookhaven researcher on this study.

In addition, the development of new electrical grids that incorporate renewable energy sources like wind and solar is also driving the need for new battery chemistries. Because these energy sources are not always available, grid-scale energy storage systems are needed to store the excess energy produced when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing.

Scientists have been searching for new battery chemistries using materials that are more readily available than lithium. Sodium is one of the most desirable options for researchers because it exists nearly everywhere and is far less toxic to humans than lithium.

But sodium poses major challenges when incorporated into a traditional battery design. For example, a typical battery’s cathode is made up of metal and oxygen ions arranged in layers. When exposed to air, the metals in a sodium battery’s cathode can be oxidized, decreasing the performance of the battery or even rendering it completely inactive.

The researchers at IOC of CAS and Jiangxi Normal University sought to resolve this issue by substituting different types of metals in the cathode and increasing the space between these metals. Then, using the Inner-Shell Spectroscopy (ISS) beamline at Brookhaven’s National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II)—a DOE Office of Science User Facility—Brookhaven’s researchers compared the structures of battery materials with unsubstituted materials to these new battery materials with substitute metals.

“We use the beamline to determine how metals in the cathode material change oxidation states and how it correlates with the efficiency and lifetime of the battery’s structure,” says Eli Stavitski, a physicist at the ISS beamline.”

The ISS beamline was the first operational x-ray spectroscopy beamline at NSLS-II. Here, researchers shine an ultra-bright x-ray beam through materials to observe how light is absorbed or reemitted. These observations allow researchers to study the structure of different materials, including their chemical and electronic states.

The ISS beamline, which is specifically designed for high-speed experiments, allowed the researchers to measure real-time changes in the battery during the charge-discharge processes. Based on their observations made at the beamline, Brookhaven’s team discovered that oxidation was suppressed in the sodium batteries with substituted metals, indicating the newly designed sodium batteries were stable when exposed to air. This is a major step forward in enabling future mass production of sodium batteries.

The researchers say this study is the first of many that will use the ISS beamline at NSLS-II to advance the study of batteries.

This study was supported by several Chinese research organizations, including the National Key R&D Program of China. The work at Brookhaven National Laboratory was supported by DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, the Vehicle Technology Office under Advanced Battery Material Research (BMR). DOE’s Office of Science (BES) also supports operations at NSLS-II.


BNL Newsroom | Scientists Design Promising New Cathode for Sodium-based Batteries

Hu-Rong Yao et al. Designing Air-Stable O3-Type Cathode Materials by Combined Structure Modulation for Na-Ion Batteries, _Journal of the American Chemical Society_ (2017). DOI: 10.1021/jacs.7b05176

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese-led scientists found a new particle*
By Gong Zhe (CNTV) 08:27, July 21, 2017





_CGTN photo_​
Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland have announced the discovery of a new particle.

Chinese scientists were involved with the research, as reported by Science and Technology Daily on Thursday.

"The newly-discovered particle is more proof of the Standard Model, another piece of the puzzle," said Gao Yuanning, leader of the Chinese team at LHC.





_Report about the discovery on LHCb's website. /LHCb Screenshot_​
In particle physics, the Standard Model is a theory related to the basic particles that form the entire universe.

Although the theory is widely considered as solid by leading physicists worldwide, not all particles it predicts have actually been found.

*Into the heart of the atom*

The new particle has been called the "doubly charmed baryon" in an article published on the LHCb website.

It's widely taught in physics classes that the world is formed by atoms, and atoms are formed by protons, neutrons and electrons.

And protons and neutrons in turn are formed by a relatively modern concept, the quark.

As the article explains, the baryon consists of one up quark and two charm quarks, and its charge equals two.

It's rare that a particle has two charm quarks in it, Gao told reporters, adding that deeper research on the particle can help humans understand how everything is formed.

*Chinese contribution*

The team of LHCb has 1185 scientists from 16 different countries. The Chinese group has been working to find the baryon since 2010.

"Initially we wanted to find a baryon with two bottom quarks, but charm quarks are lighter and easier to produce. That's why we shifted our focus," Gao explained.

The charm quark was discovered by a Chinese-born scientist Samuel C. C. Ting, together with Burton Richter. 

The two physicists received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1976 for this discovery.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Keel

JSCh said:


> *Chinese-led scientists found a new particle*
> By Gong Zhe (CNTV) 08:27, July 21, 2017
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _CGTN photo_​
> Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland have announced the discovery of a new particle.
> 
> Chinese scientists were involved with the research, as reported by Science and Technology Daily on Thursday.
> 
> "The newly-discovered particle is more proof of the Standard Model, another piece of the puzzle," said Gao Yuanning, leader of the Chinese team at LHC.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _Report about the discovery on LHCb's website. /LHCb Screenshot_​
> In particle physics, the Standard Model is a theory related to the basic particles that form the entire universe.
> 
> Although the theory is widely considered as solid by leading physicists worldwide, not all particles it predicts have actually been found.
> 
> *Into the heart of the atom*
> 
> The new particle has been called the "doubly charmed baryon" in an article published on the LHCb website.
> 
> It's widely taught in physics classes that the world is formed by atoms, and atoms are formed by protons, neutrons and electrons.
> 
> And protons and neutrons in turn are formed by a relatively modern concept, the quark.
> 
> As the article explains, the baryon consists of one up quark and two charm quarks, and its charge equals two.
> 
> It's rare that a particle has two charm quarks in it, Gao told reporters, adding that deeper research on the particle can help humans understand how everything is formed.
> 
> *Chinese contribution*
> 
> The team of LHCb has 1185 scientists from 16 different countries. The Chinese group has been working to find the baryon since 2010.
> 
> "Initially we wanted to find a baryon with two bottom quarks, but charm quarks are lighter and easier to produce. That's why we shifted our focus," Gao explained.
> 
> The charm quark was discovered by a Chinese-born scientist Samuel C. C. Ting, together with Burton Richter.
> 
> The two physicists received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1976 for this discovery.



While Chinese and US scientists have joined hands to achieve this great discovery:

JULY 20, 2017
*An experiment proposed by Stanford theorists finds evidence for the Majorana fermion, a particle that’s its own antiparticle*

In a discovery that concludes an 80-year quest, Stanford and University of California researchers found evidence of particles that are their own antiparticles. These 'Majorana fermions’ could one day help make quantum computers more robust. See video here.


Facebook
Twitter
Email
BY GLENNDA CHUI

In 1928, physicist Paul Dirac made the stunning prediction that every fundamental particle in the universe has an antiparticle – its identical twin but with opposite charge. When particle and antiparticle met they would be annihilated, releasing a poof of energy. Sure enough, a few years later the first antimatter particle – the electron’s opposite, the positron – was discovered, and antimatter quickly became part of popular culture.







Shoucheng Zhang (Image credit: Courtesy SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)

But in 1937, another brilliant physicist, Ettore Majorana, introduced a new twist: He predicted that in the class of particles known as fermions, which includes the proton, neutron, electron, neutrino and quark, there should be particles that are their own antiparticles.

Now a team including Stanford scientists says it has found the first firm evidence of such a Majorana fermion. It was discovered in a series of lab experiments on exotic materials at the University of California in collaboration with Stanford University. The team was led by UC-Irvine Associate Professor *Jing Xia* and UCLA Professor *Kang Wang*, and followed a plan proposed by Shoucheng Zhang, professor of physics at Stanford, and colleagues. The team reported the results July 20 in _Science_.

“Our team predicted exactly where to find the Majorana fermion and what to look for as its ‘smoking gun’ experimental signature,” said Zhang, a theoretical physicist and one of the senior authors of the research paper. “This discovery concludes one of the most intensive searches in fundamental physics, which spanned exactly 80 years.”

Although the search for the famous fermion seems more intellectual than practical, he added, it could have real-life implications for building robust quantum computers, although this is admittedly far in the future.

The particular type of Majorana fermion the research team observed is known as a “chiral” fermion because it moves along a one-dimensional path in just one direction. While the experiments that produced it were extremely difficult to conceive, set up and carry out, the signal they produced was clear and unambiguous, the researchers said.

“This research culminates a chase for many years to find chiral Majorana fermions. It will be a landmark in the field,” said Tom Devereaux, director of the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences (SIMES) at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, where Zhang is a principal investigator.

“It does seem to be a really clean observation of something new,” said Frank Wilczek, a theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was not involved in the study. “It’s not fundamentally surprising, because physicists have thought for a long time that Majorana fermions could arise out of the types of materials used in this experiment. But they put together several elements that had never been put together before, and engineering things so this new kind of quantum particle can be observed in a clean, robust way is a real milestone.”

*Search for ‘quasiparticles’*
Majorana’s prediction applied only to fermions that have no charge, like the neutron and neutrino. Scientists have since found an antiparticle for the neutron, but they have good reasons to believe that the neutrino could be its own antiparticle, and there are four experiments underway to find out – including EXO-200, the latest incarnation of the Enriched Xenon Observatory, in New Mexico. But these experiments are extraordinarily difficult and are not expected to produce an answer for about a decade.

About 10 years ago, scientists realized that Majorana fermions might also be created in experiments that explore the physics of materials – and the race was on to make that happen.

What they’ve been looking for are “quasiparticles” – particle-like excitations that arise out of the collective behavior of electrons in superconducting materials, which conduct electricity with 100 percent efficiency. The process that gives rise to these quasiparticles is akin to the way energy turns into short-lived “virtual” particles and back into energy again in the vacuum of space, according to Einstein’s famous equation E = mc2. While quasiparticles are not like the particles found in nature, they would nonetheless be considered real Majorana fermions.

Over the past five years, scientists have had some success with this approach, reporting that they had seen promising Majorana fermion signatures in experiments involving superconducting nanowires.

But in those cases the quasiparticles were “bound” – pinned to one particular place, rather than propagating in space and time – and it was hard to tell if other effects were contributing to the signals researchers saw, Zhang said.

*A ‘smoking gun’*
In the latest experiments at UCLA and UC-Irvine, the team stacked thin films of two quantum materials – a superconductor and a magnetic topological insulator – and sent an electrical current through them, all inside a chilled vacuum chamber.

The top film was a superconductor. The bottom one was a topological insulator, which conducts current only along its surface or edges but not through its middle. Putting them together created a superconducting topological insulator, where electrons zip along two edges of the material’s surface without resistance, like cars on a superhighway.

It was Zhang’s idea to tweak the topological insulator by adding a small amount of magnetic material to it. This made the electrons flow one way along one edge of the surface and the opposite way along the opposite edge.

Then the researchers swept a magnet over the stack. This made the flow of electrons slow, stop and switch direction. These changes were not smooth, but took place in abrupt steps, like identical stairs in a staircase.

At certain points in this cycle, Majorana quasiparticles emerged, arising in pairs out of the superconducting layer and traveling along the edges of the topological insulator just as the electrons did. One member of each pair was deflected out of the path, allowing the researchers to easily measure the flow of the individual quasiparticles that kept forging ahead. Like the electrons, they slowed, stopped and changed direction – but in steps exactly half as high as the ones the electrons took.

These half-steps were the smoking gun evidence the researchers had been looking for.

The results of these experiments are not likely to have any effect on efforts to determine if the neutrino is its own antiparticle, said Stanford physics Professor Giorgio Gratta, who played a major role in designing and planning EXO-200.

“The quasiparticles they observed are essentially excitations in a material that behave like Majorana particles,” Gratta said. “But they are not elementary particles and they are made in a very artificial way in a very specially prepared material. It’s very unlikely that they occur out in the universe, although who are we to say? On the other hand, neutrinos are everywhere, and if they are found to be Majorana particles we would show that nature not only has made this kind of particles possible but, in fact, has literally filled the universe with them.”

He added, “Where it gets more interesting is that analogies in physics have proved very powerful. And even if they are very different beasts, different processes, maybe we can use one to understand the other. Maybe we will discover something that is interesting for us, too.”

*Angel particle*
Far in the future, Zhang said, Majorana fermions could be used to construct robust quantum computers that aren’t thrown off by environmental noise, which has been a big obstacle to their development. Since each Majorana is essentially half a subatomic particle, a single qubit of information could be stored in two widely separated Majorana fermions, decreasing the chance that something could perturb them both at once and make them lose the information they carry.

For now, he suggests a name for the chiral Majorana fermion his team discovered: the “angel particle,” in reference to the best-selling 2000 thriller “Angels and Demons” in which a secret brotherhood plots to blow up the Vatican with a time bomb whose explosive power comes from matter-antimatter annihilation. Unlike in the book, he noted, in the quantum world of the Majorana fermion there are only angels – no demons.

_The materials used for this study were produced at UCLA by a team led by postdoctoral researcher *Qing Lin* He and graduate student *Lei Pan*. Scientists from the KACST Center for Excellence in Green Nanotechnology in Saudia Arabia, UC-Davis, Florida State University, *Fudan University in Shanghai and Shanghai Tech University* also contributed to the experiment. Major funding came from the SHINES Center, an Energy Frontier Research Center at UC-Riverside funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. Zhang’s work was funded by the DOE Office of Science through SIMES.

http://news.stanford.edu/2017/07/20/evidence-particle-antiparticle/_






JSCh said:


> The 29 June 2017 edition of Nature magazine is out.
> The paper is in there ,
> 
> *Observation of three-component fermions in the topological semimetal molybdenum phosphide*
> 
> B. Q. Lv,
> Z.-L. Feng,
> Q.-N. Xu,
> X. Gao,
> J.-Z. Ma,
> L.-Y. Kong,
> P. Richard,
> Y.-B. Huang,
> V. N. Strocov,
> C. Fang,
> H.-M. Weng,
> Y.-G. Shi,
> T. Qian
> & H. Ding
> 
> Affiliations
> Contributions
> Corresponding authors
> *Nature*
> * 546,*
> *627–631*
> *(29 June 2017)*
> doi:10.1038/nature22390
> Received
> 22 November 2016
> Accepted
> 19 April 2017
> Published online
> 19 June 2017
> ​View attachment 407243​



More of the above publication in XinhuaNews

*Chinese scientists discover new type of fermion: Nature*
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-20 19:47:45|Editor: Mengjie





BEIJING, June 20 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have discovered a new type of fermion that opens up a way of exploring the interplay between unconventional fermions in condensed-matter systems.

The research team was led by scientists with the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), whose findings were published in the online version of the academic journal "Nature Communications" on Monday.

In quantum field theory, Lorentz invariance leads to three types of fermion -- Dirac, Weyl and Majorana. The existence of Dirac and Weyl fermions in condensed-matter systems has been confirmed experimentally, and that of Majorana fermions is supported by various experiments.

In condensed-matter systems, however, fermions in crystals are "constrained by the symmetries of the crystal space groups rather than by Lorentz invariance," giving rise to the possibility of finding other types of fermionic excitation that have no counterparts in high-energy physics.

The CAS scientists used a technique to observe the distribution of electrons, called angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, which demonstrated the existence of a "triply degenerate point in the electronic structure of crystalline molybdenum phosphide," -- a brand new discovery in field of fermion research.

They have also observed pairs of Weyl points in the bulk electronic structure of the crystal that coexist with the three-component fermions.

So do we have a team in China which also discovered the "Angel's Particle"?

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* China strengthens national clinical research centers *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-07-22 22:17:40_|_Editor: Liangyu_





BEIJING, July 22 (Xinhua) -- China will strengthen the establishment of national clinical research centers, according to the Ministry of Science and Technology.

A total of 32 national clinical research centers, involving 11 disease categories such as cardiovascular disease, malignant tumor and respiratory system, were given licenses at a conference on advancing clinical research held by national authorities in Beijing on Saturday.

A development plan, a guideline and an assessment plan on national clinical research centers were released at the conference.

According to Wang Zhigang, vice minister of science and technology, national clinical research centers should take on the main responsibility in linking clinical medicine with life sciences and biotechnology research, and applying clinical research into practice.

National clinical research centers will be located at 30 top hospitals and more than 2,100 medical institutions.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 21-Jul-2017
* Special focus on formation control of unmanned systems *

Science China Press


​This shows trajectories of the leader and followers. 
Credit: ©Science China Press

An Unmanned System refers to the autonomous agent possessing the capability of basic sensing, communication, data processing and actuation. Formation control of unmanned systems has become one of the most active topics in the past decade. The objective is to drive multiple agents to achieve particular tasks cooperatively. Usually, appropriate reference positions or distances are required to be maintained for the agents to avoid collisions. Based on the cooperative scheme, more complex tasks that a single agent cannot fulfilled can be accomplished by a collection of agents. Up until now, quite a lot of applications of formation control for unmanned systems are witnessed in the areas of logistics, agriculture, military systems, etc., including surveillance, exploration, rescuing, aerial photography and 3D sensing.

2017 No.7 issue of _SCIENCE CHINA Information Sciences_ published a special issue focus on formation control of unmanned Systems. This special focus is expected to present readers with some recent significant achievements on formation control of unmanned systems. Seven excellent papers have been accepted in this special focus to cover up-to-date advances in theoretical design and applications of this research topic.

--> Special focus on formation control of unmanned systems | EurekAlert! Science News

*A survey on recent progress in control of swarm systems*
Bing ZHU, Lihua XIE, Duo HAN, Xiangyu MENG & Rodney TEO
_Sci China Inf Sci_, 2017, 60(7): 070201

*Formation control with disturbance rejection for a class of Lipschitz nonlinear systems*
Chunyan WANG, Zongyu ZUO, Qinghai GONG & Zhengtao DING
_Sci China Inf Sci_, 2017, 60(7): 070202

*Saturated coordinated control of multiple underactuated unmanned surface vehicles over a closed curve*
Lu LIU, Dan WANG, Zhouhua PENG & Hugh H.T. LIU
_Sci China Inf Sci_, 2017, 60(7): 070203

*Fault-tolerant cooperative control for multiple UAVs based on sliding mode techniques*
Peng LI, Xiang YU, Xiaoyan PENG, Zhiqiang ZHENG & Youmin ZHANG
_Sci China Inf Sci_, 2017, 60(7): 070204

*Simultaneous attack of a stationary target using multiple missiles: a consensus-based approach*
Jialing ZHOU, Jianying YANG & Zhongkui LI
_Sci China Inf Sci_, 2017, 60(7): 070205

*Leader-follower formation of vehicles with velocity constraints and local coordinate frames*
Xiao YU & Lu LIU
_Sci China Inf Sci_, 2017, 60(7): 070206

*Tight formation control of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles through an adaptive control method*
Yin WANG & Daobo WANG
_Sci China Inf Sci_, 2017, 60(7): 070207


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists discover new material that may allow us to charge our smartphones with our clothes*
(People's Daily Online) 15:48, July 24, 2017




_Professor Xiong Rengen shows his new findings in the lab. (Photo/Chinanews.com)_

Can you imagine the day when you can charge your smartphone simply by stretching in your clothes? A research team from China’s Southeast University has found a new organic-based piezoelectric material that could help this become reality, Chinanews.com reported.

Piezoelectricity refers to electric polarization in a substance, especially certain crystals, caused by mechanical stress. According to Professor Xiong Rengen, who heads the research team, piezoelectric materials have already been applied to various fields, such as spaceflights, submarines, missiles, and medical ultrasounds.

Traditional inorganic piezoelectric materials, such as ceramic, are too stiff to be attached to thin films or electronic components. In addition, thin films and most electronic components get damaged in the extremely high temperatures under which those materials are made.



_The new organic piezoelectric materials (Photo/Chinanews.com)_

The new organic-based perovskite structured piezoelectric material is far more pliable yet has a piezoelectric response similar to traditional materials. It is also cheaper, lighter, and more environmentally-friendly.

"The molecular piezoelectric materials will further shrink the size of computer chips, making it possible to manufacture flexible heart rate meters and ultrasound machines," Xiong noted, expressing his confidence in the future application of the material.

The research on this new material was published in the Science on July 21, making China a leader in the field of molecular material research.

###​*An organic-inorganic perovskite ferroelectric with large piezoelectric response *
_Science_ ( IF 37.205 ) *Pub Date : 2017-07-21* _, DOI: _ _10.1126/science.aai8535_ 
Yu-Meng You, Wei-Qiang Liao, Dewei Zhao, Heng-Yun Ye, Yi Zhang, Qionghua Zhou, Xianghong Niu, Jinlan Wang, Peng-Fei Li, Da-Wei Fu, Zheming Wang, Song Gao, Kunlun Yang, Jun-Ming Liu, Jiangyu Li, Yanfa Yan, Ren-Gen Xiong

Molecular piezoelectrics are highly desirable for their easy and environment-friendly processing, light weight, low processing temperature, and mechanical flexibility. However, although 136 years have passed since the discovery in 1880 of the piezoelectric effect, molecular piezoelectrics with a piezoelectric coefficient _d_33 comparable with piezoceramics such as barium titanate (BTO; ~190 picocoulombs per newton) have not been found. We show that trimethylchloromethyl ammonium trichloromanganese(II), an organic-inorganic perovskite ferroelectric crystal processed from aqueous solution, has a large _d_33 of 185 picocoulombs per newton and a high phase-transition temperature of 406 kelvin (K) (16 K above that of BTO). This makes it a competitive candidate for medical, micromechanical, and biomechanical applications.​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists Find the Next Deep-Ultraviolet Nonlinear Optical Material*
Jul 25, 2017

Deep-ultraviolet (DUV, wavelength λ<200 nm) nonlinear optical (NLO) materials are crucial for producing solid-state lasers and stimulates great interests because of their wide range of applications in the semiconductor industry.

KBe2BO3F2 (KBBF) is an unique NLO material that can efficiently generate DUV light with a strong layer growth habit and toxicity issue containing beryllium that restricts the applications. Therefore, the exploration and development of the next generation DUV NLO materials is in great importance.

Recently, a research team led by Prof. PAN Shilie at Xinjiang Technical Institute of Physics & Chemistry (XTIPC) of Chinese Academy of Sciences designed and prepared a promising DUV NLO material, NH4B4O6F (ABF), which owns favorable NLO properties comparable to famous KBBF crystal. The study was published in _J. Am. Chem. Soc_.

In this study, [BO3F] is substituted for [BeO3F] and the NH4+ ionic group is substituted for K cation. ABF was found to perfectly inherit the excellent structure features of KBBF, and exhibit a wide DUV transparency window with a cutoff edge down to 156 nm, a large NLO efficiency (3 × KDP), and suitable birefringence that enable simple frequency doubling below 200 nm (as short as 158 nm).

Compared with KBBF, this material has a compact structure with enhanced interlayer binding forces. Researchers obtained up to the centimeter-level bulk crystals. In addition, ABF can be made with an environment-friendly synthesis process without using highly toxic beryllium oxide powders. These optimizations reduce the health risk during crystal growth and are beneficial to industrial applications – insurmountable problems facing KBBF.

Besides, researchers found that ABF exhibits a NLO efficiency about 2.5 times that of KBBF. Since the conversion efficiency is proportional to the square of _d_eff, ABF will possess much better performance than KBBF in DUV frequency conversion process. All those properties make ABF an ideal candidate of next generation DUV NLO material.

This work was financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Key Research Project, and Xinjiang Key Research and Development Program.



Scientists Find the Next Deep-Ultraviolet Nonlinear Optical Material---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

JSCh said:


> *Scientists Find the Next Deep-Ultraviolet Nonlinear Optical Material*
> Jul 25, 2017
> 
> Deep-ultraviolet (DUV, wavelength λ<200 nm) nonlinear optical (NLO) materials are crucial for producing solid-state lasers and stimulates great interests because of their wide range of applications in the semiconductor industry.
> 
> KBe2BO3F2 (KBBF) is an unique NLO material that can efficiently generate DUV light with a strong layer growth habit and toxicity issue containing beryllium that restricts the applications. Therefore, the exploration and development of the next generation DUV NLO materials is in great importance.
> 
> Recently, a research team led by Prof. PAN Shilie at Xinjiang Technical Institute of Physics & Chemistry (XTIPC) of Chinese Academy of Sciences designed and prepared a promising DUV NLO material, NH4B4O6F (ABF), which owns favorable NLO properties comparable to famous KBBF crystal. The study was published in _J. Am. Chem. Soc_.
> 
> In this study, [BO3F] is substituted for [BeO3F] and the NH4+ ionic group is substituted for K cation. ABF was found to perfectly inherit the excellent structure features of KBBF, and exhibit a wide DUV transparency window with a cutoff edge down to 156 nm, a large NLO efficiency (3 × KDP), and suitable birefringence that enable simple frequency doubling below 200 nm (as short as 158 nm).
> 
> Compared with KBBF, this material has a compact structure with enhanced interlayer binding forces. Researchers obtained up to the centimeter-level bulk crystals. In addition, ABF can be made with an environment-friendly synthesis process without using highly toxic beryllium oxide powders. These optimizations reduce the health risk during crystal growth and are beneficial to industrial applications – insurmountable problems facing KBBF.
> 
> Besides, researchers found that ABF exhibits a NLO efficiency about 2.5 times that of KBBF. Since the conversion efficiency is proportional to the square of _d_eff, ABF will possess much better performance than KBBF in DUV frequency conversion process. All those properties make ABF an ideal candidate of next generation DUV NLO material.
> 
> This work was financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Key Research Project, and Xinjiang Key Research and Development Program.
> 
> 
> 
> Scientists Find the Next Deep-Ultraviolet Nonlinear Optical Material---Chinese Academy of Sciences



This should not have been published. This should have been classified.

Chinese scientists are paid generous sums for publishing, and their careers depend on publishing. This needs to change.


----------



## JSCh

Bussard Ramjet said:


> This should not have been published. This should have been classified.
> 
> Chinese scientists are paid generous sums for publishing, and their careers depend on publishing. This needs to change.


I do not think the publishing will show how the crystal is made.

The crystal made by China would probably be barred from export. 

Like KBBF that is being discuss here -> https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/us-f...-laser-crystal-breaks-chinese-embargo.422020/

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

JSCh said:


> I do not think the publishing will show how the crystal is made.
> 
> The crystal made by China would probably be barred from export.
> 
> Like KBBF that is being discuss here -> https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/us-f...-laser-crystal-breaks-chinese-embargo.422020/



Sometimes even the fact that someone has made something is a big give away. 

Many times the most painful process is to do a thousand different experiments and take thousand approaches, without any result. But your work becomes very easy, if you know for a FACT that a particular kind of compound, with particular properties achieved something.

Here, not only did you release a LOT of vital stuff, but one author is American! America can reciprocate that whenever they want.


----------



## Han Patriot

Bussard Ramjet said:


> Sometimes even the fact that someone has made something is a big give away.
> 
> Many times the most painful process is to do a thousand different experiments and take thousand approaches, without any result. But your work becomes very easy, if you know for a FACT that a particular kind of compound, with particular properties achieved something.
> 
> Here, not only did you release a LOT of vital stuff, but one author is American! America can reciprocate that whenever they want.


US have been lagging behind China in high powered laser, this could be an even bigger lead vs US. I agree this technology should be under embargo. Having said this, research paper doesn't reveal much about a particular technology, but it does trigger US into frenzy mode to catch up.


----------



## Keel

JSCh said:


> *Chinese scientists discover new material that may allow us to charge our smartphones with our clothes*
> (People's Daily Online) 15:48, July 24, 2017
> 
> 
> 
> _Professor Xiong Rengen shows his new findings in the lab. (Photo/Chinanews.com)_
> 
> Can you imagine the day when you can charge your smartphone simply by stretching in your clothes? A research team from China’s Southeast University has found a new organic-based piezoelectric material that could help this become reality, Chinanews.com reported.
> 
> Piezoelectricity refers to electric polarization in a substance, especially certain crystals, caused by mechanical stress. According to Professor Xiong Rengen, who heads the research team, piezoelectric materials have already been applied to various fields, such as spaceflights, submarines, missiles, and medical ultrasounds.
> 
> Traditional inorganic piezoelectric materials, such as ceramic, are too stiff to be attached to thin films or electronic components. In addition, thin films and most electronic components get damaged in the extremely high temperatures under which those materials are made.
> 
> 
> 
> _The new organic piezoelectric materials (Photo/Chinanews.com)_
> 
> The new organic-based perovskite structured piezoelectric material is far more pliable yet has a piezoelectric response similar to traditional materials. It is also cheaper, lighter, and more environmentally-friendly.
> 
> "The molecular piezoelectric materials will further shrink the size of computer chips, making it possible to manufacture flexible heart rate meters and ultrasound machines," Xiong noted, expressing his confidence in the future application of the material.
> 
> The research on this new material was published in the Science on July 21, making China a leader in the field of molecular material research.
> 
> ###​*An organic-inorganic perovskite ferroelectric with large piezoelectric response *
> _Science_ ( IF 37.205 ) *Pub Date : 2017-07-21* _, DOI: _ _10.1126/science.aai8535_
> Yu-Meng You, Wei-Qiang Liao, Dewei Zhao, Heng-Yun Ye, Yi Zhang, Qionghua Zhou, Xianghong Niu, Jinlan Wang, Peng-Fei Li, Da-Wei Fu, Zheming Wang, Song Gao, Kunlun Yang, Jun-Ming Liu, Jiangyu Li, Yanfa Yan, Ren-Gen Xiong
> 
> Molecular piezoelectrics are highly desirable for their easy and environment-friendly processing, light weight, low processing temperature, and mechanical flexibility. However, although 136 years have passed since the discovery in 1880 of the piezoelectric effect, molecular piezoelectrics with a piezoelectric coefficient _d_33 comparable with piezoceramics such as barium titanate (BTO; ~190 picocoulombs per newton) have not been found. We show that trimethylchloromethyl ammonium trichloromanganese(II), an organic-inorganic perovskite ferroelectric crystal processed from aqueous solution, has a large _d_33 of 185 picocoulombs per newton and a high phase-transition temperature of 406 kelvin (K) (16 K above that of BTO). This makes it a competitive candidate for medical, micromechanical, and biomechanical applications.​





JSCh said:


> *Scientists Find the Next Deep-Ultraviolet Nonlinear Optical Material*
> Jul 25, 2017
> 
> Deep-ultraviolet (DUV, wavelength λ<200 nm) nonlinear optical (NLO) materials are crucial for producing solid-state lasers and stimulates great interests because of their wide range of applications in the semiconductor industry.
> 
> KBe2BO3F2 (KBBF) is an unique NLO material that can efficiently generate DUV light with a strong layer growth habit and toxicity issue containing beryllium that restricts the applications. Therefore, the exploration and development of the next generation DUV NLO materials is in great importance.
> 
> Recently, a research team led by Prof. PAN Shilie at Xinjiang Technical Institute of Physics & Chemistry (XTIPC) of Chinese Academy of Sciences designed and prepared a promising DUV NLO material, NH4B4O6F (ABF), which owns favorable NLO properties comparable to famous KBBF crystal. The study was published in _J. Am. Chem. Soc_.
> 
> In this study, [BO3F] is substituted for [BeO3F] and the NH4+ ionic group is substituted for K cation. ABF was found to perfectly inherit the excellent structure features of KBBF, and exhibit a wide DUV transparency window with a cutoff edge down to 156 nm, a large NLO efficiency (3 × KDP), and suitable birefringence that enable simple frequency doubling below 200 nm (as short as 158 nm).
> 
> Compared with KBBF, this material has a compact structure with enhanced interlayer binding forces. Researchers obtained up to the centimeter-level bulk crystals. In addition, ABF can be made with an environment-friendly synthesis process without using highly toxic beryllium oxide powders. These optimizations reduce the health risk during crystal growth and are beneficial to industrial applications – insurmountable problems facing KBBF.
> 
> Besides, researchers found that ABF exhibits a NLO efficiency about 2.5 times that of KBBF. Since the conversion efficiency is proportional to the square of _d_eff, ABF will possess much better performance than KBBF in DUV frequency conversion process. All those properties make ABF an ideal candidate of next generation DUV NLO material.
> 
> This work was financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Key Research Project, and Xinjiang Key Research and Development Program.
> 
> 
> 
> Scientists Find the Next Deep-Ultraviolet Nonlinear Optical Material---Chinese Academy of Sciences



Keep going and well done!
Give the scientists handsome rewards if thorough reviews and checking justify the awards. 
Nobody is more authoritative than the review board, the peers acting in good faith!
Keep producing more great scientific outputs, China!


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

Han Warrior said:


> US have been lagging behind China in high powered laser, this could be an even bigger lead vs US. I agree this technology should be under embargo. Having said this, research paper doesn't reveal much about a particular technology, but it does trigger US into frenzy mode to catch up.



What makes you think US has been lagging?


----------



## Han Patriot

Bussard Ramjet said:


> What makes you think US has been lagging?


http://english.cas.cn/bcas/2013_4/201411/P020141121530076315486.pdf

This was in 2013. Please proof me wrong? KBBF crystal were embargoed by China until US developed them a few years ago.


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

Han Warrior said:


> http://english.cas.cn/bcas/2013_4/201411/P020141121530076315486.pdf
> 
> This was in 2013. Please proof me wrong? KBBF crystal were embargoed by China until US developed them a few years ago.



One crystal has got nothing to do with the overall state of laser research. 

In fact the bottlenecks in laser development is entirely different stuff. It is power management, laser formation etc. 

This crystal just transforms one laser into another particular kind of laser, that is used in niche applications. 

Otherwise why would US not have developed it earlier? The US did develop it once they were embargoed, within 3-4 years, and with only 10 million or so dollars of investment.


----------



## Han Patriot

Bussard Ramjet said:


> One crystal has got nothing to do with the overall state of laser research.
> 
> In fact the bottlenecks in laser development is entirely different stuff. It is power management, laser formation etc.
> 
> This crystal just transforms one laser into another particular kind of laser, that is used in niche applications.
> 
> Otherwise why would US not have developed it earlier? The US did develop it once they were embargoed, within 3-4 years, and with only 10 million or so dollars of investment.


The crystals are the core of the laser technology, power management and light source are all auxiliary components bro. The fact that they do not possess KBBF crystals until a few years ago showed the state of their technology, notice how they felt constrained over Chinese embargo if you read the APC article properly. It is no coincidence China introduce a few laser weapons earlier than the Americans.


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 25-Jul-2017
* Color-shifting electronic skin could have wearable tech and prosthetic uses *
IOP Publishing

The ability of some animals, including chameleons, octopus, and squid, to change their skin colour for camouflage, temperature control, or communication is well known.

While science has been able to replicate these abilities with artificial skin, the colour changes are often only visible to the naked eye when the material is put under huge mechanical strain.

Now, however, researchers in China have developed a new type of user-interactive electronic skin, with a colour change perceptible to the human eye, and achieved with a much-reduced level of strain. Their results could have applications in robotics, prosthetics and wearable technology.

Published today in the journal _2D Materials_, the study from Tsinghua University in Beijing, employed flexible electronics made from graphene, in the form of a highly-sensitive resistive strain sensor, combined with a stretchable organic electrochromic device.

Lead author Dr Tingting Yang, from Tsinghua University, said: "We explored the substrate (underlying) effect on the electromechanical behaviour of graphene. To obtain good performance with a simple process and reduced cost, we designed a modulus-gradient structure to use graphene as both the highly sensitive strain-sensing element and the insensitive stretchable electrode of the ECD layer.

"We found subtle strain - between zero and 10 per cent - was enough to cause an obvious colour change, and the RGB value of the colour quantified the magnitude of the applied strain."

Senior author Professor Hongwei Zhu said: "Graphene, with its high transparency, rapid carrier transport, flexibility and large specific surface area, shows application potential for flexible electronics, including stretchable electrodes, supercapacitor, sensors, and optical devices.

"However, our results also show that the mechanical property of the substrate was strongly relevant to the performance of the strain sensing materials. This is something that has previously been somewhat overlooked, but that we believe should be closely considered in future studies of the electromechanical behaviour of certain functional materials."

Dr Yang said: "It's important to note that the capability we found for interactive colour changes with such a small strain range has been rarely reported before. This user-interactive e-skin should be promising for applications in wearable devices, robots and prosthetics in the future." 


Color-shifting electronic skin could have wearable tech and prosthetic uses | EurekAlert! Science News


----------



## JSCh

* China contributes one fifth of the world's computer science papers *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-07-25 20:31:21_|_Editor: Mengjie_





BEIJING, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Papers written by Chinese academics account for 23 percent of the world's total, according to figures released at a Chinese computer summit Tuesday.

Over 100 academics and entrepreneurs gathered to exchange views on undergraduate computer science education at the Future Computer Education Summit 2017, held by China Computer Federation (CCF).

Due to the country's investment and individuals' passions for computer research and development, the number of papers written by Chinese academics has increased greatly from just 2 percent on the world total in 1997, according to the CCF.

"Despite the increase, China's undergraduate computer science education still lags behind top-ranking international colleges," said Gao Wen, chairman of the CCF.

Zhou Aoying, vice president of East China Normal University suggested at the summit that colleges and universities should increase the numbers of computer science teachers, and cooperate with companies to develop more talent.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists create biggest virtual universe with world’s fastest computer, beating European record*
The achievement, which dwarfed Switzerland’s record set only last month, will help researchers in their efforts to unlock the secrets of the cosmos

PUBLISHED : Thursday, 27 July, 2017, 12:45pm
UPDATED : Thursday, 27 July, 2017, 1:35pm
Stephen Chen


 The Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer, based in Wuxi, is the world’s fastest supercomputer. Photo: Xinhua

Chinese scientists have created the largest virtual universe on Sunway TaihuLight, the world’s fastest computer, according to a lead researcher on the project.

Experts said that China was learning to take full advantage of its raw calculation power, which had outpaced other nations in recent years, and recreating the universe was just the first step.

Researchers hope that within three years the country will be leading the way in making new findings about the birth of the cosmos.

The development of the next generation of high-performance computers will allow researchers to work in tandem with other advanced technological facilities, such as the world’s largest radio telescope, to unlock the secrets of the universe.

By simulating the creation of the universe on Sunway – or its more advanced successors – researchers will be able to single out distant areas of space for the telescope to investigate.

Gao Liang, chair scientist of the computational cosmology group in the National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, said they simulated the birth and early expansion of the universe using 10 trillion digital particles.

This project’s scale was five times greater than that of the previous record, which was achieved last month by astrophysicists at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, he added.

The work was carried out at the National Supercomputer Centre in Wuxi, Jiangwu two months ago.

“There were lots of calculations... It must be exhausted,” Gao said.

He explained that Sunway had used a total of 10 million CPU cores, running multiple instructions on each core to increase the speed of calculation.

The simulation was disclosed to the public for the first time on Wednesday in an article by Wang Qiao, another scientist taking part in the project, for _S_ _cience and Technology Daily_, the official newspaper of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China.

The Sunway was stretched to its limit by the task, but it remained heathy, according to Gao.

“This is just a warm-up exercise. We still have a long way ahead to get what we want,” he said.

In astronomy, researchers simulate the universe by breaking down its mass into particles. These particles interact with one another through physical forces such as gravity. The more particles involved, the more precisely the scientists can replay and forecast the universe’s evolution. This process can shed light on many issues such as the nature and spread of dark energy.




The calculation, also known as N-body simulation, intensified with the increase of particles. It was only possible to simulate over 1,000 particles with the best computers in 1970s. In recent years scientists reached the trillion-particle level on some of the world’s most powerful machines such as the Titan in the US, the K computer in Japan and Tianhe-2 in Guangzhou.

But the Sunway left the competitors trailing in its wake with its unprecedented performance.

Built entirely from China’s home-made chips with exceptionally low energy consumption, the Sunway has topped the world’s supercomputer chart since June last year.

Its linkpack benchmark rate - the maximum speed at which it can operate – has reached 93 petaflops (a thousand trillion floating point operations per second). This was nearly three times faster than its closest competitor, Tianhe-2, which was also built by China.

But Chinese supercomputers are known for a major weakness and have rarely operated at full capacity. Running full throttle would impose a strain on their hardware. Sophisticated, tailor-made software is also needed to coordinate the large number of processing units and cores within the machine.

Lin Weipeng, a professor with the Institute of Astronomy and Space Science at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, said the Sunway simulation was a milestone event in China’s rise as a research superpower.

“They did not just find a rein to tame the beast but kicked it up to a neck-breaking spring. Their work will allow China to take full advantage of its hardware superiority and stay on top in the race,” said Lin, who was informed but not involved in the project.

Lin said the unique physical structure of Sunway and its home-grown chip meant Gao’s team had to write most of the software from the bottom up. It was a labour-intensive task complicated by the use of many sophisticated algorithms.

One error in code line could have crashed the whole machine, he said.

Due to the shortage of powerful software, Chinese supercomputers often have to divide their chips to run medium or even small-scale tasks for different clients. “This is not what a supercomputer is built for,” Lin said.

“But it is about to change,” he added.




Gao said Sunway remained stable at its peak performance. The chips were hot but not overheated, and their cores engaged with their assigned tasks efficiently.

“But we have a regret,” Gao explained – the simulation ran just over an hour, as the centre had other clients waiting in line to use the machine.

“We just got to the point of tens of millions years after the Big Bang. It was still a very young stage for the universe. Most galaxies were not even born,” he said.

The current age of the universe is about 1.3 billion years. To simulate how it got to where it is, scientists would need a longer run-time on Sunway, according to Gao.

“Or its successor, which is better,” he said.

China has been building its next-generation high performance computer which will be at least 10 times faster than Sunway. When the machine is finished around 2019, astronomers in China will have more calculation resources than their peers in most other countries to uncover the secrets of the universe, according to Gao.

The supercomputers will work alongside China’s other large scientific facilities, including Fast, the world’s single largest radio telescope which is 500 metres in diameter, in Guizhou.

The telescope, whose name stands for the “Five hundred metre Aperture Spherical Telescope”, could obtain detailed information from the distant universe, but first it would need to know where to look.

By simulating the evolution of the universe on a computer, researchers can single out promising regions that may offer interesting findings and feed the coordinates to the telescope.

“After 2020, the weight of new discoveries about the universe may shift to China,” Gao said.


Chinese scientists create biggest virtual universe with world’s fastest computer, beating European record | South China Morning Post

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Rosemary Clandos
July 27, 2017 11:00 AM
* Gut Bacterium Jams Colorectal Cancer-Death Button *
Fusobacterium nucleatum promotes resistance to chemotherapy in colon cancer patients by turning off the push button for cancer cell suicide, a new study finds.




A type of bacterium is associated with the recurrence of colorectal cancer and poor outcomes, researchers at Michigan Medicine and in China showed. Specifically, they found that Fusobacterium nucleatum in the gut can stop chemotherapy from causing a type of cancer cell death called apoptosis.

*MORE FROM THE LAB: Subscribe to our weekly newsletter*

Colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer and the second leading cause of cancer-related death in the U.S., according to the American Cancer Society. The two most widely used drugs to treat colorectal cancer act to either inhibit enzyme activity of cancer cells or arrest tumor cell growth. But the bacterium can make them ineffective.

“We treat patients with chemotherapy so that it will ultimately induce tumor cell apoptosis. But some cancer cells have a way to avoid apoptosis that is induced by chemotherapy,” says Weiping Zou, M.D., Ph.D., professor of surgery at Michigan Medicine. “Those cells escape from the apoptosis process by activating a cell-survival mechanism called autophagy. That mechanism protects cancer cells from destructing.

“Once autophagy is active, the cancer becomes resistant to chemotherapy. Then Fusobacterium nucleatum keeps autophagy turned on. That’s how the tumor cells may be able to avoid the induced apoptosis,” says Zou.

Typically, autophagy can be turned on or off. But the bacterium prevents the expression of two microRNAs that, in turn, keeps the autophagy turned in the “on” position, he adds.

The collaborative study is published in _Cell_. The research was led by two teams, Zou at Michigan Medicine, and Jing-Yuan Fang, M.D., Ph.D., in Shanghai. Fang is a professor in Renji Hospital at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine.





"We think that if we deal with this bacterium, we may be able to delay and prevent chemoresistance in colorectal cancer."

Weiping Zou, M.D., Ph.D.​
*Building on past work*
The idea to check the role of the bacterium associated with innate immune signaling in chemotherapy resistance was linked to an earlier study from this research team, published in _Cell_ in 2016. In the previous paper, they studied adaptive immunity, specifically the impact of T-cells on chemoresistance, finding that it was reversely associated with resistance of cisplatin, the drug used for ovarian cancer. This means if patients have a strong T-cell immunity, their cancer cells are more sensitive to chemotherapy.

*SEE ALSO: Free C3d Regulates Immune Checkpoint Blockade and Enhances Anti-Tumor Immunity*

In the new _Cell _study, they researched whether bacterium-mediated innate immune signaling regulates chemotherapy resistance in colon cancer.

The innate immune system refers to the front-line defenders — the cells and molecular mechanisms that attack pathogens. The adaptive immune system is the body’s response to specific antigens, such as foreign substances from bacteria or tumor-associated antigens from tumor cells.

Adaptive immunity is mediated by T-cell signaling. Innate immunity is mediated by innate signaling including proteins called Toll-like receptors.

“We knew that the body uses both systems, adaptive and innate, to fight cancer and infectious pathogens. That gave us the inspiration to look further at bacterium associated with innate immune signaling.

“The results of the research were a surprise. We did not expect bacterium to contribute to chemoresistance,” says Zou.

There are other factors that are unknown about F. nucleatum. For example, what would happen if the bacterium were reduced or blocked? Might other prevalent bacterium create a similar problem with chemoresistance?

“Right now, we don’t have a specific approach to selectively treat or control Fusobacterium nucleatum. Also, we don’t know if an abundance of this bacterium is found in any other types of cancer chemoresistance,” says Zou. “Still, based on our studies, we think that if we deal with this bacterium, we may be able to delay and prevent chemoresistance in colorectal cancer.”


Gut Bacterium Jams Colorectal Cancer-Death Button | University of Michigan

TaChung Yu, Fangfang Guo, Yanan Yu, Tiantian Sun, Dan Ma, Jixuan Han, Yun Qian, Ilona Kryczek, Danfeng Sun, Nisha Nagarsheth, Yingxuan Chen, Haoyan Chen, Jie Hong, Weiping Zou, Jing-Yuan Fang. *Fusobacterium nucleatum Promotes Chemoresistance to Colorectal Cancer by Modulating Autophagy*. _Cell_, July 2017 DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2017.07.008

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Plant scientists plan massive effort to sequence 10,000 genomes*
By Dennis Normile Jul. 27, 2017 , 8:00 AM

*SHENZEN, CHINA—*Hopes of sequencing the DNA of every living thing on Earth are taking a step forward with the announcement of plans to sequence at least 10,000 genomes representing every major clade of plants and eukaryotic microbes. Chinese sequencing giant BGI and the China National GeneBank (CNGB) held a workshop yesterday on the sidelines of the International Botanical Congress, being held this week in BGI's hometown of Shenzhen, to discuss what they are calling the 10KP plan. About 250 plant scientists participated in the discussions and "are raring to go," says Gane Ka-Shu Wong, a genomicist and bioinformaticist at University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.

The 10KP plan will be a key part of the Earth BioGenome Project (EBP), an ambitious and still evolving scheme to get at least rough sequence data on the 1.5 million eukaryotic species, starting with detailed sequences of one member of each of the 9000 eukaryotic families. The effort to sequence plants is moving ahead a bit faster than other aspects of EBP "because plant scientists are more collaborative," Wong says jokingly.

The 10KP plan is also building on a previous 1000 plant (1KP) transcriptome project. That effort, launched in 2012 and now nearing completion, was also led by BGI, where Wong is an associate director. 

"One thing we focused on (for 1KP) was sampling phylogenetic diversity, not just crops and model organisms," Wong says. That strategy will continue with 10KP. The transcriptome project has resulted in more than 50 papers, with the overall summary publication still to come. A lot of the analysis has focused on plant evolution. One surprise was that important transcription factors previously thought to have evolved as land plants colonized terrestrial habitats can actually be traced back to green algae, says Michael Melkonian, a botanist at the University of Cologne in Germany. Screening green algae also turned up new light-sensitive proteins that neuroscientists now use to study how different neurons interact and better understand neurological functioning. 

Whereas the 1KP project only tackled the transcriptome, or all the messenger RNA expressed by an organism, 10KP will produce completely new sequences of the entire genome. And scientists expect an even larger bonanza of fundamental insights and economic spin-offs. The 10KP project "is 1KP on steroids," says Douglas Soltis, a plant biologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida in Gainesville. He adds that one "wonderful thing" about the project is that it will provide reference genomes for "the numerous plant researchers studying nonmodel systems," he says. The project will also present "an unprecedented opportunity to address fundamental questions about plant evolution," says Stephen Smith, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Study targets are expected to include the role of genome duplication, the correlation between genomic and morphological changes, and how rates of evolution changed over time. 

One challenge Smith points to is the need to develop new means of analyzing and synthesizing sequencing information. "Existing tools and methods are unable to handle the extraordinary scale of the data," he says. Wong says another bottleneck will be dealing with the paperwork needed to comply with legal requirements of shipping plant material across borders, as well as complying with the Nagoya Protocol, an international pact that seeks to ensure the fair and equitable sharing of genetic resources. On the other hand, gathering specimens is easier than for other areas of genetics. "You don't have to chase down some animal, you can usually just go to a botanical garden," Wong says.

Xu Xun, who leads technical development for BGI, says the company and CNBG will cover the sequencing costs but "scientists will have to find their own funding for collecting samples and for analysis." As for timing, Wong says they hope to gather the samples in the next 2 years and "we hope to wrap up the sequencing and analysis in 5 years."

"We're ready to start sequencing yesterday," Wong says. And plant scientists are eager. After the meeting yesterday in Shenzhen, "several people came up already wanting to send samples," he says. 


Plant scientists plan massive effort to sequence 10,000 genomes | Science | AAAS

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Effects of a major drug target regulated through molecular 'codes'*
July 27, 2017




Rhodopsinarrestin. Credit: Parker de Waal, Xu Laboratory, Van Andel Research Institute

A team spearheaded by Van Andel Research Institute scientists has answered a long-standing question that may lead to more effective drugs with fewer side effects for diseases ranging from heart failure to cancer.

The findings, published today in _Cell_, reveal for the first time components of a G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) named rhodopsin bound to a signaling molecule called arrestin, both crucial pieces of the body's intricate cellular communication network. The new discovery further refines a landmark 2015 _Nature_ article that first described the structure of the two molecules in complex together.

--> https://phys.org/news/2017-07-effects-major-drug-molecular-codes.html

X. Edward Zhou, Yuanzheng He, Parker W. de Waal, Xiang Gao, Yanyong Kang, Ned Van Eps, Yanting Yin, Kuntal Pal, Devrishi Goswami, Thomas A. White, Anton Barty, Naomi R. Latorraca, Henry N. Chapman, Wayne L. Hubbell, Ron O. Dror, Raymond C. Stevens, Vadim Cherezov, Vsevolod V. Gurevich, Patrick R. Griffin, Oliver P. Ernst, Karsten Melcher, H. Eric Xu. *Identification of Phosphorylation Codes for Arrestin Recruitment by G Protein-Coupled Receptors*. _Cell_, 2017; 170 (3): 457 DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2017.07.002

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

JSCh said:


> *Effects of a major drug target regulated through molecular 'codes'*
> July 27, 2017
> 
> 
> 
> Rhodopsinarrestin. Credit: Parker de Waal, Xu Laboratory, Van Andel Research Institute
> 
> A team spearheaded by Van Andel Research Institute scientists has answered a long-standing question that may lead to more effective drugs with fewer side effects for diseases ranging from heart failure to cancer.
> 
> The findings, published today in _Cell_, reveal for the first time components of a G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) named rhodopsin bound to a signaling molecule called arrestin, both crucial pieces of the body's intricate cellular communication network. The new discovery further refines a landmark 2015 _Nature_ article that first described the structure of the two molecules in complex together.
> 
> --> https://phys.org/news/2017-07-effects-major-drug-molecular-codes.html
> 
> X. Edward Zhou, Yuanzheng He, Parker W. de Waal, Xiang Gao, Yanyong Kang, Ned Van Eps, Yanting Yin, Kuntal Pal, Devrishi Goswami, Thomas A. White, Anton Barty, Naomi R. Latorraca, Henry N. Chapman, Wayne L. Hubbell, Ron O. Dror, Raymond C. Stevens, Vadim Cherezov, Vsevolod V. Gurevich, Patrick R. Griffin, Oliver P. Ernst, Karsten Melcher, H. Eric Xu. *Identification of Phosphorylation Codes for Arrestin Recruitment by G Protein-Coupled Receptors*. _Cell_, 2017; 170 (3): 457 DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2017.07.002
> 
> View attachment 414440​




Shouldn't really be in this section. 

More than 90% authors are Americans.


----------



## JSCh

*IBP Scientists Reveal Molecular Mechanism for RNA-Guided RNA Cleavage by Cas13a*
Jul 28, 2017

Almost all archaea and half of bacteria possess Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) and CRISPR-associated genes (Cas) adaptive immune systems, which protect microbes from the foreign nucleic acids. Cas13a is a newly identified effector of Class 2 and type VI CRISPR-Cas system. Cas13a was found to be a single-component programmable RNA-guided RNA-targeting CRISPR effector, protecting the host from the RNA viruses. Upon recognition of its RNA target, activated Cas13a engages in "collateral" cleavage of any free RNA in solution. However, the molecular mechanism of RNA-guided RNA cleavage is unknown.

In the study published online in _Cell,_ research team led by Prof. WANG Yanli and Prof. ZHANG Xinzheng at the institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences solved the 3.08 Å crystal structure of Leptotrichia buccalis (Lbu) Cas13a bound to crRNA and its target RNA, as well as the 3.2 Å cryo-EM structure of the LbuCas13a-crRNA complex.

These structural studies revealed that LbuCas13a adopts a bilobed architecture consisting of an α-helical REC lobe and a NUC lobe. The crRNA and target RNA form duplex RNA, located in a positively-charged central channel of the NUC lobe.

Interestingly, Cas13a protein and crRNA undergo significant conformational change upon target RNA binding. Researchers found that the guild-target RNA duplex formation triggers the conserved catalytic residues in HEPN1 domain to move towards the HEPN2 domain, activating the HEPN catalytic site of Cas13a. The activated Cas13a cleaves any single-stranded RNA in solution in a sequence non-specific manner.

Therefore, LIU's studies revealed a unique molecular mechanism by which Cas13a protein cleaves both single-stranded target RNA and collateral RNAs, resulting in cell death in bacteria. This altruistic cell suicide mediated by Cas13a is likely essential for evolution bacteria evolution. 

Together with their earlier studies, they revealed that Cas13a has two separate catalytic sites for its two interdependent RNase activities. The HEPN1 domain and HEPN2 domain are responsible for RNA cleavage. The Helical-1 and HEPN2 domains may be also involved in pre-crRNA stabilization and processing. The HEPN2 domain appears to catalyze pre-crNA processing in Lbu, while the Helical-1 domain is critical for pre-crRNA processing in Leptotrichia shahii (Lsh).

These structural studies provide critical insights into the molecular mechanism of target RNA recognition and activation of Cas13a, which will significantly facilitate the research on this type VI CRISPR-Cas system and pave the way towards better development and utilizing of the RNA editing tool. 

The research was funded by Natural Science Foundation of China, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Strategic Priority Research program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Thousand (Young) Talents Program from the Office of Global Experts Recruitment in China.

The X-ray diffraction data were collected at beamlines BL-17U and BL-19U at the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility. The cryo-EM data were collected at the Center for Biological Imaging.



The Crystal Structure of LbuCas13a-crRNA-target RNA Ternary Complex (Image by IBP)


IBP Scientists Reveal Molecular Mechanism for RNA-Guided RNA Cleavage by Cas13a---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

28 July 2017
*Smart glasses let you turn off the lights in the blink of an eye*


Lights please
Elisabeth Schmitt/Getty

By Lakshmi Supriya

Blink and the lights go out. A sensor on a pair of glasses that can pick up the motion of your skin when you blink could be used to switch the lights on and off, or to help those with limited or no mobility write messages on a computer.

“The good thing about the technology is the high sensitivity, which may become particularly useful in places where the motion is very limited,” says Ambarish Ghosh at the Indian Institute of Science, who wasn’t involved in the research.

*Blink to scroll*
The sensor, called a triboelectric generator, is thin enough to fit on the arms of a pair of glasses. It is made from multiple polymer layers with a coating of metal that acts as an electrode. Each time someone blinks, the motion of skin to the side of the eye causes the polymer layers to touch and release, generating an electrical signal. One, two or three consecutive blinks can be used to scroll through the alphabet to spell out a message on a computer, for example.

This signal can be transmitted through a wire or wirelessly, leading to the potential hands-free operation of various appliances, including cellphones. It could also aid people who have limited or no mobility of limbs because of accidents or conditions such as Lou Gehrig’s disease.





The glasses were created by Zhong Lin Wang at the Georgia Institute of Technology and his colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. They first demonstrated the principle of harvesting energy using the triboelectric effect in 2013.

However, blinking is involuntary, and unless you enjoy a disco effect, it may turn appliances off and on when you don’t want them to. “You can set a threshold for the switch,” says Wang. Only when the signal is higher than the threshold, which means you really have to blink hard, can the switch be triggered.

This could be useful in many different applications, says Ghosh, such as using the motion of other muscles or in systems that may require constant monitoring, both biological and non-biological.

The team now plans to use the sensor on other parts of the body to explore its potential in intelligent robotics applications. Wang says that if they can improve the level of the signal generated, the entire system can be self-powered.


Smart glasses let you turn off the lights in the blink of an eye | New Scientist

Xianjie Pu, Hengyu Guo, Jie Chen, Xue Wang, Yi Xi, Chenguo Hu and Zhong Lin Wang. *Eye motion triggered self-powered mechnosensational communication system using triboelectric nanogenerator*. _Science Advances_ 2017: DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1700694

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Posted: Jul 29, 2017
*Amplification on a chip: Research raises hope for erbium-based integrated photonics device*

(_Nanowerk News_) ASU researcher Cun-Zheng Ning has made another breakthrough using the rare-earth metal erbium as the gain material for an optical amplifier, this time with an achievement that will enable its use for the first time with small chip optical technologies. The discovery attains a decades-long goal in the field of photonic integration, in which different small optical components are tightly combined for better performance and ease of fabrication.

Details of the new optical amplification were published in the July online edition of _Nature Photonics_ ("Giant optical gain in a single-crystal erbium chloride silicate nanowire").

Ning, an electrical engineer, and Hao Sun from China’s Tsinghua University and their teams have succeeded in raising erbium's optical gain from the typical low level of a few dB to over 100 dB per centimeter of propagation. The significant increase in optical gain will make it possible for erbium-based materials to be integrated on a chip for optical amplifiers and lasers.

Read more: Amplification on a chip: Research raises hope for erbium-based integrated photonics device

#####​
Posted: Jul 29, 2017
*Single molecular layer and thin silicon beam enable nanolaser operation at room temperature*

(_Nanowerk News_) For the first time, researchers have built a nanolaser that uses only a single molecular layer, placed on a thin silicon beam, which operates at room temperature. The new device, developed by a team of researchers from Arizona State University and Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, could potentially be used to send information between different points on a single computer chip. The lasers also may be useful for other sensing applications in a compact, integrated format.

“This is the first demonstration of room-temperature operation of a nanolaser made of the single-layer material,” said Cun-Zheng Ning, an ASU electrical engineering professor who led the research team. Details of the new laser are published in the July online edition of _Nature Nanotechnology_ ("Room-temperature continuous-wave lasing from monolayer molybdenum ditelluride integrated with a silicon nanobeam cavity").

Read more: Single molecular layer and thin silicon beam enable nanolaser operation at room temperature

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Optical lens can transfer digital information without loss*
July 28, 2017 by Lisa Zyga



​This optical field pattern resulting from the Talbot effect and the self-focusing property can be used to encode thirty-six bits of digital data. Credit: Wang et al. ©2017 American Physical Society

(Phys.org)—Researchers have designed an optical lens that exhibits two properties that so far have not been demonstrated together: self-focusing and an optical effect called the Talbot effect that creates repeating patterns of light. The researchers showed that the combination of these two properties can be used to transfer an encoded digital signal without information loss, which has potential applications for realizing highly efficient optical communication systems.

The scientists, Xiangyang Wang and Hui Liu at Nanjing University, Huanyang Chen at Xiamen University, along with their coauthors, have published a paper on the new lens, called a "conformal lens," in a recent issue of _Physical Review Letters_.

This type of a conformal lens, which is also known as a Mikaelian lens, arose from the field of transformation optics, which is based on the idea that lenses can direct light in analogy with how the curved geometry of spacetime bends light in general relativity.

The main goal of the study was to design a conformal lens that works simultaneously in two different regimes: the geometry optics regime, in which light is treated as a particle, and the wave optics regime, which also accounts for the wave-like properties of light.

Working in both regimes is challenging because the two regimes have two seemingly opposing requirements for the size of the working wavelengths. On one hand, the working wavelengths must be much smaller than the size of the lens, but at the same time they must be larger than the basic units that make up the lens.

To address this challenge, the researchers started with a Maxwell's fish-eye lens, which dates back to the 1850s, as the basis for the conformal lens. They explained that trying to realize a lens with the desired properties using conventional transformation optics is very challenging, in part due its demands on a three-dimensional medium. On the other hand, conformal transformation optics places demands on a two-dimensional medium, which eases the fabrication requirements.

"Although transformation optics can be used to design many novel optical devices, it is usually very difficult to use in practical systems, especially in the visible regime," Liu told _Phys.org_. "In our work, we have established a feasible experiment platform to obtain conformation transformation optical devices."

After constructing the conformal lens, the researchers demonstrated that the lens exhibits both self-focusing, which is a property of geometric optics, and the Talbot effect, which is a property of wave optics. In this way, the device connects the two distinct realms of geometry optics and wave optics.

Most interesting for potential applications is that the conformal Talbot effect displayed here is very different from the ordinary Talbot effect in other media due to the additional self-focusing property. One of the biggest differences is that, unlike the ordinary Talbot effect which experiences boundary diffraction, the conformal Talbot effect does not.

As a result of its lack of diffraction, the conformal Talbot effect can be used to transfer encoded optical patterns over long distances with a very small amount of distortion. The researchers expect that this ability could lead to a highly efficient method of transferring digital information in future high-speed optical communication systems with no information loss.

"We can send a stream of optical digits '0' and '1' by parallel communication, which is much faster than the serial communication used in regular optical waveguides or optical fibers," Liu said. "The conformal Talbot effect can help reduce transmission errors because of its non-diffractive properties and good self-focusing of the field patterns."

In the future, the researchers plan to explore various potential applications of conformal transformation optics, such as designing novel integrated photonic chips that can transport and process information in micro-optical circuits. These "conformal photonic chips" may one day be used in future quantum computers.

"We hope conformal transformation optics can be used in quantum simulators and quantum computers in the future," Chen said. "We also plan to mimic the quantum effects in the curved space of general relativity using conformal transformation optics, such as the horizon of a black hole and Hawking radiation."

*More information:* Xiangyang Wang et al. "Self-Focusing and the Talbot Effect in Conformal Transformation Optics." _Physical Review Letters_. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.033902

*Abstract*
Transformation optics has been used to propose various novel optical devices. With the help of metamaterials, several intriguing designs, such as invisibility cloaks, have been implemented. However, as the basic units should be much smaller than the working wavelengths to achieve the effective material parameters, and the sizes of devices should be much larger than the wavelengths of illumination to work within the light-ray approximation, it is a big challenge to implement an experimental system that works simultaneously for both geometric optics and wave optics. In this Letter, by using a gradient-index microstructured optical waveguide, we realize a device of conformal transformation optics (CTO) and demonstrate its self-focusing property for geometry optics and the Talbot effect for wave optics. In addition, the Talbot effect in such a system has a potential application to transfer digital information without diffraction. Our findings demonstrate the photon controlling ability of CTO in a feasible experiment system.​https://phys.org/news/2017-07-optical-lens-digital-loss.html

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*China releases world's fastest and most accurate DNA sequencer *
By Xu Xiaotong
2017-08-01 13:21 GMT+8






Chinese-made third generation DNA sequencer GenoCare was released on Monday in the city of Shenzhen in south China's Guangdong Province.

With full automation, the machine, developed by a research team from the Southern University of Science and Technology, can sequence samples of human genomes in less than 30 minutes with an accuracy up to 99.7 percent, making it one of the fastest and most precise DNA sequencers in the world.

The sequencer is the first of its kind that can be applied to clinical practice.

Prof. He Jiankui, leader of the research team, said the sequencer is expected to lower the cost of DNA sequencing of any person from the current 1,000 US dollars to 100 US dollars, enabling everyone to enjoy benefits brought by accurate treatment from DNA sequencing.

The core technology of GenoCare is single-molecule fluorescence sequencing. The machine detects single-molecule fluorescence by employing total internal reflection microscopy, together with sequencing-by-synthesis chemistry.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

JSCh said:


> *China releases world's fastest and most accurate DNA sequencer *
> By Xu Xiaotong
> 2017-08-01 13:21 GMT+8
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Chinese-made third generation DNA sequencer GenoCare was released on Monday in the city of Shenzhen in south China's Guangdong Province.
> 
> With full automation, the machine, developed by a research team from the Southern University of Science and Technology, can sequence samples of human genomes in less than 30 minutes with an accuracy up to 99.7 percent, making it one of the fastest and most precise DNA sequencers in the world.
> 
> The sequencer is the first of its kind that can be applied to clinical practice.
> 
> Prof. He Jiankui, leader of the research team, said the sequencer is expected to lower the cost of DNA sequencing of any person from the current 1,000 US dollars to 100 US dollars, enabling everyone to enjoy benefits brought by accurate treatment from DNA sequencing.
> 
> The core technology of GenoCare is single-molecule fluorescence sequencing. The machine detects single-molecule fluorescence by employing total internal reflection microscopy, together with sequencing-by-synthesis chemistry.




The headline is misleading. 

In the video it says, "one of the fastest and most precise."

Anyways, I have very limited knowledge about DNA sequencing technology, so I will wait and watch and let market determine the value of the machine.


----------



## JSCh

*Growing Nearly Perfect Graphene At Scale*
Using copper foils as a substrate for carbon deposition, scientists in Korea and China have devised an inexpensive technique to grow large graphene sheets 



_
AsianScientist (Aug. 2, 2017)_ - A team of scientists from Korea and China have developed a method to synthesize large sheets of monolayer single-crystal graphene. They report their findings in the journal _Science Bulletin_.

Boasting high conductivity, strength and flexibility, graphene was proposed as one of the most likely substitutes for silicon and other materials. Polycrystalline graphene is formed by randomly oriented graphene islands, which decrease its quality. On the other hand, a honeycomb-shaped monolayer of carbon atoms, uniform throughout the whole material, offers exceptional properties to single-crystal graphene.

Currently, scientists can grow meter-sized polycrystalline graphene and smaller single-crystal graphene, ranging from 0.01 mm2 to a few square centimeters. The synthesis of large single-crystal graphene at a low cost has been considered a critical goal of graphene synthesis.

In this study, a team of researchers led by Professor Ding Feng and Professor Rodney Ruoff at the Center for Multidimensional Carbon Materials within the Institute for Basic Science reported the synthesis of a large sheet of monolayer single-crystal graphene.

The researchers grew graphene on the surface of a 5 × 50 cm2 copper foil, which was transformed into a single-crystal copper foil by heating to approximately 1,030 degrees Celcius. A temperature slope from hot to cold moved the so-called grain boundary onward, creating a perfect single crystal. During the heating and cooling treatment, copper atoms migrated inside the material, arranging into an ordered structure with fewer defects.

Then, using another technique called chemical vapor deposition, millions of parallel graphene islands were formed on the copper foil surface. As more carbon atoms deposit on the foil, the islands kept on growing until they coalesced and formed a very-close-to-perfect single-crystal graphene layer that covered the entire available surface.

“The secret to obtaining single-crystal graphene of a very large size is to have a perfect single crystal copper as a base to start with. Large single-crystal copper foils are not available in the market, so labs must build it with their own means,” explained Ding.

The team’s findings allow a leap forward in graphene production, advancing from a technique that synthesizes a few square centimeters of single-crystal graphene in a couple of hours, to an optimized method that allows the creation of an almost-perfect (> 99.9 percent aligned) 5 × 50 cm2 single-crystal graphene in just 20 minutes.

Moreover, the low production costs, comparable to commercially available lower quality polycrystalline graphene films, could expand its usability. The method is expected to stimulate further fundamental work on graphene and related materials, including large scale folding of graphene sheets, similar to paper, creating origami-like or kirigami-like shapes, which could be applied to future flexible circuits.

“The dream of many scientists is to make graphene the material of the future, to replace silicon,” Ding said. “We are exploring the best material on which to grow graphene and using copper as a substrate for other interesting 2D materials.”



Growing Nearly Perfect Graphene At Scale | Asian Scientist Magazine | Science, Technology and Medicine News Updates From Asia

Xiaozhi Xu, Zhihong Zhang, Jichen Dong, Ding Yi, Jingjing Niu, Muhong Wu, Li Lin, Rongkang Yin, Mingqiang Li, Jingyuan Zhou, Shaoxin Wang, Junliang Sun, Xiaojie Duan, Peng Gao, Ying Jiang, Xiaosong Wu, Hailin Peng, Rodney S. Ruoff, Zhongfan Liu, Dapeng Yu, Enge Wang, Feng Ding, Kaihui Liu. *Ultrafast epitaxial growth of metre-sized single-crystal graphene on industrial Cu foil*. _Science Bulletin_, 2017; DOI: 10.1016/j.scib.2017.07.005

*Abstract*
A foundation of the modern technology that uses single-crystal silicon has been the growth of high-quality single-crystal Si ingots with diameters up to 12 inches or larger. For many applications of graphene, large-area high-quality (ideally of single-crystal) material will be enabling. Since the first growth on copper foil a decade ago, inch-sized single-crystal graphene has been achieved. We present here the growth, in 20 min, of a graphene film of (5 × 50) cm2 dimension with >99% ultra-highly oriented grains. This growth was achieved by: (1) synthesis of metre-sized single-crystal Cu(1 1 1) foil as substrate; (2) epitaxial growth of graphene islands on the Cu(1 1 1) surface; (3) seamless merging of such graphene islands into a graphene film with high single crystallinity and (4) the ultrafast growth of graphene film. These achievements were realized by a temperature-gradient-driven annealing technique to produce single-crystal Cu(1 1 1) from industrial polycrystalline Cu foil and the marvellous effects of a continuous oxygen supply from an adjacent oxide. The as-synthesized graphene film, with very few misoriented grains (if any), has a mobility up to ∼23,000 cm2 V−1 s−1 at 4 K and room temperature sheet resistance of ∼230 Ω/□. It is very likely that this approach can be scaled up to achieve exceptionally large and high-quality graphene films with single crystallinity, and thus realize various industrial-level applications at a low cost.​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## rendong

China's Leading Silicon Photonics Platform Developed by IMECAS
Recently, the Integrated Circuit Advanced Process Center of Institute of Microelectronics of Chinese Academy of Sciences (IMECAS) released silicon photonics platform based on 8-inch Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) process line, which marks a significant increase in R & D capability in the field of silicon photonics in China.

Silicon photonics technology is a new technology developed under the trend of integration of microelectronics and optoelectronics in the post Moore Era. It utilizes mature CMOS technology and platform, and develops optoelectronic devices and chips based on silicon-based materials.

Silicon photonics not only has the urgent application demand in the field of optical communication and optical interconnection, but also is the potential technology to realize the optical interconnection and optical computer in the future. For a long time, China lacks perfect silicon photonic technology platform, which restricts the development of silicon photonics technology to a great extent.

Since 2015, IMECAS has begun to develop silicon photonics process technology based on the 8-inch CMOS process line. The Institute has developed a complete set of silicon photonic process modules. A series of silicon photonic devices including single-mode waveguide, Y branch, optical cross device, coupled grating, tunable attenuator, germanium detector and modulator have been successfully demonstrated.

The Process Design Kit (PDK) based on the platform has been released. The Institute is providing the service of Multi Project Wafer (MPW) process for domestic customers.

This silicon photonics platform is the first platform which provides a complete process of silicon photonic chip in China.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Study Reveals How to Reprogram Cells in our Immune System*
The discovery could improve treatments for autoimmune diseases and cancer
Gladstone Press Release / August 2, 2017

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—When the immune system is imbalanced, either due to overly active cells or cells that suppress its function, it causes a wide range of diseases, from psoriasis to cancer. By manipulating the function of certain immune cells, called T cells, researchers could help restore the system’s balance and create new treatments to target these diseases.

Scientists at the Gladstone Institutes revealed, for the first time, a method to reprogram specific T cells. More precisely, they discovered how to turn pro-inflammatory cells that boost the immune system into anti-inflammatory cells that suppress it, and vice versa.

The researchers studied two types of cells called effector T cells, which activate the immune system to defend our body against different pathogens, and regulatory T cells, which help control the immune system and prevent it from attacking healthy parts of its environment.

“Our findings could have a significant impact on the treatment of autoimmune diseases, as well as on stem cell and immuno-oncology therapies,” said Gladstone Senior Investigator Sheng Ding, PhD, who is also a professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco.

By drawing on their expertise in drug discovery, Ding’s team identified a small-molecule drug that can successfully reprogram effector T cells into regulatory T cells. Their study, published in the renowned journal _Nature_, describes in detail a metabolic mechanism that helps convert one cell type into another.

This new approach to reprogram T cells could have several medical applications. For instance, in autoimmune disease, effector T cells are overly activated and cause damage to body. Converting these cells into regulatory T cells could help reduce the hyperactivity and return balance to the immune system, thus treating the root of the disease.

In addition, the study could improve therapies using stem cells. At least in theory, producing regulatory T cells could promote immune tolerance and prevent the body from rejecting newly-transplanted cells.

“Our work could also contribute to ongoing efforts in immuno-oncology and the treatment of cancer,” explained Tao Xu, postdoctoral scholar in Ding’s laboratory and first author of the study. “This type of therapy doesn’t target the cancer directly, but rather works on activating the immune system so it can recognize cancer cells and attack them.”

Many cancers take control of regulatory T cells to suppress the immune system, creating an environment where tumors can grow without being detected. In such cases, the team’s findings could be used to transform regulatory T cells into effector T cells to strengthen the immune system so it can better recognize and destroy cancer cells.

_The research was supported by the Gladstone Institutes. _

_Other authors of this study include Katerina Akassoglou, Kai Liu, Min Xie, Jae Kyu Ryu, Ke Li, Tianhua Ma, Haixia Wang, Saiyong Zhu, Nan Cao, and Yu Zhang from Gladstone; Edward M. Driggers, Kelly M. Stewart, and Dongwei Zhu from Agios Pharmaceuticals; and Chen Dong, Xiaohu Wang, and Lu Ni from Tsinghua University in China._
https://gladstone.org/about-us/press-releases/study-reveals-how-reprogram-cells-our-immune-system


Study Reveals How to Reprogram Cells in our Immune System | Gladstone Institutes

Tao Xu, Kelly M. Stewart, Xiaohu Wang, Kai Liu, Min Xie, Jae Kyu Ryu, Ke Li, Tianhua Ma, Haixia Wang, Lu Ni, Saiyong Zhu, Nan Cao, Dongwei Zhu, Yu Zhang, Katerina Akassoglou, Chen Dong, Edward M. Driggers, Sheng Ding. *Metabolic control of TH17 and induced Treg cell balance by an epigenetic mechanism*. _Nature_, 2017; DOI: 10.1038/nature23475

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* Lightweight Catalyst for Artificial Photosynthesis: Carbonitride aerogels mediate the photocatalytic conversion of water *
Nanochemistry meets macrostructures: Chinese scientists report the synthesis of a macroscopic aerogel from carbonitride nanomaterials which is an excellent catalyst for the water-splitting reaction under visible-light irradiation. The study published in the journal _Angewandte Chemie_ adds new opportunities to the material properties of melamine-derived carbonitrides.

Friday, August 4, 2017 7:05 am EDT




Melamine can be polymerized with formaldehyde to give a highly durable and light resin, but it can also condensed to form nanostructures of carbonitride materials. These assemblies made of carbon and nitrogen combine the honeycomb-like electronically active network of graphene with some extra functionality of nitrogen. Searching for ways to assemble these nanostructures into a stable macroscopic architecture, Xinchen Wang and his team at Fuzhou University in China have now prepared a catalytically highly active and stable lightweight material, which serves well in artificial photosynthesis and offers very interesting structural and electronic properties.

Aerogels are gels but without water—up to ninety-nine percent of their structure is air. This porosity gives them a huge surface ideal for catalytic or sensory application. As carbonitrides are materials with very interesting nanostructure and graphene-like properties but nitrogen functionality, it has long be sought to bring them into a controlled macroscopic assembly. "Since CN is rich in nitrogen-containing groups, it is expected that CN may have interesting assembly behaviors like proteins or peptides in biological systems," the authors said.

The enhanced surface area and higher number of catalytic sites would make these aerogels highly functional macroscopic materials. Employing only physical interparticle forces intrinsic to the nanoparticles, the scientists prepared the aerogel by making a colloidal aqueous solution of carbonitride nanoparticles to settle first into a hydrogel, then converting it into a stable aerogel by a conventional freeze-drying technology. "This method has several advantages, including scalability for mass production and low cost," the authors said. In combination with a platinum co-catalyst, the aerogel was much better a photocatalyst for hydrogen evolution than the bulk carbonitride, and hydrogen peroxide was generated from pure water under visible-light irradiation when the bulk carbonitride failed.

Thus, by joining forces of chemical and physical characteristics from the nano- to the macroscale, they have created a new lightweight material with excellent catalytic prospects. This promising application of melamine building blocks points the way forward to new materials, and is far apart from the well-established mass production of the light and durable, but not so thermostable melamine plastic dishes.

(2908 characters)

*Cite and link*: Xinchen Wang et al., _Angewandte Chemie International Edition_, 10.1002/anie.201705926. doi.org/10.1002/anie.201705926



Lightweight Catalyst for Artificial Photosynthesis: Carbonitride aerogels mediate the photocatalytic conversion of water | Wiley News Room – Press Releases, News, Events & Media

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Light, strong alloy may alter design of aircraft*
By WANG HONGYI | China Daily | Updated: 2017-08-07 03:57

A new kind of nano material developed by domestic researchers is expected to become the next-generation aviation material and boost the development of the country's homegrown large passenger aircraft.

The nano ceramic aluminum alloy was developed by the research team from the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Light in weight, such new material has the characteristics of high rigidity, high strength, fatigue resistance, low expansion and high temperature resistance.

Instead of the traditional physical method of mixing the ceramic and aluminum alloy, researchers put the nano ceramic particles into aluminum alloy through an innovative chemical process. During the process, the size, shape, and distribution of the particles were controlled.

This helped improve the rigidity and strength of the new material. At the same time, the processing and manufacturing performance of aluminum alloy remains, said Professor Wang Haowei, who led the project.

"The nano ceramic aluminum alloy material helps break the bottleneck of large-scale application in engineering," Wang said.

The university's scientists started the basic research in the field in the early 1990s, Wang said, and they have made a lot of experiments in developing the new material over the years.

"Compared with titanium alloy and high-temperature alloy, the performance of aluminum alloy with 3D printing technology is much lower. The 3D printing components made of nano ceramic aluminum alloy can achieve the performance of forgings," Wang said.

So far, the new material has already been used in the Tiangong-1 and Tiangong-2 space labs, quantum satellites and meteorological satellites. It also has been used in key components of automotive internal-combustion engines, which not only reduces weight efficiency, but also saves energy, reduces emissions and improves safety.

Wang said researchers are stepping up their cooperation with Commercial Aircraft Corp of China to promote the use of such new materials in large aircraft.

"The advances in aviation development are closely connected to the progress of materials, and we are closely watching the development and performance of the new material," said Wu Guanghui, vice-president of COMAC, the general designer of C919, the first homegrown large passenger aircraft

Wu said the nano ceramic aluminum alloy material is still being tested, and is expected to be used in the C919 aircraft, replacing some of current components, which were imported.

A new material innovation center was established at the university last week, which aims to further boost the industrialization of the nano ceramic aluminum alloy material. Based on Wang's research team, the center was jointly established by the Huaibei government of Anhui province, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai JuneYao Group and Anhui Xiangbang Composite Material Co.

In 2013, the Huaibei government established a midterm test and manufacturing base with an annual production capacity of more than 1,000 metric tons, and it also founded the Anhui Xiangbang Composite Material Co. The production of such material aims to meet large-scale applications in aerospace, aviation and auto industries.


----------



## JSCh

*XIEG Drone Team Completes First Geological Monitoring in Sarez Lake*
Aug 08, 2017

A UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) team with the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography (XIEG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences recently finished their first aerial photography mission at the Sarez Lake of Tajikistan on its geological monitoring of Usoy.

This is the first time for the team to complete aerial monitoring of geological status in the Sarez Lake area which locates deep in the inaccessible Pamir Mountains and is therefore hard for obtaining high-precision geological data due to its high altitude and bad traffic condition.

The five-member team operates their UAV for a day-and-half aerial photography mission as high as 5,000 meters above the Sarez Lake, and obtained a large quantity of geological data for further hazard monitoring.

Sarez Lake was formed in 1911 after an earthquake measuring 7.7 on the Richter scale. The earthquake caused a landslide of 2.2 km3, which formed the five kilometers long, 3.2 kilometers wide Usoy Dam. It is the tallest dam in the World, with a height about 600 meters.

The lake’s stability has been an internationally concerned question, considering local seismic activity and the fact that Sarez is located in one of the most earthquake-prone regions in the World. According to scientists, Usoy would be unsteady if an earthquake occurred in the future. Potential flooding poses a threat not only on the population of Tajikistan, but also inhabitants of Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

The team captured more than 3,600 photos of the dam area about 70 km2 during the flights in one and a half days. Among them, over 1,500 photos are orthographic shooting with a 20-centimeter resolution and about 2100 oblique shooting with resolution of 10 centimeters.

This is the first time for Chinese scientists to carry out on-spot monitoring on Sarez Lake area, and has set a record for the XIEG drone team’s field operation.

The mission is one of many tasks of a cooperated project by XIEG and the Institute of Geology, Seismological Construction and Seismology of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tajikistan. The project aims to provide scientific support for disaster warning of flood and landslide in Usoy dam through high-precision monitoring with UAV and high-resolution satellite.


----------



## JSCh

* Battery scientists develop new strategy for carbon fixation *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-08-10 02:07:24_|_Editor: Mu Xuequan_





WASHINGTON, Aug. 9 (Xinhua) -- Scientists in Japan and China said Wednesday they have discovered an "unexpected" approach to capture and store carbon dioxide away from the atmosphere while working toward the elusive lithium-air battery.

In a study published in Joule, a new interdisciplinary energy journal from Cell Press, the researchers reported a new strategy to isolate solid carbon dust from gaseous carbon dioxide (CO2) by using a designing intended for a lithium-CO2 battery.

Converting carbon dioxide emissions into other carbon-containing compounds is desirable due to carbon dioxide's contribution to the greenhouse effect and global warming.

Examples range from natural processes, such as plants turning CO2 into oxygen and sugars, to man-made ones, such as injecting carbon dioxide into rock formations to be trapped as carbonate minerals.

"The problem with most physical and chemical pathways for CO2 fixation is that their products are gases and liquids that need to be further liquefied or compressed, and that inevitably leads to additional energy consumption and even more CO2 emissions," senior author Haoshen Zhou of Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology and China's Nanjing University, said in a statement.

"Instead, we are demonstrating an electrochemical strategy for CO2 fixation that yields solid carbon products, as well as a lithium-CO2 battery that can provide the energy necessary for that process."

The researchers worked out the carbon fixation strategy when they tried to recharge a lithium-CO2 battery prototype.

For a reversible Li-CO2 battery, the lithium carbonate and carbon produced during discharge will be fully oxidized to lithium ions and CO2 during recharge.

However, the new study found the so-called oxidation process is irreversible as the lithium carbonate is decomposed while the carbon obtained remains fixed.

In addition, the researchers found that incorporating a tiny amount of ruthenium metal into their design as a catalyst can help avoid extensive carbon deposition and induce better reversibility, converting their carbon-fixing apparatus into a functioning Li-CO2 battery.

The fixation technique might also be adapted to scrub other harmful or polluting gases such as carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitric oxide, and nitrogen dioxide from the atmosphere, Zhou said.

Looking ahead, the researchers are also excited by their system's potential to perhaps lead to a pathway for converting carbon dioxide into pure carbon and oxygen gas.

"Attaining the release of oxygen gas upon charging, coupled with the accumulation of solid carbon, would realize an electrochemical carbon dioxide fixation strategy analogous to photosynthesis," said Zhou.




This is a flowchart of energy storage and carbon fixation using Li-CO2 technology. 
_Credit: Qiao et al._
​Yu Qiao, Shichao Wu, Yang Liu, Sixie Yang, Ping He, Haoshen Zhou. *Li-CO2 Electrochemistry: A New Strategy for CO2 Fixation and Energy Storage.* _Joule_, 2017 DOI: 10.1016/j.joule.2017.07.001

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* China's satellite sends unbreakable cipher from space *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-08-10 01:06:38_|_Editor: Mu Xuequan_





BEIJING, Aug. 10 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have become the first to realize quantum key distribution from a satellite to the ground, laying the foundation for building a hack-proof global quantum communication network.

The achievement based on experiments conducted with the world's first quantum satellite, Quantum Experiments at Space Scale (QUESS), was published in the authoritative academic journal _Nature_ on Thursday.

The Nature reviewers commented that the experiment was an impressive achievement, and constituted a milestone in the field.

Nicknamed "Micius" after a 5th century B.C. Chinese philosopher and scientist who is credited as the first person ever to conduct optical experiments, the 600-kilogram-plus satellite was sent into a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 500 km on Aug. 16, 2016.

Pan Jianwei, lead scientist of QUESS and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), said the satellite sent quantum keys to ground stations in Xinglong, in north China's Hebei Province, and Nanshan near Urumqi, capital of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Communication distance between the satellite and the ground stations varied from 645 km to 1,200 km, and the quantum key transmission rate from satellite to ground is up to 20 orders of magnitude more efficient than that expected using an optical fiber of the same length, said Pan.

When the satellite flies over China, it provides an experiment window of about 10 minutes. During that time, 300 kbit secure keys can be generated and sent by the satellite, according to Pan.

"That, for instance, can meet the demand of making an absolute safe phone call or transmitting a large amount of bank data," Pan said.

"Satellite-based quantum key distribution can be linked to metropolitan quantum networks where fibers are sufficient and convenient to connect numerous users within a city over 100 km. We can thus envision a space-ground integrated quantum network, enabling quantum cryptography - most likely the first commercial application of quantum information - useful at a global scale," Pan said.

The establishment of a reliable and efficient space-to-ground link for faithful quantum state transmission paves the way to global-scale quantum networks, he added.

*HACK-PROOF COMMUNICATION*

Private and secure communications are highly sought after. Traditional public key cryptography usually relies on the perceived computational intractability of certain mathematical functions.

But a powerful quantum computer, which scientists around the world are still developing, is viewed as a threat in that it could make everything on a conventional computer hackable.

However, like a coin with two sides, quantum mechanics also serves as protector of information.

By harnessing quantum entanglement, the quantum key technology is used in quantum communications, ruling out the possibility of wiretapping and perfectly securing the communication.

Pan explained that a quantum key is formed by a string of random numbers generated between two communicating users to encode information. Once intercepted or measured, the quantum state of the key will change, and the information being intercepted will self-destruct.

An eavesdropper on the quantum channel attempting to gain information on the key will inevitably introduce disturbance to the system, and can be detected by the communicating users, said Pan.

*BREAKING LIMITS IN SPACE*

In practice, the achievable distance for quantum key distribution has been limited to a few hundred kilometers, due to the loss of photons in transmission through optical fibers, Pan said.

"If we transmit the quantum key through a 1,200-km fiber, even with a perfect single-photon source and ideal single-photon detectors, we would obtain only a 1-bit sifted key over six million years," Pan said.

A more direct and promising solution for global-scale quantum key distribution is through satellites. Transmitting photons between the satellite and ground stations greatly broadens the reach of quantum communication, Pan said.

Compared with terrestrial channels, the satellite-to-ground connection has significantly reduced losses. This is mainly because the effective thickness of the atmosphere is 10 km, and most of the photon's transmission path is in empty space with negligible absorption and turbulence.

Scientists expect quantum communications to fundamentally change human development in the next two or three decades, as there are enormous prospects for applying the new generation of communication in fields like defense, military and finance.

*CHINA'S QUANTUM LEAP*

In the same issue of Nature, another experiment, the ground-to-satellite quantum teleportation, conducted via Micius, was also published. In June, the same team's experiment in distribution of entangled photon pairs over 1,200 kilometers was published as a cover article in the academic journal Science.

Chinese scientists have completed all the experiments designed for Micius a year ahead of schedule.

Karl Ziemelis, chief physical sciences editor at Nature, said that with the publication of these new papers, Pan and his colleagues have completed their demonstration of a trio of quantum experiments that will be central to any global space-based quantum Internet.

"I mean you could say that the sky's the limit for quantum technologies, but that is a little bit conservative actually. They've gone beyond the sky with these latest experiments. And it's a testament to China's investments and significant efforts in the physical sciences that this group has been able to push research in practical quantum communication technologies to such an astronomical height," said Ziemelis.

CAS president Bai Chunli said the achievements show China has reached a leading position in the field of quantum communication research.

"Micius has ushered in the construction of global quantum communication, the study of space quantum physics and experimental verification of quantum gravity theories. It helps China's race to control the command point of quantum science and technology, and enables China to become a leader in the field," Bai said.

In addition to Micius, China has launched a series of space science satellites, including the Dark Matter Particle Explorer, the recoverable satellite SJ-10, and the Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope, over the past two years.

Bai said China plans to launch more space science satellites in the next five to 10 years, focusing on the frontiers of science, such as the study of the origin of the universe, black holes, gravitational waves, exoplanets, resources exploration of the solar system and solar storms.

The implementation of these projects is expected to bring more scientific breakthroughs, and help China to become a powerful nation in the field of science and technology, Bai said.

#####​
Sheng-Kai Liao, Wen-Qi Cai, Wei-Yue Liu, Liang Zhang, Yang Li, Ji-Gang Ren, Juan Yin, Qi Shen, Yuan Cao, Zheng-Ping Li, Feng-Zhi Li, Xia-Wei Chen, Li-Hua Sun, Jian-Jun Jia, Jin-Cai Wu, Xiao-Jun Jiang, Jian-Feng Wang, Yong-Mei Huang, Qiang Wang, Yi-Lin Zhou, Lei Deng, Tao Xi, Lu Ma, Tai Hu, Qiang Zhang, Yu-Ao Chen, Nai-Le Liu, Xiang-Bin Wang, Zhen-Cai Zhu, Chao-Yang Lu, Rong Shu, Cheng-Zhi Peng, Jian-Yu Wang & Jian-Wei Pan. *Satellite-to-ground quantum key distribution. *_Nature _(2017). DOI: 10.1038/nature23655
Ji-Gang Ren, Ping Xu, Hai-Lin Yong, Liang Zhang, Sheng-Kai Liao, Juan Yin, Wei-Yue Liu, Wen-Qi Cai, Meng Yang, Li Li, Kui-Xing Yang, Xuan Han, Yong-Qiang Yao, Ji Li, Hai-Yan Wu, Song Wan, Lei Liu, Ding-Quan Liu, Yao-Wu Kuang, Zhi-Ping He, Peng Shang, Cheng Guo, Ru-Hua Zheng, Kai Tian, Zhen-Cai Zhu, Nai-Le Liu, Chao-Yang Lu, Rong Shu, Yu-Ao Chen, Cheng-Zhi Peng, Jian-Yu Wang & Jian-Wei Pan. *Ground-to-satellite quantum teleportation. *_Nature _(2017). DOI: 10.1038/nature23675



实现星地高速量子密钥分发
Satellite to ground quantum key distribution.



完成地星量子隐形传态实验
Ground to satellite quantum teleportation.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Jurassic's earliest gliding mammals undermine dinosaurs’ reign*
*Two exquisitely preserved fossils, dated to 160 million years ago, indicate dinosaurs did not dominate the Mesozoic Era as believed.*



The _Maiopatagium furculiferum_ fossil.
Zhe-Xi Luo / University of Chicago

The earliest examples of gliding mammals yet discovered, dated to the Jurassic period about 160 million years ago, suggest dinosaurs did not dominate the prehistoric Earth as much as has been believed.

As the first winged mammals, the identified fossils of two gliders demonstrate the wide ecological diversity attained by early mammals, says Zhe-Xi Luo, professor of organismal biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago, who is co-author of two new papers analysing the animals, published in _Nature_. This degree of early evolutionary diversity, he suggests, “means dinosaurs likely did not dominate the Mesozoic landscape as much as previously thought”.

Bearing some similarities in appearance to modern gliding mammals such as flying squirrels and possums, the “exquisitely fossilised” remains of the two animals unearthed from China’s renowned Tiaojishan Formation show wing-like skin membranes between long fore and hind limbs, and skeletal features in their shoulder joints and forelimbs that would make them capable gliders. Their long fingers (or toes) are suited to gripping branches, indicating trees were their natural habitat, while their teeth indicate they ate a mainly herbivorous diet.

Their capacity for aerial travel – what is known as ‘volant locomotion’ – evolved roughly 100 million before the earliest known gliding members of the family known as therians, to which squirrel and possum flyers and gliders belong. “These Jurassic mammals are truly ‘the first in glide’,” Luo says. “In a way, they got the first wings among all mammals.”

Luo and his colleagues from the University of Chicago, the Beijing Museum of Natural History and Hebei GEO University categorise the two gliders as belonging to the haramiyidan clade, an extinct branch of the mammalian evolutionary tree considered a forerunner of modern mammals. The clade extends back to the Late Triassic (201-252 million years ago).



An artist’s impression of _Maiopatagium_ in a Jurassic forest.
April I. Neander / University of Chicago

For this reason the scientists consider the two newly discovered gliders as more antiquated than _Volaticotherium antiquus_, a squirrel-sized gliding mammal dug up in Inner Mongolia and presented to the world in 2006. It has been dated as being about the same age of the new fossils.

_V. antiquus_, however, belonged to the eutriconodont clade, which extends back only to about 170 million years ago and is technically part of the modern mammal family. “Eutriconodonts are rooted between modern monotremes and modern marsupials-placentals on the mammal evolutionary tree,” Luo explains. “_Volaticotherium_’s gliding evolved after the split of monotremes on one hand and marsupial-placental mammals on the other.”

So while in absolute geological terms all three fossils are about the same age, Luo says, the two new gliders evolved at an earlier point in mammalian evolution, prior to the diversification of modern mammals into monotremes, marsupials and placentals. “The evolutionary antiquity is much older for the newly found _Maiopatagium_ and _Vilevolodon_ than for _Volaticotherium_. That’s why we say they are the first winged mammals.”

One of the gliders, _Maiopatagium furculiferum_, was dug up from the Daxishan fossil site in Jianchang County, Liaoning Province. The other, _Vilevolodon diplomylos_, was unearthed at the Nanshimen fossil site in Qinglong County, Hebei Province.

Their evolution to glide between trees to forage for food demonstrates the the adaptability of early mammaliaformes to exploit new ecological niches otherwise inaccessible to competitors, Luo and his co-authors say. “Evolution of gliding behaviour is an important evolutionary transition between divergent land-based and aerial habitats,” they write in the paper analysing _Maiopatagium furculiferum_.



A map showing the sites where the glider fossils were found.
Zhe-Xi Luo / University of Chicago

Together with many other fossils described by Luo and colleagues over the past decade or so, the new fossils provide strong evidence that mammals adapted well and were more ubiquitous in an age once presumed to have been the domain of dinosaurs.

“The traditional and historical view was that when dinosaurs dominated the world, mammals were small, generalised and without much functional or ecological diversity,” Luo says. “In simple terms, mammals were not able to diversify when dinosaurs dominated the terrestrial ecosystem. The popular version of this view was that mammals always lived in the shadow of dinosaurs. But that was then.”

A stream of new discoveries in the past 15 years has shown that mammals which co-existed with dinosaurs during the Mesozoic evolved into semi-aquatic forms, such as _Castorocauda_, subterranean forms, such as _Docofossor_, and many arboreal forms, such as _Agilodocodon_ and _Arboroharamiya_.

“Mesozoic mammals essentially evolved all the distinctive ecomorphotypes like those of modern mammals of small-to-mid-sized bodies,” Luo says.

_Tim Wallace is a contributor to Cosmos Magazine

_
Jurassic's earliest gliding mammals undermine dinosaurs’ | Cosmos


Qing-Jin Meng, David M. Grossnickle, Di Liu, Yu-Guang Zhang, April I. Neander, Qiang Ji & Zhe-Xi Luo. *New gliding mammaliaforms from the Jurassic*, _Nature_ (2017). DOI: 10.1038/nature23476
Zhe-Xi Luo, Qing-Jin Meng, David M. Grossnickle, Di Liu, April I. Neander, Yu-Guang Zhang & Qiang Ji. *New evidence for mammaliaform ear evolution and feeding adaptation in a Jurassic ecosystem*, _Nature_ (2017). DOI: 10.1038/nature23483

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Transplant innovation a lifesaver*
By ZHENG CAIXIONG | China Daily | Updated: 2017-08-11 07:04

A cirrhosis patient in Guangzhou has been discharged from the hospital after receiving a new liver using a groundbreaking technique that is expected to keep healthy organs from going to waste.

The man, identified only as Wang, 51, said on Thursday that he felt well, and expressed his gratitude to the medical staff at the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University.

The operation on July 23 is the first time in China a transplanted organ was kept alive using new technology that provides uninterrupted blood flow, according to the hospital.

After collection from the donor, the liver was put into a machine developed by Chinese doctors and scientists that pumped body-temperature blood into the hepatic artery, replicating the effect of being in a body, keeping the organ fresh.

Organs usually are stored on ice, but after 30 minutes without the flow of blood, they begin to die. This new technique means an organ can be stored for much longer－in the case of livers, four hours.

"The technology is a breakthrough," said He Xiaoshun, vice-president of the hospital and the top expert in its organ transplant center. The success of Wang's surgery "shows the technology can also be used in other transplant operations, including hearts, kidneys and lungs, as liver transplants are the most difficult".

The method can also "help reduce complications and shorten the period of recovery compared with traditional transplants", he said, adding that Wang was transferred to an ordinary ward from the intensive care unit only 19 hours after surgery.

More than 4,080 transplantation surgeries were carried out in China last year. However, many healthy organs are wasted due to constraints in storage and transportation, experts said.

He's team began experimenting with ways to provide uninterrupted blood flow to organs seven years ago.

After observing Wang's recovery, the hospital carried out the same operation on a 50-year-old man on Aug 8. That patient is now recovering, He said, adding that the third such transplant will take place on Friday.

While the same type of technology is being used and tested in a few other countries, machines that can keep livers alive are on the cutting edge.

Wang Xuehao, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said the blood flow machine is a disruptive innovation that showcases the nation's great contribution to organ transplantation.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*In breakthrough, scientists eliminate dangerous viruses in live pigs through gene editing *
Source: Xinhua | 2017-08-11 05:23:46 | Editor: huaxia



First pigs free of porcine endogenous retroviruses (PERVS) (The image distributed by eGenesis Yang Luhan/Xinhua)

WASHINGTON, Aug. 10 (Xinhua) -- Scientists on Thursday announced a breakthrough in producing the first batch of live pigs free of dangerous viruses, setting the stage for transplanting life-saving organs from the animals into humans.

In a paper published in the U.S. journal Science, researchers from the U.S., China and Denmark described how they used the powerful gene-editing tool CRISPR to modify pig cells and produce embryos free of the so-called porcine endogenous retroviruses (PERVs) in order to create the desired piglets.

Luhan Yang, co-founder and chief scientific officer at a Massachusetts-based biotechnology company called eGenesis, who led the study, hailed the first PERV-free pigs as "an important milestone" for the use of animal organs for human transplant.

"Our work fundamentally addressed the risk of cross-species viral transmission in xenotransplantation," Yang told Xinhua.

Worldwide, human organs for transplant are in short supply. Researchers and clinicians have long hoped that the challenge could be alleviated through the availability of suitable animal organs for transplant, a concept known as xenotransplantation.

Pigs in particular have been especially promising candidates due to their similar size and physiology to humans. But one of the largest safety concerns has been the fact that most mammals including pigs contain repetitive, latent retrovirus fragments in their genomes -- present in all their living cells -- that are harmless to their native hosts but can cause disease in other species.

The presence of PERVs in pigs brought more than a billion dollars'worth of pharmaceutical industry investments in developing xenotransplant methods to a standstill by the early 2000s, according to the study.

Then, Yang and colleagues demonstrated in a 2015 Science paper a method to inactivate all 62 copies of PERVs in porcine cells and eliminated PERV transmission to human cells.

In the new study, the researchers developed a strategy to enable efficient and precise gene editing to deactivate all 25 genomic sites related to PERVs in pig fibroblast cells using the CRISPR technology.

In conjunction with a method to inhibit cell death during gene editing, they successfully produced viable PERV-free porcine embryos via somatic cell nuclear transfer, the same method that created Dolly, the world's first cloned sheep, in 1996.

The team then implanted the PERV-free embryos into surrogate sows and demonstrated the absence of PERV re-infection, initially in fetuses and finally in recently born piglets.

"At least for those who are four months old, we did not observe difference in physiology between the modified piglets and normal ones," Yang said.

"We will continue to use this platform to engineer the pig genome, on the basis of PERV-free pigs, to enhance pig-to-human immunological compatibility for the clinical xenotransplantation of porcine organs as early as possible," she said.

The paper was also authored by researchers from Harvard University and China's Zhejiang University, Yunnan Agricultural University, Third Military Medical University and Research Institute of Shenzhen Jinxinnong Technology Co Ltd as well as Denmark's Aarhus University.

Professor Darren Griffin of the University of Kent, who was not involved in the study, said the finding represents "a significant step forward towards the possibility of making xenotransplantation a reality."

"However, there are so many variables including ethical issues to resolve before xenotransplantation can take place," Griffin cautioned.

Another outside expert, Professor Ian McConnell of the University of Cambridge, sounded a similarly cautionary note, calling this work "a promising first step."

"It remains to be seen whether these results can be translated into a fully safe strategy in organ transplantation," McConnell said. "Even if organs from these gene-edited pigs could be safely used to overcome virus transmission, there remain formidable obstacles in overcoming immunological rejection and physiological incompatibility of pig organs in humans."


Dong Niu, Hong-Jiang Wei, Lin Lin, Haydy George, Tao Wang, I-Hsiu Lee, Hong-Ye Zhao, Yong Wang, Yinan Kan, Ellen Shrock, Emal Lesha, Gang Wang, Yonglun Luo, Yubo Qing, Deling Jiao, Heng Zhao, Xiaoyang Zhou, Shouqi Wang, Hong Wei, Marc Güell, George M. Church, Luhan Yang. *Inactivation of porcine endogenous retrovirus in pigs using CRISPR-Cas9.* _Science _(2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aan4187​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

August 9, 2017
*Super-light material possesses high strength, other attributes*

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — A new featherweight, flame-resistant and super-elastic “metamaterial” has been shown to combine high strength with electrical conductivity and thermal insulation, suggesting potential applications from buildings to aerospace.

The composite combines nanolayers of a ceramic called aluminum oxide with graphene, which is an extremely thin sheet of carbon. Although both the ceramic and graphene are brittle, the new metamaterial has a honeycomb microstructure that provides super-elasticity and structural robustness. Metamaterials are engineered with features, patterns or elements on the scale of nanometers, or billionths of a meter, providing new properties for various potential applications.

Graphene would ordinarily degrade when exposed to high temperature, but the ceramic imparts high heat tolerance and flame-resistance, properties that might be useful as a heat shield for aircraft. The light weight, high-strength and shock-absorbing properties could make the composite a good substrate material for flexible electronic devices and “large strain sensors.” Because it has high electrical conductivity and yet is an excellent thermal insulator, it might be used as a flame-retardant, thermally insulating coating, as well as sensors and devices that convert heat into electricity, said Gary Cheng, an associate professor in the School of Industrial Engineering at Purdue University.

“This material is lighter than a feather,” he said. “The density is really low. It has a very high strength-to-weight ratio.”

Findings were detailed in a research paper published on May 29 in the journal Advanced Materials. The paper was a collaboration between Purdue, Lanzhou University and the Harbin Institute of Technology, both in China, and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory. A research highlight about the work appeared in the journal Nature Research Materials and is available at https://www.nature.com/articles/natrevmats201744.pdf. A YouTube video about the work is available.








A new composite material combines ultra-lightweight with flame-resistance, super-elasticity and other attributes that could make it ideal for various applications. Here, the material is viewed with a scanning electron microscope, while its flame resistance is put to the test. (Purdue University photo)

“The outstanding properties of today’s ceramic-based components have been used to enable many multifunctional applications, including thermal protective skins, intelligent sensors, electromagnetic wave absorption and anticorrosion coatings,” Cheng said.

However, ceramic-based materials have several fundamental bottlenecks that prevent their ubiquitous use as functional or structural elements.

“Here, we report a multifunctional ceramic-graphene metamaterial with microstructure-derived super-elasticity and structural robustness,” Cheng said. “We achieved this by designing a hierarchical honeycomb microstructure assembled with multi-nanolayer cellular walls serving as basic elastic units. This metamaterial demonstrates a sequence of multifunctional properties simultaneously that have not been reported for ceramics and ceramics–matrix–composite structures.”

The composite material is made of interconnected cells of graphene sandwiched between ceramic layers. The graphene scaffold, referred to as an aerogel, is chemically bonded with ceramic layers using a process called atomic layer deposition.

“We carefully control the geometry of this graphene aerogel,” he said. “And then we deposit very thin layers of the ceramic. The mechanical property of this aerogel is multifunctional, which is very important. This work has the potential of making graphene a more functional material.”

The process might be scaled up for industrial manufacturing, he said.

Future work will include research to enhance the material’s properties, possibly by changing its crystalline structure, scaling up the process for manufacturing and controlling the microstructure to tune material properties.

The research was funded in part by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

*Writer:* Emil Venere, 765-494-4709, venere@purdue.edu 


Super-light material possesses high strength, other attributes - Purdue University

Qiangqiang Zhang, Dong Lin, Biwei Deng, Xiang Xu, Qiong Nian, Shengyu Jin, Kevin D. Leedy, Hui Li, Gary J. Cheng. *Flyweight, Superelastic, Electrically Conductive, and Flame-Retardant 3D Multi-Nanolayer Graphene/Ceramic Metamaterial*. _Advanced Materials_ (2017). DOI: 10.1002/adma.201605506​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Blind quantum computing for everyone*
August 11, 2017 by Lisa Zyga

(Phys.org)—For the first time, physicists have demonstrated that clients who possess only classical computers—and no quantum devices—can outsource computing tasks to quantum servers that perform blind quantum computing. "Blind" means the quantum servers do not have full information about the tasks they are computing, which ensures that the clients' computing tasks are kept secure. Until now, all blind quantum computing demonstrations have required that clients have their own quantum devices in order to delegate tasks for blind quantum computing.

The team of physicists, led by Jian-Wei Pan and Chao-Yang Lu at the University of Science and Technology of China, have published a paper on the demonstration of blind quantum computing for classical clients in a recent issue of _Physical Review Letters_.

"We have demonstrated for the first time that a fully classical client can delegate a quantum computation to untrusted quantum servers while maintaining full privacy," Lu told _Phys.org_.

The idea behind blind quantum computing is that, while there are certain computing tasks that quantum computers can perform exponentially better than classical computers, quantum computing still involves expensive, complex hardware that will make it inaccessible for most clients. So instead of everyone owning their own quantum computing devices, blind quantum computing makes it possible for clients to outsource their computing tasks to quantum servers that do the job for them. Ensuring that the quantum computing is performed blindly is important, since many of the potential applications of quantum computing will likely require a high degree of security.

Although several blind quantum computing protocols have been performed in the past few years, they have all required that the clients have the ability to perform certain quantum tasks, such as prepare or measure qubit states. Eliminating this requirement will provide greater access to blind quantum computing, since most clients only have classical computing systems.

In the new study, the physicists experimentally demonstrated that a classical client can outsource a simple problem (factoring the number 15) to two quantum servers that do not fully know what problem they are solving. This is because each server completes part of the task, and it is physically impossible for the servers to communicate with each other. To ensure that the quantum servers are performing their tasks honestly, the client can give them "dummy tasks" that are indistinguishable from the real task to test their honesty and correctness.

The researchers expect that the new method can be scaled up for realizing secure, outsourced quantum computing, which could one day be implemented on quantum cloud servers and make the power of quantum computing widely available.

"Blind quantum computing protocol is an important privacy-preserving technique for future secure quantum cloud computing and secure quantum networks," Lu said. "Applying our implemented blind quantum computing protocol, classical clients could delegate computation tasks to servers 'in the cloud' blindly and correctly without directly owning quantum devices. It saves resources and makes scalable quantum computing possible."

In the future, the physicists want to make blind quantum computing even easier for clients by further reducing the requirements.

"We plan to study more robust blind quantum computing protocols with fewer required resources and fewer constraints theoretically and experimentally," Lu said. "We will also explore blind quantum computing for more application scenarios, such as multi-user blind quantum computing, publicly verifiable quantum computing, and secure multi-party quantum computing."


https://phys.org/news/2017-08-quantum.html


He-Liang Huang, Qi Zhao, Xiongfeng Ma, Chang Liu, Zu-En Su, Xi-Lin Wang, Li Li, Nai-Le Liu, Barry C. Sanders, Chao-Yang Lu, and Jian-Wei Pan. *Experimental Blind Quantum Computing for a Classical Client*. _Physical Review Letters _(2017). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.050503 , Also at arXiv:1707.00400​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Converting greenhouse gas to value-added syngas takes a big step forward*

 Zhang Ningning 
00:05 UTC+8, 2017-08-14



Ti Gong
The demonstration plant located in Shanxi Province.

The world's largest production plant to produce value-added synthesis gas — known as syngas — has passed an industrial demonstration with flying colors.

Syngas is made from methane and carbon dioxide, two main greenhouse gases.

The successful industrial demonstration expanded the “dry reforming” technology's to an almost commercial scale and paves the way for its future commercialization, said the developer, Shanghai Advanced Research Institute of Chinese Academy of Sciences, on Sunday.

Carbon dioxide and methane are key carbon resources, local researchers said. Converting the greenhouse gases to syngas of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, known as "drying reforming of methane," is receiving increasing attention, the researchers said.

This is not only because the value-added syngas is a key raw material for a wide range of chemical products and fuels, but also because of its "great incentives" in environment protection.

"Compared with traditional steam reforming, the dry reforming almost does not consume water, but uses the greenhouse gases," said Dr Zhang Jun, a leading researcher of the project. "It can converse resources and contribute to ease the increasing pressure on greenhouse emission."

However, two of the biggest challenges to apply the dry reforming at an industrial scale lie in the catalyst that can resist severe carbon deposition and its special reactor.

The bottlenecks restricted the novel technology in in the laboratory. The issues were resolved by the research team of the institute, particularly through the development of a "highly stable nanocomposite catalyst."

“With the development, the technology can be applied on offshore natural gas, shale gas that contains large amount of carbon dioxide, as well as in traditional coal chemical industry,” said Zhang.

The demonstration plant, which is sited in north China’s Shanxi Province, can produce more than 200,000 normal cubic meters of the syngas and convert 60 tons of carbon dioxide daily.

As of Sunday, it had been operating "stably" for more than 1,000 hours. Shanxi is China’s main coal producer.

The technology demonstration project was co-launched by the scientific institute, Shanxi Lu’an Coal Corporation Limited and Shell Global Solutions International. The three parties plan to promote technology’s commercialization worldwide.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Galactic Penguin SST

JSCh said:


> *Jurassic's earliest gliding mammals undermine dinosaurs’ reign*
> *Two exquisitely preserved fossils, dated to 160 million years ago, indicate dinosaurs did not dominate the Mesozoic Era as believed.*
> 
> 
> 
> The _Maiopatagium furculiferum_ fossil.
> Zhe-Xi Luo / University of Chicago
> 
> The earliest examples of gliding mammals yet discovered, dated to the Jurassic period about 160 million years ago, suggest dinosaurs did not dominate the prehistoric Earth as much as has been believed.
> 
> As the first winged mammals, the identified fossils of two gliders demonstrate the wide ecological diversity attained by early mammals, says Zhe-Xi Luo, professor of organismal biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago, who is co-author of two new papers analysing the animals, published in _Nature_. This degree of early evolutionary diversity, he suggests, “means dinosaurs likely did not dominate the Mesozoic landscape as much as previously thought”.
> 
> Bearing some similarities in appearance to modern gliding mammals such as flying squirrels and possums, the “exquisitely fossilised” remains of the two animals unearthed from China’s renowned Tiaojishan Formation show wing-like skin membranes between long fore and hind limbs, and skeletal features in their shoulder joints and forelimbs that would make them capable gliders. Their long fingers (or toes) are suited to gripping branches, indicating trees were their natural habitat, while their teeth indicate they ate a mainly herbivorous diet.
> 
> Their capacity for aerial travel – what is known as ‘volant locomotion’ – evolved roughly 100 million before the earliest known gliding members of the family known as therians, to which squirrel and possum flyers and gliders belong. “These Jurassic mammals are truly ‘the first in glide’,” Luo says. “In a way, they got the first wings among all mammals.”
> 
> Luo and his colleagues from the University of Chicago, the Beijing Museum of Natural History and Hebei GEO University categorise the two gliders as belonging to the haramiyidan clade, an extinct branch of the mammalian evolutionary tree considered a forerunner of modern mammals. The clade extends back to the Late Triassic (201-252 million years ago).
> 
> 
> 
> An artist’s impression of _Maiopatagium_ in a Jurassic forest.
> April I. Neander / University of Chicago
> 
> For this reason the scientists consider the two newly discovered gliders as more antiquated than _Volaticotherium antiquus_, a squirrel-sized gliding mammal dug up in Inner Mongolia and presented to the world in 2006. It has been dated as being about the same age of the new fossils.
> 
> _V. antiquus_, however, belonged to the eutriconodont clade, which extends back only to about 170 million years ago and is technically part of the modern mammal family. “Eutriconodonts are rooted between modern monotremes and modern marsupials-placentals on the mammal evolutionary tree,” Luo explains. “_Volaticotherium_’s gliding evolved after the split of monotremes on one hand and marsupial-placental mammals on the other.”
> 
> So while in absolute geological terms all three fossils are about the same age, Luo says, the two new gliders evolved at an earlier point in mammalian evolution, prior to the diversification of modern mammals into monotremes, marsupials and placentals. “The evolutionary antiquity is much older for the newly found _Maiopatagium_ and _Vilevolodon_ than for _Volaticotherium_. That’s why we say they are the first winged mammals.”
> 
> One of the gliders, _Maiopatagium furculiferum_, was dug up from the Daxishan fossil site in Jianchang County, Liaoning Province. The other, _Vilevolodon diplomylos_, was unearthed at the Nanshimen fossil site in Qinglong County, Hebei Province.
> 
> Their evolution to glide between trees to forage for food demonstrates the the adaptability of early mammaliaformes to exploit new ecological niches otherwise inaccessible to competitors, Luo and his co-authors say. “Evolution of gliding behaviour is an important evolutionary transition between divergent land-based and aerial habitats,” they write in the paper analysing _Maiopatagium furculiferum_.
> 
> 
> 
> A map showing the sites where the glider fossils were found.
> Zhe-Xi Luo / University of Chicago
> 
> Together with many other fossils described by Luo and colleagues over the past decade or so, the new fossils provide strong evidence that mammals adapted well and were more ubiquitous in an age once presumed to have been the domain of dinosaurs.
> 
> “The traditional and historical view was that when dinosaurs dominated the world, mammals were small, generalised and without much functional or ecological diversity,” Luo says. “In simple terms, mammals were not able to diversify when dinosaurs dominated the terrestrial ecosystem. The popular version of this view was that mammals always lived in the shadow of dinosaurs. But that was then.”
> 
> A stream of new discoveries in the past 15 years has shown that mammals which co-existed with dinosaurs during the Mesozoic evolved into semi-aquatic forms, such as _Castorocauda_, subterranean forms, such as _Docofossor_, and many arboreal forms, such as _Agilodocodon_ and _Arboroharamiya_.
> 
> “Mesozoic mammals essentially evolved all the distinctive ecomorphotypes like those of modern mammals of small-to-mid-sized bodies,” Luo says.
> 
> _Tim Wallace is a contributor to Cosmos Magazine
> 
> _
> Jurassic's earliest gliding mammals undermine dinosaurs’ | Cosmos
> 
> 
> Qing-Jin Meng, David M. Grossnickle, Di Liu, Yu-Guang Zhang, April I. Neander, Qiang Ji & Zhe-Xi Luo. *New gliding mammaliaforms from the Jurassic*, _Nature_ (2017). DOI: 10.1038/nature23476
> Zhe-Xi Luo, Qing-Jin Meng, David M. Grossnickle, Di Liu, April I. Neander, Yu-Guang Zhang & Qiang Ji. *New evidence for mammaliaform ear evolution and feeding adaptation in a Jurassic ecosystem*, _Nature_ (2017). DOI: 10.1038/nature23483



No wonder the Liaoning Province is today the home of the momonga (「天松鼠」, モモンガ), or Haneul daramjui (하늘다람쥐) as known in North Korea!









Spoiler



http://livedoor.blogimg.jp/karapaia_zaeega/imgs/f/8/f8501811.jpg
http://karapaia.com/archives/52077027.html


▲ きゅんきゅんするモモンガたちを集めた厳選モモンがぞう（動画あり）
Parked 







Spoiler



http://livedoor.blogimg.jp/karapaia_zaeega/imgs/f/6/f666f89b.jpghttp://
http://karapaia.com/archives/52077027.html


▲ きゅんきゅんするモモンガたちを集めた厳選モモンがぞう（動画あり）
Taxiing 







Spoiler



https://ncache.ilbe.com/files/attac...28926461/f5ffa8f2cf368657638032c3fa3c6fb0.jpg
http://www.ilbe.com/7428926461
https://rr.img.naver.jp/mig?src=htt...dth=1000&theight=0&qlt=80&res_format=jpg&op=r
https://matome.naver.jp/odai/2142875184074585401/2142875211274976503


▲ エゾモモンガ (2015/09/01) の記事画像
Taxiing 







Spoiler



http://cfile21.uf.tistory.com/image/2630973E571376E919573D
http://leehg0413.tistory.com/entry/하늘-다람쥐-1


▲
하늘 다람쥐 2016.04.17 20:44
Takeoff 







Spoiler



http://cfile4.uf.tistory.com/image/2736BD3E571376EA1289A8
http://leehg0413.tistory.com/entry/하늘-다람쥐-1


▲
하늘 다람쥐 2016.04.17 20:44
Takeoff 







Spoiler



https://www.tougewo-koete.jp/animal/momonga/2/yamisora.jpg
http://www.tougewo-koete.jp/animal/momonga/momonga02.html


▲ モモンガの特徴でもある移動手段が滑空です。通常は20～30mの飛行距離ですが時折、50m以上もあるところから滑空してくることもあります。音も無く飛んできますがモモンガの目は、真剣です
Front cam view







Spoiler



https://photo1.ganref.jp/photo/0/beda518d6fa4c7dd81be3ac8cc8f408c/original.jpg
http://ganref.jp/m/toyose/portfolios/photo_detail/beda518d6fa4c7dd81be3ac8cc8f408c


▲ エゾモモンガの飛行シーン
Front cam view








Spoiler



https://pds.exblog.jp/pds/1/201508/17/19/a0145819_2122293.jpg
http://yah55.exblog.jp/21557227/


▲ フライング・モモ
Side cam view








Spoiler



https://pds.exblog.jp/pds/1/201508/01/15/b0189415_20195788.jpg
http://troutinn.exblog.jp/24748009/


▲ モモンガ滑空 (2015/08/01) の記事画像
Ground cam view








Spoiler



https://pds.exblog.jp/pds/1/201509/01/15/b0189415_1991587.jpg
http://troutinn.exblog.jp/24846530/


▲ エゾモモンガ (2015/09/01) の記事画像
Rear cam view 


*Video published 2015.04.15*

Sky squirrel gliding while carrying baby in the mouth ... First captured on camera

http://player.sbs.co.kr/SBSPlayer.swf?ver=1863
http://news.sbs.co.kr/news/endPage.do?news_id=N1002929847

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*China launches brain-imaging factory*
Hub aims to make industrial-scale high-resolution brain mapping a standard tool for neuroscience

David Cyranoski
16 August 2017
Neuroscientists who painstakingly map the twists and turns of neural circuitry through the brain are about to see their field expand to an industrial scale. A huge facility set to open in Suzhou, China, next month should transform high-resolution brain mapping, its developers say.

Where typical laboratories might use one or two brain-imaging systems, the new facility boasts 50 automated machines that can rapidly slice up a mouse brain, snap high-definition pictures of each slice and reconstruct those into a 3D picture. This factory-like scale will “dramatically accelerate progress”, says Hongkui Zeng, a molecular biologist at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, Washington, which is partnering with the centre. “Large-scale, standardized data generation in an industrial manner will change the way neuroscience is done,” she says.

The institute, which will also image human brains, aims to be an international hub that will help researchers to map neural connectivity for everything from studies of Alzheimer’s disease to brain-inspired artificial-intelligence projects, says Qingming Luo, a researcher in biomedical imaging at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) in Wuhan, China. Luo leads the new facility, called the HUST-Suzhou Institute for Brainsmatics, which has a 5-year budget of 450 million yuan (US$67 million) and will employ some 120 scientists and technicians. Luo, who calls himself a “brainsmatician”, also built the institute’s high-speed brain-imaging systems.

“There will be large demand, for sure,” says Josh Huang, a neuroscientist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, which is also partnering with the Chinese institute. Access to high-throughput, rapid brain mapping could transform neuro-scientists’ understanding of how neurons are connected in the brain, he says — just as high-throughput sequencing helped geneticists to untangle the human genome in the 2000s. “This will have a major impact on building cell-resolution brain atlases in multiple species,” he says.

Mammalian brains have millions of cells, and human brains even have billions. And the cells come in some 10,000 different types, marked by differences in shape, size and the genes they express. Neuroscientists hope that mapping out the structures and how they interact will help to reveal their functions (see _Nature _*548,* 150–152; 2017). By comparing particular neuron types across multiple brains, scientists might be able to pick out the effects of a disease or a learned behaviour on cell structure, says Jürgen Goldschmidt, a brain-imaging researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Neuro-biology in Magdeburg, Germany.

But such maps often require months or years of effort. The process involves shaving centimetre-long mouse brains into 15,000 ultrathin slices with a diamond blade, staining each layer with chemicals or fluorescent tags to pick out particular features, imaging each layer with a microscope and then reconstructing the images into a 3D map. 

*High-speed mapping*
That’s where Luo’s institute can help. Its vast number of machines have impressive speed and resolution, collaborators say. According to Zeng, the devices can gather the same amount of detail on a mouse brain in two weeks as would require months using other technologies, such as super-resolution confocal imaging. 

Participants at a February meeting of the US BRAIN initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) in Bethesda, Maryland, were treated to a display of the technology’s capabilities when they were shown an image of a neuron that wrapped all of the way around a mouse brain (see _Nature_ *543,* 14–15; 2017). Allen Institute neuroscientist Christof Koch, whose team did the work in collaboration with Luo’s group, suggests the extensive reach of the neuron shows that the cell has a role in coordinating inputs and outputs across the brain to create consciousness.

The Suzhou institute will generate a huge amount of data: each mouse brain map alone will be 8 terabytes, Luo says. But the volume of a human brain is nearly 1,500 times that of a mouse brain; it would take a single machine around 20 years to digitally reconstruct one at the institute’s current rate. Luo aims to increase the speed of his machines and to use multiple devices in parallel. 

Luo is keen for worldwide collaboration; along with the Allen Institute and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Stanford University in California is forming a partnership with the centre. But Luo says that interest is so high that he won’t be able to accommodate everyone. “We are already turning people down.”

Nature 548, 268–269 (17 August 2017) 
doi:10.1038/548268a


China launches brain-imaging factory : Nature News & Comment

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Martian2

*China's Top 10 Fabless Chipmakers*

Who Are China's Biggest Fabless Chipmakers? | Electronic Design

"*HiSilicon Semiconductors - $3.87 billion (¥26 billion)*

The largest Chinese chip supplier is this subsidiary of Huawei, the smartphone giant and the world’s largest maker of telecommunications gear. Based in the Chinese city of Shenzhen, it sells silicon for surveillance cameras, displays, set-top boxes, and wireless modems."

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Graphene and phosphorus make fire-stopping foam *
By Katrina Krämer
14 August 2017

Flame retardant hybrid material is light enough to sit on the petals of a flower





Source: American Chemical Society​
A lightweight but strong plastic almost twice as fire retardant as similar materials has been made by researchers in China and South Korea. The key to the material’s ability to keep flames at bay are small amounts of graphene combined with an element best known for its role in making, rather than stopping, fire: phosphorus.

The most widely used flame retardants are brominated compounds. However, they have been suspected to be toxic, particularly for children. As many countries move towards banning them altogether, scientists have been searching for alternatives. But in addition to being fire-retardant, materials need to be light and strong, as well as cheap and easy to produce on a large scale.

Jianxing Geng from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and colleagues have developed a non-burning polyimide foam that is strong enough to support a beaker of liquid weighing 6kg, but light enough to balance on a rose. Its flame-retardant properties come from 2% of red phosphorus-hybridised graphene – a combination of graphite and red phosphorus produced by ball milling.

The tiny phosphorus particles oxidise quickly when heated and promote char formation. Combined with graphene platelets, which are chemically stable even at high temperatures, the material forms an oxygen-proof layer on the surface. This stops the underlying material from burning.

Because polyimide foams are already made on industrial scale, Geng’s team thinks that scaling up the phosphorus graphene foam synthesis should also be feasible.

*References*
L Xu _et al, ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces_, 2017, DOI: 10.1021/acsami.7b06282


Graphene and phosphorus make fire-stopping foam | Research | Chemistry World


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 17-Aug-2017
* Scientists identify central neural circuit for itch sensation *
Chinese Academy of Sciences Headquarters



Itch-mediating spinal neurons, which express the gastrin-releasing peptide receptor (GRPR), are disynaptically connected to the parabrachial nucleus (PBN) via glutamatergic spinal projection neurons (PN).
Credit: SUN Yangang's lab

Itching is an unpleasant sensation associated with the desire to scratch, and the itch sensation is an important protective mechanism for animals. However, chronic itch, often seen in patients with skin and liver diseases, remains a challenging clinical problem as uncontrollable scratching causes severe skin and tissue damage.

Therapeutic approaches for chronic itch treatment have developed slowly due to the lack of knowledge about itch mechanisms. Therefore, the mechanism underlying itch signal processing is a key research area for both clinical and basic neuroscientists. Recent progress has strengthened the understanding of the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying itch signal processing at the spinal level. However, how itch information is transmitted to the brain was largely unknown.

A recent study carried out by Dr. SUN Yangang's lab at the Institute of Neuroscience of the Chinese Academy of Sciences discovered a central neural circuit that is critical for transmitting the itch signal. By using optogenetic, chemogenetic, patch clamp recording, and in vivo fiber photometry techniques, the researchers demonstrated that the spino-parabrachial pathway plays a key role in transmitting itch signals from the spinal cord to the brain, and identified the parabrachial nucleus (PBN) as a first central relay for the itch sensation. The study was published in _Science_.

The researchers first investigated how the spinal itch-specific neurons send itch signals to the brain. Spinal neurons expressing gastrin-releasing peptide receptor (GRPR) have been shown to be crucial for itch signal processing. They found that the spinal GRPR neurons did not send the itch signal directly to the brain. Since the PBN is activated during itch processing, they postulated that the spinal GRPR neurons might be connected to the PBN poly-synaptically, and thus send itch information to the PBN indirectly.

To test this hypothesis, researchers constructed a transgenic mouse line and selectively expressed light-sensitive channels in GRPR neurons. Light-induced activation of the spinal GRPR neurons evoked excitatory postsynaptic responses in the spinal neurons that project to the PBN. This result demonstrated that spinal GRPR neurons activate the PBN via connection to the projection neurons, supporting their idea.

The researchers also examined whether the spino-parabrachial pathway plays a functional role in itch processing. By manipulating the spino-parabrachial pathway with optogenetics, they showed that inhibition of the spino-parabrachial pathway suppressed itch-induced scratching behavior.

In addition, researchers confirmed the functional role of PBN in itch processing. They showed that the activity of PBN neurons was elevated during itch processing. At the behavioral level, suppression of the activity of PBN neurons also reduced scratching behavior, suggesting that PBN plays a key role in itch processing.

In this study, researchers revealed a long-range neural circuit that is critical for transmitting itch signals from the spinal cord to the brain. Their findings suggest that the PBN represents a first critical central relay for the itch sensation. They have further shown that the PBN plays an important role in regulating scratching behavior in both acute and chronic itching. This study paves the way for further dissection of central circuit mechanisms underlying itch signal processing, and provides a potential target for therapeutic treatment of chronic itching.

###​
This work was supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences Hundreds of Talented Program, and Youth Thousand Plan.



Scientists identify central neural circuit for itch sensation | EurekAlert! Science News

Di Mu, Juan Deng, Ke-Fei Liu, Zhen-Yu Wu, Yu-Feng Shi, Wei-Min Guo, Qun-Quan Mao, Xing-Jun Liu, Hui Li, Yan-Gang Sun. *A central neural circuit for itch sensation*, _Science_ (2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf4918.​


----------



## JSCh

*Fullerene Device Acts as Both Solar Cell and a Current Inverter*
By Dexter Johnson
Posted 17 Aug 2017 | 18:00 GMT





Illustration: Science Magazine​
An international team of researchers has developed a photovoltaic cell based on a combination of magnetic electrodes and C60 fullerenes— sometimes referred to as Buckyballs—that increases the photovoltaic efficiency of their device by 14 percent over photovoltaics using ordinary materials and architecture.

In research described in the journal _Science_, scientists from China, Germany, and Spain have taken spin valves—devices based on giant magnetoresistance and used in magnetic memory and sensors—and combined them with photovoltaic materials. The result offers a new way for solar cells to convert light into electricity.

“The device is simply a photovoltaic cell,” says Luis Hueso, research professor and leader of the Nanodevices Group at CIC nanoGUNE in Spain, in an e-mail interview with _IEEE Spectrum_. “However, we are using magnetic electrodes (cobalt and nickel-iron) rather than standard indium tin oxide (ITO) and aluminum as commonly used in organic photovoltaics.” The magnetic electrodes provide electrons with a certain orientation of their spin, creating what’s called a spin polarized current. Using these electrodes increased the photovoltaic efficiency by 14 percent compared to using ordinary electrodes, he says.

In order to achieve these results, the researchers needed the device to have both a photovoltaic effect and a spin transport effect. That is, the electrons keep their spin orientation as they cross the device, according to Hueso. “These two effects have not been observed before in the same device, only separately,” Hueso adds.

One of the byproducts of these simultaneous photovoltaic and spin-polarized effects is that the device they have developed has the added functionality of serving as an inverter, which is used to convert the direct current (DC) produced by solar cells into alternating current (AC).

Hueso explains that the current inversion is created by an external magnetic field. As the magnetic field changes, the current changes direction. The reason this works is that the current inside the device has two sources: one is the current generated by the light and the other is the current coming from the magnetic electrodes.

The current generated by the light can be changed by the amount of light irradiation. The current coming from the electrodes can be changed by the magnetic field. Balancing both contributions means the flow direction of the overall current can be modified.

The key to the functioning of the device is the C60 fullerene. The C60 is both a photovoltaic material and one that can sustain the spin polarization of the electronic carriers. “Since both effects had been demonstrated in the past—the spin one by our group—we decided to use it for a proof-of-principle experiment,” says Hueso.

The actual current output in the device is fairly small, mainly due to the fact that the C60 is not an great material for photovoltaics. To address this the researchers are currently working on building a similar device using better performing materials.

While Hueso recognizes more engineering would need to be done with the device they have produced, he believes that an actual device that acts as both a photovoltaic and an inverter could indeed be possible.


Fullerene Device Acts as Both Solar Cell and a Current Inverter - IEEE Spectrum

Xiangnan Sun, Saül Vélez, Ainhoa Atxabal, Amilcar Bedoya-Pinto, Subir Parui, Xiangwei Zhu, Roger Llopis, Fèlix Casanova, Luis E. Hueso. *A molecular spin-photovoltaic device*. _Science _(2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aan5348
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/357/6352/677​


----------



## Martian2

Leo Liu creates the ultimate evolution of the Segway. None of the Segway's drawbacks and all of the benefits.
----------

Meet The Futuristic Personal Transportation Vehicle Coming To China And U.S. Soon | Forbes

*"Blizwheel is being billed as the world's smallest electric vehicle."*

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## onebyone

*Improved ion thruster*

*




*

*Researchers from the Harbin Institute of Technology in China have created a new inlet design for Cylindrical shaped Hall thrusters (CHTs) that may significantly increase the thrust and allows spaceships to travel greater distances.

Xenon is often used as a propellant for Hall Thrusters. This is accelerated by an electric field which strips electrons from neutral xenon atoms, creating a plasma. Plasma ejected from the exhaust end of the thruster can deliver great speeds, typically around 70,000 mph.

CHTs are designed for low-power operations while low propellant flow density can cause inadequate ionization—a crucial step in the creation of the plasma and the generation of thrust. A thruster’s performance improves by increasing the gas density in the discharge channel, while lowering its axial velocity—the speed perpendicular to the thrust direction.

Physics of Plasmas – Effect of vortex inlet mode on low-power cylindrical Hall thruster

a new propellant inlet mode for a low-power cylindrical Hall thruster called the vortex inlet mode. This new mode makes propellant gas diffuse in the form of a circumferential vortex in the discharge channel of the thruster. Simulation and experimental results show that the neutral gas density in the discharge channel increases upon the application of the vortex inlet mode, effectively extending the dwell time of the propellant gas in the channel. According to the experimental results, the vortex inlet increases the propellant utilization of the thruster by 3.12%–8.81%, thrust by 1.1%–53.5%, specific impulse by 1.1%–53.5%, thrust-to-power ratio by 10%–63%, and anode efficiency by 1.6%–7.3%, greatly improving the thruster performance.

Low-power Hall thrusters (HTs) have recently received increased attention as one of the most promising electric propulsion systems for space applications, particularly in conjunction with advanced space missions such as formation flying and micro-spacecraft constellation. Hall thrusters (HTs) have been developed to have a relatively high efficiency of 45%–55% in the power range of 0.5 to 5 kW.2 However, scaling down the HT to a low power range has several challenges owing to its large surface-to-volume ratio and difficulty in miniaturizing the inner magnetic pole, which would aggravate the channel erosion and decrease the thruster lifetime. A cylindrical Hall thruster (CHT) is a type of Hall thruster designed for low power operations. Unlike conventional annular Hall thrusters, the CHT has a smaller surface-to-volume ratio that makes it more convenient for miniaturization and ensures reduced plasma-wall interactions, leading to erosion of the thruster channel. Its performance is comparable with that of a conventional coaxial Hall thruster of the same size.

Neutral flow dynamics is a basic physical process that has a very important effect on the ionization and plasma motion of a Hall thruster. Neutral flow dynamics can be described by distributions of neutral density and velocity, where the density and velocity of the neutral gas directly affect the plasma density in the discharge channel and the residence time of the neutral gas in the discharge channel. Generally, higher neutral gas density in the discharge channel and lower axial velocity will improve the ionization rate of the thruster and thus improve the overall performance of the thruster.

The most practical way to alter the neutral flow dynamics in the discharge channel is by changing the gas injection method or the geometrical morphology of the discharge channel. Vial et al. and Kim et al. tested a variety of anode geometries and concluded that the divergence of the plume was decreased due to geometry changes that increased the neutral residence time and caused ionization improvements. They pointed out that an optimal injection method must maintain an azimuthally and radially uniform neutral flow, which will maximize the neutral residence time. The neutral velocity can be controlled by changing the anode injection method or by directly cooling the anode to reduce the neutral thermal velocity. They cooled the propellant to reduce the velocity of the flow, leading to lower discharge oscillations and hence increased thruster stability. Another method to study neutral flow dynamics is changing the profile of the discharge channel. Raitses et al. diminished the discharge channel cross-section at the ionization zone. The ionization efficiency was increased by increasing the neutral density in this region.

In general, reducing the axial velocity of the neutral gas in the discharge channel is an effective means of increasing the ionization rate of the thruster.

They recently proposed a magnetically insulated anode structure for the low-power CHT, which effectively improves the life and performance of the thruster by changing the distribution of the magnetic field lines in the discharge channel. In this paper, a circumferential vortex inlet mode is proposed on the basis of the low-power CHT with magnetic induction. The influence of the vortex inlet mode on the low-power CHT performance is studied via computer simulations as well as experimentally.
















“The work we report here only verified the practicability of this gas inlet design,” Wei said. “We still need to study the effect of nozzle angle, diameter, the ratio of depth to diameter and the length of the discharge channel.”

According to Wei, the vortex design will be tested in flight-type HTs in the near future and could potentially be used in spaceflights.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/08/improved-ion-thruster.html
*

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*The world’s next fastest supercomputer will help boost China’s growing sea power*
Ambitious plan for device capable of a billion billion calculations per second will be built as part of project to expand country’s influence across the seas

PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 23 August, 2017, 11:31am
UPDATED : Wednesday, 23 August, 2017, 2:29pm





Stephen Chen

China is planning to boost its computing power tenfold within a couple of years by building a new generation supercomputer.

The machine will be based on the coast of Shandong province to process the data collected from the world’s oceans, according to scientists briefed on the project.

An Hong, professor of computer science with the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei and a member of a committee advising the central government on high performance computer development, said the world’s first exascale computer would have a dedicated mission of helping China’s maritime expansion.

An exascale computer is defined as one that can carry out one billion billion calculations per second. It is not only 10 times faster than Sunway Taihulight – at present the world’s fastest computer which operates from Wuxi, Jiangsu – but equal to the calculation power of all the world’s top 500 super computers combined.

An said the machine could be finished as soon as 2019. Three independent supercomputer manufacturers on the mainland are competing for the contract. They include Sugon, or the Dawning Information Industry, which is owned by the Chinese Academy of Sciences; the National University of Defence Technology, which built the Tianhe series supercomputers, and the Sunway team. They have produced blueprints featuring vastly different architectures, according to An.

The authorities are looking to pick a design that not only offers a high performance but will be ready for immediate use once built. The budget for the project is expected to be between one and two billion yuan (US$150 million-US$300 million).

“The most important question to us is not whether China can build an exascale computer, or how fast, but why,” An said.

“There is indeed a race among nations on supercomputers, but this is not our concern. Our concern is the ocean,” she added.

When elected leader of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, President Xi Jinping promised to turn China into a “hai shang qiang guo”, or maritime superpower, with an expansionist policy that would, according to the state media, be comparable with the fleet of Zheng He established during Ming dynasty six centuries ago to spread China’s influence over the world.

Within the space of a few years, China has effectively tightened its grip on the South China Sea, dismissed numerous neighbours’ claims over disputed waters, acquired military ports in South Asia and the African east coast, developed some of the world’s most advanced nuclear submarines with electromagnetic drive, explored vast areas of the sea bed for energy and mineral deposits, and launched the Belt and Road Initiative to strengthen economic ties with other countries, the “belt” roughly following Zheng He’s ports of call.

Chinese vessels, naval outposts and unmanned monitoring facilities – including a global network of buoys, satellites, sea floor sensors and underwater gliders – are generating countless steams of data every second.

According to marine researchers, these data contain a rich variety of information such as sea current readings, trace chemicals, regional weather and anomalies in water density that could be used for anything from helping submarines avoid turbulence to negotiating cuts to green house gas emissions.

Feng Liqiang, operational director of the Marine Science Data Centre in Qingdao, Shandong said the exascale computer would be able to pull all marine-related data sets together to perform the most comprehensive analysis ever.

“It will help, for instance, the simulation of the oceans on our planet with unprecedented resolution. “The higher the resolution, the more reliable the forecast on important issues such as El Nino and climate change,” he said.

“It will give China a bigger say over international affairs,” Feng added.

In June, the US government commissioned six companies including IBM, Intel and Hewlett Packard Enterprise to come up with countermeasures against China’s lead on high performance computing.

China not only hosts Sunway and Tianhe, which currently rank first and second on international performance charts with speeds that far exceed those of their foreign competitors, but also overtook the US last year in terms of installed supercomputing capacity, an event described as an “inflection point” by Horst Simon, deputy director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.

The White House currently hopes that American companies will be able to come up with a design to have an exascale computer up and running by 2021.

A major challenge for exascale computing is cooling. Researchers have struggled to find a way to reduce the tremendous heat generated by a large number of chips. The problem not only prevents the computer from reaching peak performance but also leads to large electricity bills.

Though the exact location of the Chinese exascale computer has not yet been determined by the authorities, Zhang Haichun, professor at the computer science and technology department, the Ocean University of China in Qingdao, said the city, the largest port in Shandong, had numerous advantages as a home for the exascale computer.

Qingdao has more ocean-related research institutes than any other city along China’s coastline. The world’s largest marine data centre is under construction, and it is directly linked to the nation’s major monitoring networks above and under the ocean, he said.

“Putting the machine in Qingdao will save the trouble of transmitting a large amount of data over long distance through optic fibres. An expensive data plan can break the project’s bank account,” Zhang said.




But marine scientists said that a single computer would not bridge the maritime power gap between China and the US overnight.

“Our data is increasing at a fast pace but it is still dwarfed by the amount gathered by the US through decades of patient, continuous effort,” said Feng.

“We also lack the powerful software with sophisticated algorithms to handle the data at full exascale speed,” he added.

Lu Xianqing, professor at the Key Laboratory of Physical Oceanography under the Ministry of Education in Qingdao, said he had “serious doubts” whether the project would fulfil its mission due to the difficulty of accessing marine-related data in China.

Unlike in the US, where most ocean data gathered from public-funded research is open to access after a limited protection period, there is no official information sharing mechanism on the mainland.

“The State Ocean Administration runs and hoards its own data sets, as do the PLA Navy, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and many universities. Every institute is treating data as private asset for the interests of their own research” he said.

There are also fears that the exchange of data might lead to leaks and threaten national security. Foreign submarines, for instance, need detailed information on China’s offshore areas. These security concerns have prompted government officials to classify most data collected from the sea as confidential.

“Getting data for the computer may turn out to be more difficult than building it,” Lu said.

An said the Chinese government might approve the construction of another exascale computer, but its purpose and location was still uncertain uncertainty.

Besides US and China, the European Union and Japan are also trying to build an exascale computer by around 2020.



The world’s next fastest supercomputer will help boost China’s growing sea power | South China Morning Post

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

22 August 2017
* When mammals picked up the evolutionary pace *
_Study suggests diversification was underway before demise of the dinosaurs. _

Whether the rise of placental mammals occurred before or after the mass-extinction event that eliminated the dinosaurs 66 million years ago is hotly debated. Fossils found so far suggest that it happened afterwards, but ‘molecular clock’ calculations — based on the rate of genetic mutations estimated from the DNA of modern animals — indicate an earlier start time.

Shaoyuan Wu and Scott Edwards at Jiangsu Normal University in Xuzhou, China, and their colleagues ran multiple molecular analyses using genome data from 82 mammalian species. Different molecular-clock models gave highly variable timing estimates for when the placental-mammal diversification spurt started. 

But combining data from different analyses strongly suggests that the radiation started while dinosaurs were still alive, and continued steadily during and after their extinction. The radiation probably began in response to the earlier diversification of flowering plants, rather than the removal of dinosaurs, the authors say.

_Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA_ (2017)



When mammals picked up the evolutionary pace : Nature.com > Research Highlights

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Martian2

*China to launch new 400 km/hr trains | Traveller*

China owns the world record for the world's fastest high-speed trains. Previously, China's high-speed trains traveled at an average of 350 km/hr. Next month, a new generation of Chinese high-speed trains will traverse the Beijing-Shanghai route at a top speed of 400 km/hr.

You may wonder: Doesn't France's TGV own the world high-speed train record? The answer is clearly no. The French TGV speed stunt was accomplished by stripping out all commercial seats, using custom-designed wheels and suspension system for a one-run stunt, and reducing the number of train cars from 10 to 4. Also, I think the French might have installed a second engine to help provide more power.

China's high-speed train record is accomplished through legitimate commercial service, without any ridiculous tricks like the French TGV. The French also cheated by modifying the train tracks for the special speed run. Finally, the French TGV record was a silly speed stunt that occurred only on a tiny straight portion of the train tracks.
----------

World's fastest trains: China to launch new, 400 km/h trains on Beijing to Shanghai route | Traveller

"*New generation trains will service the route starting next month, making the 1250-kilometre journey from the capital to Shanghai in just 4 hours, 30 minutes.

The latest trains were unveiled in June and have a top speed of 400 kilometres per hour, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.*"

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*Chinese scientists give big boost to cancer-killing virus*

2017-08-24 09:43

Xinhua _Editor: Gu Liping_

Chinese scientists have found a compound that helped a tumor-targeting virus kill liver cancer more effectively while sparing healthy cells, offering new hope for treating the world's second most common cancer killer, according to a study published Wednesday.

A therapy using viruses that selectively kill cancer cells, dubbed oncolytic viruses, is rapidly progressing through clinical evaluation, but the therapeutic efficacy in humans has been less than expected from preclinical studies, according to the study published in the U.S. journal Science Translational Medicine.

Oncolytic virotherapy involving M1 virus, a mosquito-borne pathogen that predominantly causes mild illness in horses, is believed to be a potentially attractive strategy for the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common type of liver cancer.

In order to boost the virus's antitumor effects, Professor Guangmei Yan of Sun Yat-sen University in China and colleagues screened 350 small molecules to identify compounds that can enhance viral killing of cultured HCC cells.

The researchers found that Eeyarestatin I, an inhibitor of the protein VCP, which has been linked to causing malignancy, as the strongest sensitizer for M1 virus, as it increased the potency of the virus by as much as 3,600-fold against the HCC cells.

The dual regimen had no effect on non-cancerous cells, they said.

In multiple mouse models of HCC, M1 together with Eeyarestatin I were found to shrink tumors and significantly prolong survival.

The researchers further demonstrated that the duo was safe and well-tolerated in monkeys.

"We can describe the M1 oncolytic virus as a guided missile that automatically targets tumor cells, and the addition of the VCP inhibitor is just like binding the missile to powerful explosives with the ability of auto-selection," Yan explained to Xinhua.

"The outcome is self-evident with such a strong combination," he said.

Yan said they plan to submit a clinical trial application for the combination therapy strategy in 2018.

"Hepatocellular carcinoma is the second leading cause of cancer-related death in men and claims more than 700,000 lives per year worldwide," their paper wrote. "Our study identifies combined VCP inhibition and oncolytic virus as a potential treatment for HCC and demonstrates promising therapeutic potential."

http://www.ecns.cn/2017/08-24/270557.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Laser to uncover secrets of universe*
By Zhang Zhihao | China Daily | Updated: 2017-08-24 07:27



Scientists adjust the facility that can generate 140 trillion photons per laser pulse in one picosecond in Dalian, Northeast China's Liaoning province, Jan 13, 2016. (PHOTO / XINHUA)

China is building a laser 20 times stronger than the most powerful one now in use to probe the secrets of the universe and create new materials for a wide array of products.

Last year, the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics created the world's highest peak power pulsed lasers - intense lasers that generate beams in extremely short bursts - clocking in at 5.3 quadrillion watts (a quadrillion is 1 followed by 15 zeros) in less than 30 quadrillionths of a second.

Now, it is building an even stronger one, which can produce 100 quadrillion watts - about 50,000 times the planet's total power consumption - in an extremely short time, said Li Ruxin, project leader and director of the institute, which is part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The laser is part of a new laboratory called Station of Extreme Light at the Shanghai Coherent Light Facility, one of China's key science facilities that include other major projects like the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope, better known as FAST, the world's largest radio telescope.

The station also will house a new hard X-ray free-electron laser, one of the world's most powerful X-ray lasers used for imaging extremely small phenomena-like protein structures and chemical reactions.

Scientists around the world, from the United States to Japan, have conducted a feasibility study and endorsed the station's planning and design in July. The facility will be completed within a decade and its applications "will go far beyond other existing or planned facilities", according to the review committee.

The new laser is so powerful that it can simulate extreme conditions that are akin to the core of a massive star or even a black hole, Li said. This can lead to new discoveries that can help scientists tackle many unsolved mysteries of the universe, from its origin to quantum mechanics.

One of the main objectives is using the laser to unravel the "weird quantum property of empty space, which has puzzled scientists for more than 80 years", Li said. "Normally, a vacuum is thought of as completely empty, but in quantum electrodynamics, it is actually full of virtual particles that appear and vanish all the time," he said.

"However an extremely strong electric and magnetic field can affect this space and the light passing through it. So vacuum can actually behave as a prism, or 3-D movie glasses."

Scientist only got a glimpse of this strange phenomenon recently by observing neutron stars, which are the dense remnant cores of massive stars that have at least 10 times more mass and billions of times stronger magnetic fields than the sun.

But these stars are often light years away, making them extremely hard to study accurately. "Now for the first time, we can directly create and then measure the quantum properties of vacuum on earth using the laser," Li said.

Apart from cutting-edge scientific research, the laser will have plenty of practical applications. "By simulating extreme conditions via lasers, scientists can test and create stronger and more durable materials for industrial and social needs," he said.

This includes stronger wheels for high-speed trains, safer nuclear reactors, faster processing of nuclear waste and new medical tools for cancer diagnosis and treatment, Li said.

"High-power lasers are one of the greatest tools in modern science," Li said, adding that there are about a dozen labs worldwide dedicated to using these "big guns of science".

While these lasers have immense power output, the energy they deliver is actually low, Li said. "It will only take around 1,500 joules of energy to run the new 100 quadrillion-watt laser," he said. This is around 360 calories, or two cans of soda.

In physics, the equation for power is energy divided by time. By reducing the time to a quadrillionth of a second, scientists can create immense power output with little energy.

In 2015, Japanese scientists built what was then the most powerful laser in Osaka, which produced a 2 quadrillion-watt pulse in less than a trillionth of a second. The US, United Kingdom, France, Germany and Canada also have their own intense laser facilities.

"The Station of Extreme Light will become a unique and valuable platform for scientists around world, from physics to medicine, to cooperate and study," Li said.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Martian2

*Will China opt for breakthrough four-mirror 12 meter-aperture telescope?*

Currently, the largest general-purpose telescope in China has a 2 meter aperture.

The Chinese government has provided funding for a new 12 meter-aperture telescope.

The question in China is whether the new telescope (at a cost of $300 million) will be based on a proven 3-mirror design or will China attempt to build an untested Chinese four-mirror system?

The Chinese Nanjing Institute of Astronomical Optics and Technology (NIAOT) four-mirror design will provide higher-quality images, but no one in the world has built a four-mirror telescope. The technological challenges can be overcome, but the cost in time and money are unknown. The other drawback is a more limited field-of-view with a four-mirror design. The field-of-view can be fixed by simply pointing the telescope more often at a different spot in the sky.

Will China jump into the technological unknown and choose the Chinese four-mirror telescope design? Stay tuned and find out how this story ends.
----------

Row threatens Chinese telescope | Physics World

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

* Chinese scientists make breakthrough in super steel *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-08-25 04:38:49_|_Editor: Mu Xuequan_





WASHINGTON, Aug. 24 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists said Thursday they have developed a super steel that has a high level of both strength and ductility, a breakthrough that may have a wide variety of industrial applications.

Furthermore, its material cost is just one-fifth of that of the steel used in the current aerospace and defence applications, they reported in the U.S. journal Science.

Strength and ductility are desirable properties of metallic materials for wide-ranging applications, but increasing strength often leads to the decrease in ductility, which is known as the strength-ductility trade-off.

A Hong Kong-Beijing-Taiwan mechanical engineering team led by Huang Mingxin from the University of Hong Kong adopted a new manufacturing technique called deformed and partitioned (D&P) to addressed the problem.

"Steels have been the most widely used metallic materials in the history of mankind and can be produced with much higher efficiency than any other metallic materials," the team said in a statement.

"Therefore developing a strong and ductile breakthrough steel has been a long quest since the beginning of Iron Age in mankind history."

The team explained that it is very difficult to further improve the ductility of metallic materials when their yield strength is beyond two Gigapascal (GPa).

Now, they made "a successful attempt in realizing the above dream" as the newly developed method yields a "breakthrough steel" that has the "unprecedented" yield strength of 2.2 GPa and uniform elongation of 16 percent.

"The developed D&P steel demonstrated the best combination of yield strength and uniform elongation among all existing high-strength metallic materials," the researchers said.

"In particular, the uniform elongation of the developed D&P steel is much higher than that of metallic materials with yield strength beyond 2.0 GPa."

According to the team, the "breakthrough steel" belongs to the system of so-called medium manganese steel that contains 10 percent manganese, 0.47 percent carbon, 2.0 percent aluminium and 0.7 percent vanadium.

"No expensive alloying elements have been used exhaustively but just some common alloying compositions that can be widely seen in the commercialized steels," they said.

Another advantage is that this steel can be developed using conventional industrial processing routes, including warm rolling, cold rolling and annealing.

"This is different from the development of other metallic materials where the fabrication processes involve complex routes and special equipment, which are difficult to scale-up," said the team.

"Therefore, it is expected that the present breakthrough steel has a great potential for industrial mass production."

The research outcome was a collective contribution from scientists at the University of Hong Kong, University of Science and Technology Beijing, City University of Hong Kong, and a university in Taiwan.


B. B. He, B. Hu, H. W. Yen, G. J. Cheng, Z. K. Wang, H. W. Luo, M. X. Huang. *High dislocation density–induced large ductility in deformed and partitioned steels*. _Science _(2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aan0177​

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

* More Solar Power Thanks to Titanium: Modification of a hematite photoanode by a conformal titanium dioxide interlayer for effective charge collection *
Thursday, August 24, 2017 11:05 am EDT

Earth-abundant, cheap metals are promising photocatalytic electrode materials in artificial photosynthesis. A team of Chinese scientists now reports that a thin layer of titania beneath hematite nanorods can boost the performance of the photoanode. As outlined in their report in the journal Angewandte Chemie, the nanostructured electrode benefits from two separate effects. This design combining nanostructure with chemical doping may be exemplary for improved "green" photocatalytic systems.




With the help of a catalyst, sunlight can drive the oxidation of water to oxygen and the release of electrons for current generation, a process also called artificial photosynthesis. Iron oxide in the form of hematite is a convenient and cheap catalyst candidate, but the electrons set free by the chemical reaction tend to be trapped again and get lost; the electricity flow is inefficient. As a solution, Jinlong Gong from Tianjin University, China, introduced a nanometer-thin passivation layer of titania. Not only does this prevent charge recombination between the hematite electrode structure and the substrate, but it also provides the iron oxide with a considerable doping source to increase its charge-carrier density, a highly promising effect for photoelectric applications.

Hematite may be an abundant material (iron ore), but despite its photocatalytic advantages like photostability and good energetic preconditions, scientists still struggle with its sluggish kinetics and poor electrical conductivity. Nanostructured hematite may be one solution. The hematite photocatalysts are grown on conductive glass substrates in nanorod arrays, which are further furnished with branchlets to obtain a bushy, dendritic shape. This branched nanorod structure greatly enlarges the surface to promote the water-oxidation reaction, but the problem of charge recombination, especially at the hematite-substrate interface, is not solved.

Therefore, Gong and his colleagues grew dendritic hematite nanorods on an interlayer of titanium dioxide, which by itself is a photoactive material. If sufficiently thin, the coated structure can both prevent charge recombination and provide conductivity, but this was not the only intention the scientists had. "The titanium dioxide interlayer was considered to act as a titanium cation source to dope hematite," they argued. Doping here means to increase the charge-carrier density in the photocatalyst by bringing in more positive centers and boost the electrical conductivity.

Both effects, passivation and doping, indeed produced a more than four times higher photocurrent under standardized conditions. The addition of an iron hydroxide co-catalyst pushed the photocurrent density even further to a value more than five times above that of the undoped system. This design combining cheap materials, few preparation steps, and enhanced electrical performance may be exemplary for improved systems in green artificial photosynthesis.

(3112 characters)

*Cite and link*: Jinlong Gong et al., _Angewandte Chemie International Edition_, 10.1002/anie.201705772. doi.org/10.1002/anie.201705772



More Solar Power Thanks to Titanium: Modification of a hematite photoanode by a conformal titanium dioxide interlayer for effective charge collection | Wiley News Room – Press Releases, News, Events & Media

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Structures of A Plant Photosynthetic Machine Provide High-resolution Insights into Light Harvesting Process Under Low Light*
Aug 25, 2017

Photosynthesis is a biological process mediating the conversion of solar energy into chemical energy. The so-called oxygenic photosynthesis, performed by plants, algae and cyanobacteria, is one of the most amazing chemical reactions on the planet. It provides food and energy for nearly all living organisms, and also contributes to the formation of the atmosphere and maintenance of the carbon-oxygen balance on the earth.

In plants, the primary light reaction of photosynthesis initiates at photosystem II (PSII), a membrane-embedded supramolecular machine responsible for catalyzing the water-splitting reaction. Surrounding the PSII, a number of peripheral antenna complexes dynamically associate with it to form the PSII–LHCII supercomplexes of variable sizes in response to different light conditions.

The C2S2M2-type supercomplex is known as the largest stable form of PSII-LHCII supercomplex isolated from Arabidopsis and pea so far, and crucial for plants to achieve optimal light-harvesting efficiency when they grow under low light conditions. Structural analysis of the C2S2M2 supercomplex is a pivotal step toward our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying the processes of light harvesting, energy transfer and PSII functional regulation in plants.

CHANG Wenrui-LI Mei’s group, ZHANG Xinzheng’s group and LIU Zhenfeng’s group from the Institute of Biophysics (IBP) at CAS collaborate and solved two cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) structures of C2S2M2-type PSII-LHCII supercomplex from pea at 2.7 and 3.2 Å resolution, respectively.

The 2.7 Å resolution structure of C2S2M2 supercomplex represents the highest resolution structure of membrane protein complexes solved through single-particle cryo-EM method so far. The supercomplex has a total molecular mass of 1.4 megadalton and forms a homodimer. Each monomeric PSII-LHCII contains 28 or 27 protein subunits, and binds 159 chlorophylls, 44 carotenoids and numerous other cofactors. 

The overall structural features and the arrangement of each individual subunits, as well as the sophisticated pigment network and the complete energy transfer pathways within the supercomplex have been revealed in great details through this study.

In addition, comparison of the two C2S2M2 structures solved at different states suggested the potential mechanism of functional regulation on the light-harvesting process and the oxygen-evolving activity of plant PSII. 

The research work, entitled “Structure and assembly mechanism of plant C2S2M2-type PSII-LHCII supercomplex”, was published in _Science_ on Aug. 25, 2017. The breakthrough is achieved through continuous and persistent efforts by the team from IBP after their previous work on the cryo-EM structure of spinach C2S2-type PSII-LHCII supercomplex was published on _Nature_ last year.

The project was supported by grants from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China and “National Thousand (Young) Talents Program” from the Office of Global Experts Recruitment in China.

*



*​The overall structure of C2S2M2-type PSII-LHCII supercomplex with backgroud of pea leaves (up: top-view; down: side-view). Subunits are colored differently: the main transmembrane core subunit, magenta; small intrinsic core subunit, white; oxygen evolving complex subunit PsbO (blue), PsbP (light orange) and PsbQ (lime); peripheral light harvesting complexes S-LHCII (green), M-LHCII (cyan), CP29 (orange), CP26 (purple) and CP24 (yellow). (Image by IBP) 
*

*
Structures of A Plant Photosynthetic Machine Provide High-resolution Insights into Light Harvesting Process Under Low Light---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Xiaodong Su, Jun Ma, Xuepeng Wei, Peng Cao, Dongjie Zhu, Wenrui Chang, Zhenfeng Liu, Xinzheng Zhang, Mei Li. *Structure and assembly mechanism of plant C2S2M2-type PSII-LHCII supercomplex. *_Science _(2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aan0327​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> * Chinese scientists make breakthrough in super steel *
> _ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-08-25 04:38:49_|_Editor: Mu Xuequan_
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> WASHINGTON, Aug. 24 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists said Thursday they have developed a super steel that has a high level of both strength and ductility, a breakthrough that may have a wide variety of industrial applications.
> 
> Furthermore, its material cost is just one-fifth of that of the steel used in the current aerospace and defence applications, they reported in the U.S. journal Science.
> 
> Strength and ductility are desirable properties of metallic materials for wide-ranging applications, but increasing strength often leads to the decrease in ductility, which is known as the strength-ductility trade-off.
> 
> A Hong Kong-Beijing-Taiwan mechanical engineering team led by Huang Mingxin from the University of Hong Kong adopted a new manufacturing technique called deformed and partitioned (D&P) to addressed the problem.
> 
> "Steels have been the most widely used metallic materials in the history of mankind and can be produced with much higher efficiency than any other metallic materials," the team said in a statement.
> 
> "Therefore developing a strong and ductile breakthrough steel has been a long quest since the beginning of Iron Age in mankind history."
> 
> The team explained that it is very difficult to further improve the ductility of metallic materials when their yield strength is beyond two Gigapascal (GPa).
> 
> Now, they made "a successful attempt in realizing the above dream" as the newly developed method yields a "breakthrough steel" that has the "unprecedented" yield strength of 2.2 GPa and uniform elongation of 16 percent.
> 
> "The developed D&P steel demonstrated the best combination of yield strength and uniform elongation among all existing high-strength metallic materials," the researchers said.
> 
> "In particular, the uniform elongation of the developed D&P steel is much higher than that of metallic materials with yield strength beyond 2.0 GPa."
> 
> According to the team, the "breakthrough steel" belongs to the system of so-called medium manganese steel that contains 10 percent manganese, 0.47 percent carbon, 2.0 percent aluminium and 0.7 percent vanadium.
> 
> "No expensive alloying elements have been used exhaustively but just some common alloying compositions that can be widely seen in the commercialized steels," they said.
> 
> Another advantage is that this steel can be developed using conventional industrial processing routes, including warm rolling, cold rolling and annealing.
> 
> "This is different from the development of other metallic materials where the fabrication processes involve complex routes and special equipment, which are difficult to scale-up," said the team.
> 
> "Therefore, it is expected that the present breakthrough steel has a great potential for industrial mass production."
> 
> The research outcome was a collective contribution from scientists at the University of Hong Kong, University of Science and Technology Beijing, City University of Hong Kong, and a university in Taiwan.
> 
> 
> B. B. He, B. Hu, H. W. Yen, G. J. Cheng, Z. K. Wang, H. W. Luo, M. X. Huang. *High dislocation density–induced large ductility in deformed and partitioned steels*. _Science _(2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aan0177​


*New way to make steel that is both stronger and more ductile*
August 25, 2017 by Bob Yirka



(a) Electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) phase image showing the lamella microstructure of layered austenite grains embedded in tempered martensite matrix.(b) The dislocation structures in martensite as enlarged in transmission electron microscopy (TEM) image.(c) TEM image showing the elongation of dislocation cell structure after the 8% tensile strain.(d) TEM image confirming the transformation of metastable austenite to martensite after 16% tensile strain. Credit: The University of Hong Kong 

(Phys.org)—A team of researchers from several institutions in China and Taiwan has developed a new way to make steel that offers more strength and ductility. In their paper published in the journal _Science_, the team describes part of the process and the ingredients that went into making the new type of steel and suggest possible applications.

As the researchers note, there are many industrial applications based on steel that require a high degree of strength and ductility (the ability to be pulled or deformed without breaking)—the higher degree of both, the better. But traditional steel-making techniques generally require a tradeoff: More strength means less ductility, or vice-versa. In this new effort, the researchers report that they have found a way around this problem.

To make the new steel, the researchers developed a new technique they call deformed and partitioned (D&P)—they cannot give all the details, of course, because that would prevent them from capitalizing on what they have created. But they do divulge that it belongs to a class of metal that the industry has defined as "breakthrough steels," which are medium manganese steels that are made with 0.47 percent carbon, 10 percent manganese, 0.7 percent vanadium and 2.0 percent aluminum.

They report also that the process involves cold rolling, which is followed up by tempering in a low temperature environment, and that metastable austenite grains are embedded somewhere in the process—this, they note, helps retain ductility while allowing for controlled defects that give the metal its strength. The group claims that the result is a steel with a yield strength of 2.2 GPa and 16 percent uniform elongation, which would make it the best in its class. They suggest the desired properties are due to the type of matrix formed during the rolling and tempering process.



​Tensile properties of the he present breakthrough D&P steel compared with other high-strength steels, including maraging steel, nanotwinned (NT) steel, quenching and partitioning (Q&P980) steel and dual-phase (DP780) steel. Credit: The University of Hong Kong

In addition to offering both more strength and ductility, the steel is also cheaper to make than other steels that are used in critical applications such as airplanes and rockets—the team claims that it can be made for just a fifth the cost of other more traditional methods. They also note that the process they developed offers the same desirable characteristics of other alloys.


https://phys.org/news/2017-08-steel-stronger-ductile.html

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 24-Aug-2017
* ILCregs play an important role in regulation of intestinal inflammation *
Chinese Academy of Sciences Headquarters
https://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub/148907.php


​Fig.1 ILCregs contribute to the resolution of innate intestinal inflammation by inhibition of ILC1s and ILC3s.
Credit: Image by IBP

The intestine contains an extensive and diverse microbial flora, including potential pathogens and dietary antigens that needs to be tolerated. Dysregulation of mucosal responses may cause a loss of tolerance, leading to harmful intestinal inflammation such as human inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

Innate lymphoid cells (ILCs) are located in mucosal surfaces to potentiate immune responses, sustain mucosal integrity and promote lymphoid organogenesis. Three subsets of ILCs have been defined to date and produce substantial effector cytokines upon harmful stress. These ILCs play critical roles in the regulation of type 1, type 2, and type 3 (or Th17 cell) responses, controlling host protective immunity and intestinal homeostasis.

Researchers from FAN Zusen's group at the Institute of Biophysics (IBP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have identified a regulatory subpopulation of ILCs (called ILCregs) that exist in the gut and harbor a unique genetic identity distinct from ILCs or regulatory T cells (Tregs).

During inflammatory stimulation, ILCregs can be induced in the intestine and suppress the activation of ILC1s and ILC3s via secretion of IL-10, leading to protection against innate intestinal inflammation.

In addition, TGF-ß1 is consequently secreted by ILCregs upon intestinal inflammation, and autocrine TGF-ß1 sustains the maintenance and increase of ILCregs. Therefore, ILCregs exert an inhibitory role in the innate immune response, favoring the resolution of intestinal inflammation.

Researchers found that ILCregs may be used to develop potential therapies to restore immune tolerance in chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.

###​
This research, entitled "Regulatory Innate Lymphoid Cells Control Innate Intestinal Inflammation," which was published in _Cell_ on August 24, involved cooperation with the Institute of Biophysics (IBP), the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Sichuan University and Jinan University. Profs. FAN Zusen and WANG Shuo (IBP) are the corresponding authors. Drs. WANG Shuo and XIA Pengyan (IBP) are the co-first authors of this paper.

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Strategic Priority Research Programs of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Youth Innovation Promotion Association of CAS, and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation.


ILCregs play an important role in regulation of intestinal inflammation | EurekAlert! Science News


Shuo Wang, Pengyan Xia, Yi Chen, Yuan Qu, Zhen Xiong, Buqing Ye, Ying Du, Yong Tian, Zhinan Yin, Zhiheng Xu, Zusen Fan. *Regulatory Innate Lymphoid Cells Control Innate Intestinal Inflammation*. _Cell _(2017). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2017.07.027​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Researchers create single-crystal perovskite solar cells*
August 29, 2017



​Single crystalline CH3NH3PbI3 self-grown on FTO/TiO2 substrate. (a) Schematic self-growth via temperature gradient and capillary effect; (b) cross-sectional SEM image of CH3NH3PbI3 on FTO/TiO2; (c) high resolution TEM image of single crystalline CH3NH3PbI3. Credit: Science China Press

Photovoltaic conversion is regarded as the ultimate solution to the growing demand for energy, yet traditional silicon-based solar cells are expensive to produce, and production itself involves intensive energy consumption. Emerging hybrid organic-inorganic solar cells based on perovskite CH3NH3PbI3, on the other hand, are not only inexpensive to process but also flexible, and thus are widely pursued as one of the most promising next-generation photovoltaic conversion technologies.

Since first reported in 2009, the photovoltaic conversion efficiency of perovskite solar cells has increased spectacularly from 3.81 percent to 22.1 percent in just seven years, and this unprecedented rise has fueled worldwide pursuit for new efficiency records. Nevertheless, in the last two years, the pace of perovskite solar cell efficiency gains has slowed considerably despite the distance from the projected theoretical limit of 31 percent. Therefore, researchers are exploring new strategies to further enhance perovskite solar cell performance.

The current perovskite solar cells are based on polycrystalline CH3NH3PbI3 films, and thus inevitably have many defects in grains and grain boundaries that affect the device performance. Researchers have made efforts to produce bulk CH3NH3PbI3 crystals that exhibit exceptional photovoltaic properties such as long diffusion length and lifetime of photogenerated charge carriers, though the integration of bulk crystal into the perovskite solar cell architecture has proved challenging.

Now, a team of Chinese and U.S. scientists led by Profs. Jiangyu Li and Jinjin Zhao has successfully grown single-crystalline CH3NH3PbI3 film directly on electron-collecting FTO/TiO2 substrate, as shown in Fig. 1. They took advantage of temperature gradient and the capillary effect during the growth process, enabling them to produce high-quality single crystalline film tightly integrated on FTO/TiO2. This proves critical, as FTO/TiO2 is the most widely used electron-collecting substrate for perovskite solar cells, making subsequent device fabrication straightforward.

Indeed, the single crystalline CH3NH3PbI3 film shows excellent photovoltaic properties. Measured directly on an FTO glass substrate with poor electron extraction, the time-resolved photoluminescence has much longer carrier lifetime in single crystalline CH3NH3PbI3 film compared to polycrystalline film, as seen in Fig. 2(a). When a TiO2 electron-collecting layer is added to the FTO glass, then the charge carrier lifetime drops substantially, thanks to efficient electron extraction at the TiO2/perovskite interface. As a result, the device exhibits photovoltaic conversion efficiency of 8.78 percent, the highest reported to date for a single crystalline perovskite solar cells. The team says that the system has much room for improvement, and with continuous optimization of materials and devices, they believe that the single crystalline perovskite solar cells will rival their polycrystalline counterparts in the foreseeable future.



​Photo-carrier properties and photovoltaic performance of single crystalline and polycrystalline CH3NH3PbI3. (a) time-resolved photoluminescence shows longer charge lifetime in single crystalline film and efficient charge collection at the interface with FTO/TiO2 substrate; and (b) current density-voltage curve shows a photovoltaic efficiency of 8.78 percent. Credit: Science China Press



https://phys.org/news/2017-08-single-crystal-perovskite-solar-cells.html

Jinjin Zhao, Guoli Kong, Shulin Chen, Qian Li Boyuan Huang, Zhenghao Liu, Xingyuan San, Yujia Wang, Chen Wang, Yunce Zhen, Haidan Wen, Peng Gao, Jiangyu Li. *Single crystalline CH3NH3PbI3 self-grown on FTO/TiO 2 substrate for high efficiency perovskite solar cells*, _Science Bulletin_ (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.scib.2017.08.022​


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese company plans hyperloop traveling at 1,000 km/h*
By Zhao Lei | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2017-08-30 11:14
















​
China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp, one of the nation's major space contractors, announced that it has launched research and development of a futuristic ultrafast transport system popularly known as hyperloop, in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, on Wednesday.

The CASIC hyperloop will be a maglev line on which a pod will travel on partly elevated tubes or tunnels at superfast speed reaching 1,000 km per hour.

CASIC is the first Chinese enterprise and the world's third, following the United States' Hyperloop Transportation Technologies and Hyperloop One, that has started developing hyperloop system. The project will benefit from the company's rich experience and expertise in systems engineering and supersonic vehicles, said CASIC.


----------



## JSCh

* China focus: China aims high in nanotechnology *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-08-30 14:57:42_|_Editor: Yang Yi_





BEIJING, Aug. 29 (Xinhua) -- China has become a nanotechnology powerhouse, according to a report released at the 7th International Conference on Nanoscience and Technology (ChinaNANO 2017) in Beijing on Tuesday.

China's applied nanoscience research and the industrialization of nanotechnology have been developing steadily, with the number of nano-related patent applications ranking among the top in the world, said the report.

The report was co-produced by Springer Nature, National Center for Nanoscience and Technology (NCNST), and the National Science Library of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

According to Bai Chunli, president of CAS, China faces new opportunities for nanoscience research and development as it builds the NCNST and globally influential national science centers.

"We will strengthen the strategic landscape and top-down design for developing nanoscience, which will contribute greatly to the country's economy and society," said Bai.

Nanoscience is the study of the interaction, composition, properties and manufacturing methods of materials at the nanometer scale.

The science encourages integration of many disciplines and has a direct impact on daily work and life because it leads to the discovery of advanced technology.

In 1997, around 13,000 nanoscience-related papers were published worldwide. By 2016, the number had risen to more than 154,000, the report said.

Over the same period, the number of papers related to nanoscience from China grew from 820 in 1997 to over 52,000 in 2016.

Since 2007, the average compound annual growth rate of China's most cited nanoscience papers was 22 percent -- three times the global rate, the report stated.

In terms of the number of nano-related patent applications, China has reached 209,344 over the past 20 years, accounting for 45 percent of the world's total.

In 2003, CAS and the Ministry of Education co-established the NCNST. Key to the NCNST's success has been the involvement of three of China's top research institutions -- Tsinghua University, Peking University and CAS, said Liu Minghua, director of the NCNST.

Liu said that thanks to robust funding, a growing number of Chinese scientists have been attracted to research of nanomaterials. Additionally, more foreign-trained Chinese researchers have returned to China under favorable policies.

Energy nanotechnology and catalytic nanomaterials are the top two fields in which China has made remarkable achievements.

Faced with mounting public pressure to tackle deteriorating environmental problems, China is putting great effort into the research and development of new energy, as well as efficient energy and environmental protection technology.

This has made energy nanotechnology a promising area, leading Chinese researchers to research batteries and energy storage and conversion, Liu said.

Catalytic nanomaterials research is considered China's most promising area of nanoscience. Nanostructure-based catalysts can speed up chemical reactions and could be useful in chemical industries and oil refining, experts said.

Bai said both challenges and opportunities await China. More breakthroughs in basic nanoscience research need to be made, and the gap between basic research and application should be closed.

CAS will foster more young scientists who can innovate, accelerate the building of value chains, and foster broad and efficient international collaboration, Bai said.

"Through our joint efforts, we expect to apply nanotechnology to various sectors that will benefit the people and help China to be a global leader in science and technology," Bai said.


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *Chinese company plans hyperloop traveling at 1,000 km/h*
> By Zhao Lei | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2017-08-30 11:14

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Galactic Penguin SST

*Astronomers recover a lost nova* 

First observed 600 years ago, this binary system is providing vital clues to how novae work.

Published: Wednesday, August 30, 2017

In the tail of Scorpius the Scorpion, a new star appeared briefly nearly 600 years ago. The year was 1437, and the previously unseen star, which flared bright and lasted 14 days before disappearing, was recorded by Korean astrologers at the time. Lost to astronomers hunting for its source since that date, the binary star system that underwent that nova has now been found.

The work, published today in Nature, describes “the first nova that's ever been recovered with certainty based on the Chinese, Korean, and Japanese records of almost 2,500 years,” according to lead author Michael Shara, a curator in the American Museum of Natural History's Department of Astrophysics, in a press release. Rediscovering this nova, which now appears to undergo periodic smaller-scale nova explosions, provides key support for the theory that novae have long life cycles, and can go dormant before ramping up again.

A nova differs from a supernova in that the former is not a catastrophic event that destroys its progenitor star. In a nova system, a white dwarf (the remnant of a star like our Sun) pulls material off a companion star, which is still in the hydrogen-burning phase of its life. This material, mostly hydrogen, piles up slowly over the course of something like 100,000 years, until it reaches a critical point. At that point, the hydrogen envelope suddenly fuses into helium, releasing a huge amount of energy that’s seen as a nova. It’s essentially a giant hydrogen bomb, and the white dwarf can shine several hundred thousand times brighter for days or even months afterward.

In a type Ia supernova, which occurs in similar systems, it’s thought that the white dwarf pulls matter off its companion much more quickly, and reaches a critical mass point that triggers a larger explosion, which does tear the white dwarf apart. Thus, supernovae destroy the stellar remnant that creates them; novae do not, allowing the process of hydrogen buildup to occur again and possibly trigger another nova in the future.

The nova of 1437 has been elusive, with several astronomers including Shara, Richard Stephenson of Durham University, and Mike Bode of Liverpool John Moores University searching for the binary system that caused it.

But recently, after expanding their initial search area, they came across a shell of material: the sign of a classical nova explosion. They even found a bright star near — but not in — the center of the shell.

The team cross-referenced their find with an image of the area taken at the Harvard Observatory station in Peru in 1923, and were able to accurately chart the star’s motion across the sky over time. Based on their calculations, “… we traced it back six centuries, and bingo, there it was, right at the center of our shell. That's the clock, that's what convinced us that it had to be right,” said Shara.

That photographic plate is now part of the Digitizing a Sky Century at Harvard (DASCH) project. And with the addition of other plates from the DASCH project taken in the 1940s, Shara and his team discovered that the nova is now something called a “dwarf nova,” which undergoes periodic small outbursts that are likely due to instabilities in the material as it forms a disk around and accretes onto the white dwarf, rather than the huge explosion of a “classical nova,” like the event it underwent nearly 600 years ago.

This behavior helps to cement the idea that classical novae, dwarf novae, and other objects that show novae-like variability are all different stages of the same type of system. “In the same way that an egg, a caterpillar, a pupa, and a butterfly are all life stages of the same organism, we now have strong support for the idea that these binaries are all the same thing seen in different phases of their lives,” Shara explained.

However, because these systems can evolve and change over hundreds of thousands of years, showing different types of behavior at different times, it’s been difficult to link them together. “We simply haven't been around long enough to see a single complete cycle,” said Shara.

But now, the rediscovery of the 1437 eruption and the ability to trace its evolution over time, astronomers can take a closer, more complete look at that life cycle to approach a better understanding of how systems that may seem different are really all one and the same.








Spoiler



https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v548/n7669/images/nature23644-f1.jpg
https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v548/n7669/fig_tab/nature23644_F1.html



▲ This Hα image was taken with the Swope 1-metre telescope and its CCD camera in June 2016, with a total of 6,000 seconds of exposure. Images taken by Swope were processed and combined with standard PyRAF and IRAF procedures. Here, north is up and east is to the left. The location of the cataclysmic variable in 2016 is indicated with red tick marks. Its proper motion places the AD 1437 cataclysmic variable 7.4″ east and 16.0″ north of its current position, at the red plus sign. The position of the centre of the shell in 2016 and its deduced position in 1437 (see text) are indicated with blue and green plus signs, respectively. The 1437 positions of the shell centre and of the cataclysmic variable agree to within 1.7″, and their 1σ error ellipses overlap.







Spoiler



https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v548/n7669/images/nature23644-f2.jpg
https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v548/n7669/fig_tab/nature23644_F2.html



▲ The Harvard photographic plate A12425, part of which is shown here, is a 300-minute exposure obtained using the 24″ Bruce Doublet telescope at the Harvard Observatory station in Arequipa, Peru. North is up; east is to the left; and the cataclysmic variable is indicated with red tick marks.







Spoiler



https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v548/n7669/images/nature23644-f3.jpg
https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v548/n7669/fig_tab/nature23644_F3.html



▲ The grey symbols show upper limits, while the black dots are measured DASCH detections of the star, with typical 1σ errors of ±0.1–0.2 mag. The star was first detected in quiescence near magnitude 17 in 1923, and near magnitude 16 in 1925. Dwarf-nova outbursts in 1934 (reaching nearly magnitude 12), 1935 and 1942 (see Fig. 4) are evident.







Spoiler



https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v548/n7669/images/nature23644-f4.jpg
https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v548/n7669/fig_tab/nature23644_F4.html



▲ The star is seen to undergo a dwarf-nova eruption, brightening substantially between the first and third images, then returning to quiescence a few days later. The dwarf nova is indicated with an arrow in each epoch in this series of Harvard DASCH MF-series photographic plates (see Methods). North is up and east is to the left.









Spoiler



http://
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlJ0zP_CzgA



▲ Published on Aug 31, 2017: '별 폭발' 세종실록으로 풀었다 / SBS 조선 시대에도 천문학이 발달했던 걸로 알려졌지요. 당시 천문관들이 밤하늘을 관측해 세종실록에 꼼꼼히 적어놨는데 600년 전의 이 기록들 덕분에 얼마 전 별 폭발의 비밀이 밝혀졌습니다. 정구희 기자입니다.

http://www.astronomy.com/news/2017/08/lost-nova-is-found-again

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*U.S.-China mission rushes bomb-grade nuclear fuel out of Africa*
By Richard Stone
Aug. 31, 2017 , 9:00 AM

*ACCRA AND BEIJING—*Dan Peng steps onto a narrow steel frame just above a 6-meter-deep pool, which holds a nuclear reactor about to go critical. Clad in a lab coat with a pocket radiation dosimeter, sweating in the stifling reactor hall here on the outskirts of Ghana's capital, the young nuclear physicist edges out to a tube jutting above the water's surface. He grabs a cord leading out of the tube and reels it up, hand over hand, until a cigar-shaped capsule emerges—a packet of neutron-absorbing cadmium. It's the last of three that were immersed in the pool as a safety measure, to ensure that the reactor's new low-enriched uranium (LEU) core did not achieve a self-sustaining fission reaction—criticality—before the team was ready.

At the edge of the pool, several other physicists and engineers, colleagues of Peng's at the China Institute of Atomic Energy (CIAE) in Beijing, huddle behind a bank of instruments. On one digital display, numbers change in a blur as the neutron count shoots up, then levels off. Now, the only bulwark against criticality is a single control rod piercing the heart of the reactor.

"We're ready," says a smiling Li Yiguo, a CIAE nuclear physicist and leader of a landmark effort in nuclear nonproliferation at the Ghana Research Reactor (GHARR-1). Li asks a colleague to summon dignitaries to mark the culmination of a 10-year odyssey to remove GHARR-1's highly enriched uranium (HEU) fuel—weapons-grade material—and replace it with LEU, which cannot be used for a nuclear bomb without further enrichment.

The operation, which took place in July at the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission in Accra, is a milestone in a dogged effort since the end of the Cold War to remove enriched uranium and plutonium from countries that do not have nuclear weapons. Spearheaded by the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, the initiative took on added urgency after the 9/11 attacks, out of fear of al-Qaida or another terrorist group laying hands on nuclear materials. Small, HEU-fueled research reactors, including GHARR-1 and four other Chinese-made miniature neutron source reactors (MNSRs) operating in the Middle East and Africa, were a high priority. But reengineering an MNSR's core—a cylindrical array of 350 fuel and dummy pins that is a little larger than a gallon paint can—to run on safer fuel posed unique challenges.

Chinese and U.S. nuclear experts spent a decade plotting out the Ghana operation, sharing expertise and working at each other's labs. "No question, we were able to collaborate very, very well on the MNSR conversion," says Ernest Moniz, CEO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), a think tank in Washington, D.C., and former secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The process strengthened a bond that is quietly developing between nuclear scientists in the United States and China. "It's very important for building trust," says Hui Zhang, a nuclear policy analyst at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University.

In 1999, relations between Chinese and U.S. nuclear scientists entered a tailspin after the U.S. Congress, in a high-profile report, accused China of stealing nuclear weapons secrets from DOE's national laboratories. China denied the allegations, and U.S. nonproliferation experts cast doubt on them. Nevertheless, the accusations torpedoed a nascent technical exchange program between U.S. and Chinese weapons scientists.

But now, even as the two countries are embroiled in trade disputes and tensions over the South China Sea and North Korea's nuclear program, collaborations between their nuclear scientists are intensifying. Last year, China opened a Center of Excellence (COE) in nuclear security in Beijing that's filled with top-of-the-line instrumentation for combatting nuclear smuggling and terrorism; Chinese and U.S. physicists work together there to hone measures for protecting nuclear facilities and analyzing interdicted nuclear materials. Under the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, U.S. and Chinese scientists are helping counterparts in Iran reconfigure a heavy water reactor in Arak so it can no longer produce significant quantities of plutonium. And the research reactor conversions will continue. Next up is an MNSR in Nigeria in spring 2018, followed by reactors in Iran, Pakistan, and—when conditions permit—Syria.

The MNSR conversions "show real leadership on the part of the Chinese," says David Huizenga, acting deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation at DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) in Washington, D.C. They are part of a "very important partnership" in nuclear security, he says, in which something unthinkable only a few years ago is taking place: Chinese and U.S. weapons scientists are finding ways to work together.
_

Con't reading --> _U.S.-China mission rushes bomb-grade nuclear fuel out of Africa | Science | AAAS

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Martian2

China's Comac is the designer of the C919 narrow-body jet. The capacity of the commercial jet is 190 passengers.

Comac is also the designer of the earlier ARJ-21 regional jet. The ARJ-21 has a smaller passenger capacity of 90.

Comac spent eight years (2008-2016) testing the ARJ-21. The experience-gained was very valuable and is probably accelerating the test-schedule for the larger C919. After all, the basic test procedures are similar (such as certification for cold/hot weather, night-time, altitude, etc.).

Last week, Comac displayed an exact-replica flight simulator of the C919 to the public. The following photographs offer an exciting glimpse into the C919 high-tech cockpit controls. China's C919 airliner was built to compete against the Boeing 737 and the Airbus A320.
----------

C919 flight simulator debuts at Shanghai expo | China Daily

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*China produces its first neutron beams*
By ZHANG ZHIHAO | China Daily | Updated: 2017-09-02 06:46














China has become the latest country to create neutron beams－which can examine subatomic materials without damaging their structure－an advance expected to lead to new discoveries in material science, clean energy and medicine.

The beams were first produced on Aug 28 at the China Spallation Neutron Source in Dongguan, Guangdong province, making China the fourth country in the world, after the United States, United Kingdom and Japan, to have a neutron beam source.

"This is a major milestone for Chinese scientists. The lab will help us solve some of the nation's most difficult scientific issues," said Chen Hesheng, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the manager of the project.

"It will also help the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area to upgrade its industries and support their high-end scientific research and development," Chen said.

The China Spallation Neutron Source cost 1.87 billion yuan ($280 million) and took around six and a half years to build. It will be fully operational next year and Chinese scientists from more than 70 projects and 22 universities have applied to use it. The facility would also be open to foreign researchers, he said.

Neutrons and protons are found at the nucleus, or the core of an atom－the basic building block of materials. While protons have a positive charge, neutrons have no electric charge, and have strong penetrative capability.

As a result, unlike X-rays, whose ionized radiation can rip through the atomic structures of biomaterials like proteins, neutron rays can just pass through the material without damaging the structures, Chen said.

However, some neutrons will hit the atomic nucleus in the material and "bounce" harmlessly away at an angle in a phenomenon called neutron scattering, hence creating the "spallation". Using detectors, scientists can count these scattered neutrons, measure their energies and the angles at which they scatter, and map their final positions.

This way, scientists can glean details about the nature of the examined materials－from its atomic arrangement to movements.

"This will help scientists discover new chemical mechanisms for producing clean energy, new material for more powerful electronics, or create stronger and more durable material for engines," Chen said.

Another promising application is creating new therapies to treat tumors that are difficult to operate on by hand, such as brain tumors, said Fu Shinian, a researcher at the academy's Institute of High Energy Physics.

The Boron Neutron Capture Therapy takes advantage of boron's properties to accurately latch onto cancer cells. Then doctors can shine neutron beams at the tumor, triggering the boron to kill the cancer cells while leaving surrounding cells intact, Fu said.

Despite these promising applications, creating neutron beams is no easy task. In China's neutron source, scientists have to accelerate a group of protons close to the speed of light, use them to smash into a target tungsten block, and knock the neutrons out of the target's atomic nucleus.

Then these neutrons are "sucked" into various branches and channeled into different lab equipment for research, said Chen. All of the equipment used to generate the neutron beams is more than a dozen meters underground, trapping the tiny amount of harmful radiation created in the process.

China's neutron source will be free to the public, only collecting a small fee from companies with special needs.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Nanoscience making China global leader*
Source: Xinhua | 00:01 UTC+8 September 4, 2017



Russian-British physicist Kostya Novoselov, winner of 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on graphene with Andre Geim, speaks at ChinaNANO 2017 in Beijing. — Xinhua 

MOBILE phones, computers, cosmetics, bicycles... nanoscience is hiding in so many everyday items, wielding a huge influence on our lives at a microscale level.

Scientists and engineers from around the world exchanged new findings and perceptions on nanotechnology at the recent 7th International Conference on Nanoscience and Technology (ChinaNANO 2017) in Beijing last week.

China has become a nanotechnology powerhouse, according to a report released at the conference. China’s applied nanoscience research and the industrialization of nanotechnology have been developing steadily, with the number of nano-related patent applications ranking among the top in the world.

The report was co-produced by Springer Nature, National Center for Nanoscience and Technology (NCNST) and the National Science Library of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

According to Bai Chunli, president of CAS, China faces new opportunities for nanoscience research and development as it builds the NCNST and globally influential national science centers.

“We will strengthen the strategic landscape and top-down design for developing nanoscience, which will contribute greatly to the country’s economy and society,” said Bai.

Nanoscience can be defined as the study of the interaction, composition, properties and manufacturing methods of materials at a nanometer scale.

At such tiny scales, the physical, chemical and biological properties of materials are different from those at larger scales — often profoundly so.

For example, alloys that are weak or brittle become strong and ductile; compounds that are chemically inert become powerful catalysts.

It is estimated that there are more than 1,600 nanotechnology-based consumer products on the market, including lightweight but sturdy tennis rackets, bicycles, suitcases, automobile parts and rechargeable batteries.

Nanomaterials are used in hairdryers or straighteners to make them lighter and more durable. The secret of how sunscreens protect skin from sunburn lies in the nanometer-scale titanium dioxide or zinc oxide they contain.

In 2016, the world’s first one-nanometer transistor was created. It was made from carbon nanotubes and molybdenum disulphide, rather than silicon. Carbon nanotubes or silver nanowires enable touch screens on computers and televisions to be flexible, said Zhu Xing, chief scientist at the NCNST.

Nanotechnology is also having an increasing impact on healthcare, with progress in drug delivery, biomaterials, imaging, diagnostics, active implants and other therapeutic applications.

The biggest current concern is the health threats of nanoparticles, which can easily enter body via airways or skin. Construction workers exposed to nanopollutants face increased health risks.

In response to these concerns, the Chinese government has invested in nanosafety research since 2001, with around 7 percent of the nanotechnology research budget going to research into the environmental, health and safety implications of nanotechnology, said Zhu.

Since 2007, the average compound annual growth rate of China’s most cited nanoscience papers was 22 percent — three times the global rate, the report stated.

In terms of the number of nano-related patent applications, China has reached 209,344 over the past 20 years, accounting for 45 percent of the world’s total.

In 2003, CAS and the Ministry of Education co-established the NCNST. Key to the NCNST’s success has been the involvement of three of China’s top research institutions — Tsinghua University, Peking University and CAS, said Liu Minghua, director of the NCNST.

Liu said that due to robust funding, a growing number of Chinese scientists have been attracted to research of nanomaterials. Additionally, more foreign-trained Chinese researchers have returned to China under favorable policies.

Energy nanotechnology and catalytic nanomaterials are the top two fields in which China has made remarkable achievements.

Faced with mounting public pressure to tackle deteriorating environmental problems, China is putting great effort into the research and development of new energy, as well as efficient energy and environmental protection technology.

This has made energy nanotechnology a promising area, leading Chinese researchers to research batteries and energy storage and conversion, Liu said.

Catalytic nanomaterials research is considered China’s most promising area of nanoscience. Nanostructure-based catalysts can speed up chemical reactions and could be useful in chemical industries and oil refining, experts said.

Bai said both challenges and opportunities await China. More breakthroughs in basic nanoscience research need to be made, and the gap between basic research and application should be closed.

CAS will foster more young scientists who can innovate, accelerate the building of value chains, and foster broad and efficient international collaboration, Bai said.

“Through our joint efforts, we expect to apply nanotechnology to various sectors that will benefit the people and help China to be a global leader in science and technology,” Bai said.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Two distant hypervelocity stars discovered by Chinese astronomers*
September 4, 2017 by Tomasz Nowakowski




LAMOST spectra of LAMOST-HVS1 (top), LAMOST-HVS2 (middle) and LAMOST-HVS3 (bottom). The inset in each panel shows the enlarged normalized blue-arm spectrum. Credit: Huang et al., 2017. 

(Phys.org)—A group of Chinese astronomers led by Yang Huang of the Yunnan University in Kunming, China, has detected two new unbound hypervelocity stars located over 70,000 light years away. The discovery, described in a paper published Aug. 29 on the arXiv pre-print server, could help scientists better understand the nature of these rare, peculiar stars.

Hypervelocity stars (HVSs) are rare objects with velocities so great that they exceed the escape velocity of the galaxy. Astronomers believe that they originate near the center of the Milky Way galaxy by dynamical interactions between binary stars and the central massive black hole. While ordinary stars have velocities around 100 km/s, the velocities of HVSs can reach even 1,000 km/s.

Although scientists estimate that approximately 1,000 HVSs exist in the Milky Way, only about 20 such stars have been identified so far. Given that these objects travel large distances across our galaxy, they could serve as powerful tracers to probe the mass distribution in the Milky Way, providing crucial information about the shape of the galactic dark matter halo. Therefore, finding new HVSs could help us build a valuable database of such tracers.

With this aim in mind, Huang's team have analyzed the available data provided by the LAMOST spectroscopic surveys. The surveys, utilizing the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fibre Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) in China, investigate the structure and evolution of our galaxy, and have already located one hypervelocity star.

Now, the Chinese astronomers report the finding of two new HVSs in the latest data release from the LAMOST surveys. The researchers found two new unbound hypervelocity stars, designated LAMOST-HVS2 and LAMOST-HVS3. They also re-discovered LAMOST-HSV1 – the first HVS spotted by LAMOST in 2014.

According to the study, LAMOST-HVS2 has a spectral type B2V, mass of about 7.3 solar masses and an effective temperature of 20,600 K. The star, located about 72,500 light years away from the Earth, has a heliocentric radial velocity of 341.1 km/s, which corresponds to a galactic rest-frame radial velocity of 502.33 km/s.

With an effective temperature of 14,000 K, LAMOST-HVS3 is nearly four times as massive as the sun and has a spectral type B7V. The star's heliocentric radial velocity was found to be 361.38 km/s, while its galactic rest-frame radial velocity equals 408.33 km/s. LAMOST-HVS3 is located some 72,760 light years away from our planet.

The researchers assume that the two newly discovered HSVs and the one found earlier may originate from the galactic center and their progenitors are spatially associated with young stellar structures near the center of the Milky Way. However, more studies are needed to confirm this hypothesis. Therefore, the team hopes that the upcoming new data release from ESA's Gaia satellite could shed some light on this problem.

"Finally, accurate proper motion measurements are required in order to better constrain the origin of the three HVSs discovered with LAMOST. The current measurements have uncertainties (systematic plus random) too large to make a conclusive analysis. Fortunately, all the three stars are quite bright and the upcoming Gaia data release should solve this problem," the authors concluded.

*More information:* Discovery of two new hypervelocity stars from the LAMOST spectroscopic surveys, arXiv:1708.08602 [astro-ph.GA] arxiv.org/abs/1708.08602

*Abstract*
We report the discovery of two new unbound hypervelocity stars (HVSs) from the LAMOST spectroscopic surveys. They are respectively a B2V type star of ~ 7 M⊙ with a Galactic rest-frame radial velocity of 502 km/s at a Galactocentric radius of ~ 21 kpc and a B7V type star of ~ 4 M⊙ with a Galactic rest-frame radial velocity of 408 km/s at a Galactocentric radius of ~ 30 kpc. The origins of the two HVSs are not clear given their currently poorly measured proper motions. However, the future data releases of Gaia should provide proper motion measurements accurate enough to solve this problem. The ongoing LAMOST spectroscopic surveys are expected to yield more HVSs to form a statistical sample, providing vital constraint on understanding the nature of HVSs and their ejection mechanisms.​

https://phys.org/news/2017-09-distant-hypervelocity-stars-chinese-astronomers.html

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Raycus fiber lasers exemplify nation's Made in China plan*
By Zheng Xin and Zou Shuo | China Daily | Updated: 2017-09-06 07:54














Yan Dapeng, a leading expert in the development of fiber lasers, was visiting Wuhan in 2006 when he found out the fiber laser products he had helped create in the United States were sold to China at high, nonnegotiable prices, with poor after-sales service.

One year later, at the age of 51, Yan resigned from his US job, came back to China and partnered with a domestic company to found Raycus, which has developed into a leading developer and manufacturer of high-powered fiber laser and core components in China, breaking the American monopoly in the sector.

In 2013, Raycus succeeded in developing China's first 10 kW fiber laser－making China the second country to master the technology in the world. Last year, a 20 kW fiber laser produced by Raycus was unveiled at the laser technology and industry development forum held in Wuhan, Central China's Hubei province. That product is expected to enter mass production by 2018, according to the company.

Fiber laser, which releases laser energy through a fiber as thin as a human hair, has been widely applied in aerospace, shipbuilding, airplane and auto manufacturing, as well as 3D printing. It is an indispensable component of precision machining.

Compared with carbon dioxide laser, fiber lasers feature three times faster emitting speed, 20 percent higher energy conversion efficiency, four times less power consumption, with no noise or pollution emitted.

Yan said fiber laser industry is of strategic significance and an important industry in military-civilian integration.

The United States still embargoes the export of high-power fiber lasers of more than 1,000 W to China. However, since Raycus has successfully produced fiber lasers with that much or more power, the embargo thus makes no sense, he said.

China's breakthrough in high-power fiber laser is also proving to be lucrative.

According to Yan, the successful development of the 10 kW fiber laser has lowered the price of imported fiber laser from five million yuan ($760,000) to a little more than three million yuan. As the country realizes production of 20 kW fiber laser, the price of imported ones will decrease by 40 percent.

China has made great efforts to upgrade its manufacturing industry into a more intelligent one. In 2015, the country put forward the "Made in China 2025" initiative, which seeks to transform itself from a manufacturing giant into a global high-tech manufacturing power.

Under the initiative, the Chinese government allocated 5.2 billion yuan to promote 133 key projects including bullet trains, 3D printing, construction machinery and electric vehicles in 25 provinces and autonomous regions last year.

However, China still lags behind other countries in fiber laser technology, said Wang Pu, a professor at the Institute of Laser Engineering of Beijing University of Technology.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

06 September 2017
*Light-Based Method Improves Practicality and Quality of Remote Wind Measurements *
_Innovative technology could aid hurricane forecasting, aircraft safety and wind energy generation_

WASHINGTON —Researchers have developed a new remote sensing instrument based on light detection and ranging (LIDAR) that could offer a simple and robust way to accurately measure wind speed. The detailed, real-time wind measurements could help scientists to better understand how hurricanes form and provide information that meteorologists can use to pinpoint landfall earlier, giving people more time to prepare and evacuate.

“As hurricane Harvey approached the U.S., hurricane hunters flew directly into the storm and dropped sensors to measure wind speed,” said Xiankang Dou, leader of the research team at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). “Our Doppler LIDAR instrument can be used from a plane to remotely measure a hurricane’s wind with high spatial and temporal resolutions. In the future, it could even make these measurements from aboard satellites.”

Wind measurements are also crucial for determining safe flying conditions, understanding how pollution moves through the air and efficiently operating wind turbines. Existing high-accuracy wind measurement technologies can be expensive and difficult to operate, leading to gaps in the application of these technologies in situations where they are most useful. 



_Mingjia Shangguan and Haiyun Xia from the University of Science and Technology of China were part of a research team who developed a new Doppler LIDAR system for accurately measuring the wind. It features a greatly simplified optical setup that makes it robust and stable enough to use in harsh environments such as aboard aircraft or satellites. *Image Credit:* Quantum LIDAR Laboratory._

“We demonstrated a Doppler wind LIDAR with a simplified optical layout that also substantially enhances the system stability,” said Dou. “Although specialists are typically needed to operate and maintain a sophisticated Doppler LIDAR, we are confident we can develop our approach into a system that will be as easy to use as a smartphone.”

In The Optical Society (OSA) journal _Optics Letters_, the researchers demonstrated their Doppler wind LIDAR system’s ability to measure horizontal wind speed with high accuracy and showed that the system remained stable throughout a 10-day test period. The researchers say that the stability and accuracy of this new system represents a substantial improvement compared to previously developed direct detection Doppler wind LIDARs.

One important application of LIDAR is in aeronautics, where it can be used on aircrafts or from a ground station to remotely measure air motion. With a vertical spatial resolution of 10 meters, the new system could measure small-scale wind phenomena such as wind shear and the wake turbulence created by an aircraft. A better understanding of these phenomena could improve flight safety and also increase airport capacity by optimizing the separation between aircraft during takeoff and landing.

*Using light to measure wind*
LIDAR is a remote sensing method that has been used to create high-resolution maps, scan the bottom of the ocean floor and to guide driverless cars. For measuring wind, a LIDAR system emits a laser pulse that propagates through the atmosphere where it interacts with molecules and aerosols. A small amount of the light scatters back towards the LIDAR instrument, where it is collected by a telescope. When wind causes air to move, this causes a Doppler shift that can be detected by the device.

The researchers designed a dual frequency direct detection Doppler wind LIDAR that used a laser emitting 1.5-micron light. Because this wavelength is commonly used in optical communications networks, they were able to build the system using commercially available fiber-optic components, each combining several light-controlling components into a single device. The all fiber construction of the LiDAR system is therefore robust against vibrations and rough operation handling.

Compared to previously developed systems, the new simplified design makes it much easier to configure and align each component, increases stability and lowers the amount of light lost within the system. The new system also requires no calibration after it is initialized and requires no special eye protection.

“For LIDAR systems that will be operated full-time in the field, eye safety is an important consideration,” said Haiyun Xia, the principle investigator of the Quantum Lidar Laboratory at USTC. “Fortunately, the 1.5-micron laser we used exhibits the highest permissible exposure for eye safety in the wavelength range from 0.3 to 10 microns.”

The 1.5-micron wavelength is also ideal for atmospheric wind sensing from satellites because, compared to UV and visible wavelengths, it shows less susceptibility to atmospheric disturbance and optical contamination from the sun and other sources. Satellite-based wind measurements are used for weather forecasts and meteorological studies. “Space-borne Doppler wind LIDAR is now regarded as the most promising way to meet the need for global wind data requirements and to fill gaps in the wind data provided by other methods,” said Xia.

*Upgraded optical components*
The optical setup for the new Doppler wind LIDAR contains just one laser source, one detector and a single-channel Fabry-Perot interferometer that converts the Doppler shift into photon number variations of the backscatter signals. Using a Fabry-Perot interferometer made of optical fibers rather than one consisting of many individual optical components made the system robust and stable enough to use in harsh environments such as aboard aircraft or satellites.

The new system also includes one of the fastest detectors available for single photon counting, a superconducting nanowire single photon detector (SNSPD). This detector improved the LIDAR’s performance compared to the InGaAs avalanche photodiodes typically used to detect 1.5-micron light.

“The high detection efficiency and low dark count rate of the SNSPD means that the weak signal from the backscattered light can be detected with a high signal-to-noise ratio,” said Xia. “Another attractive feature of the SNSPD is its high maximum count rate, which helps avoid detector saturation.”

The researchers tested their system by first examining its stability after calibration. Overall, the system’s measurements varied by less than 0.2 meters per second over 10 days in the lab. They then tested the system outdoors and compared its horizontal wind measurements with measurements from an ultrasonic wind sensor, a non-remote system for measuring wind. On average, the LIDAR measurements were within 0.1 meters per second and 1 degrees for wind speed and direction, respectively.

The researchers are now working to improve the spatial resolution of the Doppler wind LIDAR system and want to make it even more practical to use in the field. They have also founded a company to further develop the system and plan to have a commercial version available next year.

*Paper*: M. Shangguan, H. Xia, C. Wang, J. Qiu, S. Lin, X. Dou, Q. Zhang, J.-W. Pan, “Dual-frequency Doppler LIDAR for wind detection with superconducting nanowire single-photon detector,” _Opt. Lett._, Volume 42, Issue 18, 3541-3544 (2017).
DOI: 10.1364/OL.42.003541



Light-Based Method Improves Practicality and Quality of Remote Wind Measurements | News Releases | The Optical Society

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

JSCh said:


> 06 September 2017
> *Light-Based Method Improves Practicality and Quality of Remote Wind Measurements *
> _Innovative technology could aid hurricane forecasting, aircraft safety and wind energy generation_
> 
> WASHINGTON —Researchers have developed a new remote sensing instrument based on light detection and ranging (LIDAR) that could offer a simple and robust way to accurately measure wind speed. The detailed, real-time wind measurements could help scientists to better understand how hurricanes form and provide information that meteorologists can use to pinpoint landfall earlier, giving people more time to prepare and evacuate.
> 
> “As hurricane Harvey approached the U.S., hurricane hunters flew directly into the storm and dropped sensors to measure wind speed,” said Xiankang Dou, leader of the research team at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). “Our Doppler LIDAR instrument can be used from a plane to remotely measure a hurricane’s wind with high spatial and temporal resolutions. In the future, it could even make these measurements from aboard satellites.”
> 
> Wind measurements are also crucial for determining safe flying conditions, understanding how pollution moves through the air and efficiently operating wind turbines. Existing high-accuracy wind measurement technologies can be expensive and difficult to operate, leading to gaps in the application of these technologies in situations where they are most useful.
> 
> 
> 
> _Mingjia Shangguan and Haiyun Xia from the University of Science and Technology of China were part of a research team who developed a new Doppler LIDAR system for accurately measuring the wind. It features a greatly simplified optical setup that makes it robust and stable enough to use in harsh environments such as aboard aircraft or satellites. *Image Credit:* Quantum LIDAR Laboratory._
> 
> “We demonstrated a Doppler wind LIDAR with a simplified optical layout that also substantially enhances the system stability,” said Dou. “Although specialists are typically needed to operate and maintain a sophisticated Doppler LIDAR, we are confident we can develop our approach into a system that will be as easy to use as a smartphone.”
> 
> In The Optical Society (OSA) journal _Optics Letters_, the researchers demonstrated their Doppler wind LIDAR system’s ability to measure horizontal wind speed with high accuracy and showed that the system remained stable throughout a 10-day test period. The researchers say that the stability and accuracy of this new system represents a substantial improvement compared to previously developed direct detection Doppler wind LIDARs.
> 
> One important application of LIDAR is in aeronautics, where it can be used on aircrafts or from a ground station to remotely measure air motion. With a vertical spatial resolution of 10 meters, the new system could measure small-scale wind phenomena such as wind shear and the wake turbulence created by an aircraft. A better understanding of these phenomena could improve flight safety and also increase airport capacity by optimizing the separation between aircraft during takeoff and landing.
> 
> *Using light to measure wind*
> LIDAR is a remote sensing method that has been used to create high-resolution maps, scan the bottom of the ocean floor and to guide driverless cars. For measuring wind, a LIDAR system emits a laser pulse that propagates through the atmosphere where it interacts with molecules and aerosols. A small amount of the light scatters back towards the LIDAR instrument, where it is collected by a telescope. When wind causes air to move, this causes a Doppler shift that can be detected by the device.
> 
> The researchers designed a dual frequency direct detection Doppler wind LIDAR that used a laser emitting 1.5-micron light. Because this wavelength is commonly used in optical communications networks, they were able to build the system using commercially available fiber-optic components, each combining several light-controlling components into a single device. The all fiber construction of the LiDAR system is therefore robust against vibrations and rough operation handling.
> 
> Compared to previously developed systems, the new simplified design makes it much easier to configure and align each component, increases stability and lowers the amount of light lost within the system. The new system also requires no calibration after it is initialized and requires no special eye protection.
> 
> “For LIDAR systems that will be operated full-time in the field, eye safety is an important consideration,” said Haiyun Xia, the principle investigator of the Quantum Lidar Laboratory at USTC. “Fortunately, the 1.5-micron laser we used exhibits the highest permissible exposure for eye safety in the wavelength range from 0.3 to 10 microns.”
> 
> The 1.5-micron wavelength is also ideal for atmospheric wind sensing from satellites because, compared to UV and visible wavelengths, it shows less susceptibility to atmospheric disturbance and optical contamination from the sun and other sources. Satellite-based wind measurements are used for weather forecasts and meteorological studies. “Space-borne Doppler wind LIDAR is now regarded as the most promising way to meet the need for global wind data requirements and to fill gaps in the wind data provided by other methods,” said Xia.
> 
> *Upgraded optical components*
> The optical setup for the new Doppler wind LIDAR contains just one laser source, one detector and a single-channel Fabry-Perot interferometer that converts the Doppler shift into photon number variations of the backscatter signals. Using a Fabry-Perot interferometer made of optical fibers rather than one consisting of many individual optical components made the system robust and stable enough to use in harsh environments such as aboard aircraft or satellites.
> 
> The new system also includes one of the fastest detectors available for single photon counting, a superconducting nanowire single photon detector (SNSPD). This detector improved the LIDAR’s performance compared to the InGaAs avalanche photodiodes typically used to detect 1.5-micron light.
> 
> “The high detection efficiency and low dark count rate of the SNSPD means that the weak signal from the backscattered light can be detected with a high signal-to-noise ratio,” said Xia. “Another attractive feature of the SNSPD is its high maximum count rate, which helps avoid detector saturation.”
> 
> The researchers tested their system by first examining its stability after calibration. Overall, the system’s measurements varied by less than 0.2 meters per second over 10 days in the lab. They then tested the system outdoors and compared its horizontal wind measurements with measurements from an ultrasonic wind sensor, a non-remote system for measuring wind. On average, the LIDAR measurements were within 0.1 meters per second and 1 degrees for wind speed and direction, respectively.
> 
> The researchers are now working to improve the spatial resolution of the Doppler wind LIDAR system and want to make it even more practical to use in the field. They have also founded a company to further develop the system and plan to have a commercial version available next year.
> 
> *Paper*: M. Shangguan, H. Xia, C. Wang, J. Qiu, S. Lin, X. Dou, Q. Zhang, J.-W. Pan, “Dual-frequency Doppler LIDAR for wind detection with superconducting nanowire single-photon detector,” _Opt. Lett._, Volume 42, Issue 18, 3541-3544 (2017).
> DOI: 10.1364/OL.42.003541
> 
> 
> 
> Light-Based Method Improves Practicality and Quality of Remote Wind Measurements | News Releases | The Optical Society




This stuff is exactly what should not be published but patented. 

A patent is NOT granted if the research, design, or process is already published in open source.


----------



## cirr

*China detects its highest-temperature HDR geothermal energy*

2017-09-07 11:11

CGTN _Editor: Mo Hong'e_





(Photo/CGTN)

China has detected hot dry rock (HDR) at *236 degrees Celsius* in Gonghe County, northwest China's Qinghai Province.

China Geological Survey told CGTN on Wednesday that the HDR was found 3,705 meters beneath the Earth's surface. It is the highest-temperature HDR China has detected since the development of HDR geothermal energy starting in 2012.

Geothermal energy generated by HDR is a potential replacement for fossil fuels and can serve as a clean heating resource for millions in China.

Normally, with an over 150-degree-Celsius temperature, HDR lays 3,000 to 10,000 beneath the Earth's surface. Weather has little influence on the process of extracting power from HDR, and the cost is half the price of utilizing wind and one-tenth of generating solar energy.

Qinghai Province was the first known HDR resource in China. In 2014, geological and mineral resource explorers first found HDR in Qinghai with a temperature as high as 153 degrees Celsius, 2,230 meters beneath the Earth's surface.

Besides for Qinghai Province, Chinese explorers have found HDR in regions including southeast coastal areas, the Northeast Plain and the North Plain. In December last year, China detected HDR in its east Shandong Province with a temperature as high as 110 degrees Celsius at a depth of 1,240 meters beneath the Earth's surface.

The development of HDR geothermal energy started in the 1970s and many countries, including U.S., UK and Australia have set up bases for HDR experimental research.

http://www.ecns.cn/2017/09-07/272580.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Researchers Report New Way to Make Dissolving Electronics*
Discovery Has Applications for Eco-Friendly Disposal, Data Security and Healthcare

By Jeannie Kever 713-743-0778
September 6, 2017



Cunjiang Yu, Bill D. Cook Assistant Professor of mechanical engineering, center, and co-first authors Xu Wang, left, and Kyoseung Sim, right)

Researchers from the University of Houston and China have reported a new type of electronic device that can be triggered to dissolve through exposure to water molecules in the atmosphere.

The work holds promise for eco-friendly disposable personal electronics and biomedical devices that dissolve within the body. There are also defense applications, including devices that can be programmed to dissolve in order to safeguard sensitive information, said Cunjiang Yu, Bill D. Cook Assistant Professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Houston and lead author of the paper, published in Science Advances.

The field, known as physically transient electronics, currently requires immersion in aqueous corrosive solutions or biofluids. Yu said this work demonstrates a completely new working mechanism – the dissolution is triggered by ambient moisture.

“More importantly, the transient period of time can be precisely controlled,” he said.

That means a biomedical implant could be programmed to disappear when its task – delivering medication, for example – is complete. Sensitive communications could be devised to literally vanish once the message was delivered.

And all those old cell phones littering kitchen drawers? New versions could be programmed to dissolve when they are no longer needed.

“We demonstrate that polymeric substrates with novel degradation kinetics and associated transience chemistry offer a feasible strategy to construct physically transient electronics,” the researchers wrote. “Through the manipulation of the polymer component and environmental humidity, the progress of hydrolyzing polyanhydrides can be managed and thus the dissolution kinetics of (a) functional device can be controlled.”

The time period can range from days to weeks, or even longer, they said.

The model constructed by the researchers works like this: Functional electronic components were built via additive processes onto a film made of the polymer polyanhydride. The device remained stable until ambient moisture triggered a chemical breakdown that digested the inorganic electronic materials and components.

The researchers tested a number of compounds, including aluminum, copper, nickel indium-gallium, zinc oxide and magnesium oxide, and developed various electronic devices, including resistors, capacitors, antennas, transistors, diodes, photo sensors and more, to demonstrate the model’s versatility.

The lifespan of the devices can be controlled by varying the humidity level or by changing the polymer composition, Yu said.

In addition to Yu, authors on the paper include Yang Gao, Xu Wang, Kyoseung Sim, Jingshen Liu and Ji Chen, all from UH, and Ying Zhang and Hangxun Xu of the University of Science and Technology of China.


Researchers Report New Way to Make Dissolving Electronics - University of Houston

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

* Strong solar flare to affect shortwave communications *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-09-07 16:38:48_|_Editor: Xiang Bo_





BEIJING, Sept. 7 (Xinhua) -- A strong solar flare may affect shortwave communications on earth, but the disruptions in China will be minor, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) said Thursday.

According to the CAS National Space Science Center, an X9.3-class solar flare emitting from a group of sunspots codenamed AR 2673 was spotted at 7:53 p.m. Wednesday.

The sunspots have triggered solar flares more than 10 times since Sunday and may continue to cause large flares in the following days, CAS said in a statement.

They are the strongest spotted since 2005 and likely to impact earth on Friday night or Saturday, according to CAS.

The flares may also lead to strong disturbances in the earth's magnetosphere, ionosphere and upper atmosphere, and affect the performance and safety of satellites, the statement said.

A solar flare is a violent explosion in the sun's atmosphere caused by huge magnetic activity. The flares produce large amounts of radiation that can affect the earth's ionosphere and disrupt radio communications.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

Sep 7, 2017
*Large-area perovskite films go solvent- and vacuum-free*

Researchers at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology have developed a new technique to deposit high-quality large-area perovskite films that does not require solvents or vacuum processing. The method produces homogenous films with relatively few defects, which leads to a record efficiency of 12.1% for a solar module made from a methylammonium lead halide film that is just over 36 cm2 in size.






A perovskite solar module with a size of 36 cm2​
Organic-inorganic hybrid perovskites, which have the chemical formula (CH3NH3)PbX3 (where Pb is lead and X can be iodine, bromine or chlorine), are one of the most promising thin-film solar-cell materials around today thanks to the fact that they can absorb light over a broad range of solar-spectrum wavelengths. The power-conversion efficiency (PCE) of solar cells made from these materials has gone from just 3% to more than 22% in the last eight years, which means that their PCE is now comparable to that of silicon-based solar cells.

For such cells to be widely employed and commercialized, however, we need large-area (1 m2), uniformly high-quality perovskite films from which to make the devices. This is because perovskite-based cells cannot be easily scaled up. Indeed, their PCE decreases from more than 20% to about 10% when they are increased in size from 0.1 cm2 to 25 cm2.

*Converting amine complex precursors to perovskite films*
A team led by Liyuan Han in China and Michael Grätzel in Switzerland has now developed a new technique to produce large-area methylammonium lead halide (CH3NH3PbI3) perovskite films that relies on rapidly converting amine complex precursors (CH3NH3I·mCH3NH2 (where m is close to 3) and PbI2·nCH3NH2 (where n is close to 1) to perovskite films and then applying pressure to them.

The deposited films are free of pinholes and are highly uniform, say the researchers. “Our technique has the advantage that it does not require any toxic or irritating solvents like N,N-dimethylformamide, dimethyl sulphoxide (DMSO) or gamma-butyrolactone, unlike conventional methods to produce these cells,” says team member Xudong Yang. “It does not produce any waste either and no thermal annealing is required. The technique also works in air and at low temperatures, making it more cost-friendly and environmentally friendly overall.

And that is not all, the pressure-processing step at the end is better than the spin-coating method that is widely employed for depositing perovskite films, he, tells _nanotechweb.org_.

The film produced by the new technique is highly uniform over a large area (36.1 cm2) with only a 2% variation in film thickness and the grains in the material are around 0.8-1.0 microns in size, which is three to four times bigger than those in spin-coated processed film. The researchers succeeded in making a photovoltaic module with a PCE of 12.1% from such a film.

According to the researchers, reporting their work in _Nature_ doi:10.1038/nature23877, the technique will be useful for growing perovskite crystals, which could greatly reduce so-called trap states and further enhance the photovoltaic performance of these materials. “It could be then used to produce low-cost optoelectronics devices, like light-emitting diodes or laser diodes on a large scale,” adds Han.

*About the author*
Belle Dumé is contributing editor at _nanotechweb.org


_
Large-area perovskite films go solvent- and vacuum-free - nanotechweb.org

Han Chen, Fei Ye, Wentao Tang, Jinjin He, Maoshu Yin, Yanbo Wang, Fengxian Xie, Enbing Bi, Xudong Yang, Michael Grätzel & Liyuan Han. *A solvent- and vacuum-free route to large-area perovskite films for efficient solar modules*. _Nature _(2017). DOI:10.1038/nature23877​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*China to phase in 14nm semiconductor process in 2018, says top tech master*

Jean Chu, Taipei; Willis Ke, DIGITIMES

[Tuesday 22 August 2017]

*China is proceeding with systematic deployments in 14nm semiconductor fabrication equipment, process, packaging and materials, which will be fully industrialized in 2018. And the nation will render major support to the development of 5-7nm procesess and 3D memories under its 13th Five-year Development Plan running 2016-2020*, according to Ye Tianchun, director of the Institute of Microelectronics under the Chinese Academy of Science.

Customs statistics showed that China imported US$227 billion worth of IC products in 2016, twice its crude oil imports for the year, but the nation's IC exports reached only US$61.4 billion. The huge trade deficit was due mainly to China's lack of high-end chip products for exports, Ye said.

Ye said that IC technologies are the most crucial cornerstone of the information technology era, and the "grain" of modern industries, as ICs are now totally indispensable to computers, smartphones, home appliances, automobiles, high-speed rail system, electrical grid, medical instrument, robots and industrial control, among others.

Also serving as China's National Science and Technology Major Master, Ye stressed that the nation's IC industrial chains are expected to reach advanced international levels by 2030, when a certain semiconductor firms will be able to emerge as top players in the world. Inspired by more policy support from the government, he added, China's semiconductor firms are expected to spend more on the development of advanced processes in the coming years.

US 'Section 301' investigation may target semiconductor

The US has recently launched a "Section 301" investigation to determine whether China's intellectual property policies and practices are unreasonable or discriminatory. It is widely speculated that the US will list semiconductor among high-tech sectors subject to investigations in a bid to dampen the rise of China's semiconductor industry.

In response, Ye said that over the years, advanced countries in the West have rigidly blocked key IC technologies from flowing into China, and the best way to counter is for China makers to pursue technology innovations and breakthroughs on their own.

As early as 2000, the central governmemnt issued a set of policy guidelines for the development of the IC industry, and in 2008 it listed core electronics components, high-end chips and basic software products, as well as very-large-scale integration IC fabrication equipment as key technology development projects for implementation. In 2014, the government set up National IC Industry Investment Fund (Big Find), at a scale of CNY120 billion(US$18.03 billion), all highlighting China's determination to develop the semiconductor industry on its own, according to Ye.

He stressed that following years of concerted efforts by the government and enterprises, China's semiconductor industry is showing increasingly strong technology and production prowess, given the fact massive amount of chips designed and manufactured by domestic companies have been adopted by China's leading vendors of smartphones, communication equipment and smart cards.

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20170822PD208.html?mod=0

The gap between China and its main rivals is beginning to close. India? @Bussard Ramjet  China will leap-frog the 10nm process and jump to 5-7nm processes in or around 2021.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Unprecedented: China launches ATV capable of climbing 70-degree slope and making 360-degree turn*


People's Daily, China
Published on Sep 8, 2017

The research and design of all-terrain vehicle (ATV) “Bobcat” began in 2004 by Chen Jin, a PhD graduate in Mechanical Engineering from Tsinghua University. His task was to design a combat vehicle that could be transported by a helicopter and be able to fight in any terrains after landing. The first prototype is named “Bobcat”, because Chen wants it to be as sharp and flexible as a bobcat. 

With eight wheels, “Bobcat” is able to make a 360-degree turn and climb a steep slope up to 70 degrees. Chen said “Bobcat” is a tank just with a smaller size. 

Among over 800 car manufacturers in China, more than a half is able to produce military vehicles. Many countries are using world-class special purpose military vehicles that are made in China nowadays.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## yantong1980

Seems this 'Bobcat' was perfect platform for UGV system.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*China’s 2017 Future Science Prize winners announced *
By Fan Yixin
2017-09-09 22:41 GMT+8 





China’s Future Science Prize on Saturday announced winners for 2017 in the areas of life science, physical science, mathematics and computer science. 

The winners are Shi Yigong, Pan Jianwei and Xu Chenyang respectively. Each winner will be awarded 1 million US dollars.

Shi is a Chinese biophysicist in the field of protein X-ray crystallography, and Dean of School of Life Sciences of Tsinghua University. He was awarded for his study of high-resolution structures of the eukaryotic spliceosome.

Pan is a Chinese physicist at the University of Science and Technology of China. He was awarded for his innovation of quantum optical technology which enables practical implementation of secure communication through quantum key distribution. He was the lead researcher of the iconic transmission of entangle photons across 1,200 km using Micius Satellite in June this year.

Xu is a Chinese mathematician in algebraic geometry and a professor at Beijing International Center for Mathematical Research. Xu was awarded for his contribution to birational algebraic geometry.

The award ceremony of the Future Science Prize will be held at China World Hotel on October 29, 2017.

The Future Science Prize is a non-governmental award established in 2016 by scientists and business owners in China. The prizes are instituted to reward scientists who make outstanding scientific contributions in Greater China. Winners are not limited to Chinese nationals.

When it was first established last year, the Mathematics and Computer Science Prize was left out. Winners of the other two prizes, Life Science Prize and Physical Science Prize were Dennis Lo, a professor of chemical pathology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Xue Qikun, a physicist at Tsinghua University.

(Top photo: From left are 2017 Future Science Prize winners Shi Yigong, Pan Jianwei and Xu Chenyang.)

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Galactic Penguin SST

*Plasma electric cooker from aerospace*

2017-05-17 16:19:54

In February of this year, Shenzhen Yu Long Electric Co., Ltd. was formally established, and introduced the electric flame stove (also known as Yu Long plasma stove) to the public.

Plasma is often seen as a fourth state after the solid, liquid, and gas.

In addition to the flame stove, Lu Yu Long's team also started to develop plasma water heaters, plasma heaters and other technology products.


《中国达人秀》上，那个玩转特斯拉线圈的科学达人卢驭龙，还在朝着他的梦想一步步前进。

今年2月份，深圳驭龙电器有限公司正式成立，身兼CEO、CTO的卢驭龙，带着他的新作——驭龙电焰灶（也称驭龙等离子灶）再一次走进了公众的视野。

等离子体(plasma)又叫做电浆，常被视为是除去固、液、气外，物质存在的第四态。看似“神秘”的等离子体，其实广泛存在于宇宙中，例如常见的闪电，就是一种等离子态。卢驭龙与等离子技术，有着特殊的渊源：当年帮助卢驭龙夺得青少年科技创新大赛大奖的作品--晶体管式等离子弧双声道扬声器，就是一种等离子技术。与“通过改变调制信号的频率，使电弧发出的声音产生相应变化”的等离子弧扬声器不一样，如今的电焰灶，是通过高压等离子体弧光放电实现作业的。由于是通过电离空气介质进行作业，驭龙电焰灶颠覆了传统灶具，只要插电就可以产生跟明火一样的火焰，无需消耗燃料，真正做到安全清洁无污染，具有无比广阔的市场前景。

作为电学实验爱好者，卢驭龙并没有打算停下探索的脚步，成立深圳驭龙电器有限公司的初衷，是想通过科学技术，为人类的生产生活添砖加瓦。除了电焰灶，卢驭龙的团队还着手研发等离子热水器、等离子供暖器等科技产品，怀揣着年少时的梦想，当初的“闪电侠”在不断成长。


http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_17155e76e0102wpf4.html


4 May 2017

We have collaborated with an aerospace institute working on electric rocket engine technology and have developed in the process the plasma electric stove.
Direct plugging can produce open flames, it doesn't consume any fuel nor discharge any emissions gas.
-Lu Yu Long

我们在跟某航天院所就电火箭发动机技术合作的过程中发明了这个产品--电焰灶。直接插电即可产生明火，不消耗任何燃料也不排放任何废气。来呀，让我们稍微颠覆一下灶具行业吧。... 来自DAS-卢驭龙 - 微博

http://www.weibo.com/2115829327/F1lwIeCnY​






Spoiler: Links



http://img4.jiameng.com/2017/06/UA3HZ2200Rw1.jpg
http://jiaju.jiameng.com/news/G24l2H3J2407.htm



▲ New Plasma electric cooker







Spoiler: Links



http://img4.jiameng.com/2017/06/CLj5116BR5GD.jpg
http://jiaju.jiameng.com/news/G24l2H3J2407.htm



▲ Plasma electric cooker








Spoiler: Links



http://img4.jiameng.com/2017/08/14S00jm6w9RN.jpg
http://jiaju.jiameng.com/news/G24l2H3J2407.htm



▲ Comparative electric consumption...



Spoiler: Link



http://
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMjcyNjIyNDQ2MA==.html



▲ 驭龙电器：一面生活,一面安全. —— 驭龙电焰灶宣传片

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*China building world’s biggest quantum research facility*
_Centre could boost military’s code-breaking ability and navigation of stealth submarines_

PUBLISHED : Monday, 11 September, 2017, 8:46am
UPDATED : Monday, 11 September, 2017, 8:46am





Stephen Chen

China is building the world’s largest quantum research facility to develop a quantum computer and other “revolutionary” forms of technology that can be used by the military for code-breaking or on stealth submarines, according to scientists and authorities involved in the project.

The National Laboratory for Quantum Information Science will be located on a 37-hectare site next to a small lake in Hefei, Anhui province. Some time this month developers will be invited to bid for a contract to construct the site, according to an article in _Hefei Evening News_, a daily newspaper run by the city government on Thursday.

Pan Jianwei, China’s lead quantum scientist who was playing a key role in the project, told local officials at a briefing in May that technology developed in the facility would be of immediate use to the armed forces, according to A_nhui Business Daily_ newspaper.

Quantum metrology, which measures small variations in physical parameters such as gravity with unprecedented accuracy, could significantly improve submarines’ stealth operations.

A submarine with a quantum navigation system could operate underwater for more than three months without the need to surface for positioning satellite signals.

After operating for 100 days underwater the captain would still be able to pinpoint the vessel’s position in the Pacific Ocean with a margin of error of just a few hundred metres according to Pan, who could not be immediately reached for comment.




Another key mission of the laboratory is to build the nation’s first quantum computer that could break an encrypted message in seconds.

“Our plan is that by 2020, or maybe as soon as next year, to achieve ‘quantum supremacy’ with calculation power one million times to all existing computers around the world combined,” Pan was quoted as saying by _Anhui Business Daily_, which is run by the provincial government.

It was unclear whether the computer could be used for code-breaking.

Construction work is expected to finish in 2 ½ years with a budget of 76 billion yuan (HK$91.6 billion).

Ground-clearing work started with approval from the central government in February, according to the website of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the owner of the new facility.

Guo Guoping, a quantum information researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Hefei, said

a large facility with centralised resources could accelerate this process by pulling together the talents of scientists from all over the nation with knowledge and experience of multiple scientific disciplines to overcome a wide range of technical and engineering hurdles, he said.

Guo stressed that in the national laboratory, researchers’ performance should not be evaluated by the scientific papers they published but by their contribution to specific project targets, such as building a general-purpose quantum computer.

“This may sound a bit old-fashioned, even Soviet-style, but it can give China a chance to win the race,” he added.

China moved a step ahead with the launch of a quantum satellite last year and conducted a series of cutting edge experiments such as quantum entanglement and teleportation in space.

Last month the world’s longest and most sophisticated quantum key distribution network for ultra-secure communication between Beijing and Shanghai was successfully tested and deemed ready for official deployment in the military, government and financial sectors.

Guo said the field had advanced rapidly, but the delivery of a code-breaking machine by 2020 was “highly unlikely”.

Over the next few years, researchers from around the globe may be able to develop primitive quantum computers to deal with some specific tasks.

They could, for example, simulate the movement of particles at a subatomic level to solve some physical problems that might help develop new materials or drugs.

But these are not general-purpose computers capable of code-breaking, Guo added.



China building world’s biggest quantum research facility | South China Morning Post

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*Chinese scientists print 3D model of fish that lived 400 mln years ago*

2017-09-11 13:12

Ecns.cn _Editor: Mo Hong'e_





A researcher shows the fossil of a Placodermi. (Photo/Beijing Youth Daily)

(ECNS) -- Using 3D technology, a team lead by two Chinese ancient biology researchers has successfully printed a 3D model of a Placodermi's head, which will help further research on the ancient fish that lived in Australia approximately 400 million years ago.

Lu Jing, a researcher with the institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology who was in charge of the research, told Chinese media the joint China-Australia team spent the past year conducting detailed research on the Placodermi head fossil.

The size of a ping pong ball, with the thinnest point less than 0.1 mm, the fossil was discovered 30 years ago in Australia. However, few researchers had touched it because it was so fragile, Lu said.

Lu, together with Hu Yuzhi, a Chinese doctor, used micro-CT technology to scan the fossil in detail, and then virtually created several thousand cross sections of it, which Lu used to print a 3D model of the fish head.

"It took us more than three months to print the model," Lu said. The model was six times larger than the original fossil and was the first 3D model of an ancient fish in the world, according to Lu.

With the model, researchers could deconstruct and then put together the pieces to get first-hand information on the ancient fish. Some information might also help researchers uncover secrets about the human body.

Lu said she was planning to print 3D models of other Placodermi, and her research achievements had been shared with Chinese professionals. She said she hoped one day the models could be exhibited in museums, allowing every child the opportunity to touch them and learn about the ancient fish.

http://www.ecns.cn/cns-wire/2017/09-11/273057.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* World’s 1st atmosphere observation system to be brought to Tibet *
By Liu Caiyu Source:Global Times Published: 2017/9/11 23:13:40

The world's first complex atmospheric observation system will be brought to Southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region before October to monitor the atmosphere, experts said Monday.

The Atmospheric Profiling Synthetic Observation System (APSOS) is capable of monitoring the atmospheric composition, such as temperature, wind, ozone and carbon dioxide levels through remote sensing, the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) said on its website.

"The system was debugged in Anhui Province's Huainan Atmospheric Physics (HAAS) and will soon be brought to the Yangbajain cosmic rays monitoring station in Tibet for extended atmospheric observation."

Located at 4,300 meters above sea level, the station is home to a host of many researches, including on cosmic rays.

APSOS is led by Lü Daren, a professor at the CAS' Institute of Atmospheric Physics, who told the Global Times Monday that "the system will be transported to Yangbajain station before October from Huainan city by trucks."

The system will be operational after at least one month of testing, Lü said.

"The system is the world first complex atmospheric monitoring equipment, which can continuously monitor multiple atmospheric components in a specific location. It can monitor up to 110 kilometers," Lü added.

Funded by the National Nature Science Foundation of China, the program was launched in 2012.

Lü said data collected by APSOS will be a worldwide achievement.

"Its data, together with data collected on the ground and through satellites from other countries, can support world atmospheric research."

APSOS will improve China's overall level of atmospheric environment detection, offer valuable data on weather conditions and space security, CAS said.

APSOS is composed of five laser radars, a millimeter-wave cloud radar, a terahertz superconducting radiation spectrometer and telescopes, and can detect precise air quality through multiband detection technology, CAS explained.

"The Yangbajain cosmic rays monitoring station was chosen as the site for APSOS due to its high altitude. The terahertz superconducting radiation spectrometer can only work in altitudes above 3,000 kilometers," Lu Hong, a professor at CAS' Institute of High Energy Physics, told the Global Times on Monday.

The terahertz spectrometer is capable of penetrating the air and detecting remote targets through, CAS said.

It also said the system will receive simultaneous changes in the atmospheric components of an area, and can also capture transient atmospheric processes through high temporal resolution. The data will help researchers understand how the atmospheric layer affects solar and human activity, it said.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*Chinese astronomers reveal evidence of dynamical dark energy*

2017-09-12 08:39

Xinhua _Editor: Gu Liping_

An international research team led by Chinese astronomers revealed an evidence of dynamical dark energy.

The discovery, recently published on Nature Astronomy, with a News & Views article written by a world expert on cosmology, found that the nature of dark energy may not be the cosmological constant introduced by Albert Einstein 100 years ago, which is crucial for the study of dark energy.

The new study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a Royal Society Newton Advanced Fellowship.

Revealing the nature of dark energy is one of key goals of modern sciences. The physical property of dark energy is represented by its Equation of State (EoS), which is the ratio of pressure and energy density of dark energy.

In the traditional Lambda-Cold Dark Matter (LCDM) model, dark energy is essentially the cosmological constant, i.e., the vacuum energy, with a constant EoS of -1. In this model, dark energy has no dynamical features.

In 2016, a team within the SDSS-III (BOSS) collaboration led by Prof. Gong-Bo Zhao of National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC) performed a successful measurement of the Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) at multiple cosmic epochs with a high precision.

Based on this measurement and a method developed by Zhao for dark energy studies, the Zhao team found an evidence of dynamical dark energy at a significance level of 3.5 sigma. This suggests that the nature of dark energy may not be the vacuum energy, but some kind of dynamical field, especially for the quintom model whose EoS varies with time and crosses the -1 boundary during evolution, according to NAOC.

"As the Zhao team reported in this work, a dynamical dark energy model is able to naturally reconcile tensions between local and primordial measurements of cosmological parameters in the LCDM model," Prof. Xinmin Zhang at the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) told Xinhua.

"Which makes a crucial step towards understanding the nature of dark energy," he added.

The dynamics of dark energy needs to be confirmed by next-generation astronomical surveys. The team points to the upcoming Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey, which aims to begin creating a 3D cosmic map in 2018.

In the next five to ten years, the world largest galaxy surveys will provide observables which may be key to unveil the mystery of dark energy, according to a news release of NAOC.

http://www.ecns.cn/2017/09-12/273106.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Research group discovers the origin of octopuses' instant modulation of body coloration*
September 11, 2017 by Zhou Yijing



​The origin of the reflectin gene and hierarchical assembly of its protein. Credit: Peking University 

Cephalopods, the group of animals including octopus, squid, and cuttlefish, are famous for their remarkable ability to modulate body coloration and patterns instantly. With this ability, they can easily blend into surrounding environments or send warning signals to other animals. Reflectin, a protein that exists exclusively in cephalopods, is responsible for this structural color change. However, its origin and working mechanism are still unknown.

Researcher Xie Can from School of Life Sciences, Peking University, and his co-workers carried out a 5-year research and traced the origin of the reflectin gene back to a transposon from the symbiotic bioluminescent bacterium Vibrio fischeri. They hypothesized that a horizontal gene transfer (HGT) event introduced the reflectin gene into ancient cephalopods. In addition, the hierarchical structure of reflectin protein was reported. Activated by some chemical molecules and neurotransmitters, reflectin is able to form ordered structures swiftly. Moreover, the team also found that self-assembly and higher-order assembly in reflectin originated from a core repeating octapeptide, which may be from the aforementioned symbiotic bacteria, and named it "protopeptide."

The discovery was published online in _Current Biology_ as the cover paper, with PhD Student Guan Zhe and Cai Tiantian as the co-first authors and Xie Can as the corresponding author.

*More information:* Zhe Guan et al. *Origin of the Reflectin Gene and Hierarchical Assembly of Its Protein*, _Current Biology_ (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2017.07.061



https://phys.org/news/2017-09-group-octopuses-instant-modulation-body.html

How sea creatures change their colour : Research Highlights : nature.com

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*A blueprint to a science city that will rival Silicon Valley*
By Li Xinran | 00:01 UTC+8 September 12, 2017 |



Print Edition





Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility​
THE recently released “Construction Plan of Zhangjiang Science City” revealed that the high-tech park will become an administrative subdistrict, as part of a national strategy to establish Zhangjiang Comprehensive National Scientific Center.

According to the blueprint, Zhangjiang will have a central region along Chuanyang River, an artificial branch of Huangpu River, to be home to a batch of national-level laboratories and scientific projects along with various public services for employees and residents.

The science city has ambitions to be on a par with California’s Silicon Valley, Singapore’s One North Science Park and Japanese Tsukuba scientific town. And it will establish a basic framework for a comprehensive national scientific center by 2020.

To achieve that goal the world’s top innovative professionals, national scientific facilities, leading universities, research institutes and research and development centers of multinational enterprises will be looked at.

To make Zhangjiang a top attraction for talented researchers, the local government provides vigorous support with a series of complementary policies. Scientists will be ensured to receive excellent services and enjoy a supportive environment for research.

As part of the policies, around 9.2 million square meters of residential buildings will be built. About 96 percent of them will only be available for rental, according to the Shanghai Planning, Land and Resources Administration.

The first phase construction of apartments for rent will be launched at Sunqiao. As part of the future international community, it occupies an area of 65,000 square meters. A total of 1,226 well-furnished condos will be available after the construction is completed.

Subway and bus lines will run through the science city to connect office buildings, renovated factory houses and innovation parks for startups. More expressways to link to Shanghai’s railway stations, airports, and downtown areas have also been planned.

Schools and other public facilities will be built to serve residents, most of whom are scientists, research fellows, senior executives and their families.

The science city will be surrounded by a greenbelt. Continuous paths for walking and cycling along the Chuanyang River, small parks and public plazas will be built within the area.

It aims to attract 500 renowned scientists and experts by the end of 2020. Over 20,000 professionals from abroad and overseas graduates will work in Zhangjiang by then, according to the Pudong New Area government.

The authority has announced the establishment of the Administration of Overseas Talent to offer a one-stop service for overseas professionals along with a batch of new policies to ease green card and work permit rules.

The foreign talent recommended by the Zhangjiang or Shanghai Free Trade Zone management committee, for instance, can enjoy a fast track system to apply for the Chinese green card, or foreigners’ permanent residence cards, according to one of the new policies.

The application process can be shortened to two months from six months to receive the card. Spouses and children under 18-years-old can apply for the card at the same time.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## terranMarine

But we already have one that rivals the Silicon Valley, it's Shenzhen. Though i have no objection seeing Shanghai turning into a 2nd Silicon Valley


----------



## JSCh

* China lags behind in global talent recruitment *
By Zhao Yusha Source:Global Times Published: 2017/9/11 23:23:39

*Govt should provide more incentives to foreign talent *
China urgently needs more qualified international talent, with Shanghai the country's only city that enjoys global talent competitiveness above the world's average, a new report revealed.

Shanghai is the favorite Chinese city of foreign talent, said the report, released by the Center for China and Globalization (CCG) on Monday, followed by Beijing, South China's Guangdong Province and East China's Jiangsu Province.

Shanghai beat other cities and scored 65.17 out of 100 in global talent competitiveness, because of its openness, work environment, job opportunities and preferential policies.

"I finally chose to stay in Shanghai because it has more work opportunities than other Chinese cities, and the city's lifestyle is more international, which makes me feel more comfortable," said Juan, a Mexican electronics engineer who has worked in several other Chinese cities.

Surprisingly, East China's Jiangsu Province has more foreign talent than Beijing, the CCG report said.

Coastal province Jiangsu is home to many foreign companies because it's relatively developed and the environment is enjoyable and pleasant, Zhang Yunling, director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute for International Studies, told the Global Times.

The Jiangsu government has invested heavily to attract foreign talent, CCG vice secretary Zheng Qinglian said.

For instance, a medical park in Taizhou city gives each PhD holder an additional subsidy of 20,000 yuan ($3,070) and 150,000 yuan to buy a house, Jiangsu's official newspaper, Xinhua Daily, reported.

However, Wang Huiyao, head of Southwestern University of Finance and Economics' Institute of Development Studies, said China's global talent competitiveness still lags behind developed countries.

According to the 2017 Global Talent Competitiveness Index, a report produced by The Business School for the World (INSEAD), China ranks 54th in global talent competitiveness.

As a developing country, China faces the challenge of attracting international talent because it provides less work opportunities for foreigners than developed countries, and Chinese society is relatively more conservative, said Zhang, adding that foreigners also face cultural and language barriers.

*Providing incentives*

"China has a great potential to attract international talent," said Xie Shouguang, head of the Social Sciences Academic Press.

China is in a reasonably robust position of talent readiness because of improvements to its educational and employment system, connectivity of stakeholders, and level of technological competence, the INSEAD report said.

Many foreigners also complained that aside from cultural and language barriers, they also have a difficult time applying for a visa. Reforms have been implemented in different regions to correct this problem.

"It is impossible for fresh college graduates to apply for a work visa because the country requires two years of work experience," Jon, a Dane, who currently studies in Shanghai, told the Global Times.

The Shanghai government began a pilot program in 2015 that allows foreign students with a master's degree from Shanghai universities to start a business after graduating, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

In May, the Anhui government said that high-level foreign talent, their spouse and minor children, as well as overseas Chinese with PhD degrees who work in Anhui, can apply for permanent residency.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* China invests in seismological study after major quakes *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-09-12 15:54:54_|_Editor: Song Lifang_





CHENGDU, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese science authorities will give special funding to support seismological research on plate tectonics in the country's earthquake-prone areas.

At a meeting on quake prevention and disaster reduction Monday, Zheng Guoguang, head of the China Earthquake Administration said funding up to 30 million yuan (4.6 million U.S. dollars) a year would go to the research program in the next five years.

The program, in effect from this month, is jointly sponsored by the administration, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the China National Natural Science Foundation.

Two strong earthquakes hit China in August, with one measuring magnitude 7 in Jiuzhaigou of southwest China's Sichuan Province, and the other measuring magnitude 6.6 in Bortala Mongolian Autonomous Prefecture in Xinjiang.

The Jiuzhaigou quake left at least 24 people dead and 493 injured.

Seismologists believe that the epicenter of the quake was located near three fault zones, with frequent seismic activity making the area earthquake-prone. They attributed the quake to northward movement on the Indochina block.

Zheng said the in-depth seismological research program would help scientists understand the rhythm of seismic activities and carry out quake risk assessments.

The program also includes anti-seismic building construction and quake information services.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*World lags badly on targets to slash TB, HIV, obesity: study*
September 13, 2017



Credit: CC0 Public Domain​
Not a single country, out of nearly 200 reviewed, was on track to meet the UN target of eliminating new tuberculosis infections by 2030, according to a global health review published Wednesday.


At the same time, less than five percent of countries were likely to reach the UN goal of reducing suicides, road deaths and child obesity by that date, and only seven percent would likely eliminate new HIV infections.

Overall, only a fifth of 37 health-related targets set under the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted in 2015, are likely to be met, said the review carried by _The Lancet_ medical journal.

"A number of targets remained out of reach for most countries," the authors wrote.

Under the review, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, more than 2,500 researchers from around the world scored the health progress of 188 countries, and projected their trajectory to 2030.

The projections "underscore the need for dramatic, if not unprecedented, acceleration of progress to improve health outcomes, reduce risk exposure, and expand essential health services for all countries," the authors said.

They team found "considerable inequality" between projections for rich and poor countries.

High-income countries were forecast to meet 38 percent of the UN's health-related targets, compared to three percent for low-income states.

They also were not dealing with the same problems.

Poor countries fared poorly on maternal mortality, child stunting, malaria and environmental risks that affected rich nations less.

But when it comes to lifestyle problems, many high-income countries, including the United States, fared poorly on measures for suicide, alcohol abuse and homicide.

*China improving, US not*

Looking to the future, the review said efforts to eradicate malaria and reduce deaths of infants and pregnant women were among the most promising, with more than 60 percent of countries projected to meet UN goals for all three.

"On the basis of current trends, Kazakhstan, Timor-Leste, Angola, Nigeria and Swaziland were projected to have the largest overall improvements," the team said in a statement.

This was driven by cuts in child mortality and better access to health care, family planning and birth assistance.

Countries expected to lose ground—considering trends for child obesity and alcohol abuse—included Sri Lanka, Venezuela, Serbia and Ukraine.

The report named China and Cambodia among middle- and low-income countries deserving of "recognition for improving their citizens' lives".

The same countries—along with Rwanda, Equatorial Guinea, Laos and Turkey—recorded the biggest improvements in universal health care between 2000 and 2016, which translated into better vaccine coverage, as well as fewer child deaths and malaria infections.

The United States, on the other hand, joined Lesotho and the Central African Republic among countries showing "minimal improvement" in universal health care, said the team.

This is a controversial topic in the United States, where Donald Trump's administration is seeking to undo Barack Obama's expansion of health care coverage.

Singapore, Iceland and Sweden were the best-performing countries in terms of health-related Sustainable Development Goals, according to the review.

Somalia, the Central African Republic and Afghanistan ranked lowest.

The United States was rated 24th overall with poor marks for suicide, child sex abuse, alcohol abuse and homicide, wile China ranked 74th with low scores for air pollution, road injuries, poisoning, and smoking.

India was at number 127 with poor performance on air pollution, sanitation and acute childhood malnutrition.

The review was published ahead of the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly opening in New York Tuesday.


https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-09-world-lags-badly-slash-tb.html


Measuring progress and projecting attainment on the basis of past trends of the health-related Sustainable Development Goals in 188 countries: an analysis from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016 - The Lancet

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 13-Sep-2017
* Is the Earth warming? The ocean gives you the answer *
Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
https://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub/150293.php


​Ocean heat content (OHC) and CO2 concentration measurements since 1950s. The black line represents ocean heating for the upper 2000 meters of ocean, and light red shading represents the 95 percent confidence interval. CO2 concentration observed in Mauna Loa Observatory is displayed by light blue. Credit: Lijing Cheng

Humans have released carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and the result is an accumulation of heat in the Earth's climate system, commonly referred to as "global warming". "How fast is the Earth's warming?" is a key question for decision makers, scientists and general public.

Previously, the global mean surface temperature has been widely used as a key metric of global warming. However, a new study published in AGU's _Eos_ proposed a better way of measuring global warming: monitoring ocean heat content change and sea level rise. The authors come from a variety of international communities including China (Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences), U.S.A. (NCAR, NOAA, and University of St. Thomas) and France (Mercator Ocean).

To determine how fast the Earth is accumulating heat, scientists focus on the Earth's energy imbalance (EEI): the difference between incoming solar radiation and outgoing longwave (thermal) radiation. Increases in the EEI are directly attributable to human activities that increase carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Extra heat trapped by increasing greenhouse gases mainly ends up in the oceans (more than 90% is stored there). Hence, to measure global warming, we have to measure ocean warming!

On the other hand, the amplitude of the global warming signal compared with natural variability (noise) defines how well a metric tracks global warming. This study shows that the temporal evolution of ocean heat content has relatively high signal-to-noise ratio; therefore, it requires 3.9 years to separate the global warming trend from natural variability. Similarly, for sea level rise, 4.6 years are sufficient to detect the climate change signal. By contrast, owing to weather, El Niño - Southern Oscillation and other natural variability embedded in the global mean surface temperature record, scientists need at least 27 years of data to detect a robust trend. An excellent example is the 1998-2013 period, when energy was redistributed within the Earth's system and the rise of global mean surface temperature slowed - sometimes call a "hiatus".

This study suggests that changes in ocean heat content, the dominant component of Earth's energy imbalance, should be a fundamental metric along with sea level rise. Based on the recent improvements of ocean monitoring technologies, especially after 2005 through autonomous floats called Argo, and advanced methodologies to reconstruct the historical ocean temperature record, scientists have been able to quantify ocean heat content changes back to 1960, even though there is a much sparser historical instrument record prior to 2005. Sea level rise is best known since 1993 when altimeters were first launched on satellites to enable sea level change observations to millimeter accuracy.

According to the most up-to-date estimates, the top-10 warmest years of the ocean (indicated by OHC change at upper 2000m) are all in the most recent decade after 2006, with 2015-2016 the warmest period among the past 77 years. The heat storage in the ocean amounts to an increase of 30.4×1022 Joules (J) since 1960, equal to a heating rate of 0.33 Watts per square meter (W m-2) averaged over the entire Earth's surface-- and 0.61 W m-2 after 1992. For comparison, the increase in ocean heat content observed since 1992 in the upper 2000 meters is about 2000 times the total net generation of electricity by U.S. utility companies in 2015.

It is evident that scientists and modelers who seek global warming signals should track how much heat the ocean has stored at any given time, i.e. ocean heat content, as well as sea level rise. Locally, in the deep tropics, ocean heat content directly relates to hurricane activity. Ocean heat content is a vital sign of our planet and informs societal decisions about adaptation to and mitigation of climate change.


Is the Earth warming? The ocean gives you the answer | EurekAlert! Science News

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Genome of orchid Apostasia shenzhenica sequenced*
September 14, 2017 by Bob Yirka report



​A flowering plant of Apostasia shenzhenica Credit: Zhong-Jian Liu and Li-Jun Chen

(Phys.org)—A large international team of researchers has sequenced the genome of the orchid Apostasia shenzhenica. In their paper published in the journal _Nature_, the team describes the approach they used and what they learned during the process.

To say that orchids are prevalent in the world today is an understatement—as the researchers note, they currently constitute approximately 10 percent of all flowering plant species and have colonized all but the most extreme habitats on Earth. Because of its strong ability to migrate and change to suit diverse conditions, it has aroused the interests of scientists for many years. In this new effort, the researchers focused their work on Apostasia shenzhenica, a type of orchid found in southeast China. It is mostly green with yellow blossoms. Learning about the genomic makeup of the flower reveals the way it has evolved to adapt so well to new conditions.

The researchers report that they used 10x genomics scaffolding to conduct both short and long-read sequencing to develop a genome sequence for the plant. They report also that they used the results of their work to compare the plant with other orchids to isolate parts that were the same versus those that were different using transcriptome data.

The team found that A. shenzhenica offered strong evidence of its inclusion in the family of orchids—large parts of the genome were virtual copies of those of other orchid types. They also found, as suspected, that it split off from other orchids millions of years ago—close to the point in time when orchids first came to exist. They also found that orchids underwent a major extinction period after which the plants differentiated and subsequently evolved into five subfamilies. They suggest that it was during this period that features such as the famous "lip" developed.



​The plants of Tie Pi Shi Hu Dendrobium catenatum (Epidendroideae) were growing on the tree. The whole genome of this species has been re-sequenced for this study. Credit: Zhong-Jian Liu and Li-Jun Chen

The team's findings suggest the plant is a good candidate for further research because it might offer evolutionary clues such as the factors that led to orchids having pollonia (masses of pollen) and lighter seeds than other plants. It might also explain another well-known trait—the ability to use other plants for support.

*More information:* Guo-Qiang Zhang et al. The Apostasia genome and the evolution of orchids, _Nature_ (2017). DOI: 10.1038/nature23897



https://phys.org/news/2017-09-genome-orchid-apostasia-shenzhenica-sequenced.html

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Mass movements of microbes*
14 September 2017
Posted by Chris Smith.





Human population, agriculture, tourism and trade are moving microbes around the world at unprecedented levels, scientists are warning.

Human population now tops 7.5 billion people, and, combined with the animals we rear agriculturally, we outweigh - thirty-five fold - all other mammals in the wild. Human activities move more sand and rock than all natural processes combined, and current estimates suggest that natural erosion displaces only about 20 billion tonnes of material per year, considerably less than the 75 billion tonnes of soil lost owing to agriculture.

Tourism and travel are also booming: more than 1.2 billion international tourist movements happen each year. Meanwhile, boats are dumping millions of tonnes of ballast water - replete with cargoes of exotic microbes - in remote geographies, and hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of agricultural land are now irrigated by wastewater supercharged with bacteria, antibiotics, heavy metals and disinfectants.

Together, these factors are dramatically and rapidly reshaping the microbial ecosystem, a team of researchers, including Macquarie University's Michael Gillings, argue in a perspective published this week in the journal _Science_.

This, they say, is driving antibiotic resistance and a loss of microbial diversity. It also threatens to jeopardise the natural biogeochemical relationships that underpin processes like nutrient cycling, the carbon cycle and nitrogen fixing. And because these changes are occurring literally at the microscopic scale, the authors point out, they are easy to overlook.

"Human activity," say the researchers, "is having the same effects on the otherwise invisible microbial world as it is on the world of larger organisms: increasing homogeneity, extinctions of endemic organisms and instability in ecosystem processes."

Gillings and his colleagues point to the wide-scale spread of a genetic component called the class 1 integron as an objective measure of the extent of the problem. This DNA element plays a key role in helping bacteria to acquire and deploy new tricks and traits, like acquiring the genes for antibiotic resistance from their environment.

Winding back the genetic clock, the class 1 integron appears to have originated by chance in a single cell in a single place earlier in the last Century. Now it's in every continent, in a diverse range of bacteria and a range of different hosts, including in the bugs we carry.

"Realisation of the global extent of pollution with these xenogenetic [foreign] elements, and the organisms that carry them, should stimulate questions at a much more global scale," says the researchers, concluding with the poignant counsel that "microorganisms usually perform their essential ecosystem services invisibly, but we ignore them at our peril..."


Mass movements of microbes | Science Articles | Naked Scientists

Yong-Guan Zhu, Michael Gillings, Pascal Simonet, Dov Stekel, Steve Banwart and Josep Penuelas. *Microbial mass movements*. _Science _(2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aao3007.​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

* China makes breakthrough in anti-corrosion coating *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-09-17 14:58:26_|_Editor: Mengjie_





SANSHA, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- China has achieved a major breakthrough in heavy-duty anti-corrosion coating by using modified graphene, according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

The results were achieved by scientists led by researcher Wang Liping and academician Xue Qunji through years of research and development.

Identified by the Chinese Society for Corrosion and Protection, the new coating can be used in the state grid, petrochemical engineering, and marine engineering and equipment.

It will change the monopoly by foreign products in heavy-duty anti-corrosion coating in China and protect engineering equipment in the country's tropical marine areas.

According to the CAS, China has an anti-corrosion coating market worth 200 billion yuan (30.6 billion U.S. dollars), including heavy-duty coating with an average annual growth rate of more than 20 percent.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*China plans to launch 'brain project' by year end*
2017-09-18 12:42 Ecns.cn _Editor: Mo Hong'e_ ECNS App Download

(ECNS) -- China plans to launch its own version of BRAIN, or Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies, by the end of this year, said Muming Poo, director of the Institute of Neuroscience at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The China Brain Project has been in planning for three years and is now included as a key Science & Technology project of the 13th Five Year Plan (2016-2020), Poo told China Business News.

In 2015, Chinese scientists proposed targeted research into the neural basis of cognitive function, with the additional goals of improving diagnosis and prevention of brain diseases, and driving artificial intelligence research through computing and system simulation.

Poo said China's investment in the project would be equivalent to the amount allocated for the U.S. BRAIN initiative announced by the Obama administration in 2013, and that China would also encourage private capital participation, although details were yet to be ironed out.

Scientists believe the China Brain Project would increase understanding of the reasons behind Alhzeimer's, depression and other diseases, and also provide a huge boost to the development of artificial intelligence in China.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences kicked off its Mapping Brain Functional Connections (MBFC) project in 2012 to focus on the analysis and simulation of the connectome pathway and network structure of specific brain functions.

Yang Xiongli, an academic at Fudan University, said brain research and application could promote the development of many fields.

Currently, China lags behind in brain research projects. Wang Zuoren, deputy Party chief at the Institute of Neuroscience, said the U.S. invests $5 billion a year in neurosciences, excluding private capital, but China only invests 200 million yuan.

In a paper published last month, Poo said China aimed to take a leading role in brain research in 15 years.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Keel

*Chinese hospital treats US cancer patient with experimental therapy*
Xinhua | Updated: 2017-09-11 10:49
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/life/2017-09/11/content_31843874.htm

A Chinese hospital has used an experimental therapy to treat an American patient with bone marrow cancer, the first time a foreigner has received such therapy at a Chinese institution, the hospital said.

Craig Chase, 56, from California, was discharged on Aug 30 from Jiangsu People's Hospital in Nanjing, in Jiangsu Province, after receiving treatment for myeloma cancer.

Before he was discharged from hospital, his blood test results were within normal range.

"The medical treatment has been successful," said Dr. Chen Lijuan, who carried out the CAR-T trials.

Chase underwent repeated chemotherapy and received an autologous stem cell transplant in June 2015. However, the conventional treatment failed to contain the disease.

In June, he learnt about the CAR-T trial treatment in China and through his American doctor contacted Li Jianyong, director of the hematology department at Jiangsu People's Hospital. Li is a famed blood disease expert in China. Li directed Chase to Chen.

The hospital started to treat myeloma cancer patients by using CAR-T therapy from April this year.

Before Chase, five patients had received the therapy with four having excellent results, but the doctors had never treated a foreign citizen, Chen said.

"His illness was rather serious, and it was already late stage. The therapy is still in experimental phase, so we were under a lot of pressure," she said.

CAR-T, chimeric antigen receptor, involves removing T-cells from a patients' blood, reprogramming them into the body to attack infected cells.

"T-cells are like the police force in our body. CAR-T arms the cells with positioning and ballistic device. When the T-cells are re-injected in the body, these cell police can precisely locate the cancer cells and terminate them," she said. "CAR-T has received a lot of attention, but using CAR-T to treat multiple myeloma is still in the trial phase and not yet mature."

Chase started CAR-T treatment on Aug. 11, and doctors will continue to monitor his health, she said.










_Craig Chase, a patient from California, the United States, in a hospital in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province. [Photo: sczkzz.com]
http://chinaplus.cri.cn/news/china/9/20170903/23132.html




_

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists talk China-UK healthcare tech collaboration*
by Catherine Jessup Sep 18, 2017 15:11



Surgeons using a da Vinci surgical robot in Fujian, China. _China News Service_ _China News Service_

‘Biologically-inspired robots’ and tumour-zapping ultrasound devices were two of the projects highlighted by scientists who spoke at the ‘One Belt One Road Summit’ in Oxford on Thursday.

Hosted by the University of Oxford’s law faculty, the event brought together researchers in science, the digital economy and the arts among other fields to talk about past and future joint projects between China and the UK.

Surgical robots were one of the inventions featured in the discussions on science. Already in use in hospitals around the world, these systems allow surgeons to use VR screens and haptic devices to move high precision robot hands.

“Using a robot like this gives surgeons more space to work, which allows for greater accuracy in difficult operations,” explained Jindong Liu, a Research Fellow at the Hamlyn Centre, a healthcare technology research centre at Imperial College London.

Dr Liu’s talk highlighted the importance of Chinese collaboration in this research. “In the UK, the small patient pool means it takes longer for these devices to be tested out,” he explained. “Through working directly with hospitals in China, we can trial these devices further and get them to a point where they’re ready for use and can be made available more widely.”

Chinese president Xi Jinping visited the Hamlyn Centre in 2015 and during his visit UCF, a major Chinese financial services group, announced that it would donate US$4.1m to support research both there and at Imperial’s Data Science Institute.

Another invention discussed by the panel of researchers was High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound, or HIFU, which researchers have been trialling as a non-invasive method of treating harmful tumours.

“Ultrasound waves are used for medical scans because they can transmit harmlessly through living tissue,” explained David Cranston, Clinical Director of the HIFU unit at the University of Oxford, which has been testing ultrasound equipment developed in China. “When these same ultrasound beams are focused, they can be used to ‘cook’ tumours, without causing damage to the tissue surrounding them.”

Oxford University acquired the first Chinese HIFU machine in the western hemisphere, which was developed by researchers in Chongqing. Since 2002, the HIFU unit has been used in a range of clinical trials for illnesses including prostate cancer, liver and kidney tumours.



Scientists talk China-UK healthcare tech collaboration | gbtimes.com

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists Produce a Second-generation Flagellin-rPAc Fusion Protein, KFD2-rPAc*
Sep 14, 2017

Dental caries, one of the most common global chronic diseases distributed unevenly among populations, is still a major oral health problem in most industrialized countries.

It affects 60–90% of school-age children and the vast majority of adults, thus an anti-caries vaccine has long been attractive for broad-based dental health in caries prevention, and in the treatment of large infected populations. Dental lesions of caries usually result from the localized dissolution and destruction of teeth caused primarily by Streptococcus mutans (S. mutans) infections. 

In a present study, the research group led by Prof. YAN Huimin from Wuhan Institute of Virology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences characterized the second-generation flagellin-rPAc fusion protein, a vaccine candidate designed to avoid an undesired flagellin-specific antibody response and inflammatory side effects while inducing efficacious antibodies against PAc and providing high protective efficacy against dental caries.

To reduce the immunogenicity of flagellin, the scientists constructed a second-generation flagellin-rPAc fusion protein, KFD2-rPAc, in which rPAc replaced D2/D3, the main antigenicity domains of KF. 

Results in this study demonstrated that the immunogenicity of flagellin itself is substantially reduced in KFD2-rPAc. KFD2-rPAc induced over 10-fold less flagellin-specific antibody responses in mice and rats. The significantly lowered immunogenicity of flagellin partly makes KFD2-rPAc more feasible for multiple administrations without interference by pre-existed antibodies.

In conclusion, KFD2-rPAc, the second-generation flagellin-rPAc fusion protein, induced low potential systemic inflammatory responses and low flagellin-specific antibody responses, but high immune protection against caries. These advantages make KFD2-rPAc a promising anti-caries vaccine candidate.

The results have been published in _Scientific Reports_ entitled "Second-generation Flagellin-rPAc Fusion Protein, KFD2-rPAc, Shows High Protective Efficacy against Dental Caries with Low Potential Side Effects". 

This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the "One-Three-Five" Strategic Planning Program of Wuhan Institute of Virology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and grants from Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. 



KFD2-rPAc induced a much lower systemic inflammatory response. (Image by ZHONG Maohua)



Scientists Produce a Second-generation Flagellin-rPAc Fusion Protein, KFD2-rPAc---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *China produces its first neutron beams*
> By ZHANG ZHIHAO | China Daily | Updated: 2017-09-02 06:46
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> China has become the latest country to create neutron beams－which can examine subatomic materials without damaging their structure－an advance expected to lead to new discoveries in material science, clean energy and medicine.
> 
> The beams were first produced on Aug 28 at the China Spallation Neutron Source in Dongguan, Guangdong province, making China the fourth country in the world, after the United States, United Kingdom and Japan, to have a neutron beam source.
> 
> "This is a major milestone for Chinese scientists. The lab will help us solve some of the nation's most difficult scientific issues," said Chen Hesheng, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the manager of the project.
> 
> "It will also help the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area to upgrade its industries and support their high-end scientific research and development," Chen said.
> 
> The China Spallation Neutron Source cost 1.87 billion yuan ($280 million) and took around six and a half years to build. It will be fully operational next year and Chinese scientists from more than 70 projects and 22 universities have applied to use it. The facility would also be open to foreign researchers, he said.
> 
> Neutrons and protons are found at the nucleus, or the core of an atom－the basic building block of materials. While protons have a positive charge, neutrons have no electric charge, and have strong penetrative capability.
> 
> As a result, unlike X-rays, whose ionized radiation can rip through the atomic structures of biomaterials like proteins, neutron rays can just pass through the material without damaging the structures, Chen said.
> 
> However, some neutrons will hit the atomic nucleus in the material and "bounce" harmlessly away at an angle in a phenomenon called neutron scattering, hence creating the "spallation". Using detectors, scientists can count these scattered neutrons, measure their energies and the angles at which they scatter, and map their final positions.
> 
> This way, scientists can glean details about the nature of the examined materials－from its atomic arrangement to movements.
> 
> "This will help scientists discover new chemical mechanisms for producing clean energy, new material for more powerful electronics, or create stronger and more durable material for engines," Chen said.
> 
> Another promising application is creating new therapies to treat tumors that are difficult to operate on by hand, such as brain tumors, said Fu Shinian, a researcher at the academy's Institute of High Energy Physics.
> 
> The Boron Neutron Capture Therapy takes advantage of boron's properties to accurately latch onto cancer cells. Then doctors can shine neutron beams at the tumor, triggering the boron to kill the cancer cells while leaving surrounding cells intact, Fu said.
> 
> Despite these promising applications, creating neutron beams is no easy task. In China's neutron source, scientists have to accelerate a group of protons close to the speed of light, use them to smash into a target tungsten block, and knock the neutrons out of the target's atomic nucleus.
> 
> Then these neutrons are "sucked" into various branches and channeled into different lab equipment for research, said Chen. All of the equipment used to generate the neutron beams is more than a dozen meters underground, trapping the tiny amount of harmful radiation created in the process.
> 
> China's neutron source will be free to the public, only collecting a small fee from companies with special needs.
> 
> View attachment 422426


*First Successful Operation of CSNS Cryogenic System*
Sep 18, 2017

The cryogenic system for the China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS) cryogenic system has been successfully operated over the past four weeks since August 16th.

Cooling of the CSNS cryogenic system was started on August 16th. After 25 hours, the temperature of the whole system had decreased smoothly to 18K. The heater of the hydrogen circulation cold box was loaded to 700 W, then the cryogenic system was switched to a stable state and send out the ‘Ready’ signal.

On August 28th, a neutron beam was successfully obtained at CSNS for the first time. The cryogenic system worked steadily, and satisfied the requirements for neutron physics. After targeting, the cryogenic system kept running and the two hydrogen pumps were tested separately and proved stable.

First operation results showed that the performance of the cryogenic system met the technical specifications and requirements.

The cryogenic system was warmed up again on September 13th, completing the first round of testing. The stability and reliability of the CSNS cryogenic system were tested and proven.

Experience gained during this operation period will lay a solid foundation for long-term stable operation in the future. For the next step, the CSNS cryogenic system will run in conjunction with beam tuning for the target station and spectrometer.


First Successful Operation of CSNS Cryogenic System---Chinese Academy of Sciences


#####
​* Breakthrough technology puts China in elite science club *
Source:Global Times Published: 2017/9/18 19:43:39



The pictured is part of the 'super microscope' in Dongguan, South China's Guangdong Province. Photo: VCG

China celebrated a major scientific breakthrough on August 28, 2017, when the China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS) produced its first neutron beam.

The CSNS will provide powerful support to high-value scientific projects and seeks to make great contributions to China's sustainable development and national security.

Hailed as a "super microscope", the CSNS offers an excellent resource for scientists looking to probe the micro-cosmos. 

*Going local*

The discovery and application of neutrons were one of the most significant scientific achievements of the 20th century, said Chen Hesheng, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

As well as being non-destructive, neutrons are electrically neutral and have high penetrativity, and are thus able to differentiate between light elements, isotopes and neighboring elements. As a result, neutron scattering is one of the best approaches to studying material structures and dynamic properties.

"When projected onto samples, the neutrons react with the nucleus and magnetic moments and then produce scattering," said Chen, adding that scientists study the microstructures and law of motion of each material by measuring the energy and momentum changes in the scattering.

Though neutrons are tiny particles, a spallation neutron source is a bulky device that integrates the most advanced technologies. China is the fourth country in the world to have developed its own spallation neutron source after the UK, the US, and Japan.

Because of the high costs of some key components offered by foreign companies, Chinese researchers of the CSNS decided to develop their own technologies to manufacture the parts. Through cooperation with a number of institutions, they finally succeeded after years of endeavor, said Fu Shinian, vice general manager of the CSNS.

"By breaking down a series of technical barriers, we have localized over 96% of the parts, and the development of some of the devices is taking the lead in the international community," Chen introduced.

*Wide application
*
After 10 years of construction, the CSNS will be soon completed and make its first step toward industrialization.

The technology is expected to usher in a new era of oncotherapy in the next five years. "Boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) is a technology used to treat tumors through neutron beams," said Zhang Zhongneng, chairman of the pharmaceutical manufacturing company HEC Group. 

"It is able to kill cancer cells without damaging peripheral tissues, featuring a high level of safety, high precision and low cost," he added.

HEC Group has signed a cooperative agreement with the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences to carry out a BNCT treatment project by exploiting the spallation neutron source. A commercial BNCT treatment center is scheduled to be established, said Wang Yifang, president of the IHEP.

However, life sciences are not the only field in which the CSNS can be applied. As a new platform of interdisciplinary studies, it can be broadly used in a number of sectors including materials science, chemical engineering, resource and environment and new energy. 

The spallation neutron source can also be used for the study of the formation mechanism and stability condition of methane clathrate, offering a scientific basis to promote a more secure and effective exploitation of combustible ice, Chen explained.

*Innovation hub*

China has a unique advantage over the three other spallation neutron sources in that it enjoys close integration with the manufacturing industry.

Dongguan, southern China's Guangdong province, where the CSNS is located, is home to 2,028 high-tech companies. The city is planning to build a 45.7-square kilometer industrial park for neutron technology, said Huang Qinghui, deputy mayor of Dongguan.

Currently, the industrial park is bringing together a batch of internationally influential companies. Huawei, a Chinese multinational networking and telecommunications equipment and services company, will send a total of 30,000 researchers to the park. The industrial park will attract more personnel upon completion, becoming a hub for 600 scientists to carry out their research simultaneously.

According to Huang, the CSNS project contributed to China's rapid development of the technology and industrial application of neutron scattering, particularly in the Greater Pearl River Delta region.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

* VCU physicists discover a tri-anion particle with colossal stability *
 _The particle could be used in battery creation and for other industrial purposes _



A rendering of protons, neutrons and electrons in an atom. By Leah Small

Monday, Sept. 18, 2017

Virginia Commonwealth University researchers have achieved a feat that is a first in the fields of physics and chemistry — one that could have wide-ranging applications.

A team in the lab of Puru Jena, Ph.D., a distinguished professor in the Department of Physics in the College of Humanities and Sciences, has created the most stable tri-anion particle currently known to science. A tri-anion particle is a combination of atoms that contains three more electrons than protons. This discovery is novel because previously known tri-anion particles were unstable due to their numerical imbalance. These unstable particles dispel additional electrons, interrupting chemical reactions.

Jena partnered with Tianshan Zhao, a graduate student in the physics department; Jian Zhou, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow; and Qian Wang, Ph.D., a physics professor at Peking University, to use quantum mechanical calculations to create computer models to prove the stability of the BeB11(CN)12 tri-anion. This tri-anion is made of the elements boron and beryllium and the chemical compound cyanogen.

Not only can it keep three electrons but the third electron is extremely stable.

The researchers’ work will be featured on the cover of Angewandte Chemie, a world-renowned chemistry journal, on Oct. 17. The team’s article was designated a VIP paper by the publication, which means it is considered among the top five percent of papers for its contribution to the study of chemistry.

“This is very important in this field, nobody has ever found such a tri-anion,” Jena said. “Not only can it keep three electrons but the third electron is extremely stable. The guiding principles we have used in this paper will help with the design of other tri-anions. The question is: What do we do with this knowledge?”

*Real world applications*

The tri-anion may have a number of industrial applications. So far, Jena and his team have hypothesized that the particle may be used in the creation of an aluminum ion battery, which has distinct advantages over the widely used rechargeable lithium ion battery. Aluminum is in greater supply than lithium and is less reactive. During the chemical reaction that would power the battery, the tri-anion would make the battery conductive by moving from one of its electrodes to the other.

While a battery is the only demonstrated use so far, existing applications for other particles with one additional electron, called mono-anions, and two additional electrons, called di-anions, show the potential of Jena’s work.

“Such particles are very important for many reasons. Number one, they make salts. Secondly, they are used in all kinds of chemical compounds, such as those in floor cleaners as oxidizing agents that kill bacteria,” Jena said. “They are also used to purify air, which is a billion-dollar industry, and in mood enhancers, similar to what Prozac does. The potential uses are endless.”


VCU physicists discover a tri-anion particle with colossal stability | VCU News

*Journal Reference*:

Tianshan Zhao, Jian Zhou, Qian Wang, Puru Jena. *Colossal Stability of Gas-Phase Trianions: Super-Pnictogens*. _Angewandte Chemie International Edition_, 2017; DOI: 10.1002/anie.201708386

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

* Tianhe-2 Supercomputer Being Upgraded to 95 Petaflops *
* Michael Feldman | September 20, 2017 05:46 CEST 
*
The number two-ranked Tianhe-2 supercomputer, installed at the National Super Computer Center in Guangzhou, is being upgraded to 94.97 petaflops, nearly doubling its current peak performance of 54.9 petaflops.




The news comes out of the International HPC Forum (IHPCF), via a series of tweets from Satoshi Matsuoka posted on Tuesday. During the morning session, it was revealed that the upgraded system, dubbed Tianhe-2A, will sport the new Chinese-made Matrix-2000 GPDSP accelerators. They will replace the existing Intel Knights Corner Xeon Phi coprocessors that were installed in the Tianhe-2 back in 2013.

The original plan was to upgrade the system with the newer Knights Landing devices. But after the US government instituted an embargo on these chips to certain Chinese supercomputing sites, including the Guangzhou center, the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) had to come up with plan B. In this case, that meant developing their own coprocessor. That turned out be the Matrix-2000, a DSP-type chip, tweaked for more general-purpose computation.

According to slides presented at the forum, each Matrix-2000 will deliver 2.4576 teraflops (peak), which more than doubles the 1.0 teraflops delivered by the original Xeon Phi chip. The Matrix-2000 consists of 128 cores, each one providing 16 double precision flops per cycle. Those flops are delivered by a 256-bit vector unit, which as Satoshi notes, is in line with the Knights Corner chip it replaces.

At least for the time being, the system will retain the original host CPUs from Tianhe-2, which are Intel Xeon processors. Each supercomputer node will pair two of those Intel CPUs with two Matrix-2000 coprocessors, hooked in via PCIe. The node count is being increased from 16,000 to 17,792.

Other enhancements include an interconnect that is 40 percent faster interconnect (to 14 Gbps) and has 50 percent lower latency (1 us). This is likely the TH-Express-2+ that NUDT has talked about before. In addition, main memory has been bumped from 1.4 to 3.4 petabytes, slightly improving the bytes-to-flops ratio of the Tianhe-2. Storage has also been enhanced in both capacity and I/O bandwidth. All the particulars are below, courtesy of James Lin, who tweeted some nice screen images from the presentation.




*
Source: James Lin,‏ @jameslinsjtu*​
Even though peak performance is going to nearly double, the system’s total power draw of 18 MW is just slightly more than that of the original system. That gives it a power efficiency of more than 5 gigaflops per watt, which would place it somewhere around the number 20 slot on the Green500 list.

Ironically, the upgrade won’t improve the system’s position in the TOP500 rankings. The number one Sunway TaihuLight has a peak performance of 125.4 petaflops, and attains 93 petaflops on the High Performance Linpack (HPL) benchmark. It’s unlikely Tianhe-2A will come in at better than 70 or 80 petaflops on HPL.

Nevertheless, the upgrade further cements China’s status as a serious supercomputing power, and does so, once again, with domestically produced technology. The country is currently the odds-on favorite to stand up the first exascale system, which it intends to do in the 2019-2020 timeframe.



Tianhe-2 Supercomputer Being Upgraded to 95 Petaflops | TOP500 Supercomputer Sites

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*China’s atomic clock passes space test*
By Edwin Cartlidge 
Sep. 20, 2017 , 1:03 PM

Clocks that use cold atoms form the backbone of the international time system here on Earth. Now, scientists in China have successfully demonstrated a cold atom clock in space, an achievement that could lead to more accurate terrestrial timekeeping and better tests of fundamental physics.

Most atomic clocks rely on a very steady tick: the frequency of fluorescent light emitted by cesium atoms after being excited by a microwave field. The frequency is steadier when the atoms move slowly, and so scientists first trap the atoms using intersecting laser beams and cool them down to a few millionths of a degree above absolute zero.

Because the laser beams would impair the frequency measurement, the atoms must be released from the trap before they are excited by the microwaves. Typically, they are nudged upward by another laser and zapped with microwaves as they rise and then fall back down to Earth. But the briefness of this free fall limits how long the atoms can be probed and, hence, the clock’s accuracy and stability. In orbit, however, the atoms are in continuous free fall and can in principle be probed over longer periods of time.

The Cold Atom Clock Experiment in Space (CACES) involves trapping, cooling, and probing rubidium atoms within a box that could fit in the trunk of a car. In orbit at an altitude of 400 kilometers, the experiment was launched on board China’s Tiangong-2 space laboratory last September. Now, a year later, it is performing just as expected, according to a paper posted to the arXiv server by scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’s Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics.

Shanghai team leader Liang Liu says that he and his colleagues “had to work night and day” to get CACES ready for launch. They “encountered tremendous technical difficulties,” he recalls, in shrinking the bulky and complex equipment needed to trap and cool atoms and also ensuring that the kit withstands the rigors of space. “Fortunately we did it, and after a year in orbit CACES is still working perfectly,” he says.

As such, Liu and co-workers have overtaken scientists working on a mission for the European Space Agency known as the Atomic Clock Ensemble in Space (ACES). Proposed in 1997, ACES has faced a series of funding and technical delays that mean it won’t arrive at the International Space Station for at least another year. In contrast, CACES has gone from conception to operation in just a decade.

The Chinese clock, however, is less advanced than its European counterpart, which will use cold cesium atoms. For one thing, its estimated stability—three parts in 1013—is a third of ACES design value, meaning it would take nine times as long to reach a given accuracy. In addition, CACES doesn’t transmit its ticking to Earth, so its accuracy can’t be regularly monitored. (It has a data link but not one that can send stable time and frequency information.) ACES, on the other hand, will communicate its timekeeping to Earth through a microwave link, allowing atomic clocks on the ground to be calibrated and also enabling tests of the theory of general relativity involving the effect of altitude on a clock’s ticking rate.

ACES Principal Investigator Christophe Salomon, an atomic physicist at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, says that although Liu and colleagues have demonstrated the basics of a cold atom clock in orbit, they haven’t fully exploited that capability—the longest recorded time measurement was actually shorter than the 0.5 seconds typically reached on Earth. “They have made a nice technology demonstration,” he says, “but it is disappointing that they haven’t taken advantage of the microgravity.”

Stephan Schiller, an atomic physicist at the University of Düsseldorf in Germany, points out that, strictly speaking, CACES is not the first cold atom experiment to be carried out in space. In January, German researchers produced an exotic state of matter known as a Bose-Einstein condensate by launching cold atoms on a sounding rocket from Sweden. But that flight lasted just 6 minutes—“a different ball park” to a year of tests, he maintains. “With their experiment,” he says, “the Chinese are at the forefront of space-based cold atom sensors worldwide.”

Next, Liu and colleagues plan to install a more stable clock with links to the ground on board China’s space station, which is due to start taking shape in 2020. Then both they and a group of European researchers led by Schiller aim to test orbital “optical clocks,” which would use a laser beam to probe atoms with higher frequency emissions in order to generate even more precise ticks than a microwave device. “There is an exciting future for high-precision clocks in space,” Schiller says.


China’s atomic clock passes space test | Science | AAAS

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Yukihime

*China High Speed Train 'Fuxing' EMU raised speed from 300km/h to 350km/h making it only 4.5 hours from Beijing to Shanghai*

Journalist is streaming now using the built-in WI-FI provided in a 'Fuxing' train which runs at 350km/h.
Streaming: http://live.sina.com.cn/zt/l/v/news/fuxinggaotie/

Screen shows water glass, pen and even an cell phone can stand while the train is running at full speed.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* China Exclusive: China builds world-class astronomical base in Tibet *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-09-21 13:19:44_|_Editor: Xiang Bo_





By Xinhua writer Yu Fei

BEIJING, Sept. 21 (Xinhua) -- With its thin air and clear sky, Ngari Prefecture is an ideal place for astronomers to gaze into the remote universe.

Chinese scientists are building a world-class observatory base at an altitude above 5,000 meters at Ngari, in the west of China's Tibet Autonomous Region.

They have launched a project to detect primary gravitational waves there. They also plan to conduct high-precision detection of cosmic rays and build China's largest optical telescope.

Xue Suijian, deputy director of the National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC), says astronomical observation requires clarity, transparency, tranquility and aridity of the atmosphere. A suitable site for multiple wave-length observation is a rare resource.

It's widely believed that the world's best astronomical observatories are located on Mauna Kea mountain, on Hawaii's Big Island, and in the desert in northern Chile. These two places, in the northern and southern hemispheres respectively, are home to more than 90 percent of the world's large astronomical facilities.

However, due to objections from native Hawaiians, the world's largest optical telescope, the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), might be the last astronomical project to be built on Mauna Kea, says Xue.

Scientists are eager to find another good observatory base in the northern hemisphere.

Xue said NAOC began looking for a suitable site in western China in 2004, focusing on a ridge ranging from 5,000 meters to 6,200 meters above sea level in Ngari.

Now the Ngari Observatory is starting to take shape. Chinese universities and institutes, as well as research organizations from Japan and the United States, are joining NAOC with plans for projects there.

China's largest optical telescope, the 12-meter telescope, is expected to be built at the site. The project is included in China's large-scale sci-tech infrastructure plan for 2016 to 2020, says Xue.

Xue says NAOC will also cooperate with Tibet University and Ngari prefecture government to launch a project for the high-precision detection of cosmic rays above the 50 TeV energy region. Scientists from the University of Tokyo have pledged equipment worth tens of millions of yuan for the project.

Scientists are also building at Ngari the world's highest station to observe primary gravitational waves, dubbed "the first cry of the cosmos after the Big Bang."

Zhang Xinmin, lead scientist of the project with the Institute of High Energy Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), says detection of primary gravitational waves is of great significance to studying the origin and evolution of the universe.

Although the first detection of gravitational waves was announced on February 2016, no primary gravitational waves have been detected so far. But they remain a hot topic in international academic circles.

According to cosmic inflation theory, the universe expanded rapidly in a very short period after the Big Bang, and caused ripples in space-time. The primary gravitational waves generated by cosmic inflation should have left traces in the cosmic microwave background (CMB).

In May 2014, Zhang Xinmin proposed a CMB detection experiment in Ngari, arguing that as primary gravitational waves were very weak, the detection site should have thin air, and the drier the better.

Ngari is one of just four places in the world regarded as the best sites for primary gravitational wave detection, alongside Antarctica, Chile's Atacama Desert and Greenland.

Zhang had considered China's Kunlun Station in Antarctica to conduct the experiment, but the infrastructure there was insufficient.

The primary gravitational wave detection experiment, a joint China-U.S.project, was launched in late 2016.

The first stage of the project will see a telescope built at a site 5,250 meters above sea level to realize the first measurement of primary gravitational waves in the northern hemisphere. The telescope is expected to be installed at the end of 2019 and operational in 2020.

Scientists then plan to build a more sensitive telescope at a higher site to realize more accurate measurement of primary gravitational waves.

Scientists at the Institute of High Energy Physics of CAS and Stanford University are cooperating to design the telescope, which will be 2.7 times more powerful than the BICEP 3 telescope in Antarctica, says Zhang.

Xue says China should utilize the unique geographical advantage of the "Roof of the World." The series of projects, scheduled to run until 2030, could help promote Tibet's social and economic development.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Super-Sticky Robot Clings Underwater Like 'Hitchhiker' Fish*
By Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor | September 20, 2017 02:05pm ET

A robot inspired by a hitchhiking fish can cling to surfaces underwater with a force 340 times its own weight.

The new bot was inspired by the remora, fish that cling to larger marine animals like sharks and whales, feeding off their hosts' dead skin and feces.

Remora fish do this with a specially adapted fin on their undersides called a suction disc, which consists of a soft, circular "lip" and linear rows of tissue called lamellae. The lamellae sport tiny, needle-like spinules. The remora can use tiny muscles around the disc to change its shape to suction itself to the host; the spinules then provide major gripping power by adding friction to the equation.

"Biologists say that it represents one of the most extraordinary adaptions within the vertebrates," said Li Wen, a robotics and biomechanics researcher at Beihang University in China and the lead author of a new paper describing the remora robot. [7 Clever Technologies Inspired by Nature]

* Fishy inspiration*
Wen said he got the idea for a remora-inspired robot when he was a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University. He and his advisor were working on designing 3D-printed sharkskin. When looking up photos to use in a paper, Wen said, he kept seeing these odd little hangers-on in photos of sharks. They were remoras. Struck by the fact that no one had tried to make a biorobotic remora disc, Wen and his colleagues decided to tackle the project themselves.

To do so, they had to come up with a way to create a disc with sections ranging from downright rigid to skin-soft. The researchers used 3D printing to pull off this feat, and then added approximately 1,000 faux spinules made of laser-cut carbon fiber. To allow the disc to move just like a real remora disc, the researchers embedded six pneumatic actuators — basically little air pockets — that could inflate and deflate on cue.





A look at the undulating remora robot dic.
Credit: Wang et al., Sci. Robot. 2, eaan8072 (2017)

The result looks a bit like one of those shaving razors with far too many blades, just larger. The robot measures about 5 inches (13 centimeters) from end to end.

* Ride-along robot*
To test this fishy bot, the researchers attached it underwater to a variety of surfaces, some rough, some smooth, some rigid and some flexible. These included real mako shark skin, plexiglass, epoxy resin and silicone elastomer. The robot clung quite nicely to all the surfaces, the researchers found.

The force needed to pull the remora robot off the smooth plexiglass was about 436 newtons, which translates to 340 times the weight of the robot itself. On rougher surfaces, the bot clung a little less tightly. It took about 167 newtons of force to pull the bot off real sharkskin, for instance.

Finally, the researchers attached their disc to a real remotely operated underwater vehicle and practiced attaching the ROV by the disc, to various surfaces. They had a 100 percent success rate attaching the disc to the same range of surfaces that they'd tested before, with an average time to attach of less than 4 seconds, the study said.

"The rigid spinules and soft material overlaying the lamellae engage with the surface when rotated, just like discs of live remora," Wen told Live Science.

While adhesive robots are nothing new, the remora is one of the first options roboticists have had for underwater attachments. Other sticky bots, like ones inspired by tree frogs and geckos, don't work well when submerged. The remora bot could be used to attach things to any broad underwater surface, Wen said, or to allow an underwater robot to cruise along on the underside of a boat.

Remora robots could even be used as tags for tracking the movements of marine animals, he said. After all, what's one more hitchhiker?


https://www.livescience.com/60465-robot-clings-underwater-like-hitchhiker-fish.html

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*For the First Time, Signal Transfer Between Molecules Has Been Achieved*
By Dexter Johnson
Posted 22 Sep 2017 | 16:00 GMT



Image: Nanchang University/Nature Nanotechnology
STM image of all the initial β-form molecules in the middle row that changed into the α-form owing to a single manipulation

The history of molecular computing and electronics has been a long and twisting road—one that was meticulously catalogued on the pages of _IEEE Spectrum_ two years ago. While the future of molecular electronics and computing remains somewhat up in the air, a great deal of research is still being focused on the field.

There have been proof-of-concept molecular switches, molecular data storage bits, and diodes. However, one fundamental issue that has not been resolved is the transfer and exchange of signals between molecular devices for complex signal processing at room temperature.

Now researchers at Nanchang University in China have described, in the journal _Nature Nanotechnology_, a device that uses a particular kind of molecule that takes on two specific geometries when in contact with a copper surface. These two geometries can serve as the “0” and “1” of digital logic.

The work is based on a phenomenon known as in-plane molecular orientation, which occurs when an organic molecule lands on a solid surface. This adsorbed molecule might take different adsorption geometries. These adsorption geometries can be classified into several groups.

“In our case, the molecule we used has two distinguished adsorption geometries on a copper surface,” explained Li Wang, professor of physics at Nanchang University, in an e-mail interview with _IEEE Spectrum_. “One is left-handed, the other is right handed.” For the purposes of data storage or transfer, “We define left-handed geometry as ‘1’ and the right-handed geometry as ‘0’,” added Wang.

Wang and his colleagues discovered that the in-plane orientation of a molecule could be controlled by the in-plane orientations of two neighboring molecules due to their intermolecular interactions. The researchers exploited this intermolecular interaction as a way to build a logic gate in which an output signal is controlled by two input signals.

“For the first time, we have succeeded in realizing signal transfer and operation between molecules,” said Wang. “Our findings prove that a single molecule can present a certain signal and such signal can be utilized as a conventional signal to carry useful information to transfer and take part in complex operation processing.”

From this stepping stone, Wang believes in principle that as long as the molecules are coupled to each other in some way, much more complicated functions can be achieved, such as molecular computing.

The molecular devices that Wang and his colleagues fabricated in the lab were built by manipulating molecules one by one. For this kind of work to go beyond a mere prototype, it will de necessary to assemble the molecules into designed configurations with the expected intermolecular interactions, according to Wang.

In ongoing research, Wang and his colleagues intend to build more molecular devices with which they can exploit the intermolecular interactions in order to carry out different functions. “We will try to connect variable molecular devices into a whole system to achieve computing as common electronic devices can do,” he added.


For the First Time, Signal Transfer Between Molecules Has Been Achieved - IEEE Spectrum

Chao Li, Zhongping Wang, Yan Lu, Xiaoqing Liu & Li Wang. *Conformation-based signal transfer and processing at the single-molecule level*. _Nature Nanotechnology_ (2017); DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2017.179​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*EarthLab Makes Debut at Hong Kong InnoTech Expo 2017*
Sep 25, 2017







CAS Vice President ZHANG Jie visits the booth of EarthLab. (Image by IAP)​
EarthLab, an earth system science simulator developed by Chinese research team led by CAS Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP), makes debut at Hong Kong InnoTech Expo 2017, a showcase of achievements in science and technology of the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong. Sponsored by Our Hong Kong Foundation, the Expo will run from 24 sept to 2 Oct. 2017.

EarthLab is a numerical simulation system of the main Earth systems, developed by the IAP, Sugon, Tsinghua University, and the National Satellite Meteorological Center.

The comprehensive technical level of EarthLab will rank among its counterparts in the United States, Japan and Europe, according to scientists.

The system can help explore the impact of each system and its interaction with the Earth system as a whole, as well as the regional environment in China; integrate simulations and observation data to improve the accuracy of forecasting; improve the prediction and projection skills for climate change and air pollution; provide a numerical simulation platform to take Earth system research in China to the top level internationally; and support China's disaster prevention and mitigation, climate change, and atmospheric environment governance, along with other major issues.

At the booth of EarthLab, Visitors can observe and even “touch” simulation of dust/pollutant transportation, solar activities, land surface change, ocean circulation and other earth systems at the booth of EarthLab by means like augmented reality (AR) and other interactive science.

Participants at the opening ceremony include TUNG Chee-hwa, President of Our Hong Kong Foundation, Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, Chief Executive of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and WAN Gang, Minister of Science and Technology. With the theme "Displaying China's Civilization of Technology and Its Latest Innovation," nearly 130 exhibits are showcased at the event, and the organizer is expecting 100,000 guests this year.

EarthLab will be accommodate in the Huairou Campus of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. Construction of the site will begin in 2018 and is expected to be completed by 2021.
 

*



*​Visitors watch the video of EarthLab introduction on the screen on one of the walls of the model of prototype of EarthLab. (Image by IAP)



EarthLab Makes Debut at Hong Kong InnoTech Expo 2017---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Long-Lasting Qubits Share Vibrations to Stay Cool*
By Charles Q. Choi
Posted 25 Sep 2017 | 15:00 GMT





Illustration: Tsinghua University/Nature Photonics​
A quantum computer can theoretically vastly outperform a normal computer, but until now its basic component, known as a qubit, could only remain stable for less than a minute. Now scientists in China have developed single qubits that could remain coherent for about 10 minutes. These magnetically trapped qubits could someday become an essential component of quantum computers and quantum networks.

The quantum effect known as superposition permits a particle to essentially spin in two opposite directions at once, or exist in two or more places simultaneously. Using superposition, qubits can symbolize data as both a one and zero at the same time, whereas transistors in standard computers are each limited to representing data as single digits. When qubits are linked or entangled together, they can help perform exponentially more computations than a comparable number of transistors.

But qubits are only useful if their superpositions can stay coherent or stable. More than 20 years ago, scientists found they could achieve coherence times of roughly 10 minutes with ensembles of magnetically trapped ions. However, unexpectedly, when it came to single qubits, researchers were cursed with much shorter coherence times. Until now, the best coherence time they could accomplish was less than one minute with solitary magnetically trapped ions.

Now scientists at Tsinghua University in Beijing have achieved a coherence time of more than 10 minutes for a single qubit consisting of a magnetically trapped, positively charged ytterbium-171 ion.

"What we have demonstrated is basically how the memory zone for quantum memory, one essential part of a quantum computer, can be physically implemented," says study senior author Kihwan Kim, a quantum physicist at Tsinghua University.

Kim says the reason that prior experiments with ensembles of ions were able to achieve long coherence times was because they were performed using large magnetic traps, whereas previous research with single ions used much smaller magnetic traps. As such, the electrodes used to analyze the ensembles were relatively far away, while the electrodes used to analyze the single ions were much closer. This meant the amount of heat the ensembles experienced from the vibrational motion of atoms in the electrodes was a few million times less than what the single ions felt, Kim says. Such heat can disrupt coherence.

In order to keep their qubits relatively cool, the scientists placed a positively charged barium-138 ion in the same magnetic trap with each ytterbium-171 ion. Whenever the barium-138 ion collides with the ytterbium-171 in the trap, it absorbs some of its vibrational motion, cooling it down.

"Before us, no one performed such 'sympathetic cooling' for single ions to observe long coherence times in a trap for quantum information processing," Kim says.

The researchers also suppressed the level of disruptive noise that each single qubit experienced from fluctuations in the magnetic fields used to trap them. This also helped prolong their coherence time. The scientists detailed their findings today in the journal _Nature Photonics_.

The group is now exploring ways to further reduce noise in their system, such as by installing a shield to protect ions from those magnetic field fluctuations. Kim notes, "the coherence time after we eliminate the heating problem is still limited to 10 minutes. We are not yet fully sure the main reason for this limitation."


Long-Lasting Qubits Share Vibrations to Stay Cool - IEEE Spectrum

Ye Wang, Mark Um, Junhua Zhang, Shuoming An, Ming Lyu, Jing-Ning Zhang, L.-M. Duan, Dahyun Yum & Kihwan Kim. *Single-qubit quantum memory exceeding ten-minute coherence time*. _Nature Photonics_ (2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41566-017-0007-1​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *A blueprint to a science city that will rival Silicon Valley*
> By Li Xinran | 00:01 UTC+8 September 12, 2017 |
> 
> 
> 
> Print Edition
> 
> View attachment 424719
> 
> Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility​
> THE recently released “Construction Plan of Zhangjiang Science City” revealed that the high-tech park will become an administrative subdistrict, as part of a national strategy to establish Zhangjiang Comprehensive National Scientific Center.
> 
> According to the blueprint, Zhangjiang will have a central region along Chuanyang River, an artificial branch of Huangpu River, to be home to a batch of national-level laboratories and scientific projects along with various public services for employees and residents.
> 
> The science city has ambitions to be on a par with California’s Silicon Valley, Singapore’s One North Science Park and Japanese Tsukuba scientific town. And it will establish a basic framework for a comprehensive national scientific center by 2020.
> 
> To achieve that goal the world’s top innovative professionals, national scientific facilities, leading universities, research institutes and research and development centers of multinational enterprises will be looked at.
> 
> To make Zhangjiang a top attraction for talented researchers, the local government provides vigorous support with a series of complementary policies. Scientists will be ensured to receive excellent services and enjoy a supportive environment for research.
> 
> As part of the policies, around 9.2 million square meters of residential buildings will be built. About 96 percent of them will only be available for rental, according to the Shanghai Planning, Land and Resources Administration.
> 
> The first phase construction of apartments for rent will be launched at Sunqiao. As part of the future international community, it occupies an area of 65,000 square meters. A total of 1,226 well-furnished condos will be available after the construction is completed.
> 
> Subway and bus lines will run through the science city to connect office buildings, renovated factory houses and innovation parks for startups. More expressways to link to Shanghai’s railway stations, airports, and downtown areas have also been planned.
> 
> Schools and other public facilities will be built to serve residents, most of whom are scientists, research fellows, senior executives and their families.
> 
> The science city will be surrounded by a greenbelt. Continuous paths for walking and cycling along the Chuanyang River, small parks and public plazas will be built within the area.
> 
> It aims to attract 500 renowned scientists and experts by the end of 2020. Over 20,000 professionals from abroad and overseas graduates will work in Zhangjiang by then, according to the Pudong New Area government.
> 
> The authority has announced the establishment of the Administration of Overseas Talent to offer a one-stop service for overseas professionals along with a batch of new policies to ease green card and work permit rules.
> 
> The foreign talent recommended by the Zhangjiang or Shanghai Free Trade Zone management committee, for instance, can enjoy a fast track system to apply for the Chinese green card, or foreigners’ permanent residence cards, according to one of the new policies.
> 
> The application process can be shortened to two months from six months to receive the card. Spouses and children under 18-years-old can apply for the card at the same time.


*Zhangjiang Lab represents big step for science hub ambition*
By Zhang Ningning | 00:01 UTC+8 September 27, 2017 |



Print Edition

SHANGHAI’S ambition to be a global innovation and science hub took a giant stride yesterday with the unveiling of Zhangjiang Lab.

The lab, co-built by the city government and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was unveiled in Pudong’s Zhangjiang Science City.

The lab will serve as a comprehensive national science center to promote basic science, officials said.

“In the beginning of the lab’s development, we will focus on building up major scientific facilities to make breakthroughs in fundamental sciences,” said Wang Xi, director of the lab, who is also the head of Shanghai Advanced Research Institute, which is part of the academy.

“Particularly on photonics (the physical science of light), life science, information technology and brain-inspired intelligence technologies, an interdisciplinary between life science and information technology,” Wang added.

Several national-level major science facilities in Zhangjiang will be integrated into the institute to make the lab better serve the science community.

Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility is part of the set-up. This facility can create super beams hundreds of millions of times brighter than a normal X-ray.

Construction of a hard x-ray facility — an X-ray with high photon energy — will begin this year. The facility is expected to be China’s most expansive science infrastructure project.

Wang added the lab aims to attract top researchers from across the world. Officials have set a target to become a world-class national laboratory by 2030.

Shanghai Party Secretary Han Zheng, Bai Chunli, director of the academy, and the city’s Mayor Ying Yong attended the opening ceremony.

Last year, President Xi Jinping said China will facilitate the setting up of innovation platforms and national laboratories will play a leading role in those platforms.

Wan Gang, Minister of Science and Technology, said at a Pujiang Innovation Forum on Saturday that the country will further develop fundamental science and invest more in scientific infrastructures.

*Space ambition*

Also yesterday, an innovation and research institute for microsatellites of the academy was inaugurated in Zhangjiang.

Bai said the institute aims to be an innovation engine for satellite science and contribute to the country’s space ambition.

Ying said the institute represents a new phase in the development of Shanghai Engineering Centre for Microsatellites, which was co-built by the academy and the city government in 2003.

The city will continue to support the development and construction of the new institute, Ying added.

Over the past few years, the engineering center successfully developed 19 satellites, including a BeiDou navigation satellite, the world’s first quantum communication satellite, and China’s first observation satellite to monitor carbon dioxide level.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese company XDM 3D Printing Technology claims new XDM750 is world's largest SLM 3D printer*
Sep 27, 2017 | By Benedict

XDM 3D Printing Technology, a 3D printing company based in Suzhou, China, claims to have developed the world’s largest selective laser melting (SLM) 3D printer. The XDM750 has a build volume of 750 x 750 x 500 mm, larger than Concept Laser’s X LINE 2000R.




It’s difficult to make conclusive statements about the *world’s largest 3D printers*. For one, you never know what private companies are doing in secret—just because a gigantic machine hasn’t been put on the market, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

But it’s also pretty hard to get objective reports about “record-breaking” machines from third parties. At present, there’s no Guinness World Records-type organization dedicated to 3D printing, so there’s nobody going round with a measuring tape and stopwatch verifying every claim by every company.

This isn’t such a problem with commercially available machines. In these cases, you simply have to check with the company’s customers to see if the machines are as big, fast, or efficient as they claim to be. (Or you can buy one yourself.) Besides, companies would get in a lot of trouble if their spec sheets didn’t match up to their products.

But with one-off 3D printers, brand-new printers, or machines not being sold at scale, you sometimes have to take a company’s word for it.

You might therefore take XDM 3D Printing Technology’s claim that it has developed the “world’s largest SLM 3D printer” with a pinch of salt.

That’s not because we think the company would put out a factually incorrect statement about printer dimensions. In that regard, the XDM750 is quite probably the world’s largest SLM printer. It’s just that we know so little about XDM 3D Printing Technology, we have no way of knowing whether the printer works at a high level.




Nonetheless, the XDM750 certainly sounds like a formidable machine in terms of size. With a build area of 750 x 750 x 500 mm, the SLM 3D printer can purportedly fabricate larger objects than would be possible with the *Concept Laser X LINE 2000R*, generally believed to be the largest laser melting machine on the market with a whopping 800 x 400 x 500 mm build area.

But eclipsing the X LINE 2000R in terms of size might not even be XDM’s boldest claim. Making a very large printer is one thing, but ensuring it meets the required quality standards is quite another. The Chinese 3D printer company claims to have done this too.

The Suzhou-based manufacturer says the performance of the XDM750 matches that of the most advanced metal 3D printers in the world, and could therefore be used in serious industries like aerospace, automotive, military, and medical.

It’s these claims that will take a little longer to evaluate. It’s possible that this could be the start of a serious wave of 3D printing evolution in the Far East; on the other hand, we might never hear about XDM again.

XDM was founded in 2015, and employs a number of technicians with long-term experience in SLM research. It already has 12 *patents* and three core technologies.



3ders.org - Chinese company XDM 3D Printing Technology claims new XDM750 is world's largest SLM 3D printer | 3D Printer News & 3D Printing News

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Synopsis: How to Make Superhydrophobicity Last*
September 27, 2017

*Researchers find tricks to prolong the typically short-lived water repellency of a superhydrophobic surface.
*




iStockphoto.com/Art Wager​
Coating a ship’s hull with a strongly water repellent material could lower the vessel’s drag in the water. A popular form of such a superhydrophobic material works because it has a rough surface that traps a lubricating cushion of air. But this type of material has yet to be utilized on ships, as the air layer tends to degrade with time. Researchers have now pinpointed certain conditions in the fluid that, if met, would lead to a more enduring air layer—though the conditions might be difficult to meet for ships.

The short-lived air layer is a well-known hurdle when it comes to using superhydrophobic materials for applications. For example, when a lotus leaf—the icon of superhydrophobicity—is submerged under 5 m of water, the air layer diffuses away in less than 2 min.

Huiling Duan and colleagues from Peking University, China, considered a superhydrophobic surface with a thermodynamic model that accounts for the diffusion of gas between the trapped air layer and the surrounding water. They found that an equilibrium state exists in which the total amount of air in the layer doesn’t change, provided there’s a sufficient quantity of gas dissolved in the water. Directly controlling the amount of dissolved gas in a body of water is tricky in the lab—let alone at sea. But the team’s experiments on lotus leaves and artificial superhydrophobic surfaces show that this control can be achieved indirectly in sealed systems by adjusting the pressure of the water acting on the surface. The team tested their idea on a lotus leaf, showing they could extend the air-layer lifetime to at least four hours—the maximum length of their experiments.

This research is published in _Physical Review Letters_.

–Katherine Wright

Katherine Wright is a Contributing Editor for _Physics_.


Physics - Synopsis: How to Make Superhydrophobicity Last

Yaolei Xiang, Shenglin Huang, Pengyu Lv, Yahui Xue, Qiang Su, and Huiling Duan. *Ultimate Stable Underwater Superhydrophobic State*. _Phys. Rev. Lett._ (2017). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.134501​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

* China's high magnetic field facility passes testing *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-09-27 22:13:59_|_Editor: An_





HEFEI, Sept. 27 (Xinhua) -- China's Steady High Magnetic Field Facility (SHMFF) Wednesday passed testing by an expert panel organized by the National Development Reform Commission (NDRC).

The facility ranks second worldwide in terms of quantity and intensity.

The project, approved by NDRC in 2008, was jointly built by Hefei Institute of Physical Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CASHIPS) and the University of Science and Technology of China.

As one only two 40-Tesla hybrid magnet groups worldwide, the SHMFF has the potential to reach an even higher level of 45 Tesla, according to Hans Schneider Muntau, a world-renowned high field magnet expert.

By creating a magnetic field as high as 40 Tesla, the SHMFF would become an experimental environment for fields such as high temperature superconductivity, quantum materials and life science.

Since 1913, 19 accomplishments closely linked to high magnetic fields have won Nobel Prizes.

Wang Yingjian, Party chief of CASHIPS, said the SHMFF has been used as an experimental environment for more than 100 universities and research institutions, including Tsinghua and Peking universities, since its trial operation began in 2010.

More than 800 of their accomplishments have been published in journals including Nature and Science.

China is the fifth country to have a high magnetic field facility, following the United States, where the other 40-Tesla hybrid magnet is located, France, the Netherlands and Japan.



Chinese scientists check the Steady High Magnetic Field Facility in a factory of Heifei, Anhui Province on September 27, 2017. (Image by Xinhua)

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Researchers Are First to Edit Human Embryos With Tiniest of Genetic Snips*

Researchers from Sun Yat-sen University in China have for the first time used base editing, a technique that can tweak a single letter in a strand of DNA, to edit disease out of a human embryo. The team used the approach to fix a single mutation known to cause an inherited form of anemia. People with the disease have abnormally shaped blood cells.

The work was led by Junjiu Huang, who in 2015 headed up research showing that abnormal embryos from an IVF clinic with the same mutation could be fixed using CRISPR-Cas9 editing. But as we reported at the time, the results showed that CRISPR editing was inaccurate, and embryos often ended up with a mix of cells—some with corrected genomes, and some that still had the genetic fault.

Earlier this year, researchers used CRISPR to create the first gene-edited embryos in the U.S., and the results initially seemed promising. But closer examination of the work again suggested that the gene-editing technique still wasn't reliable enough to be used on an embryo that would be allowed to grow into a baby.

Huang's team has now moved on to a different editing technique, called simply base editing. It's exactly what it sounds like: instead of cutting out chunks of DNA, as CRISPR does, base editing alters just a single letter of DNA—in the case of the mutation that causes anemia, a faulty "G" is chemically changed to an "A." Crucially, the team's results, published in the journal _Protein and Cell_ (paywall), minimized the kind of side effects that have plagued experiments with CRISPR. And, the researchers told the BBC, base editing could be effective on a range of disorders that are known to be caused by a single genetic error.

Posted by Michael Reilly
September 28th, 2017 11:11AM



Researchers Are First to Edit Human Embryos With Tiniest of Genetic Snips | MIT Technology Review

Puping Liang, Chenhui Ding, Hongwei Sun, Xiaowei Xie, Yanwen Xu, Xiya Zhang, Ying Sun, Yuanyan Xiong, Wenbin Ma, Yongxiang Liu, Yali Wang, Jianpei Fang, Dan Liu, Zhou Songyang, Canquan Zhou, Junjiu Huang. *Correction of β-thalassemia mutant by base editor in human embryos*. _Protein & Cell _(2017). DOI: 10.1007/s13238-017-0475-6​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*High-Efficiency and Full-Space Manipulation of Electromagnetic Wave Fronts with Metasurfaces*
Tong Cai, GuangMing Wang, ShiWei Tang, HeXiu Xu, JingWen Duan, HuiJie Guo, FuXin Guan, ShuLin Sun, Qiong He, and Lei Zhou
Phys. Rev. Applied *8*, 034033 – Published 28 September 2017

*Abstract*

Metasurfaces offer great opportunities to control electromagnetic (EM) waves, but currently most metadevices work either in pure reflection or pure transmission mode, leaving half of the EM space completely unexplored. Here, we propose an alternative type of metasurface, composed of specifically designed meta-atoms with polarization-dependent transmission and reflection properties, to efficiently manipulate EM waves in the full space. As a proof of concept, three microwave metadevices are designed, fabricated, and experimentally characterized. The first two metadevices can bend or focus EM waves at different sides (i.e., transmission and reflection sides) of the metasurfaces, depending on the incident polarization, while the third one changes from a wave bender for the reflected wave to a focusing lens for the transmitted wave as the excitation polarization is rotated, with all of these functionalities exhibiting very high efficiencies (in the range of 85%–91%) and total thickness ∼λ/8. Our findings significantly expand the capabilities of metasurfaces in controlling EM waves, and can stimulate high-performance multifunctional metadevices facing more challenging and diversified application demands.​DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.8.034033

© 2017 American Physical Society


Phys. Rev. Applied 8, 034033 (2017) - High-Efficiency and Full-Space Manipulation of Electromagnetic Wave Fronts with Metasurfaces

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

* Chinese scientists reveal why Zika virus causes microcephaly *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-09-29 03:19:03_|_Editor: yan_





WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers said Thursday they might have solved the mystery of why the Zika virus causes microcephaly, a birth defect marked by small head size that can lead to severe developmental problems in babies.

In a study published in the U.S. journal Science, a team led by Cheng-Feng Qin of the Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology reported that one single genetic change, likely acquired in 2013, gave the mosquito-borne virus the ability to cause severe fetal microcephaly.

"Our findings offer a reasonable explanation for the unexpected causal link of Zika to microcephaly, and will help understand how Zika evolved from an innocuous mosquito-borne virus into a congenital pathogen with global impact," Qin said.

Zika was first identified in 1947 in Uganda, and until its recent emergence in the Americas, was a little known one that sporadically causes mild infections.

Then, it rapidly swept through South and Central America in 2015, and due to its link to congenital brain abnormalities, especially microcephaly during pregnancy, the World Health Organization declared in early 2016 the current epidemics a public health emergency of international concern.

However, scientists remain unable to determine why the virus evolved into a pathogen triggering severe neurological syndromes.

By comparing contemporary Zika virus strains from the 2015 and 2016 South American epidemics with an ancestral Cambodian virus that was circulating in 2010, Qin and colleagues found one critical mutation that conferred the ability to cause microcephaly in mouse models of fetal infection.

That one change, S139N, which replaced a serine amino acid with an asparagine at the 139th position of a Zika protein called prM, also made the virus more lethal to human neuron precursor cells in culture compared with the ancestral form.

Zika accumulated numerous changes throughout its genome between 2010 and 2016, of which S139N caused substantially more severe microcephaly and embryonic lethality in mouse models.

Evolutionary analyses revealed that the S139N change likely arose sometime around 2013, which coincided with initial reports of microcephaly.

It was then stably maintained during subsequent spread to the America.

"The discovery should provide guidance for the study of pathogenetic mechanisms of the Zika virus and for the development of vaccines and treatments," Qin said.


Ling Yuan, Xing-Yao Huang, Zhong-Yu Liu, Feng Zhang, Xing-Liang Zhu, Jiu-Yang Yu, Xue Ji, Yan-Peng Xu, Guanghui Li, Cui Li, Hong-Jiang Wang, Yong-Qiang Deng, Menghua Wu, Meng-Li Cheng, Qing Ye, Dong-Yang Xie, Xiao-Feng Li, Xiangxi Wang, Weifeng Shi, Baoyang Hu, Pei-Yong Shi, Zhiheng Xu, Cheng-Feng Qin. *A single mutation in the prM protein of Zika virus contributes to fetal microcephaly*. _Science_ (2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aam7120​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*China starts construction of major national scientific infrastructure *
By Gao Yun
2017-09-29 15:41 GMT+8



‍
China started building an integrated experimental device for extreme conditions in Beijing on Thursday, according to local media reports. Once completed, it can greatly improve the country’s scientific competitiveness in relevant industries.

It is the first major scientific and technological infrastructure project to be constructed at the Huairou Science City, a comprehensive national science center in Beijing's Huairou district.

Primarily operated by the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), it is a large scientific experimental device that incorporates a group of facilities which generate extreme conditions such as ultralow temperatures, ultrahigh pressure, high magnetic fields and ultrafast optical fields, as well as systems for sample representation, measurement and other supporting functions.



The rendering of the device in Huairou Science City, Beijing /CAS Photo

*Extreme conditions*

Substances are formed under certain physical conditions and, under the extreme conditions generated by these physical experiments, new substances and new states of matter that cannot exist under normal conditions will form, leading to new scientific phenomena and breakthroughs.

For example, the ultralow temperature is 300,000 times lower than room temperature, and the high magnetic field 600,000 times stronger than the Earth’s. The ultrahigh pressure may be equivalent to that of the Earth’s core.

*Make a big significance*

Making breakthroughs under extreme experimental conditions has become an important scientific model and many developed countries have invested heavily in this field, equipping their research institutions with advanced experimental facilities designed specifically for extreme conditions.

"The overall level of experimental methods under extreme conditions will directly improve China’s competitiveness in several core domains," said Fang Zhong, director of the Institute of Physics, CAS.



Fang Zhong, director of the Institute of Physics, CAS /CAS Photo

The device is of significant value in scientific research, Fang said. It can be used in the research of non-conventional superconductors, the topological state of matter and new quantum materials and devices, and also help accelerate the ultrafast science research in physics, chemistry, biomedicine.

Integration and penetration into different scientific disciplines will be promoted. 

The project is expected to be completed in five years, and once completed, will be the world’s first consumer device that incorporates extreme conditions.

Both domestic and international users will have access to the device, according to Lyu Li, the project’s chief scientist.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*China Builds World's First Space-ground Integrated Quantum Communication Network*
Sep 29, 2017

*Using Micius for a quantum-safe intercontinental video conference between China and Austria.*

The first quantum-safe video conference was held between President BAI Chunli of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and President Anton Zeilinger of the Austria Academy of Sciences in Vienna, as the first real-world demonstration of intercontinental quantum communication on September 29th.



Message sending from Vienna to Beijing through space-ground integrated quantum network. (Image by PAN Jianwei's team) 

Private and secure communications are fundamental human needs. In particular, with the exponential growth of Internet use and e-commerce, it is of paramount importance to establish a secure network with global protection of data. Traditional public key cryptography usually relies on the perceived computational intractability of certain mathematical functions. In contrast, quantum key distribution (QKD) uses individual light quanta (single photon) in quantum superposition states to guarantee unconditional security between distant parties. Previously, the quantum communication distance had been limited to a few hundred kilometers, due to the channel loss of fibers or terrestrial free space. A promising solution to this problem is exploiting satellite and space-based link, which can conveniently connect two remote points on the Earth with greatly reduced channel loss because most of the photons' propagation path is in empty space with negligible loss and decoherence.



Illustration of the experimental set-up. (Image by PAN Jianwei's team) 

A cross-disciplinary multi-institutional team of scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, led by Professor PAN Jianwei, has spent more than ten years in developing a sophisticated satellite, named Micius, dedicated for quantum science experiments (for the project timeline, see Appendix), which was successfully launched on 16th August 2016, from Jiuquan, China, orbiting at an altitude of ~500 km . The satellite is equipped with three payloads: a decoy-state QKD transmitter, an entangled-photon source, and a quantum teleportation receiver and analyzer. Five ground stations are built in China to cooperate with the Micius satellite, located in Xinglong (near Beijing, 40°23'45.12''N, 117°34'38.85''E, altitude 890m), Nanshan (near Urumqi, 43°28'31.66''N, 87°10'36.07''E, altitude 2028m), Delingha (37°22'44.43''N, 97°43'37.01"E, altitude 3153m), Lijiang (26°41'38.15''N, 100°1'45.55''E, altitude 3233m), and Ngari in Tibet (32°19'30.07''N, 80°1'34.18''E, altitude 5047m).

Within a year after the launch, three key milestones that will be central to a global-scale quantum internet have been achieved: satellite-to-ground decoy-state QKD with kHz rate over a distance of ~1200 km (Liao et al. 2017, Nature 549, 43); satellite-based entanglement distribution to two locations on the Earth separated by ~1200 km and Bell test (YIN et al. 2017, Science 356, 1140), and ground-to-satellite quantum teleportation (REN et al. 2017, Nature 549, 70). The effective link efficiencies in the satellite-based QKD were measured to be ~20 orders of magnitudes larger than direct transmission through optical fibers at the same length at 1200 km.

The satellite-based QKD has now been combined with metropolitan quantum networks, in which fibers are used to efficiently and conveniently to connect many users inside a city with a distance scale of ~100 km. For example, the Xinglong station has now been connected to the metropolitan multi-node quantum network in Beijing via optical fibers. Very recently, the largest fiber-based quantum communication backbone has been built in China by Professor PAN's team, linking Beijing to Shanghai (going through Jinan and Hefei, and 32 trustful relays) with a fiber length of 2000 km. The backbone uses decoy-state protocol QKD and achieves an all-pass secure key rate of 20 kbps. It is on trial for real-world applications by government, banks, securities and insurance companies.



Establishment of a reliable space-to-ground link for quantum state transfer. (Image by PAN Jianwei's team) 

The Micius satellite can be further exploited as a trustful relay to conveniently connect any two points on the earth for high-security key exchange. Early this year, the Chinese team has implemented satellite-to-ground QKD in Xinglong. After that, the secure keys were stored in the satellite for 2 hours until it reached Nanshan station near Urumqi, by a distance of ~2500 km from Beijing. By performing another QKD between the satellite and Nanshan station, and using one-time-pad encoding, secure key between Xinglong and Nanshan were then established. To test the robustness and versatility of the Micius, QKD from the satellite to Graz ground station near Vienna has also been carried out successfully this June, as a collaboration between Professor PAN and Professor Anton Zeilinger's group. Upon request, future similar experiments are also planned between China and Singapore, Italy, Germany, and Russia.



Performance of satellite-to-ground QKD performance during one orbit. (Image by PAN Jianwei's team) 



China Builds World's First Space-ground Integrated Quantum Communication Network---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *Researchers Are First to Edit Human Embryos With Tiniest of Genetic Snips*
> 
> Researchers from Sun Yat-sen University in China have for the first time used base editing, a technique that can tweak a single letter in a strand of DNA, to edit disease out of a human embryo. The team used the approach to fix a single mutation known to cause an inherited form of anemia. People with the disease have abnormally shaped blood cells.
> 
> The work was led by Junjiu Huang, who in 2015 headed up research showing that abnormal embryos from an IVF clinic with the same mutation could be fixed using CRISPR-Cas9 editing. But as we reported at the time, the results showed that CRISPR editing was inaccurate, and embryos often ended up with a mix of cells—some with corrected genomes, and some that still had the genetic fault.
> 
> Earlier this year, researchers used CRISPR to create the first gene-edited embryos in the U.S., and the results initially seemed promising. But closer examination of the work again suggested that the gene-editing technique still wasn't reliable enough to be used on an embryo that would be allowed to grow into a baby.
> 
> Huang's team has now moved on to a different editing technique, called simply base editing. It's exactly what it sounds like: instead of cutting out chunks of DNA, as CRISPR does, base editing alters just a single letter of DNA—in the case of the mutation that causes anemia, a faulty "G" is chemically changed to an "A." Crucially, the team's results, published in the journal _Protein and Cell_ (paywall), minimized the kind of side effects that have plagued experiments with CRISPR. And, the researchers told the BBC, base editing could be effective on a range of disorders that are known to be caused by a single genetic error.
> 
> Posted by Michael Reilly
> September 28th, 2017 11:11AM
> 
> 
> 
> Researchers Are First to Edit Human Embryos With Tiniest of Genetic Snips | MIT Technology Review
> 
> Puping Liang, Chenhui Ding, Hongwei Sun, Xiaowei Xie, Yanwen Xu, Xiya Zhang, Ying Sun, Yuanyan Xiong, Wenbin Ma, Yongxiang Liu, Yali Wang, Jianpei Fang, Dan Liu, Zhou Songyang, Canquan Zhou, Junjiu Huang. *Correction of β-thalassemia mutant by base editor in human embryos*. _Protein & Cell _(2017). DOI: 10.1007/s13238-017-0475-6​


*Chinese scientists fix genetic disorder in cloned human embryos*
A method for precisely editing genes in human embryos hints at a cure for a blood disease.

David Cyranoski
02 October 2017
Fixing the genetic mutation linked to β-thalassaemia would save affected individuals from having to get life-sustaining blood transfusions.

A team in China has taken a new approach to fixing disease genes in human embryos. The researchers created cloned embryos with a genetic mutation for a potentially fatal blood disorder, and then precisely corrected the DNA to show how the condition might be prevented at the earliest stages of development.

The report, published on 23 September in _Protein & Cell_, is the latest in a series of experiments to edit genes in human embryos. And it employs an impressive series of innovations, scientists say. Rather than replacing entire sections of genes, the team, led by Junjiu Huang at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, tweaked individual DNA letters, or bases, using a precision gene-editing technology developed in the United States.

Huang’s team is also the first to edit out the mutation responsible for a ‘recessive’ disease: one caused by having two faulty copies of a gene. Because it would be difficult for researchers to find dozens of embryos that all have this rare double mutation, the team worked around this roadblock by developing embryonic clones from their patient’s skin cells.

“I thought, ‘Why would they do cloning?’ Then I read the paper, and thought, ‘Wow, that’s fascinating,’” says Shoukhrat Mitalipov, a reproductive-biology specialist at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland who pioneered human cloning and also works on gene editing in embryos. “I would not have thought to do this.”

Scientists around the world have now published eight studies reporting gene editing in human embryos, five in the past two months. None have permitted the embryos to grow beyond 14 days, and the research has had different purposes: some to test gene-editing technologies; others to edit various disease-related genes; and some to unravel the mechanisms behind early embryonic development. Huang’s team led the first report, published in April 2015, in which they used the CRISPR–Cas9 enzyme complex to snip chromosomes at specific locations, excise DNA and replace it with other genetic material.

*Precision editing*
In the latest study, Huang’s team used ‘base editing’, a modification of CRISPR–Cas9. It guides an enzyme to specific gene sequences, but does not cut the DNA. Instead, the Cas9 enzyme is disabled and tethered to another enzyme that can swap out individual DNA base pairs. So far, this technique can convert guanine (‘G’) to adenine (‘A’), and cytosine (‘C’) to thymine (‘T’). Hundreds of genetic diseases are caused by single-base changes, or ‘point mutations’, and so editing of this sort at the embryonic stage could potentially stave off such conditions.

Huang’s team chose one mutation common in the Chinese population: a switch from an A to a G at a certain spot in the _HBB_ gene, which can lead to β-thalassaemia, a recessive blood disorder associated with severe or fatal anaemia. Researchers generally source embryos from _in vitro_ fertilization (IVF) clinics, but it’s rare for these facilities to have embryos with two copies of the same rare mutation. So Huang’s team found a person with the blood disorder, extracted their skin cells and used cloning techniques to develop embryos with the same genetic makeup.

The researchers reported that in 8 of 20 cloned embryos, they were able to convert the errant G back into an A in one or both copies of the gene. (Repairing only one copy might be enough to cure a recessive disease.) That rate is too low for the technique to be considered for clinical use, but the efficiency was high relative to that achieved in other gene-editing studies. “The repair rate is pretty good, and certainly promising,” says Gaetan Burgio, a geneticist at the Australian National University in Canberra. “Our study opens new avenues for therapy of β-thalassaemia and other inherited diseases,” says Huang.

But scientists caution that not all cells in the eight embryos were fixed. Such embryos are ‘mosaic’, meaning that they have a patchwork of cells with different genetic make-ups, which is potentially dangerous. “It looks like solid work, but highlights that the problem of mosaicism remains a challenge for any form of gene editing in the human embryo,” says Dieter Egli, a stem-cell biologist at Columbia University in New York City.

*Unintended consequences*
Some scientists also question whether Huang’s team looked thoroughly enough for unintended genetic changes, called off-target effects, that might have been caused by the base-editing procedure, although the authors reported that none were found.

Huang says future experiments will be more comprehensive, but that this first study was a successful proof of principle that the base-editing technique can be used to correct a disease mutation in a human embryo. It may be that conventional CRISPR–Cas9 cannot fix embryos when both copies are faulty, although this isn’t yet clear. In August, for instance, Mitalipov’s team reported using CRISPR–Cas9 to repair a mutation in a gene that can cause a potentially deadly heart disorder, by using the other, healthy copy of the gene as a template.

In the future, Huang says, he plans to ask for oocytes and sperm from donors who have one mutated copy of the gene — and so are unaffected by the condition, but are carriers of the disease — and use these to produce embryos. Some of those embryos would have two mutated copies, and some one, but Huang wants to edit both types. That raises the contentious idea that gene editing might be used not only to prevent severe disease, but also to eliminate the chance of people becoming carriers of the disorder. “Base editing can repair the mutant site and block it from being passed on to the next generation,” he says.

Nature doi:10.1038/nature.2017.22694



Chinese scientists fix genetic disorder in cloned human embryos : Nature News & Comment

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists make breakthrough in replacing WiFi with LiFi*
(Xinhua) 14:13, October 03, 2017

CHANGCHUN, Oct. 3 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have made a breakthrough in creating full-color emissive carbon dots (F-CDs), which brings them one step closer to developing a faster wireless communication channel that could be available in just six years.

Light Fidelity, known as LiFi, uses visible light from LED bulbs to transfer data much faster than radio wave-based WiFi.

While most current research uses rare earth materials to provide the light for LiFi to transmit data, a team of Chinese scientists have created an alternative -- F-CDs, a fluorescent carbon nanomaterial that proves to be safer and faster.

"Many researchers around the world are still working on this. We were the first to successfully create it using cost-effective raw materials such as urea with simple processing," said Qu Songnan, an associate researcher at Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which leads the research.

Qu said rare earth has a long lifespan which reduces the speed of LiFi transmission. However, F-CDs enjoy the advantage of faster data transmission speeds.

In previous studies, carbon dots were limited to the emission of lights such as blue and green. The new nanomaterial that Qu's team has developed can emit all light visible to the human eye, which is a breakthrough in the field of fluorescent carbon nanomaterial.

Qu said this is significant for the development of LiFi, which he expects to enter the market in just six years.

A 2015 test by a Chinese government ministry showed that LiFi can reach speeds of 50 gigabytes per second, at which a movie download can be completed in just 0.3 seconds.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 3-Oct-2017
* Astronomers reveal evidence of dynamical dark energy *
University of Portsmouth



The cosmological "constant" (illustrated by the straight yellow line) is introduced to explain the accelerated expansion of the Universe (shown as the expanding blue cone) due to the presence of dark energy. The study instead suggests that the contribution of dark energy to this expansion is time-dependent (grey curve). The uncertainty of this time dependency is also shown (blue shaded area).
Credit: Gong-Bo Zhao, NAOC and the University of Portsmouth.

An international research team, including astronomers from the University of Portsmouth, has revealed evidence of dynamical dark energy.

The discovery, recently published in the journal _Nature Astronomy_, found that the nature of dark energy may not be the cosmological constant introduced by Albert Einstein 100 years ago, which is crucial for the study of dark energy.

Lead author of the study Professor Gong-Bo Zhao, from the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation (ICG) at the University of Portsmouth and the National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC), said: "We are excited to see that current observations are able to probe the dynamics of dark energy at this level, and we hope that future observations will confirm what we see today."

Co-author Professor Bob Nichol, Director of the ICG, said: "Since its discovery at the end of last century, dark energy has been a riddle wrapped in an enigma. We are all desperate to gain some greater insight into its characteristics and origin. Such work helps us make progress in solving this 21st Century mystery."

Revealing the nature of dark energy is one of key goals of modern sciences. The physical property of dark energy is represented by its Equation of State (EoS), which is the ratio of pressure and energy density of dark energy.

In the traditional Lambda-Cold Dark Matter (LCDM) model, dark energy is essentially the cosmological constant, i.e., the vacuum energy, with a constant EoS of -1. In this model, dark energy has no dynamical features.

In 2016, a team within the SDSS-III (BOSS) collaboration led by Professor Zhao performed a successful measurement of the Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) at multiple cosmic epochs with a high precision.

Based on this measurement and a method developed by Professor Zhao for dark energy studies, the team found an evidence of dynamical dark energy at a significance level of 3.5 sigma. This suggests that the nature of dark energy may not be the vacuum energy, but some kind of dynamical field, especially for the quintom model of dark energy whose EoS varies with time and crosses the -1 boundary during evolution, according to NAOC.

The dynamics of dark energy needs to be confirmed by next-generation astronomical surveys. The team points to the upcoming Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey, which aims to begin creating a 3D cosmic map in 2018.

In the next five to ten years, the world largest galaxy surveys will provide observables which may be key to unveil the mystery of dark energy.

The new study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), Chinese Academy of Sciences and a Royal Society Newton Advanced Fellowship.

Professor Nichol added: "This work is the culmination of many years of work in collaboration between scientists in China and the UK. Gong-Bo is one of our brightest stars holding a joint position between NAOC and here at the ICG."


Astronomers reveal evidence of dynamical dark energy | EurekAlert! Science News

Gong-Bo Zhao, Marco Raveri, Levon Pogosian, Yuting Wang, Robert G. Crittenden, Will J. Handley, Will J. Percival, Florian Beutler, Jonathan Brinkmann, Chia-Hsun Chuang, Antonio J. Cuesta, Daniel J. Eisenstein, Francisco-Shu Kitaura, Kazuya Koyama, Benjamin L’Huillier, Robert C. Nichol, Matthew M. Pieri, Sergio Rodriguez-Torres, Ashley J. Ross, Graziano Rossi, Ariel G. Sánchez, Arman Shafieloo, Jeremy L. Tinker, Rita Tojeiro, Jose A. Vazquez & Hanyu Zhang. *Dynamical dark energy in light of the latest observations*. _Nature Astronomy_ (2017). DOI:10.1038/s41550-017-0216-z​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*A new way to improve solar cells can also benefit self-driving cars*
_By figuring out how to help solar cells capture more photons, a team of engineers unexpectedly improved the collision-avoidance systems of autonomous cars._

October 02, 2017 By Shara Tonn

When a team of engineers went to work in 2015 looking for a new technique to boost the cost-effectiveness of solar cells, they didn’t realize they’d end with a bonus – a way to help improve the collision avoidance systems of self-driving cars.

But that’s precisely what happened, as the engineers, James Harris and graduate student Kai Zang, explain in a recent _Nature Communications_ article.

The twin discoveries started, they say, when they began looking for a solution to a well-known problem in the world of solar cells. Solar cells capture photons from sunlight in order to convert them into electricity. The thicker the layer of silicon in the cell, the more light it can absorb, and the more electricity it can ultimately produce. But the sheer expense of silicon has become a barrier to solar cost-effectiveness.

So the Stanford engineers figured out how to create a very thin layer of silicon that could absorb as many photons as a much thicker layer of the costly material. Specifically, rather than laying the silicon flat, they nanotextured the surface of the silicon in a way that created more opportunities for light particles to be absorbed. Their technique increased photon absorption rates for the nanotextured solar cells compared to traditional thin silicon cells, making more cost-effective use of the material.

Then came the surprise. After the researchers shared these efficiency figures, engineers working on autonomous vehicles began asking whether this texturing technique could help them get more accurate results from a collision-avoidance technology called LIDAR, which is conceptually like sonar except that it uses light rather than sound waves to detect objects in the car’s travel path.

LIDAR works by sending out laser pulses and calculating the time it takes for the photons to bounce back. The autonomous car engineers understood that current photon detectors use thick layers of silicon to make sure they capture enough photons to accurately map the terrain ahead. They wondered if texturing a thin layer of silicon, much like on the solar cells, would lead to more accurate maps than the current thin silicon.

Indeed, in their new paper, the Stanford engineers report that their textured silicon can capture as many as three to six times more of the returning photons than today’s LIDAR receivers. They believe this will enable self-driving car engineers to design high-performance, next-generation LIDAR systems that would continuously send out a single laser pulse in all directions. The reflected photons would be captured by an array of textured silicon detectors, creating moment-to-moment maps of pedestrian-filled city crosswalks.

Harris said the texturing technology could also help to solve two other LIDAR snags unique to self-driving cars – potential distortions caused by heat and the machine equivalent of peripheral vision.

The heat problem occurs because the LIDAR laser apparatus can heat up during extended use, causing photon wavelengths to shift slightly. Such shifts could cause light particles to bounce off traditional silicon that is made to absorb specific wavelengths. But the Stanford nanotexturing technology can absorb photons across a broad spectrum, eliminating this heat-shift issue.

With respect to the machine equivalent of peripheral vision, Harris and Zang believe it may be possible to make a flexible version of their nanotextured silicon receptor. Flexibility would allow them to curve the receptor. Between that and the light-trapping advantage of their nanotextured surface, they think it may be possible for LIDAR systems to enlarge the angle of acceptance for photons, in order to more completely identify all potential obstacles.

Harris said he always thought Zang’s texturing technique was a good way to improve solar cells. “But the huge ramp up in autonomous vehicles and LIDAR suddenly made this 100 times more important,” he says.



A new way to improve solar cells can also benefit self-driving cars | School of Engineering | Stanford

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* Scientists call for int'l cooperation in human embryo editing *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-10-06 20:03:00_|_Editor: Zhou Xin_





BEIJING, Oct. 6 (Xinhua) -- A group of scientists are pursuing international cooperation in human embryo editing.

Pei Duanqing with the Guangzhou institute of biomedicine and health of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and nine other scientists published an article in the latest online issue of Stem Cell, a subsidiary of the academic journal Cell, discussing the importance of sharing human embryo editing technology.

In light of recent editing developments, scientists and stakeholders from all nations should cooperate in this historic opportunity for medicine and basic human biology, the article said.

Altering human genomic DNA is not a new concept, but CRISPR methods are game changing. The efficiency and accuracy of CRISPR gene editing uncovers new areas that were previously inaccessible, Pei explained.

The scientists called for an international cooperative structure or consortium to allow problems to be tackled jointly and for data to be analyzed and shared collaboratively.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* China's first double-rotor thermoelectric generator completes test operations *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-10-08 19:52:45_|_Editor: Xiang Bo_





HARBIN, Oct. 8 (Xinhua) -- China's first 350-megawatt double-rotor thermoelectric generator has completed 168 hours of test operations in northeast China.

The generator was produced by Harbin Turbine Company, a branch of Harbin Electric Corporation, one of the largest manufacturers of power plant equipment in China, company sources said Sunday.

It features stronger heating supply capacity and more efficient energy use for its double-rotor design, said Guo Pengfei, a researcher at Harbin Turbine.

After being put into operation, it will be able to replace more than 200 coal-burning boilers.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Alibaba to spend more than U$15bn on technology research with launch of collaborative academy*
E-commerce giant will open seven labs globally as part of project that executive chairman Jack Ma says will also contribute to ‘society and the era’

PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 11 October, 2017, 12:38pm
UPDATED : Wednesday, 11 October, 2017, 12:38pm





Meng Jing 
Sarah Dai

Alibaba Group has pledged to spend more than US$15 billion on research and development over the next three years – a big step-up by the e-commerce juggernaut whose market cap now stands side by side with Amazon.

Through the Alibaba Damo Academy, its first global initiative in technology collaboration, the company aims to bankroll some of the most frontier research, ranging from data intelligence, internet of things and fintech to quantum computing and human-machine interaction.

“We are now looking for talented researchers to join us in the quest for original and disruptive technologies that will ultimately change the world,” Jeff Zhang, the group’s chief technology officer, said during an announcement at the Alibaba Computing Conference, held at the group’s headquarters in Hangzhou, on Wednesday.

Alibaba, which owns the _South China Morning Post_, will open seven research labs along with universities in Beijing, Hangzhou, Singapore, Moscow, San Mateo and Bellevue in the United States and Tel Aviv as part of the project. These will focus on areas that include machine learning, network security, visual computing and natural language processing.

Zhang will head the Damo – or Discovery, Adventure, Momentum and Outlook – Academy, which is looking to recruit 100 talented researchers from around the world.

“The Alibaba Damo Academy will be at the forefront of developing next-generation technology that spurs the growth of Alibaba and its partners,” said Zhang.




The decision comes months after Alibaba’s executive chairman, Jack Ma, vowed to double down on research, figuratively upgrading his team from a workshop making “hand grenades” into one “developing missiles”.

Ma said that thanks to the talent and technology China boasts, the academy is positioned to overtake research facilities built by IBM, Microsoft and Intel as the global leader in technology research.

But rather than seeing the academy as a technology powerhouse driving business growth at Alibaba, Ma said it would also contribute to “society and the era”.

“The technologies development from Damo Academy is expected to serve at least 2 billion consumers around the world and help Alibaba create 100 million jobs worldwide by 2036,” he said.

Ma aims to make Alibaba the world’s fifth-largest economy in the next 20 years. And to reach that goal, the group must build on the continuing development of technological infrastructure, he added.

The move marks a big step up in research spending – the company reported a product development expense of US$2.48 billion in the fiscal year ending in March 2017, a 24 per cent increase from a year ago.

While the group did not disclose overall research costs, payroll and share-based compensation towards development accounted for 11 per cent of total revenue, according to Alibaba’s annual report.

Alibaba briefly overtakes Amazon as world’s most valuable e-commerce merchant

“At its core, Alibaba is a technology company. As recent financial results show, staying ahead of the curve in areas such as artificial intelligence and machine learning has been positive,” said Kirk Boodry, an analyst with the UK-based equity and debt research firm New Street Research.

Alibaba, the operator of the world’s largest online shopping platform, has been driving China’s AI programme together with its two biggest rivals, Baidu and Tencent Holdings, catching up with the US in investing in machine learning and natural language processing.

The Damo Academy announcement comes as the group’s shares rose for eight trading days in New York to a record high, surpassing Amazon at one point on Tuesday to become the world’s biggest e-commerce company by market cap.

“Research and development for internet of things and fintech helps with monetisation and business expansion, whilst spending on quantum computing and human-machine interaction could also be defensive as disruption from these technologies could be higher,” Boodry said.



Alibaba to spend more than U$15bn on technology research with launch of collaborative academy | South China Morning Post

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*China's Arctic expeditions increase to once a year*

2017-10-11 10:27 Xinhua _Editor: Gu Liping_





Shi Xing'an (2nd R, rear), a member of the Chinese scientific expedition team, is welcomed by his son upon his return in Shanghai, east China, Oct. 10, 2017. China's ice breaker, the Xuelong (Snow Dragon) returned to base in Shanghai Tuesday after 83 days on the Arctic rim, completing its eighth Arctic expedition. (Xinhua/Fang Zhe)

China will double the frequency of Arctic expeditions to once a year from this year, the State Oceanic Administration (SOA) announced Tuesday.

China's ice breaker, the Xuelong (Snow Dragon) returned to base in Shanghai Tuesday after 83 days on the Arctic rim, completing its eighth Arctic expedition.

Rapid changes in the Arctic have an influence on climate, ecology, social and economic development in China, Lin Shanqing, deputy director of the SOA, said at a press conference when explaining why the country will increase the Arctic research.

Arctic shipping routes which have been opened by thawing in the region, are significant to China as the economy depends heavily on maritime transport, Lin said.

The routes are the shortest maritime trade connecting northeast Asia with Europe and North America.

"Our polar explorations will help understanding, use and protection of the Arctic," Lin said. "Melting ice in the Arctic, the most vulnerable area to climate change, has been far beyond expectations. Our knowledge is far from sufficient."

http://www.ecns.cn/2017/10-11/276539.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* Researchers develop new approach to efficiently detect liver cancer *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-10-10 01:45:59_|_Editor: yan_





LONDON, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) -- An international team of researchers have developed a new diagnostic and prognosis method for early detection of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), based on a simple blood sample containing circulating tumor DNA, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Materials.

HCC is the most common type of primary liver cancer in adults and among the leading causes of cancer mortality in the world.

Like many cancers, early detection improves prognosis and survival rates, in part due to greater efficacy of localized treatment versus systemic treatments. But current detection methods for HCC primarily rely upon imaging and a blood test for a non-specific tumor marker called alpha-fetoprotein (AFP), which is usually elevated when the disease is significantly advanced.

"Non-invasive blood tests or liquid biopsies present a better alternative," said Kang Zhang, from the University of California San Diego.

Many liquid biopsies work by detecting circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), which are fragments of genetic material shed into the blood by tumor cells.

These biopsies offer several potential advantages over other methods of cancer detection, according to Zhang. They can be done at any time during therapy, allowing physicians to monitor molecular changes in tumors in real-time. They may detect tumors not apparent or indeterminant based upon imaging.

Meanwhile, ctDNA potentially represents the entire molecular picture of a patient's malignancy while a tumor biopsy may be limited to just the tested portion of the tumor.

The new method is developed by researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Moores Cancer Center, with colleagues at Sun Yet-sun University Cancer Center and other collaborating institutions.

"Right now, oncologists are quite limited in how they detect HCC and evaluate treatment. Our study is a great demonstration of proof-of-concept for a new, more effective approach that applies to solid malignancies, HCC and beyond," said Zhang.

Rui-hua Xu, Wei Wei, Michal Krawczyk, Wenqiu Wang, Huiyan Luo, Ken Flagg, Shaohua Yi, William Shi, Qingli Quan, Kang Li, Lianghong Zheng, Heng Zhang, Bennett A. Caughey, Qi Zhao, Jiayi Hou, Runze Zhang, Yanxin Xu, Huimin Cai, Gen Li, Rui Hou, Zheng Zhong, Danni Lin, Xin Fu, Jie Zhu, Yaou Duan, Meixing Yu, Binwu Ying, Wengeng Zhang, Juan Wang, Edward Zhang, Charlotte Zhang, Oulan Li, Rongping Guo, Hannah Carter, Jian-kang Zhu, Xiaoke Hao & Kang Zhang. *Circulating tumour DNA methylation markers for diagnosis and prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma*. _Nature Materials_ (2017). DOI: 10.1038/nmat4997​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*Better test developed to detect liver cancer*

2017-10-12 10:21 China Daily _Editor: Wang Zihao_

Scientists in China have identified DNA markers specific to liver cancer, which is expected to greatly improve accuracy in diagnosis of one of the most common cancers in China.

Using the new technology, doctors can provide a diagnosis and prognosis to patients with liver cancer through simple blood tests. That could decrease the chances of a misdiagnosis by more than half, according to Xu Ruihua, director of the Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, who has led the research.

After five years of research, involving over 100 researchers from different institutes, the scientists identified methylation in DNA circulating in the blood that is related to liver cancer. Methylation, like genetic mutation, is an abnormal genetic change that can cause cancer, Xu said.

Using samples of circulatory system DNA from a large group of 1,098 liver cancer patients and 835 healthy people for comparison, they constructed a diagnostic prediction model that showed high diagnostic specificity and sensitivity, Xu said in the study, which was published in Nature Materials, a science journal, on Monday.

Liver cancer is one of the most common cancers in China. The number of new cases reached 466,000 in 2015, and the cancer caused 422,000 deaths that year, according to the center, accounting for more than half of the world's liver cancer cases and deaths.

Currently, a method that is often used for diagnosis of early-stage liver cancer is to check the level of alpha fetoprotein, which normally remains at very low level in the blood but increases significantly in many liver cancer patients.

But the method is ineffective for 40 percent of those who have liver cancer, and 20 percent of patients with no liver cancer are diagnosed as having the disease because rising alpha fetoprotein levels can also be caused by factors such as pregnancy and hepatitis, Xu said.

But using the new method, about 85 percent of cancer patients can be diagnosed and only about 7 percent of patients are misdiagnosed, he said.

The new method is more accurate and much simpler and does not require other tests such as a liver biopsy, Xu said.

The center has developed tests for liver cancer based on the research, and they will be used on people with a high risk of the disease at Sun Yat-sen University's Cancer Hospital, he said.

The tests are expected to be widely available for clinical use by the end of the year, he said.

Zhu Jiye, a professor of liver diseases at Peking University, said the new findings represent progress in the early diagnosis of liver cancer, but he thinks more research is needed before it significantly improves diagnosis of liver cancer in clinical practice.

"We recommend that people with a higher risk of liver cancers go to the hospital for screening regularly for early diagnosis and treatment," he said.

A doctor at Beijing Friendship Hospital who specializes in liver disease treatment, who asked to remain anonymous, said that worldwide, several methods are used in testing and screening for liver cancer, including blood tests, ultrasound and computed tomography scans.

"Most liver cancer patients are diagnosed only when at late stages in China, and the major reason is they ignore their condition and fail to come to hospitals for regular tests," he said. "We suggest patients with a high risk to go to hospitals every six months for early diagnosis and treatment."

http://www.ecns.cn/2017/10-12/276746.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* Quantum computing cloud platform released in China *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-10-11 23:54:57_|_Editor: Yamei_







Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma speaks during the opening ceremony of "The Computing Conference 2017" in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, Oct. 11, 2017. The four-day conference kicked off here on Wednesday, attracting guests from 67 countries and regions. (Xinhua/Huang Zongzhi) 

HANGZHOU, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) research institute and Aliyun, Alibaba's cloud computing subsidiary, have released a cloud platform for quantum computing.

The platform was announced online by Aliyun and the CAS innovative center for quantum information and quantum physics (Shanghai) at a cloud computing conference Wednesday in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province, where Alibaba is based.

The platform will offer users a development and testing environment for cloud-based quantum algorithms.

Pan Jianwei, lead scientist of China's quantum experiments at space scale and a member of the academy, said the platform would help industrialize quantum computing.

"If a classic computer is compared to a bicycle in computation speed, a quantum computer is like a jet," said Pan.

Cooperation between CAS and Aliyun dates back to July 2015, when a quantum computing laboratory was launched. In May 2017, the world's first prototype quantum computer was developed by the laboratory and two Chinese universities.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Han Patriot

JSCh said:


> * Quantum computing cloud platform released in China *
> _ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-10-11 23:54:57_|_Editor: Yamei_
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma speaks during the opening ceremony of "The Computing Conference 2017" in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, Oct. 11, 2017. The four-day conference kicked off here on Wednesday, attracting guests from 67 countries and regions. (Xinhua/Huang Zongzhi)
> 
> HANGZHOU, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) research institute and Aliyun, Alibaba's cloud computing subsidiary, have released a cloud platform for quantum computing.
> 
> The platform was announced online by Aliyun and the CAS innovative center for quantum information and quantum physics (Shanghai) at a cloud computing conference Wednesday in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province, where Alibaba is based.
> 
> The platform will offer users a development and testing environment for cloud-based quantum algorithms.
> 
> Pan Jianwei, lead scientist of China's quantum experiments at space scale and a member of the academy, said the platform would help industrialize quantum computing.
> 
> "If a classic computer is compared to a bicycle in computation speed, a quantum computer is like a jet," said Pan.
> 
> Cooperation between CAS and Aliyun dates back to July 2015, when a quantum computing laboratory was launched. In May 2017, the world's first prototype quantum computer was developed by the laboratory and two Chinese universities.


INDIAAAAAAAAAA, Where are you? Smartest, bestest, supa powa in the world with a billion geniuses.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Researchers implement entanglement swapping with independent sources over 100km optical fiber*
October 12, 2017



Scheme of the entanglement swapping experiment. Credit: ZHANG Qiang

A group of scientists led by Prof. Zhang Qiang and Pan Jianwei from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) have successfully demonstrated entanglement swapping with two independent sources 12.5 km apart using 103 km optical fiber.

Realizing long-distance entanglement swapping with independent sources under real-world conditions is important for both future quantum networks and the fundamental study of quantum theory.

However, due to its high susceptibility to environmental effects, demonstration of the principle had previously been achieved over only a few tens of kilometers of underground optical fiber, and there had been no report of implementation using optical fiber longer than 100 km or using suspended optical fiber.

To increase the experimental distance, USTC scientists exploited two independent 1 GHz-clock sequential time-bin entangled photon-pair sources, developed several automatic stability controls, and successfully implemented a field test of entanglement swapping over a 103 km optical fiber link composed of about 77 km of optical fiber inside the lab, 25 km of optical fiber outside the lab but kept underground, and 1 km of optical fiber suspended in the air outside the lab to account for various types of noise mechanisms in the real world.

The team has increased the length of optical fiber from metropolitan distance to inter-city distance. It is worth noting that suspended optical fiber was used in the experiment. The loss and stability of the optical fiber channel in the experiment was enough to match that of typical underground deployed optical fiber more than 100 km in length.

To increase the event rate, the scientists updated the sources to 1 GHz sequential time-bin entangled photon-pair sources. In addition, they improved the polarization and delay compensation system. The work was published in _Optica_ and titled "Entanglement swapping over 100 km optical fiber with independent entangled photon-pair sources."

The setup of this experiment provides a promising platform for many fundamental tests in the future. The configuration of the experiment allows the space-like separation between any two measurements of distance as performed in the experiments, and various time-space relations can be achieved by combining both coiled optical fiber and deployed optical fiber.

The results show that realizing entanglement swapping between two cities is technically feasible, even if more suspended fiber is used.

The experiment also verifies the feasibility of such technologies for long distance quantum networks and opens up new possibilities for future applications in more complicated environments.

As Hoi-Kwong Lo, associate editor of _Optica_, said, "Entanglement swapping over long distances is a crucial ingredient for quantum networks in optical fiber. The paper provides important details about the synchronization of the sources, the stabilization of the optical distance, and polarization."

*
More information:* Qi-Chao Sun et al, Entanglement swapping over 100 km optical fiber with independent entangled photon-pair sources, _Optica_ (2017). DOI: 10.1364/OPTICA.4.001214



https://phys.org/news/2017-10-entanglement-swapping-independent-sources-100km.html

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 12-Oct-2017
* Scientists discover more than 600 new periodic orbits of the famous three body problem *
Science China Press
https://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub/152983.php


This is a brief overview of the six newly-found families of periodic three-body orbits. Blue line: orbit of Body-1; red line: orbit of Body-2; black line: orbit of Body-3
Credit: ©Science China Press

The famous three-body problem can be traced back to Isaac Newton in 1680s, thereafter Lagrange, Euler, Poincare and so on. Studies on the three-body problem leaded to the discovery of the so-called sensitivity dependence of initial condition (SDIC) of chaotic dynamic system. Nowadays, the chaotic dynamics is widely regarded as the third great scientific revolution in physics in 20th century, comparable to the relativity and the quantum mechanics. Thus, the studies on three-body problem have very important scientific meanings.

Poincare in 1890 revealed that trajectories of three-body systems are commonly non-periodic, i.e. not repeating. This can explain why it is so hard to gain periodic orbits of three-body system. In the 300 years since three-body problem was first recognized, only three families of periodic orbits had been found, until 2013 when Suvakov and Dmitrasinovic [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 114301 (2013)] made a breakthrough to numerically find 13 new distinct periodic orbits, which belong to 11 new families of Newtonian planar three-body problem with equal mass and zero angular momentum (see http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013...-whopping-13-new-solutions-three-body-problem). Currently, two scientists, XiaoMing Li and ShiJun Liao at Shanghai Jiaotong University, China, successfully gained 695 families of periodic orbits of the above-mentioned Newtonian planar three-body system by means of national supercomputer TH-2 at Guangzhou, China, which are published online via SCIENCE CHINA-Physics Mechanics Astronomy, 2017, Vol. 60, No. 12: 129511. The movies of these orbits are given on the website http://numericaltank.sjtu.edu.cn/three-body/three-body.htm

These 695 periodic orbits include the well-known figure-eight family found by Moore in 1993, the 11 families found by Suvakov and Dmitrasinovic in 2013, and especially more than 600 new families that have never been reported. The two scientists used the so-called "Clean Numerical Simulation (CNS)", a new numerical strategy for reliable simulations of chaotic dynamic systems proposed by the second author in 2009, which is based on high enough order of Taylor series and multiple precision data with many enough significant digits, plus a convergence/reliability check. The CNS can reduce truncation error and round-off error so greatly that numerical noises are negligible in a long enough interval of time, thus more periodic orbits of the three-body system can be gained.

As pointed out by Montgomery in 1998, each periodic orbit in real space of the three-body system corresponds to a closed curve on the so-called "shape sphere", which is characterized by its topology using the so-called "free group element". The averaged period of an orbit is equal to the period of the orbit divided by the length of the corresponding free group element. These 695 families suggest that there should exist the quasi Kepler's third law: the square of the average period times the cube of the total kinetic and potential energy approximately equals to a constant. The generalized Kepler's third law reveals that the three-body system has something in common, which might deepen our understandings and enrich our knowledges about three-body system.

"The discovery of the more than 600 new periodic orbits is mainly due to the advance in computer science and the use of the new strategy of numerical simulation for chaotic dynamic systems, namely the CNS", spoke the two scientists. It should be emphasized that 243 more new periodic orbits of the three-body system are found by means of the CNS. In other words, if traditional algorithms in double precision were used, about 40% new periodic orbits would be lost. This indicates the novelty and originality of the Clean Numerical Simulation (CNS), since any new methods must bring something completely new/different.

As shown in Figure 1, many pictures of these newly-found periodic orbits of the three-body system are beautiful and elegant, like modern paintings. "We are shocked and captivated by the perfect of them", spoke the two scientists.

###​
See the article:

XiaoMing Li, and ShiJun Liao, More than six hundred new families of Newtonian periodic planar collisionless three-body orbits, _Sci. China-Phys. Mech. Astron._ 60, 129511 (2017), doi: 10.1007/s11433-017-9078-5 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11433-017-9078-5


Scientists discover more than 600 new periodic orbits of the famous three body problem | EurekAlert! Science News

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Haowen Tong​DNA was analyzed from a partial skeleton of a 40,000-year-old human found at Tianyuan Cave. 

*Was this ancient person from China the offspring of modern humans and Neandertals?*
By Ann Gibbons
Oct. 12, 2017 , 12:00 PM

When scientists excavated a 40,000-year-old skeleton in China in 2003, they thought they had discovered the offspring of a Neandertal and a modern human. But ancient DNA now reveals that the “Tianyuan Man” has only traces of Neandertal DNA and none detectable from another type of extinct human known as a Denisovan. Instead, he was a full-fledged member of our species, _Homo sapiens,_ and a distant relative of people who today live in East Asia and South America. The work could help scientists retrace some of the earliest steps of human migration.

“The paper is very exciting because it is the first genome to fill a really big gap, both geographically and temporally, in East Asia,” says paleogeneticist Pontus Skoglund of Harvard Medical School in Boston, who was not involved in the work.

The first modern humans arose in Africa about 300,000 years ago. By 60,000 years ago, a subset swept out of Africa and mated with Neandertals, perhaps in the Middle East. After that, they spread around the world—DNA from ancient humans in Europe, western Asia, and the Americas has revealed the identity of those early migrants and whether they were related to people living today, especially in Europe. But the trail grows cold in eastern Asia, where warmer climates have made it hard to get ancient DNA from fossils.

The new genome sheds some light on those missing years. In the first genome-wide study of an ancient East Asian, researchers led by Qiaomei Fu, a paleogeneticist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, extracted DNA from the thighbone of the Tianyuan Man—so named because he was found in Tianyuan Cave, 56 kilometers southwest of Beijing.

The team calculated that the Tianyuan Man inherited about as much Neandertal DNA—4% to 5%—as ancient Europeans and Asians of similar age. That’s a bit higher than the 1.8% to 2.6% of Neandertal DNA in living Europeans and Asians. The Tianyuan Man did not have any detectable DNA from Denisovans, an elusive cousin of Neandertals known only from their DNA extracted from a few teeth and small bones from a Siberian cave and from traces of their DNA that can still be found in people in Melanesia—where they got it is a major mystery.

A big surprise is that the Tianyuan Man shares DNA with one ancient European—a 35,000-year-old modern human from Goyet Caves in Belgium. But he doesn’t share it with other ancient humans who lived at roughly the same time in Romania and Siberia—or with living Europeans. But the Tianyuan Man _is_ most closely related to living people in east Asia—including in China, Japan, and the Koreas—and in Southeast Asia, including Papua New Guinea and Australia.

All of this suggests that the Tianyuan Man was not a direct ancestor, but rather a distant cousin, of a founding population in Asia that gave rise to present-day Asians, Fu’s team reports today in Current Biology. It also shows that these ancient “populations moved around a lot and intermixed,” says paleoanthropologist Erik Trinkaus of Washington University in St. Louis in Missouri, who is not a co-author.

And some left offspring whereas others did not. “I find it interesting that … some of the early modern colonizers of Eurasia were successful while others were not,” says co-author Svante Pääbo, a paleogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

The Tianyuan Man also was a distant relative of Native Americans living today in the Amazon of South America, such as the Karitiana and Surui peoples of Brazil and the Chane people of northern Argentina and southern Bolivia. They inherited about 9% to 15% of their DNA from an ancestral population in Asia that also gave rise to the Tianyuan Man. But he is not an ancestor to ancient or living Native Americans in North America, which suggests there were two different source populations in Asia for Native Americans.

This is welcome news to Skoglund, who found in a separate study in 2015 that the Karitiana and Surui peoples are closely related to indigenous Australians, New Guineans, and Andaman Islanders. At the time, he predicted that they came from the same “ghost” source population in Asia, which was separate from another Asian population that gave rise to Native Americans in North America. “It’s fascinating that a prediction of a ‘ghost population’ based on modern-day populations alone can be confirmed in this way,” he says.


doi:10.1126/science.aar1993

Was this ancient person from China the offspring of modern humans and Neandertals? | Science | AAAS

Melinda A. Yang, Xing Gao, Christoph Theunert, Haowen Tong, Ayinuer Aximu-Petri, Birgit Nickel, Montgomery Slatkin, Matthias Meyer, Svante Pääbo, Janet Kelso, Qiaomei Fu. *40,000-Year-Old Individual from Asia Provides Insight into Early Population Structure in Eurasia*. _Current Biology_ (2017). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2017.09.030​#####​In Mandarin,

四万年前北京人DNA成功提取测序：第一个中国古人类基因组_绿政公署_澎湃新闻-The Paper​#####​*Genome-wide Data from a 40,000-year-old Man in China Reveals Complicated Genetic History of Asia  *
Oct 13, 2017

The biological makeup of humans in East Asia is shaping up to be a very complex story, with greater diversity and more distant contacts than previously known, according to a new study in Current Biology analyzing the genome of a man that died in the Tianyuan Cave near Beijing, China 40,000 years ago. His bones had enough DNA molecules left that a team led by Professor FU Qiaomei, at the Molecular Paleontology Lab at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP), could use advanced ancient DNA sequencing techniques to retrieve DNA from him that spans the human genome.

Though several ancient humans have been sequenced in Europe and Siberia, few have been sequenced from East Asia, particularly China, where the archaeological record shows a rich history for early modern humans. This new study on the Tianyuan man marks the earliest ancient DNA from East Asia, and the first ancient genome-wide data from China. 

The Tianyuan man was studied in 2013 by the same lab. Then, they found that he showed a closer relationship to present-day Asians than present-day Europeans, suggesting present-day Asian history in the region extends as far back as 40,000 years ago. With new molecular techniques only published in the last two years, Professor FU and her team, in a joint collaboration with experts at the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology and UC Berkeley, sequenced and analyzed more regions of the genome, particularly at positions also sequenced in other ancient humans. 

Since 2013, DNA generated from ancient Europeans has shown that all present-day Europeans derive some of their population history from a prehistoric population that separated from other early non-African populations soon after the migration out of Africa. The mixed ancestry of present-day Europeans could bias tests of genetic similarity, including the results found for the Tianyuan man. With the newly published data, however, the Fu lab showed that his genetic similarity to Asians remained in comparisons including ancient Europeans without mixed ancestry. They confirmed that the closest relationship he shares is with present-day Asians. That was not, however, the most exciting result they found.

With a close relationship to present-day Asians, they expected him to act similarly to present-day Asian populations with respect to Europeans. It was a surprise when they found that a 35,000-year-old individual from Belgium, GoyetQ116-1, who in other ways behaved as an ancient European, shared some genetic similarity to the Tianyuan individual that no other ancient Europeans shared. It is unlikely that this is due to direct interactions between populations near the east and west coasts of Eurasia, since other ancient Europeans do not show a similar result. Instead, the researchers suggested that the two populations represented by the Tianyuan and GoyetQ116-1 individuals derived some of their ancestry from the same sub-population prior to the European-Asian separation. The genetic relationship observed between these two ancient individuals is direct evidence that European and Asian populations have a complex history.

A second unexpected result shed some light on human genetic diversity in prehistoric East Asia. In 2015, a study comparing present-day populations in Asia, the Pacific and the Americas showed that some Native American populations from South America had an unusual connection to some populations south of mainland Asia, most notably the Melanesian Papuan and the Andamanese Onge. That study proposed that the population that crossed into the Americas around 20,000 years ago could not be thought of as a single unit. Instead, one or more related but distinct populations crossed at around the same time period, and at least one of these groups had additional ties to an Asian population that also contributed to the present-day Papuan and Onge.

No trace of this connection is observed in present-day East Asians and Siberians, but unlike them, the Tianyuan man also possesses genetic similarities to the same South Americans, in a pattern similar to that found for the Papuan and Onge. The new study directly confirms that the multiple ancestries represented in Native Americans were all from populations in mainland Asia. What is intriguing, however, is that the migration to the Americas occurred approximately 20,000 years ago, but the Tianyuan individual is twice that age. Thus, the population diversity represented in the Americas must have persisted in mainland Asia in two or more distinct populations since 40,000 years ago.

The Tianyuan man is only one individual, but the deeper sequencing of his genome by Professor FU and her team reveals a complicated separation for ancient Europeans and Asians and hints at a diverse genetic landscape for humans in East Asia. Their study also showed that he derives from a population that is related to present-day East Asians, but is not directly ancestral to these populations, further suggesting that multiple genetically distinct populations were located in Asia from 40,000 years ago until the present.

The Tianyuan man shows us that between 40,000 years ago and the present, there are many unanswered questions about the past populations of Asia, and ancient DNA will be the key solving those questions.

This research was supported in part by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.



Fig. 2 Graphical Abstract highlighting major relationships for the Tianyuan man and other individuals and populations (Image by FU Qiaomei) 
*

*
Genome-wide Data from a 40,000-year-old Man in China Reveals Complicated Genetic History of Asia---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Water-repellent coatings could make de-icing a breeze*
_Coatings that force ice to grow upwards from the surface could make it easier to remove._

Mark Zastrow
09 October 2017


Wang et al., DOI 10.1073/pnas.1712829114
Ice growth on hydrophillic (top layer) and hydrophobic surfaces

When water droplets suspended in the air freeze, they generate snowflakes — ice crystals with six-fold symmetry. But when ice grows along a solid surface, like frost growing on windows, it can take on an almost infinite range of different shapes.

These crystalline patterns are affected by whether a surface repels or absorbs water, says a team led by chemists Jie Liu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Chemistry in Beijing and Chongqin Zhu of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. The researchers showed that when a surface tends to repel water, ice crystals can be cultivated to grow away from the surface at an angle, resembling a clover with six leaves.

The work was published on 9 October in the _Proceedings of the National Academies of Science_1.

*Clover crystals*
Using a high-speed camera attached to a microscope, the team captured imagery of ice forming on aluminium that had been covered with a hydrophobic, or water-repellent, coating. Water drops sprayed on the surface remained taut and spherical instead of spreading out.

The researchers triggered ice formation across the entire surface by spraying it with silver iodide nanoparticles, which acted as seeds for ice growth. As the ice developed, the crystals grew outwards and up from the nanoparticle, forming a symmetrical, six-leafed clover with only a single point of contact with the surface.

On hydrophilic, or absorbant, surfaces, water spread out quickly, and so did ice — forming a sunflower-shaped crystal in full contact with the surface.

And, when the team prepared a hybrid surface with both hydrophilic and hydrophobic parts, ice spreading on the hydrophilic side came to a halt at the boundary with the hydrophobic side.

The researchers also observed that the clover-like ice crystals growing away from a hydrophobic surface could be removed by wind more easily than crystals on a hydrophilic surface.

They suggest that this could be exploited to make surfaces such as car windscreens more resistant to icing by embedding nanoparticles inside them. “The key is to have these stable ice-nucleation sites,” says Jianjun Wang, a materials scientist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Chemistry and a co-author of the paper.

doi:10.1038/nature.2017.22790
*
References*
Liu, J. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1712829114 (2017).​
Water-repellent coatings could make de-icing a breeze : Nature News & Comment

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Armed Gut Bacteria in Mosquitoes: a New Weapon of Fighting Malaria*
Oct 13, 2017

Malaria, one of the most devastating infectious diseases worldwide, is caused by _Plasmodium_ parasites that are transmitted through the bite of infected female anopheline mosquitoes. Current approaches for controlling malaria include vector control and anti-malarial drugs.

Evidently, with the increasing resistance of malaria parasites to drugs and of mosquitoes to insecticides, the solutions are not sufficient for malaria control, and new weapons are urgently needed. A new approach being considered is not to kill the mosquito, but instead to convert it into an ineffective malaria vector.

Previous studies have shown great promise of a new strategy, paratransgenesis, involving the use of genetically modified mosquito symbiotic bacteria to deliver anti-_Plasmodium_ effector molecules to mosquitoes. However, a major unresolved challenge still remains to devise means to spread such bacteria throughout mosquito populations.

Recently, a joint research team led by Prof. WANG Sibao at Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Prof. Marcelo Jacobs-Lorena at Johns Hopkins University, has developed a promising way to stop mosquitoes spreading malaria. The study was published in _Science_.

In this study, researchers identified a new bacterium strain (AS1) of the genus _Serratia_ isolated from _Anopheles_ ovaries. _Serratia_ AS1 fed to adult mosquitoes stably colonizes the mosquito midgut, crosses the midgut epithelium and colonizes reproductive organs (ovaries and accessory glands). When fed to male mosquitoes, AS1 bacteria colonized their accessory glands, and were venereally transmitted from males to females via mating. Moreover, _Serratia_ AS1 is vertically transmitted from female to larval progeny via attaching to laid eggs, primarily on the chorion ridges and floats. These bacteria propagated in the water and were ingested by the larvae that hatch from these eggs.

The results demonstrated that this bacterium can spread rapidly throughout mosquito populations, and persist for subsequent multiple generations. Moreover, _Serratia_ AS1 can be genetically manipulated for secretion of anti-_Plasmodium_ effector molecules by use of the _Serratia_ HasA (heme-binding protein) exporting system, and the recombinant strains strongly inhibit development of the human malaria parasite _Plasmodium falciparum_ in mosquitoes, but do not have an obvious negative impact on mosquito longevity or fecundity and fertility.

Therefore, _Serratia _AS1 makes it possible to develop a powerful tool for driving mosquito refractoriness to _Plasmodium _infection in the field, and thus provides means to translate the bench findings to the field application. This study not only contribute to malaria combating, but also help come up with new ideas for prevention and control of other mosquito-borne diseases and plant diseases.

This study was supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Nature Science Foundation of China, and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of USA.


Armed Gut Bacteria in Mosquitoes: a New Weapon of Fighting Malaria---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Sibao Wang, André L. A. Dos-Santos, Wei Huang, Kun Connie Liu, Mohammad Ali Oshaghi, Ge Wei, Peter Agre, Marcelo Jacobs-Lorena. *Driving mosquito refractoriness to Plasmodium falciparum with engineered symbiotic bacteria*. _Science _(2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aan5478​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* China announces new gravitational wave observation *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-10-17 00:52:38_|_Editor: Mu Xuequan_







Wang Lifan, director of the Chinese Center for Antarctic Astronomy, speaks at a press conference at the Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing, east China's Jiangsu Province, Oct. 16, 2017. Chinese scientists on Monday announced observation of the "optical counterpart" of gravitational waves coming from the merger of two binary neutron stars using a survey telescope in Antarctica. The gravitational waves were first discovered by the U.S.-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors on Aug. 17. The Chinese telescope independently observed optical signals resulting from the merger the next day, according to the Chinese Center for Antarctic Astronomy. It was the first time humans have detected gravitational waves and the corresponding electromagnetic phenomena resulting from a binary neutron star merger. (Xinhua/Li Xiang)

NANJING, Oct. 16 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists on Monday announced observation of the "optical counterpart" of gravitational waves coming from the merger of two binary neutron stars using a survey telescope in Antarctica.

The gravitational waves were first discovered by the U.S.-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors on Aug. 17. The Chinese telescope independently observed optical signals resulting from the merger the next day, among some 70 telescopes on the ground or from space across the world, according to the Chinese Center for Antarctic Astronomy.

It was the first time humans have detected gravitational waves and the corresponding electromagnetic phenomena resulting from a binary neutron star merger.

Data exclusively collected by the Chinese detector has led to a preliminary estimate of the ejecta parameters, according to Wang Lifan, director of the center.

The merging process ejected radioactive material with more than 3,000 times the mass of the Earth at a speed of up to 30 percent the speed of light, Wang said.

A merger of black holes with an extremely strong gravitational field can not generate ejecta or electromagnetic phenomena, according to Wu Xuefeng, a researcher with the Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

However, the collision of binary neutron stars is accompanied by a series of electromagnetic phenomena that are crucial to research in origins of heavy elements like platinum and gold.

"The crash of binary neutron stars is like a gigantic gold factory in the universe," said Jin Zhiping, an associate researcher with the observatory and a member of an international team that analyzed optical signals.

The host galaxy of the incident is located about 130 million light years from the Earth.

In 2015, LIGO detectors confirmed the existence of gravitational waves produced during the merger of two black holes, which were predicted by Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity 100 years ago.

So far, LIGO and its partners have discovered four cases of gravitational waves coming from mergers of two black holes.

The Chinese telescope is a catadioptric optical telescope with an entrance pupil diameter of 500 mm. Its unique location allows for continuous observations lasting longer than 24 hours during the austral winter.

China's first X-ray astronomical satellite, a Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope named Insight, also contributed to the detection.

Only two months after its launch, the satellite successfully monitored the space where the incident occurred.

Chinese scientists forecast that the next achievement in observation might be gravitational waves coming from the merger of a binary neutron star and a black hole.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* Backgrounder: 10 facts about gravitation waves from neutron star merger *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-10-17 05:54:12_|_Editor: ZD_







Image made by Caltech and NASA shows the UV/IR/Radio discovery of neutron star merger in NGC 4993. Scientists announced Monday that they have for the first time detected the ripples in space and time known as gravitational waves as well as light from a spectacular collision of two neutron stars. (Xinhua/Robert Hurt of Caltech, Mansi Kasliwal of Caltech, Gregg Hallinan of Caltech, Phil Evans of NASA and the GROWTH collaboration)

WASHINGTON, Oct. 16 (Xinhua) -- Scientists announced Monday that they have for the first time detected the ripples in space and time known as gravitational waves as well as light from a spectacular collision of two neutron stars.

Here are 10 key facts about the event known as GW170817, which triggered an international effort to observe the massive explosion that resulted from the collision.

1. For the first time, telescopes and gravitational wave observatories together witnessed the same astronomical event.

Telescopes observing across the gamma-ray, X-ray, optical, infrared, and radio spectra confirmed the source of GW170817 after its observation by twin detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO).

2. This is the first time gravitational waves from the merger of binary neutron stars have been observed.

3. This observation is the first to definitively identify binary neutron star collisions as a source of short gamma-ray bursts. Theorized for many years, this is the first direct link between those phenomena.

4. This discovery is the first verification of a "kilonova" explosion, confirming binary neutron star collisions as one source for the universe's heaviest elements, such as gold and uranium.

5. This is the first binary neutron star pair confirmed outside of our own Milky Way galaxy, and this is the closest to Earth that astronomers have been seen a gamma ray burst.

6. The gravitational wave signals from GW170817 have enabled scientists to measure the expansion rate of the universe in a completely new way.

7. The partnership between LIGO and Italy-based Virgo allowed telescopes to rapidly turn their attention towards the area of sky where the neutron stars collided.

These telescopes identified the source as galaxy NGC4993, which is located 130 million light years from Earth in the constellation Hydra.

8. This event presents the strongest evidence to date for the detection of a gamma-ray burst off-axis, which means the cone emission from the explosion is not pointed directly at Earth.

9. The gravitational waves and light waves arrived within seconds of each other, suggesting they may travel at the same speed and confirming a prediction of Albert Einstein. The difference in detection time is likely a reflection of what happens during the explosion process.

10. Only gravitational wave observatories can directly detect unexploded binary neutron stars outside of our local galactic neighborhood, or directly observe the stars pre-collison, albeit only briefly before impact.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## TaiShang

*China sees nuclear advance*
By Huang Ge Source:Global Times Published: 2017/10/16 

*Faster growth expected as global recognition grows*






Engineers install parts of the first nuclear power plant using Hualong One technology in Fuqing, East China's Fujian Province in May. Photo: VCG

China's nuclear power industry has moved into a new phase over the last five years, with the country strengthening efforts to develop independent technology through innovation while also improving safety standards, experts said on Monday.

*The number of nuclear power plants that are in operation in the Chinese mainland has reached 36, ranking fourth globally, and China's total installed capacity of nuclear power is 56.9 million kilowatts, according to a report by news.cctv.com in August.*

*Also, 20 nuclear power plants are under construction in the mainland and 10 of them have adopted China-designed third-generation nuclear power technology*, the report noted.

*In the 2012-17 period, nuclear power projects built in China accounted for more than 90 percent of the world's new project construction in the nuclear sector*, Lin Boqiang, director of the China Center for Energy Economics Research at Xiamen University, told the Global Times on Monday.

*Technology breakthrough
*
"China's nuclear power technology has achieved comprehensive development in the past five years and has risen to the highest global level," said Han Xiaoping, chief analyst at energy website china5e.com. 

Han told the Global Times on Monday that the independent development and research going into the third-generation reactor technology, or Hualong One technology, could represent the future of the global nuclear power industry.

*The construction of China's first pilot nuclear power project using Hualong One technology was completed in May, and Hualong One is already building influence in the global market.*

The containment dome for the K2 project of Pakistan's Karachi nuclear power plant using Hualong One was successfully installed on Friday, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission said in a post on its website on Monday.

Chinese nuclear power technologies and investment are now sought after by countries and regions across the globe that are considering low-carbon alternatives to coal, experts said.

Apart from Pakistan, China's nuclear power industry has seen growth in countries like the UK and Argentina, according to Han.

China General Nuclear Power Corp (CGN) announced In September 2016 that it had signed the final agreements for the Hinkley Point C project in the UK with French energy company EDF and the British government. CGN will fund one-third of the project in return for the chance to build its own design of reactor at another plant in the UK at Bradwell in Essex.

"The cooperation with the UK will boost global recognition of China's nuclear power technology, which will be widely accepted by other countries and regions," said Han.

In order to expand its presence in overseas markets, China's nuclear power industry is expected to further develop its independent technology, and cooperation with countries and regions in the Belt and Road initiative will have great growth potential, said Lin.

The sector is also faced with challenges in going global, as nuclear power projects are capital intensive and the industry is often affected by political issues in some markets, Lin said.

*Faster growth*

China attached greater importance to industrial safety after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011, and new laws and rules have been unveiled to guarantee the safety of the country's nuclear power sector, experts said.

In October 2016, the government announced the drafting of the China nuclear power safety laws, and laws about atomic energy are also being discussed, according to media reports.

After the Fukushima disaster, China reexamined the nuclear power projects that were under construction on the basis of the new safety standards, Han said. "In the next five years, China's nuclear power sector will put more focus on safety and efficiency." 

The domestic nuclear power sector will see faster growth in the next five years compared with the previous period, Lin forecast, saying that the reduction of overcapacity in the coal power sector and technological progress will be the major driving forces.

Han said that the rapid growth of the nuclear industry will change the power generation model in China as well as help the Chinese market reduce its dependence on coal.

Nuclear power reached a record high of 3.9 percent of China's total power generation in the first half of this year, the news.cctv.com report said. Experts said the percentage will increase in the future.

http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1070579.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## TaiShang

*China gains ground in ranking of research*
China Daily, October 18, 2017

Academic research papers from China garner the second most worldwide citations, after those from the United States but ahead of those from the United Kingdom, according to a new study.

The analysis was conducted by Amsterdam-based information and analytics company Elsevier and commissioned by the UK's Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

Citations are the way in which scholars give credit to other researchers and acknowledge their ideas. They indicate how seriously research is taken by other scientists.

*Elsevier assessed the performance of the UK's research base between 2010 and 2014 and compared it with seven other countries: China, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US.*

The analysis found that *in 2014, research papers originating in China accounted for 18.1 percent of all citations, a sharp increase from the 11 percent it had in 2010.*

In comparison,* the UK's share in 2014 was 10.7 percent, which was slightly down from the 11 percent they garnered in 2010. The US saw its share slip from 39.4 percent in 2010 to 35 percent in 2014.*

*In 2014, China accounted for 19.6 percent of the world's most heavily cited articles, while the UK produced 15.2 percent.*

The report said: "The global research landscape in recent years has become increasingly complex and fluid, and it can only become more so as emerging research nations grow their research bases."

Authors said the UK and other research-intensive nations are seeing their global shares in key research indicators eroded by emerging countries, "especially by China".

"As China and other rising research nations succeed in their desire to emulate and even surpass the research performance of countries like the US and the UK, their shares will naturally become larger while the erstwhile powerhouses see theirs shrink," the report said.

http://www.china.org.cn/china/2017-10/18/content_41751423.htm

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*Domestic steam generator headed for nuclear power plant*

2017-10-18 14:06 

Xinhua _Editor: Gu Liping_

*A cutting-edge domestic steam generator Tuesday departed for the first demonstration nuclear power project using Hualong One technology, a domestically developed third-generation reactor design.*

The *Hualong One ZH-65* steam generator has a life span of 60 years with lower outlet humidity and a higher power-weight ratio than previous technology.

"The generator has demonstrated China's latest nuclear power equipment manufacturing technology," said Zeng Xianmao, chairman and general manager with the Dongfang Electric (Guangzhou) Heavy Machinery, producer of the generator.

The generator was developed by a team led by Zhang Fuyuan, chief designer at the Nuclear Power Institute of China.

It was designed for the No. 5 unit of Fuqing Nuclear Plant in Fujian Province, a project of the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC).

The government has approved the Fuqing project to build six nuclear power units. The No. 5 and 6 units will be a pilot project also featuring Hualong One.

In May, a hemispherical dome, weighing 340 tonnes and measuring 46.8 meters in diameter, was installed by crane on the No. 5 unit, marking the start of the assembly stage.

The installation of the dome ranked first in projects on progress in nuclear science and technology, according to the annual conference of the Chinese Nuclear Society on Monday.

Hualong One was jointly designed by China's two nuclear power giants, China General Nuclear Power Group and CNNC, and passed inspection by a national panel in August 2014.

China has 37 operational nuclear reactors and is building a further 19.

China is aiming to have 88 million kw of nuclear power capacity in operation or under construction by 2020. The current level is just under 57 million kw.

On Sept. 1, China's legislature passed a nuclear safety law, reflecting the country's careful safety outlook and commitment to its international obligations.

There are now four projects using Hualong One design under construction, including two reactors in Karachi, Pakistan. A contract was also signed in May for the construction of the Hualong One design in Argentina.

The country has promoted the Hualong One at home and abroad.

http://www.ecns.cn/business/2017/10-18/277536.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## TaiShang

*Domestic steam generator headed for nuclear power plant*




Photo taken on Oct. 17, 2017 shows the Hualong One ZH-65 steam generator being hoisted for shipment in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province. The cutting-edge domestic steam generator Tuesday departed for the first demonstration nuclear power project using Hualong One technology, a domestically developed third-generation reactor design. It was designed for the No. 5 unit of Fuqing Nuclear Plant in Fujian Province, a project of the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC). (Xinhua/Zhai Li)






Photo taken on Oct. 17, 2017 shows the Hualong One ZH-65 steam generator being hoisted for shipment in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province. The cutting-edge domestic steam generator Tuesday departed for the first demonstration nuclear power project using Hualong One technology, a domestically developed third-generation reactor design. It was designed for the No. 5 unit of Fuqing Nuclear Plant in Fujian Province, a project of the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC). (Xinhua/Zhai Li)

http://www.china.org.cn/photos/2017-10/19/content_41757064_2.htm

Reactions: Like Like:
7


----------



## JSCh

* China unveils first system using electron beam irradiation to treat polluted water *
By Liu Caiyu Source:Global Times Published: 2017/10/18 23:43:39

*China’s first system using irradiation to treat polluted water*

China's first home-grown industrial wastewater-cleaning system using electron beam irradiation could effectively dissolve pollutants in the environment and has the potential for use in a wide range of industries, Chinese experts said. 

The new water-cleaning system was developed by China's largest nuclear power operator, the China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN), and Tsinghua University, Economic Daily reported on Tuesday. 

Zhang Jianfeng, CGN's chief executive, said he saw this birth of a water cleaning system using electron beam irradiation as "a milestone in the field of industrial wastewater treatment both in China and worldwide."

Zhang made the remarks during a meeting on Monday with nine Chinese experts in the field of nuclear instrument applications and environmental protection.

Zhao Zhangyuan, a fellow researcher at the Chinese Environmental Sciences Research Academy, told the Global Times on Wednesday that the technology could largely dissolve pollutants in the environment for disposal treatment and could be applied to other industries as well.

There are many difficulties in the water cleaning process because wastewater can contain some complex chemicals that are not easily degraded and even after a certain amount of treatment they still continue to damage the environment, Zhao said.

Zhang emphasized that China owns the rights to this system and that it could have wider use for various pollutants and is more efficient than traditional sewage disposal methods, and this is an area the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) considers a primary nuclear power research field in the 21st Century. 

Scientists can use the electron beams to break up complex chemicals into smaller molecules that are easier to treat through normal biological processes, and can remove the wastewater color and odor if needed, according to an IAEA statement, which noted that this method won't make the water radioactive or leave any radioactive residue.

An electron beam pilot project for processing sewage was first tried in Jinhua, East China's Zhejiang Province in March, Zhang added, explaining that it can handle up to 5,000 tons of industrial sewage a day, especially wastewater in the printing and dyeing business. 

In 2014, Chinese industries produced about 20 billion tons of wastewater, or 56 million tons a day. This means that about 600 electron beam irradiation systems, costing 10 billion yuan, would be needed to treat five percent of China's industrial wastewater.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Adam WANG SHANGHAI MEGA

Source: Xinhua
BEIJING, Oct. 19 (Xinhua) -- China's spending on research and development (R&D) accounted for 2.1 percent of GDP in 2016, the Ministry of Science and Technology announced Thursday.

The spending reached 1.54 trillion yuan (around 233 billion U.S. dollars) last year, with over 78 percent coming from enterprises.

Based in the south China city of Shenzhen, Chinese drone manufacturer DJI-Innovations (DJI) has pioneered the development of drones with its products gaining 80 percent of the global market share.

With the addition of innovative enterprises like DJI, the production value of the seven "strategic emerging industries," such as biology and the internet, has enjoyed an average annual increase of 17.4 percent in Shenzhen, according to the ministry.

The scientific and technological progress contribution increased to 56.2 percent in China's economic growth in 2016, the ministry said.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Using optical chaos to control the momentum of light*
_Researchers demonstrate new method to control light in a photonic circuit _

By Leah Burrows
October 19, 2017


Coupling the optical fields from waveguides to the optical fields in whispering galleries in photonic circuits is like trying to transfer a package between a bike and a car on a highway. But, with chaos, the photons could be efficiently delivered to the optical mode. (Illustration courtesy of Yin Feng and Xuejun Huang)

Integrated photonic circuits, which rely on light rather than electrons to move information, promise to revolutionize communications, sensing and data processing. But controlling and moving light poses serious challenges. One major hurdle is that light travels at different speeds and in different phases in different components of an integrated circuit. For light to couple between optical components, it needs to be moving at the same momentum.

Now, a team of researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, in collaboration with Peking University in Beijing, has demonstrated a new way to control the momentum of broadband light in a widely-used optical component known as a whispering gallery microcavity (WGM).

The paper, whose co-authors also include researchers from Washington University in Saint Louis, the California Institute of Technology, and the University of Magdeburg, is published in Science.

“The broadband optical chaos in a microcavity creates a universal tool to access many optical states,” said Linbo Shao, a graduate student in the lab of Marko Loncar, the Tiantsai Lin Professor of Electrical Engineering, at SEAS and co-first author of the paper. “Previously, researchers needed multiple special optical elements to couple light in and out WGMs at different wavelengths, but with this work we can couple all color lights with a single optical coupler.”

A WGM is a type of optical microresonator used in a wide variety of applications, from long-range transmission in optical fibers to quantum computing. WGMs are named for the whispering galleries of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, where an acoustic wave (a whisper) circulates inside a cavity (the dome) from a speaker on one side to a listener on the other. A similar phenomena occurs in the Echo Wall in the Temple of Heaven in China and in the whispering arch in Grand Central Station in New York City.

Optical whispering galleries work much the same way. Light waves trapped in a highly-confined, circular space — smaller than a strand of hair — orbit around the inside of the cavity. Like the whispering wall, the cavity traps and carries the wave. 

However, it is difficult to couple the optical fields from waveguides to the optical fields in whispering galleries in photonic circuits because the waves are traveling at different speeds.

Think of a WGM as a highway roundabout and optical fields as UPS trucks. Now, imagine trying to transfer a package between two trucks while both are moving at different speeds. Impossible, right?



(Left) Without the chaos, coupling photons to an optical mode is inefficient. (Right) With the chaos, the photons could be efficiently delivered to the optical mode. (Artwork by Yin Feng and Xuejun Huang)

In order to solve for this difference of momentum — without breaking Newton’s law of the conservation of momentum — the research team created a little chaos. By deforming the shape of the optical microresonator, the researchers were able to create and harness so-called chaotic channels, in which the angular momentum of light is not conserved and can change over time. By alternating the shape of the resonator, the momentum can be tuned; the resonator can be designed to match momentum between waveguides and WGMs. Importantly, the coupling is broadband and occurs between optical states that would otherwise not couple.



By deforming the shape of the optical microresonator, the researchers were able to create and harness so-called chaotic channels, in which the angular momentum of light is not conserved and can change over time. (Image courtesy of Linbo Shao/Harvard SEAS)

The research provides new applications for microcavity optics and photonics in optical quantum processing, optical storage and more.

“The work illustrates a fundamentally different approach to probe this important class of microresonators while also revealing beautiful physics relating to the subject of optical chaos,” said Kerry Vahala, the Ted and Ginger Jenkins Professor of Information Science and Technology and Professor of Applied Physics at Cal Tech, who was not involved in this research.

Next, the team will explore the physics of optical chaos in other optical platforms and materials, including photonic crystals and diamonds. 

Additional co-authors of the paper include Loncar, Qihuang Gong, Yun-Feng Xiao, Xuefeng Jiang, Shu-Xin Zhang, Xu Yi, Jan Wiersig, Li Wang and Lan Yang. The research was supported in part by the SEAS-based Center for Integrated Quantum Materials and the National Science Foundation. The computations were run on the Odyssey cluster supported by the FAS Division of Science, Research Computing Group at Harvard University.


Using optical chaos to control the momentum of light | Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

Xuefeng Jiang, Linbo Shao, Shu-Xin Zhang, Xu Yi, Jan Wiersig, Li Wang, Qihuang Gong, Marko Lončar, Lan Yang, Yun-Feng Xiao. *Chaos-assisted broadband momentum transformation in optical microresonators*. _Science _(2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aao0763.​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*Chinese scientists discover anticancer activities in TCM medicine*

2017-10-20 11:00

chinadaily.com.cn _Editor: Li Yahui_

Chinese scientists have found evidence that cordyceps militaris, one of the many traditional Chinese medicines widely used for its healing powers, carries anticancer activities by identifying a dual biosynthesis of two anticancer compounds in the fungus.

The two compounds are cordycepin and pentostatin. The former was first identified from cordyceps militaris in 1950 but its synthesis mechanism had remained unknown. The latter was first identified from a bacterium and was developed as a commercial drug to treat leukemia and cancers in the 1990s.

"For the first time, we decoded the biosynthesis mechanism of cordycepin in the fungus and during the research we discovered pentostatin just by chance," said Wang Chengshu, head of the research team at the Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology, a branch of the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

"These two compounds coexist in fungal cells in the form of protector and protégé. That is to say, cordycepin is synthetized with the coupled production of pentostatin to protect the stability of the former," he said.

A paper about the team's findings after nearly eight years of research was published on the website of Cell Chemical Biology, an international journal, on Thursday.

Cordyceps fungi are popular in China for its widely believed immunity-enhancing and energy-strengthening properties. Their uses in medical treatment dates back to the Compendium of Materia Medica, a book widely deemed the bible of traditional Chinese medicine written in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).

"Arguments have been going on for years whether such fungi are antibacterial or anticancer and people use them based on experience in most cases. It's a major progress that our team scientifically proved that cordyceps militaris really carries such properties," said Guo Jinhua, Party secretary of the institute.

http://www.ecns.cn/2017/10-20/277797.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

Proton knife @Bussard Ramjet 

*中科院上海光机所激光质子刀研究获重要突破 有望减少肿瘤治疗费用*

2017-10-21 09:03:48字号：A- A A+来源：科学网

关键字:激光质子刀激光质子刀上海上海激光质子刀激光质子刀肿瘤肿瘤激光质子刀

科学网10月20日报道，今天，记者从中科院上海光机所获悉，该所强场激光物理国家重点实验室在徐至展院士、李儒新研究员的领导下，在激光质子刀研究中取得重要进展。研究人员利用圆偏振拍瓦级超强超短激光脉冲轰击纳米厚度薄膜靶，获得了大流强、准单能的高品质质子束，质子能谱峰能量达到9 MeV，峰值流强高达3×1012protons/MeV/sr。这一结果代表着激光驱动的质子刀方案向前迈出了关键一步。10月17日，相关研究成果已经发表于《物理评论快报》。

高能质子束在物质中传输时具体独特的布拉格峰，即质子在传输路径上损失能量很少，能量主要沉积在末端。因此采用高能质子束治疗体内癌症时，在杀死癌细胞的同时，能很好地保护健康细胞，这种治疗手段被称为质子刀。基于传统加速器的质子刀肿瘤治疗在国内外都已取得很大进展。临床效果非常好，但缺点是治疗费用十分昂贵，难以普及。






新激光质子刀可以大大减少肿瘤治疗的费用@视觉中国

超强超短激光驱动的以等离子体为工作介质的高能质子加速器，由于其加速梯度（单位长度内粒子获得的能量）远大于传统加速器，大大缩小加速器规模*，从而有望减少治疗费用，服务于大众，成为新一代质子刀，即激光质子刀。*用于肿瘤治疗的质子刀，需要满足能量高、准单能、流强大等条件。激光质子刀研究虽已有近二十年时间，并取得了很多理论和实验进展，但同时满足这些条件还有很大困难，其实际应用受到制约。

在这项研究中，研究人员分析表明，基于无碰撞激波的加速机制是产生这种高品质高能质子束的原因，该机制预言质子能量可在现有的激光条件下定标到百兆电子伏特，满足质子刀肿瘤治疗的要求。此前该团队已经利用线偏振激光在国际上率先获得了基于超强超短激光的无碰撞冲击波加速的实验结果。

超强超短激光驱动产生的超短脉冲、高品质高能质子束还可应用于质子照相与材料检测、激光核聚变快点火、实验室天体物理、激光核物理和核医学等方面的研究。

据悉，这项研究得到了中科院先导B类专项、国家重点研发计划及国家自然科学基金等项目的支持。

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Han Patriot

cirr said:


> Proton knife @Bussard Ramjet
> 
> *中科院上海光机所激光质子刀研究获重要突破 有望减少肿瘤治疗费用*
> 
> 2017-10-21 09:03:48字号：A- A A+来源：科学网
> 
> 关键字:激光质子刀激光质子刀上海上海激光质子刀激光质子刀肿瘤肿瘤激光质子刀
> 
> 科学网10月20日报道，今天，记者从中科院上海光机所获悉，该所强场激光物理国家重点实验室在徐至展院士、李儒新研究员的领导下，在激光质子刀研究中取得重要进展。研究人员利用圆偏振拍瓦级超强超短激光脉冲轰击纳米厚度薄膜靶，获得了大流强、准单能的高品质质子束，质子能谱峰能量达到9 MeV，峰值流强高达3×1012protons/MeV/sr。这一结果代表着激光驱动的质子刀方案向前迈出了关键一步。10月17日，相关研究成果已经发表于《物理评论快报》。
> 
> 高能质子束在物质中传输时具体独特的布拉格峰，即质子在传输路径上损失能量很少，能量主要沉积在末端。因此采用高能质子束治疗体内癌症时，在杀死癌细胞的同时，能很好地保护健康细胞，这种治疗手段被称为质子刀。基于传统加速器的质子刀肿瘤治疗在国内外都已取得很大进展。临床效果非常好，但缺点是治疗费用十分昂贵，难以普及。
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 新激光质子刀可以大大减少肿瘤治疗的费用@视觉中国
> 
> 超强超短激光驱动的以等离子体为工作介质的高能质子加速器，由于其加速梯度（单位长度内粒子获得的能量）远大于传统加速器，大大缩小加速器规模*，从而有望减少治疗费用，服务于大众，成为新一代质子刀，即激光质子刀。*用于肿瘤治疗的质子刀，需要满足能量高、准单能、流强大等条件。激光质子刀研究虽已有近二十年时间，并取得了很多理论和实验进展，但同时满足这些条件还有很大困难，其实际应用受到制约。
> 
> 在这项研究中，研究人员分析表明，基于无碰撞激波的加速机制是产生这种高品质高能质子束的原因，该机制预言质子能量可在现有的激光条件下定标到百兆电子伏特，满足质子刀肿瘤治疗的要求。此前该团队已经利用线偏振激光在国际上率先获得了基于超强超短激光的无碰撞冲击波加速的实验结果。
> 
> 超强超短激光驱动产生的超短脉冲、高品质高能质子束还可应用于质子照相与材料检测、激光核聚变快点火、实验室天体物理、激光核物理和核医学等方面的研究。
> 
> 据悉，这项研究得到了中科院先导B类专项、国家重点研发计划及国家自然科学基金等项目的支持。


Before this a Chinese company sold to Oxford University a precision ultrasonic knife, it was the first system in the world, forgot the exact term.


----------



## JSCh

*China approves Ebola vaccine*
Xinhua | Updated: 2017-10-20 18:53














BEIJING -- China has approved a domestically developed Ebola vaccine, according to the China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) Friday.

The vaccine was developed by the Academy of Military Medical Sciences and CanSino Biologics INC. 

Its approval makes China the third country to develop a vaccine against Ebola following the United States and Russia. 

The vaccine is based on the 2014 mutant gene type and in the form of freeze-dried powder, which can remain stable for at least two weeks in temperatures of up to 37 degrees Celsius and is suitable for the climate in West Africa. 

The vaccine was clinical-approved by the CFDA in Feb 2015 and has undergone clinical trials in Sierra Leone, one of the countries worst hit by Ebola. 

The virus was discovered in 1976 and severely affected countries including Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone from 2013, claiming the lives of more than 11,000 people.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## onebyone

__ https://www.facebook.com/





To reduce global greenhouse emissions, China has announced it will stop selling cars powered by fossil fuels in the next 15 years. As many question how to charge the next generation of electric cars, the country’s booming solar industry is already providing answers. https://america.cgtn.com/?p=489882

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## onebyone

__ https://www.facebook.com/





Live: Innovation in agricultural science & technology

Officials, scholars and researchers from the agricultural field have reviewed the country's achievements in this sector over the last five years and shared their ideas on the future in this division. CGTN editors rewind the group interview and discuss on advancing innovation in agricultural science & technology.#19thCPC

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Huan

After the next 15 years, it will stop selling?


----------



## Beast

Huan said:


> After the next 15 years, it will stop selling?


Yes, selling fossil fuel car will received a death sentence.


----------



## rambro

Should i hold back on getting a petrol car?

Geely have acquired proton, hope geely brings its range of electric vehicles here.


----------



## Shahzaz ud din

*Scientists for the first time reconstruct genome of ancient Chinese*
By Sun Wenyu (People's Daily Online) 16:17, October 13, 2017






_The Tianyuan Cave site_

A team of Chinese and German scientists has for the first time reconstructed the genome of an ancient Chinese person after extracting nuclear and mitochondrial DNA from the man’s leg bone, which was found in 2003 at the Tianyuan Cave site, located outside Beijing, Chinese media outlet thepaper.cn reported on Oct. 13.

The scientists used new techniques that can identify ancient genetic material from an archaeological find even when large quantities of DNA from soil bacteria are present.

Comparing that data with other genomic data, the scientists carried out thorough studies on this hard-won genetic profile.






_Skeleton of Tianyuan Man_

According to Fu Qiaomei, a researcher on the project, Tianyuan Man shares DNA with one ancient European—a 35,000-year-old modern human from Goyet Caves in Belgium. However, the results show that Tianyuan Man is more closely related with ancient people living in East Asia.

Tianyuan Man is not the immediate ancestor of the present-day people in East Asia, according to Fu. This branch of ancient East Asians has become extinct at some point of time in history.

The finding was published in the international academic journal Current Biology on Oct. 13. In addition, it has also offered a surprising insight into the evolution of ancient Native Americans.

The big surprise here is that Tianyuan Man also shares a close genetic relationship with Native Americans living in the Amazon region. It suggests that this group of people might be the offspring of an unknown branch of ancient humans who had a connection with Tianyuan Man.







*(For the latest China news, Please follow People's Daily on Twitter and Facebook)*(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
*Add your comment*


----------



## lcloo

When China stop making petrol powered cars, global oil demand will go down thus the petrol prices will become cheaper which is good news for current petrol powered car owners. And fresh air for all.

The bad news is five (or ten) to fifteen years from now, petrol car owners will probably face penalties like higher road tax, more expensive replacement parts due to economy of scales on production of replacement parts, and the re-sale value of their cars.

Solar, wind, hydro power and high-tech clean coal power generation coulped with eletric cars will make skies more blue .

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*Ocean research gets 'smart'*

2017-10-23 09:22 Global Times _Editor: Li Yan_

*China building intelligent vessels with fewer crew*

China plans to build more "intelligent and competitive" scientific research vessels to meet the growing global ocean exploration demand, following the country's first intelligent polar research ship, the Xuelong 2, which is still being built and is expected to carry researchers to the North and South poles, Chinese experts said.

China is planning for an intelligent, eco-friendly oceanic research system that covers the globe and can withstand all climates and water conditions.

This was explained by Huang Wei, a chief engineer at the China State Shipbuilding Corporation's (CSSC) Research Institute No.708, who spoke at an oceanic scientific vessel conference in Shanghai on Friday, as reported by the Science and Technology Daily.

China's future focus in research ship building is on a minimal number of crew numbers. In the area of automation and intelligence, it wants to match U.S. counterparts' standards, and allow scientists to control the mission from an intelligent capsule, according to Wu Lixin, vice-principal of the Ocean University of China, as reported by the Shanghai Observer.

Wu also pointed out that ships of the future will have professional research teams on board to significantly save scientists from doing the physical labor by themselves as is the case currently.

Wu went on to say that Chinese research vessels really need to improve their safety since the West Pacific, a critical area for Chinese scientific research, has been experiencing stronger typhoons.

The Xuelong 2, China's first domestically-built polar research vessel, is an exemplar of China's future plans, experts have said, pointing to its length of 122.5 meters and beam of 22.3 meters, with a displacement of 13,990 tones and a navigational capability of 20,000 nautical miles. It will also be able to break polar ice with both its bow and stern, the Xinhua News Agency reported previously.

It comes with an intelligent capsule that can give the vessel a thorough examination. It is expected to take Chinese scientists to the north and south poles in 2019, and to be a leader in polar research, its chief designer Wu Gang, was quoted as saying in the Science and Technology Daily report.

There are now about 50 vessels qualified for oceanic survey and deep-sea scientific research in the world, according to Qu Tanzhou, head of the State Oceanic Administration's science and technology division.

Qu also noted that the number of Chinese research vessels and their quality still fail to meet the need to conduct marine surveys on a regular basis.

"From retrofitting to construction, Chinese research vessels are gradually improving and taking scientists to deeper seas and higher seas and the polar regions after 60 years of development," Huang was quoted as saying in the report.

*China has the largest number of new oceanic research vessels in the world, with 10 in the design stage or under construction as of August*, experts said at the conference.

http://www.ecns.cn/2017/10-23/277982.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## cirr

*China's gravitational wave observatory to be operational by 2020*

2017-10-23 16:15 Ecns.cn _Editor: Mo Hong'e_





A observatory is under construction at an altitude above 5,250 meters in Ngari Prefecture, Southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region. (Photo/Xinhua)

(ECNS) -- *A world-class observatory under construction at an altitude above 5,250 meters in Ngari Prefecture, Southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, will begin efforts to detect primary gravitational waves in 2020.*

Ngari is considered an ideal place for astronomers to gaze into the remote universe due to its thin air and clear skies. Chinese scientists will also undertake high-precision detection of cosmic rays in the program called the Ngari Plan.

Zhang Xinmin, researcher with the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, works as chief scientist on the Ngari Plan.

He said principal construction on the observatory complex will be completed by the end of this year, with the optical telescope ready in 2019. The site is scheduled to start observation a year later.

Zhang said detection of primary gravitational waves, dubbed "the first cry of the cosmos after the Big Bang", is of great significance to studying the origin and evolution of the universe.

The telescope will enable the first measurement of primary gravitational waves in the northern hemisphere.

According to Zhang, China's current research into gravitational waves include three approaches – the Ngari Plan, the 500-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in Guizhou Province and space exploration, each under the leadership of different institutes.

Space exploration includes two projects -- the Taiji project by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Tianqin project proposed by Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou City.

http://www.ecns.cn/cns-wire/2017/10-23/278071.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

* China paying attention to better, more sound earthquake technology *
By Zhao Yusha Source:Global Times Published: 2017/10/22 22:33:39

China wants to develop its earthquake forecasting technology to become one of the most advanced countries in this field, Chinese scientists said on Sunday.

Zheng Guoguang, head of the China Earthquake Administration, has explained that the country will speed up development of its earthquake technology to make it competitive with that of developed countries by 2020, and to develop global top-notch detecting technology by 2030, the Science and Technology Daily reported on Sunday.

The report quoted Zheng as saying that the Chinese government saw great progress in earthquake preparation and disaster relief in the past five years, and the current technology is capable of detecting an earthquake above 2.5-magnitude, and reporting it within two minutes.

However, the report also pointed out that disaster relief work is more crucial because of growing population density and the construction of more reservoirs and nuclear power stations.

But, China does not lag behind some developed countries very much, since no one can really do an earthquake forecast with zero-error, Sun Shihong, a China Earthquake Networks Center (CENC) researcher told the Global Times on Sunday. And, seismic resistance materials, such as a shock-absorption devices is already wide used in China, according to the report.

China has given priority to earthquake-forecasting technology, a challenge that requires solid understanding of complicated subterranean activity, said Sun, adding that China also wants to focus on disaster prevention, for example, with earthquake resistant buildings.

China's earthquake administrators have said China plans to launch a satellite that can be used for real-time monitoring of earthquakes and possible seismic precursors in China and neighboring regions, through data on the Earth's electromagnetic field and high-energy particle study, said the Xinhua News Agency on January 17.

In 2016, China announced a new seismic parameter map to help build safer structures with national standards, said Xinhua, adding that it includes national standards for construction and anti-seismic design. All buildings and infrastructure must meet basic criteria and requirements as outlined by the country.

China's size has it straddling one of the most active seismic zones in the world. Since 1900, it has had a 7.5-magnitude earthquake or above every five years on average on the mainland, and every decade has seen one tremor measuring at least magnitude 8.0.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Atoms and Josephson junctions simulate 1D quantum liquid*
Oct 19, 2017




Disorder at work: the Josephson junction quantum simulator​
A theory that describes how quantum particles interact with each other in 1D has been put to the test by two independent teams of physicists. In one experiment, aspects of the Tomonaga–Luttinger theory were verified using laser-trapped ultracold atoms. The other study made use of superconducting devices. Confirmation of the theory could lead to the development of new technologies based on nanowires and other 1D systems. Applications include electronics, sensing, energy harvesting and quantum information.

Tomonaga–Luttinger theory describes a 1D ensemble of interacting quantum particles in terms of a Tomonaga–Luttinger liquid (TLL). It predicts properties of 1D quantum systems such as how electrons behave in a nanowire. Testing these predictions in a systematic way has not been possible, however, because it is very difficult to control how particles interact in 1D systems such as nanowires.

*Quantum simulator*
One way forward is to create an analogous quantum system such as an ensemble of trapped ultracold atoms, in which parameters such as particle interactions can be controlled. While there has been some progress in studying TLLs using quantum simulators, challenges remain. One problem is that a TLL has a homogenous distribution of particles whereas most quantum simulators have spatial order. Ultracold atoms, for example, are held in a 1D lattice with regular spacing.

Now, Bin Yang, Yang-Yang Chen and colleagues at the University of Science and Technology of China have overcome this inhomogeneity problem in an ultracold-atom simulator. Their experiment begins with a regular 1D array of rubidium-87 atoms trapped in an optical lattice of laser light. A laser pulse is then used to eject atoms from the central region of the trap, which sets off a density wave that moves outwards from the centre of the trap. The atomic density in the central region of the trap becomes nearly uniform, thus providing a homogeneous analogue to a TLL.

*TLL parameter*
By measuring the density and speed of sound in the central region, the team could work out the "TLL parameter" – which measures the level of quantum fluctuations in the system. Yang, Chen and colleagues then measured the momentum distribution in the system and confirmed that it was as predicted by the TTL model.

Meanwhile at the University of New South Wales, Timothy Duty and colleagues took a very different approach. They made their quantum simulators using lines of superconducting material that are interrupted by Josephson junctions at intervals of about 1 μm. In this case, the quantum particles are the Cooper pairs of electrons that are responsible for superconductivity.

*Disorder versus interactions*
Josephson junctions are non-superconducting regions through which the Cooper pairs can tunnel. There is inherent disorder in the materials used to make simulators and this results in slight differences in the number of Cooper pairs at each junction. By studying simulators with different sized junctions – and therefore different levels of disorder – Duty and colleagues were able to look at how disorder and particle interactions compete against each other to determine the properties of the TLL. When interactions dominate, for example, the system behaved as a superfluid. But when disorder prevails, the system became glass-like with no flow.

Both studies are described in _Physical Review Letters_.

*About the author*
Hamish Johnston is editor of _physicsworld.com_


Atoms and Josephson junctions simulate 1D quantum liquid - physicsworld.com

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*The world’s first trees grew by splitting their guts*

By Dennis Normile
Oct. 23, 2017 , 3:00 PM

Scientists have discovered some of the best preserved specimens of the world’s first trees in a remote region of China. At up to 12 meters tall, these spindly species were topped by a clump of erect branches vaguely resembling modern palm trees and lived a whopping 393 million to 372 million years ago. But the biggest surprise is how they got so big in the first place.

Today’s trees grow through a relatively simple mechanism. The trunk is a single cylindrical shaft made up of hundreds of woody strands called xylem, which conduct water from the roots to the branches and leaves. New xylem grow in rings at the periphery of the trunk just behind the bark, adding girth so the tree can get taller.

This is not how ancient trees known as cladoxylopsids grew, however. Two specimens discovered in a desert in China’s northwestern Xinjiang province in 2012 were remarkably well preserved. That’s because they underwent a process in which silica—likely emitted by a nearby volcano—saturated the tree and took on the shape of the wood’s internal structure as it decayed, preserving its 3D cellular structure.

The fossils reveal that, unlike modern trees with a single shaft, cladoxylopsids had multiple xylem columns spaced around the perimeter of a hollow trunk. A network of crisscrossing strands connected the vertical xylem—much like a chain-link fence spreads from pole to pole—and soft tissue filled the spaces between all these strands. New growth formed in rings around each of the xylem columns while an increasing volume of soft tissue forced the strands to spread out.

All of this expanded the girth of the trunk, allowing for a taller tree. But it also split apart the tree’s xylem skeleton, which required the tree to continually repair itself, the team reports today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The weight of the tree squeezed tissue at the base of the trunk outward.



An artist’s impression of a stand of cladoxylopsida trees, which formed Earth's first forests.
Peter Geisen

In the largest of the two fossil trunks, above the bulge, the xylem and soft tissue occupied a ring about 50 centimeters in diameter and 5 centimeters thick, with external roots making up the remainder of the 70-centimeter-diameter tree trunk. The scientists estimate cladoxylopsids could have been 8 to 12 meters tall.

This growth strategy has not been seen in any other tree in Earth’s history, says Xu Hong-He, a paleontologist at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology in China who discovered the fossilized tree trunks. “It's crazy that the oldest trees also had the most complex growth strategy,” adds Christopher Berry, a plant paleontologist at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom who helped analyze the fossils.

The trees are particularly important, says Berry, because they dominated Earth during the Devonian period from 419 million to 358 million years ago. They formed the first forests and played a key role in absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. They also added oxygen to the atmosphere, affecting the climate and influencing conditions that fostered the emergence of other life forms, he says.

Despite their early critical role in the evolution of life on Earth, the cladoxylopsids do not have any modern descendants. They disappeared at the end of the Devonian period, perhaps because they were left in the shade of taller, more robust trees, or because changing environmental conditions may have favored _Archaeopteris_, the ancestors of modern trees that appeared about 385 million years ago.

The new study is an important step in solving several such mysteries about early Earth, says Brigitte Meyer-Berthaud, a paleobotanist at the University of Montpellier in France who was not involved in the research. To understand the role of cladoxylopsids on our planet’s past, she says, “it is essential to know how the trees are constructed.”

doi:10.1126/science.aar2986


The world’s first trees grew by splitting their guts | Science | AAAS

Hong-He Xua, Christopher M. Berry, William E. Steinc, Yi Wang, Peng Tang, and Qiang Fu. *Unique growth strategy in the Earth’s first trees revealed in silicified fossil trunks from China*. _PNAS _(2017). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1708241114​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

* China uses unmanned boats for coastal geological survey *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-10-23 17:55:55_|_Editor: Mengjie_






Surveyors transport unmanned boat Jinghai No. 3 into water in Sanya, south China's Hainan Province, Oct. 23, 2017. China has sent two unmanned boats to join a geological survey along its 18,000 km coastline, especially in main coastal zones. Guangzhou Marine Geological Survey has introduced two unmanned boats, developed by Shanghai University, to collect data and take video, which used to be done by surveyors. (Xinhua/Zhang Jiansong)

SANYA, Hainan Province, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) -- China has sent two unmanned boats to join a geological survey along its 18,000 km coastline, especially in main coastal zones.

Guangzhou Marine Geological Survey has introduced two unmanned boats, developed by Shanghai University, to collect data and take video, which used to be done by surveyors.

The unmanned boats, named Jinghai N0. 3 and Jinghaihong respectively, are carried by China's new-generation offshore fishing ship YUEXIAYU 90215, which has a displacement of 887 tonnes and is equipped with a crane for lifting the boats.

The boats have just finished surveying the geological marine condition in Dongmaozhou Islands off Sanya city in Hainan Province, where surveyors failed to carry out a field survey last year after ships ran aground.

It was the first time that unmanned boats had been used in such a survey, said senior engineer Wen Mingming from the Guangzhou subsidiary of China Geological Survey.

"Many shallow coasts are complicated and likely to leave survey boats stranded. While, the unmanned boats can fit in and eliminate risks for surveyors," Wen said.

Jinghai No. 3 is 6.28 meters long and 2.86 meters wide, with a load capacity of 2.6 tonnes and a cruising power of 200 nautical miles. It can conduct automatic topographical mapping, sea floor exploration and environmental monitoring.

The 2.7-meter-long Jinghaihong is the newest model developed by the Shanghai University, with a speed of 6 nautical miles per hour. It can perform automatic route planning and navigation while collecting hydrological data.

Shanghai University unmanned vessel research institute is China's first institute for designing and developing such vessels with advanced communication and computing systems.

Guangzhou Marine Geological Survey is responsible for comprehensive geological survey of coastal zones in Guangdong, Fujian and Hainan provinces, as well as Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. 







Unmanned boat Jinghaihong works in Sanya, south China's Hainan Province, Oct. 23, 2017.


Unmanned boat Jinghai No. 3 works in Sanya, south China's Hainan Province, Oct. 23, 2017.


China's new-generation offshore fishing ship YUEXIAYU 90215 is seen in Sanya, south China's Hainan Province, Oct. 23, 2017.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*New property found in unusual crystalline materials*
_Materials with a special kind of boundary between crystal grains can deform in unexpected ways. _

David L. Chandler | MIT News Office 
October 25, 2017

Most metals and semiconductors, from the steel in a knife blade to the silicon in a solar panel, are made up of many tiny crystalline grains. The way these grains meet at their edges can have a major impact on the solid’s properties, including mechanical strength, electrical conductivity, thermal properties, flexibility, and so on.

When the boundaries between the grains are of a particular type, called a coherent twin boundary (CTB), this adds useful properties to certain materials, especially at the nanoscale. It increases their strength, making the material much stronger while preserving its ability to be deformed, unlike most other processes that add strength. Now, researchers have discovered a new deformation mechanism of these twin crystal boundaries, which could help engineers figure out how to more precisely use CTBs to tune the properties of some materials.

Contrary to expectations, it turns out that a material’s crystal grains can sometimes slide along these CTBs. The new finding is described in a paper published this week in the journal _Nature Communications_ by Ming Dao, a principal research scientist in MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering; Subra Suresh, the Vannevar Bush Professor Emeritus of Engineering and president-designate of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore; Ju Li, the Battelle Energy Alliance Professor in MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering; and seven others at MIT and elsewhere.

While each crystal grain is made up of an orderly three-dimensional array of atoms in a lattice structure, CTBs are places where, on the two sides of a boundary, the lattice forms a mirror-image of the structure on the other side. Every atom on either side of the coherent twin boundary is exactly matched by an atom in a mirror-symmetrical location on the other side. Much research in recent years has shown that lattices that incorporate nanoscale CTBs can have much greater strength than the same material with random grain boundaries, without losing another useful property called ductility, which describes a material’s ability to be stretched.


_Experimental observation of coherent twin boundary (CTB) sliding in a nanopillar subjected to compression. (Courtesy of the researchers)_

Some previous research suggested that these twin crystal boundaries are incapable of sliding due to the limited number of defects. Indeed, no experimental observations of such sliding have been reported before at room temperature. Now, a combination of theoretical analysis and experimental work reported in the _Nature Communications_ paper has shown that in fact, under certain kinds of loads these grains can slide along the boundary. Understanding this property will be important for developing ways to engineer material properties to optimize them for specific applications, Dao says.

“A lot of high-strength nanocrystalline materials [with grains sizes measured in less than 100 nanometers] have low ductility and fatigue properties, and failure grows quite quickly with little stretching,” he says. Conversely, in the metals that incorporate CTBs, that “enhances the strength and preserves the good ductility.” But understanding how these materials behave when subjected to various mechanical stresses is important in order to be able to harness them for structural uses. For one thing, it means that the way the material deforms is quite uneven: Distortions in the direction of the planes of the CTBs can happen much more readily than in other directions.

The experiment was carried out with copper, but the results should apply to some other metals with similar crystal structures, such as gold, silver, and platinum. These materials are widely used in electronic devices, Dao says. “If you design these materials” with structures in the size range explored in this work, which involves features smaller than a few hundred nanometers across, “you need to be aware of these kinds of deformation modes.”



_Molecular dynamics simulation showing coherent twin boundary (CTB) sliding in a nanopillar under compression. (Courtesy of the researchers)_

The sliding, once understood, can be used for significant advantages. For example, researchers could design extremely strong nanostructures based on the known orientation dependence; or by knowing the type and direction of force that’s required to initiate the sliding, it might be possible to design a device that could be activated, such as an alarm, in response to a specific level of stress. 

“This study confirmed CTB sliding, which was previously considered impossible, and its particular driving conditions,” says Zhiwei Shan, a senior co-author and dean of the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Xi’an Jiao Tong University in China. “Many things could become possible when previously unknown activation or enabling conditions are discovered.”

“This work has identified through both systematic experiments and analysis the occurrence of an important mechanical characteristic which is found only in certain special types of interfaces and at the nanoscale. Given that this phenomenon can potentially be applicable to a broad range of crystalline materials, one can envision new materials design approaches involving nanostructures to optimize a variety of mechanical and functional characteristics,” Suresh says.

“This discovery could fundamentally change our understanding of plastic deformation in nanotwinned metals and should be of broad interest to the material research community,” says Huajian Gao, the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Engineering at Brown University, who was not involved in this work.

Gao adds that “CTBs are key to engineering novel nanotwinned materials with superior mechanical and physical properties such as strength, ductility, toughness, electrical conductivity, and thermal stability. This paper significantly advances our knowledge in this field by revealing large-scale sliding of CTBs.”

The team included researchers at Xi’an Jiaotong University in China, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, the Chinese Academy of Sciences in China, and Nanyang Technical University in Singapore. The work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China, ExxonMobil Research and Engineering through the MIT Energy Initiative, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the Singapore-MIT Alliance.



New property found in unusual crystalline materials | MIT News

Zhang-Jie Wang, Qing-Jie Li, Yao Li, Long-Chao Huang, Lei Lu, Ming Dao, Ju Li, Evan Ma, Subra Suresh & Zhi-Wei Shan.* Sliding of coherent twin boundaries*,_ Nature Communications_ (2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-01234-8​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Super laser sets another record for peak power*
By Ke Jiayun | 00:01 UTC+8 October 27, 2017 |



Print Edition

SHANGHAI’S super laser machine has given a demonstration of ultra intense, ultra fast lasers that can deliver peak power of 10.3 petawatts, the city government announced yesterday.

According to the government, this reading is the highest so far in the world.

The machine Shanghai Superintense-Ultrafast Lasers Facility (SULF) had already recorded a breakthrough in August last year when the peak power exceeded 5 petawatts, making it then the world’s most powerful pulse laser.

The latest result was released on Tuesday by a combined lab, supplied by Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics (SIOM) and ShanghaiTech University. The SULF machine is scheduled to be fully completed in late 2018.

One petawatt equals 1 quadrillion watts. Experts said the new progress in laser technology can be projected to research covering fields such as astrophysics, nuclear medicine, nuclear physics and material science.

The super intense and ultra fast laser also makes it possible to create extreme environments — which only exist inside a star or at the edge of a black hole — within a laboratory.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*It’s Big and Long-Lived, and It Won’t Catch Fire: The Vanadium Redox-⁠Flow Battery*
_*Move over, lithium ion: Vanadium flow batteries finally become competitive for grid-scale energy storage*_

Posted 26 Oct 2017 | 15:00 GMT
By Z. Gary Yang



Photo: Rongke Power
*Go Big: *This factory produces vanadium redox-flow batteries destined for the world’s largest battery site: a 200-megawatt, 800-megawatt-hour storage station in China’s Liaoning province.
*
The factory sprawls over an area larger than 20 soccer fields.* Inside, it’s brightly lit and filled with humming machinery, a mammoth futuristic manufactory. Robot arms grab components from bins and place each part with precision, while conveyor belts move the assembled pieces smoothly down production lines. Finished products enter testing stations for quality checks before being packed for shipping.

It has been called a gigafactory, and it does indeed produce vast quantities of advanced batteries. But this gigafactory is in China, not Nevada. It doesn’t make batteries for cars, and it’s not part of the Elon Musk empire.

Opened in early 2017, in the northern Chinese port city of Dalian, this plant is owned by Rongke Power and is turning out battery systems for some of the world’s largest energy storage installations. It’s on target to produce 300 megawatts’ worth of batteries by the end of this year, eventually ramping up to 3 gigawatts per year.

The scale of this “other” gigafactory may be impressive, but the core technology it makes is even more compelling. The Dalian factory produces vanadium redox-flow batteries, a specialized type whose time has finally come. The VRFB was invented decades ago but has emerged only recently as one of the leading contenders for large-scale energy storage.

How large? VRFBs are being touted for grid-scale uses in which they would store up to hundreds of megawatt-hours of energy. In these applications, they may be charged by large baseload power plants, which generate electricity cheaply but are too sluggish to accommodate sharp increases in demand during peak hours. Or they may be charged by renewable sources like wind farms, whose generation doesn’t always align well with demand. Like most batteries, VRFBs can deliver power nearly instantaneously, so they can stand in for the traditional means of meeting peak demand: fossil-fueled “peaker” plants that, in comparison with batteries, are costly to maintain and operate and not as fast.

Lithium-ion batteries, too, have been proposed for grid-scale uses. But here they are no match for VRFBs, which have longer lifetimes, can be scaled up more easily, and can operate day in, day out, with no significant performance loss for 20 years or more.

Soon this technology will be the cornerstone of the largest battery installation in the world: a 200-MW, 800-megawatt-hour storage station being built in Dalian. The first 100 MW will be installed by the end of this year, with the remainder coming on line in 2018. The station will help balance supply and demand on the Liaoning province power grid, which serves about 40 million people, filling the same function as a peaker power plant but without using scarce water. Furthermore, if the batteries are charged by the wind-generated power that’s abundant in northern China, no fossil fuels will be burned. Should demand spike or the supply dip suddenly, the battery station will be able to dispatch all or just part of its 200 MW within milliseconds.

The result will be a stable grid that can integrate more renewable energy. At times, wind generation in Liaoning province tops 7 GW, or about 15 percent of total generation. But much of that power isn’t used because other sources already meet grid demand. Earlier this year, the amount of wind power in Liaoning that was curtailed, or wasted, reached 15 percent; in the neighboring province of Jilin, it was 30 percent. The Dalian site will store that wasted energy for later use, adding up to a few hundred gigawatt-hours per month.

The Dalian site is just one of several big VRFB installations being built in China, so its reign as the world’s biggest battery may be short. Meanwhile, other countries are adopting VRFBs. According to the U.S. Department of Energy’s global energy storage database, since 2014, more than 30 VRFB projects in 11 countries have been deployed or begun construction; these range in power from a few tens of kilowatts up to Dalian’s 200 MW. While these projects reflect the surging interest in all forms of energy storage, what’s driving the renewed push toward VRFBs are important technological distinctions.


_*Continue -->*_ It’s Big and Long-Lived, and It Won’t Catch Fire: The Vanadium Redox-⁠Flow Battery - IEEE Spectrum

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Young researchers invent cancer detector: screening for 12 types of cancer with a single drop of blood*
Sang Yarong, China Plus 
Published: 2017-10-26 17:09:39

MxHealth, a research team from Southeast University, has invented an automatic detector that can screen for 12 types of cancer by testing one drop of blood, Chinanews.com reported.

The researchers applied the world-leading technology which uses a photonic crystal microsphere to build an accurate system to detect early-stage cancers.

The team leader, Chang Ning, a 22-year-old Ph.D. candidate from Southeast University, explained that the traditional means of detection usually screens for only one cancer biomarker, which is unstable and inaccurate. Instead, the automatic detector developed by MxHealth examines multiple tumor markers, greatly improving the accuracy of the detection process.



Chang Ning demonstrates how to apply the cancer detector to examine a drop of blood at Southeast University in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, on October 25, 2017. [Photo: Chinanews.com]

“We only need to collect 50 microlitres of blood to examine biomarkers of 12 common cancers, including liver, lung, pancreatic and prostatic cancers,” said Chang. “The whole testing process takes only five to ten minutes and costs less than 100 yuan (around 15 U.S. dollars).”



Test results are displayed on the screen of the printer-like cancer detector at Southeast University in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, on October 25, 2017. [Photo: Chinanews.com]

The invention won the silver award at this year’s China College Students “Internet Plus” Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition.

It will take two to three years or possibly longer to officially launch the cancer detector on the market, according to Chang.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Tsinghua Named World’s Best Engineering, Computer Science School*

_Beijing university overtakes MIT in two US News & World Report subject rankings._
*
David Paulk*  Oct 25, 2017

One of China’s elite educational institutions, Tsinghua University in Beijing, is the world’s top school for both engineering and computer science, authoritative ranking survey U.S. News & World Report announced Tuesday.

While Tsinghua has previously held U.S. News’ top spot for engineering, this marks the first time the school has overtaken the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to be named the world’s best in computer science. Tsinghua was also ranked sixth in materials science and 10th in chemistry.

Other Chinese universities to be ranked highly for engineering include the Harbin Institute of Technology at No. 6 and Zhejiang University at No. 7. Zhejiang University also made the global top 10 in computer science, behind ninth-ranked Hangzhou University of Science and Technology.

U.S. News & World Report evaluated 1,250 universities in 74 countries for its 2018 rankings. The top four overall spots went to U.S. institutions Harvard University, MIT, Stanford University, and the University of California–Berkeley, in that order, with the U.K.’s Oxford University rounding out the top five.

Tsinghua, meanwhile, ranked fourth in Asia behind two Singaporean universities and the University of Tokyo, and 64th overall, just ahead of Beijing rival Peking University.

“The schools that rank the highest in the Best Global Universities rankings are those that emphasize academic research, including by partnering with international scholars to produce highly cited articles,” said Robert Morse, chief data strategist for U.S. News, in the company’s press release.

For its 2018 global rankings, U.S. News said it placed greater emphasis on international collaboration, rewarding schools that partnered with their foreign peers to write and publish papers. Other variables considered for the company’s rankings methodology include research reputation, number of publications, and citation frequency.

Tsinghua University did not immediately respond to Sixth Tone’s interview request on Wednesday.

_Additional reporting: Lin Qiqing; editor: Kevin Schoenmakers._



Tsinghua Named World’s Best Engineering, Computer Science School_ | _
Sixth Tone

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## bobsm

Re: Tsinghua Named World’s Best Engineering, Computer Science School

Ranking for Computer Science(left) and Engineering (right)

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*What’s in a Brain? The Lab in China That Wants to Map Our Minds*
_How a research institute in an ancient Chinese city became a leader in technology to decode the human brain._*http://www.sixthtone.com/users/21159*
*http://www.sixthtone.com/users/21159*
*Cai Yiwen*
Oct 26, 2017

JIANGSU, East China — Machines are now so smart they can outwit their creators in a complex strategy game, or beat doctors to a cancer diagnosis. But one thing remains a mystery: the human brain itself.

Despite making leaps and bounds in artificial intelligence, scientists have yet to crack the codes inside our brains that determine everything from how we learn to how we fall in love. The puzzle has attracted attention internationally, but it’s in Suzhou — a 2,500-year-old city perhaps most famous for its ancient gardens — that researchers are at the forefront of brain imaging technology that could improve scientists’ understanding of how our minds work.

In a bright, clean, and spacious laboratory at Suzhou Industrial Park, 10 automated brain imaging machines work around the clock to produce high-resolution 3-D models of mouse brains. Construction on the HUST-Suzhou Institute for Brainsmatics began last year, but the lab only got its machines up and running last month. Once it’s operating at full capacity, the institute will be the largest high-resolution brain mapping center in the world.

Scientists at the lab — a multimillion-yuan collaboration between local authorities and the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in central China’s Hubei province — hope comprehensive human brain mapping will be a reality in the not-too-distant future. “We are confident that our technology will have significant impact in future studies,” Luo Qingming, the facility’s lead researcher, told Sixth Tone. “There will definitely be a huge demand for brain mapping that can show both detail and the overall picture,” added Luo, who has been working on the technology used at the lab since 2002.

Current brain imaging technology can show the functions of almost 200 areas of the human brain, but scientists still can’t map how neurons — a type of cell in the brain that transmits information — interact with one another. This piece of the puzzle is essential for helping scientists understand mental disorders, such as autism spectrum disorder and depression, according to U.S.-based neuroscientist Josh Huang. And the potential payoff is significant: By 2020, brain diseases will account for 20 percent of the global burden of disease, according to the World Health Organization.

*There will definitely be a huge demand for brain mapping that can show both detail and the overall picture.*
- Luo Qingming, HUST-Suzhou Institute for Brainsmatics lead researcher​
“The institute’s systems have reached the highest-resolution level for brain-wide imaging,” said Huang, who works at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, a leading nonprofit research institute that has partnered with the Suzhou-based lab.

The Suzhou institute has already begun creating 3-D models of mouse brains that allow scientists to both see the overall organ and zoom in on individual neurons, according to Luo. The institute can map five mouse brains a day, Luo said — a marked increase in speed from the 50 days it took the institute’s scientists when they first published a paper on the technology in 2010.

The researchers start by giving the mouse a chemical injection or electric shock to provoke a certain brain response like fear or excitement, so they can later track which neurons are associated with that emotion. They then take the tiny 0.5-cubic-centimeter brain out of the mouse and place it in one of the lab’s machines, explained Jiang Tao, the director of the institute’s brain imaging department. The organ is dissected into more than 15,000 miniscule slices, photographs of which are sent to a computer. Once all the slices are pieced together, a 3-D model of the mouse brain — in its final emotional state before death — is born.

For now, the scientists are only working with mice. They’ll move on to monkey brains, Luo said, before finally tackling to their most ambitious goal: starting high-resolution human brain mapping within five years.

But mapping a human brain — which is around 3,000 times larger than a mouse brain — is another thing altogether, said Li An’an, the institute’s deputy director who played a key role in development of the core technology. For one, the scientists won’t be able to work with live human brains; they’ll have to use brains from people who donated their bodies to scientific research, said Jiang. Another challenge will be managing the massive amount of data. If the researchers succeed, Luo hopes the technology they develop could result in a standardized platform to make brain imaging more consistent and efficient in China.

*I often sat still in that room for the whole day, staring at the monitor, afraid that something might go wrong with the machine or the specimen.*
- Jiang Tao, HUST-Suzhou Institute for Brainsmatics brain imaging department director​
The institute — which is largely funded by local authorities and has a five-year budget of 450 million yuan ($67.9 million) — is currently only operating at one-fifth capacity. In the future, the lab will have 50 automated brain imaging machines running 24 hours a day, each worth millions of yuan. Over 100 staff will be on hand to prepare samples, monitor machines, and generate data, which will be stored in a 140-square-meter computer room. The lab will produce 100 terabytes of brain image data per day — equivalent to 25,000 high-resolution blockbuster movies.

The unprecedented scale of the institute’s technology could “dramatically accelerate progress” in the field, U.S.-based molecular biologist Hongkui Zeng said in an article published in scientific journal Nature in August. “Large-scale, standardized data generation in an industrial manner will change the way neuroscience is done,” said Zeng, whose research organization, the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, has partnered with the Suzhou lab.

Luo compared his work to a 13-year international project that identified all the genes in human DNA. “Like the Human Genome Project, we need a large collection of samples and data to make a difference,” he said.

The institute has come a long way since it began researching its current technology in 2002. Back then, there was little funding for brain mapping technology and few supporters in China, Luo recalled. Researchers sometimes had to borrow obsolete equipment from other labs. Over the next eight years, young scientists on the team came and went: The project had gone on for too long without a published paper, leaving them little chance of promotion and at risk of losing their faculty positions.




Neural circuit imaging is displayed at the HUST-Suzhou Institute for Brainsmatics in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, Oct. 10, 2017. Courtesy of the HUST-Suzhou Institute for Brainsmatics

The research process was often torturous. Jiang recalled long days spent in a dark room only large enough to fit a brain imaging machine and a chair. “I often sat still in that room for the whole day, staring at the monitor, afraid that something might go wrong with the machine or the specimen,” he said. “This went on for nearly a year, during which time I scanned hundreds of mouse brains.”

Since then, the center has attracted international attention and scored collaborations with leading labs around the world. According to Luo, the institute will also play an important role domestically in the government-funded China Brain Project, a multibillion-yuan initiative expected to kick off this year, with the aim of supporting brain research. The project follows similar initiatives launched by the EU and the U.S., both with similarly hefty price tags and the same goal: to decode the human brain and use the knowledge to tackle brain diseases and advance artificial intelligence.

Despite China’s recent progress, it’s late to the game on brain research — which could put the China Brain Project in competition with its European and North American peers for talent when it launches, according to neuroscientist Huang.

“The major disadvantage of China’s brain science development is talent,” Huang said. “Though China has caught up rapidly in the past decade, cultivating a pool of talent in the field takes time.”

_Editors: Julia Hollingsworth and Denise Hruby._



What’s in a Brain? The Lab in China That Wants to Map Our Minds | Sixth Tone

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*New research center seeks to map out China's genes*

2017-10-30 10:20

Global Times _Editor: Li Yan_

China announced a 6 billion yuan ($900 million) genome sequencing project that among other goals aims to map out the genetic diversity of Chinese, media reported Sunday.

The four-year project involves compiling a massive genome database based on the hospital records for 80 million people across Jiangsu Province, authorities said at the China-U.S. Precision Medicine Initiatives Nanjing Summit on Sunday.

The project will be centered in a new research facility in Nanjing's Xinbei District, which will house a number of genome sequencing firms, said Lan Qing, Deputy Director with the Jiangsu Health and Family Planning Commission.

"Fifty sequencing machines will launch the center, as well as some leading sequencing firms," Lan said at the summit.

Among other research goals, scientists seek to analyze disease mutations and the diversity of Chinese genome assemblies.

"We will be capable of testing up to 500,000 people per year," Lan added.

http://www.ecns.cn/2017/10-30/278879.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*The Genome Variation Map: A Data Repository of Genome Variations in BIG Data Center*
Oct 27, 2017

The genome sequence variation is genetic variation of genomic DNA molecules. It is the basis of species diversity, and is the most valuable genetic resources for studying the evolution of species, molecular breeding, human diseases etc. Recently, a world leading and the largest domestic genome sequence variation data resource (GVM) was released by the BIG Data Center, Beijing Institute of Genomics of Chinese Academy of Sciences. This work was published in _Nucleic Acids Research_.

GVM is a public data repository of genome variations, which dedicates to collect, integrate and visualize genome variations for a wide range of species, accepts submissions of different types of genome variations from all over the world and provides free open access to all publicly available data in support of worldwide research activities.

In the current implementation of GVM, it houses a total of ∼4.9 billion variants for 19 species including chicken, dog, goat, human, poplar, rice and tomato, incorporates 8,669 individual genotypes and 13,262 manually curated high-quality genotype-to-phenotype associations for non-human species.

In addition, GVM provides friendly intuitive web interfaces for data submission, browse, search and visualization.

Collectively, GVM serves as an important resource for archiving genomic variation data, and is helpful for better understanding population genetic diversity and deciphering complex mechanisms associated with different phenotypes.

This research was supported by Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Key Research & Development Program of China; National Key Research Program of China, National Programs for High Technology Research and Development, the Youth Innovation Promotion Association of Chinese Academy of Sciences, etc.



The Genome Variation Map: A Data Repository of Genome Variations in BIG Data Center---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Newly discovered neutron beams expected to lead to more discoveries for China*
By Li Yan (People's Daily Online) 16:40, October 30, 2017





_The China Spallation Neutron Source Park_​
Chinese experts say the neutron beams obtained at the China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS) in Dongguan, south China’s Guangdong province, is expected to lead to new discoveries in material science, clean energy, and medicine.

The CSNS project has currently entered the test operation phase. The project makes China the latest country to create neutron beams after the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan.

Neutron beams can examine subatomic materials without damaging their structure. Chen Hesheng, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the project manager, unveiled how the neutron beams are produced and transported.

The neutrons are “sucked” into various branches and channeled into different lab equipment for research, he said. All of the equipment used to generate the neutron beams is more than a dozen meters underground in order to trap the tiny amount of harmful radiation created in the process.

“In the first phase, three facilities will be constructed; and for the long term, some 20 pieces of equipment, each of which can generate more neutron beams, will be constructed,” Chen disclosed.

The neutron beams will help scientists discover new chemical mechanisms for producing clean energy, such as flammable ice, and facilitate the discovery of new material for more powerful electronics or create stronger and more durable material for engines, Chen said.

They will also be helpful in creating new therapies to treat tumors that are difficult to operate on by hand, Chen added.

The construction of the CSNS equipment will promote international exchanges and cooperation on research and application of neutron beams. “The project will draw some 600 scientists at home and abroad to jointly carry out scientific research on cutting-edge technologies related to the sector,” said Sun Mu, Party secretary of the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The equipment is safe, Chen said. His team has estimated that the amount of radiation from the equipment is equal to a long-distance air trip in terms of its impact on residents living nearby.

A monitoring station was built near the facility to examine and control the amount of radiation. A report about CSNS’s impact on the surrounding environment has proposed an emergency response plan, which says the main radiation created by the neutron beams will immediately disappear following a power cut.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## cirr

*Chinese scientists measure universe with 'magic ruler'*

2017-10-31 09:24 Xinhua _Editor: Gu Liping_

There's a giant "ruler" hidden among millions of galaxies in the universe. With it, scientists can measure how fast the universe is expanding. This will help them explore dark energy, the mysterious power behind cosmic expansion, and so speculate on the universe's destiny.

With this ruler, Chinese astronomers recently succeeded in reconstructing the evolution history of dark energy based on the observation of over a million galaxies. The research shows that dark energy is dynamic.

"What it means is that dark energy, which causes cosmic expansion, might not be a vacuum energy with a constant density, like many scientists previously believed, but rather an energy field with certain dynamic properties," said Zhao Gongbo, a researcher at the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

The research result made by a team led by Zhao was recently published on the academic journal, Nature Astronomy.

Dark energy determines the universe's destiny, he said.

"If dark energy is indeed a vacuum energy, the universe will keep on expanding until it ends with a 'big rip'. But if dark energy is dynamic, the universe might go through expansion, contraction and then expansion again -- a cyclical universe."

*FINDING THE RULER*

How do scientists measure such a vast universe? According to Zhao, nature provides a magic ruler -- baryon acoustic oscillations.

The early universe consisted of a hot, dense plasma of electrons, baryons (protons and neutrons) and photons, like a pot of porridge. The primordial disturbances from cosmic creation transmitted through the "porridge," causing periodic changes to its density, temperature and pressure on the chronological sequence. This transmission mechanism is similar to sound waves transmission, so it is called baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) by scientists.

About 380,000 years after the Big Bang, the cooled-down universe became transparent. The transmission of BAOs stopped, and the information of those oscillations is frozen in space-time. But the great power of it influenced the distribution of galaxies in the universe.

In 2005, the BAO signal was discovered for the first time. Thus cosmologists finally got the "standard ruler" they dreamed of, in order to measure the universe -- whether it's flat or curved, and how fast it's expanding.

But that's just the start. Scientists also have to make accurate measurements.

Since 2012, Zhao's team has been making observations with the Sloan telescope at the Apache Point Observatory in the U.S. state of New Mexico. Based on the observation of galaxies and quasars, they obtained high-precision BAO signals.

"The observation of BAOs is becoming more precise. Previous observations focused on a short period of the universe, but we adopted a new method. Like doing a CT scan for a more remote universe, we get to know more about the history of cosmic evolution," said Zhao.

Based on the measurement with the ruler, astronomers will be able to draft a three-dimensional map of the universe.

*EXPLORING DARK ENERGY*

In 1929, U.S. astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble discovered most galaxies are moving away from the Earth, indicating the universe is expanding. The discovery shocked the world, overthrowing the long-held perception of a static universe.

But many scientists still believed that cosmic expansion would slow down. However, to their surprise, two research teams, in the United States and Australia, reported respectively in 1998 that they had discovered cosmic expansion is speeding up.

Scientists assumed an unknown power they called dark energy was accelerating cosmic expansion. Even now, scientists still know little about it, although they have put forward many theoretical models.

For instance, a model of dark energy advanced by Zhang Xinmin, a researcher at Institute of High Energy Physics under the CAS, conforms to the observation results of Zhao's team using the Sloan telescope.

In order to test so many theories, large-scale computer simulations are needed. "With the help of China's Tianhe supercomputer as well as foreign supercomputers, we simulated approximately 2,000 universes for analytic purposes," said Zhao.

On the computer screen, billions of years flew by, galaxies took shape and the universe evolved.

"I want to understand why cosmic expansion is accelerating," said Zhao. "There is so much new physics in that. Normal matter only accounts for about 5 percent of the universe, while the other 95 percent of dark matter and dark energy is still unknown to us. If one day we know what dark energy is, the whole discipline of physics will be revolutionized."

In the next five to 10 years, many projects will study dark energy on Earth and in space, both in China and abroad, he said. For example, China's future space station will contain a space telescope two meters in diameter. Its major scientific goal is to study dark energy.

http://www.ecns.cn/2017/10-31/278986.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Researchers show how nanoscale patterning can decrease metal fatigue*
October 30, 2017 Media contact: Kevin Stacey 401-863-3766

_Fatigue due to repetitive strain is the leading cause of failure in metal components and structures, but new research shows how crystalline structures called nanotwins can slow the accumulation of fatigue-related damage._



*Nanotwin powers, activate!* Tiny crystalline structures called nanotwins can stabilize the effects of cyclical strain, new research shows, in such a way that damage does not accumulate within material grains. The findings could be a path to more fatigue-resistant metals. _Gao Lab / Brown University_

*PROVIDENCE, R.I.* [Brown University] — A new study in the journal Nature shows how metals can be patterned at the nanoscale to be more resistant to fatigue, the slow accumulation of internal damage from repetitive strain.

The research focused on metal manufactured with nanotwins, tiny linear boundaries in a metal’s atomic lattice that have identical crystalline structures on either side. The study showed that nantowins help to stabilize defects associated with repetitive strain that arise at the atomic level and limit the accumulation of fatigue-related damage.

“Ninety percent of failure in metal components and engineering structures is through fatigue,” said Huajian Gao, a professor in Brown University’s School of Engineering and corresponding author of the new research. “This work represents a potential path to more fatigue-resistant metals, which would useful in nearly every engineering setting.”

Gao co-authored the study with Haofei Zhou, a postdoctoral researcher at Brown, along with Quingson Pan, Qiuhong Lu and Lei Lu from the Chinese Academy of Science.

To study the fatigue effects of nanotwins, the researchers electroplated bulk samples of copper with closely spaced twin structures within the plates’ crystalline grains. Then they performed a series of experiments in which they stretched and compressed the plates repeatedly at different amplitudes of strain and measured the material’s associated stress response using a fatigue testing system. Beginning with a strain amplitude of .02 percent, the researchers progressively increased the amplitude every 1,500 cycles to .04, then .06, finally peaking at .09 before stepping back down through the strain amplitudes.

The tests showed that the stress response of the nanotwinned copper quickly stabilized at each strain amplitude. More importantly, Gao said, the study found that the stress response at each strain amplitude was the same during the second half of the experiment, when the metal was cycled through each strain amplitude a second time. That means the material did not harden or soften under the strain as most metals would be expected to do.

“Despite having already been through thousands of strain cycles, the material showed the same stress response,” Gao said. “That tells us that the reaction to cyclic strain is history-independent — the damage doesn’t accumulate the way it does in common materials.”

For comparison, the researchers performed similar experiments on non-nanotwinned samples, which showed significant hardening and softening (depending on the material) and displayed the type of cumulative fatigue effects that are common in most metals.

To understand the mechanism behind this fatigue resistance, the researchers performed supercomputer simulations of the metal’s atomic structure. At the atomic level, material deformation manifests itself through the motion of dislocations — line defects in the crystalline structure where atoms are pushed out of place. The simulations showed that the nanotwin structures organize strain-related dislocations into linear bands called correlated necklace dislocations (named for their beaded-necklace-like appearance in simulation). Within each crystal grain, the dislocations remain parallel to each other and don’t block each other’s motion, which is why the effects of the dislocations are reversible, Gao says.



Atomic-scale simulations show how nanotwins align strain-related defects, deeping them from impeding each other and making them reversible.

“In a normal material, fatigue damage accumulates because dislocations get tangled up with each other and can’t be undone,” he said. “In the twinned metal, the correlated necklace dislocations are highly organized and stable. So when the strain is relaxed, the dislocations simply retreat and there’s no accumulated damage to the nanotwin structure.”

The metals aren’t entirely immune to fatigue, however. The fatigue resistance demonstrated in the study is within each crystalline grain. There’s still damage that accumulates at the boundaries between grains. But the within-grain resistance to fatigue “slows down the degradation process, so the structure has a much longer fatigue life,” Gao said.

Gao’s research group has worked extensively on nanotwinned metals, previously showing that nanotwin structures can improve a metal’s strength — the ability to resist deformation such as bending — and ductility, the ability to stretch without breaking. This new finding suggests yet another advantage to twinned metals. He and his colleagues hope this latest research will encourage manufacturers to find new ways of creating nanotwins in metals. The electroplating method used to fabricate the copper for this study isn’t practical for making large components. And while there are some forms of twinned metal available now (twinning-induced plasticity or “TWIP” steel is an example), scientists are still looking for cheap and efficient ways to make metals and alloys with twin structures.

“It’s still more of an art than a science, and we haven’t mastered it yet,” said Lu, one of the corresponding authors from Chinese Academy of Sciences. “We hope that if we point out the benefits you can get from twinning, it might stimulate fabrication experts to find new alloys that will twin easily.”

The work was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (DMR-1709318) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China. Computer simulation resources were provided by the U.S. NSF’s Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE).


Researchers show how nanoscale patterning can decrease metal fatigue | News from Brown

Qingsong Pan, Haofei Zhou, Qiuhong Lu, Huajian Gao, Lei Lu. *History-independent cyclic response of nanotwinned metals*. _Nature_, 2017; DOI: 10.1038/nature24266​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*Chinese researchers discover gene variation can increase grain yield*

2017-10-31 15:25

chinadaily.com.cn _Editor: Mo Hong'e_

A group of Chinese researchers discovered recently a certain rice gene can vary in nature that remarkably increases grain yield by 15 percent.

The findings were published on Nature Plants, an online journal of the Nature series, on Tuesday by a research team led by professor Xing Yongzhong of the College of Life Science and Technology in Huazhong Agricultural University.

Over half of the world's population relies on rice as its staple food. Increasing grain yield has been a life-long aspiration for many agricultural scientists.

Xing said the production of the rice has a close relation with the rice development genes, called frizzy panicle (FZP), which is one of the crucial development genes that cannot be changed but can be controlled in volume.

According to Xing, with a high volume of expression of FZP, the grain grows bigger but the number of grains decrease, while low volume of expression of FZP will lead smaller grain and higher number of grains.

The most effective way to increase the production of the rice is to increase the number of grain per ear though ear number and thousand seed weight are the other two factors to affect the rice production per acre.

"How to balance those factors to maximum the rice production is what we need to figure out next," said Xing.

Xing also said the genetic variation happens in nature that can be used in breed improvement among high-yield variety in China. Related improvement on rice has been under going already

http://www.ecns.cn/2017/10-31/279112.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

C. Zhang, _et al_., Nature Communications, 10.1038/s41467-017-01248-2, 2017​*This new invisible ink can be switched on and off on demand*
By Giorgia Guglielmi
Oct. 31, 2017 , 12:00 PM

The next James Bond might have a hard time decoding top secret documents. Researchers have developed a lead-based invisible ink that, unlike its predecessors, is colorless under ultraviolet (UV) light until a salt is added to make it glow. What’s more, the ink can be switched off on demand using another chemical trigger: Add methanol, and it vanishes within 10 minutes. The researchers have used the ink to print on parchment paper both text and more complex patterns, such as QR codes and butterflies (pictured, as they appear under a UV lamp after adding the salt). After being switched on and off 20 times, the ink didn’t lose its bright color under UV light, and could be kept in open air for 3 months without degrading, the team reports today in Nature Communications. Because lead-based materials can be toxic, the researchers hope to design lead-free alternatives that could make the new ink a go-to tool for security and privacy protection.



*This new invisible ink can be switched on and off on demand | Science | AAAS*

###​
*Invisible ink uses metal-organic frameworks*
_Chinese researchers reveal a new kind of ink, invisible until it touches salt. Andrew Masterson reports._


James Bond: invisible ink safely stowed in his pocket.
Stanley Bielecki Movie Collection/Getty Images

Spies take note: from now on stow a little packet of salt upon your person. The fate of the free world may depend on it.

For generations, espionage – or, at least, childhood games and ripping yarns about espionage – involved at some point the application and revealing of invisible ink. Writing messages that can’t be seen by bad guys is a critical part of any decent spy’s tradecraft.

The trouble is, most invisible inks are anything but. Sure, they might look invisible – if that’s not a contradiction in terms – but as soon the shadowy code-breakers on the other side start applying a bit of heat or a few drops of acid to the paper, the message shows up bright and clear and the next thing you know 16 secret agents have been arrested.

Now, however, the problem may have been solved. A team of researchers led by Congyang Zhang of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China has come up with a truly invisible ink made from lead-based metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs.

MOFs are used in many fields for storage, carbon capture and the manufacture of pharmaceuticals and sensors. Typically, they are made of metal ions joined together by organic linkers. Essentially, they are crystalline powders full of molecule-sized holes.

Zhang’s team developed a lead-based MOF that is completely invisible yet can be used in a printer to produce detailed documents to order. Using heat or acid or any other traditional method to break the invisibility encryption is doomed to fail.

Applying salt, however, is another matter. Putting salt on the invisible MOF structures turns them into easily readable luminescent perovskite nanocrystals. This type of crystal is the focus of widespread research, because it has potential applications in fields as diverse as making liquid-crystal television displays and the manufacture of quantum dots.

In the invisible ink made by Zhang and his colleagues, the applied salt essentially works as a two-way switch. The first time it is deployed the crystals become visible and the message is revealed. A second application reverses the process, rendering the message unseeable once again.

The scientists imagine multiple applications in fields such as security and encryption for their new invention. Budding James Bonds, however, might care to consider one important aspect, before trying to place an order.

Being lead-based, the invisible ink is toxic. Zhang and his colleagues say they are working on developing a safer version, using a different type of base metal.

The research is published in the journal _Nature Communications_.


Invisible ink uses metal-organic frameworks | Cosmos

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*The University Medical Center Groningen and Novogene Announce the Start of the 10K Metagenome Project*

*Groningen, Netherlands and Beijing, China – October 31, 2017 — * A research group led by Professor Cisca Wijmenga from the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) and Novogene, a leading global provider of genomic services and solutions, today announced a partnership to start the 10K Metagenome Project to further study population-based metagenomics.

The 10K Metagenome Project is initiated by Professor Cisca Wijmenga, Professor Rinse Weersma, Associate Professor Jingyuan Fu, and Associate Professor Alexandra Zhernakova from UMCG. This project aims to analyze 10,000 gut microbiomes from a large, deeply phenotyped population-based cohort in the Netherlands by using next-generation sequencing to study interactions between the microbiome and exogenous and intrinsic host factors. This follows a successful proof of concept study that was published last year in Science (Zhernakova et al., 2016). As part of the partnership, Novogene will provide next-generation sequencing for stool samples collected by UMCG and deliver high-quality data for each metagenome.

“Metagenomic shotgun sequencing allows us to discover intrinsic and exogenous factors that correlate with shifts in the microbiome composition and functionality,” said Professor Cisca Wijmenga, Spinoza Prize winner at UMCG. “Combined with the 8000 phenotypes present in the biobank, this rich dataset will enhance our understanding of which strains and pathways prevent or cause disease, a first step in translational research”.

“By leveraging the largest sequencing capacity in the world as well as our rich experience with next-generation sequencing technology, Novogene is taking an active role in accelerating genomic studies from all over the world,” said Ms. Tingting Zhou, General Manager of Novogene Europe. “It’s a great honor to partner with distinguished scholars from UMCG on the 10K Metagenome Project. This unprecedented study will shed more light on gut metagenomics, and therefore provide a better understanding of human health. We are proud to be part of it.”



The University Medical Center Groningen and Novogene Announce the Start of the 10K Metagenome Project - Novogene

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Wednesday, November 01, 2017, 15:00
*Nation's papers gain global credibility*
By Zhang Zhihao

China's academic science papers have moved into second place for global citations, behind the United States, according to a report released on Tuesday.

The 2017 edition of Statistical Data of Chinese Science and Technology Papers shows that the nation's science papers have been cited more than 19.35 million times over the past decade, ahead of those from the United Kingdom and Germany.

It also shows the number of highly cited Chinese papers rose 18.7 percent compared with last year's report, reaching 20,131 papers and accounting for 14.7 percent of the global total.

*China's science academic literature has been steadily improving both in quantity and quality in recent years*

*Dai Guoqiang, *director, the Ministry of Science and Technology's Institute of Scientific and Technical Information​
*ALSO READ: **Scientists push for breakthroughs*

The report has been released annually since 1987 by the Ministry of Science and Technology's Institute of Scientific and Technical Information.

"China's science academic literature has been steadily improving both in quantity and quality in recent years," said Dai Guoqiang, director of the institute.

"It showcases Chinese science workers' increased innovation and research capabilities, which will help transform China into a global technology powerhouse."

Academic paper citation is an indication of a paper's quality. The number of citations has long been treated as a reflection of a nation's strength in scientific research.

China is now the world's most cited country in material science research, with eight other research fields ranking second globally. These are agriculture, chemistry, computer science, engineering, environmental science, mathematics, physics and pharmaceuticals.

China also ranks second behind the US for the seventh consecutive year in the number of articles published in the world's most prestigious science journals, such as Nature and Science.

Regarding global science projects, Chinese scientists contributed to about 25 percent of all the joint science papers in 2016, and cooperated with scholars from 155 countries. China's top six science partners are the US, Australia, the UK, Canada, Japan and Germany.

"China is now fully capable of participating in large-scale global science projects," said Dai, adding that such projects, in fields ranging from astrophysics to biomedicine, typically involve more than 1,000 scientists and 150 organizations around the world.

*READ MORE: **Scientist: China has right formula*

In these types of projects, China contributed to 225 papers in 2016, a 20 percent year-on-year increase. "Chinese scientists will continue to cooperate with scientists in China and abroad to facilitate scientific development," Dai said.

The report pointed to some shortcomings in China's scientific literature. In recent years, China's research has grown rapidly in applied science and engineering, but medicine and other health fields lag behind the US and European countries.

The report also showed that universities, research institutions and enterprises are the three mainstays of Chinese innovation. However, about 76 percent of the high-quality papers were generated by universities, with around 43 percent of these papers supported by the National Natural Science Fund.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*An early Christmas present: Scientists have unwrapped the reindeer genome*
November 1, 2017
 


Photo of the author Zhipeng Li accepting his GigaScience Prize-track award from one of the judges, Dr. Kathy Belov from the University of Sydney. Credit: GigaScience

With Halloween over, today is traditionally the day that the Christmas decorations come out, so it is appropriate that an iconic animal associated with the festivity is getting a jump on the holiday spirit by joining the list of species to have its genome sequenced. Published today in the open-access journal _GigaScience_, is an article describing the sequencing and analysis of the reindeer genome. This work, although unlikely to reveal why Santa's reindeer can fly, provides a great resource for gaining greater understanding of the processes of evolution, domestication, animal husbandry, and adaptation to extreme environments.

The reindeer (_Rangifer tarandus_) is the only fully domesticated species in the deer, or Cervid, family. It is also the only deer that has a worldwide distribution: spanning boreal, tundra, subarctic, arctic and mountainous regions of northern Asia, North America and Europe. Unlike all other cervids, it is not just the male deer that grow and shed antlers, but also the females. From an animal husbandry standpoint, reindeer milk is far richer in protein and has less lactose than cow's milk. The latter aspect makes the availability of this milk of interest given the high percentage of lactose intolerant people in the world. With this variety of unique features, the availability of a reindeer genome sequence can provide an entire sleigh-full of new information, and is a welcome new member to the elite club of domesticated species with reference genomes, including the cow, sheep and goat.

This work was carried out by a team of Chinese researchers from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Changchun and the Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi'an. The researchers took a blood sample from a two-year-old, female reindeer of a domesticated herd maintained by nomadic Ewenki hunter-herders in the Greater Khingan Mountains in China. They sequenced, assembled, annotated the genome and showed it was of high quality. Comparison of the reindeer genome to the genomes of related species and to humans, revealed that the reindeer genome size (2.6 GB or 2.6 billion base pairs) is slightly smaller than that of humans, cows, and goats, and about the same size as sheep.

The paper's first author, Zheping Li, associate professor at the Institute of Special Animal and Plant Sciences at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, noted that the analysis also identified "335 reindeer-specific genes that are likely to aid in understanding the special biological characteristics of reindeer. These could also be very useful in understanding the evolution of the reindeer as well as the entire Cervid family in future comparative genomics studies between reindeer and other ruminants."

With this goal in mind, the researchers also constructed an evolutionary tree using the new genome and the already available genomes of members of the bovine family. They found that reindeer, cattle, and goats separated from a common ancestor approximately 29.6 million years ago. This was during the Oligocene epoch where one of the major changes was the global expansion in grasslands.

This article was one of the winners of the inaugural _GigaScience_ competition and prize track that is used to promote new, cutting edge, research. The authors presented their work in a special session at BGI's 12th annual International Conference on Genomics in Shenzhen on Friday 27th October. As an open-science competition this and the other winners' articles were reviewed in a fully open manner, where the public could follow the entire publication process from having the draft article openly available in the Biorxiv pre-print server, the peer review process done live with reviews made available prior to publication decision at the Academic Karma overlay review system, followed by editorial decisions, manuscript revisions and article publication with all editor, author, and reviewer correspondence made available with the published article.

*More information:* Zhipeng Li et al. Draft genome of the Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus), _GigaScience_ (2017). DOI: 10.1093/gigascience/gix102



https://phys.org/news/2017-11-early-christmas-scientists-unwrapped-reindeer.html

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*Chinese scientists complete genome sequencing for coconut*

2017-11-02 16:08

Xinhua _Editor: Gu Liping_

Chinese scientists announced Thursday that they had completed sequencing the genome of the coconut.

Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences sequenced and assembled the genome of the coconut, laying solid foundations for further research of functional genes of the coconut and Palmae family.

A genome is the full complement of an organism's DNA -- complex molecules that direct the formation and function of all living organisms. The size of an organism's genome is measured by the number of bases it contains -- base pairs being the building blocks of DNA.

"We found 282 unique genome families in the coconut," said Yang Yaodong, a researcher with the academy.

"The completion of the genome sequencing is like finishing drawing a map of coconut genes," Yang said. "Following the map, scientists will be able to bread more high-yield, drought-enduring, and disease-resistant species, with a shorter breeding cycle."

Scientists began the genome sequencing project more than 4 years ago. The research paper was published in Giga Science journal.

http://www.ecns.cn/2017/11-02/279448.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists create new type of magnetic nanorobot*
By Tian Xuefei and Zhou Huiying | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2017-11-03 15:29

















Recently, Professor Zhang Guangyu and Professor Li Longqiu from School of Mechatronics Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, achieved important progress in the research of magnetic nanorobot with the cooperation of Joseph Wang from University of California, San Diego.

Their research result is a new type of magnetic nanorobot, a symmetric multilinked two-arm nanoswimmer, capable of efficient "freestyle" swimming in human blood vessels and sending drug to the nidus.

It can even distinguish between cancer cells and normal red blood cells, which opens new possibilities in designing remotely actuated nanorobots for biomedical operation at the nanoscale.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*10-Qubit Entanglement and Parallel Logic Operations with a Superconducting Circuit*

*Abstract *
Here we report on the production and tomography of genuinely entangled Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states with up to ten qubits connecting to a bus resonator in a superconducting circuit, where the resonator-mediated qubit-qubit interactions are used to controllably entangle multiple qubits and to operate on different pairs of qubits in parallel. The resulting 10-qubit density matrix is probed by quantum state tomography, with a fidelity of 0.668±0.025. Our results demonstrate the largest entanglement created so far in solid-state architectures and pave the way to large-scale quantum computation.​

Chao Song, Kai Xu, Wuxin Liu, Chui-ping Yang, Shi-Biao Zheng, Hui Deng, Qiwei Xie, Keqiang Huang, Qiujiang Guo, Libo Zhang, Pengfei Zhang, Da Xu, Dongning Zheng, Xiaobo Zhu, H. Wang, Y.-A. Chen, C.-Y. Lu, Siyuan Han, Jian-Wei Pan. *10-Qubit Entanglement and Parallel Logic Operations with a Superconducting Circuit*. _Phys. Rev. Lett. _(2017). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.180511

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

* Chinese archaeologists discover cave-dwelling agrarian society *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-11-05 14:02:17_|_Editor: Mengjie_





FUZHOU, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- Chinese archaeologists have found a large amount of carbonized rice grains in caves dating from the New Stone Age, challenging the conventional view that cave dwellers were solely hunter gathers and did not cultivate land for food.

More than 10,000 grains were discovered at the No. 4 cave in the Nanshan ruins in east China's Fujian Province, which dates back 5,300 to 4,300 years.

At an ongoing international conference on prehistoric archaeology being held in Fujian, the archaeological team announced that this is the first cave-dwelling agrarian society ever found in China.

The finding is also rare worldwide, said Zhao Zhijun, a member of the team and also from the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

The grains are believed to have been grown by the Nanshan cave dwellers, rather than being obtained by other means, because many farmland weeds were also found along with the grains, according to Zhao.

The team's studies on the remains of the cave-dwellers showed that they suffered dental cavities and other oral diseases that are common among humans in agrarian societies, said Wang Minghui, another team member and researcher with the institute.

"It further proves that Nanshan residents mastered some agricultural techniques," Wang said.

The finding has raised the question why the Nanshan ancestors continued to live in caves after beginning farming. It is traditionally believed that humans in agrarian societies would move from caves to more spacious homes due to explosive population growth.

"The Nanshan finding offers a new perspective for prehistoric study. We must consider more possibilities when talking about where our ancestors lived and what they lived on," Zhao said.

Excavation of the Nanshan ruins started in 2012. Scores of caves, thousands of items made from pottery, stone and bones, as well as eight tombs and two reservoirs, have been found at the site.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Biological Consequences of Climate Change on Epidemics May Be Scale-dependent*
Nov 07, 2017

Conventional thinking holds that current climate warming will increase the prevalence and transmission of disease.

However, a recent study led by Prof. ZHANG Zhibin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Prof. Nils Christian Stenseth of the University of Oslo in Norway show that the impact of climate change on the prevalence of epidemics may be scale-dependent.

The study was conducted using two millennia of historical data from ancient China extracted from A Compendium of Chinese Meteorological Records of the Last 3,000 Years.

When data covering a large time scale were analyzed, the researchers found that climate cooling caused more epidemics. However, when data covering a small time scale were analyzed, the association between epidemics and temperature was not consistent; in other words, both positive and negative associations were observed.

Further analysis revealed that a long-term cool and dry climate trend contributed to more epidemics mainly via an increase in locusts and famines. Both long-term and short-term trends in epidemics were closely and positively associated with drought, flood, locust and famine events.

Conventional theory suggests that climate warming should cause more disease by increasing the rates of development, reproduction and/or survival of hosts and/or vectors directly. Evidence supporting this theory is mainly derived from analyses of short-term data.

On a large time scale, however, temperature not only affects hosts and vectors directly, but also indirectly by influencing precipitation, and then agricultural production, famine and finally disease.

The researchers found that long-term climate cooling trends caused more droughts in China, probably due to the weakening monsoon. Droughts caused more locusts and the collapse of agriculture, producing more famines. Hungry people were more susceptible to disease and infections due to weakened immunity.

The long-term effects of climate change were not easily captured by using short-term data. China has a long history of recording significant biological, climatic and social events, which provides a unique opportunity to study the biological consequences of long-term climate change.

This study highlights the scale-dependent effects of climate change on biological as well as natural disasters. In contrast with the conventional view, the researchers found that the biological consequences of climate could be nonmonotonic, i.e., the effects could be either positive or negative.

The study’s findings may have implications for human disease prevention. In the short term, more droughts, floods or a warm climate would increase the risk of disease prevalence. However, over the long term, climate cooling would cause more epidemics as well as other disasters.

The researchers expressed an urgent need to study the scale-dependent effects of climate change on human epidemics.




Frequency-dependent effects of biological and climatic factors on prevalence of human epidemics in ancient China (Image by IOZ)



Biological Consequences of Climate Change on Epidemics May Be Scale-dependent---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

* Chinese researchers uncover genetic secrets behind aging rate *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-11-09 03:06:52_|_Editor: yan_





LONDON, Nov. 8 (Xinhua) -- A research team from China has discovered a genetic mechanism that affects animal's aging rate, shedding light on the biological basis and regulation of healthy aging, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Learning more about this process is important because the world's population is aging rapidly, and aging is also a major risk factor for diseases including neurodegenerative disorders and cancer.

To better understand the issue, a team led by Dr. Shi-Qing Cai at the Chinese Academy of Sciences analyzed the genetic origin of variability in the rate of aging by using Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) as an animal model. C. elegans is a tiny free-living nematode with a length of about one millimeter, and it has been widely used in aging research.

In their short lifespan, C. elegans from different parts of the world showed distinct rates of declines in virility, feeding behavior, and locomotion during aging, according to the study.

Further analysis showed that genetic variations in a novel neuropeptide coding gene, rgba-1, and its receptor gene, npr-28, regulated aging rate of worm behaviors among the C. elegans.

The team believes that their study reveals the first genetic pathway underlying natural variation in the rate of aging, and uncovers an important role of neuropeptide-mediated glia-neuron signaling in controlling aging rate.

The pathway appears to affect C. elegans' virility and feeding behavior, but not its locomotion, suggesting that "the mechanism regulating declines of various behaviors might be quite different", said the first author of the study, Dr. Jiang-An Yin, who is a member of Cai's team.

It remains an important challenge to determine whether neuropeptides play a similar role in regulating human healthspan.

But this study provides new insights into the evolution of aging, suggesting that aging rates may have been affected by emergence of new genes, natural selection, and the interaction between different genetic loci.

"The genes underlying variation in aging rate among individuals have undergone long-term natural selection, and they usually do not affect animal growth and reproduction. Thus, these genes potentially can be good drug targets for future anti-aging treatments," said Yin.


Jiang-An Yin, Ge Gao, Xi-Juan Liu, Zi-Qian Hao, Kai Li, Xin-Lei Kang, Hong Li, Yuan-Hong Shan, Wen-Li Hu, Hai-Peng Li & Shi-Qing Cai. *Genetic variation in glia–neuron signalling modulates ageing rate*. _Nature _(2017). DOI: 10.1038/nature24463​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*A Joint Beam Commissioning Performed at CSNS*
Nov 04, 2017

The joint beam commissioning among accelerators, target station and instruments started in the China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS) on November 1, 2017.

At about 15:00 p.m., the proton beam pulses with repetition rate of 1Hz at an average beam power of 300~400W from accelerator collided on the tungsten target.

All systems of the target station were operating smoothly. Continuous cold and thermal neutron pulse from three types of moderator were output for neutron instruments, while the target imaging system successfully captured the proton beam imaging on the target.

Up until 21:00 p.m., detectors of all three Phase-I instruments, including the General-Purpose Powder Diffractometer (GPPD), the Small-Angle Neutron Scattering instrument (SANS) and the Multi-purpose Reflectometer (MR), measured the neutron signals.

The neutron beam was successfully obtained for the first time at the China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS) on 28th August. This is a great milestone for the CSNS project, marking the completion of the main construction and entering into the test operation phase.


A Joint Beam Commissioning Performed at CSNS---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*1st ITER Magnet Component Arrives in Cadarache*
Nov 07, 2017





ITER DG Bernard BIGOT hosting the ceremony (Image by Christophe ROUX) ​
The first ITER magnet component, PF4 cryostat feeder through, arrived in Cadarache on 25th October. A ceremony was held in Institute for Magnetic Fusion Research (IRFM) to celebrate this delivery from China.

This magnet feeder system was manufactured by the Institute of Plasma Physics (ASIPP), Hefei Institute of Physical Science, and will be tested on Magnet Infrastructure Facilities for ITER (MIFI) on the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission ( CEA) site, before installation on ITER.

At the ceremony, ITER Director General (DG) Bernard Bigot congratulated and thanked China for its partnership, leadership, scientific genuine excellence and, most of all, its commitment to ITER project.

"Yesterday was just the 10th anniversary of ITER. I believe what we are doing is historic!" Director General of ITER China CNDA DG LUO Delong said. "I would express my gratitude to the ASIPP team led by SONG Yuntao".

Feeder is the lifeline of ITER magnet. It carries cryogenic cooling and power supply and plays the role as the transmission line for diagnosis and control signals.

The newly-arrived PF4 CFT is 8.5m long, 4.8m tall and 2.5m wide, consisting of more than 60,000 parts and weighing 16.1 tons. But can we imagine? It is just 1% of the entire Feeder system!

PF4 CFT is also the first magnet component of ITER. It’s the first feeder component to be installed before the ITER cryostat is in place.That’s why its arrival has positive significance to the progress of ITER project.

CEA/IRFM Director Alain Becoulet, ITER Magnet Division head Neil Mitchell and more than 40 scientists and engineers from ITER IO, ASIPP and IRFM also attended the ceremony to welcome the component arriving across seas.



1st ITER Magnet Component Arrives in Cadarache---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

Today, two papers from China appeared in Nature, (perhaps the highest regarded journal in the world).

There were total of 15 papers in the journal. 

The first article, that has already been posted above by @JSCh is completely Chinese: 

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature24463

The other article, had 5 authors out of which 3 are Chinese, and 2 appear to be Chinese Americans. (or Chinese citizens in America) 

Out of the two lead authors though, one is in China, the other in US. 

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature24266


----------



## JSCh

Bussard Ramjet said:


> Today, two papers from China appeared in Nature, (perhaps the highest regarded journal in the world).
> 
> There were total of 15 papers in the journal.
> 
> The first article, that has already been posted above by @JSCh is completely Chinese:
> 
> https://www.nature.com/articles/nature24463
> 
> The other article, had 5 authors out of which 3 are Chinese, and 2 appear to be Chinese Americans. (or Chinese citizens in America)
> 
> Out of the two lead authors though, one is in China, the other in US.
> 
> https://www.nature.com/articles/nature24266


The second paper was also posted before here -> https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/china-science-technology-forum.249386/page-116#post-9982308

Also published online,

Binquan Kou, Yixin Cao, Jindong Li, Chengjie Xia, Zhifeng Li, Haipeng Dong, Ang Zhang, Jie Zhang, Walter Kob, Yujie Wang. *Granular materials flow like complex fluids. *_Nature _(2017). DOI: 10.1038/nature24062​
Granular materials such as sand, powders and foams are ubiquitous in daily life and in industrial and geotechnical applications1, 2, 3, 4. These disordered systems form stable structures when unperturbed, but in the presence of external influences such as tapping or shear they ‘relax’, becoming fluid in nature. It is often assumed that the relaxation dynamics of granular systems is similar to that of thermal glass-forming systems3, 5. However, so far it has not been possible to determine experimentally the dynamic properties of three-dimensional granular systems at the particle level. This lack of experimental data, combined with the fact that the motion of granular particles involves friction (whereas the motion of particles in thermal glass-forming systems does not), means that an accurate description of the relaxation dynamics of granular materials is lacking. Here we use X-ray tomography to determine the microscale relaxation dynamics of hard granular ellipsoids subject to an oscillatory shear. We find that the distribution of the displacements of the ellipsoids is well described by a Gumbel law6 (which is similar to a Gaussian distribution for small displacements but has a heavier tail for larger displacements), with a shape parameter that is independent of the amplitude of the shear strain and of the time. Despite this universality, the mean squared displacement of an individual ellipsoid follows a power law as a function of time, with an exponent that does depend on the strain amplitude and time. We argue that these results are related to microscale relaxation mechanisms that involve friction and memory effects (whereby the motion of an ellipsoid at a given point in time depends on its previous motion). Our observations demonstrate that, at the particle level, the dynamic behaviour of granular systems is qualitatively different from that of thermal glass-forming systems, and is instead more similar to that of complex fluids. We conclude that granular materials can relax even when the driving strain is weak.​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

JSCh said:


> The second paper was also posted before here -> https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/china-science-technology-forum.249386/page-116#post-9982308
> 
> Also published online,
> 
> Binquan Kou, Yixin Cao, Jindong Li, Chengjie Xia, Zhifeng Li, Haipeng Dong, Ang Zhang, Jie Zhang, Walter Kob, Yujie Wang. *Granular materials flow like complex fluids. *_Nature _(2017). DOI: 10.1038/nature24062​
> Granular materials such as sand, powders and foams are ubiquitous in daily life and in industrial and geotechnical applications1, 2, 3, 4. These disordered systems form stable structures when unperturbed, but in the presence of external influences such as tapping or shear they ‘relax’, becoming fluid in nature. It is often assumed that the relaxation dynamics of granular systems is similar to that of thermal glass-forming systems3, 5. However, so far it has not been possible to determine experimentally the dynamic properties of three-dimensional granular systems at the particle level. This lack of experimental data, combined with the fact that the motion of granular particles involves friction (whereas the motion of particles in thermal glass-forming systems does not), means that an accurate description of the relaxation dynamics of granular materials is lacking. Here we use X-ray tomography to determine the microscale relaxation dynamics of hard granular ellipsoids subject to an oscillatory shear. We find that the distribution of the displacements of the ellipsoids is well described by a Gumbel law6 (which is similar to a Gaussian distribution for small displacements but has a heavier tail for larger displacements), with a shape parameter that is independent of the amplitude of the shear strain and of the time. Despite this universality, the mean squared displacement of an individual ellipsoid follows a power law as a function of time, with an exponent that does depend on the strain amplitude and time. We argue that these results are related to microscale relaxation mechanisms that involve friction and memory effects (whereby the motion of an ellipsoid at a given point in time depends on its previous motion). Our observations demonstrate that, at the particle level, the dynamic behaviour of granular systems is qualitatively different from that of thermal glass-forming systems, and is instead more similar to that of complex fluids. We conclude that granular materials can relax even when the driving strain is weak.​



Oh, Cool. I missed that.



JSCh said:


> The second paper was also posted before here -> https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/china-science-technology-forum.249386/page-116#post-9982308
> 
> Also published online,
> 
> Binquan Kou, Yixin Cao, Jindong Li, Chengjie Xia, Zhifeng Li, Haipeng Dong, Ang Zhang, Jie Zhang, Walter Kob, Yujie Wang. *Granular materials flow like complex fluids. *_Nature _(2017). DOI: 10.1038/nature24062​
> Granular materials such as sand, powders and foams are ubiquitous in daily life and in industrial and geotechnical applications1, 2, 3, 4. These disordered systems form stable structures when unperturbed, but in the presence of external influences such as tapping or shear they ‘relax’, becoming fluid in nature. It is often assumed that the relaxation dynamics of granular systems is similar to that of thermal glass-forming systems3, 5. However, so far it has not been possible to determine experimentally the dynamic properties of three-dimensional granular systems at the particle level. This lack of experimental data, combined with the fact that the motion of granular particles involves friction (whereas the motion of particles in thermal glass-forming systems does not), means that an accurate description of the relaxation dynamics of granular materials is lacking. Here we use X-ray tomography to determine the microscale relaxation dynamics of hard granular ellipsoids subject to an oscillatory shear. We find that the distribution of the displacements of the ellipsoids is well described by a Gumbel law6 (which is similar to a Gaussian distribution for small displacements but has a heavier tail for larger displacements), with a shape parameter that is independent of the amplitude of the shear strain and of the time. Despite this universality, the mean squared displacement of an individual ellipsoid follows a power law as a function of time, with an exponent that does depend on the strain amplitude and time. We argue that these results are related to microscale relaxation mechanisms that involve friction and memory effects (whereby the motion of an ellipsoid at a given point in time depends on its previous motion). Our observations demonstrate that, at the particle level, the dynamic behaviour of granular systems is qualitatively different from that of thermal glass-forming systems, and is instead more similar to that of complex fluids. We conclude that granular materials can relax even when the driving strain is weak.​




Also do you have some good scientometric study about Chinese research to read? I would like to know Chinese progress in science and its subfields. 

I hear that Chinese government released some stats during 19th congress. Can you please help me here?


----------



## JSCh

Bussard Ramjet said:


> Oh, Cool. I missed that.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Also do you have some good scientometric study about Chinese research to read? I would like to know Chinese progress in science and its subfields.
> 
> I hear that Chinese government released some stats during 19th congress. Can you please help me here?


Sorry, I don't have those info.


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

JSCh said:


> Sorry, I don't have those info.



Okay. I thought you may have it since you are is interested in research of China. 

However, I think that it makes more sense to look at the larger picture than individual articles.


----------



## TaiShang

*Chinese scientists identify genetic pathway in aging*

By Zhou Wenting in Shanghai (China Daily) 08:54, November 10, 2017

Chinese scientists studying a worm have found the first genetic pathway underlying natural variation in aging, which could provide insights for the development of interventions to slow down the process in humans.

They found that the combination of a certain neuropeptide coding gene and its receptor gene controls the stress reaction of a "longevity gene", which regulates the rate of aging.

The more active the coding gene and the stronger the receptor gene, the more rapid aging occurs, according to the team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Neuroscience.

An article about their study, which took more than five years, was published on Thursday in the journal Nature.

Uncovering the genetic secrets of the aging rate is significant, as the average age of the global population is rising fast. Aging is also a major risk factor for diseases, such as cancers and diabetes, the researchers said.

According to the United Nations, the number of people age 60 or older hit 1 billion worldwide this year and will rise to 3.1 billion by 2100.

"When people live longer, they begin to care more about healthy aging, which means keeping healthy and youthful and having a better quality of life in their twilight years, like some lucky ones do," said Cai Shiqing, the team's lead researcher.

One peer review of the article said the results will be of interest to the readers of Nature because of the general lack of information about how natural genetic variation regulates aging, and the role of neuromodulatory signaling in the process.

Lab experiments were conducted on Caenorhabditis elegans, a transparent worm about 1 millimeter in length that lives in temperate soil environments. It is the basis of the animal model widely used for age-related research because of its clear genetic profile and short life span - an average of three weeks.

The tiny free-living worms from different parts of the world show varied rates of decline in virility, eating and locomotion during aging.

Researchers said they have not yet found the worms' neuropeptide in the human body.

"But we know that animal evolution is conservative, and if we carry on with further studies we're confident that we will probably find that the mechanism underlying the aging rate of mammals is the same as for the worms," said Mu-Ming Poo, director of the institute and an academician of the science academy.

"Healthy human life can be extended if there is a way to target these genes in the future," he said.

http://en.people.cn/n3/2017/1110/c90000-9290957.html

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese medicine scholars develop novel targeted delivery system for CRISPR/Cas9*
*Achieve therapeutic genome editing of VEGFA in osteosarcoma*
Date: November 10, 2017
Source: Hong Kong Baptist University



This image shows the preparation of LC09-PPC-CRISPR/Cas9 delivery system.

_Credit: HKBU_

Chinese Medicine scholars at Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) have succeeded in developing a novel targeted delivery system for CRISPR/Cas9 to achieve therapeutic genome editing of VEGFA in osteosarcoma (OS). Their research paper entitled "Tumor cell-targeted delivery of CRISPR/Cas9 by aptamer-functionalised lipopolymer for therapeutic genome editing of VEGFA in osteosarcoma" was recently published in the academic journal _Biomaterials_.

CRISPR/Cas9 is a budding genome editing technology which holds tremendous promise for cancer treatment. However, a major bottleneck for achieving the therapeutic potential of CRISPR/Cas9 is the lack of an in vivo targeted delivery system. The HKBU team has achieved a breakthrough in the search for an answer to the crux of the above mentioned problem and developed an aptamer-functionalised delivery system for CRISPR/Cas9 with the treatment of OS as a research target.

The research team is led by Professor Lyu Aiping, Dean of the School of Chinese Medicine (SCM) of HKBU, and Professor Zhang Ge, Director of Technology Development Division and Associate Director of Teaching and Research Division of SCM.

Professor Zhang Ge said: "OS, a very common primary malignant bone tumor in children and adolescents, is mainly treated by surgery and chemotherapy but the five-year post-surgery survival rate is a mere 5% to 20%. Aptamers which are single-stranded oligonucleotides and could specifically recognise target cells have been widely used for in vivo targeted delivery of therapeutics. VEGFA has been reported to be a novel therapeutic target for OS."

Professor Lyu Aiping said: "The tumor-specific aptamers, when conjugated with PPC polymers encapsulating CRISPR/Cas9, may facilitate therapeutic genome editing in tumors."

In the experiments using a mouse model, the aptamer facilitated selective distribution of CRISPR/Cas9 in both orthotopic OS and lung metastasis, leading to effective in vivo VEGFA genome editing, inhibited orthotopic OS malignancy and lung metastasis, as well as reduced angiogenesis and bone lesion with no detectable toxicity. The research facilitated clinical application of CRISPR/Cas9 in tumor treatment.
*
Journal Reference*:

Chao Liang, Fangfei Li, Luyao Wang, Zong-Kang Zhang, Chao Wang, Bing He, Jie Li, Zhihao Chen, Atik Badshah Shaikh, Jin Liu, Xiaohao Wu, Songlin Peng, Lei Dang, Baosheng Guo, Xiaojuan He, D.W.T. Au, Cheng Lu, Hailong Zhu, Bao-Ting Zhang, Aiping Lu, Ge Zhang. *Tumor cell-targeted delivery of CRISPR/Cas9 by aptamer-functionalized lipopolymer for therapeutic genome editing of VEGFA in osteosarcoma*. _Biomaterials_, 2017; 147: 68 DOI: 10.1016/j.biomaterials.2017.09.015

Chinese medicine scholars develop novel targeted delivery system for CRISPR/Cas9: Achieve therapeutic genome editing of VEGFA in osteosarcoma -- ScienceDaily

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Focus: Field-Free Spin Patterns*
November 10, 2017• _Physics_ 10, 124

_A vortex-like magnetic spin structure inside a small disk of material is stable without an external magnetic field and might be useful for information storage or processing.
_


​F. Zheng_ et al_., Phys. Rev. Lett. (2017)
*Magnetic whorls.* A target skyrmion is a pattern of spins in a material (gray disks) that includes two components (shown below each disk): a “normal” circular skyrmion (middle level) and a ring of spins that produces an opposing magnetic field (bottom level). The pattern comes in two states, “down” (left) and “up” (right). ​
Magnetic skyrmions are swirling patterns of spins in a material, and they could potentially be used to store data. They often require an external magnetic field for stability, but a new experiment using a nanosized disk has demonstrated a skyrmion that exists without any external field. The so-called target skyrmion consists of a circular skyrmion surrounded by a thin ring of twisting spins. The researchers show that a magnetic field can switch the system between two different orientations that could represent the zero and one of a digital bit.

Skyrmions come in a number of shapes, but the most familiar looks like a “bad hair day” for a magnetic material. The spins in the center of the skyrmion point up, but as one moves out from the center, the spins gradually rotate in both the horizontal and vertical planes, twisting around like the hairs in a cowlick and ending with the spins pointing down at the outer edge of the circle. This whirling is robust because no uniform rotation (or “combing”) can unwind it. The structure is also compact, with a diameter as small as a few nanometers, which is several times smaller than the ferromagnetic domains currently used in magnetic data storage. Therefore, skyrmion-based memory could offer a higher storage density than traditional ferromagnetic domains, explains Jiadong Zang from the University of New Hampshire in Durham.

Skyrmions appear in various magnetic materials with an asymmetry in their crystal structure that causes nearby spins to tilt relative to each other, rather than aligning in parallel as they do in a ferromagnet. In most cases, the stability of this spin configuration relies on an external magnetic field, which would complicate the control of closely packed skyrmion-based bits. Motivated by theoretical predictions [1–3], a team led by Zang and Haifeng Du of the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science in China has demonstrated the existence of target skyrmions, which are stable in the absence of an external field.


_Continue ->_ Physics - Focus: Field-Free Spin Patterns

Fengshan Zheng, Hang Li, Shasha Wang, Dongsheng Song, Chiming Jin, Wenshen Wei, András Kovács, Jiadong Zang, Mingliang Tian, Yuheng Zhang, Haifeng Du, and Rafal E. Dunin-Borkowski. *Direct Imaging of a Zero-Field Target Skyrmion and Its Polarity Switch in a Chiral Magnetic Nanodisk*. _Phys. Rev. Lett. _119, 197205 (2017). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.197205​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 9-Nov-2017
* Practical superconducting nanowire single photon detector with record detection efficiency over 90 percent *
Science China Press



​Schematics of fiber-coupled superconducting nanowire single photon detector.
©Science China Press​
Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) offer significant improvement on detection efficiency (DE) compared to their semiconducting counterparts, having enabled many breakthrough applications in quantum information technologies. The team headed by Prof. Lixing You from Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology (SIMIT), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) (also affiliated to CAS Center for Excellence in Superconducting Electronics (CENSE)) first demonstrated the fabrication and operation of a NbN-SNSPD with system detection efficiency over 90% at 2.1 K at a wavelength of 1550 nm, which paves the way for practical application of SNSPD (Figure 1).

The results were published recently on _SCIENCE CHINA Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy_ [1] as a cover image story. Dr. Weijun Zhang is the first author and Dr. Lixing You is the corresponding author.

At 1550 nm, which is the most important wavelength for applications, the state of the art SNSPD made of WSi superconductor has reached a DE record of 93% [2], compared to InGaAs detector with DE ~30%. Unfortunately, WSi-SNSPD usually operates at sub-kelvin temperatures, requiring expensive and user unfriendly refrigeration equipment.

Extensive efforts are made on the development of SNSPDs based on NbN, targeted at operating temperature above 2K, accessible to inexpensive and user-friendly compact cryocoolers. With a decade research, the detection efficiency of NbN-SNSPDs were gradually increased to ~ 80%. However, further improvements are not reported. Achieving DE over 90% requires the simultaneous optimization of many different factors, including near perfect optical coupling, near perfect absorption, and near unity intrinsic quantum efficiency. Previous attempts at doing this have mostly been made through a process of trial and error.

This paper first reported a NbN-SNSPD system based on G-M cryocooler with system detection efficiency over 90% (at dark count rate of 10 Hz) at 2.1 K at a wavelength of 1550 nm. The efficiency of the device saturates to 92% when the temperature is lowered to 1.8 K.

The success of this device has been the result of using an integrated Distributed Bragg Reflector (DBR) cavity offering near unity refection at the interface, and through systematic optimization of the NbN nanowire's meandered geometry. The joint efforts enable researchers to simultaneously achieve the stringent requirements for coupling, absorption and intrinsic quantum efficiency. What is more, the device exhibit timing jitters down to 79 ps, almost half that of previously reported WSi-SNSPD, promising additional advantages in applications requiring high timing precision. The devices have been applied to the quantum information frontier experiments in University of Science and Technology of China.

SNSPD with near unity detection efficiency operational on economical and user-friendly compact cryocooler will provide researchers a powerful and easy accessible tool, envisage further breakthrough in quantum information areas such as optical quantum computation/simulation, quantum key distribution etc., in a foreseeable near future. Aiming to this niche and growing market, Dr. You et al also founded a start-up company (Shanghai Photon Technology CO LTD, http://www.sconphoton.com/ ) to commercialize the technology.

The SNSPDs with start-of-art performance from SIMIT have provided key support to quantum communication of China. Collaborated with JW Pan's group, many world records on fiber quantum key distribution have been made including the current record of the longest distance of 404 km [3]. Dr. You believes that there is still room for further improving the detection efficiency of NbN SNSPD. In the new National Key R&D Program of China kicked off in July of 2017 directed by Dr. You, the new target of the detection efficiency is 93-95%.

###​
This research was funded by National Key R&D Program of China (2017YFA0304000); Strategic Priority Research Program (B) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB04010200); National Natural Science Foundation of China (91121022, 61401441, and 61401443) and the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (16JC1400402)


Practical superconducting nanowire single photon detector with record detection efficiency over 90 percent | EurekAlert! Science News

WeiJun Zhang, LiXing You, Hao Li, Jia Huang, ChaoLin Lv, Lu Zhang, XiaoYu Liu, JunJie Wu, Zhen Wang, XiaoMing Xie, *NbN superconducting nanowire single photon detector with efficiency over 90% at 1550 nm wavelength operational at compact cryocooler temperature*, _Science China Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy_ (2017). DOI: 10.1007/s11433-017-9113-4​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *10-Qubit Entanglement and Parallel Logic Operations with a Superconducting Circuit*
> 
> *Abstract *
> Here we report on the production and tomography of genuinely entangled Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states with up to ten qubits connecting to a bus resonator in a superconducting circuit, where the resonator-mediated qubit-qubit interactions are used to controllably entangle multiple qubits and to operate on different pairs of qubits in parallel. The resulting 10-qubit density matrix is probed by quantum state tomography, with a fidelity of 0.668±0.025. Our results demonstrate the largest entanglement created so far in solid-state architectures and pave the way to large-scale quantum computation.​
> 
> Chao Song, Kai Xu, Wuxin Liu, Chui-ping Yang, Shi-Biao Zheng, Hui Deng, Qiwei Xie, Keqiang Huang, Qiujiang Guo, Libo Zhang, Pengfei Zhang, Da Xu, Dongning Zheng, Xiaobo Zhu, H. Wang, Y.-A. Chen, C.-Y. Lu, Siyuan Han, Jian-Wei Pan. *10-Qubit Entanglement and Parallel Logic Operations with a Superconducting Circuit*. _Phys. Rev. Lett. _(2017). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.180511


*Superconducting quantum computer achieves ten-qubit entanglement*
Nov 10, 2017




Entangled states: a ten-qubit processor​
Physicists in China and the US have built a ten-qubit superconducting quantum processor that could be scaled up to tackle problems not solvable by classical computers. The performance of the device was verified using quantum tomography, which showed that the new approach can generate a true ten-partite Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger (GHZ) state – the largest yet achieved in a solid-state system.

The field of quantum computing is in its infancy, and a genuinely useful, practical device that outperforms classical computers has not yet been built. At this stage of development, researchers do not even agree on the basics of implementation, but techniques employing superconducting circuits have an advantage over some other designs in that they are based on established and scalable microfabrication processes.

*Robust to noise*
Writing in _Physical Review Letters_, a multi-institution collaboration led by Jian-Wei Pan of the University of Science and Technology of China, Shanghai, report a superconducting architecture in which information is encoded as transmons – a form of charge qubit especially robust to noise. The team used a bus resonator to mediate qubit–qubit coupling, and showed that a single collective interaction could produce a ten-qubit GHZ state from initially non-entangled qubits.

Pan and colleagues propose that the efficient generation of entanglement, and the ability to operate on different qubit pairs in parallel, make their approach a promising route to achieving a large-scale quantum computer.

*About the author*
Marric Stephens is a reporter on _physicsworld.com

_
Superconducting quantum computer achieves ten-qubit entanglement - physicsworld.com

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

JSCh said:


> *Superconducting quantum computer achieves ten-qubit entanglement*
> Nov 10, 2017
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Entangled states: a ten-qubit processor​
> Physicists in China and the US have built a ten-qubit superconducting quantum processor that could be scaled up to tackle problems not solvable by classical computers. The performance of the device was verified using quantum tomography, which showed that the new approach can generate a true ten-partite Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger (GHZ) state – the largest yet achieved in a solid-state system.
> 
> The field of quantum computing is in its infancy, and a genuinely useful, practical device that outperforms classical computers has not yet been built. At this stage of development, researchers do not even agree on the basics of implementation, but techniques employing superconducting circuits have an advantage over some other designs in that they are based on established and scalable microfabrication processes.
> 
> *Robust to noise*
> Writing in _Physical Review Letters_, a multi-institution collaboration led by Jian-Wei Pan of the University of Science and Technology of China, Shanghai, report a superconducting architecture in which information is encoded as transmons – a form of charge qubit especially robust to noise. The team used a bus resonator to mediate qubit–qubit coupling, and showed that a single collective interaction could produce a ten-qubit GHZ state from initially non-entangled qubits.
> 
> Pan and colleagues propose that the efficient generation of entanglement, and the ability to operate on different qubit pairs in parallel, make their approach a promising route to achieving a large-scale quantum computer.
> 
> *About the author*
> Marric Stephens is a reporter on _physicsworld.com
> 
> _
> Superconducting quantum computer achieves ten-qubit entanglement - physicsworld.com




This is not an American collaboration paper. This is a purely Chinese paper. Only 1 author out of 19 is an American. The lead author, the last author, and all the corresponding authors are Chinese.


----------



## cirr

*China to get a third telescope for Antarctic observations*

2017-11-13 08:44 Global Times _Editor: Li Yan_

*China will add a third Antarctic Survey Telescope (AST3) to the South Pole array for observing gravitational waves, and introduce more equipment for its observation work*, Chinese scientists said on Sunday.

The AST3-3 telescope is expected to be installed on China's next round of Antarctic scientific investigation at the Kunlun Station, Wu Xuefeng, a research fellow with the Chinese Academy of Sciences Purple Mountain Observatory, told the Global Times on Sunday.

Wu added that the AST3 team will take part in global cooperation to better observe gravitational waves.

"Gravitational waves offer a new method for astronomers and, when this is combined with traditional approaches, such as optical and electromagnetic waves, more data on the universe can be discovered," Chen Xuelei, a research fellow at CAS' National Astronomical Observatories, previously told the Global Times.

Gravitational waves were first discovered by the US's Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory detectors in August. China's AST3-2 observed optical signals, in a separate study, the following day, according to the Chinese Center for Antarctic Astronomy.

This was the first time for humans to have detected gravitational waves and corresponding electromagnetic phenomena resulting from a binary neutron star merger, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

China's AST3-2 observed optical signals resulting from a merger the following day, with some 70 telescopes on the ground or in space around the world, China's Center for Antarctic Astronomy said.

As the equipment used to detect gravitational waves becomes more accurate, more optical counterparts of gravitational waves will be detected, said Wu.

The AST3 is at Dome A, Antarctica, which is uniquely situated for rapid response time-domain astronomy with continuous night-time coverage during the austral winter.

It was installed at Kunlun Station in 2015. The second Chinese Antarctic Survey Telescope, AST3-2, is the largest visible telescope in the Antarctic, operating in a fully automatic control mode for the observation of different scientific targets.

http://www.ecns.cn/2017/11-13/280625.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*China fires up next-generation neutron-science facility*
Beam generator puts country in elite company for doing experiments in materials science and other fields.

David Cyranoski
14 November 2017



Jin Liwang/Xinhua via ZUMAPRESS​Engineers work on an instrument at the China Spallation Neutron Source in Dongguan.

China is revving up its next-generation neutron generator and will soon start experiments there. That will lift the country into a select group of nations with facilities that produce intense neutron beams to study the structure of materials.

The China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS) in Dongguan, a 2.2-billion-yuan (US$331-million) centre, will allow the country’s growing pool of top-notch physicists and material scientists, along with international collaborators, to compete in multiple physics and engineering fields. Its designers also hope that the facility will lead to commercial products and applications ranging from batteries and bridges to aeroplane engines and cancer therapy.

“It is not only a big step forward for Chinese scientists, but also a significant event for the international scientist community,” says Wang Xun-Li, a physicist at the City University of Hong Kong who has been involved in planning the facility.

*Related stories*

Policy: Crystallography needs a governing body
Sweden likely winner for neutron source
Beamline bonanza for Japanese researchers
More related stories

*Beam bombardment*
Spallation neutron sources produce neutrons by slamming protons onto a metal target — CSNS uses tungsten. They are more cost effective and safer than other methods, which use nuclear reactors to produce neutron beams. As neutrons have no charge, they can penetrate materials more easily than some other probing methods, and they are more senstive to light elements such as hydrogen, making them useful for evaluating candidate materials for fuel cells. Similar facilities exist only in the United Kingdom, United States, Japan and Switzerland, and one is under construction in Sweden.

Fujio Maekawa, a specialist in neutron sources at the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex in Tokaimura, says that although the CSNS delivers neutrons at a lower density than other spallation sources — which means that experiments will take longer — a planned upgrade will bring it in line with other facilities. And given their scarcity, “neutron users around the world always welcome new sources”, he say_s._

The CSNS will have capacity to host 20 beam lines, supplying as many instruments. Preliminary tests of its first three instruments began on 1 November. “Neutrons arrived at the samples as expected,” says Wang Fangwei, head of the neutron-science division at CSNS. Although debugging might take a couple of years, he expects the instruments to be calibrated and ready for initial experiments by the end of 2017.

Chinese physicists are eager to use the facility to analyse the underlying magnetic properties of materials, an area in which the country has significant experience. Wang Xun-Li says that several planned instruments will give scientists the chance to move to the forefront of fields such as the physics of skyrmions — vortex-like excitations in magnetic materials — and high-temperature superconductivity. “There are a whole bunch of early- to mid-career scientists who are hungry to use the facility for studying magnetism,” says Wang Xun-Li.

*Global appeal*
Wang Xun-Li thinks that the latest facility will encourage Chinese researchers to remain in the country instead of pursuing careers elsewhere. “In the past, it was common to see Chinese scientists go abroad for these kinds of studies,” he says.

The facility’s first instruments are also attracting international researchers. German material scientist Frank Klose says that the CSNS was a major factor when he and material scientist Christine Rehm, his wife, decided to join the new Guangdong Technion Israel Institute of Technology in Shantou, 400 kilometres east of Dongguan. Klose’s research focuses on designing data-storage devices and sensors that could be used in hydrogen-powered cars. He helped design one of the facility's instruments to investigate the magnetic properties of spintronic devices, which take advantage of the spin of electrons to store data.

But scientists contacted by _Nature_ have raised concerns about CSNS’s location, saying that Dongguan lacks services and infrastructure, such as schools and universities, that will persuade top scientists and their families to move there. “I believe CSNS is suffering from a lack of first-grade scientists who actually are based in Dongguan,” says a researcher familiar with the facility, who asked for anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. Potential users have also expressed some frustration that only 3 instruments will be ready this year, despite the facility’s capacity to host 20.

But more instruments are already being built. Shenzhen's government is funding two that are expected to be ready by the end of 2019, including one designed to model high-pressure environments, such as the Earth's core. Mao Ho-Kwang, a geophysicist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC, is keen to use it to simulate what happens to materials in high-pressure conditions. “The CSNS instruments will be a great asset for Earth, environmental and energy science, as well as physics, chemistry and material science,” says Mao. “I am very excited, and the whole neutron community is getting very excited too”.

Nature 551, 284 (16 November 2017)
doi:10.1038/nature.2017.22976​


China fires up next-generation neutron-science facility : Nature News & Comment

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

A recent paper in Physical Review Letters, published on 13th November. 

It is marked as Editor's Suggestion. 

https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.200501

Man! @JSCh 

Pan Jianwei is a real rockstar!

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

Bussard Ramjet said:


> A recent paper in Physical Review Letters, published on 13th November.
> 
> It is marked as Editor's Suggestion.
> 
> https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.200501
> 
> Man! @JSCh
> 
> Pan Jianwei is a real rockstar!



Infact the biggest thing, about Pan Jianwei, and indeed all top scientists is not only their own research. 

It is the fact that they can attract a huge amount of extremely high quality talent to work with them. 

Lu Chaoyang is a young scientist in the same field, who will be the Pan Jianwei of the next generation from China, and he may not have come if for Pan Jianwei. 

Similarly, the scientists and students being trained in these labs are extraordinary, and will help China for a generation to come! 

That is why I was so against Yan Nieng leaving China for Princeton. She is an exceptional scientist who was already attracting international talent to China. 

@JSCh @yusheng


----------



## yusheng

International cooperation among scientists is normal and should be encouraged, Pan was a very talented scientist when he went abroad.
so was Yan.

anyway, if China still pays attention and invests in education, brilliant scientists will emerge continously in the future.
no worry at all.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Highly Cited Researchers 2017: China ‘powering ahead’ in key fields*
China now third behind US and UK on Clarivate list of most impactful researchers worldwide

November 15, 2017

By Simon Baker Twitter: @HigherBaker

The number of Chinese researchers making a list of the most highly cited authors worldwide has gone up by more than a third in just a year.

According to the latest edition of the Highly Cited Researchers List, produced by Clarivate Analytics, China now ranks behind only the US and UK in terms of the countries with the most entries in the annual publication.

The list features more than 3,000 researchers, in 21 fields, who produced a “notable” number of highly cited papers in Clarivate’s Web of Science database over the period 2005-2015.

Authors are selected on the basis of “consistent production” of highly cited papers – defined as those that rank in the top 1 per cent by citations for field and publication year – to allow early career researchers to be considered as much as established names.

Researchers from the US continue to be the most represented in the list, with almost half of all the entries being affiliated with organisations, including research institutes and universities, in the nation.

In total, the US had more than 1,600 entries, a 13 per cent increase on last year, with the UK second, being responsible for almost 350 entries. However, China is gaining fast: its representation in the list has jumped 34 per cent compared with last year, giving it almost 240 entries.


In the category of engineering, a subject that China has been heavily focusing on for research, the country has the most entries with 51, way ahead of the US on 26. It is also second only to the US for representation in some fields, including computer science and materials science.

David Pendlebury, a senior citation analyst at Clarivate Analytics, said that China’s rise in publication output was a well-known trend but “what we are now seeing is [its] increasing presence among most cited authors and papers, especially in the physical sciences”.

*Search our database of global university jobs*

“China’s output of materials science papers is now more than twice that of the US, and it is capturing a greater and greater share of top cited papers in the field. In some fields China has not only caught up, but it is now powering ahead.”

In terms of institutions in China, the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS) is most represented, with 45 entries on the list. The institution also comes fourth in the world behind Harvard University in top spot (109 entries), Stanford University (64 entries) in second and Germany’s Max Planck Society (47) in third.


Meanwhile, Clarivate also released its latest list of researchers who, in recent years, have published multiple papers that have been rapidly accumulating citations, known as “Hot Papers”.

The current list features 21 researchers who, since 2014, have each published at least 14 Hot Papers, according to citations data running up until the end of last year.

Clarivate says that two “dominant” research themes have emerged in recent editions for this list: cancer genomics and the development of solar power using the mineral perovskite.

Sharing top spot for researchers with the most Hot Papers are Michael Grätzel, professor of physical chemistry at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, and Henry Snaith, professor of physics at the University of Oxford, who both appear as authors on separate batches of 29 papers on perovskite solar cells.

Both academics are also among 147 authors in the Highly Cited Researchers List who appear across more than one field, with Professor Grätzel authoring highly cited papers in four separate fields and Professor Snaith in three.

_simon.baker@timeshighereducation.com_



Highly Cited Researchers 2017: China ‘powering ahead’ in key fields | THE News

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Han Patriot

JSCh said:


> *Highly Cited Researchers 2017: China ‘powering ahead’ in key fields*
> China now third behind US and UK on Clarivate list of most impactful researchers worldwide
> 
> November 15, 2017
> 
> By Simon Baker Twitter: @HigherBaker
> 
> The number of Chinese researchers making a list of the most highly cited authors worldwide has gone up by more than a third in just a year.
> 
> According to the latest edition of the Highly Cited Researchers List, produced by Clarivate Analytics, China now ranks behind only the US and UK in terms of the countries with the most entries in the annual publication.
> 
> The list features more than 3,000 researchers, in 21 fields, who produced a “notable” number of highly cited papers in Clarivate’s Web of Science database over the period 2005-2015.
> 
> Authors are selected on the basis of “consistent production” of highly cited papers – defined as those that rank in the top 1 per cent by citations for field and publication year – to allow early career researchers to be considered as much as established names.
> 
> Researchers from the US continue to be the most represented in the list, with almost half of all the entries being affiliated with organisations, including research institutes and universities, in the nation.
> 
> In total, the US had more than 1,600 entries, a 13 per cent increase on last year, with the UK second, being responsible for almost 350 entries. However, China is gaining fast: its representation in the list has jumped 34 per cent compared with last year, giving it almost 240 entries.
> 
> 
> In the category of engineering, a subject that China has been heavily focusing on for research, the country has the most entries with 51, way ahead of the US on 26. It is also second only to the US for representation in some fields, including computer science and materials science.
> 
> David Pendlebury, a senior citation analyst at Clarivate Analytics, said that China’s rise in publication output was a well-known trend but “what we are now seeing is [its] increasing presence among most cited authors and papers, especially in the physical sciences”.
> 
> *Search our database of global university jobs*
> 
> “China’s output of materials science papers is now more than twice that of the US, and it is capturing a greater and greater share of top cited papers in the field. In some fields China has not only caught up, but it is now powering ahead.”
> 
> In terms of institutions in China, the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS) is most represented, with 45 entries on the list. The institution also comes fourth in the world behind Harvard University in top spot (109 entries), Stanford University (64 entries) in second and Germany’s Max Planck Society (47) in third.
> 
> 
> Meanwhile, Clarivate also released its latest list of researchers who, in recent years, have published multiple papers that have been rapidly accumulating citations, known as “Hot Papers”.
> 
> The current list features 21 researchers who, since 2014, have each published at least 14 Hot Papers, according to citations data running up until the end of last year.
> 
> Clarivate says that two “dominant” research themes have emerged in recent editions for this list: cancer genomics and the development of solar power using the mineral perovskite.
> 
> Sharing top spot for researchers with the most Hot Papers are Michael Grätzel, professor of physical chemistry at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, and Henry Snaith, professor of physics at the University of Oxford, who both appear as authors on separate batches of 29 papers on perovskite solar cells.
> 
> Both academics are also among 147 authors in the Highly Cited Researchers List who appear across more than one field, with Professor Grätzel authoring highly cited papers in four separate fields and Professor Snaith in three.
> 
> _simon.baker@timeshighereducation.com_
> 
> 
> 
> Highly Cited Researchers 2017: China ‘powering ahead’ in key fields | THE News


Bash us more, bash, and you will see what we will achieve. I have never doubted Chinese abilities.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> * China plans world's most powerful particle collider*
> China Daily, October 29, 2015
> 
> Chinese scientists have completed an initial conceptual design of a super giant particle collider which will be bigger and more powerful than any particle accelerator on Earth.
> 
> "We have completed the initial conceptual design and organized international peer review recently, and the final conceptual design will be completed by the end of 2016," Wang Yifang, director of the Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, told China Daily in an exclusive interview.
> 
> The institute has been operating major high-energy physics projects in China, such as the Beijing Electron Positron Collider and the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino experiment.
> 
> Now scientists are proposing a more ambitious new accelerator with seven times the energy level of the Large Hadron Collider in Europe.
> 
> In July 2012, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, also known as CERN, announced that it had discovered the long sought-after Higgs boson－the "God particle", regarded as the crucial link that could explain why other elementary particles have mass－on LHC.
> 
> The discovery was believed to be one of the most important in physics for decades. Scientists are hopeful that it will further explain nature and the universe we live in.
> 
> While LHC is composed of 27-kilometer-long accelerator chains and detectors buried 100 meters underground at the border of Switzerland and France, scientists only managed to spot hundreds of Higgs boson particles, not enough to learn the structure and other features of the particle.
> 
> With a circumference of 50 to 100 km, however, the proposed Chinese accelerator Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC) will generate millions of Higgs boson particles, allowing a more precise understanding.
> 
> "The technical route we chose is different from LHC. While LHC smashes together protons, it generates Higgs particles together with many other particles," Wang said.
> 
> "The proposed CEPC, however, collides electrons and positrons to create an extremely clean environment that only produces Higgs particles," he said.
> 
> The Higgs boson factory is only the first step of the ambitious plan. A second-phase project named SPPC (Super Proton-Proton Collider) is also included in the design－a fully upgraded version of LHC.
> 
> LHC shut down for upgrading in early 2013 and restarted in June with an almost doubled energy level of 13 TeV, a measurement of electron volts.
> 
> "LHC is hitting its limits of energy level, it seems not possible to escalate the energy dramatically at the existing facility," Wang said. The proposed SPPC will be a 100 TeV proton-proton collider.
> 
> If everything moves forward as proposed, the construction of the first phase project CEPC will start between 2020 and 2025, followed by the second phase in 2040.
> 
> "China brings to this entire discussion a certain level of newness. They are going to need help, but they have financial muscle and they have ambition," said Nima Arkani Hamed from the Institute for Advanced Study in the United States, who joined the force to promote CEPC in the world.
> 
> David J. Gross, a US particle physicist and 2004 Nobel Prize winner, wrote in a commentary co-signed by US theoretical physicist Edward Witten that although the cost of the project would be great, the benefits would also be great.
> 
> "China would leap to a leadership position in an important frontier area of basic science," he wrote.
> 
> Gerard't Hooft, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1999, said in an earlier interview to Doha-based broadcaster Al Jazeera that the proposed collider, if built, "will bring hundreds, probably thousands, of top class scientists with different specializations, from pure theory to experimental physics and engineering, from abroad to China".


*CEPC Industrial Promotion Consortium Established*
Nov 15, 2017

Over forty domestic entrepreneurs gathered at the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) and announced the establishment of an industrial promotion consortium for the Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC) Project on Nov. 7th 2017.

The CEPC Industrial Promotion Consortium (CIPC) will aim at promoting research progress, coordinating technology pre-research, organizing joint efforts in R&D for key technologies, and speeding up the industrialization of accelerator technology.

By participating in the construction of this large science facility, these entrepreneurs will improve their abilities in innovation and manufacturing, making it a win-win situation. It is expected that the domestic market of the entrepreneurs could be expanded, as well as opening a door to the international market, as they could become equipment suppliers for well-known international facilities.

Many of CEPC's key technologies, such as superconducting RF acceleration and high-Q superconducting RF cavities, will inevitably need to be developed for future accelerators. High-efficiency microwave power sources and large-scale refrigerators can be produced in China, which means the barriers for importing this kind of equipment could be broken down.

Some strategic cutting-edge technologies such as cryogenics, precision mechanisms, vacuum, electronics, radiation-resistant chips, automatic control, computers, etc., can achieve international leadership. In particular, high temperature superconducting wire and superconducting magnets are expected to lead the world, resulting in great economic and social benefits.

The establishment of the Industry Promotion Association can co-ordinate and bring together the strengths of the scientific community and the business community in the design of CEPC-SppC, pre-key technology research and industrialization development, as well as policy research and promotion of the project.

Developed countries have invested heavily in the construction of various types of large-scale scientific facilities, such as the well-known Hubble Space Telescope, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in the United States, Japan's Super Kamioka Neutrino Detector and so on.

These multi-billion-dollar investments have not only brought about fruitful scientific returns but also led the development of technology. One of the most famous examples is the World Wide Web, invented by CERN to solve the problem of data sharing between scientists. Internationally, there have been some studies on the input-output ratio of large scientific devices. For example, the input-output ratio of the large accelerators used for high-energy physics research is generally accepted to be around 1:3, that is to say, for each yuan invested, three yuan are generated.

CEPC-SppC is becoming a large international science project. The International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA) and Asian Committee for Future Accelerators have stated their support for research on energy frontier circular colliders and for global collaboration. To date, IHEP has signed MOUs on the CEPC project with over twenty institutions and universities. An International Advisory Committee has been founded and annual review meetings and related workshops are held every year.

Since the idea of constructing CEPC-SppC was proposed in 2012, IHEP has been promoting the design and pre-research of the project. In 2015, the preliminary concept design report was completed. With the assistance of the State Key Research and Development Program under the Ministry of Science and Technology, the project team has made fruitful progress in terms of accelerator physics design, superconducting accelerating cavities, klystrons, beam measurement, key technologies for linear accelerators, and key detector technologies. The CEPC-SppC conceptual design report will be completed by the end of 2017, laying a good foundation for producing the technical design report in 2018.


CEPC Industrial Promotion Consortium Established---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

Today's edition of Nature is out. 

And there are two Chinese papers in the journal. 

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature24062

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature24467


----------



## JSCh

*2017 ACM Gordon Bell Prize Awarded to Chinese Team for 18.9 Petaflops Earthquake Simulation*
November 16, 2017

DENVER, Nov. 16, 2017 – ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery (www.acm.org), has named a 12-member Chinese team the recipients of the 2017 ACM Gordon Bell Prize for their research project, “18.9-Pflops Nonlinear Earthquake Simulation on Sunway TaihuLight: Enabling Depiction of 18-Hz and 8-Meter Scenarios_._” Using the Sunway TaihuLight, which is ranked as the world’s fastest supercomputer, the team developed software that was able to efficiently process 18.9 Pflops (or 18.9 quadrillion calculations per second) of data and create 3D visualizations relating to a devastating earthquake that occurred in Tangshan, China in 1976. The team’s software included innovations that achieved greater efficiency than had been previously attained running similar programs on the Titan and TaihuLight supercomputers.

The ACM Gordon Bell Prize (awards.acm.org/bell) tracks the progress of parallel computing and rewards innovation in applying high performance computing to challenges in science, engineering, and large-scale data analytics. The award was presented today by ACM President Vicki Hanson and Subhash Saini, Chair of the 2017 Gordon Bell Prize Award Committee, during the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC17) (sc17.supercomputing.org/) in Denver, Colorado.

Although earthquake prediction and simulation is an inexact and emerging area of research, scientists hope that the use of supercomputers, which can process vast sets of data to address the myriad of variables at play in geologic events, may lead to better prediction and preparedness. For example, the Chinese team’s 3D simulations may inform engineering standards for buildings being developed in zones known to have seismic activity. In this vein, many have advocated for a significant increase in the

amount of sensors to regularly monitor seismic activity. The Tangshan earthquake, which occurred on July 28, 1976 in Tangshan, Hebei, China, is regarded as the most devastating earthquake of the 20th century, and resulted in approximately 242,000-700,000 deaths. In developing their simulations for the Tangshan earthquake, the winning team included input data from the entire spatial area of the quake, a surface diameter of 320 km by 312 km, as well as 40 km deep below the earth’s surface. The input data also included a frequency range of the earthquake of up to 18 Hz (Hertz). In the study of earthquakes, a Hertz is a unit of measurement that measures the number of times an event happens in the period of a second. For example, it might correspond to the number of times the ground shakes back and forth during an earthquake. Previous simulations of violent earthquakes have employed a lower frequency than 18 Hz, since enormous memory and time consumption are needed for high frequency simulations.

This year’s winning team is not the first to develop algorithms for supercomputers in an effort to simulate earthquake activity. In the abstract of their presentation, the 2017 Gordon Bell recipients write: “Our innovations include: (1) a customized parallelization scheme that employs the 10 million cores efficiently at both the process and thread levels; (2) an elaborate memory scheme that integrates on-chip halo exchange through register communication, optimized blocking configuration guided by an analytic model, and coalesced DMA access with array fusion; (3) on-the-fly compression that doubles the maximum problem size and further improves the performance by 24%.”

Of its new innovations, the Chinese team adds that its on-the-fly compression scheme may be effectively applied to other challenges in exascale computing. In their paper, the authors state: “The even more exciting innovation is the on-the-fly compression scheme, which, at the cost of an acceptable level of accuracy lost, scales our simulation performance and capabilities even beyond the machine’s physical constraints. While the current compression scheme is largely customized for our specific application and the Sunway architecture, we believe the idea has great potential to be applied to other applications and other architectures.”

Winning team members include Haohuan Fu, Tsinghua University and National Supercomputing Center, Wuxi, China; Conghui He, Tsinghua University and National Supercomputing Center, Wuxi, China; Bingwei Chen, Tsinghua University and National Supercomputing Center, Wuxi, China; Zekun Yin, Shandong University; Zhenguo Zhang, Southern University of Science and Technology, China; Wenqiang Zhang, University of Science and Technology of China; Tingjian Zhang, Shandong University; Wei Xue, Tsinghua University and National Supercomputing Center, Wuxi, China; Weiguo Liu, Shandong University; Wanwang Yin, National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering and Technology, China; Guangwen Yang, Tsinghua University and National Supercomputing Center, Wuxi, China; and Xioafei Chen, Southern University of Science and Technology, China.

Innovations from advanced scientific computing have a far-reaching impact in many areas of science and society—from understanding the evolution of the universe and other challenges in astronomy, to complex geological phenomena, to nuclear energy research, to economic forecasting, to developing new pharmaceuticals. The annual SC conference brings together scientists, engineers and researchers from around the world for an outstanding week of technical papers, timely research posters, and tutorials.

The Sunway TaihuLight is a Chinese supercomputer with over 10.5 M heterogeneous cores and is ranked as the fastest supercomputer in the world. Located at the National Supercomputer Center in Wuxi, Jingsu, China, it is nearly three times as fast as the Tianhe-2, the supercomputer that previously held the world record for speed.


https://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wir...se-team-18-9-petaflops-earthquake-simulation/

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*High-tech companies in the limelight at Shenzhen expo*
By Chai Hua and Zhou Mo in Shenzhen, Guangdong | China Daily | 2017-11-17 08:53


















Visitors take photographs of an underwater robot in a tank at the China High-tech Fair 2017 held in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, on Nov 16, 2017. Xuan Hui / Provided to China Daily

Have you seen a machine that transforms air into drinking water, a window membrane to protect your home from outside pollutants, or a battery that needs only 30 seconds to charge?

Innovative companies and technologies are the top draw for foreign delegations and visitors at the China High-tech Fair 2017, a State-level technology show that kicked off on Thursday in Shenzhen, Guangdong province.

More than 1,000 new products are being showcased at the fair that has attracted 3,049 exhibitors from all over the world. Some of the top global technology companies are also participating in the event, such as the 3-D robotic sorting system from Intel and the latest 5G solution from Huawei.

In addition, the fair also set an exhibition zone for early-stage startups for the first time this year.

Delegations from 35 countries and the European Union are seeking cooperation with China's innovative high-tech companies.

The delegation from Argentina's La Rioja province, which is taking part in the event for the first time, signed a memorandum of understanding with China's leading new-energy carmaker BYD at the fair to purchase 50 electric buses. The Shenzhen-based company will also provide a package of new energy solutions, including electronic cars, e-trucks, solar panels, and energy storage systems.



Visitors watch flexible screens during the 19th China High-tech Fair in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong province, Nov 16, 2017. More than 3,000 exhibitors would show latest achievements in science and technology here on the fair which kicked off on Thursday. [Photo/Xinhua]

Ruben Eduardo Galleguillo, minister of industry and planning of La Rioja, said "Argentina is a country with abundant agricultural and tourism resources, while China is advanced in technology. We hope to learn from and introduce Chinese technologies to our country while bringing our natural and cultural resources to China."
The province also signed an agreement with Chinese telecommunication company ZTE for smart city solutions at the exhibition.

John Kilmartin, executive director of Bahrain Economic Development Board, said they are looking at cloud solutions, digital entertainment services and internet security companies in particular.

"I am impressed by innovative products and technologies in the fair, such as facial recognition, virtual reality, IOT and robotics," he noted, "China is a beacon for Bahrain. Especially in Shenzhen, if we could emulate any small way what happened here, we would be very proud of that."

Several Chinese companies have already set up offices in Bahrain, such as Huawei, while companies in the e-commerce and online-gaming industry have charted plans to develop the market. Bahrain is also looking for Chinese investors to fund startups in the Middle East, he said.





​Robots play football under the command of a person during the 19th China High-tech Fair in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong province, Nov 16, 2017. More than 3,000 exhibitors would show latest achievements in science and technology here on the fair which kicked off on Thursday. [Photo/Xinhua]




​A water dispenser which can condense air moisture is seen during the 19th China High-tech Fair in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong province, Nov 16, 2017. More than 3,000 exhibitors would show latest achievements in science and technology here on the fair which kicked off on Thursday. [Photo/Xinhua]




​A visitor tries an aircraft during the 19th China High-tech Fair in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong province, Nov 16, 2017. More than 3,000 exhibitors would show latest achievements in science and technology here on the fair which kicked off on Thursday. [Photo/Xinhua]




​A visitor experiences 3D theatre during the 19th China High-tech Fair in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong province, Nov 16, 2017. More than 3,000 exhibitors would show latest achievements in science and technology here on the fair which kicked off on Thursday. [Photo/Xinhua]




​The 19th China High-tech Fair is held in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong province, Nov 16, 2017. More than 3,000 exhibitors would show latest achievements in science and technology here on the fair which kicked off on Thursday. [Photo/Xinhua]

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*CSNS Beam Power Meets Goal of Acceptance*
Nov 16, 2017

On November 9, 2017, an average beam power of 10 kW was achieved at the China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS) when a proton beam with a repetition rate of 25 Hz collided on the tungsten target. This means the average beam power has met the acceptance goal of the CSNS project, marking another major step forward after the first beam was obtained in late August.

CSNS is composed of a linac with a modest but upgradable energy of 80 MeV, and a rapid cycling synchrotron (RCS) with energy of 1.6 GeV and repetition rate of 25 Hz. At present the linac can only provide an energy of 60 MeV, since one of the four klystrons for the drift tube linac (DTL) was returned to the factory in the USA due to a quality problem.

In April, the linac finished beam commissioning with the beam energy of 60 MeV. In July, the proton beam was accelerated to 1.6 GeV in the RCS. To reduce the beam loss, the CSNS team used single-shot mode for beam commissioning. On August 28, 2017, the first neutron beam was obtained from the tungsten target.

On November 1, 2017, the CSNS team began to provide beam with a repetition rate of 1 Hz, and received neutron signals at all three initial instruments during a joint beam commissioning. On November 9 of the same year, the proton beam pulses, with a repetition rate of 25 Hz struck on the tungsten target, which received an average beam power of more than 10 kW.





Imaging of the Proton Beam on Fluorescent Materials (Image by IHEP)​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Chao Zhang, Yang Gao, Jiaojiao Liu, Zhe Xue, Yan Lu, Lian Deng, Lei Tian, Qidi Feng, Shuhua Xu. *PGG.Population: a database for understanding the genomic diversity and genetic ancestry of human population*. _Nucleic Acids Research_ (2017). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkx1032


*Abstract*
There are a growing number of studies focusing on delineating genetic variations that are associated with complex human traits and diseases due to recent advances in next-generation sequencing technologies. However, identifying and prioritizing disease-associated causal variants relies on understanding the distribution of genetic variations within and among populations. The _PGG_.Population database documents 7122 genomes representing 356 global populations from 107 countries and provides essential information for researchers to understand human genomic diversity and genetic ancestry. These data and information can facilitate the design of research studies and the interpretation of results of both evolutionary and medical studies involving human populations. The database is carefully maintained and constantly updated when new data are available. We included miscellaneous functions and a user-friendly graphical interface for visualization of genomic diversity, population relationships (genetic affinity), ancestral makeup, footprints of natural selection, and population history etc. Moreover, _PGG_.Population provides a useful feature for users to analyze data and visualize results in a dynamic style via online illustration. The long-term ambition of the _PGG_.Population, together with the joint efforts from other researchers who contribute their data to our database, is to create a comprehensive depository of geographic and ethnic variation of human genome, as well as a platform bringing influence on future practitioners of medicine and clinical investigators. _PGG_.Population is available at https://www.pggpopulation.org.​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* Chinese students take top honors in SC17 supercomputer competition *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-11-19 00:55:00_|_Editor: Zhou Xin_





By Peter Mertz

DENVER, the United States, Nov. 16 (Xinhua) -- Singapore's Nanyang Technological University and China's Tsinghua University finished 1-2 in the 11th annual highly competitive Student Cluster Competition (SCC) at the Super Computer Conference (SC17) this week in Denver in the U.S. state of Colorado.

SCC was introduced in 2007 to expose undergraduate and high school students to high performance computing.

Over the past few months, six-person student teams designed and built small clusters with hardware and software vendor partners, learned designated scientific applications, and applied optimization techniques for their chosen architectures.

In the final days, students competed in a non-stop, 48-hour "mystery" challenge at the SC17 conference - to complete a real-world scientific work challenge.

A total of 16 teams competed in the 2017 competition, hailing from China, Germany, Poland, Singapore, the United States and China's Taiwan province.

The event is considered the penultimate student supercomputer competition in the world.

Tsinghua narrowly missed winning its third straight international computer competition of 2017 - edged out by a Singapore team comprised of all Mainland Chinese students.

"I was a little surprised we won," admitted modest Nanyang Technical University team co-leader Siyuan Liu from Hebei Province, whose team was considered a long shot by industry experts.

"We are very excited to finish ahead of such strong teams," the other co-leader Yiyang Shao told Xinhua, who also said they knew the team to beat was Tsinghua.

The favored Tsinghua team was having a phenomenal 2017 - taking top honors on April 17 at ASC17 in Wuxi, China, and on June 17 at ISC17 in Frankfurt, Germany, and were nudged out in a photo finish by a mere three points at SC17 in America's Mile High City.

"I thought they were going to win," SCC Chairman Stephen Harrell told Xinhua, of the favored Tsinghua team.

Harrell, a computer technical expect from Purdue University was given the difficult task of compiling results from a panel of judges who ranked the diverse international field.

"No one's a loser in this competition," Harrell emphasized, as he met with, and complimented all of the teams after the top honor was announced.

"All of these students will be very successful in life and in the HPC field," he said.

Harrell, who emphasized the integrity displayed by the Chinese students from both teams, said that interviews and a poster competition also factored into the decision-making.

This year's all decisive "mystery" question dealt with the migration of carbon dioxide around the world, and students were asked to simulate the flow of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere using calculations and creating an algorithm.

"It was exhausting," Tsinghua team leader Beichen Li told Xinhua of the final two-day, no-sleep element of competition that began Nov. 13.

"The memories and the experience of being in this competition far outweighs the paper given out here," Harrell noted.

Tsinghua University professor Jidong Zhai was gracious in finishing behind Singapore's team, and had nothing but praise for his young superstars.

"Although we finished second, the team members did a very good job," advisor Zhai told Xinhua. "They were very impressive, and I was very happy to work with such a group of smart guys."

"We will come back next year," team leader Beichen Li said with a smile.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> Chao Zhang, Yang Gao, Jiaojiao Liu, Zhe Xue, Yan Lu, Lian Deng, Lei Tian, Qidi Feng, Shuhua Xu. *PGG.Population: a database for understanding the genomic diversity and genetic ancestry of human population*. _Nucleic Acids Research_ (2017). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkx1032
> 
> 
> *Abstract*
> There are a growing number of studies focusing on delineating genetic variations that are associated with complex human traits and diseases due to recent advances in next-generation sequencing technologies. However, identifying and prioritizing disease-associated causal variants relies on understanding the distribution of genetic variations within and among populations. The _PGG_.Population database documents 7122 genomes representing 356 global populations from 107 countries and provides essential information for researchers to understand human genomic diversity and genetic ancestry. These data and information can facilitate the design of research studies and the interpretation of results of both evolutionary and medical studies involving human populations. The database is carefully maintained and constantly updated when new data are available. We included miscellaneous functions and a user-friendly graphical interface for visualization of genomic diversity, population relationships (genetic affinity), ancestral makeup, footprints of natural selection, and population history etc. Moreover, _PGG_.Population provides a useful feature for users to analyze data and visualize results in a dynamic style via online illustration. The long-term ambition of the _PGG_.Population, together with the joint efforts from other researchers who contribute their data to our database, is to create a comprehensive depository of geographic and ethnic variation of human genome, as well as a platform bringing influence on future practitioners of medicine and clinical investigators. _PGG_.Population is available at https://www.pggpopulation.org.​


*Scientists Release a Database for Genomic Diversity and Genetic Ancestry of Global Human Populations*
Nov 17, 2017

Population genetic diversity is shaped by complex process across human evolutionary history, including population divergence, migration, isolation, and admixture. Local adaptation to environments such as high-altitude, pathogen and dietary shift, could also affect the diversity of human genome locally. Genomic diversity further determines largely the phenotypic diversity. Therefore, understanding phenotypic differences between populations (including diseases, anthropological traits and adaptive traits) relies on delineating genetic diversity and ancestry as well as evolutionary history of human populations.

In a study published online in _Nucleic Acids Research_, Prof. Dr. XU Shuhua's group at Max Planck Independent Research Group on Population Genomics, CAS-MPG Partner Institute for Computational Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences of Chinese Academy of Sciences analyzed the genomic diversity and genetic ancestry of 356 ethnic groups from 107 counties, and released a database named "_PGG_.Population” through which users can freely access to the data and related information of global populations.

_PGG_.Population is the only database being committed to dissect the genetic affinities of populations and genetic ancestries for each ethnic group at the genomic level. It is also the one covering the largest number of populations to date, proving a query and analysis platform for researchers, clinical and medical doctors, students and the public to understand the genetic background of each ethnic group.

Over the past decades, many joint forces based on international collaborations have made remarkable achievements in studying human genetic variation, such as the Human Genome Diversity Project, the HapMap Project, the HUGO Pan-Asian SNP Project and the 1000 Genomes Project. Nonetheless, most efforts have focused on major groups of large population size but ignored indigenous groups which usually have much smaller population size.

_PGG_.Population was born at the right moment. Researchers sequenced and collected the genomes of diverse populations especially for small/unique groups, integrated them and re-analyzed each combined dataset. Meanwhile, they built a free available database to illustrate the genomic diversity and genetic ancestry (including basic information, Y and mtDNA haplogroup, genetic affinities, population structure, admixture and local adaptation) for each ethnic group.

Up to date, the database has documented 7122 genomes, representing 356 non-redundant populations/groups from 107 countries in eight regions (Africa, America, Central Asia and Siberia, East Asia, Oceania, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and West Eurasia) collected from 27 studies. Every population has its own story. The long-term ambition of the _PGG_.Population, together with the joint efforts from other researchers who contributed their data to this database, is to create a comprehensive depository of geographic and ethnic variation of human genome, as well as a platform bringing influence on future practitioners of medicine and clinical investigators.

However, it still has a long way to achieve the goal. There are more than 2,000 populations worldwide, and the database currently only covers one sixth of those groups. Scientists are now sequencing and collecting genomes from more populations. In addition, _PGG._Population will extend to comprehensive analysis of population genetics and genomics. “We call for more cooperation and contribution from geneticists, linguists, anthropologists, medical and clinical doctors,” said Dr. XU Shuhua.

This work was supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program and Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Natural Science Foundation of China grant, the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, the Program of Shanghai Academic Research Leader, and the National Key Research and Development Program, and by the National Program for Top-notch Young Innovative Talents of The “Ten Thousand Talent Program”.


Scientists Release a Database for Genomic Diversity and Genetic Ancestry of Global Human Populations---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* China publishes standards on stem cell use *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-11-22 21:07:21_|_Editor: liuxin_





BEIJING, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- A general standard on research in stem cell technology was published in China on Wednesday.

The document introduces general requirements on screening of donors, tissue collection, cell separation and preservation, transportation and detection of stem cells.

The general requirements will safeguard the interest of donors and promote standardized development of the sector, according to Zhou Qi, head of the stem cell branch of the Chinese Society of Cell Biology, which led the compilation of the standard.

The standard will contribute to research on differentiation of stem cells, said Zhou, adding that a more detailed national standard will be published at a later date.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*High-tech Chinese lab to boost marine research*
By Xie Chuanjiao in Qingdao, Shandong | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2017-11-20 17:45

A new lab to be built in eastern China will combine supercomputing and big data research to provide technical support for global marine research.

The Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology, Inspur Group, the National Supercomputer Center, and Peking, Tsinghua and Shandong universities signed an agreement to launched the project on Saturday.

"Marine research needs support from supercomputers, while the development of supercomputing is driven by its application in marine research," said Wu Lixin, head of the Qingdao lab's executive committee. "The joint laboratory will better serve ocean observation, analysis and forecasts."

The Qingdao lab is home to the world's fastest supercomputer for marine research, and by 2020 it aims to develop an exascale supercomputer capable of running at least 1 quintillion (1 followed by 18 zeros) floating-point calculations per second.

Also on Saturday, the Qingdao lab signed a strategic cooperative agreement with two national supercomputing centers, in Jinan and Wuxi, to establish a "supercomputing group". A deal was also agreed with China Telecom and the China Education and Research Network to support connections between the three partners.

"All parities — the joint lab, supercomputing group and telecom companies — will contribute to constructing a high-resolution simulator for global oceanic systems," said Wei Zhiqiang, vice-executive director of the joint lab project.

Building the simulator is one of the goals of the international lab operated by Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology, the US-based National Center for Atmospheric Research, and Texas A&M University.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Mysterious deep-Earth seismic signature explained *
Wednesday, November 22, 2017





*Washington, DC*— New research on oxygen and iron chemistry under the extreme conditions found deep inside the Earth could explain a longstanding seismic mystery called ultralow velocity zones. Published in _Nature_, the findings could have far-reaching implications on our understanding of Earth’s geologic history, including life-altering events such as the Great Oxygenation Event, which occurred 2.4 billion years ago.

Sitting at the boundary between the lower mantle and the core, 1,800 miles beneath Earth’s surface, ultralow velocity zones (UVZ) are known to scientists because of their unusual seismic signatures. Although this region is far too deep for researchers to ever observe directly, instruments that can measure the propagation of seismic waves caused by earthquakes allow them to visualize changes in Earth’s interior structure; similar to how ultrasound measurements let medical professionals look inside of our bodies.

These seismic measurements enabled scientists to visualize these ultralow velocity zones in some regions along the core-mantle boundary, by observing the slowing down of seismic waves passing through them. But knowing UVZs exist didn’t explain what caused them.

However, recent findings about iron and oxygen chemistry under deep-Earth conditions provide an answer to this longstanding mystery.

It turns out that water contained in some minerals that get pulled down into the Earth due to plate tectonic activity could, under extreme pressures and temperatures, split up—liberating hydrogen and enabling the residual oxygen to combine with iron metal from the core to create a novel high-pressure mineral, iron peroxide.

Led by Carnegie’s Ho-kwang “Dave” Mao, the research team believes that as much as 300 million tons of water could be carried down into Earth’s interior every year and generate deep, massive reservoirs of iron dioxide, which could be the source of the ultralow velocity zones that slow down seismic waves at the core-mantle boundary.

To test this idea, the team used sophisticated tools at Argonne National Laboratory to examine the propagation of seismic waves through samples of iron peroxide that were created under deep-Earth-mimicking pressure and temperature conditions employing a laser-heated diamond anvil cell. They found that a mixture of normal mantle rock with 40 to 50 percent iron peroxide had the same seismic signature as the enigmatic ultralow velocity zones.

For the research team, one of the most-exciting aspects of this finding is the potential of a reservoir of oxygen deep in the planet’s interior, which if periodically released to the Earth’s surface could significantly alter the Earth’s early atmosphere, potentially explaining the dramatic increase in atmospheric oxygen that occurred about 2.4 billion years ago according to the geologic record.

“Finding the existence of a giant internal oxygen reservoir has many far-reaching implications,” Mao explained. “Now we should reconsider the consequences of sporadic oxygen outbursts and their correlations to other major events in the Earth’s history, such as the banded-iron formation, snowball Earth, mass extinctions, flood basalts, and supercontinent rifts.”

Other team members including Jin Liu, Qingyang Hu, and Wendy L. Mao of Stanford University; Duckyoung Kim of the Center of High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research in China, Zhongqing Wu and Wenzhong Wang of University of Science and Technology of China; Yuming Xiao, Paul Chow, and Yue Meng of Carnegie’s High Pressure Collaborative Access Team; and Vitali B. Prakapenka of Center for Advanced Radiation Sources.



The movement of seismic waves through the material of the mantle allows scientists to image Earth’s interior, just as a medical ultrasound allows technicians to look inside a blood vessel. Image is courtesy of Edward Garnero and Allen McNamara’s 2008 Science paper Structure and Dynamics of Earth’s Lower Mantle, provided with Garnero’s permission.

_________________

This work is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Deep Carbon Observatory, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.


Mysterious deep-Earth seismic signature explained | Carnegie Institution for Science

Jin Liu, Qingyang Hu, Duck Young Kim, Zhongqing Wu, Wenzhong Wang, Yuming Xiao, Paul Chow, Yue Meng, Vitali B. Prakapenka, Ho-Kwang Mao & Wendy L. Mao. *Hydrogen-bearing iron peroxide and the origin of ultralow-velocity zones*. _Nature _(2017). DOI: 10.1038/nature24461​
---#####---​
Public Release: 22-Nov-2017
* A huge hydrogen generator at the Earth's core-mantle boundary *
Science China Press



The oxygen and hydrogen cycling in the deep Earth. 
Credit: ©Science China Press​
Splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen is a major theme in the development of clean, abundant energy source. A new study lead by an international research group revealed that when water meets the iron core of the Earth, the extremely high pressures and temperatures existing at the core-mantle boundary can naturally cause water to split into hydrogen and a super oxidized iron dioxide. Both the released hydrogen and the retained oxygen in the dioxide have many far-reaching implications and consequences, including the behaviors of the core-mantle boundary as a huge hydrogen generator, the separation of the deep Earth's water and hydrogen cycles, and the accumulation of oxygen-rich patches.

The article, published in the _National Science Review_, is the result of an international collaboration among the Center for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research (HPSTAR) in China and Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC, and Department of Geosciences, Stanford University. They conducted high pressure-temperature experimental studies and theoretical calculations on the reaction between water and iron and probed the reaction products with synchrotron x-ray sources at the Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory. They observed a series of intermediate composition iron oxides and iron hydride, with the final product of hydrogen and the new super oxidized iron dioxide.

The authors argue that based on our knowledge of water in the slabs subducting into the deep interior as a result of plate tectonics movement, 300 million tons of water per year could be carried down and meet iron in the core. This could generate a great amount of free hydrogen at the core-mantle boundary, 2900 kilometers beneath the surface. Although such rich hydrogen source is far beyond our reach, its upward movements returning to the surface via various paths as free hydrogen, as carbon hydrides through reactions with carbon, as hydrides through reaction with nitrogen, sulfur, and halogens, or as water again after recombined with oxygen on the way up, will be key issues for understanding geochemistry of deep volatiles.

Furthermore, the authors point out that continuous accumulation of super oxidized iron dioxide at the core-mantle boundary throughout the Earth history may create sizable domains detectable by seismic probes. Such domains may stay at the core-mantle boundary indefinitely without disturbance. However, they are out-of-the-place in terms of their very oxidized chemistry in the very reduced environment near the iron core. In the events that they were overheated by the core, a massive amount of oxygen could be released and erupted to reach the surface, causing colossal episode such as the Great Oxidation Event 24 billion years ago that put oxygen into the atmosphere and enabled aerobic life form like us.

"This newly discovered water-splitting reaction at the middle Earth affects geochemistry from the atmosphere to the deep interior," said the lead-author Ho-kwang Mao. "Many previous theories need to be re-examined now."

###​
See the article: When water meets iron at Earth's core-mantle boundary
Ho-Kwang Mao, Qingyang Hu, Liuxiang Yang, Jin Liu, Duck Young Kim, Yue Meng, Li Zhang, Vitali B. Prakapenka, Wenge Yang, Wendy L. Mao
https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwx109

https://academic.oup.com/nsr/article/4107791/When-water-meets-iron-at-Earth-s-core-mantle​

A huge hydrogen generator at the Earth's core-mantle boundary | EurekAlert! Science News

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*China-Uzbekistan Global Allium Garden (Kunming Center) Launched in Kunming Institute of Botany*
Nov 23, 2017

The launching ceremony of the China-Uzbekistan Global Allium Garden (Kunming Center) was held on November 22, 2017, at Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences (KIB/CAS). Co-constructed by KIB and the Institute of Botany, Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences, the Garden is the world’s first _Allium_ garden and is supposed to collect, conserve and exhibit over 90% _Allium_ of world.

The Global Allium Garden (Kunming Center) will be composed of two centers, namely the Kunming Center and Toshkent Center. Located in Kunming Botanical Garden, KIB, it covers an area of 3,700 square meters (5.5 acres) and is designed in line with circumstances to create a natural type landscape.

The garden (Kunming Center) is divided into the native species conservation area and flower border viewing area, while the latter is subdivided into three sectors based on the different use of _Allium_ as edible, ornamental or medicinal plants. It will act as a supporting platform for _Allium_ research, utilization and public education.

At the ceremony, representatives of relevant authorities and S&T organizations from both China and Uzbekistan inspected the pre-construction work as well as the planning layout of the Garden.

"The launching of the China-Uzbekistan Global Allium Garden (Kunming Center) is a great example that strengthens relationship among countries and regions along the Belt and Road Initiative," said Prof. SUN Hang, the director of KIB. Since the first MoU between the two parties signed in 2013, KIB has built strong partnership with the Institute of Botany, Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences.

CAO Jinghua, the director of Bureau of International Cooperation of CAS said: "Science and innovation not only holds the promise of solutions to complex scientific challenges in the development of the Belt and Road Initiative, but can also be of significant value to the upgrading of the capacity and quality of cooperation between China and other countries. I believe the China-Uzbekistan Global Allium Garden (Kunming Center) will show the great effort for construction of the Belt and Road Initiative."

"_Allium_, which has been long-standing and widely used worldwide, is an important economic plant distributed in China as well as in Central Asia along the Belt and Road countries and regions. The construction of China-Uzbekistan Global Allium Garden (Kunming Center) is one of the example the Belt and Road platform to promote innovation and international collaboration between China and Uzbekistan," said Dr. Tojibave Komiljon, director of Institute of Botany, Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences.

The genus _Allium_ (Liliaceae) contains hundreds of species, including the cultivated onion, garlic, scallion, shallot, leek, and chives, many of them have the smell of garlic and are economically important as crops, medicinal or ornamental plants. The majority of over 500 _Allium_ species are native to the Northern Hemisphere, while a few species are distribute in tropical and subtropical regions.

There are more than 100 _Allium_ species (nearly 50% of which are endemic to China) that are mainly distributed in northwestern, southwestern and northeastern China. Uzbekistan is also an important origin and diversification center of _Allium_, which owns rich germplasm resources.

Up to now, over 100 _Allium_ species have been introduced and bred in the China-Uzbekistan Allium Germplasm Nursery. The planning layout called for the conservation and breeding of at least 200 _Allium_ species to be completed during the first phase of construction.



To unveil the plaque for the China-Uzbekistan Global Allium Garden (Kunming Center) by CAO Jinghua & Komiljon TOJIBAEV (Image by KIB)



China-Uzbekistan Global Allium Garden (Kunming Center) Launched in Kunming Institute of Botany---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* Chinese scientists develop liquid metal 3D printing technique *


CGTN
*Published on Nov 25, 2017*

Chinese scientists have worked out a new liquid metal 3D printer. The process takes place in a vat filled with self-healing hydrogels. Researchers with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) are behind the new invention. The new method will be helpful in areas such as flexible electronic devices and quick production of intelligent systems.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Bill Gates appointed as academician by Chinese Academy of Engineering *
CGTN
2017-11-27 10:14 GMT+8 




Bill Gates, co-founder of the Microsoft Corporation, was appointed as academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), the national academy announced on Monday.

Gates is one of the 18 international academicians added into the list this year. 

The newly-appointed include experts from the UK, the US, Australia, Russia and Japan, and are expected to work in promoting the development of engineering and international cooperation, the academy said.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese company seeking titanium to reach the bottom of the sea *
By Gong Zhe
2017-11-27 11:26 GMT+8

A Chinese state-owned company is building a titanium sphere that can carry humans to the deepest ocean, which is about 10,000 meters below sea level.

The company, Baoji Titanium Industry headquartered in northwestern China's Shaanxi Province, has set 2020 as the year to help Chinese people see the "true bottom of the sea" with naked eyes.



The titanium sphere build by Baotai /Screenshot from CCTV

*Why titanium?*

The first time human reached the sea bottom dated back to 1960, when Trieste, a Swiss-designed, Italian-built "bathyscaphe" carried two people to the Challenger Deep near Guam in the Pacific. The measured depth was 10,911 meters, just three meters deeper than James Cameron's diving.



The bathyscaphe Trieste /US National Ocean Service Photo‍

The sphere used to carry people on the Trieste was made of steel.

Canadian film director James Cameron, creator of Aliens, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Titanic and the 2007 movie sensation Avatar, reached 10,908 meters with a steel submersible to shoot his 2014 documentary Deepsea Challenge 3D.



Cameron in a submersible that dived more than 10,000 meters deep in the Mariana Trench. /Screenshot from National Geographic

So why would the Chinese use titanium instead of steel? Deputy general manager of the company Wang Dingchun gave two reasons:

"The submersible will be used for 30 years. So it has to be corrosion resistant. Our company can make titanium alloy that's almost corrosion-free," Wang told CCTV.

"The elasticity of the metal is also important," he added. "It offers much better protection against the massive pressure deep in the sea [than steel]."



Wang talks about the titanium sphere. /Screenshot from CCTV

*Get the hard job done*

China has many experienced companies that can process steel. But it's not the case for titanium.

"There's very little appliance of this metal in China," said Jia Shuaixiao, general manager of the company.

The engineers chose the hard way to build the sphere in order to make it more reliable.

"The traditional method of building a metal sphere is to first build the slices and then weld them together, resulting in many seams," Wang explained. "But we directly made two hemispheres, and weld only once. Thus the sphere will be more solid."



Engineers at Baotai polishing a titanium hemisphere /Screenshot from CCTV

If the sphere survives the 2020 deep-sea exploration, it may give huge confidence to titanium processors across the country.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*China Top Think Tank Expanded with New Members*
Nov 28, 2017

Sixty-one Chinese and 16 foreign scholars were recently inducted as members into the Academic Divisions of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), bringing total Chinese and foreign membership to 838 and 98, respectively.

This is the second-time membership cooptation since the Academy revised its charter to cut administrative interference. CAS elects new members every two years.

Among the 61 new members, 11 are from Division of Mathematics and Physics, nine from Division of Chemistry, 13 from Division of Life Sciences and Medical Sciences, 10 from Division of Earth Sciences, six from Division of Information Technical Sciences, and 12 from Division of Technological Sciences. 

The average age of new members is 54.1, with the youngest at 46 and the eldest at 67. Three female scientists were among the group.

The 16 foreign scientists newly inducted into the Academy come from eight countries (one member is dual nationality). Two of them are Nobel laureates, Prof. Andre K. Geim of University of Manchester and Prof. James Fraser Stoddart of Northwestern University.

New foreign members also include Prof. Jerzy Duszynski of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the first CAS foreign member from Poland, Prof. Andre K. Geim of the University of Manchester, the first foreign member from Netherlands (with dual nationality of the Great Britain), and Prof. Shavkat Salikhov of Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry of the Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences, the first foreign member from Uzbekistan.

Foreign scientists who have made important contributions to the cause of science and technology in China and who enjoy high international academic standing may be nominated for CAS membership.

As the highest national academic title in science and technology, CAS membership is a lifelong honor. However, members also have a responsibility to model academic integrity and advance their fields.

The Academic Divisions of CAS play an important role as the top think tank involved in China’s economic and social development. The Academic Divisions produce dozens of consulting reports and suggestions on key issues every year, supporting state decision-making on economic and social development, national security and progress in science and technology.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* New 3D bio-printer makes mass production of tissues possible *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-11-27 19:56:31_|_Editor: Xiang Bo_





HANGZHOU, Nov. 27 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers have developed a 3D bio-printer that makes it possible to mass produce human tissue, including skin, cartilage and liver.

Measuring 1.6 meters long, 1 meter wide and 1.9 meters tall, the printer was developed by a research team led by Hangzhou Regenovo Biotechnology Co., Ltd.

"Mass production of medical materials as well as quality and safe printed products are two requirements for the clinical use of 3D printing," said the company's chairman, Xu Ming'en.

3D printing is not yet ubiquitous. Many bio-printers on the market remain too slow for mass production, or the printed products are not up to standards.

Xu said that the new printer, equipped with a variety of nozzles, can print more types of biological materials in a given period.

Different parts of the printer can control their own temperatures, ranging from minus 20 degrees Celsius to 260 degrees Celsius, to help preserve cell function and viability.

In addition, it has an infrared laser scanning head with micron-level accuracy, which can check the quality of the inner structure of products while printing, according to Wang Ling, associate professor with Hangzhou Dianzi University. Wang is also the developer of the scanning head.

The new 3D bio-printer will contribute to the clinical application of artificial tissues and organs. The 3D printed tissues and organs can also be used to test new medicines.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*China unveils new bomb disposal robot that can dismantle explosives*
By Sun Wenyu (People's Daily Online) 16:41, November 28, 2017




A new type of robot that can remove explosives fixed by screws and ropes was unveiled in China on Nov. 26, chinanews.com reported.

Unlike traditional explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) robots that require manual control, the new model is able to do the removal task by itself. It is the first of its kind in the world.

In addition, the new robot is also equipped with an explosion-proof tank to isolate the dismantled explosive.

Under traditional manual operation, EOD personnel are at risk during the detection, disposal, transfer, and destruction of explosives.

“With this robot, EOD personnel can operate at locations 100 meters away from the site,” said Xiangli Xiaojun, a researcher at an EOD test center of the Public Security Department of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

A dock to connect an interferometer is another highlight. Xiangli told chinanews.com that the interferometer must be turned on during removal in case the explosive detonates. This robot is the first robot to offer such a function.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Russia, China to Pool Efforts to Develop Combined HIV Vaccine*
© Sputnik/ Alexandr Kryazhev
13:56 24.11.2017(updated 14:09 24.11.2017)

_Over 90% of HIV cases in Russia were caused by HIV-1 strains belonging to the East European variety of Subtype A that differed greatly from HIV-1 strains prevalent in West Europe and North America, as well as in African countries._

MOSCOW (RIA Novosti) — An agreement to this effect was reached at the 2nd Russian-Chinese Biomedical Cooperation International Forum, held as part of the One Belt, One Road initiative. The Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU) hosted the forum on November 11-16.

The combined vaccine includes a Russian DNA component and a Chinese protein (booster), Prof Andrei Kozlov of the SPbPU Molecular Virusology and Oncology Laboratory, told RIA Novosti.

In 1997, Prof. Kozlov's team participated in Russia's first program to develop an HIV vaccine. After analyzing the molecular epidemiology of an early stage of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Russia and other countries of the former USSR, the scientists obtained full-size genomes of HIV-1variants dominant in Russia.

*Beijing Universities Offer HIV Self-Test Kits in Vending Machines*

It was proved that during the 15 years of the epidemic development which started in 1995, the level of genetic diversity of the Subtype A strains remained low in Russia, making it possible to create a series of plasmids based on a cloned genome of Subtype A HIV-1strain, plasmids capable of expressing four HIV-1 genes in mammals' cells. This formed the basis of the first Russian DNA vaccine against HIV that passed Stage I of clinical tests.

"A DNA vaccine is a platform, on which we can build a number of vaccine candidates," Prof. Kozlov said. In his view, creating a concomitant HIV vaccine could become a powerful research project for Russian and Chinese scientists, who decided to pool their findings.

Speaking about the need for this kind of research, he cited statistics to the effect that there are between 700,000 and 1 million HIV-infected people in Russia.

"All these people should be provided with free medical treatment. Currently, however, only a quarter of this number get therapy at the cost of about 20 billion rubles and it will cost over 80 billion rubles to offer medication to every HIV-positive patient," he said, adding that the drugs had to be taken for life, but they did not lead to recovery and only made the disease chronic.

"Clearly, not a single country in the world can do without an HIV vaccine," he said in conclusion.

The 2nd Russian-Chinese Biomedical Cooperation International Forum held as part of the One Belt, One Road initiative is aimed at adapting and introducing new biomedical technologies. The SPbPU prioritizes precisely this field of research as part of Project 5-100.

The first forum, held in Shanghai in June 2017, was sponsored by the Russian General Consulate, the Shanghai Administration, the PRC Biomedical Association, and others. The initiative for it came from the SPbPU Mission in Shanghai and the PuE business incubator.

At that time, the Russian-Chinese Biomedical Cooperation Center was created to develop innovative medical technologies, materials, and equipment, and to train highly skilled personnel.


Russia, China to Pool Efforts to Develop Combined HIV Vaccine - Sputnik Internationa

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

THIS IS A DAMN BIG NEWS!!!!! 

DAMPE FROM CHINA DETECTS MYSTERIOUS SIGNALS THAT COULD GIVE A HINT OF DARK MATTER 

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017...um=twitter&utm_campaign=darkmatterprobe-16614

@JSCh @AndrewJin


----------



## AndrewJin

Bussard Ramjet said:


> THIS IS A DAMN BIG NEWS!!!!!
> 
> DAMPE FROM CHINA DETECTS MYSTERIOUS SIGNALS THAT COULD GIVE A HINT OF DARK MATTER
> 
> http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017...um=twitter&utm_campaign=darkmatterprobe-16614
> 
> @JSCh @AndrewJin


Pls provide Chinese link, can’t understand English jargon


----------



## cirr

*Chinese satellite detects mysterious signals in search for dark matter*

2017-11-30 06:42 Xinhua _Editor: Gu Liping_





Photo taken on Dec. 17, 2015 shows a Long March 2-D rocket carrying the Dark Matter Particle Explorer satellite blasting off. China's Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) has detected unexpected and mysterious signals in its measurement of high-energy cosmic rays, which might bring scientists a step closer to shedding light on invisible dark matter. (Xinhua/Jin Liwang)

China's Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) has detected unexpected and mysterious signals in its measurement of high-energy cosmic rays, which might bring scientists a step closer to shedding light on invisible dark matter.

The satellite, also called Wukong, or Monkey King, has measured more than 3.5 billion cosmic ray particles with the highest energy up to 100 tera-electron-volts (TeV for short, corresponding to 1 trillion times the energy of visible light), including 20 million electrons and positrons, with unprecedentedly high energy resolution.

"DAMPE has opened a new window for observing the high-energy universe, unveiling new physical phenomena beyond our current understanding," said Chang Jin, chief scientist of DAMPE and vice director of the Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

The initial detection results were published in the latest issue of the academic journal, Nature.

"This is the first time a space experiment has reported a detailed and precise electron and positron spectrum up to about 5 TeV. In this energy range, we found some unexpected and interesting features. We have detected a spectral break at 0.9 TeV and a possible spike at 1.4 TeV," said Chang.

Precise measurement of cosmic rays, especially at the very high energy range, is important for scientists to look for traces of dark matter annihilation or decay, as well as to understand the most energetic astrophysical phenomena in the universe, such as pulsars, active galaxy nuclei and supernova explosions. "Our data may inspire some new ideas in particle physics and astrophysics," said Chang.

Dark matter, which cannot be seen or touched, is one of the great mysteries of science. Scientists calculate that normal matter, such as galaxies, stars, trees, rocks and atoms, accounts for only about 5 percent of the universe. However, about 26.8 percent of the universe is dark matter and 68.3 percent dark energy.

China sent DAMPE into an orbit of about 500 kilometers above the earth on December 17, 2015, to look for evidence of the annihilation or decay of dark matter particles in space.

DAMPE has the widest energy range coverage and the highest energy resolution of all the dark matter probes currently in space. Based on the satellite's data, scientists drew the cosmic ray electron and positron spectrum.

To their surprise, scientists found a break at around 0.9 TeV and a strange spike at around 1.4 TeV on the spectrum. "We never expected such signals," Chang said.

"The spike might indicate that there exists a kind of unknown particle with a mass of about 1.4 TeV," said Chang.

"All the 61 elementary particles predicted by the standard model of particle physics have been found. Dark matter particles are beyond the list. So if we find a new elementary particle, it will be a breakthrough in physics," he added.

"The spike is very unusual," said Fan Yizhong, deputy chief designer of the scientific application system of DAMPE. "The signals might have originated from either dark matter or pulsars. Even if they were from pulsars, it would be quite a strange astrophysical phenomenon that nobody had known before."

"However, the data of the strange signal are still not enough. We need to collect more data to make sure it's real," Chang said.

More than 100 Chinese scientists and engineers, together with those from Switzerland and Italy, took part in the development of DAMPE and the analysis of its data.

Researchers have ruled out the possibility that the unusual signals are caused by a malfunction of the satellite's detectors. Independent analyses from five different teams all came to the same conclusion, said Chang.

DAMPE's design life is three years, but as it is performing so well, scientists expect it to work much longer. "DAMPE will continue to collect data to help us better understand the anomaly and might bring dark matter out of the shadows," said Chang.

Nobel Laureate Samuel Chao Chung Ting, leader of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) experiment on the International Space Station, said of DAMPE, "It's a very good experiment."

Bi Xiaojun, a particle physicist at the Institute of High Energy Physics of the CAS, said DAMPE's observations are important to help scientists better understand the origin of cosmic rays.

"The satellite's data on the spike at 1.4 TeV are still not enough to declare a physical discovery. If the signal can be confirmed with the accumulation of data, it would be of great significance," Bi said.

"That could be explained by either dark matter or an astrophysical source. If we use dark matter to explain it, dark matter would be different from what we thought before. It conforms to the popular dark matter model of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMP), but has some special features," Bi said.

Chen Hesheng, a CAS academician, said that even if a candidate dark matter particle is found, it still needs other experiments such as underground detection or collider experiments to confirm it, which would be difficult.

http://www.ecns.cn/2017/11-30/282672.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Han Patriot

Bussard Ramjet said:


> THIS IS A DAMN BIG NEWS!!!!!
> 
> DAMPE FROM CHINA DETECTS MYSTERIOUS SIGNALS THAT COULD GIVE A HINT OF DARK MATTER
> 
> http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017...um=twitter&utm_campaign=darkmatterprobe-16614
> 
> @JSCh @AndrewJin


Wow, I thought dark matter was just science fiction.


----------



## onebyone

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/936047804761432064

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

01 December 2017
*GM plant species numbers set to dramatically increase*
Chinese scientists combine magnets and nanotech to successfully manipulate pollen. Tim Wallace reports.

Genetic modification of food crops is, depending on your point of view, a wondrous technological solution to feed a growing global population or a hubris-soaked scientific monstrosity sowing the seeds of environmental apocalypse.

Yet the war over GM crops, though intense, has so far been restricted to a small number of battlefields – corn, soybean, tomatoes and canola, for instance – due to the limited list of plant species scientists have been able to successfully modify.

Now the stage may be set for a massive expansion in the theatres of conflict. A team of mostly Chinese scientists has announced a new technique, called pollen magnetofection, which they say overcomes the obstacles of traditional plant-transformation methods and clears the way to genetically modify “almost all crops”.

“At the moment, we are very limited as to which plants, and even types of plants – called cultivars – we are able to transform,” explains Rachel Burton, of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Cell Walls at the University of Adelaide, who was not involved in the research.

“For example, we work with barley a lot, and are only able to make transgenic barley from about 10 cultivars. There are even more we can’t transform at all. This technology would change that.”

Almost all current GM methods involve regenerating a new plant from a single transformed cell using complicated in vitro culture processes. The alternative approach taken by Xiang Zhao, of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing, and colleagues is to first manipulate the DNA of pollen, then use this pollen to fertilise a plant’s ovary and directly generate transgenic seeds.

The team details its methods in the journal _Nature Plants_.

Their key tool for overcoming the lack of success of previous efforts to genetically transform pollen is pairing magnetofection – the use of magnetic fields to direct foreign DNA to target cells – with nanobio technology, using magnetic nanoparticles to “smuggle” DNA into the heart of the pollen.

Magnetofection has mainly been used in animal science and medical research, as the researchers note in their paper, because the thicker cell walls of plants have proved more resistant to DNA incursions. Zhao and colleagues overcame this resistance by concentrating on pollen’s weakest points – the apertures that are exit points for the release of sperm cells during germination.

The scientists measured the size of these apertures, then chose nanoparticle delivery vehicles small enough to fit through them, transporting DNA cargo into the pollen.

The process is “a ground-breaking step towards eliminating the time-consuming steps of in vitro culture techniques”, says Chris Cazzonelli, of the Environmental Epigenetics Laboratory at Western Sydney University in Australia.

“It opens opportunities to transform new plant species not previously easily amenable to tissue culture or conventional transformation techniques.”

Monika Doblin, an expert on plant cell walls at the University of Melbourne, also in Australia, agrees a genetic transformation technique that can be easily applied to any pollen-producing plant species is a “significant advance”, though she notes the small species sample size and experiment numbers presented in the new paper. “Further investigation as to the effectiveness of this technique across a broad range of current crop species is warranted but, that said, it does sound promising,” she says.

The rewards and any risks, however, are likely to be limited to special cases, says Justin Borevitz, who specialises in food and environmental security at Australian National University in Canberra. “It may not be substantially different to existing agriculture technologies,” he adds. “Another tool for the genomic breeding toolbox.”

Anti-GM activists are nonetheless likely to greet the news with dread, while Burton reckons most plant scientists will see the prospect of more plant experimentation as a good thing.

“We have been doing this for thousands of years, since agriculture got going,” she says. “Usually we do it by conventional breeding.” Not only is this very slow but it brings “all the DNA, both the good and the bad, from both parents, and then you have to spend time getting rid of the bad stuff”. With genetic modification “you can add just the good bit that you want”.

Yet while generally in favour of GM technology and what it can do, Burton acknowledges there are potential issues, too. “We have to be careful we don’t make plants that are weedy, that can take over, wreck ecosystems and push native species out, for example,” she says. “We also have to be sure that we are not making toxic versions of plants – although we can do this by conventional breeding just as easily and with no regulations to stop it.”


GM plant species numbers set to dramatically increase | Cosmos

Xiang Zhao, Zhigang Meng, Yan Wang, Wenjie Chen, Changjiao Sun, Bo Cui, Jinhui Cui, Manli Yu, Zhanghua Zeng, Sandui Guo, Dan Luo, Jerry Q. Cheng, Rui Zhang & Haixin Cui.* Pollen magnetofection for genetic modification with magnetic nanoparticles as gene carriers*. _Nature Plants _(2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41477-017-0063-z​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists Visualize Structure of Key DNA Repair Component with ‘Near-Atomic Resolution’*
[2017-11-30]

Cells continuously replicate to repair and replace damaged tissue, and each division requires a reprinting of the cell’s genetic blueprints. As the DNA duplicates, errors inevitably occur, resulting in damage that, if left unrepaired, can lead to cellular death. At the first hint of DNA damage, a protein known as an ATR kinase activates the cell’s built-in repair system. Scientists have now imaged this protein at unprecedented resolution, and are beginning to understand its response to DNA damage.




Artist's concept of Launching the cellular DNA-damage response by the ATR-ATRIP complex. /By WANG Guoyan and CHEN Lei, USTC

The researchers published the structural information today in _Science_.

“The ATR protein is the apical kinase to cope with the DNA damages and replication stress,” said CAI Gang, a professor of life sciences at the University of Science & Technology of China in Hefei, China, and the lead author on the paper. “It has long been a central question to determine the activation mechanism of ATR kinase—how it responds to DNA damage and how it is activated.” 

CAI and his team used electron microscopy to image the Mec1-Ddc2 complex at 3.9 ångströms, which is about eight times the size of a single atom of helium. The complex is found in yeast and is the equivalent of the human ATR protein and its cell-signaling protein partner, ATRIP.

The ATR kinase is one of six proteins responsible for maintaining the health of the cell. When this family of proteins identify a problem, such as DNA damage, they instigate the downstream signals needed to repair the damage.

“Cryo-electron microscopy of the Mec1-Ddc2 with state-of-the-art instrumentation has resulted in an electron density map at near-atomic resolution,” said CAI, noting that the improved map has confirmed and expanded upon previous findings. 



Three-dimensional structure of the yeast Mec1-Ddc2 complex, a homolog of human ATR-ATRIP. /By WANG Guoyan and MA Yanbing, USTC

ATR has long been a potential therapeutic target, according to CAI. The high-resolution structural information revealed regulatory sites of the ATR kinase, which are poised to activate at the first hint of DNA damage. Elucidating this mechanism could aid in the development of new therapeutics.

“The structure of the yeast member closely resembles those of the human counterpart,” said CAI, drawing attention to the substantial similarity in the detailed architecture. “We believe the information acquired from the yeast Mec1-Ddc2 shed light on the architecture and mechanism of the human ATR-ATRIP complex.”



Scientists Visualize Structure of Key DNA Repair Component with ‘Near-Atomic Resolution’ | USTC Highlights
http://en.ustc.edu.cn/highlight/201712/t20171201_289507.html
Xuejuan Wang, Tingting Ran, Xuan Zhang, Jiyu Xin, Zhihui Zhang, Tengwei Wu, Weiwu Wang, Gang Cai. *3.9 Å structure of the yeast Mec1-Ddc2 complex, a homolog of human ATR-ATRIP*. _Science _(2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aan8414​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

JSCh said:


> *Scientists Visualize Structure of Key DNA Repair Component with ‘Near-Atomic Resolution’*
> [2017-11-30]
> 
> Cells continuously replicate to repair and replace damaged tissue, and each division requires a reprinting of the cell’s genetic blueprints. As the DNA duplicates, errors inevitably occur, resulting in damage that, if left unrepaired, can lead to cellular death. At the first hint of DNA damage, a protein known as an ATR kinase activates the cell’s built-in repair system. Scientists have now imaged this protein at unprecedented resolution, and are beginning to understand its response to DNA damage.
> 
> 
> 
> Artist's concept of Launching the cellular DNA-damage response by the ATR-ATRIP complex. /By WANG Guoyan and CHEN Lei, USTC
> 
> The researchers published the structural information today in _Science_.
> 
> “The ATR protein is the apical kinase to cope with the DNA damages and replication stress,” said CAI Gang, a professor of life sciences at the University of Science & Technology of China in Hefei, China, and the lead author on the paper. “It has long been a central question to determine the activation mechanism of ATR kinase—how it responds to DNA damage and how it is activated.”
> 
> CAI and his team used electron microscopy to image the Mec1-Ddc2 complex at 3.9 ångströms, which is about eight times the size of a single atom of helium. The complex is found in yeast and is the equivalent of the human ATR protein and its cell-signaling protein partner, ATRIP.
> 
> The ATR kinase is one of six proteins responsible for maintaining the health of the cell. When this family of proteins identify a problem, such as DNA damage, they instigate the downstream signals needed to repair the damage.
> 
> “Cryo-electron microscopy of the Mec1-Ddc2 with state-of-the-art instrumentation has resulted in an electron density map at near-atomic resolution,” said CAI, noting that the improved map has confirmed and expanded upon previous findings.
> 
> 
> 
> Three-dimensional structure of the yeast Mec1-Ddc2 complex, a homolog of human ATR-ATRIP. /By WANG Guoyan and MA Yanbing, USTC
> 
> ATR has long been a potential therapeutic target, according to CAI. The high-resolution structural information revealed regulatory sites of the ATR kinase, which are poised to activate at the first hint of DNA damage. Elucidating this mechanism could aid in the development of new therapeutics.
> 
> “The structure of the yeast member closely resembles those of the human counterpart,” said CAI, drawing attention to the substantial similarity in the detailed architecture. “We believe the information acquired from the yeast Mec1-Ddc2 shed light on the architecture and mechanism of the human ATR-ATRIP complex.”
> 
> 
> 
> Scientists Visualize Structure of Key DNA Repair Component with ‘Near-Atomic Resolution’ | USTC Highlights
> Xuejuan Wang, Tingting Ran, Xuan Zhang, Jiyu Xin, Zhihui Zhang, Tengwei Wu, Weiwu Wang, Gang Cai. *3.9 Å structure of the yeast Mec1-Ddc2 complex, a homolog of human ATR-ATRIP*. _Science _(2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aan8414​



There is one more Chinese paper published in Science, regarding some dinosaur eggs.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Ancient flying reptiles cared for their young, fossil trove suggests*
By Gretchen Vogel
Nov. 30, 2017 , 2:00 PM

A spectacular fossil find is providing tantalizing new clues about the habits of pterosaurs, ancient flying reptiles that lived at the same times as dinosaurs. The cache of more than 200 fossil eggs found with bones of juvenile and adult animals in northwestern China is “one of the most extraordinary fossil [finds] I’ve ever seen,” says David Unwin, a paleontologist at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, who was not involved in the work. And it suggests to some researchers that pterosaur parents may have cared for their newly hatched young.

The fossils formed about 120 million years ago when disaster struck a group of pterosaurs. The researchers speculate that when a sudden rain flooded a river, hundreds of pterosaur eggs buried in shallow sand or under a layer of leaves or grass were drowned and washed downstream, along with a number of older individuals. Quickly buried by sediment, the eggs and bones did not decay but instead were preserved as fossils. “You’ve captured the life history of pterosaurs,” Unwin says.

Only a few fossilized pterosaur eggs had turned up before, at sites in Argentina and in China. But in a paper published today in Science, Wang Xiaolin and Jiang Shunxing at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’s Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing and their colleagues report that a 3-meter square chunk of rock they excavated in the Turpan-Hami Basin in northwest China contains more than 200 eggs of the pterosaur, called _Hamipterus tianshanensis_. In 16 of them, researchers have been able to identify fossilized bones of developing embryos.

Whatever transported the eggs to their resting place likely damaged them, so the bones are jumbled and incomplete. But enough is preserved to allow comparisons between the bones in the embryos and those of older pterosaurs also preserved, says Alexander Kellner of the National Museum at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, who helped analyze the fossils. “It’s amazing,” he says. “We never thought we would find so many eggs.”



This Chinese fossil contains hundreds of pterosaur eggs and bones.
Wang _et al_., Science, 2017

The researchers used computerized tomography scans to measure some of the embryonic bones and took thin slices of some to tell how mature they were. In one particularly well preserved egg, the hind limbs were more developed than the forelimbs. That suggests, Kellner says, that pterosaurs could walk when they hatched, but not fly. The embryos also appeared to be toothless, unlike some dinosaur embryos. Together, the authors say, the evidence suggests that hatchlings might have not been able to hunt for themselves, relying on their parents to feed them. “They needed some sort of parental care,” Kellner says.

Unwin says he’s not yet convinced. The smallest hatchlings in the sample are 40% bigger than the embryos, he notes, so the forelimbs might have matured by the time they hatched. Charles Deeming, an expert on reptile reproduction at the University of Lincoln in the United Kingdom, also cautions about drawing firm conclusions from close analysis of just a few eggs. Although fossil egg finds are spectacular, he says, “one of the dangers … is that they are often overinterpreted.”

Jiang says that’s a fair critique, but he and others say further analysis of the wealth of eggs at the site will eventually provide firmer evidence one way or another. “The numbers [of eggs and bones] mean that we can move on from positing ideas to testing ideas,” Unwin says. Pterosaur remains scattered through multiple layers of the rocks suggest that the site was a pterosaur nesting site for many years. “It must have been a great place to bury eggs,” Unwin says—until, periodically, catastrophe struck. The specimen described today is only the start, Jiang says. “There are many more eggs.”


Ancient flying reptiles cared for their young, fossil trove suggests | Science | AAAS

###​*Scientists just discovered the mother lode of pterosaur eggs, and they are over the moon*
By Jason Bittel November 30 at 2:00 PM

“Extraordinary.” “Stellar.” “Truly awesome.” “A world-class find.”

That's how paleontologists are reacting to the discovery of several hundred ridiculously well-preserved pterosaur eggs in China, some of them still containing the remains of embryos.

“My first thought was extreme jealousy,” said David Unwin, a pterosaur expert and paleobiologist at the University of Leicester. “Really.”

To understand why Unwin and others are freaking out about the discovery, published Thursday in the journal Science, you have to first appreciate how rare pterosaur eggs are.


--> Scientists just discovered the mother lode of pterosaur eggs, and they are over the moon - The Washington Post

Xiaolin Wang, Alexander W. A. Kellner, Shunxing Jiang, Xin Cheng, Qiang Wang, Yingxia Ma, Yahefujiang Paidoula, Taissa Rodrigues, He Chen, Juliana M. Sayão, Ning Li, Jialiang Zhang, Renan A. M. Bantim, Xi Meng, Xinjun Zhang, Rui Qiu, Zhonghe Zhou. *Egg accumulation with 3D embryos provides insight into the life history of a pterosaur*. _Science _(2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aan2329​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

JSCh said:


> *Ancient flying reptiles cared for their young, fossil trove suggests*
> By Gretchen Vogel
> Nov. 30, 2017 , 2:00 PM
> 
> A spectacular fossil find is providing tantalizing new clues about the habits of pterosaurs, ancient flying reptiles that lived at the same times as dinosaurs. The cache of more than 200 fossil eggs found with bones of juvenile and adult animals in northwestern China is “one of the most extraordinary fossil [finds] I’ve ever seen,” says David Unwin, a paleontologist at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, who was not involved in the work. And it suggests to some researchers that pterosaur parents may have cared for their newly hatched young.
> 
> The fossils formed about 120 million years ago when disaster struck a group of pterosaurs. The researchers speculate that when a sudden rain flooded a river, hundreds of pterosaur eggs buried in shallow sand or under a layer of leaves or grass were drowned and washed downstream, along with a number of older individuals. Quickly buried by sediment, the eggs and bones did not decay but instead were preserved as fossils. “You’ve captured the life history of pterosaurs,” Unwin says.
> 
> Only a few fossilized pterosaur eggs had turned up before, at sites in Argentina and in China. But in a paper published today in Science, Wang Xiaolin and Jiang Shunxing at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’s Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing and their colleagues report that a 3-meter square chunk of rock they excavated in the Turpan-Hami Basin in northwest China contains more than 200 eggs of the pterosaur, called _Hamipterus tianshanensis_. In 16 of them, researchers have been able to identify fossilized bones of developing embryos.
> 
> Whatever transported the eggs to their resting place likely damaged them, so the bones are jumbled and incomplete. But enough is preserved to allow comparisons between the bones in the embryos and those of older pterosaurs also preserved, says Alexander Kellner of the National Museum at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, who helped analyze the fossils. “It’s amazing,” he says. “We never thought we would find so many eggs.”
> 
> 
> 
> This Chinese fossil contains hundreds of pterosaur eggs and bones.
> Wang _et al_., Science, 2017
> 
> The researchers used computerized tomography scans to measure some of the embryonic bones and took thin slices of some to tell how mature they were. In one particularly well preserved egg, the hind limbs were more developed than the forelimbs. That suggests, Kellner says, that pterosaurs could walk when they hatched, but not fly. The embryos also appeared to be toothless, unlike some dinosaur embryos. Together, the authors say, the evidence suggests that hatchlings might have not been able to hunt for themselves, relying on their parents to feed them. “They needed some sort of parental care,” Kellner says.
> 
> Unwin says he’s not yet convinced. The smallest hatchlings in the sample are 40% bigger than the embryos, he notes, so the forelimbs might have matured by the time they hatched. Charles Deeming, an expert on reptile reproduction at the University of Lincoln in the United Kingdom, also cautions about drawing firm conclusions from close analysis of just a few eggs. Although fossil egg finds are spectacular, he says, “one of the dangers … is that they are often overinterpreted.”
> 
> Jiang says that’s a fair critique, but he and others say further analysis of the wealth of eggs at the site will eventually provide firmer evidence one way or another. “The numbers [of eggs and bones] mean that we can move on from positing ideas to testing ideas,” Unwin says. Pterosaur remains scattered through multiple layers of the rocks suggest that the site was a pterosaur nesting site for many years. “It must have been a great place to bury eggs,” Unwin says—until, periodically, catastrophe struck. The specimen described today is only the start, Jiang says. “There are many more eggs.”
> 
> 
> Ancient flying reptiles cared for their young, fossil trove suggests | Science | AAAS
> 
> ###​*Scientists just discovered the mother lode of pterosaur eggs, and they are over the moon*
> By Jason Bittel November 30 at 2:00 PM
> 
> “Extraordinary.” “Stellar.” “Truly awesome.” “A world-class find.”
> 
> That's how paleontologists are reacting to the discovery of several hundred ridiculously well-preserved pterosaur eggs in China, some of them still containing the remains of embryos.
> 
> “My first thought was extreme jealousy,” said David Unwin, a pterosaur expert and paleobiologist at the University of Leicester. “Really.”
> 
> To understand why Unwin and others are freaking out about the discovery, published Thursday in the journal Science, you have to first appreciate how rare pterosaur eggs are.
> 
> 
> --> Scientists just discovered the mother lode of pterosaur eggs, and they are over the moon - The Washington Post
> 
> Xiaolin Wang, Alexander W. A. Kellner, Shunxing Jiang, Xin Cheng, Qiang Wang, Yingxia Ma, Yahefujiang Paidoula, Taissa Rodrigues, He Chen, Juliana M. Sayão, Ning Li, Jialiang Zhang, Renan A. M. Bantim, Xi Meng, Xinjun Zhang, Rui Qiu, Zhonghe Zhou. *Egg accumulation with 3D embryos provides insight into the life history of a pterosaur*. _Science _(2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aan2329​




One thing I don't understand is why the Chinese scientist collaborated with Brazilians in this paper.

Any insights?


----------



## JSCh

Bussard Ramjet said:


> One thing I don't understand is why the Chinese scientist collaborated with Brazilians in this paper.
> 
> Any insights?


No idea.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

JSCh said:


> No idea.



In fact it seems that these Brazilian Scientists collaborate regularly with Chinese. I have just seen other papers with the same group. 

Also, I widely underestimated the impact of this find. It turns out that this is one of the biggest finds in Paleontology. Twitter and all news media is full of this paper. 

Also, here is the twitter handle of one of the Brazilian scientists: @paleotaissa


----------



## Han Patriot

JSCh said:


> *Ancient flying reptiles cared for their young, fossil trove suggests*
> By Gretchen Vogel
> Nov. 30, 2017 , 2:00 PM
> 
> A spectacular fossil find is providing tantalizing new clues about the habits of pterosaurs, ancient flying reptiles that lived at the same times as dinosaurs. The cache of more than 200 fossil eggs found with bones of juvenile and adult animals in northwestern China is “one of the most extraordinary fossil [finds] I’ve ever seen,” says David Unwin, a paleontologist at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, who was not involved in the work. And it suggests to some researchers that pterosaur parents may have cared for their newly hatched young.
> 
> The fossils formed about 120 million years ago when disaster struck a group of pterosaurs. The researchers speculate that when a sudden rain flooded a river, hundreds of pterosaur eggs buried in shallow sand or under a layer of leaves or grass were drowned and washed downstream, along with a number of older individuals. Quickly buried by sediment, the eggs and bones did not decay but instead were preserved as fossils. “You’ve captured the life history of pterosaurs,” Unwin says.
> 
> Only a few fossilized pterosaur eggs had turned up before, at sites in Argentina and in China. But in a paper published today in Science, Wang Xiaolin and Jiang Shunxing at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’s Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing and their colleagues report that a 3-meter square chunk of rock they excavated in the Turpan-Hami Basin in northwest China contains more than 200 eggs of the pterosaur, called _Hamipterus tianshanensis_. In 16 of them, researchers have been able to identify fossilized bones of developing embryos.
> 
> Whatever transported the eggs to their resting place likely damaged them, so the bones are jumbled and incomplete. But enough is preserved to allow comparisons between the bones in the embryos and those of older pterosaurs also preserved, says Alexander Kellner of the National Museum at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, who helped analyze the fossils. “It’s amazing,” he says. “We never thought we would find so many eggs.”
> 
> 
> 
> This Chinese fossil contains hundreds of pterosaur eggs and bones.
> Wang _et al_., Science, 2017
> 
> The researchers used computerized tomography scans to measure some of the embryonic bones and took thin slices of some to tell how mature they were. In one particularly well preserved egg, the hind limbs were more developed than the forelimbs. That suggests, Kellner says, that pterosaurs could walk when they hatched, but not fly. The embryos also appeared to be toothless, unlike some dinosaur embryos. Together, the authors say, the evidence suggests that hatchlings might have not been able to hunt for themselves, relying on their parents to feed them. “They needed some sort of parental care,” Kellner says.
> 
> Unwin says he’s not yet convinced. The smallest hatchlings in the sample are 40% bigger than the embryos, he notes, so the forelimbs might have matured by the time they hatched. Charles Deeming, an expert on reptile reproduction at the University of Lincoln in the United Kingdom, also cautions about drawing firm conclusions from close analysis of just a few eggs. Although fossil egg finds are spectacular, he says, “one of the dangers … is that they are often overinterpreted.”
> 
> Jiang says that’s a fair critique, but he and others say further analysis of the wealth of eggs at the site will eventually provide firmer evidence one way or another. “The numbers [of eggs and bones] mean that we can move on from positing ideas to testing ideas,” Unwin says. Pterosaur remains scattered through multiple layers of the rocks suggest that the site was a pterosaur nesting site for many years. “It must have been a great place to bury eggs,” Unwin says—until, periodically, catastrophe struck. The specimen described today is only the start, Jiang says. “There are many more eggs.”
> 
> 
> Ancient flying reptiles cared for their young, fossil trove suggests | Science | AAAS
> 
> ###​*Scientists just discovered the mother lode of pterosaur eggs, and they are over the moon*
> By Jason Bittel November 30 at 2:00 PM
> 
> “Extraordinary.” “Stellar.” “Truly awesome.” “A world-class find.”
> 
> That's how paleontologists are reacting to the discovery of several hundred ridiculously well-preserved pterosaur eggs in China, some of them still containing the remains of embryos.
> 
> “My first thought was extreme jealousy,” said David Unwin, a pterosaur expert and paleobiologist at the University of Leicester. “Really.”
> 
> To understand why Unwin and others are freaking out about the discovery, published Thursday in the journal Science, you have to first appreciate how rare pterosaur eggs are.
> 
> 
> --> Scientists just discovered the mother lode of pterosaur eggs, and they are over the moon - The Washington Post
> 
> Xiaolin Wang, Alexander W. A. Kellner, Shunxing Jiang, Xin Cheng, Qiang Wang, Yingxia Ma, Yahefujiang Paidoula, Taissa Rodrigues, He Chen, Juliana M. Sayão, Ning Li, Jialiang Zhang, Renan A. M. Bantim, Xi Meng, Xinjun Zhang, Rui Qiu, Zhonghe Zhou. *Egg accumulation with 3D embryos provides insight into the life history of a pterosaur*. _Science _(2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aan2329​


200 eggs are a crazy find.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Martian2

Bussard Ramjet said:


> One thing I don't understand is why the Chinese scientist collaborated with Brazilians in this paper.
> 
> Any insights?


Brazil is an important supplier of iron ore to China.

China has collaboration projects with important trade partners to build people-to-people bridges between countries.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 4-Dec-2017
* Better mastery of heat flow leads to next-generation thermal cloaks *
_Chinese physicists manipulate the transfer of thermal energy as a means of reducing heat waste, using thermal camouflage tactics_
Springer

Ever heard of the invisibility cloak? It manipulates how light travels along the cloak to conceal an object placed behind it. Similarly, the thermal cloak is designed to hide heated objects from infrared detectors without distorting the temperature outside the cloak. Materials for such cloaks would need to offer zero thermal conductivity to help camouflage the heat. Now, Liujun Xu and colleagues from Fudan University, Shanghai, China, have explored a new mechanism for designing such materials. These findings published in _EPJ B_ could have implications for manipulating the transfer of thermal energy as a way to ultimately reduce heat waste from fossil fuels and help mitigate energy crises.

In this work, for the first time the authors experimentally verify that the inner composition of materials, which presents a non-uniform periodic structure, can exhibit quasi-uniform heat conduction. To do so, they use an infrared camera to detect heat in experimental samples placed between a hot and cold bath. These results confirm their own equations predicting the thermal conductivity of the periodic material.

To achieve the desired thermal illusion, they rely on quasi-uniform heat conduction. Instead of producing an omnidirectional illusion, showing objects with the same temperature signature regardless of the angle of observation, the authors introduce what they refer to as the Janus thermal illusion. It features an object whose heat is not detectable from one direction, thus forming an invisible illusion. By contrast, it features a different heat signature than its actual signature along the vertical axis, thus forming a different type of illusion, which is visible but not displaying the reality.

To remove the influence of thermal convection and radiation from their experimental results, the authors also perform simulations. These in turn help to develop the concept of 'illusion thermal diodes', which approach thermal illusion as an additional degree of freedom for heat management. Ultimately, these diodes could be applied in fields that require both thermal camouflage and thermal rectification.

###​
*Reference:* L. Xu, C. Jiang, J. Shang, R. Wang and J. Huang (2017), Periodic composites: Quasi-uniform heat conduction, Janus thermal illusion, and illusion thermal diodes, _European Physical Journal B_ 90: 221, DOI: 10.1140/epjb/e2017-80524-6


Better mastery of heat flow leads to next-generation thermal cloaks | EurekAlert! Science News

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 5-Dec-2017
* Working in the cold *
_High-rate and long-life lithium-ion battery with improved low-temperature performance through a prelithiation strategy_
Wiley

When it is cold in winter, cars tend to have starting problems. This is not much better with electric cars, which inevitably lose capacity of their rechargeable lithium-ion batteries at freezing temperatures. Now, Chinese scientists have offered a strategy to avoid plunging battery kinetics. In a study published in the journal _Angewandte Chemie_, they designed a battery system with a cold-enduring hard-carbon anode and a powerful lithium-rich cathode, with the important initial lithiation step integrated.

"Non-graphitizable" or "hard" carbon is a promising, low-cost anode material in battery technology. Even at low temperatures, it exhibits fast intercalation kinetics of lithium ions. During charging/discharging of a battery cell, lithium ions migrate from the cathode through an electrolyte to the anode and vice versa. If the anodic material, which is often graphite, contains prestored lithium, the volume change by the incoming lithium ions is leveled out to ensure a longer cell life and faster charge/discharge kinetics. Prelithiated hard carbon has been proven as a robust material in lithium-ion capacitors. However, the prelithiation process, which involves a pure lithium electrode, is complicated and expensive. Alternative prelithiation strategies are therefore favored by Yonggang Wang and his team at Fudan University, Shanghai, China.

Instead of the extra lithium electrode, they introduced a lithium-rich vanadium phosphate electrode both for lithiation and normal battery operation. The cathode loses some of its lithium ions to the anode in the first charging process where they are intercalated and stored. Then, the scientists combined the lithium-reduced vanadium phosphate cathode and the prelithiated hard-carbon anode (Li(x)C) to form a working lithium-ion battery system. This full cell "keeps the high energy density characteristics of conventional lithium-ion batteries and exhibits the supercapacitor-like high power and long cycle life," the scientists explained. Moreover, it keeps about two-thirds of its capacity at temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees Celsius. Conventional lithium-ion batteries retain only 10 percent. "This achievement arises from the inherent low-temperature ability of the vanadium phosphate cathode and the fast kinetics of the prelithiated hard-carbon anode," said the authors. Many further tests showed that these batteries fulfilled the other parameters of electrochemical cells.

A flaw, still, is the electrolyte that loses conductivity under extremely cold conditions. If this point is solved, this system might provide an attractive design for best performance, winter-enduring electric car engines.


Working in the cold | EurekAlert! Science News

Yao Liu , Bingchang Yang , Xiaoli Dong , Yonggang Wang , Yongyao Xia. *A Simple Prelithiation Strategy To Build a High-Rate and Long-Life Lithium-Ion Battery with Improved Low-Temperature Performance*, _Angewandte Chemie International Edition_ (2017). DOI: 10.1002/anie.201710555​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Earliest example of large hydraulic enterprise excavated in China*
December 5, 2017 by Bob Yirka



​Map of the Liangzhu city and hydraulic system, Lower Yangtze River, China Credit: _PNAS_

(Phys.org)—A team of researchers from several institutions in China has uncovered one of the largest water management projects in the ancient world in what is now a part of the eastern coast of modern China. In their paper published in _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_, the group describes their finding and compares it to other ancient water management systems.

Over 5000 years ago, people living in the Yangtze River Delta apparently grew weary of the flooding that periodically destroyed their crops. They embarked on what became one of the largest water management projects in the ancient world, moving earth and piling it in desired ways to change over 10,000 hectares of landscape to suit their needs. The researchers at the site have been working for four years uncovering the large hydraulic system that was built to support Liangzhu Ancient City.

The researchers report that laborers spent years digging up dirt to make canals, piled it to make dams, and even installed a system of gates to control movement of the water. The result was a system able to prevent normal flooding and to irrigate crops during dry times with rainwater saved in large reservoirs. They also dug canals to allow small boats to carry people and materials around the area. The researchers estimate that it took approximately 3000 people working for eight years just to build one of the larger dams, and in the process, they moved approximately 10 million cubic feet of earth.



(A) Well-preserved 'sand bags', with the knots still clearly visible, the grass plants used are Triarrhena lutarioriparia. (B) A small proportion of rice remains discovered from the storage pit excavated at eastern Mojiaoshan, depth of the boxes around 10 cm. Credit: _PNAS_

Prior research has dated Liangzhu Ancient City to approximately 5,300 to 4,300 years ago, which would make the water engineering effort one of the oldest in the world. The newer research work demonstrates that use of such technology began in China earlier than had been thought. And it occurred in a relatively isolated location—the water system was not part of empire building; it was constructed to service the needs of a single city. Sadly, prior evidence has also revealed that their efforts were not sufficient to prevent the entire area from being massively flooded approximately 4,200 years ago, leaving behind a meter-thick layer of clay—the devastation was so great the city never recovered, and those that survived migrated to other areas.



​(A) Structure of the Meirendi bank with wooden planks still standing upright. (B) The Bianjiashan pier, wooden stakes still were preserved, forming a T shape. Credit: _PNAS_

*More information:* Bin Liu et al. Earliest hydraulic enterprise in China, 5,100 years ago, _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_ (2017). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1710516114

*Abstract*
Here we present one of the world's oldest examples of large-scale and formalized water management, in the case of the Liangzhu culture of the Yangtze Delta, dated at 5,300–4,300 years cal B.P. The Liangzhu culture represented a peak of early cultural and social development predating the historically recorded Chinese dynasties; hence, this study reveals more about the ancient origins of hydraulic engineering as a core element of social, political, and economic developments. Archaeological surveys and excavations can now portray the impressive extent and structure of dams, levees, ditches, and other landscape-transforming features, supporting the ancient city of Liangzhu, with an estimated size of about 300 ha. The results indicate an enormous collective undertaking, with unprecedented evidence for understanding how the city, economy, and society of Liangzhu functioned and developed at such a large scale. Concurrent with the evidence of technological achievements and economic success, a unique relationship between ritual order and social power is seen in the renowned jade objects in Liangzhu elite burials, thus expanding our view beyond the practicalities of water management and rice farming.​
https://phys.org/news/2017-12-earliest-large-hydraulic-enterprise-excavated.html

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

Scientists used diamond tips to apply enormous pressure to a superconducting alloy. Credit: Max Alexander/SPL

06 December 2017
* Super-squeezing can’t crush this superconductor’s powers *
_Material shrugs off pressures similar to those at Earth’s core._

An exotic alloy conducts electricity when subjected to extreme pressures that would be expected to crush the material’s structure and destroy its electrical properties.

The alloy is a superconductor, a material that offers no resistance to the passage of an electrical current. Such materials are valuable for fabricating specialized magnets and other technology. But extreme pressures distort their atomic arrangements, disrupting their ability to carry current.

Liling Sun at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, Robert Cava at Princeton University in New Jersey and their colleagues subjected samples of the alloy to pressures of up to 190 gigapascals — nearly 2 million times the atmospheric pressure at sea level — about the level in Earth’s outer core. The alloy’s superconductivity persisted. That contradicts scientists’ understanding of how such materials should behave, providing a challenge to superconducting theory, the authors say.

_Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA _ (2017)



Super-squeezing can’t crush this superconductor’s powers : Research Highlights | Nature

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*New SLM 3D printing technique can produce strong, ductile stainless steel parts*
Dec 11, 2017 | By Benedict

A joint research team from the UK, Sweden, and China has developed a new stainless steel SLM 3D printing technique that results in high levels of strength and ductility. The process could be used to make heavy-duty parts for the aerospace and automotive sectors.




While users of plastic 3D printers have found plenty of success printing rubbery and stretchy objects using *flexible 3D printer filaments*, achieving ductility in the metal 3D printing world has proven rather more difficult.

The general outlook seems to be that one can’t additively manufacture a metal part that has high levels of both strength and ductility, since one trait normally compromises the other. Strong 3D printed metal parts therefore tend to be rigid and brittle—fine for many applications, but not for all.

But sometimes the key to unlocking a breakthrough is collaboration, and researchers from three universities across the world—the University of Birmingham, UK; Stockholm University, Sweden; and Zhejiang University, China—recently came together to develop a new metal 3D printing process that overcomes the additive manufacturing strength-ductility bottleneck.

Their new Selective Laser Melting (SLM) technique, which also enables the printing of “previously inaccessible shapes,” offers an ultrafast cooling rate—1000°C per second to 100 million °C per second—which leads to some highly desirable mechanical results, which could make 3D printed stainless steels a more attractive proposition to manufacturers of cars and aircraft, amongst other things.

The technique's rapid cooling rate, which could not have been achieved with a metal production process besides additive manufacturing, puts the metal into a non-equilibrium state. This can produce microstructures like a sub-micro-sized dislocation network, which in turn results in desirable mechanical properties like strength and ductility.




Ultimately, this dislocation network means greater flexibility for engineers who need complex metal shapes that aren’t necessarily rigid or brittle.

"This work gives researchers a brand new tool to design new alloy systems with ultra-mechanical properties,” says Dr. Leifeng Liu, lead author, who recently moved to the University of Birmingham from Stockholm University as an AMCASH research fellow. “It also helps metal 3D printing to gain access into the field where high mechanical properties are required—like structural parts in aerospace and automotive.”

Liu’s University of Birmingham team—Dr. Yu-Lung Chiu, Dr. Ji Zou, and Dr. Jing Wu, all of whom are part of the university’s School of Metallurgy and Materials—were responsible for establishing a micro and nano material testing system inside electron microscopes, allowing the researchers to analyze the performance of the 3D printed metal sample during mechanical tests.

This testing system reportedly helped the researchers understand the physical mechanisms at play, and to identify effective microstructural features of the printed metals.

The researchers’ study, “Dislocation network in additive manufactured steel breaks strength–ductility trade-off,” has been *published* in _Materials Today_.


3ders.org - New SLM 3D printing technique can produce strong, ductile stainless steel parts | 3D Printer News & 3D Printing News

Leifeng Liu, Qingqing Ding, Yuan Zhong, Ji Zou, Jing Wu, Yu-Lung Chiu, Jixue Li, Ze Zhang, Qian Yu, Zhijian Shen. *Dislocation network in additive manufactured steel breaks strength–ductility trade-off*. _Materials Today_ (2017). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mattod.2017.11.004​


----------



## JSCh

* Chinese-made ventricular assist device enters clinical testing *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-12-08 18:59:24_|_Editor: pengying_





CHONGQING, Dec. 8 (Xinhua) -- Several Chinese hospitals Friday started a clinical test for a ventricular assist device (VAD), which is believed to be the first such test conducted on the Chinese mainland.

The test will be conducted at three hospitals, namely Fuwai Hospital under the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Union Hospital affiliated with Tongji Medical College at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and Fujian Medical University Union Hospital.

It is expected to benefit hundreds of thousands of Chinese patients with severe heart failure.

The VAD was developed by Chongqing Yongrenxin Medical Devices Co. Ltd., a Sino-Japanese joint venture. The device entered a period of clinical testing in Japan in 2005.

In November, the Chongqing-based company officially obtained approval for the clinical test from the China Food and Drug Administration.

According to Hu Shengshou, president of Fuwai Hospital, heart failure caused more than 40 percent deaths due to diseases in China annually.

Hu said that China has at least 600,000 patients with severe heart failure. However, due to a severe donor shortage, the country only conducts around 300 heart transplant surgeries each year.

VAD is known globally as one of the most effective measures to treat patients with severe heart failure. Domestically-made devices are not yet ready to be put into commercial use, while foreign-made devices are often unaffordable.

The device will be put into use in 2018 after the clinical test concludes.

A VAD is an electromechanical device for assisting cardiac circulation, which is used either to partially or completely replace the function of a failing heart.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *China develops advanced PET scan technology*
> (People's Daily Online) 14:25, April 28, 2016
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> China has developed the world's first clinical all-digital positron emission tomography (PET) scan which helps significantly with the early detection of cancer.(People.cn/Photo)​
> It was announced on Wednesday that Chinese scientists have developed the world's first clinical all-digital positron emission tomography (PET) scan, which is used for checking the whole human body, and also helps significantly with the early detection of cancer.
> 
> Developed by Huazhong University of Science and Technology, the new PET represents today's cutting-edge medical imaging technology. In addition to cancer prevention, the new technology will be used to diagnose cardiovascular and neurological diseases.
> 
> The all-digital PET has been granted 81 patents at home and abroad, and will be put into clinical application soon, said professor Xie Qingguo, who led the research for the project.
> 
> The machine consists of more than 300 modules that take just five minutes to scan an entire body. The resolution of its scans reaches 2.2 millimeters, which is twice as good as the capability of current imported models.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> China has developed the world's first clinical all-digital positron emission tomography (PET) scan which helps significantly with the early detection of cancer.(People.cn/Photo)​


*
China develops world’s first digital positron emission tomography *
CGTN
2017-12-13 11:59 GMT+8






The world’s first digital positron emission tomography (PET ) has been developed at China's Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) in Wuhan City, central China.

The medical imaging device which helps doctors detect cancer and brain diseases is expected to better fight serious diseases at a lower cost.

In early November, Professor Xie Qingguo and his team at HUST conducted full digital PET for online proton beam monitoring in Taiwan Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, which has the largest and most advanced proton radiotherapy center in Asia.

“This is the first time in human history that we monitored how the proton produced oxygen-15 on a rat. It has proven two things about digital PET: To help the proton knife locate where to hit and where it actually hits,” said Professor Xie.

The full clinical digital PET is currently in the process of installment at the Affiliated Hospital of Zhongshan University in Guangzhou. It has begun to carry out the China Food and Drug Administration clinical trials.

The formal starting up of the first digital PET will take place in early 2018.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 14-Dec-2017
* UMass Amherst, Peking University scientists advance knowledge of plant reproduction *
_Researchers identify a pair of receptors essential to male-female plant communications_

University of Massachusetts at Amherst



​UMass Amherst plant molecular biologist Alice Cheung says the male plant's pollen tube transports sperm to female target cells. She and colleagues identify two new receptors essential to this communication and other molecules whose interactions regulate the process.
Credit: UMass Amherst

AMHERST, Mass. - Two groups of plant molecular biologists, at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Peking University, China, have long studied how pollen tubes and pistils, the male and female parts of flowers, communicate to achieve fertilization in plants. Today they report in a _Science_ early release paper that they have identified a pair of receptors essential to these communications as well as molecules that modulate the receptors' activity.

The work, in the model plant _Arabidopsis_, advances basic understanding of plant reproduction, say Alice Cheung and Hen-Ming Wu at UMass Amherst, with Li-Jia Qu and Hongya Gu in China. The researchers named the two new receptors Buddha Paper Seal 1 and 2 (BUPS1/2). Their paper also identifies several small peptides known as Rapid Alkalinization Factors (RALF) 4, 19 and 34 as their ligands - molecules that modulate the receptors' functions.

Further, the authors describe how BUPS1/2 and a second pair of related receptors called ANXUR 1 and 2 (ANX1/2), and RALF 4 and 19, all expressed in the pollen tube and required for male fertility, interact together to get their jobs done.

Cheung says, "Our paper describes an important elaboration of the male and female interaction network in plant reproduction. Molecules involved in the process have to work intimately together to orchestrate and support the male-female interactive events. In this process the pollen tube grows inside the pistil, often over distances hundreds or thousands of times greater than the tube's diameter, to deliver sperm to the target egg cell. The pollen tube must remain intact throughout this journey, but then must burst open at exactly the right time and place when it arrives at the target to release sperm for fertilization. Bursting too soon or failing to burst when it should are both devastating to reproduction."

The two research teams found that the receptors and RALF4 and 19 are required to maintain pollen tube integrity during the growth process. They also show that RALF34, expressed from the female, facilitates the bursting process, along with some known and other not yet identified factors. They demonstrate how these molecules interact with each other, illustrating an "intriguing communication mechanism" between male and female to produce seeds, Cheung says.

She adds, "In showing how receptors and their ligands work together to ensure reproductive success, our work illuminates one of the most mysterious processes in biology."

The plant reproduction research community has a tradition of naming important genes from ancient mythology, the biologist says. For example, a gene her group also works on, FERONIA, is named after the Roman goddess of fertility. The researchers named the new factors Buddha paper seal 1 and 2 after a Chinese tale about a naughty monkey held under a rock for 400 years by a charmed paper seal. When a kindly monk passing by broke the seal, the monkey burst out, which is what the scientists were reminded of when they saw how the pollen tube explodes to release sperm and enable fertilization.

This work continues the Cheung-Wu group's many years of plant reproduction research, especially on FERONIA, a receptor related to BUPSs and ANXURs that plays a major role in controlling plant female fertility in development and in coping with environmental stresses.

"It's actually very interesting," says Cheung. "The pollen tube transports sperm to female target cells. FERONIA is waiting there for the pollen tube to arrive. BUPSs, ANXURs, RALF 4 and 10 in the pollen tube make sure the tube does not burst too early, but wait until it gets to the target female cell. There the tube bursts abruptly, an action controlled by FERONIA and in part mediated by a different set of RALFs, releasing sperm at the right time and place."

The team used a combination of reverse genetics, biochemical and biophysical approaches for this work, in collaboration not only with the Chinese group, but also involved investigators from Brazil, Germany, the United States and Mexico. Cheung says the U.S. National Science Foundation's Research Coordination Network in Integrative Pollen Biology, of which she is the principle investigator, provided the catalyst and forum that stimulated these international interactions.

She adds, "I want to emphasize this work as a collaboration. We and the Peking University group, close colleagues with common interests, worked in parallel on some of the topics in this paper without knowing about each other's efforts. In a discussion one day we found out that we had common results, but each group had also generated unique observations and developed distinct insights, so we decided to merge our efforts and publish jointly."

She adds, "In my mind, this sort of collaboration is probably the best kind of scientific interaction. As scientists, we value our own independence and creativity. Even with common results, our thinking could diverge, leading each team to further investigate in different directions, getting to end points that complement each other. This collaboration is not a matter of different expertise, but a matter of common interest and curiosity that took us in different directions that eventually came back together in a complete story."

###​
Major support for this work was from the U.S. National Science Foundation to the Cheung-Wu group, National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Peking-Tsinghua Joint Center for Life Sciences to the Qu-Gu group, and by graduate student fellowships from Brazil and Mexico for studies at UMass Amherst.



UMass Amherst, Peking University scientists advance knowledge of plant reproduction | EurekAlert! Science News

Zengxiang Ge, Tabata Bergonci, Yuling Zhao, Yanjiao Zou, Shuo Du, Ming-Che Liu, Xingju Luo, Hao Ruan, Liliana E. García-Valencia, Sheng Zhong, Saiying Hou, Qingpei Huang, Luhua Lai, Daniel S. Moura, Hongya Gu,, Juan Dong, Hen-Ming Wu, Thomas Dresselhaus, Junyu Xiao, Alice Y. Cheung, Li-Jia Qu. *Arabidopsis pollen tube integrity and sperm release are regulated by RALF-mediated signaling*. _Science_ (2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aao3642.​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*Tsinghua University builds 'future lab' to promote cross-field research*

2017-12-17 07:55 CGTN _Editor: Gu Liping_

Tsinghua University, China's top university in the QS World Rankings, has launched a "*future lab*" to encourage collaboration among research fields.

The lab's mission is to "explore humans' future," according to the university's official press release on Thursday.

*Another lab for brain and AI research* was also launched on the same day.

*How to study the future?*

The future seems too abstract to do research on. But the university has found its path to tap into the area.

"We'll start from the fields including subversive teaching, future living, future healthcare, computer vision, computer emotions and multichannel cognition," Xu Yingqing, head of the lab, explained during the launching ceremony.

"It's going to be a massive crossover between science, tech, society and art," Xu added.

The crossover can only be achieved in a school that has a leading position in all these fields, said the press release.

This is also a method to build a more dynamic university because the researchers have to work in both their own fields and the new labs at the same time.

*Interdisciplinary research*

When we study at school, the knowledge is taught in different "disciplines" or subjects, which may include math, literature, physics, history and many more.

This kind of division also happens when scientists do their research.

Even the Nobel Prize has different awards for physics, chemistry and biology studies.

But the division is under heavy question now, as more and more new subjects stand in the middle of two fields or more.

One of the most obvious examples is biochemistry. The name is obviously indicating that the study has one leg in biology and the other in chemistry.

But scientists in different fields have their own angles to view the world. It can be hard for them to fully understand each other, although they are all highly intelligent.

That's one of the main reasons why universities are promoting "interdisciplinary research" to encourage collaboration between different fields.

In the case of Tsinghua's future lab, the university didn't specify which fields are included, leaving vast space for great minds to join in.

"In this way, we hope to attract the best researchers in the world and bring the future within our reach," Xu said.

http://www.ecns.cn/2017/12-17/284788.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

* Chinese scientist among Nature magazine's 10 people who matter in science *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2017-12-19 01:52:34_|_Editor: yan_





LONDON, Dec. 18 (Xinhua) -- For his role in pushing forward the development of quantum communications, Chinese physicist Pan Jianwei has been included in Nature's 10, the annual list of ten people who mattered in science in 2017, which was released online Monday by the prestigious journal Nature.

From quantum communications and genome editing to the threat of a nuclear crisis and the dismantling of environmental protections in the United States, "this list covers the highs and lows for science and scientists in 2017," said Brendan Maher, news features editor at Nature.

Dubbed "Father of Quantum" by some in China, Pan Jianwei and his team harnessed quantum laws to transmit information securely, called quantum communications.

In July, Pan and his team reported they had broken the record for quantum teleportation. In September, the team used a satellite to beam photons to Beijing and Vienna, generating quantum encryption keys that allowed teams in these cities to video chat securely, according to Nature.

More experiments have been planned by Pan and his team, and in the next five years, "many wonderful results will come, It's really a new era," Pan was quoted as saying in the Nature feature.

Renowned scientist and president of the Austrian Academy of Sciences Anton Zeilinger, seen as a pioneer in the field of quantum information and of the foundations of quantum mechanics, believes the landmark quantum-encrypted intercontinental video call between China and Austria is very important and impressive.

"I see this as a part of the goal of building a future quantum internet, where in this case China enabled a worldwide quantum-secure communication," the physicist told Xinhua earlier.

Another scientist featured in the list is David Liu. The biologist and his team at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have dedicated efforts to improving the powerful CRISPR genome-editing technique. Such tools could one day save lives, as cell-based therapies can be enhanced by the method.

"I'm deeply honored to be selected for this distinction, and I'm especially grateful to the remarkably talented and dedicated members of my research group. Their insight and hard work are what really mattered, and they are the true recipients of this recognition," Liu told Xinhua.

This year's list also includes Marica Branchesi. The astronomer is a member of the Virgo collaboration, which operates a gravitational wave detector near Pisa, Italy. Branchesi helped bring together more than 3,500 researchers who captured the collision of two neutron stars in detail, according to Nature.

Meanwhile, Khaled Toukan, a physicist who kept the Middle East's first synchrotron light source on track, is among Nature's top ten.

Nature's 10 are not just about scientists, and policy makers are also featured in the list. Lassina Zerbo, head of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, is included for his hard work on encouraging nuclear non-proliferation.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*First CSNS Research Proposals Released*
Dec 21, 2017

The China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS) announced its first batch of research proposals in Dongguan on December 14, 2017. The proposals reflect the research needs in several cutting-edge and cross-disciplinary research fields.

The proposed experiments at CSNS will allow scientists to have a closer look at the inner structure of materials including lithium-ion battery materials, photovoltaic materials, thermoelectric materials, polymer-based nanocomposites, and super-strong steel, magnesium, and aluminum alloys.

"We have witnessed the construction of the China Spallation Neutron Source for more than a decade. We are excited to see that the facility will soon start operation and play an important role in materials science, new energy, chemical engineering, soft matter and life sciences in the near future,” Prof. WANG Yifang, Director of the Institute of High Energy Physics said.

Following its first neutron beam in late August, CSNS completed the first round of joint commissioning of the accelerator and target station spectrometer in early November. During the joint commissioning, the average power of the target beam reached 10kW, which met the design specifications. The next goal is the national acceptance test, scheduled in March next year.

The main principle of the facility is to generate neutrons by accelerating protons which then hit a tungsten target. Because neutrons are uncharged, they can penetrate materials more easily than other probing methods and thus they can help reveal the microstructure and kinetic characteristics of the material.

Since the construction of spallation neutron sources is very difficult, only the United Kingdom, the United States and Japan already have such a facility. CSNS is the first spallation neutron source in a developing country, with over 96% of the equipment produced domestically.

CSNS is designed to host twenty spectrometers. However, due to a funding shortage, only three spectrometers have been built so far - the Small Angle Neutron Scattering instrument, the Multiple Purpose Reflectometer and the General Purpose Powder Diffractometer.

"In the first phase, the number of spectrometers is too small to carry out research on high-precision measurements and kinetics, neutron physics and neutron technology. This is not only a serious waste of neutron beam resources, but also means the facility does not yet meet the need for high-performance neutron spectrometers in the domestic neutron scattering research and applied science fields,” Prof. CHEN Hesheng, CSNS project manager and Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, commented, “therefore, currently, we need to launch the second phase of construction at CSNS, which means adding more spectrometers is now a top priority for CSNS.”

On the same day, the management of CSNS also announced plans for joint construction of thirteen spectrometers with the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Southern University of Science and Technology, Sun Yat-Sen University, etc. It is hoped to boost the construction of national science and technology industry innovation centers in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, and promote technological innovation and industrial restructuring and upgrading in Guangdong province.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*Chinese scientists develop fast-charging aluminum-graphene battery*

2017-12-24 10:34

Xinhua _Editor: Liang Meichen_

A team of researchers from Zhejiang University have developed a new type of aluminum-graphene battery that can be charged in seconds, instead of hours.

The team, led by professor Gao Chao, from Department of Polymer Science and Engineering of Zhejiang University, designed a battery using graphene films as anode and metallic aluminum as cathode.

The battery could work well after quarter-million cycles and can be fully charged in seconds.

Experiments show that the battery retains 91 percent of its original capacity after 250,000 recharges, surpassing all the previous batteries in terms of cycle life.

In quick charge mode, the battery can be fully charged in 1.1 seconds, according to Gao. The finding was detailed in a paper recently published in Science Advances.

The assembled battery also works well in temperatures range of minus 40 to 120 degrees Celsius. It can be folded, and does not explode when exposed to fire.

However, the aluminum-ion battery cannot compete with commonly-used Li-ion batteries in terms of energy density, or the amount of power you can store in a battery in relation to the size, according to Gao.

"It is still costly to make such battery. Commercial production of the battery can only be possible until we can find cheaper electrolyte," Gao said.

http://www.ecns.cn/2017/12-24/285645.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*China builds first national lab for monitoring atmospheric environment*

2017-12-25 15:03

Xinhua _Editor: Mo Hong'e_






China started building its first national engineering laboratory for atmospheric environmental monitoring on Sunday in Hefei, capital of east China's Anhui Province.

Jointly launched by the Hefei government and Hefei Institute of Physical Science under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the lab aims to develop advanced monitoring technology and equipment for the country's environmental monitoring agencies and companies.

Liu Wenqing, director of the lab, said construction will last three years.

"The national engineering lab will research and develop advanced technology and equipment related to monitoring of fine particulate matter, gaseous pollutants, volatile organic compounds and heavy metals, as well as onboard and satellite telemetry systems," said Liu.

Yan Qing, director of the Bureau of Science and Technology for Development under the CAS, said that the new lab will put China's home-grown atmospheric environmental monitoring technology into domestic and international markets.

Tackling pollution has been listed as one of "the three tough battles" that China aims to win in the next three years, according to the Central Economic Work Conference, which concluded this month.

http://www.ecns.cn/2017/12-25/285786.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

18 December 2017
* A big bad bacterial killer powered by light *
_Harmful microbes help to transform a clump of molecules into an antibiotic._

Certain harmful bacteria help to kill themselves when exposed to a clutch of molecules paired with near-infrared light.

Molecules that produce heat when illuminated hold promise for suppressing drug-resistant microbes. Jiang-Fei Xu and Xi Zhang at Tsinghua University in Beijing and their colleagues assembled a large molecule, known as a supramolecule, from three sections. It comprised a central rod — made from carbon rings, oxygen and nitrogen — flanked by more carbon rings that formed bulky pumpkin shapes at each end.

Some kinds of bacteria, such as _Escherichia coli_, change these molecules into negatively charged ions. When zapped with near-infrared light, the ions absorb the light and heat their surroundings, killing the bacteria.

The authors hope that the molecule could be used to selectively kill dangerous microbes, and could have uses in treatments such as restoring microbial balance in the gut.

_Angew. Chem. Int. Edn_ (2017)



A big bad bacterial killer powered by light : Research Highlights | Nature

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*CNNC breaks foreign monopoly in containers for spent nuclear fuel*

2017-12-26 10:23 Global Times _Editor: Li Yan_

China has attained the ability to mass produce spent nuclear fuel shipping containers thanks to recent achievements by China National Nuclear Corp (CNNC), according to media reports.

The milestone was marked by the prototype unit of "Longzhou-CNSC" shipping containers of spent nuclear fuel, a national-level major scientific and technological project led and researched by CNNC.

The containers have passed the initial tests and can begin mass production on Wednesday, according to a post on the website of CNNC.

CNNC's success fills a technology gap in China and breaks the foreign monopoly in this area, the Beijing-based Science and Technology Daily newspaper reported on Sunday.

The CNNC project can carry 21 sets of spent nuclear fuel assemblies, and Xi'an Nuclear Equipment Co is the manufacturer, the report said.

According to transport regulations and provisions developed by the International Atomic Energy Agency, shipping containers have to be tested under hypothetical accidental conditions.

CNNC has built a testing platform for digital simulation and experimental verification, an industry insider told the Science and Technology Daily.

"The workload in the design stage was immense. For instance, one of the simulations required 24-hour nonstop calculations for one week," Wang Qing, project manager in the research and development team, was quoted saying in the report.

The development and manufacturing project for the shipping containers involves a series of sub-projects, including containers for new fuel and spent nuclear fuel.

These containers cover all fuel models related to transportable experimental reactors and pressurized water reactors and other new types of nuclear fuel, the report noted.

Under China's long-term nuclear development plan, by 2020, installed nuclear power capacity is expected to reach 58 million kilowatts, with spent nuclear fuel standing at more than 7,000 tons. The amount of spent fuel is expected to double by 2025, according to the report.

The project was launched in 2009 and contracted to CNNC in December 2010 by the National Energy Administration.

http://www.ecns.cn/business/2017/12-26/285881.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese Scientists Develop 27.2 T All-superconducting Magnet*
Dec 25, 2017

Superconducting magnets are widely used in MRI machines in hospitals, and in scientific equipment such as NMR spectrometers, mass spectrometers, fusion reactors and particle accelerators.

Through high-temperature insert magnet technology, Prof. WANG Qiuliang’s group from the Institute of Electrical Engineering (IEE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences developed a 27.2 T all-superconducting magnet with a REBCO insert composed of 15 Double Pancake (DP) coils, currently the second highest magnetic field with steady operation.

It is the third-highest magnetic field ever achieved by all superconducting magnets. The highest now is 32 T, obtained at NHMFL on December 8, 2017 and the second-highest is 27.6 T, obtained at RIKEN in January 10, 2016.

REBCO (consisting of Rare Earth, Ba, Cu, and O) superconductor is suitable for winding high field superconducting magnet due to its high tensile strength and current-carrying features under high magnetic field. 

However, with layered structure of REBCO strip, delamination may occur due to stress concentration in very high field, which would result in premature quench and prevent steady operation.

To solve this problem, the group adopted special binding device to protect the outer conductor of the magnet, adjusted the layered structure of the insert magnet coil to reduce the stress on REBCO conductor, and used grading design to increase safety margin as well as operation margin of insert magnet.

The 27.2 T all-superconducting magnet lays foundation for subsequent development of the 30 T high-field scientific device and the spectrometer magnet at the GHz level.

WANG’s group developed a 25.7 T all-superconducting magnet this May 11, making China the fourth country in the world to achieve an all-superconducting magnet above 25 T.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* China launches world's largest human genome research project *
By Deng Xiaoci Source:Global Times Published: 2017/12/28 22:28:40

*Researchers plan to probe causes of sickness *

The world's largest human genome research project of 100,000 people was launched by China on Thursday to document their genetic makeup for a study that aims to help generate the precision medicines of the future.

It is the country's first large project detecting the genetic links between health and sickness and will involve 100,000 people from different ethnic backgrounds and regions, China Central Television (CCTV) reported on Thursday.

The project will collect the genetic data of Han ethnic majority people from all over the country and nine other ethnic minority groups with a population of more than 5 million including the Zhuang and Hui peoples.

There are about 25,000 human genes and the project aims to decode the hereditary information contained in each, according to the CCTV report.

The project includes four stages - collecting, sequencing gene samples, gathering the data and sharing the findings, one of the project's founders told the Global Times.

Currently it's the first stage, said Yu Jun, former deputy head of the Beijing Institute of Genomics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

Researchers will create a "health contrast" pool, he said, gathering genetic information from those who suffer a variety of diseases.

In this way, they hope to dig deeper into the links between specific genes and particular diseases such as diabetes, he said.

The project's chief scientist Wang Yadong was quoted as saying by CCTV that the major research aim is to study what makes Chinese people get sick, "providing references for China's medical research, clinical diagnoses and treatments."

The project will help all Chinese people, including Han majority and ethnic minorities, Zhao Guoping, a CAS academician and director of the Chinese National Human Genome Center in Shanghai, told CCTV.

The project will conclude all its gene sequencing and analysis within four years, which will also make it the fastest genome engineering project in the world, the report said. It did not disclose the budget.

Yu revealed that the project was funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology, which has been working on promoting precision medicine for years. He declined to disclose the budget.

The key stage of the project was the sharing phase which remained unclear at the moment, Yu said, as China does not have a national gene database.

China has listed genomics as a key strategic field in its 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) for the country's economic and social development.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 3-Jan-2018
* Glucagon receptor structure offers new opportunities for type 2 diabetes drug discovery *
_Complex structure of a class B GPCR bound to an analogue of its endogenous ligand ignites new excitement in GPCR research_

Chinese Academy of Sciences Headquarters



This is the The Crystal Structure of the Full-Length Human Glucagon Receptor (GCGR)crystal structure of the full-length human glucagon receptor (GCGR): orange (extracellular domain), blue (transmembrane domain), green (stalk), magenta (the first extracellular loop), red (NNC1702), yellow (NNC0640) and cyan (mAb1)
Credit: Dr. WU Beili

Class B G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) exert essential action in hormonal homeostasis and are important therapeutic targets for a variety of diseases including metabolic disorders such as type 2 diabetes. These receptors consist of an extracellular domain (ECD) and a transmembrane domain (TMD), both of which are required to interact with their cognate peptide ligands and to regulate downstream signal transduction. Due to difficulties in high-quality protein preparation, determination of the structure of full-length class B GPCRs remains a challenge, thus limiting the understanding of molecular mechanisms of receptor action.

Activation of the human glucagon receptor (GCGR) by its endogenous ligand glucagon triggers the release of glucose from the liver during fasting, making it a potential drug target for type 2 diabetes. Last year, a group of scientists at the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica (SIMM) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences determined the crystal structure of the full-length GCGR bound to a negative allosteric modulator NNC0640 and an inhibitory antibody mAb1, thus providing for the first time a clear picture of a full-length class B GPCR at high resolution.

Recently, scientists at SIMM determined the crystal structure of GCGR in complex with a glucagon analogue and partial agonist NNC1702. This structure reveals, for the first time, the molecular details of a class B GPCR binding to its peptide ligand at high resolution and unexpectedly discloses the structural complexity that governs receptor activation, thereby greatly expanding the understanding of class B GPCR signal transduction. The study was published in _Nature_.

This study offers some valuable insights into the activation mechanism of GCGR. The most exciting finding is that the linker region connecting the ECD and TMD of the receptor, termed the "stalk," and the first extracellular loop undergo significant conformational changes in their secondary structures in the peptide-bound GCGR structure compared to the previously determined non-peptide-bound structure. This leads to a marked change in the relative orientation between the ECD and TMD of the receptor to accommodate peptide binding and initiate receptor activation.

Furthermore, the stalk may modulate receptor activity by facilitating conformational movements of the receptor TMD. "It is amazing to observe how the stalk region plays such an important role in regulating receptor function, although it only contains 12 amino acids," said SIMM professor Dr. ZHAO Qiang. "This has never been observed in previously solved GPCR structural studies. It significantly deepens the knowledge about class B GPCR signaling mechanisms."

Based on the structure of GCGR-NNC1702 complex, the researchers performed a series of functional studies using techniques such as competitive ligand binding, cell signaling, molecular dynamics simulations and double electron-electron resonance spectroscopy. The results support the GCGR structure and confirm the conformational alterations of the receptor in different functional states.

"The newly solved GCGR structure provides the most accurate template to date for drug design targeting GCGR, which offers new opportunities in drug discovery for treating type 2 diabetes," said team leader and SIMM professor Dr. WU Beili.

###​
This study was a collaboration work conducted by researchers from SIMM, Fudan University, the iHuman Institute of ShanghaiTech University, Novo Nordisk, University of Toronto, and GPCR Consortium.



Glucagon receptor structure offers new opportunities for type 2 diabetes drug discovery | EurekAlert! Science News


Haonan Zhang, Anna Qiao, Linlin Yang, Ned Van Eps, Klaus S. Frederiksen, Dehua Yang, Antao Dai, Xiaoqing Cai, Hui Zhang, Cuiying Yi, Can Cao, Lingli He, Huaiyu Yang, Jesper Lau, Oliver P. Ernst, Michael A. Hanson, Raymond C. Stevens, Ming-Wei Wang, Steffen Reedtz-Runge, Hualiang Jiang, Qiang Zhao & Beili Wu. *Structure of the glucagon receptor in complex with a glucagon analogue*_*. *Nature_ *553*, 106–110 (04 January 2018). DOI:10.1038/nature25153​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* China's first bio-safety level 4 lab put into operation *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2018-01-04 19:49:18_|_Editor: Xiang Bo_





BEIJING, Jan. 4 (Xinhua) -- China has opened its first bio-safety level four laboratory, capable of conducting experiments with highly pathogenic microorganisms, according to the national health authority on Thursday.

Wuhan national bio-safety level four lab of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Wuhan P4 lab) is part of Sino-French cooperation in prevention and control of emerging infectious diseases, said the Department of Health Science, Technology and Education with the National Health and Family Planning Commission.

Level four is the highest bio-safety level, used for diagnostic work and research on easily transmitted pathogens which can cause fatal disease, including Ebola virus.

The Wuhan P4 lab will conduct research in anti-virus drugs and vaccines.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

* Chinese researchers make breakthrough in study of nuclear technology: report *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2018-01-06 17:34:05_|_Editor: ZD_





BEIJING, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers have developed the world's top high intensity neutron generator, a breakthrough in the study of nuclear technology, the Science and Technology Daily reported.

The generator, developed by researchers at the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, is a vital platform for studying the application of nuclear power and nuclear technology, according to the report.

The achievement has been published by the International Journal of Energy Research, the report said.

The neutron energy spectrum generated by the equipment can faithfully reproduce the complex neutron environment in advanced nuclear power systems, the report said.

The generator is therefore important for studying neutron physics and advanced nuclear technology, as well as developing new nuclear power systems, according to the report.




​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Wang Zeshan, Hou Yunde win China's top science award *
CGTN
2018-01-08 10:16 GMT+8
Updated 2018-01-08 12:40 GMT+8 





Chinese scientists Wang Zeshan and Hou Yunde won China's top science award, the State Preeminent Science and Technology Award, for their outstanding contributions to scientific and technological innovation.

China's State Science and Technology Awards ceremony was held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Monday.



Wang Zeshan /Chinanews Photo

Wang is a professor of Nanjing University of Science and Technology and an academic at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, while Hou is a virologist and academic at the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

President Xi Jinping presented them with award certificates and offered congratulations at the annual ceremony which is held to honor distinguished scientists and research achievements.



Hou Yunde /Chinanews Photo‍

Other leaders, including Li Keqiang, Liu Yunshan, Zhang Gaoli, Wang Huning also attended the ceremony.

*Wang Zeshan: King of gunpowder* 

Dedicated to the research on gunpowder for over 60 years, Wang Zeshan was awarded for his original achievements made in this field, taking the lead of the international level and rejuvenating gunpowder, one of China’s four great inventions.

Wang, born on Oct. 10, 1935 in Jilin city, northeast China’s Jilin Province, has spent his whole lifetimes working with explosives, specializing in energetic materials. Now in his eighties, Wang still spends half the year working.



Wang Zeshan at work /Xinhua Photo

Wang was the first to develop technology for reutilizing obsolete explosives, and energetic materials with low temperature sensitivity. He successfully designed propelling charge and modular change systems for the extended firing range, improving the firing range of China’s artillery by 20 percent and optimizing the ballistic performance.

This is not the first time Wang has received a national-level award. He was the first-prize winner of National Scientific and Technological Progress Awards in 1993, and National Technology Invention Awards in both 1996 and 2016.

*Hou Yunde: Father of China’s interferon*

Hou Yunde is a researcher at the National Institute of Viral Disease Control and Prevention, and director of the National Engineering Research Center for Viro Bio Technology. He was born on July 13, 1929, in Wujin, now a district in the city of Changzhou, Jiangsu Province.

Hou was awarded for his outstanding achievements in molecular virology, genome project interferon, and control and prevention of major infectious diseases.



Hou Yunde (L) with his team /Xinhua Photo

Hou is known as the “father of China’s interferon”. He laid the groundwork for the research of molecular virology in China, and successfully developed a genome project interferon and other cytokines products including interferon α-1b.

During the H1N1 flu’s outbreak in 2009, Hou served as a director of the Expert Committee of the Defense and Control Mechanism. His team’s successful intervention of the flu was internationally recognized.

In 1984, Hou was the first Chinese scientist to win the “Young and Middle-aged Scientists with Outstanding Contributions” title. Hou received the Ho Leung Ho Lee Prize in 1994, and Medical Science Prize of China the year after. During the following two decades he has won one first prize and seven second prizes of National Science and Technology Progress, 10 first prizes of Scientific and Technological Achievements of Ministry of Health.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Researchers design dendrite-free lithium battery*
January 8, 2018 by Lisa Zyga, Phys.org feature



​A thin asymmetric solid electrolyte meets both the requirements of the lithium metal (blocking dendrite formation) and cathode (enabling low interface resistance). Credit: H. Duan et al. ©2017 American Chemical Society 

By designing a solid electrolyte that is rigid on one side and soft on the other, researchers have fabricated a lithium-metal battery that completely suppresses dendrite formation—a major safety hazard that can cause fires and shorten battery lifetime. This design also overcomes a tradeoff that is typically present in these batteries, by simultaneously eliminating dendrite growth and reducing the resistance at the electrode/electrolyte interface. Typical methods cannot achieve both of these goals at the same time.

The researchers, from Profs. Yu-Guo Guo and Li-Jun Wan's groups of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, have published a paper on the new electrolyte in a recent issue of the _Journal of the American Chemical Society_.

"We have proposed an asymmetric solid electrolyte, which can concurrently meet the requirements of a dendrite-free lithium anode and a low interface resistance in solid batteries," Guo told _Phys.org_.

As the researchers explain, the tradeoff in lithium batteries occurs because the lithium anode and the cathode have requirements that are inherently contradictory. While the anode requires a rigid electrolyte to block dendrite growth, it is difficult for a rigid electrolyte to maintain sufficient contact with the solid cathode, which creates a highly resistive cathode/electrolyte interface.

To address this problem, the researchers designed an asymmetrical solid electrolyte, in which each side has a different type of surface. The side facing the anode is a rigid ceramic material that presses against the lithium anode to discourage dendrite growth. On the other hand, the side facing the cathode is made of a soft polymer, which allows for a strong interfacial connection with the cathode. The entire electrolyte is also very thin, at just under 36 micrometers.

In tests, the researchers compared batteries with the new electrolyte to those with a conventional electrolyte. After 1750 hours of cycling, they found that the batteries with the conventional electrolyte exhibited rough morphologies indicative of dendrite formation, while those with the new electrolyte showed no morphological changes even after 3200 hours of cycling, indicating that dendrite growth was effectively eliminated.

Going forward, the researchers expect that the dendrite-free lithium batteries will lead to energy-storage systems that combine the high energy and power densities of lithium batteries with improved safety and longer lifetimes due to eliminating dendrite growth.

"We plan to design pouch cells with this asymmetric solid electrolyte for attaining a high energy density in solid batteries," Guo said.

*More information:* Hui Duan, Ya-Xia Yin, Yang Shi, Peng-Fei Wang , Xu-Dong Zhang, Chun-Peng Yang, Ji-Lei Shi , Rui Wen, Yu-Guo Guo , and Li-Jun Wan. "Dendrite-Free Li-Metal Battery Enabled by a Thin Asymmetric Solid Electrolyte with Engineered Layers." _Journal of the American Chemical Society_ (2017). DOI: 10.1021/jacs.7b10864


https://phys.org/news/2018-01-dendrite-free-lithium-battery.html

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

Web Date: January 9, 2018
*Rewritable paper goes technicolor*
_Metal-ligand complexes display a range of long-lasting colors that can be erased on demand, allowing paper to be reused_

By Mark Peplow



Aqueous metal-ion inks were used to draw a sunflower on rewritable paper. 
Credit: _Nat. Commun._

The paper industry has a significant environmental impact, from cutting down trees for raw material to consuming large amounts of energy and water to process that material. To curb that impact, chemists have been working on rewritable paper technologies that would allow people to print on a sheet of paper with special inks and then erase them to reuse the paper.

A team now reports a form of rewritable paper that can display multicolored images and text for months, before being erased and reused time after time (_Nat. Commun._ 2018 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-02452-w).

Previous technologies have involved impregnating paper with colorless dyes that are activated by water sprayed from inkjet printers; others use dyes that show up when exposed to ultraviolet light. But these systems have struggled to create multicolored images, and the printed text rarely lasts for more than a few days.

A team at Nanjing University of Posts & Telecommunications overcame these hurdles, using water-based inks and inexpensive materials to form colored metal-ligand complexes that remain stable for at least 6 months.

The ligands are terpyridine molecules, containing three nitrogen atoms that coordinate to metal ions such as iron, zinc, and cobalt. The terpyridines also carry fluorene or triphenylamine groups that tune their optical properties.

In one demonstration, the researchers coated paper with a thin film of a poly(ethylene glycol) copolymer mixed with a terpyridine molecule. Adding aqueous solutions of different metal ions to the paper—either by freehand drawing or inkjet printing—created long-lasting colored complexes that included brown, blue, yellow and green hues. “It is exciting to see that by simply varying the metal ions, a number of distinct colors can be obtained, and the color intensity remains stable for months,” says Yadong Yin at the University of California, Riverside, who also works on rewritable paper and was not involved in this research.




Using zinc-based inks and a different terpyridine, the team printed a barcode pattern that was only visible under UV light, and which lasted for more than one year. The resolution of these patterns was comparable to that of conventional inkjet printing, and the team suggests the method could be useful for security tags.

The rewritable paper can be erased and reused five times with no significant loss in color intensity. However, the erasure process involves washing with a solution of fluoride ions to disrupt the metal-ligand complexes, a significant drawback for commercial applications. Qiang Zhao, part of the research team, says that they are already working on more practical ways to erase the paper.

In an alternative approach that avoided the fluoride wash, the team coated paper with a colorless zinc-ligand complex that luminesced orange under UV light. Then they printed patterns with an ink of pure water, which disrupted the zinc-ligand coordination bonds and changed the luminescence to cyan. Even after the paper had dried, this UV-visible image lasted for more than 6 months, and could be erased by simply heating at 65°C for 30 minutes.



The Chinese characters for ‘Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications’ glow cyan under UV light. 
Credit: _Nat. Commun._

Zhao adds that the materials they used should not prevent the paper from being recycled once its write-erase cycles are completed, and that experiments with cell cultures showed that the materials all had low toxicity.

The researchers estimate that printing a page of text on their rewritable paper could cost less than one-fifth of a conventional inkjet print on fresh paper. “We are optimistic about the commercialization of rewritable paper,” says Zhao.

Chemical & Engineering News
ISSN 0009-2347
Copyright © 2018 American Chemical Society



Rewritable paper goes technicolor | Chemical & Engineering News​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*First doubly holey MOF holds catalysis promise*
 By Katrina Krämer | 11 January 2018

_Macroporous particles made out of microporous material could catalyse reactions between bulky molecules_



Source: © K Shen et al, Science, 2018, 359, 206 (DOI: 10.1126/science.aao3403)

Tiny porous particles made out of a metal–organic framework that contains even smaller holes are the first macro–microporous material ever made. When tested in an organic reaction, the doubly holey crystals outperformed all state-of-the-art catalysts.

Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) are highly porous. If it were possible to unfold 1g of MOF-5, one of the first MOFs ever made, its internal surface area would cover 2500m2. MOFs huge number of cavities and massive surface area makes them promising for gas storage, as well as catalytic applications.



Source: © sciencemag.org

The use of an organised template of polystyrene balls allowed scientists to create a metal–organic framework with a hierarchical network of pores

Researchers have now created a MOF that, in addition to containing its usual microscopic holes, is arranged into a regular macroscopic pore network. The team let ZIF-8 – a zinc imidazole MOF – assemble within the pores of a template of polystyrene spheres arranged into ordered particles. Once the polystyrene is removed, what remains is a negative replica of the template’s holes.

A state-of-the-art heterogeneous catalyst can catalyse the Knoevenagel condensation – a reaction between an aldehyde and a nitroalkane – to completion in 10 hours. The macro–microporous MOF can perform the same reaction within just two. The same MOF in its usual microporous-only form takes four times as long. Unlike a regular MOF, the doubly porous MOF’s reactive sites are more accessible to reagents, which can enter into the material through the macroscopic holes.

The researchers think that the material is particularly promising for promoting reactions between bulky molecules that are notoriously difficult to react.

*References*
K Shen _et al_,_ Science_, 2018, *359*, 206 (DOI: 10.1126/science.aao3403)​


First doubly holey MOF holds catalysis promise | Research | Chemistry World

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*China announces top 10 news stories for defense-related science and technology in 2017 *
By Guo Meiping, Gao Yun
2018-01-12 21:43 GMT+8 




The State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense on Thursday announced the top 10 news stories of 2017 in defense-related science and technology, which most embody China’s achievements and breakthroughs in national defense, industry and technology last year.

*1. Breakthroughs in key space project*



Tianzhou-1 successfully refueled the Tiangong-2 space lab in orbit on April 27, 2017. /Xinhua Photo

China's first cargo spacecraft, the Tianzhou-1, blasted off on April 20, 2017, in south China’s Hainan Province. Carried by a Long March-7 Y2 carrier rocket, the Tianzhou-1 successfully refueled the Tiangong-2 space lab in orbit on April 27, 2017.

China's BeiDou Satellite Navigation System (BDS) covers the globe thanks to the two BeiDou-3 satellites launched into space last November. The self-developed system has been providing navigation services in the Asia-Pacific region since 2012.

(Click to read more about China’s achievements in aerospace in 2017)

*2. Launches of China’s first self-developed aircraft carrier and new generation destroyer*



China launched its first domestically constructed aircraft carrier on April 26, 2017. /CGTN Photo

On April 26, 2017, China launched its first domestically constructed aircraft carrier, the Type 001A, at the Dalian shipyard in northeast China's Liaoning Province. The country started building this carrier in November 2013, and dock construction started in March 2015.

(Click here to know more about the first self-developed aircraft carrier)



The new-generation missile destroyer launched on June 28, 2017 from the Jiangnan Shipyard (Group) Co., LTD. in Shanghai /VCG Photo

Two months later on June 28, the Chinese navy launched a new-generation missile destroyer from the Jiangnan Shipyard (Group) Co., Ltd. in Shanghai. The 10,000-ton domestically designed and manufactured vessel is the first in a new generation of destroyers.

(Click here to get more information about the destroyer)

*3. Development in space science, space technology and space application*



A diagram of the “Huiyan” satellite /China Daily Photo

China launched its first space telescope, the Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (HXMT), on June 15, 2017. Named “Huiyan”, HXMT is tasked with surveying the Milky Way to observe black holes, pulsars and gamma-ray bursts.

What’s worth noting is that only four telescopes among dozens around the world were capable of detecting the gravitational waves at high frequency and shooting the best image resolution; HXMT was one of them.

(Click here to learn more about “Huiyan”)

*4. Military parade showcased China’s advanced national defense and weaponry*



President Xi Jinping inspects the armed forces to mark the 90th founding anniversary of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) at Zhurihe military training base in Inner Mongolia, July 30, 2017. /Xinhua Photo

China held a grand military parade at Zhurihe training base in northern China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on July 30, 2017, in celebration of the 90th birthday of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA).

Tanks, vehicle-mounted nuclear-capable missiles and other equipment rolled by, as military aircraft flew above, including H-6K bombers, the J-15 carrier-based fighters and new generation J-20 stealth fighters.

12,000 service personnel, more than 129 aircraft and 571 pieces of ground equipment appeared in 36 formations at the parade. 

(Click here to read more about military parade)

*5. J-20 fighter jet put into service, AG600 completed maiden flight*



The J-20 is China's fourth-generation medium and long-range fighter jet. /Xinhua Photo

China's latest J-20 stealth fighter has been officially commissioned into military service, said Wu Qian, spokesperson for the Ministry of National Defense on September 28, 2017. The introduction marks dramatic progress in China's efforts to develop advanced aircraft, and strengthen its abilities to safeguard national security.

The J-20 is China's fourth-generation medium and long-range fighter jet. It made its maiden flight in 2011 and was first shown to the public at the 11th Airshow China in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, in November last year. In July 2017, the aircraft made its parade debut as the PLA staged a show of force to mark its 90th founding anniversary.

(Click here to know more about J-20)



The AG600 is the third member of China's "large aircraft family" after the large freighter Y-20 and large passenger aircraft C919. /VCG Photo

C‍‍hina's first home-grown amphibious aircraft, the AG600, completed its maiden flight in Zhuhai, south China's Guangdong Province, on December 24, 2017. It is a major piece of aviation equipment in China’s expanding emergency rescue system and a milestone in the country's amphibious aircraft development.

Codenamed "Kunlong,” the plane was designed to be put into rescue missions both on land and water.

(Click here to get more information about AG600)

*6. Shenlong-2 to lead the world's development of high-current multi-pulse accelerator*



Shenlong-2 accelerator /CCTV Photo

China’s domestically-developed multi-pulse high-power accelerator “Shenlong-2,” also the world’s first of its kind, passed the state-level on-site inspection on Nov. 23, a milestone in the development of linear induction accelerator and China’s flash radiography technology.

The researchers overcame critical problems during the development process, and made innovations in the design and technologies. The inspection panel assessed that the overall technology was at an advanced level globally, and part of the key indicators took the world's lead.

*7. District heating with nuclear energy to save resources and environment*



The monitor showing real-time heating data by Yanlong /CCTV Photo

China unveiled its self-developed pool-type low-temperature heating reactor “Yanlong” on Nov. 28, which can continuously supply heat for 168 hours.

Developed by China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), the low-temperature heating reactor of 400 megawatts can supply heating covering 20 million square meters, meeting the needs of 200,000 three-bedroom families.

By utilizing nuclear energy for district heating, it can efficiently improve China’s energy structure, alleviate the increasing pressure of energy supply and reduce emissions. 

(Click here to get more information about Yanlong)

*8. Measures to deepen civil-military integration in defense technology industry*



China has launched several measures to boost civil-military integration. /CCTV Photo

China has launched several measures to boost civil-military integration, as said in a guideline issued by the State Council on Dec. 4.

Expanding the access to military-related industry, enhancing the sharing of military and civilian resources and collaborative innovation, interchanging military and civilian technologies are means to achieve substantial breakthroughs in the civil-military integration.

(Click here to get more information about civil-military integration) 

*9. Launch of world’s fastest quantum random number generator*



The high-speed quantum random number generator developed by China Electronics Technology Group Co. /CCTV Photo

China Electronics Technology Group Co. (CETC) unveiled a high-speed quantum random number generator (QRNG) at the 2017 World Internet Conference on Dec. 4.

With a real-time generation rate of over 5.4G per second and an ultimate rate of over 117G per second, the QRNG peeled off the record set by its predecessors, ranking the world’s fastest.

As the core device to realize quantum secure communication, the one developed by CETC is at the world’s advanced level and can be widely used in the quantum communication industry and information security industry. 

*10. Delivery of world’s first smart bulk carrier*



The world's first smart bulk carrier "Da Zhi" /CCTV Photo

Developed by China State Shipbuilding Corporation, the world's first smart bulk carrier "Da Zhi" was delivered in Shanghai on Dec. 5, kicking off an era of more secure, economical and environmental-friendly shipping.

It is equipped with up-to-date information technologies, including the world's first self-learning information platform, large-capacity calculations and a China-developed intelligent remote control system.

The smart vessel is also the world's first to get recognition from both Lloyd's Register and the China Classification Society.

(Click here to learn more about Da Zhi)

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## Adam WANG SHANGHAI MEGA

*China launches land exploration satellite*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-01-13 17:06:13|Editor: Mengjie











China launches a land resources exploration satellite into a preset orbit from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi desert, China, on Jan. 13, 2018. (Xinhua/Wang Jiangbo)

JIUQUAN, Jan. 13 (Xinhua) -- China launched a land resources exploration satellite into a preset orbit from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi desert at 3:10 p.m. Saturday Beijing Time.

A Long March-2D rocket carried the satellite into space.

The launch was the 263th mission of the Long March rocket series.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## yusheng

Zhaoxin's home-grown x86 CPU is completely designed from the ground up within China. The Central Processing Unit not only offers reliability and great performance, but hardware security features for the highest level of data protection. The x86 CPU supports a wide variety of Windows Operating System

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 17-Jan-2018
* The world's first all-Si laser *
Science China Press



(a) A schematic image of DFB Si laser; Inset: photograph of a fabricated DFB device. (b) Emission spectra of the Si laser as a function of pump power; Background: a cross-sectional SEM image of the DFB structure.
©Science China Press

Integrated Si photonics incorporates the essence of the two pillar industries of "microelectronics" and "optoelectronics", which is expected to bring new technological revolution in a variety of fields such as communication, sensing, lighting, dispalay, imaging, detection, etc. Si lasers are the key to achieve integrated Si photonics. However, the optical gains of Si are lower than those of III-V compound semiconductors by one order of magnitude or two, due to its indirect bandgap feature. Although the fabrication of matured III-V compound lasers on Si substrates has been proposed to circumvent this problem, the development of all-Si laser is still in high demand for integrated Si photonics, due to its better compatibility with modern Si techniques.

Recently, a joint research team led by Prof. X. Wu, Prof. M. Lu and associate Prof. S.-Y. Zhang from Fudan University developed the world's first all-Si laser using Si nanocrystals with high optical gains. First, they enhanced the Si emission intensity greatly by developing a film growth technique for high-density silicon nanocrystals (Physica E, 89, 57-60(2017)). Then, they developed a high-pressure low-temperature passivation approach, which contributed to a full saturation of dangling bonds, leading to increased optical gains that were comparable to those achieved by gallium arsenide (GaAs) and indium phosphide (InP). On this basis, they designed and fabricated distributed feedback (DFB) resonance cavities and successfully achieved optically pumped all-Si DFB lasers. The optically pumped all-Si laser also paves the way towards the realization of electrically pumped all-Si laser.

It was found that the optical gain of Si nanocrystals was constantly enhanced as the passivation proceeded and eventually reached the value comparable to those of GaAs and InP. Lasing characteristics - the threshold effect, the polarization dependence, the significant spectral narrowing and small spread of divergence angle of stimulated emission - were fulfilled, suggesting the realization of an optically pumped all-Si laser. The lasers also showed reliable repeatability. The lasing peaks of the four additional samples made under the similar fabrication conditions were within the spectral range of 760 nm to 770 nm. The variation in the lasing peak was due to the slight difference in effective refractive indices. The full-width-at-half-maximum (FWHM) of the emission peak was narrowed from ~120 nm to 7 nm when the laser was pumped above threshold. This program is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51472051, 61275178, 61378080, 61705042) and Shanghai Sailing Program (16YF1400700).

###​
Dong-Chen Wang#, Chi Zhang#, Pan Zeng, Wen-Jie Zhou, Lei Ma, Hao-Tian Wang, Zhi-Quan Zhou, Fei Hu, Shu-Yu Zhang*, Ming Lu*, and Xiang Wu*. An all-silicon laser based on silicon nanocrystals with high optical gains. _Science Bulletin_, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095927318300069


The world's first all-Si laser | EurekAlert! Science News

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> Scientists used diamond tips to apply enormous pressure to a superconducting alloy. Credit: Max Alexander/SPL
> 
> 06 December 2017
> * Super-squeezing can’t crush this superconductor’s powers *
> _Material shrugs off pressures similar to those at Earth’s core._
> 
> An exotic alloy conducts electricity when subjected to extreme pressures that would be expected to crush the material’s structure and destroy its electrical properties.
> 
> The alloy is a superconductor, a material that offers no resistance to the passage of an electrical current. Such materials are valuable for fabricating specialized magnets and other technology. But extreme pressures distort their atomic arrangements, disrupting their ability to carry current.
> 
> Liling Sun at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, Robert Cava at Princeton University in New Jersey and their colleagues subjected samples of the alloy to pressures of up to 190 gigapascals — nearly 2 million times the atmospheric pressure at sea level — about the level in Earth’s outer core. The alloy’s superconductivity persisted. That contradicts scientists’ understanding of how such materials should behave, providing a challenge to superconducting theory, the authors say.
> 
> _Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA _ (2017)
> 
> 
> 
> Super-squeezing can’t crush this superconductor’s powers : Research Highlights | Nature


*A material that superconducts continuously up to extreme pressures*
January 17, 2018 by Laura Mgrdichian, Phys.org feature



A rendering of the HEA sample being squeezed between the culets of two diamonds. Credit: Liling Sun

Researchers have discovered a metal alloy that can conduct electricity with zero resistance, or superconduct, from ambient pressure up to pressures similar to those that exist near the center of the Earth. The material, which is likely the first to show this kind of robust superconductivity, is described in a paper in the December 12, 2017, edition of the _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_.

The material is a member of a new family of metal alloys known as high-entropy alloys (HEAs), which are composed of random atomic-scale mixtures of elements from the block of "transition metals" on the periodic table. HEAs are interesting in multiple ways, including structurally. They have simple crystal structures, but the metals are arranged randomly on the lattice points, giving each alloy the properties of a both a glass and a crystalline material.

The HEA studied in this work is unique in that it can superconduct continuously from low to high pressures – even when subjected to pressures akin to those that exist at the outer area of our planet's core. This discovery was made by a group of scientists from the Institute of Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chemistry Department at Princeton University. The HEA they studied is composed of the metals tantalum (Ta), niobium (Nb), hafnium (Hf), zirconium (Zr), and titanium (Ti).

"We have observed that this HEA remains in a state of zero electrical resistance all the way from one-bar of pressure to the pressure of the Earth's outer core, without structural changes," said one of the study's senior researchers, Professor Liling Sun of the Institute of Physics in Beijing, to _Phys.org_.

Robert Cava, the Russell Wellman Moore Professor of Chemistry at Princeton, another senior author, added, "This is a remarkable thing – we know of no other similar material – and it makes this HEA a promising candidate for new applications of superconductors under extreme conditions."

Pressure is one of the external variables that can uncover unexpected characteristics in a material. In superconductors, for example, the application of pressure has changed critical temperatures (the temp below which a material will superconduct) and induced superconductivity in materials that otherwise wouldn't exhibit the phenomenon.

Here, the group applied pressure to the HEA using a diamond anvil cell, a device that uses the polished faces of two diamonds – one of the hardest materials on Earth – to squeeze a sample placed between them. To generate sufficiently high pressure to perform the measurements on the HEA, the size of each diamond's culet – the "point" at the bottom of the gem – was 40 microns (millionths of a meter), which is about half the diameter of a human hair.

To track the possible structural changes while the sample was in the diamond anvil cell, the group used synchrotron-based x-ray diffraction (XRD) at the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility. XRD allows researchers to gain structural information on a crystalline sample based on the pattern the x-rays make after they diffract away from the atoms in the sample. They combined these techniques with complementary measurements of resistivity and magnetoresistance to characterize the superconductivity.

The results show that the HEA retains its basic crystal structure, despite the sample's volume being compressed considerably (by one measurement, when the pressure was about 96 GPa, the volume had been reduced by about 28 percent).

Sun, Cava, and their colleagues attribute the material's unique behavior and stability to its strong crystal structure, combined with the seemingly robust nature of its electronic structure when subjected to a very large amount of lattice compression.

*More information:* J. Guo et al, "Robust zero resistance in a superconducting high-entropy alloy at pressures up to 190 GPa." _Proc Natl Acad Sci_, 114 (2018), DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1716981114

https://phys.org/news/2018-01-material-superconducts-extreme-pressures.html

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*EDITORIAL *17 January 2018
*China needs to listen to its researchers to become a scientific superpower*
The country’s research could soon dominate the world stage, but pitfalls lie in wait.



China’s Long March 5 rocket. The country’s science is heading up, but significant concerns remain.Credit: Xinhua News Agency/REX/Shutterstock

In the past 12 months or so, China has opened its first facility for research into the world’s most dangerous pathogens, unveiled another world-leading telescope and turned on its first world-class neutron source. Researchers in the country have also established a neuroimaging factory to automate the highly detailed imaging of human brains.

Money has poured in, too. Chinese artificial-intelligence (AI) companies, in a crowded field, impressed international investors. Companies specializing in computer-vision technology pulled in more than US$1 billion in investment last year. Legend Biotech in Nanjing reported positive results from a clinical trial of a CAR-T therapy — showing its clout in a highly competitive field in which researchers engineer a patient’s own cells and reintroduce them to treat cancer. In response, Janssen Biotech of Horsham, Philadelphia, put $350 million into further development of the therapy.

Look at most scientific indicators — publications, patents, number of researchers — and China seems to be on course to sail into scientific dominance. And, as many observers point out, that could happen much sooner than anyone previously expected if the US government continues to hold policies as destructive to science as those pushed by the administration of President Donald Trump. The upshot of this is a lot of opportunities for researchers in China. A Career Guide this week offers details on how to embrace them.

But pitfalls lie in wait if officials and researchers in China are not careful. The country’s AI research, for example, is booming right now, with publications outpacing those produced in the United States. But researchers acknowledge that many of these papers are not of particularly high quality. They also wonder whether Chinese academia or industry will invest in the ways necessary to create fundamental breakthroughs in the field.

As we discuss in a News story this week, billions of dollars announced for a provincial AI park in China came as a surprise to many AI researchers in the capital, Beijing. This doesn’t bode well, because it suggests a top-down effort made without consulting the research or academic community. Existing pricey science parks dedicated to trendy fields such as biotechnology and software development have produced mixed results and raised the question of whether resources are being wasted on fancy infrastructure.

Meanwhile, China might ratchet up its firm grip on the Internet. If it does so, many scientists there could lose access to the virtual private networks that they use to bypass restrictions and reach crucial websites such as Google Scholar. That would cut off access to literature, results and discussion, and isolate them from the international community.

Despite China’s claim to the throne of scientific superpower, the government retains a soft spot for unproven claims of traditional Chinese medicine. (This is one area in which the United States, in its attempts to rein in naturopathy and homeopathy in the past two years, seems to be cleaning up its own scientific house.)

The lack of transparent or predictable funding decisions could also derail China’s ambitions. Although the National Natural Science Foundation of China is generally well regarded for the grants it distributes, however small, larger projects continue to be marked by disarray. Neuroscientists have been sounded out to join a multimillion-dollar national programme meant to rival (and hopefully complement) brain-science projects in the United States, Europe and Japan. But so far, all the Chinese project has produced is false starts and confusion as scientists attempt to ready their research programmes to align with a national project that is always just around the corner.

China is right to praise itself for its accomplishments in building a successful scientific community. And its stated goals of becoming an attractive place for foreign or returning scientists and a more desirable partner for international collaborations are the right ones for a country ready to take up a much needed leadership role and act as a model for other nations. But China will need to make more effort to listen to its scientists and survey the needs of researchers elsewhere to find out what problems — including those mentioned above — might hamper attainment of those goals.



China needs to listen to its researchers to become a scientific superpower | Nature

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*NEWS *| 18 January 2018
*China declared world’s largest producer of scientific articles*
Report shows increasing international competition, but suggests that United States remains a scientific powerhouse.

*Jeff Tollefson *

For the first time, China has overtaken the United States in terms of the total number of science publications, according to statistics compiled by the US National Science Foundation (NSF).

The agency’s report, released on 18 January, documents the United States’ increasing competition from China and other developing countries that are stepping up their investments in science and technology. Nonetheless, the report suggests that the United States remains a scientific powerhouse, pumping out high-profile research, attracting international students and translating science into valuable intellectual property.

“The US continues to be the global leader in science and technology, but the world is changing,” says Maria Zuber, a geophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. As other nations increase their output, the United States’ relative share of global science activity is declining, says Zuber, who chairs the National Science Board, which oversees the NSF and produced the report. “We can’t be asleep at the wheel.”

The shifting landscape is already evident in terms of the sheer volume of publications: China published more than 426,000 studies in 2016, or 18.6% of the total documented in Elsevier’s Scopus database. That compares with nearly 409,000 by the United States. India surpassed Japan, and the rest of the developing world continued its upward trend.

But the picture was very different when researchers examined where the most highly cited publications came from. The United States ranked third, below Sweden and Switzerland; the European Union came in fourth and China fifth. The United States still produces the most doctoral graduates in science and technology, and remains the primary destination for international students seeking advanced degrees — although its share of such students fell from 25% in 2000 to 19% in 2014, the report says.

The United States spent the most on research and development (R&D) — around US$500 billion in 2015, or 26% of the global total. China came in second, at roughly $400 billion. But US spending remained flat as a share of the country’s economy, whereas China has increased its R&D spending, proportionally, in recent years.



Credit: National Science Foundation

The NSF analysis, the latest edition of the agency’s biennial _Science and Engineering Indicators_, comes at a time of heightened concern about the state of US science. It should raise some alarms, says Mark Muro, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington DC. Trends in US science spending are heading in the wrong direction, he says, and the talent pool of researchers continues to be limited by under-representation of women and minorities. Similarly, key industries such as semiconductors have been hollowed out as businesses ship production work to other countries, Muro adds.

For the first time, the NSF included a section on technology transfer and innovation in its statistical analysis. Data suggest that the United States continues to lead the world when it comes to things like patents, revenue from intellectual property and venture capital funding for innovative technologies. Although more focus is needed at the local and regional level, Muro says, the report nonetheless provides important data about the value of scientific innovation.

“A nation’s innovation capacity is one of the main drivers of productivity growth and so prosperity,” Muro says. The new data provide “a useful reminder of why we care about these indicators in the first place.”



China declared world’s largest producer of scientific articles | Nature

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

* American, Chinese scientists find new way to develop flu vaccines *
_ Source: Xinhua_|_ 2018-01-19 03:58:03_|_Editor: yan_





WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- A team of American and Chinese scientists have found a new approach to vaccine development that may effectively prevent the seasonal flu, a new study says.

Scientists from two countries used cutting-edge genomics to identify and eliminate the virus' defense mechanisms, enabling them to develop a vaccine "candidate" that in animals has been proven to be safe and highly effective against influenza, according to the study published in the journal Science on Thursday.

The study shows that the engineered influenza virus induced strong immune responses in animals.

Scientists are hopeful that their approach could lead to a new, more effective vaccine that can be taken as a nasal spray at home, rather than an injection by a health professional.

"Because the variations of seasonal influenza viruses can be unpredictable, current vaccines may not provide effective protection against them," said Ren Sun, a professor of molecular and medical pharmacology at University of California Los Angles and the study's senior author.

The key to the new vaccine is an understanding of the interactions between the virus and interferons, which are proteins that are critical to the body's immune response.

In the study, Sun and his Chinese colleagues defined the function of every amino acid in the influenza virus's entire genome, and deactivated the sequences that prevent interferon induction, so the interferon production would be highly stimulated in organisms infected with the virus.

"By disabling these interferon-evasion functions, the engineered virus is weakened in typical hosts," said Yushen Du of Zhejiang University School of Medicine, the study's first author. "At the same time, however, due to interferon stimulation, the engineered virus generates very strong immune responses."

Although researchers have disabled genetic sequences that block interferon before, the scientists were the first to systematically identify and eliminate multiple interferon-evasion sites at single amino acid resolution on the virus.

"Other researchers have knocked out one anti-interferon sequence, but we knocked out eight locations by changing one amino acid at a time," Du said.

Sun and his colleagues plan to test the vaccine in animals with two strains of influenza before moving to clinical trials with humans. He said the approach could also be applied to developing vaccines against a wide range of other viruses. 


Yushen Du, Li Xin, Yuan Shi, Tian-Hao Zhang, Nicholas C. Wu, Lei Dai, Danyang Gong, Gurpreet Brar, Sara Shu, Jiadi Luo, William Reiley, Yen-Wen Tseng, Hongyan Bai, Ting-Ting Wu, Jieru Wang, Yuelong Shu, Ren Sun. *Genome-wide identification of interferon-sensitive mutations enables influenza vaccine design*. _Science _(2018). DOI: 10.1126/science.aan8806​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## yusheng

cold lunching satellites 2018 Jun 19

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

* Micius Satellite Enables Intercontinental Quantum Communications *
January 19, 2018



​Illustration of the three cooperating ground stations (Graz, Nanshan, and Xinglong). Listed are all paths used for key generation and the corresponding final key length. Credit: University of Science and Technology of China

Private and secure communications are fundamental human needs. In particular, with the exponential growth of Internet use and e-commerce, it is of paramount importance to establish a secure network with global protection of data. Traditional public key cryptography usually relies on the computational intractability of certain mathematical functions. In contrast, quantum key distribution (QKD) uses individual light quanta (single photons) in quantum superposition states to guarantee unconditional security between distant parties. Previously, the quantum communication distance had been limited to a few hundred kilometers, due to the optical channel losses of fibers or terrestrial free space. A promising solution to this problem exploits satellite and space-based link, which can conveniently connect two remote points on the Earth with greatly reduced channel loss because most of the photons’ propagation path is in empty space with negligible loss and decoherence.

A cross-disciplinary multi-institutional team of scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, led by Professor Jian-Wei Pan, has spent more than ten years developing a sophisticated satellite, Micius, dedicated to quantum science experiments, which was launched on August 2016 and orbits at an altitude of ~500 km. Five ground stations are built in China to cooperate with the Micius satellite, located in Xinglong (near Beijing), Nanshan (near Urumqi), Delingha (37°22’44.43”N, 97°43’37.01″E), Lijiang (26°41’38.15”N, 100°1’45.55”E), and Ngari in Tibet (32°19’30.07”N, 80°1’34.18”E). Within a year after the launch, three key milestones for a global-scale quantum internet have been achieved: satellite-to-ground decoy-state QKD with kHz rate over a distance of ~1200 km (Liao et al. 2017, Nature 549, 43); satellite-based entanglement distribution to two locations on the Earth separated by ~1200 km and Bell test (Yin et al. 2017, Science 356, 1140), and ground-to-satellite quantum teleportation (Ren et al. 2017, Nature 549, 70). The effective link efficiencies in the satellite-based QKD were measured to be ~20 orders of magnitudes larger than direct transmission through optical fibers at the same length of 1200 km. The three experiments are the first steps towards a global space-based quantum internet.



​One-time-pad file transfer. Credit: University of Science and Technology of China

The satellite-based QKD has now been combined with metropolitan quantum networks, in which fibers are used to efficiently and conveniently connect numerous users inside a city over a distance scale of ~100 km. For example, the Xinglong station has now been connected to the metropolitan multi-node quantum network in Beijing via optical fibers. Very recently, the largest fiber-based quantum communication backbone has been built in China, also by Professor Pan’s team, linking Beijing to Shanghai (going through Jinan and Hefei, and 32 trustful relays) with a fiber length of 2000 km. The backbone is being tested for real-world applications by government, banks, securities and insurance companies.

The Micius satellite can be further exploited as a trustful relay to conveniently connect any two points on Earth for high-security key exchange. To further demonstrate the Micius satellite as a robust platform for quantum key distribution with different ground stations on Earth, QKD from the Micius satellite to Garz ground station near Vienna has also been performed successfully this June in collaboration with Professor Anton Zeilinger of Austrian Academy of Sciences. The satellite thus establishes a secure key between itself and, say, Xinglong, and another key between itself and, say, Graz. Then, upon request from the ground command stations, Micius acts as a trusted relay. It performs bitwise exclusive OR operations between the two keys and relays the result to one of the ground stations. That way, a secret key is created between China and Europe at locations separated by 7600 km on Earth. This work points towards an efficient solution for an ultra-long-distance global quantum network.

A picture of Micius (with a size of 5.34 kB) was transmitted from Beijing to Vienna, and a picture of Schrödinger (with a size of 4.9 kB) from Vienna to Beijing, using approximately 80 kbit secure quantum key for one-time-pad encoding.

An intercontinental videoconference was also held between the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Austria Academy of Sciences, employing the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)-128 protocol that refreshed the 128-bit seed keys every second. The videoconference lasted for 75 min with a total data transmission of ~2 GB, which included ?560 kbit of the quantum key exchanged between Austria and China.

Publication: Sheng-Kai Liao, et al., “Satellite-Relayed Intercontinental Quantum Network,” Physical Review Letters, 2018; doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.030501

Source: Sheng-Kai Liao, University Of Science And Technology Of China


Micius Satellite Enables Intercontinental Quantum Communications

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 19-Jan-2018
* NMRCloudQ: A quantum cloud experience on a nuclear magnetic resonance quantum computer *
Science China Press
https://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub/160835.php


​Connection between different parts of the NMRcloudQ platform. ©Science China Press

Quantum computers are coming and attract attentions from scientists all over the world. However, as of today, no one can tell when a universal quantum computer with thousands of logical quantum bits will be built. At present, most quantum computer prototypes involve less than ten individually controllable qubits, and only exist in laboratories for the sake of either the great costs of devices or professional maintenance requirements. Moreover, scientists believe that quantum computers will never replace our daily, every-minute use of classical computers, but would rather serve as a substantial addition to the classical ones when tackling some particular problems, Due to the above two reasons, cloud-based quantum computing is anticipated to be the most useful and reachable form for public users to experience with the power of quantum.

As initial attempts, IBM Q has launched influential cloud services on a superconducting quantum processor in 2016, but no other cloud services have followed up yet in china. Recently, three research teams from Prof. G. L. Long at Tsinghua University, Ali-USTC joint program and Quantum BenYuan at USTC launched their cloud services on the same day. Different from the existing cloud services, a joint team led by G. Long at Tsinghua University, B. Zeng at University of Guelph and D. Lu at SUSTech presents a new cloud quantum computing NMRCloudQ which is based on well-established nuclear magnetic resonance. NMRCloudQ sevice provides a comprehensive software environment and aims to be freely accessible to either amateurs that look forward to keeping pace with this quantum era or professionals that are interested in carrying out real quantum computing experiments in person. In the current version, 4 -qubit NMRCloudQ provides users with 20 single-qubit gates and 9 two-qubit gates for building quantum circuit on line and density matrix of the final state after finishing experiments. Randomized Benchmarking tests show that average 99.10% single-qubit gate fidelity and 97.15% two-qubit fidelity are achieved. Improved control precisions after updating a new sample with longer coherence time and stronger coupling between different nuclei will be available later. Benefitting from the mature techniques in experimental quantum computing, NMRCloudQ may open the control layer to users in the future.

###​
*See the article:* Tao Xin, Shilin Huang, Sirui Lu, Keren Li, Zhihuang Luo, Zhangqi Yin, Jun Li, Dawei Lu, Guilu Long, and Bei Zeng. NMRCloudQ: A quantum cloud experience on a nuclear magnetic resonance quantum computer. _Science Bulletin_, 2018, 63(1)17-23
Doi: 10.1016/j.scib.2017.12.022
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095927317306412



NMRCloudQ: A quantum cloud experience on a nuclear magnetic resonance quantum computer | EurekAlert! Science News

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Adam WANG SHANGHAI MEGA

China and Europe show global video leadership level operations. Encrypted quantum communications video conferencing between Austria and China lasted 75 minutes with a total data transfer of 2GB, a world-class game that shakes the global scientific community.

With the help of the world's first quantum satellite Mozi, China sent encrypted information and video to Austria through photons, establishing an unbreakable quantum communications network. This significant development that provides unconditional security of data may change the way global communications networks operate.
https://www.toutiao.com/a6513291335573701127/

*中国和欧洲的洲际量子通信试验震动印度学界，评论火啦！*
原创 蜀中行讲武堂 2018-01-21 09:02:35






加密量子通讯视频会议

中国与欧洲展示全球视频顶级玩法，印度说自己擅长理论只试验落后。奥地利和中国之间的加密量子通讯视频会议持续了75分钟，总数据传输量为2GB，这一全球顶级玩法震动印度科学界。

中国借助世界上第一颗量子卫星墨子号，将加密的信息和视频通过光子发送到奥地利，建立了牢不可破的量子通信网络。这种为数据提供无条件安全性的重大发展可能会改变通信网络在全球的运作方式。






加密量子通讯视频会议

使用墨子号卫星作为中继，中国已经展示了多个地点之间的洲际量子通信，或成地球最大洲际量子通信间距为7600公里，中国的工作已经构成了一个全球量子通信网络的简单原型。

当时，科学家使用安全量子密钥传送了一幅从北京到维也纳的墨子图片和一幅从维也纳到北京的薛定谔的照片。






洲际量子通信

还通过量子通讯网络于2017年9月29日在中国科学院和奥地利科学院之间举行了洲际视频会议。采用先进的加密标准，每秒刷新种子密钥。奥中视频会议历时75分钟，总数据传输2GB。

为了增加更高效的量子密钥分发（QKD）网络的时间和面积覆盖范围，以潘建伟为首的科学家还发射了更高的轨道卫星，实现了使用电信波长光子和更严格的特殊和光谱滤波的日间操作，使白天进行量子通信也成为可能，以前只能在晚上试验。






量子通信

中国和欧洲的顶级量子通信试验震动印度学界，请看印度科学家们的感叹：

.印度钦奈数学科学研究所光学和量子信息小组的首席科学家Chandrashekar说：“虽然中国这个实验是一个原型，但我认为这将彻底改变现有的通信系统。量子计算机将需要一些时间，但量子通信将成为现实。中国已经开始量子通信研究近15年了，并投入巨资进行量子研究。欧盟已经开始进行研究，并完成了所有的小规模通信活动。“

印度认为，目前世界上量子通信已经开始在美国，欧盟和中国之间的竞赛。印度科学技术部门已经意识到了这一现实，并宣布了“量子技术”研究将成为印度科学界的使命量子，并可能在未来5年内花费高达5亿美元用于量子技术相关的研究。

来自印度北方邦诺伊达的Jaypee信息技术研究所的Anirban Pathak教授，领导了一个专注于量子光学和量子信息的研究小组，这位教授说：“印度科学家非常擅长量子理论并做出贡献，但是我们在实验中落后了，中国的试验是一个重大的发展。逐渐地，人们会去寻求更安全的通信网络。量子通信网络和中国科学家对我们研究的影响以及量子研究人员的发展现在越来越重要。“

他进一步表示，“印度拥有一批与世界上任何人一样优秀的科学家。有些人有足够的能力知道如何建造卫星和有效载荷。我们需要把所有的人才集中到量子技术研究上来配合其他国家。“

*印度在量子理论研究领域真的很厉害吗？*





量子通信

在二十世纪二三十年代，印度的一些杰出科学家做出了一批让世界物理学界瞩目的成果。

其中玻色、萨哈和拉曼就是他们的代表人物。1924年，玻色这位名不见经传的印度物理学讲师发表了论文《普朗克定律和光量子假说》。在文章中，他批评了普朗克和爱因斯坦等物理学家推导黑体辐射公式的方法，指出在这些方法中普遍存在着量子现象与经典物理概念的逻辑矛盾，并提出了新的推导方法，获得了逻辑一致的量子论结果。

以该文为基础，爱因斯坦连续发表了《单原子理想气体的量子理论》Ⅰ和Ⅱ二篇论文，从而不仅创立了著名的玻色－爱因斯坦量子统计理论，而且预言了物质在一定条件下存在玻色－爱因斯坦凝聚状态（即BEC）。七十余年后，物理学家发现了金属原子气体在低温状态下的玻色－爱因斯坦凝聚现象。目前，这一方向的研究已经成为物理学的前沿领域之一。

玻色作为一位远离西方科学主流社会的东方物理学家，为推动量子理论的发展做出了重要贡献。玻色在印度所接受的是殖民地性质的西方科学教育和印度本土文化的熏陶，其成长道路和所做出的科学工作都是耐人寻味的。可以说，在玻色的身上，即体现了西方科学的精神，也展现了东方传统文化的智慧。在玻色的科学生涯中，爱因斯坦不仅对其科学研究工作给予了热情的帮助，而且又将其原创性思想向前大大发展了一步。这件事已经成为物理学史上即相当感人而又富有启发性的一个典型案例。

玻色由此获得量子统计学的先驱的称号。1928年，玻色被一些物理学家提名推荐诺贝尔物理学奖，但结果并没有如愿。

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Three_Kingdoms

yusheng said:


> cold lunching satellites 2018 Jun 19
> View attachment 448805
> View attachment 448806
> View attachment 448807
> View attachment 448808



"Cold Launching satellites" mission produces so much black smoke??
Problem with the rocket fuel or the engine is not efficient?



JSCh said:


> *NEWS *| 18 January 2018
> *China declared world’s largest producer of scientific articles*
> Report shows increasing international competition, but suggests that United States remains a scientific powerhouse.
> 
> *Jeff Tollefson *
> 
> For the first time, China has overtaken the United States in terms of the total number of science publications, according to statistics compiled by the US National Science Foundation (NSF).
> 
> The agency’s report, released on 18 January, documents the United States’ increasing competition from China and other developing countries that are stepping up their investments in science and technology. Nonetheless, the report suggests that the United States remains a scientific powerhouse, pumping out high-profile research, attracting international students and translating science into valuable intellectual property.
> 
> “The US continues to be the global leader in science and technology, but the world is changing,” says Maria Zuber, a geophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. As other nations increase their output, the United States’ relative share of global science activity is declining, says Zuber, who chairs the National Science Board, which oversees the NSF and produced the report. “We can’t be asleep at the wheel.”
> 
> The shifting landscape is already evident in terms of the sheer volume of publications: China published more than 426,000 studies in 2016, or 18.6% of the total documented in Elsevier’s Scopus database. That compares with nearly 409,000 by the United States. India surpassed Japan, and the rest of the developing world continued its upward trend.
> 
> But the picture was very different when researchers examined where the most highly cited publications came from. The United States ranked third, below Sweden and Switzerland; the European Union came in fourth and China fifth. The United States still produces the most doctoral graduates in science and technology, and remains the primary destination for international students seeking advanced degrees — although its share of such students fell from 25% in 2000 to 19% in 2014, the report says.
> 
> The United States spent the most on research and development (R&D) — around US$500 billion in 2015, or 26% of the global total. China came in second, at roughly $400 billion. But US spending remained flat as a share of the country’s economy, whereas China has increased its R&D spending, proportionally, in recent years.
> 
> 
> 
> Credit: National Science Foundation
> 
> The NSF analysis, the latest edition of the agency’s biennial _Science and Engineering Indicators_, comes at a time of heightened concern about the state of US science. It should raise some alarms, says Mark Muro, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington DC. Trends in US science spending are heading in the wrong direction, he says, and the talent pool of researchers continues to be limited by under-representation of women and minorities. Similarly, key industries such as semiconductors have been hollowed out as businesses ship production work to other countries, Muro adds.
> 
> For the first time, the NSF included a section on technology transfer and innovation in its statistical analysis. Data suggest that the United States continues to lead the world when it comes to things like patents, revenue from intellectual property and venture capital funding for innovative technologies. Although more focus is needed at the local and regional level, Muro says, the report nonetheless provides important data about the value of scientific innovation.
> 
> “A nation’s innovation capacity is one of the main drivers of productivity growth and so prosperity,” Muro says. The new data provide “a useful reminder of why we care about these indicators in the first place.”
> 
> China declared world’s largest producer of scientific articles | Nature



We are lagging far behind EU and USA in Bio-Medical science (second chart)


----------



## JSCh

*Machine Learning Method to Locate Unseen Sources in Deep Water*
Jan 19, 2018

As a data-driven source localization method, machine learning begins to draw the attention among ocean acoustic community.

Based on previous research on machine learning for source localization published in _The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America_, researcher NIU Haiqiang from the Institute of Acoustics (IOA) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and his colleagues from the USA applied the machine learning classifiers to the ship localization in Santa Barbara Channel off the west coast of California.

They demonstrated that with limited environmental information, machine learning classifiers could produce reasonable range estimates at longer ranges than conventional matched field processing (MFP).

The experiment was conducted in Santa Barbara Channel with water depth 540-600m in 2016. Moreover, three randomly selected transiting ships with varying speed were used as underwater sources.

The hydrophone array consisting of 28 sensors (77 m aperture) recorded noise from ships exiting or entering Los Angeles harbor. Data from three ship tracks during different periods were used to form training and test data sets. The corresponding spectrograms recorded on the top hydrophone are shown in Figure 1.



Figure 1. Spectrograms of shipping noise at the top hydrophone during three periods. (Image by NIU Haiqiang)

Researchers investigated two frequency bands (53-200 Hz and 203-350 Hz) and compared range predictions on the two test data sets between using conventional MFP and using machine learning classifiers. As a result, machine learning classifiers outperformed conventional MFP and were more robust to low signal noise ratio at ranges greater than 4 km.

It is demonstrated that machine learning classifier methods could generate reasonable range predictions without knowledge of the ocean environment, even when the data are from different sources with different moving speeds.

Their study was published in _The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America_.

The research was supported by the Office of Naval Research, the China scholarship Council, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.



Machine Learning Method to Locate Unseen Sources in Deep Water---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## yusheng

Three_Kingdoms said:


> "Cold Launching satellites" mission produces so much black smoke??
> Problem with the rocket fuel or the engine is not efficient?



Cold launch, means that the main, high-temperature rocket motor does not fire until the missile is outside its launcher. Rocket ignition needs to be delayed long enough so it is of no danger to the launcher system, and there is no backblast if it is fired from a closed room.

The technique is a practical necessity for a rocket with Solid propellant rocket engine and sealed in a closed launcher, where the hot exhaust of a rocket motor could be catastrophic when the rocket is still in the launcher.

the cold launch method needs more extensive piping for the ejection system and a more complex firing system, Energy for the cold launch ejection comes from a compressed gas cylinder, or a pyrotechnic gas generator whose exhaust is of low temperature.





cz11 is from DF31, which has solid propellant rocket engine and sealed in a launcher system when transporting. so when you have a satellite to launch, the rocket is always ready, the only time needed is to install the satellite and check the system, then launch it at any location.

the black smoke you see is the low temperture gas which send the rocket out of the jacket.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

Public Release: 23-Jan-2018
* A new family of aerodynamic configurations of hypersonic airplanes *
Science China Press


​This is a principle test model (left) and an artist concept for future applications (right) of HIACs. ©Science China Press

Hypersonic vehicles, which flight at Mach numbers lager than five (flight velocity more than 6000 km/h), will serve as a more convenient and efficient transport tool than present subsonic airplanes for long-distance journeys in future. Typically, it only takes a couple of hours from Beijing to New York. Recent interest in these vehicles has grown intensively, and various types of innovative designs have been proposed and studied.

Despite entering the age of hypersonic flight, there still exist many problems to resolve. How to design an advanced aerodynamic configuration is one of them. Prof. Kai Cui, Dr. Yao Xiao, Dr. Ying-Zhou Xu, and Dr. Guang-Li Li from State Key Laboratory of High Temperature Gas Dynamics, Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences tried to tackle this problem in a long time. After more than seven years investigation, they first proposed a family of innovative configurations named "Hypersonic I-shaped Aerodynamic Configurations". Their work was published as the cover article of _SCIENCE CHINA Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy_ (2018, 61(2), 024722).

In general, there are at least three objectives in designing an aerodynamic configuration, the high lift to drag ratio (L/D), the high volumetric efficiency and the high lift coefficient. Designers always take the high L/D during the cruise state as the primary goal because the flight range is linearly proportional to the L/D according to the famous Breguet's equation. In addition, a vehicle should provide sufficient space to contain equipments, passengers and cargoes as many as possible. Furthermore, the aerodynamic lift coefficient should be enhanced in whatever way possible. This is because a vehicle with high lift may elevate the vehicle to a high altitude where the aero-thermal environment is efficiently improved owing to the low atmosphere density.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to obtain a high L/D for a generic configuration due to the presence of strong shock wave drag and massive viscosity in the hypersonic regime. Moreover, there exist strong contradictions among the L/D, the volumetric efficiency and the lift coefficient. Among the existing configurations, the waverider has been deemed the most promising because the containment of flow beneath the vehicle results in a high pressure being exerted on the lower surface. Yet a pure waverider with high L/D is always too thin to provide enough volume for fuel and payloads. Typically, the volumetric efficiency of the viscous optimized waverider is lower than 0.12. Although the freestream upper surface of a pure waverider can be morphed to an upwarp to enlarge the volume, but this canopy actually forms a compression surface on the upper part of the vehicle, which leads to an increase in both the aerodynamic drag and the negative lift, causing an overall reduction in L/D.

To aim at enhancing the aerodynamic performance of hypersonic aircraft with large volume requirements, a new concept that called high-pressure capturing wing (HCW) was first proposed by Kai Cui et al. Unlike generic configurations, an extra wing called the HCW is attached to the top of an upwarp airframe. Based on the shock wave compression theory, the high-pressure airflow compressed by the upper surface of the vehicle acts on the HCW when it flies in the hypersonic regime. Therefore, the aerodynamic lift significantly augments on the vehicle with only a small increase in drag, producing a correspondingly high increase in its L/D. Furthermore, such a concept particularly fits for vehicles with large volumes because the lift produced by the HCW increases with the increase of the compression angle in the upwarp.

Expanding on the philosophy of HCWs, a family of novel configurations is proposed in this letter. There are two lift surfaces in this configuration. The lower surface is a common compression surface, while the upper one is designed according to the idea of HCWs. The parts between the two wings are the airframe and the attachment struts. Because the cross-section of the configuration appears like the letter "I", it is thus named "Hypersonic I-shaped Aerodynamic Configuration (HIAC)".

In order to validate the advantages of HIACs, a test model with the volumetric efficiency 0.175 was generated as a typical example. Moreover, the leading edge profiles of both the low wing and the HCW were optimized by combined using the computational fluid dynamics, the design of experiments method, the surrogate models method, and the genetic algorithm. Subsequently, a numerical simulation work was carried out to evaluate the aerodynamic performances of the model. The results show that both the L/D and the lift coefficient drastically improve benefiting from the innovative configuration. The maximal L/D values at Mach number 5 to 7 are more than 4.5, while the increased percentages of corresponding values of the lift coefficient are about 60% comparing with generic configurations.

In the present study, only the profiles of the leading edges were taken as design variables of the optimization. The aerodynamic performances of the configuration may be further enhanced if the surface shape of the HCW is considered as optimization variables. The authors believe their present study will promote further research in the aerodynamic design of high-speed configurations, which may ultimately offer a new candidate for hypersonic flight vehicles.

###​
See the article: K. Cui, Y. Xiao, Y. Z. Xu, G. L. Li, "Hypersonic I-shaped aerodynamic configurations" _SCIENCE CHINA Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy_ 61(2), 024722(2018); doi: 10.1007/s11433-017-9117-8

http://engine.scichina.com/publisher/scp/journal/SCPMA/61/2/10.1007/s11433-017-9117-8?slug=full text https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11433-017-9117-8​
A new family of aerodynamic configurations of hypersonic airplanes | EurekAlert! Science News

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Rooster Year in Review: Faces of China's science and technology *
By Gong Zhe
2018-01-23 23:14 GMT+8 




Last year on China's lunar calendar, the Year of Rooster has witnessed the achievements of some of the greatest scientists and innovators in the country.

We have collected 10 of them in Sunday's review. And now we are shifting from achievements to the people behind them.

*Pan Jianwei: Unhackable communication*

CGTN has covered extensively China's quantum network, which is totally safe from hacking because it utilizes basic physics laws to operate.

Pan Jianwei is the leading contributor to the project. He learned the laws from his teacher, Austrian quantum physicist Anton Zeilinger.



Pan Jianwei. /Web Photo

In October 2017, the two scientists talked through the network they built.

*Wang Zeshan and Hou Yunde: The highest honor*



Hou Yunde (L) and Wang Zeshan. /Web Photo

Wang and Hou won China's top science award of 2017, each receiving 500 million yuan (about 781,000 US dollars) presented by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Wang, nicknamed "king of gunpowder," is an engineering academician who boosted the shooting range of China's artillery by 20 percent.

Hou is a virologist who sees viruses as the arch-enemy and fights them through research. Other virologists like to call him the "father of China's Interferon."

*Xu Ying: My system is better than the GPS*

Xu Ying is the youngest in this year's list. She is a major developer of China's Beidou satellite navigation system.

She does not like people calling Beidou "the Chinese GPS" because she thinks her project is better.

At her age of 34, Xu won great reputation online for her passion in advocating science. Her photos circulated a lot among Chinese netizens, who called her "the Beidou goddess."



Xu Ying. /Web Photo‍

*Remember Nan Rendong: The man behind world's largest telescope*

China in 2016 built the world's largest telescope FAST – the five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope. It's as large as 30 football fields and able to "see" as far as 13.7 billion light years from the Earth through radio wave detection.

Nan was the creator of the whole project, and has spent most of his career building the telescope.

Nan is included in the list mainly for remembrance; he passed away in September 2017.



Nan Rendong. /Web Photo

There are so many more people who made great contributions to China's sci-tech but we can't list all. They include the Chen brothers who crafted the world's first deep-learning chip "Cambricon", which powers the AI camera in Huawei smartphones. Also, Su Quanke laid out a solid plan to build the bridge that links Hong Kong, Zhuhai and Macao.

Stay tuned to CGTN to find more and more excellent Chinese innovators that change the country and even the world.

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## JSCh

*First cloned monkeys born in China*
(People's Daily) 07:30, January 25, 2018_

_



Two cloned macaques named Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua are held by a nurse at the non-human-primate research facility under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Suzhou, east China's Jiangsu province, Jan. 22, 2018. China on Thursday announced it successfully cloned world's first macaques from somatic cells by method that made Dolly. (Xinhua/Jin Liwang)

Beijing (People's Daily) – Researchers in China officially made history on Wednesday when it was announced they had successfully cloned two monkeys.

Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, both female monkeys, were cloned from fetal fibroblasts, a cell found in connective tissue.

The cloning method involves removing the nucleus from a donor egg cell and replacing it with one taken out of a cell from another animal.

Somatic cells are a concept relative to germ cells. It is a type of cell whose genetic information does not pass to the next generation like germ cells.

Zhong Zhong was born on November 27, and Hua Hua was born on Christmas Day.

Both monkeys are in good health under the watchful eyes of a research team that has been working on the clone project for five years.



File photo provided by the Chinese Academy of Sciences shows two cloned macaques named Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua at the non-human-primate research facility under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. China on Thursday announced it successfully cloned world's first macaques from somatic cells by method that made Dolly. (Xinhua)

Research team leader, Sun Qiang, at the Institute of Neuroscience and Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai.

Since “Dolly’ was cloned in Scotland in 1996, scientists have successfully used SCNT to clone more than 20 other species, including cows, pigs, dogs, rabbits, rats and mice.

But cloning primates had always remained elusive.

The Chinese team succeeded by using modulators to switch on or off certain genes that were inhibiting embryo development.

“After this technology matures, the future, China can also be built to nonhuman primates as a model of the main research and development base and industrial chain,” said scientist Pu Muming.

#####​Zhen Liu, Yijun Cai, Yan Wang, Yanhong Nie, Chenchen Zhang, Yuting Xu, Xiaotong Zhang, Yong Lu, Zhanyang Wang, Muming Poo, and Qiang Sun. *Cloning of Macaque Monkeys by Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer*. _Cell_, 2018. 172, 1–7. DOI:10.1016/j.cell.2018.01.020​
_Also,_

These monkey twins are the first primate clones made by the method that developed Dolly | Science | AAAS

First monkeys cloned with technique that made Dolly the sheep | Nature

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

* Scientists Create a 3-D Model Of Molecules in Yeast Linked to Enzyme that Lengthens Chromosome Tips*
Release Date: January 24, 2018

*Share Fast Facts*

Biologists create three-dimensional models—at the atomic level—of the inner workings of cells. - Click to Tweet
The beauty of science in 3D - Click to Tweet
Through the haze of a sonogram screen, an expectant mother catches a glimpse of the growing baby within her. The outline of a nose, chin and head, instantly recognizable as a tiny human, brings to life what parents, until then, could only imagine. Biologists, too, aim to bring their scientific discoveries to life by creating three-dimensional models—at the atomic level—of the inner workings of cells.

“We need atomic-resolution 3-D images of molecular structures for many reasons. For example, these images can show us precisely how interacting molecules bind to each other in order to carry out critical cellular functions. This helps us develop therapeutic drugs that control the interactions, and therefore also the biochemical processes that they perform in cells,” says David Zappulla, Ph.D., a researcher in the department of molecular biology and genetics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.





Zappulla’s research focuses on an enzyme found in cells, called telomerase, which lengthens repetitive bits of DNA at the end of chromosomes. These end-caps, called telomeres, erode each time a cell divides, and without these protective tips, this erosion would chip away at the chromosomes—including crucial genetic information—and kill the cell.

Telomerase is present in fetal cells to keep DNA from getting too clipped as cells multiply rapidly during early development, but then the enzyme is turned off, and telomeres erode over time, as part of the natural aging process of cells. It’s well-known that older people tend to have shorter telomeres than younger people.

Cancer cells, on the other hand, hijack telomerase and re-express it to maintain telomere length, making them impervious to aging-related death. To kill cancer cells, scientists have long sought drugs that target telomerase’s ability to keep cells alive.

But to develop such drugs, scientists need a better understanding of how telomerase gets to and extends the chromosomes’ ends.

“There appear to be multiple regulatory steps that precisely control telomerase and recruit it to the shortest chromosome ends where and when it’s needed,” says Zappulla, who has worked to reveal these processes. He published research in 2015 showing how two proteins, Ku and Sir4, interact to lure telomerase near the tips of yeast chromosomes.

In experiments looking at telomerase in baker’s yeast, his lab showed that the Ku protein helps telomerase sense when a telomere is short. They showed that Ku binds to another protein, Sir4, and this connection is important for telomere lengthening. He believes that Sir4 acts as a landing pad to attract telomerase preferentially to short chromosome tips that need an extension.

To visualize these concepts in 3-D, Zappulla teamed up with Ming Lei, Ph.D., an expert in creating crystal structures, at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The two met during their postdoctoral training at the University of Colorado Boulder.

For the current research, published Jan. 11 in Cell, Lei’s team crystallized the baker’s yeast versions of key telomerase-recruiting proteins, as well as a piece of the telomerase enzyme’s RNA. Then they shot X-rays through the crystals and inferred the 3-D shape of each molecule based on how the X-rays’ paths are redirected. Then several co-teams collaborated to validate the structures by introducing mutations in the genes encoding the proteins and testing the altered molecules’ functions in live yeast cells. These experiments led to new insights into how telomerase-recruiting proteins work and interrelate in time and space.

“It’s amazing how much precise detail you can get from crystallography studies,” says Zappulla.

When Zappulla first saw the results, he says that they immediately answered one of his questions about how telomerase interacted with Ku and Sir4 to attach to the chromosome end. “The crystal structures show how Ku binds to both the RNA in telomerase and the Sir4 protein on the chromosomes, as we had proposed in our 2015 study.”

Zappulla says that yeast telomerase and the way it works will certainly be different than the human version; however, insights from yeast should help scientists understand fundamental molecular and cellular features that are similar or even have been conserved over evolution.

Zappulla works in the department of molecular biology and genetics at Johns Hopkins, which is led by Carol Greider, Ph.D., who discovered telomerase in 1984 and shares the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Elizabeth Blackburn and Jack W. Szostak for the finding.

Additional scientists involved in the research include Hongwen Chen, Jing Xue, Jian Wu and Shaohua Shi of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine; Dmitri Churikov, Pierre Luciano and Vincent Geli of the Marseille Cancer Research Center; Evan P. Hass of the Johns Hopkins University; Laramie D. Lemon and Alison A. Bertuch of the Baylor College of Medicine.

The current research was supported by grants from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2013CB910402), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31330040, 31525007, 31500625 and U1732124), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB08010201), the Youth Innovation Promotion Association of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of General Medical Sciences (RO1GM118757 and RO1GM077509).



Scientists Create a 3-D Model Of Molecules in Yeast Linked to Enzyme that Lengthens Chromosome Tips | Johns Hopkins Medicine

Hongwen Chen, Jing Xue, Dmitri Churikov, Evan P. Hass, Shaohua Shi, Laramie D. Lemon, Pierre Luciano, Alison A. Bertuch, David C. Zappulla, Vincent Géli, Jian Wu, Ming Lei. *Structural Insights into Yeast Telomerase Recruitment to Telomeres*. _Cell_, 2018; 172 (1-2): 331 DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2017.12.008​

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

A laser in Shanghai, China, has set power records yet fits on tabletops.
KAN ZHAN​*Physicists are planning to build lasers so powerful they could rip apart empty space*
By Edwin Cartlidge
Jan. 24, 2018 , 9:00 AM

Inside a cramped laboratory in Shanghai, China, physicist Ruxin Li and colleagues are breaking records with the most powerful pulses of light the world has ever seen. At the heart of their laser, called the Shanghai Superintense Ultrafast Laser Facility (SULF), is a single cylinder of titanium-doped sapphire about the width of a Frisbee. After kindling light in the crystal and shunting it through a system of lenses and mirrors, the SULF distills it into pulses of mind-boggling power. In 2016, it achieved an unprecedented 5.3 million billion watts, or petawatts (PW). The lights in Shanghai do not dim each time the laser fires, however. Although the pulses are extraordinarily powerful, they are also infinitesimally brief, lasting less than a trillionth of a second. The researchers are now upgrading their laser and hope to beat their own record by the end of this year with a 10-PW shot, which would pack more than 1000 times the power of all the world's electrical grids combined.

The group's ambitions don't end there. This year, Li and colleagues intend to start building a 100-PW laser known as the Station of Extreme Light (SEL). By 2023, it could be flinging pulses into a chamber 20 meters underground, subjecting targets to extremes of temperature and pressure not normally found on Earth, a boon to astrophysicists and materials scientists alike. The laser could also power demonstrations of a new way to accelerate particles for use in medicine and high-energy physics. But most alluring, Li says, would be showing that light could tear electrons and their antimatter counterparts, positrons, from empty space—a phenomenon known as "breaking the vacuum." It would be a striking illustration that matter and energy are interchangeable, as Albert Einstein's famous E=mc2 equation states. Although nuclear weapons attest to the conversion of matter into immense amounts of heat and light, doing the reverse is not so easy. But Li says the SEL is up to the task. "That would be very exciting," he says. "It would mean you could generate something from nothing."

The Chinese group is "definitely leading the way" to 100 PW, says Philip Bucksbaum, an atomic physicist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. But there is plenty of competition. In the next few years, 10-PW devices should switch on in Romania and the Czech Republic as part of Europe's Extreme Light Infrastructure, although the project recently put off its goal of building a 100-PW-scale device. Physicists in Russia have drawn up a design for a 180-PW laser known as the Exawatt Center for Extreme Light Studies (XCELS), while Japanese researchers have put forward proposals for a 30-PW device.


_*Continue -> *_Physicists are planning to build lasers so powerful they could rip apart empty space | Science | AAAS

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Synopsis: A Clearer View of the Atomic World*
January 25, 2018
_A new technique uses electric repulsion to compress electron beams that probe molecular processes._



C. Lu _et al_., Phys. Rev. Lett. (2018)

Ultracompact bunches of electrons are an essential tool for deducing the atomic structure of a material and for capturing the rapid motion of the material’s atoms. But when millions of electrons are crammed together into a bunch, they repel one another. This repulsion increases the width of the electron bunch, reducing the spatial and temporal resolutions with which the tool can operate. Now researchers have found a way to capitalize on electron repulsion, using the repulsion between electrons in one bunch to compress those in another. Their approach could create electron beams with shorter electron bunches, enabling researchers to study molecular processes that occur on time scales currently too fast to capture, such as proton transfer or the oscillations of molecules made of lightweight atoms.

The idea of Dao Xiang, of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and colleagues is to constrain the electrons within a given bunch via the repulsive interactions between it and its two neighboring bunches. The electric repulsion from the leading and trailing bunches compresses the central “probe” bunch, preventing the electrons it contains from flying apart. Using this approach, the team squished the probe bunch laterally by about a factor of 3, increasing the technique’s spatial and temporal resolution threefold. They also eliminated variations in the arrival times of bunches—so-called timing jitter—introduced in other beam compression methods, further improving resolution. This narrower bunch was not quite as small as the shortest bunches in some other experiments, but the improvement demonstrates the potential of the new technique.

The team says that future optimization of the experimental parameters could enable researchers to generate electron bunches with both a pulse width and a timing jitter shorter than 50 fs, the state-of-the-art in this field.

This research is published in _Physical Review Letters_.
*https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.044801*
*Coulomb-Driven Relativistic Electron Beam Compression*
Chao Lu, Tao Jiang, Shengguang Liu, Rui Wang, Lingrong Zhao, Pengfei Zhu, Dao Xiang, and Jie Zhang
Phys. Rev. Lett. *120*, 044801 (2018)
Published January 25, 2018​–Christopher Crockett



Physics - Synopsis: A Clearer View of the Atomic World

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## Three_Kingdoms

yusheng said:


> Cold launch, means that the main, high-temperature rocket motor does not fire until the missile is outside its launcher. Rocket ignition needs to be delayed long enough so it is of no danger to the launcher system, and there is no backblast if it is fired from a closed room.
> 
> The technique is a practical necessity for a rocket with Solid propellant rocket engine and sealed in a closed launcher, where the hot exhaust of a rocket motor could be catastrophic when the rocket is still in the launcher.
> 
> the cold launch method needs more extensive piping for the ejection system and a more complex firing system, Energy for the cold launch ejection comes from a compressed gas cylinder, or a pyrotechnic gas generator whose exhaust is of low temperature.
> 
> View attachment 449240
> 
> cz11 is from DF31, which has solid propellant rocket engine and sealed in a launcher system when transporting. so when you have a satellite to launch, the rocket is always ready, the only time needed is to install the satellite and check the system, then launch it at any location.
> 
> the black smoke you see is the low temperture gas which send the rocket out of the jacket.
> View attachment 449239



Thanks buddy for the explanation.
Cold launch techniques are also used in our JL1 and 2 SLBMs, I guess.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*Hyperunified field theory and gravitational gauge–geometry duality*

The European Physical Journal C, Jan 2018

Yue-Liang Wu

A hyperunified field theory is built in detail based on the postulates of gauge invariance and coordinate independence along with the conformal scaling symmetry. All elementary particles are merged into a single hyper-spinor field and all basic forces are unified into a fundamental interaction governed by the hyper-spin gauge symmetry SP(1, \(D_h-1\)). The dimension \(D_h\) of hyper-spacetime is conjectured to have a physical origin in correlation with the hyper-spin charge of elementary particles. The hyper-gravifield fiber bundle structure of biframe hyper-spacetime appears naturally with the globally flat Minkowski hyper-spacetime as a base spacetime and the locally flat hyper-gravifield spacetime as a fiber that is viewed as a dynamically emerged hyper-spacetime characterized by a non-commutative geometry. The gravitational origin of gauge symmetry is revealed with the hyper-gravifield that plays an essential role as a Goldstone-like field. The gauge–gravity and gravity–geometry correspondences bring about the gravitational gauge–geometry duality. The basic properties of hyperunified field theory and the issue on the fundamental scale are analyzed within the framework of quantum field theory, which allows us to describe the laws of nature in deriving the gauge gravitational equation with the conserved current and the geometric gravitational equations of Einstein-like type and beyond.

Full article for the really seriously scientifically minded:

http://paperity.org/p/85949014/hyperunified-field-theory-and-gravitational-gauge-geometry-duality

@Bussard Ramjet

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*China to build world's most powerful hyper-gravity centrifuges*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-01-31 18:46:18|Editor: Mengjie





HANGZHOU, Jan. 31 (Xinhua) -- China plans to build two centrifuges for hyper-gravity experiments that, when completed, will become the world's largest by capacity, scientists said Wednesday.

The centrifuges are designed to each have a capacity of at least 1,500 gravity tons (gt), compared with the 1,200-gt centrifuge developed by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the world's most powerful to date.

The project is expected to be completed in five years, with funding of more than 2 billion yuan (about 303 million U.S. dollars).

The project, planned to be located in China's eastern city of Hangzhou, will be spearheaded by Chen Yunmin, an engineering professor with Zhejiang University. He is also an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, one of China's top think tanks.

One of the planned centrifuges will give researchers access to a range of hyper-gravity up to 1,500 times of Earth gravity and the other up to 600 times.

The development of the new machines will be based on a two-arm, 9-meter-diameter centrifuge that has been in operation at Zhejiang University.

Along with the two hyper-gravity centrifuges, Chen's team will also develop six hyper-gravity labs and other supporting equipment.

Chen said he aims to develop the facility into a multifunctional platform for interdisciplinary hyper-gravity experiments.

"The centrifuges will provide strong support to research in areas such as underground and deep-sea exploration, disaster control, waste disposal, and new material manufacturing," said Chen.

Hyper-gravity will enable scientists to simulate a deep-sea environment thousands of meters below the sea level, in which they can easily test the mining of natural gas hydrate, or combustible ice, Chen said.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*China develops female radiation virtual human*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-01-31 18:31:11|Editor: Mengjie




BEIJING, Jan. 31 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have constructed a whole-body female radiation virtual human called Rad-Human and a complete radiation dose database with Chinese anatomical body characteristics.

The database was built on two-dimensional sliced images of a human body, according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

The Rad-Human, consisting of 28.8 billion voxels, is a radiation virtual human with the best accuracy of the Chinese female.

It has been applied to radiology therapy, and will be put in use in nuclear power, aviation, and aerospace.

Virtual humans help in avoiding radiation hazard during dose assessment.

Previously, the virtual human recommended by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) came from Caucasians. Its anatomical differences with Chinese people can significantly affect Chinese people's dose assessment.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Adam WANG SHANGHAI MEGA

*Chinese Academy of Sciences developed the world's strongest deuterium tritium neutron source
*
*中科院研发出世界最强氘氚中子源*
分享到：
66
2018-02-01 16:01:16字号：A- A A+来源：科技日报
关键字:强流氘氚中子源强流氘氚中子源中科院中科院强流氘氚中子源
核能是20世纪人类最伟大的成就之一。中子被称为核能系统的“灵魂”，是反应堆中核反应的触发粒子和能量载体，也是产生核热能和引发放射性的源头。中子源是产生、研究、利用中子的必备科学装置，也是开展中子物理与辐射安全、先进核能系统关键技术及核技术交叉应用等研究的重要实验平台。

据《科技日报》2月1日报道，日前，中科院核能安全技术研究所FDS凤麟核能团队的科研人员，在中子输运物理与技术方面取得突破性创新研究成果。该团队研发出强流氘氚中子源实验装置HINEG，其中子源强度创现行同类装置中的世界第一。那么，这个“世界最强氘氚中子源”究竟强在哪呢？






HINEG-I离子注入系统（图：中科院）

*超强中子靶，承受的热流密度是太阳表面的3倍*

“中子靶是HINEG的核心系统之一，强流离子加速器产生的高功率氘离子束轰击含有氚的中子靶，在靶上发生氘氚聚变反应产生中子。”中科院核能安全技术研究所所长、FDS凤麟核能团队创建人吴宜灿研究员告诉科技日报记者。为了产生强流的中子束，靶需要承受高功率离子束的轰击，从而带来靶上高强热流散出的难题。

“HINEG中子靶承受的热流密度是太阳表面热流密度的3倍。如果散热问题解决不好，靶温度迅速升高，其内含有的氚会快速释放，就无法实现中子的持续稳定产生。靶温升高过快时，甚至会出现瞬间被熔穿烧毁的情形。”吴宜灿说。

针对中子靶的高效散热难题，FDS凤麟核能团队发明了阵列射流耦合强剪切场的高效散热技术，并通过反复验证测试，成功实现了高效散热，将靶的温度控制在200℃以内。

*不带电的中子也能做到精准调控*

氘氚聚变反应产生14兆电伏（MeV）的单能中子，为模拟再现先进核能系统的复杂中子能谱环境，需要对产生的单能中子进行精确调控以便开展各类实验研究，这无疑是另一项严峻挑战。

“我们知道，电子、质子是带电粒子，可以利用电场或磁场对这些带电粒子进行控制，但中子是不带电的，无法用电磁场对其进行调控，不过可以通过中子与特定材料中原子核的反应过程来进行调控，这就需要精确的理论方法与实验技术来实现。”吴宜灿告诉记者。

FDS凤麟核能团队以中子输运理论研究成果为基础，发明了中子输运精准调控关键技术，实现了先进核能系统的复杂中子能谱环境的准确再现，对先进核能系统研究具有重要意义。

*核能及核技术交叉应用研究的重要平台*

与传统核反应堆相比，先进核能系统可极大提高资源利用率，并降低核废料的产生。HINEG可以真实再现多种类型先进核能系统的复杂中子能谱环境，开展理论与程序验证、核数据测量与验证、反应堆部件核性能验证等实验研究。

中子照相是一种检测物质内部微细结构的“显微探测”技术，它利用中子在不同物质中穿透能力的差异来洞察物体内部结构，在检测含氢材料、重金属组件结构、放射性材料等方面弥补了X光等其他无损检测技术的不足。HINEG产生的强流中子束可用于开展高精度的无损检测，服务于我国航空航天等领域的快速发展。

中子治癌是目前正在快速发展的癌症治疗方法，该方法是一种身具固有安全性的生物靶向放射治疗模式，对患者正常组织损伤小，可有效提高患者的生命质量，开创了人类攻克恶性肿瘤的新途径。有国际著名专家表示，在癌症领域，20世纪可以说是X射线的世纪，而21世纪将是中子治疗的世纪。HINEG可作为中子治癌技术研究的重要平台，可促进我国在中子治癌领域的发展。

（本报记者 吴长锋）
Chinese Academy of Sciences developed the world's strongest deuterium tritium neutron source
Share to: 2066
Source: Science and Technology Daily
Keywords: strong flow deuterium tritium neutron source strong flow deuterium tritium neutron source Chinese Academy of Sciences CAS strong deuterium tritium neutron source
Nuclear energy is one of the greatest achievements of mankind in the 20th century. Known as the "soul" of the nuclear energy system, neutron is the trigger particle and energy carrier of the nuclear reaction in the reactor. It is also the source of generating nuclear thermal energy and initiating radioactivity. The neutron source is an indispensable scientific device for generating, researching and utilizing neutron. It is also an important experiment platform for carrying out research on neutron physics and radiation safety, key technologies of advanced nuclear energy system and cross-application of nuclear technology.
According to "Science and Technology Daily" reported February 1, a few days ago, Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Nuclear Energy Safety FDS Fenglin nuclear team of researchers, made a breakthrough innovation in neutron transport physics and technology research results. The team developed HINEG, a high-flow deuterium-tritium neutron source experimental unit that ranks first in the world for its class of sub-source intensities. So, this "world's strongest deuterium tritium neutron source" what is strong in what?

HINEG-I ion implantation system (Figure: Chinese Academy of Sciences)
Super-neutron targets withstand three times the heat flux of the sun's surface
"The neutron target is one of the core HINEG systems. The high-power deuterium ion beam generated by a high-flux accelerator bombard the neutron target with tritium and generate fusion of deuterium, tritium and neutrons on the target." Institute of Nuclear Energy Safety, Chinese Academy of Sciences Director, FDS Fenglin Nuclear Energy Team founder Wu Yican researcher told science daily reporter. In order to generate a strong stream of neutron beams, the target needs to withstand the bombardment of high-power ion beams, resulting in the problem of high heat flux shedding on the target.
"HINEG neutron targets are exposed to three times the heat flux density of the sun.If the heat problem is not well solved and the target temperature rises rapidly, the tritium contained in the target will quickly release and the neutron generation will not be sustained. When the target temperature rises too fast, there may even be an instantaneous situation of being burned through. "
For the efficient heat dissipation problem of neutron targets, FDS Fenglin Nuclear Energy Team invented the highly efficient cooling technology of array jet coupled with strong shear field, and succeeded in achieving efficient heat dissipation by repeatedly verifying and testing the target temperature below 200 ℃.
Uncharged neutrons can also be precise control
The fusion reaction of deuterium and tritium generates a single energy neutron of 14 MeV. To simulate the complex neutron energy spectrum environment of the advanced nuclear energy system, the single energy neutron generated needs to be precisely regulated to carry out various experimental studies. This is undoubtedly another serious challenge.
"We know that electrons and protons are charged particles that can be controlled by an electric or magnetic field. However, neutrons are uncharged and can not be controlled by electromagnetic fields, but they can pass through the nuclei of neutron-specific nuclei Reaction process to regulate, which requires accurate theoretical methods and experimental techniques to achieve. "Wu Yi-tsan told reporters.
Based on the research results of neutron transport theory, FDS Fenglin Nuclear Energy Team invented the key technology of precise control of neutron transport and realized accurate reproduction of complex neutron energy spectrum environment of advanced nuclear energy system, which is important for the research of advanced nuclear energy system significance.
Nuclear and nuclear technology application of cross-cutting an important platform
Compared with traditional nuclear reactors, advanced nuclear energy systems can greatly improve resource utilization and reduce the generation of nuclear waste. HINEG can truly reproduce the complex neutron spectrum environment of many types of advanced nuclear energy systems, carry out experimental and theoretical studies on program verification, verification and verification of nuclear data, and nuclear performance verification of reactor components.
Neutron photography is a kind of "microscopic detection" technology which detects the fine structure inside the material. It uses the difference of penetrating ability of neutrons in different materials to understand the internal structure of the object. In the detection of hydrogen-containing materials, structure of heavy metal components, radioactive materials And other areas to make up for X-ray and other non-destructive testing techniques. HINEG generated strong current neutron beam can be used to carry out high-precision non-destructive testing, serving the rapid development of China's aerospace and other fields.
Neutron cancer is currently the rapid development of cancer treatment methods, the method is an inherently safe biological targeting radiotherapy mode, the patient's normal tissue damage is small, which can effectively improve the quality of life of patients, creating a human A new way to overcome malignant tumors. There are internationally renowned experts said that in the field of cancer, the 20th century can be said that X-ray century, and the 21st century will be the century of neutron therapy. HINEG can be used as an important platform for neutron cancer research and can promote the development of neutron cancer in our country.
(Reporter Wu Chang-feng)

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Evolution of China's flowering plants shows East-West divide between old, new lineages*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-02-01 07:00:00|Editor: Liangyu




CHICAGO, Jan. 31 (Xinhua) -- There is a distinct regional pattern in China's 30,000 flowering plant species: Eastern China is a floral "museum" with a rich array of ancient lineages and distant relatives, while the western provinces are a "cradle" for newer and more closely related species.

In a study published Wednesday in the online edition of Nature, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hope College, the Florida Museum of Natural History, and the University of Michigan (UM) highlight the need for more conservation efforts in densely populated eastern China, home to many threatened plant species.

In the study, researchers produced the first dated phylogeny, a family tree of organisms showing when new species appeared, for all of China's flowering plant species, or angiosperms, and mapped their distributions using 1.4 million museum records.

The researchers found that about 66 percent of angiosperm genera in China did not originate until the early Miocene, about 23 million years ago. Mean species divergence times when species first appeared fell between 22-25 million years ago in the East and 15-19 million years ago in the West.

Over the past 30 million years, herbaceous plants, those without a woody stem, diversified much more quickly than woody genera such as shrubs, trees and vines.

China is home to about 10 percent of the world's flowering plant species, outstripping the number of angiosperm species in the U.S. by more than 3.5-fold. Its varied geography and climate contribute to its wealth of biodiversity.

Unlike North America and Europe, China did not undergo the dramatic ecological turnover driven by glaciation in the ice age from about 2.58 million to 11,700 years ago, thus allowing ancient plant lineages to persist in the East and newer lineages to be folded into ever-diversifying plant communities.

China didn't experience that big type of cataclysmic event, and that allowed it to be more of a museum than other parts of the Northen Hemisphere, said Doug Soltis, professor and curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

The uplift of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau in the West spurred the region's evolutionary explosion of new species by opening up myriad new habitats and creating a cool, arid western climate. The West became a cradle for newer herbaceous plants while the East remained a museum for older herbaceous plants and both a museum and a cradle for woody plants.

The researchers used species-distribution data to map China's areas of genetic richness, pinpointing several eastern provinces as home to the country's greatest genetic diversity of flowering plants: Guangdong, Guanxi, Guizhou, Hainan and Yunnan. Conservation in the East, however, is carried out on a much smaller, more fragmented scale than in the sparsely populated West.

The researchers pointed to the value of museum collections in enabling this country-scale study of thousands of plant species spanning millions of years of evolution. Each plant specimen, painstakingly collected and preserved in herbaria over the past century and digitized, contributed to an enormous dataset that offered a detailed snapshot of China's diversity of flowering plants.

"It is only the beginning, as we can now apply these methods across the globe and throughout the tree of life," said Stephen Smith, a UM evolutionary biologist and co-author of the study.

Li-Min Lu, Ling-Feng Mao, Tuo Yang, Jian-Fei Ye, Bing Liu, Hong-Lei Li, Miao Sun, Joseph T. Miller, Sarah Mathews, Hai-Hua Hu, Yan-Ting Niu, Dan-Xiao Peng, You-Hua Chen, Stephen A. Smith, Min Chen, Kun-Li Xiang, Chi-Toan Le, Viet-Cuong Dang, An-Ming Lu, Pamela S. Soltis, Douglas E. Soltis, Jian-Hua Li, Zhi-Duan Chen. *Evolutionary history of the angiosperm flora of China*. _Nature_, 2018; DOI: 10.1038/nature25485
​====

Evolutionary history of the angiosperm flora of China | Nature Ecology & Evolution Community

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Prehistoric 'pancake bird' sheds light on ancient avians*
2018-02-02 21:20 GMT+8





The remains of a prehistoric bird dating back some 100 million years were discovered inside a piece of Burmese amber.

The finding was announced on Friday in Beijing by paleontologists from China, Canada, and the United States.

Similar in size to the smallest modern bird – the bee hummingbird – the 5 cm bird is well preserved in the piece of amber. The remains, dating from the late Cretaceous period, feature "skeletal material and soft tissues in unmatched detail," according to an academic paper published as the cover article of the journal Chinese Science Bulletin.



A reconstructed picture of the "pancake bird" /Photo via people.cn

Professor Tseng Kuowei at the University of Taipei noted that the specimen provides a unique perspective for research as it is split along the coronal plane, exposing much of its internal anatomy and giving it the nickname "pancake bird".

Although parts of the skull and most of the right wing and leg are missing, it is still the most complete prehistoric bird specimen found in Burmese amber so far, according to Jingmai O'Connor, a researcher at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in China.

Based on the latest study, the bird's skeletal structure and plumage patterns are basically in alignment with those of the enantiornithines.

Enantiornithes first appeared in the Cretaceous period and died out at the same time as their non-avialan dinosaur relatives. The extinct avialans were one of the most crucial branches in the evolution of ancient birds.

"The density and length of the feathers preserved along the exposed neck and head regions may suggest that this specimen is older than a hatchling or the juvenile remains discovered in the area," said Xing Lida, associate professor at China University of Geosciences.



Close up of the wing /Photo via people.cn

"So far, this pancake bird is the most physically developed ancient bird ever discovered in amber," Xing said.

Moreover, structures found in its primary feathers indicated the rigid feathers were capable of flight, making them more consistent with feathers from advanced flying birds than typical enantiornithines.

It is not clear whether the bird was alive when it was sealed in resin. The missing internal organs and lack of soft tissue around the femur suggest it might have died before it was trapped in the amber.

Paleontologists believe that further studies of the specimen will shed light on the process of corpse preservation, as well as the diversity and geographical distribution of ancient birds.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists discover spider with a tail trapped in 100 million-year-old amber*
2018-02-06 14:42 GMT+8





Two teams of scientists on Monday unveiled a "missing link" species of spider with a scorpion-like tail found perfectly preserved in amber in Southeast Asia's forests after at least 100 million years.

In studies published side-by-side in Nature Ecology and Evolution, one team argued that male sex organs and silk thread-producing teats link the creature to living spiders.

The other team pointed to the long tail and a segmented body to argue that Chimerarachne yingi belongs instead to a far more ancient and extinct lineage at least 380 million years old.



An extraordinary new species of arachnid, resembling a spider with a tail, has been discovered in amber from Myanmar of mid-Cretaceous age, around 100 million years ago. /Photo via University of Kansas

Either way, the researchers agree that C. yingi fills a yawning gap in the evolutionary saga of the nearly 50,000 species of spiders that spin webs and trap prey around the world today.

"It's a missing link between the ancient Uraraneida order, which resemble spiders but have tails and no silk-making spinnerets, and modern spiders, which lack tails," said Bo Wang, a palaeobiologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Nanjing and lead author of the study, suggesting C. yingi has more in common with their present-day, eight-legged cousins.

Remarkably, the previously unknown species was simultaneously discovered by two groups of scientists, each of which unearthed two specimens locked in translucent amber teardrops.

By coincidence, both teams submitted their findings to the same journal, which coordinated the joint release.

With a total body length of about six millimeters (one-fifth of an inch) – half taken up by the tail – C. yingi is, truly, an itsy bitsy spider.

The filaments made by four nipples extruding from the back end of its abdomen were probably not there to spin webs, the researchers speculated.

*Venom glands*

"Spinnerets are used to produce silk for a whole host of reasons: to wrap eggs, to make burrows, to make sleeping hammocks, or just to leave behind trails," said Paul Selden, Wang's co-author and a professor at the University of Kansas.

C. yingi also boasts pincer-like appendages, called pedipalps, used to transfer sperm to the female during mating, a signature trait of all living spiders.



AFP Photo

Its whip-like tail or flagellum, also known as a telson, likely "served a sensory purpose," Wang told AFP.

By contrast, modern spiders use silk spun into webs to monitor changes in their surroundings.

They also have venom secreted from special-purpose glands, but neither of the studies was able to confirm that C. yingi could poison its prey.

Both teams used X-ray computed tomography scanning technology to remotely dissect their specimens.

The new species was discovered in the jungles of Myanmar, which yields nearly 10 tonnes of amber every year.

"It has been coming into China where dealers have been selling to research institutions," Wang said.

Amber has been crucial for tracing the early ancestors of spiders – but only up to a certain point.

"Spiders have soft bodies and no bones, so they don't fossilize very well, so we rely on special conditions – especially amber – to find them," Wang explained.

But working back in time, the trail of animal remains in amber ends about 250 million years ago, making it very difficult to trace the spider's earliest origins.

======================

Also,
Part spider, part scorpion creature captured in amber | Science | AAAS

Eight-legged crawlers spin controversy : Research Highlights | Nature​

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Galactic Penguin SST

*Lunar Eclipse Of A Super Blue Blood Moon*


*Total Lunar Eclipse*







Spoiler: Links



https://defence.pk/pdf/attachments/...1/?temp_hash=30738b84afcda8a6b3d2351be54f0f8c
http://spaceweathergallery.com/full_image.php?image_name=Steed-Yu-IMG_7319-HD_1517420940.jpg
http://0e33611cb8e6da737d5c-e13b5a9...dn.com/Steed-Yu-IMG_7319-HD_1517420940_lg.jpg



▲ Taken by Steed Yu on January 31, 2018 @ Beijing, China 

*Details:*
the begin (, maximum, and end ) of the super blue total lunar eclipse in Jan. 31st, 2018 



Code:


Camera Used: Unavailable Unavailable
Exposure Time: Unavailable
Aperture: Unavailable
ISO: Unavailable
Date Taken: Unavailable

http://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=142254


*Super Blue Blood Moon＆aircraft*







Spoiler: Links



https://defence.pk/pdf/attachments/...2/?temp_hash=30738b84afcda8a6b3d2351be54f0f8c
http://spaceweathergallery.com/full_image.php?image_name=cat-FH4A1186_1517809676.gif
http://0e33611cb8e6da737d5c-e13b5a9...f1.rackcdn.com/cat-FH4A1186_1517809676_lg.gif



▲ Taken by cat on January 31, 2018 @ nanjing，china

*Details:*
Super moon + blue moon + red moon + plane, this is a rare opportunity. At that time I was watching with friends in the square and took pictures with the camera in my hand. It was just a plane coming over. My feeling was that the plane could pass through the moon, so I quickly picked up the camera in my hand and kept pressing the shutter button. Finally, the plane and the moon freeze in the camera screen. This picture is so exciting, how good luck can meet. awesome! 



Code:


Camera Used: Unavailable Unavailable
Exposure Time: Unavailable
Aperture: Unavailable
ISO: Unavailable
Date Taken: Unavailable

http://spaceweathergallery.com/indi...d=142446&PHPSESSID=8b5qk999trtoptt762csg2tsa2


*Lunar Eclipse*







Spoiler: Links



https://defence.pk/pdf/attachments/...3/?temp_hash=30738b84afcda8a6b3d2351be54f0f8c
http://spaceweathergallery.com/full...afrac12p-20180131-aaoaaoncmapp_1517655920.jpg
http://0e33611cb8e6da737d5c-e13b5a9...ac12p-20180131-aaoaaoncmapp_1517655920_lg.jpg



▲ Taken by Steed Yu on January 31, 2018 @ Beijing, China 

*Details:*
We can see the shadow of the Earth, when the Lunar eclipse happens.



Code:


Camera Used: Unavailable Unavailable
Exposure Time: Unavailable
Aperture: Unavailable
ISO: Unavailable
Date Taken: Unavailable

http://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=142401


*Super Blue Blood Moon＆earth Shadow*







Spoiler: Links



https://defence.pk/pdf/attachments/...4/?temp_hash=30738b84afcda8a6b3d2351be54f0f8c
http://spaceweathergallery.com/full...lood-Moon-ifrac14-earth-shadow_1517807942.jpg
http://0e33611cb8e6da737d5c-e13b5a9...d-Moon-ifrac14-earth-shadow_1517807942_lg.jpg



▲ Taken by janewind on January 31, 2018 @ nanjing，china 

*Details:*
This is the most beautiful total lunar eclipse Ive ever seen. The blue moon, the red moon and the super moon are great. Most of the total solar eclipse seen on the horizon was on the horizon. The total eclipse was at high altitude this time. More than a thousand people, the atmosphere is great. The weather was not very good on that day, and my friend said I might not see it. I told her that if I could not see it, I would take the moon off and I prepared a 3D printed moon lantern I made myself. That night, when I took out the glowing Moon model, we became the focus, and everyone came around for a group photo and attracted a reporter from Shanghai Oriental Satellite TV to come to interview. The red moon that day, simply beautiful, too unforgettable! 



Code:


Camera Used: NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D3100
Exposure Time: 1/60
Aperture: f/8.0
ISO: 400
Date Taken: 2018:02:05 10:51:55

http://spaceweathergallery.com/indi...d=142445&PHPSESSID=8b5qk999trtoptt762csg2tsa2

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 9-FEB-2018
*Chinese researchers report first lung stem cell transplantation clinical trial*
SPRINGER

A research team from Tongji University in China have made a breakthrough in human lung regeneration technology. For the first time, researchers have regenerated patients' damaged lungs using autologous lung stem cell transplantation in a pilot clinical trial. The study can be found in the open access journal _Protein & Cell_ which is published by Springer Nature.

For patients suffering from chronic pulmonary diseases, lung stem cell transplantation could be their biggest, if not last, hope.

"Both patients and researchers need great courage to step forward from benchside to bedside, to test the new therapeutic strategy. Now the good news is that the strategy looks quite promising," said author of the study, Professor Wei Zuo.

Already in 2015, Professor Zuo and his colleagues identified p63+/Krt5+ adult stem cells in a mouse lung, which had potential to regenerate pulmonary structures including bronchioles and alveoli. Now Professor Zuo's lab in Tongji University and Kiangnan Stem Cell Institute is focusing on lung stem cells in humans rather than mice.

"The anatomical structure and development process of human lungs are quite different from that of mice. Only by directly studying human subjects can we get close to the truth and finally solve the real medical problem," Zuo explained.

The researchers found that a population of basal cells labeled with an SOX9+ marker had the potential to serve as lung stem cells in humans. By working with Ren Tao, professor and physician in Shanghai East Hospital, they used lung bronchoscopy to brush off and amplify these lung stem cells from tiny samples. About 0.2% of the cells from each brush were lung stem cells. The genetic stability and molecular phenotypes of these cells could be well maintained over scaled expansion.

In order to test the capacity of lung stem cells to regenerate lung tissue in vivo, the team transplanted the GFP-labeled human lung stem cells into damaged lungs of immunodeficient mice. Three weeks after transplantation, they detected that human lung stem cells were integrated into mice lungs in a large area, forming a "human - mouse chimeric organ".

Further histological analysis showed that stem cell transplantation successfully regenerated human bronchial and alveolar structures in the lungs of mice. More importantly, the host capillaries rose around the regenerated human alveoli structures, which indicated the formation of functional respiratory units as demonstrated by the gold nanoparticle tracking technique. Also, the fibrotic area in the injured lungs of the mice was replaced by new human alveoli after receiving stem cell transplantation. Arterial blood gas analysis showed that the lung function of the mice was significantly recovered

Together with researchers from Southwest Hospital of China Army University and Regend Therapeutics, the team launched the first clinical trial based on autologous lung stem cell transplantation for the treatment of bronchiectasis. Bronchiectasis is a permanent injury to the bronchial structure of lung. After strict review by academic and ethical committees, the first two patients were recruited in March 2016. Their own lung stem cells were delivered into the patients' lung through bronchoscopy.

One year after transplantation, two patients described relief of multiple respiratory symptoms such as coughing and dyspnea. CT imaging showed regional recovery of the dilated structure. Patient lung function began to recover three months after transplantation, which maintained for one year.

"Stem cell transplantation is quite effective and we will continue the study by expanding the cohort size, including the control group and carrying out a long-term continuous observation," said Professor Xiaotian Dai, the physician who supervised this clinical study.

The safety and efficacy of cell therapy depends largely on the cell quality.

"Quality is life and we are implementing the quality management strictly according to the CFDA standard of China as well as the FDA standards of the United States," said Lifeng Wang, the chief quality officer of Regend Therapeutics .

According to Professor Wei Zuo, the lung stem cell clinical trial in China has been licensed by CFDA and National Health and Family Planning Commission. A multi-center, placebo-controlled study is being carried out. Up to now, the team has performed 80 stem cell transplantation cases in total, involving different categories of respiratory diseases including bronchiectasis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and interstitial lung disease.

"Chronic lung diseases could be conquered within 5 years," said Professor Zuo.

###​
Reference: Ma Qiwang et al (2018). Regeneration of functional alveoli by adult human SOX9+ airway basal cell transplantation, _Protein & Cell_ DOI: 10.1007/s13238-018-0506-y


Chinese researchers report first lung stem cell transplantation clinical trial | EurekAlert! Science News

Reactions: Like Like:
6


----------



## cirr

*Breakthrough may help with earlier detection of heart attacks and cancer*

2018-02-12 09:45 Xinhua _Editor: Gu Liping_

*A mobile phone-sized box* may help patients detect acute heart failure or cancer, at any time, without any medical assistance. A Chinese research program is trying to make this "family physician" dream come true.

Chinese scientists have developed a biosensor based on an optical microfiber coupler (OMC) to identify one ultra sensitive biomarker of acute myocardial infarction (AMI), the medical term for a heart attack, which could make detection much easier and less expensive.

A team of scientists from Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics (CIOFMP) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences *have dedicated 16 years* to researching this label-free immunosensor and published their findings online in the scientific journal, Biosensors and Bioelectronics earlier this month.

"The goal of this research is to make detection of heart attack biomarkers more sensitive and convenient, so as to identify the disease at an earlier stage," said Zhou Wenchao, a researcher at the CIOFMP State Key Laboratory of Applied Optics.

Despite advancements in modern medicine, heart attacks remain a common, life-threatening condition.

According to Zhou, early diagnosis can decrease the fatality rate of heart attacks. However, patients can currently only go to hospitals for testing, instead of testing themselves at home.

Hospitals usually use a biochemical technique called enzyme immunoassay (EIA) to track AMI biomarkers, which takes one to two hours for one single test and requires a 0.1 ng/ml clinical cut-off.

Chinese researchers are trying to improve the situation by developing the OMC. "Since 2002, we've recorded countless failures while trying to find the way to improve the test sensitivity and accuracy, and maintain its stability. Now each test only takes 10 minutes and costs less than the EIA approach," said Wu Yihui, head researcher in the program at the State Key Laboratory of Applied Optics.

In experiments, the sensitivity of this newly-developed biosensor can reach to 2 fg/ml, equivalent to a 0.000002 ng/ml cut-off.

The research is jointly sponsored by the China-Israel International Science and Technology Cooperation Program and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

"The research has put forward an approach that can improve the sensitive detection of biomarkers, which could further assist early diagnosis and intervention for critical illnesses like cancer in the future," said Chinese and Israeli experts who participated in evaluating the research achievement.

"We can't run the test with whole blood yet. Within two years, we plan to improve the procedures and make detection easier by taking a few drops of blood from fingertip," said Wu.

http://www.ecns.cn/2018/02-12/292495.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## cirr

*China to build science park in Xi'an*

2018-02-12 13:57 Xinhua _Editor: Gu Liping_

China will build a science park in Xi'an, the capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, reported the People's Daily Monday.

Supported by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and local governments, the complex will begin to take shape in 2020.

*Covering five square kilometers, it will accommodate national scientific research bases, high tech enterprises, an environmental institute, a heavy ion accelerator for medical use and a financial center for scientific research.*

http://www.ecns.cn/2018/02-12/292555.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*Searching for power outlet may soon become thing of past: Chinese, U.S. researchers*

2018-02-12 16:53 Xinhua _Editor: Gu Liping_

Chinese and U.S. researchers have developed a small metallic tab that, when attached to the body, is capable of generating electricity from bending a finger and other simple movements.

Searching for a power outlet may soon become a thing of the past. Instead, devices will receive electricity from the tab, triboelectric nanogenerator.

The researchers' study, published online recently in the journal Nano Energy, describes the tab as being 1.5 centimeters long, by 1 centimeter wide. It delivered a maximum voltage of 124 volts, a maximum current of 10 microamps and a maximum power density of 0.22 milliwatts per square centimeter. That is not enough to quickly charge a smartphone, however, it lit 48 red LED lights simultaneously.

Triboelectric charging occurs when certain materials become electrically charged after coming into contact with a different material. Most everyday static electricity is triboelectric, according to the collaborative research led by University at Buffalo (UB) and Institute of Semiconductors (IoP) at Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

"No one likes being tethered to a power outlet or lugging around a portable charger. The human body is an abundant source of energy. We thought: 'Why not harness it to produce our own power?'" lead author Qiaoqiang Gan, associate professor of electrical engineering in UB's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, was quoted as saying in a news release.

The tab that the research team is developing addresses both concerns of the difficulty of manufacture and cost-effectiveness.

It consists of two thin layers of gold, with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), a silicon-based polymer used in contact lenses, Silly Putty and other products, sandwiched in between.

Key to the device is that one layer of gold is stretched, causing it to crumple upon release and create what looks like a miniature mountain range. When that force is reapplied, for example from a finger bending, the motion leads to friction between the gold layers and PDMS.

"This causes electrons to flow back and forth between the gold layers. The more friction, the greater the amount of power is produced," said another lead author, Yun Xu, professor of IoP at CAS.

The team also plans to use larger pieces of gold, which when stretched and folded together are expected to deliver even more electricity.

Next, researchers are working to develop a portable battery to store energy produced by the tab, according to the news release. They envision the system serving as a power source for various wearable and self-powered electronic devices.

http://www.ecns.cn/2018/02-12/292585.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Cancer-fighting nanorobots programmed to seek and destroy tumors*
February 12, 2018

*Study shows first applications of DNA origami for nanomedicine *






In a major advancement in nanomedicine, Arizona State University (ASU) scientists, in collaboration with researchers from the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology (NCNST), of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, have successfully programmed nanorobots to shrink tumors by cutting off their blood supply.

“We have developed the first fully autonomous, DNA robotic system for a very precise drug design and targeted cancer therapy,” said Hao Yan, director of the ASU Biodesign Institute’s Center for Molecular Design and Biomimetics and the Milton Glick Professor in the School of Molecular Sciences.

“Moreover, this technology is a strategy that can be used for many types of cancer, since all solid tumor-feeding blood vessels are essentially the same,” said Yan.

The successful demonstration of the technology, the first-of-its-kind study in mammals utilizing breast cancer, melanoma, ovarian and lung cancer mouse models, was published in the journal Nature Biotechnology (DOI:10.1038/nbt.4071).

*Seek and destroy*
Yan is an expert in the field of DNA origami, which in the past two decades, has developed atomic-scale manufacturing to build more and more complex structures.

The bricks to build their structures come from DNA, which can self-fold into all sorts of shapes and sizes ---all at a scale one thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair---in the hopes of one day revolutionizing computing, electronics and medicine.

That one day may be coming a bit faster than anticipated.

Nanomedicine is a new branch of medicine that seeks to combine the promise of nanotechnology to open up entirely new avenues for treatments, such as making minuscule, molecule-sized nanoparticles to diagnose and treat difficult diseases, especially cancer.

Until now, the challenge to advancing nanomedicine has been difficult because scientists wanted to design, build and carefully control nanorobots to actively seek and destroy cancerous tumors---while not harming any healthy cells.

The international team of researchers overcame this problem by using a seemingly simple strategy to very selectively seek and starve out a tumor.

This work was initiated about 5 years ago. The NCNST researchers first wanted to specifically cut-off of tumor blood supply by inducing blood coagulation with high therapeutic efficacy and safety profiles in multiple solid tumors using DNA-based nanocarriers. Prof. Hao Yan’s expertise has upgraded the nanomedicine design to be a fully programmable robotic system, able to perform its mission entirely on its own.

“These nanorobots can be programmed to transport molecular payloads and cause on-site tumor blood supply blockages, which can lead to tissue death and shrink the tumor,” said Baoquan Ding, a professor at the NCNST, located in Beijing, China.

*Nanorobots to the rescue*
To perform their study, the scientists took advantage of a well-known mouse tumor model, where human cancer cells are injected into a mouse to induce aggressive tumor growth.

Once the tumor was growing, the nanorobots were deployed to come to the rescue.

Each nanorobot is made from a flat, rectangular DNA origami sheet, 90 nanometers by 60 nanometers in size. A key blood-clotting enzyme, called thrombin, is attached to the surface.

Thrombin can block tumor blood flow by clotting the blood within the vessels that feed tumor growth, causing a sort of tumor mini-heart attack, and leading to tumor tissue death.

First, an average of four thrombin molecules was attached to a flat DNA scaffold. Next, the flat sheet was folded in on itself like a sheet of paper into a circle to make a hollow tube.

They were injected with an IV into a mouse, then traveled throughout the bloodstream, homing in on the tumors.

The key to programming a nanorobot that only attacks a cancer cell was to include a special payload on its surface, called a DNA aptamer. The DNA aptamer could specifically target a protein, called nucleolin, that is made in high amounts only on the surface of tumor endothelial cells---and not found on the surface of healthy cells.

Once bound to the tumor blood vessel surface, the nanorobot was programmed, like the notorious Trojan horse, to deliver its unsuspecting drug cargo in the very heart of the tumor, exposing an enzyme called thrombin that is key to blood clotting.

The nanorobots worked fast, congregating in large numbers to quickly surround the tumor just hours after injection.

*Safe and sound design*
First and foremost, the team showed that the nanorobots were safe and effective in shrinking tumors.

“The nanorobot proved to be safe and immunologically inert for use in normal mice and, also in Bama miniature pigs, showing no detectable changes in normal blood coagulation or cell morphology,” said Yuliang Zhao, also a professor at NCNST and lead scientist of the international collaborative team.

Most importantly, there was no evidence of the nanorobots spreading into the brain where it could cause unwanted side effects, such as a stroke.

“The nanorobots are decidedly safe in the normal tissues of mice and large animals,” said Guangjun Nie, another professor at the NCNST and a key member of the collaborative team.

The treatment blocked tumor blood supply and generated tumor tissue damage within 24 hours while having no effect on healthy tissues. After attacking tumors, most of the nanorobots were cleared and degraded from the body after 24 hours.

By two days, there was evidence of advanced thrombosis, and 3 days, thrombi in all tumor vessels were observed.

The key is to trigger thrombin only when it is inside tumor blood vessels. Also, in the melanoma mouse model, 3 out of 8 mice receiving the nanorobot therapy showed complete regression of the tumors. The median survival time more than doubled, extending from 20.5 to 45 days.

They also tried their system in a test of a primary mouse lung cancer model, which mimics the human clinical course of lung cancer patients. They showed shrinkage of tumor tissues after a 2-week treatment.

*Science of the very small goes big*
For Yan, the important study milestone represents the end of the beginning for nanomedicine.

“The thrombin delivery DNA nanorobot constitutes a major advance in the application of DNA nanotechnology for cancer therapy,” said Yan. “In a melanoma mouse model, the nanorobot not only affected the primary tumor but also prevented the formation of metastasis, showing promising therapeutic potential.”

Yan and his collaborators are now actively pursuing clinical partners to further develop this technology.

“I think we are much closer to real, practical medical applications of the technology,” said Yan. “Combinations of different rationally designed nanorobots carrying various agents may help to accomplish the ultimate goal of cancer research: the eradication of solid tumors and vascularized metastases. Furthermore, the current strategy may be developed as a drug delivery platform for the treatment of other diseases by modification of the geometry of the nanostructures, the targeting groups and the loaded cargoes.”

This work was supported by grants from National Basic Research Plan of China (MoST Program 2016YFA0201601), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31730032, 21222311, 21573051, 91127021, the National Distinguished Young Scientists program 31325010), Innovation Research Group of National Natural Science Foundation (11621505, 21721002), Beijing Municipal Science & Technology Commission (Z161100000116035, Z161100000116036), CAS Interdisciplinary Innovation Team, K. C. Wong Education Foundation and US National Institutes of Health Director’s Transformative Research Award (R01GM104960-01).


Written by: Joe Caspermeyer

Cancer-fighting nanorobots programmed to seek and destroy tumors | The Biodesign Institute | ASU

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese research advances highlighted in special issue of Human Gene Therapy*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-02-17 02:40:48|Editor: Chengcheng




WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 (Xinhua) -- A special issue of peer-reviewed journal Human Gene Therapy was published on Friday, documenting China's progress, opportunities and challenges in its biomedical research.

"This special issue, released coincident with the New Year in China, illustrates the tremendous scientific progress that has been made at certain leading institutions in China working in cell and gene therapy," says its editor-in-chief Terence R. Flotte, professor of University of Massachusetts Medical School.

The issue has six research articles and 12 special commentaries and review articles covering the world's first gene therapy product for cancer, the rare diseases registry system, and genomic editing and stem-cell therapy advances.

Gendicine, developed by a Shenzhen bio-tech company was approved in 2003 by China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) as a first-in-class gene therapy product to treat head and neck cancer. It is the first-ever approved gene therapy drug in the world.

In a review article, drug evaluation scientists from CFDA discuss the principles on which clinical review of cellular therapy, including CAR-T products in China are based.

The special issue shows that China is helping to advance gene and cell therapy and genome editing research by creating novel viral and nonviral vectors for gene delivery and innovative applications of CRISPR technology in a broad range of disease areas.

"We hope that these particular focused commentaries can provide a roadmap for gene therapy scientists from other parts of the world to identify important achievements and opportunities for future collaboration," Flotte said.

The journal is owned by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. publishers, a New York-based media company known for establishing authoritative peer-reviewed journals in many promising areas of science and biomedical research.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Adam WANG SHANGHAI MEGA

*Big data help ease holiday crowds in Shanghai*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-02-18 21:39:08|





SHANGHAI, Feb. 18 (Xinhua) -- Shanghai municipal government issued a notice Sunday afternoon on its official Wechat account, advising visitors against flocking to over-crowded tourist attractions.

The Oriental Pearl Radio and TV Tower, Shanghai Museum, and Madame Tussauds wax museum were among a number of tourist sites that had or were about to reach their maximum capacity Sunday afternoon, according to a real-time monitoring system launched by the municipal authorities.

Through the system based on big data analysis, tourists in Shanghai can keep an eye on the size of the crowds in more than 70 tourist attractions in the city and make sensible decisions to avoid the crowds during the holiday.

Shanghai received some 2.54 million visitors during the first four days of the week-long Chinese Lunar New Year holiday, according to Shanghai Municipal Tourism Administration.

Copyright © 2000-2018 XINHUANET.com All rights reserved.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Galactic Penguin SST

*"*_*China unveils the world's largest synthetic sapphire crystal *








Spoiler: Links



https://defence.pk/pdf/attachments/...7/?temp_hash=a8f5dda1372b678985d8842c8c06d834
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DV9zQoQUMAAHbnF.jpg
https://twitter.com/PDChina/status/963615592644145153



▲ The world's largest synthetic sapphire crystal was unveiled in China

*450公斤级！世界最大人造蓝宝石晶体诞生*

2018年02月14日09:11 

记者13日从呼和浩特市赛罕区委宣传部获悉，全球最大450公斤级超大尺寸高品质泡生法蓝宝石晶体在内蒙古晶环电子材料有限公司生产车间成功面世。该晶体为晶环电子研发团队自主研发，经过近8个月的设计开发、设备加工、煅烧、长晶等过程，于13日小试成功。经初步检测，该晶体重量445公斤，外形规整，通体透明，无裂纹，无晶界，气泡较少，可应用于LED的4英寸晶棒有效长度达到4550mm以上。

　　泡生法是目前国际上主流的晶石生产方法，也是世界各国致力攻关的生产工艺。2017年俄罗斯的350公斤人造蓝宝石被确定为全球最大，这一纪录在一年后即被我国打破。

　　晶环电子副总经理、总工程师欧阳鹏根向科技日报记者介绍，泡生法人造蓝宝石的生产技术瓶颈在于自动化设备研发和热产设计，每增加一定体积和质量，核心技术的内容和研发过程就会发生根本性的变化。也就是说，450公斤级和350公斤级人造晶石的核心技术有着本质区别，从这个意义上讲，我国在此领域的技术研发和生产工艺已经超过俄罗斯等世界主要人造晶石生产国。

　　据了解，蓝宝石晶体是半导体GaN/ Al2O3发光二极管（LED）、大规模集成电路SOI和SOS及超导纳米结构薄膜等理想的衬底材料，属于国家重点支持和鼓励发展的能源材料及光电子材料。

　　“450公斤级的研发成功，将很快改变我国人造晶石领域内200公斤和250公斤级批量生产的现状，将使我国大尺寸蓝宝石材料彻底摆脱进口依赖，大大提高我国在蓝宝石产业的核心竞争力。”晶环电子总经理张俊这样评价。（记者 张景阳）

The world's largest synthetic sapphire crystal was unveiled in China on Monday. The 445kg crystal, which can be used to produce 4-inch sapphire ingots for LEDs, marks a breakthrough for China's research and development in new materials.

The crystal research and development team in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, succeeded after nearly eight months of design and development, equipment processing, calcination, growth and other processes, on its 13th attempts. After preliminary testing, the weight of the crystal is 445 kg, the shape regular, the whole body transparent, without any cracks, without grain boundaries, presenting less bubbles. It can be used in 4-inch LED with an effective length of more than 4550mm.

Russia's 350 kilos synthetic sapphire was presented as the largest in the world in 2017, a record that was broken by China in less than a year's time.

In this sense, China's R&D and production technology in this field has surpassed the world's major producers of artificial crystal in Russia.

It is understood that the sapphire crystal is an ideal substrate material for semiconductor GaN / Al2O3 light-emitting diode (LED), large-scale integrated circuits SOI and SOS and superconducting nanostructured thin films, and belongs to the energy materials and optoelectronic materials that are supported and encouraged by the state.

The success of the 450kg class R&D will soon change the status of mass production of 200kg and 250kg in China's man-made crystal. This will enable China to completely get rid of its dependence on imported large-size sapphire and greatly enhance China's core competition in the sapphire industry. 


http://scitech.people.com.cn/n1/2018/0214/c1057-29823975.html
*,,*​​_

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*Chinese scientists find how bats carry viruses without getting sick*

2018-02-23 09:47 Xinhua _Editor: Gu Liping_

Chinese scientists have identified the secret of bats that harbor highly pathogenic viruses like Ebola, Marburg and SARS coronavirus but do not show clinical signs of disease.

In a paper published on Thursday in the journal Cell Host & Microbe, scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China find that in bats, an antiviral immune pathway called the STING-interferon pathway is dampened, so bats can maintain just enough defense against illness without triggering a heightened immune reaction.

"We believe there is a balance between bats and the pathogens they carry," said the paper's senior author Zhou Peng.

"This work demonstrated that in order to maintain a balance with viruses, bats may have evolved to dampen certain pathways," Zhou said.

According to researchers, in humans and other mammals, an immune-based over-response to one of these and other pathogenic viruses can trigger severe illness. For example, in humans, an activated STING pathway is linked with severe autoimmune diseases.

"In human history, we have been chasing infectious diseases one after another," said Zhou, "But bats appear to be a 'super-mammal' to these deadly viruses."

By identifying a weakened but not defunct STING pathway in bats, researchers have some new insight into how bats fine-tune antiviral defenses to balance an effective, but not an overt, response against viruses.

They hypothesize that this defense strategy evolved as part of three interconnected features of bat biology: they are flying mammals, have a long lifespan, and host a large viral reservoir.

"Adaptation to flight likely caused positive selection of multiple bat innate immune and DNA damage repair genes," Zhou said.

These adaptations may have shaped certain antiviral pathways including STING, interferon to make them good viral reservoir hosts and achieve a tolerable balance.

Zhou told Xinhua that the study has provided a possibility that people can learn from bats in combating virus although whether this mechanism can be directly used in humans is still unknown.

http://www.ecns.cn/2018/02-23/293220.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*Chinese scientists find critical gene for heart development*

2018-02-28 13:25 Xinhua _Editor: Gu Liping_

Chinese scientists identified a gene critical for the development of the network of nerves wrapped around the heart and its surrounding vasculature, according to a recently published study.

The discovery can potentially improve the prevention and treatment of diseases like coronary artery disease, a leading global cause of mortality, said the study appeared on Tuesday in the U.S. journal Science Signaling.

Zhang Zhen from Shanghai Children's Medical Center and his colleagues pinpointed the gene "Wdpcp" as an important player in coronary plexus formation in mice.

This gene is known for its role in the formation of cell cilia, or eyelash-like structures that help control locomotion.

The coronary arteries and the nerves surrounding them are essential for providing oxygen and nutrition to the heart muscle.

Their development involves two major steps: the cells from the heart's inner lining form the primitive coronary plexus, which then begins the remodeling process by recruiting cells from outside of the heart, Zhang told Xinhua.

The remodeling stage is essential for smooth muscle cells, the building blocks of artery walls, to surround the vessels in the primitive coronary plexus.

Studying mice with mutated Wdpcp, the researchers found that although the primitive coronary plexus formed properly and rather quickly, the remodeling stage was defective because of impaired migration of cells from the outside of the heart, ultimately stunting the formation of arterial walls.

Similarly, mice with a complete deletion of Wdpcp exhibited the same remodeling defects, and they are notably more severe than those of the Wdpcp mutants.

Zhang's method may serve as a viable animal model for studying the remodeling stages of coronary artery development.

http://www.ecns.cn/2018/02-28/293945.shtml


----------



## cirr

*Chinese scientists develop battery operable at extreme low temperature*

2018-03-01 09:37 Xinhua _Editor: Gu Liping_

Chinese researchers have developed a battery with eco-friendly organic compound electrodes that can function at minus 70 degrees Celsius, far colder than the temperature at which lithium-ion batteries lose most of their ability to conduct and store energy.

The findings, published Wednesday in the journal Joule, could aid engineers in developing technology suited to withstand the most frigid regions on Earth or the coldest reaches of outer space.

Most of previous batteries perform at only 50 percent of their optimal level when the temperature hits minus 20 degrees Celsius, and by minus 40 degrees Celsius, lithium-ion batteries only have about 12 percent of their room temperature capacity.

This can be severely limiting when it comes to operating batteries in space, where temperatures can dip to minus 157 degrees Celsius, or in parts of Canada and Russia, where temperatures can be lower than minus 50 degrees Celsius.

Chinese researchers have found a design that can function even where other batteries might fail.

Xia Yongyao, a battery researcher at Fudan University said: "It is well known that both the electrolyte (the chemical medium that carries ions between electrodes) and electrodes (the positively charged cathode and negatively charged anode) have great influence on the battery performance."

When it gets cold, the conventional electrolytes that lithium-ion batteries often use become sluggish conductors and the electrochemical reactions that occur at the interface of the electrolyte and the electrode struggle to continue.

Xia's team experimented with using an ethyl acetate-based electrolyte, which has a low freezing point that enables it to conduct a charge even at extremely low temperatures.

For the electrodes, they used two organic compounds, PTPAn cathode and PNTCDA anode. Unlike the electrodes used in lithium-ion batteries, these organic compounds don't rely on intercalation, the process of continuously integrating ions into their molecular matrix, which slows down as the temperature drops.

"Compared to the transition-metal-containing electrodes materials in conventional lithium-ion batteries, organic materials are abundant, inexpensive, and environmentally friendly," Xia said.

He estimated the price of the electrode materials at about one third of the price of electrodes in a lithium-ion battery.

However, the battery will still require some tweaking before it is ready to leave the lab, because its energy per unit mass is still low compared with commercialized lithium-ion batteries, and the assembly process needs to be further optimized.

http://www.ecns.cn/2018/03-01/294064.shtml


----------



## JSCh

*American, Chinese scientists develop new catalyst to help harvest, store clean energy*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-06 05:11:54|Editor: Mu Xuequan

WASHINGTON, March 5 (Xinhua) -- American and Chinese scientists have synthesized a new, dual-atom catalyst to serve as a platform for artificial photosynthesis, a move that may help harvest and store solar energy more efficiently.

In a study reported on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, scientists displayed an iridium catalyst with only two active metal centers, which can directly harvest solar energy and store the energy in chemical bonds, similar to how photosynthesis is performed but with higher efficiencies and lower cost.

Dunwei Wang, Boston College Associate Professor of Chemistry and the paper's lead author, said, "It addresses the critical challenge that solar energy is intermittent," using the "atomically dispersed catalyst" featuring two atoms.

Researchers synthesized an iridium dinuclear heterogeneous catalyst in a facile photochemical way. They reported that the catalyst showed outstanding stability and high activity toward water oxidation, an essential process in natural and artificial photosynthesis.

According to researchers, challenges are that most active heterogeneous catalysts are often poorly defined in their atomic structures, which makes it difficult to evaluate the detailed mechanisms at the molecular level.

Heterogeneous catalysts, widely used in large-scale industrial chemical transformations, involve the form of catalysis where the phase of the catalyst differs from that of the reactants.

Wang said they managed to determine the smallest active and most durable heterogeneous catalyst unit for water oxidation, previously known only to be done for homogeneous catalysts, whose durability was poor.

They also performed X-ray experiments to determine the structure of the iridium catalyst at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Wang said the team was surprised by the simplicity and durability of the catalyst, combined with the high activity toward the desired reaction of water oxidation.

Scientists from the University of California, Irvin; Yale, Tufts, and China's Tsinghua and Nanjing Universities also participated the research.


Yanyan Zhao, Ke R. Yang, Zechao Wang, Xingxu Yan, Sufeng Cao, Yifan Ye, Qi Dong, Xizi Zhang, James E. Thorne, Lei Jin, Kelly L. Materna, Antonios Trimpalis, Hongye Bai, Sirine C. Fakra, Xiaoyan Zhong, Peng Wang, Xiaoqing Pan, Jinghua Guo, Maria Flytzani-Stephanopoulos, Gary W. Brudvig, Victor S. Batista, Dunwei Wang. *Stable iridium dinuclear heterogeneous catalysts supported on metal-oxide substrate for solar water oxidation*. _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_, 2018; 201722137 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1722137115​


----------



## cirr

*Chinese scientists create gas detector as sensitive as dog's sniffer*

2018-03-08 09:25 Xinhua _Editor: Gu Liping_

A team of Chinese scientists has used *graphene* to create an artificial gas detector that is as good as a dog's nose.

The study, reported Wednesday in ACS Nano, a monthly scientific journal of the American Chemical Society, showed that the graphene-based nanoscrolls can mimic a dog's sensitive sniffer, which is lined with millions of tiny capillaries.

It is well known that dogs have a better sense of smell than humans. For years, scientists have been trying to develop an artificial detector that is just as good as a canine's nose.

Drawing inspiration from the capillary structure, researchers from South China Normal University and Beihang University found a way to modify the graphene with a polymer to make high-quality nanoscrolls.

These nanoscrolls have a large surface area like that in dog's nose. They are stable at high temperatures, and are strong and durable.

Previous studies have produced the graphene-based nanoscrolls, which are nanosheets of graphene rolled up in continuous and uniform manner.

But they are difficult to manufacture, consume a lot of energy and difficult to scale up.

And past studies have used raw graphene or modified graphene that either left behind some unrolled structures, or shriveled up and aggregated, respectively.

The team prepared graphene-based nanoscrolls with the addition of poly or sodium-p-stryrenesulfonate, using the freeze-drying method to create uniform, unaggregated structures.

It showed that the nanoscrolls had a wide, tubular shape, and almost all of the graphene was rolled up.

The researchers then incorporated the nanoscrolls into a gas sensor, which was highly selective and sensitive.

They said that this method had the potential for large-scale production.

http://www.ecns.cn/2018/03-08/294980.shtml


----------



## JSCh

*Fiber-fermenting bacteria improve health of type 2 diabetes patients*
March 8, 2018, Rutgers University



​Gut bacteria in culture. Credit: Tao Liu and Xiaoyan Pang/Shanghai Jiao Tong University

The fight against type 2 diabetes may soon improve thanks to a pioneering high-fiber diet study led by a Rutgers University-New Brunswick professor.

Promotion of a select group of gut bacteria by a diet high in diverse fibers led to better blood glucose control, greater weight loss and better lipid levels in people with type 2 diabetes, according to research published today in _Science_.

The study, underway for six years, provides evidence that eating more of the right dietary fibers may rebalance the gut microbiota, or the ecosystem of bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract that help digest food and are important for overall human health.

"Our study lays the foundation and opens the possibility that fibers targeting this group of gut bacteria could eventually become a major part of your diet and your treatment," said Liping Zhao, the study's lead author and a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology, School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.

Type 2 diabetes, one of the most common debilitating diseases, develops when the pancreas makes too little insulin - a hormone that helps glucose enter cells for use as energy - or the body doesn't use insulin well.

In the gut, many bacteria break down carbohydrates, such as dietary fibers, and produce short-chain fatty acids that nourish our gut lining cells, reduce inflammation and help control appetite. A shortage of short-chain fatty acids has been associated with type 2 diabetes and other diseases. Many clinical studies also show that increasing dietary fiber intake could alleviate type 2 diabetes, but the effectiveness can vary due to the lack of understanding of the mechanisms, according to Zhao, who works in New Jersey Institute for Food, Nutrition, and Health at Rutgers-New Brunswick.

In research based in China, Zhao and scientists from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Yan Lam, a research assistant professor in Zhao's lab at Rutgers, randomized patients with type 2 diabetes into two groups. The control group received standard patient education and dietary recommendations. The treatment group was given a large amount of many types of dietary fibers while ingesting a similar diet for energy and major nutrients. Both groups took the drug acarbose to help control blood glucose.

The high-fiber diet included whole grains, traditional Chinese medicinal foods rich in dietary fibers and prebiotics, which promote growth of short-chain fatty acid-producing gut bacteria. After 12 weeks, patients on the high-fiber diet had greater reduction in a three-month average of blood glucose levels. Their fasting blood glucose levels also dropped faster and they lost more weight.

Surprisingly, of the 141 strains of short-chain fatty acid-producing gut bacteria identified by next-generation sequencing, only 15 are promoted by consuming more fibers and thus are likely to be the key drivers of better health. Bolstered by the high-fiber diet, they became the dominant strains in the gut after they boosted levels of the short-chain fatty acids butyrate and acetate. These acids created a mildly acidic gut environment that reduced populations of detrimental bacteria and led to increased insulin production and better blood glucose control.

The study supports establishing a healthy gut microbiota as a new nutritional approach for preventing and managing type 2 diabetes.



https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-03-fiber-fermenting-bacteria-health-diabetes-patients.html

Liping Zhao, Feng Zhang, Xiaoying Ding, Guojun Wu, Yan Y. Lam, Xuejiao Wang, Huaqing Fu, Xinhe Xue, Chunhua Lu, Jilin Ma, Lihua Yu, Chengmei Xu, Zhongying Ren, Ying Xu, Songmei Xu, Hongli Shen, Xiuli Zhu, Yu Shi, Qingyun Shen, Weiping Dong, Rui Liu, Yunxia Ling, Yue Zeng, Xingpeng Wang, Qianpeng Zhang, Jing Wang, Linghua Wang, Yanqiu Wu, Benhua Zeng, Hong Wei, Menghui Zhang, Yongde Peng, Chenhong Zhang. *Gut bacteria selectively promoted by dietary fibers alleviate type 2 diabetes*. _Science_, 2018; 359 (6380): 1151 DOI: 10.1126/science.aao5774​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese, Japanese scientists identify new material for making quantum computers*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-09 03:28:45|Editor: Mu Xuequan




WASHINGTON, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Chinese and Japanese researchers have found a new kind of topological superconductor that can become a promising candidate in making the future quantum computers.

In a paper published on Thursday in the journal _Science_, Zhang Peng, a post-doctoral researcher at University of Tokyo, and his colleagues attained three key types of measurement necessary to analyze the quantum phase of Fe (Te, Se) in detail.

They confirmed that the surface of the material is suitable to support an exotic quasiparticles called Majorana bound states (MBSs). The MBSs was first proposed by Italian theoretical physicist Ettore Majorana. Utilizing the properties of MBSs is now believed as a promising path towards topological quantum computing.

According to researchers, the Majorana bound state, existing on edges of two-dimensional topological superconductors, is a fermion that is its own antiparticle. An exchange of two MBSs can result in the change of the system state, thus offering possibilities for quantum computing.

Quantum computers are poised to revolutionize society by tackling problems that conventional computers cannot. But most quantum computers currently in development are susceptible to the problem of decoherence, where the quantum state that encodes information degrades, which causes intolerable computing errors.

Zhang Peng told Xinhua, "a solution would be to develop topological quantum computers, where the integrity of the quantum state is protected by the topological properties of the system."

"In topological state, the local noises cannot disturb the topological properties unless the noises are so loud to cripple the whole system," Zhang explained.

But identifying materials that would be suitable to host MBSs is extremely challenging, according to Zhang.

He said this is the first time that the topological superconducting is found on crystals of Fe (Te, Se).

Unlike other topological superconductors identified to date, Zhang's team created the topological superconducting in a single crystal, on which the stable MBSs can be achieved relatively easily.

"It can promote the development of quantum computing," he said.


----------



## JSCh

*China Focus: Chinese scientists find key factor activating genome expression in human embryos*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-09 01:07:55|Editor: Jiaxin



By Xinhua writer Quan Xiaoshu

BEIJING, March 9 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have identified the crucial factor that activates gene expression in human embryos, bringing them a step closer to explaining the mystery of human development at a very early embryonic stage, according to a paper published on the website of the scientific journal, _Cell_.

Human life starts from a fertilized egg. However, in the first two days after fertilization, almost no genes are expressed in human embryos. Previously scientists did not know how genomes become active and start gene expression in early embryos.

"What activates gene expression? The puzzle has been troubling scientists around the world for a long time. We were the first to find it," said Liu Jiang, senior author of the paper.

During human growth, different genes must be expressed at the right time and right place. The genetic code stored in DNA is "interpreted" by gene expression, which gives rise to all the particular features of an individual.

A team from Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), led by Liu, together with a group from Center for Reproductive Medicine, Shandong University, under Chen Zijiang, and a group from Guangzhou Medical University under Liu Jianqiao, found that Oct-4, a transcriptional factor, plays a crucial role in activating zygotic genome expression.

In the first two days, a human zygote will grow into eight cells after three cell divisions. Once the embryo has eight cells, it will generate a sufficient amount of Oct-4, which will directly bind with DNA and switch on the gene expression, Liu said.

The research also found genome activation follows a particular sequence. "The older genes usually start expression at early embryonic stages, and younger ones at later stages," Liu said.

Humans have more than 20,000 genes, a reflection of a long chain of evolution. Some genes originated at the beginning of life on Earth, and are thus very old genes. Some originated in mammals, and are young ones. Some originated only in humans, and are deemed the youngest.

"We found that the expression of older genes usually occur at earlier embryonic stages, as these genes, shared by more life species, are needed during earlier development," Liu said.

But how human genome differentiates between old and young genes is still unclear and needs further study.

The study also found that transposons, a class of DNA elements, are very active in early human embryos, which might be a trigger of evolution.

"These transposons can jump from one position to another in a genome, and introduce DNA mutations. Since they are only active in early embryos, but not in differentiated tissues, the mutations caused by their mobility are more likely to be passed to the germ line, and then to the next generations," Liu said.

"As DNA mutations drive evolution, we believe that these active transposons have a big impact on human evolution," he said.

Before this study, the major hurdle in this research was the limited number of human embryos for experiment. Similar research would normally consume millions of animal embryos, but acquiring so many human embryos was neither possible nor ethical.

"We optimized the experiment methods so that the research could perform the assay with a very small number of human embryos," Liu said.

According to the paper, the scientists used just 50 to 100 cells, all derived from in vitro fertilization with written consent from donor couples.


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese, American scientists "light up" lung cancer mutations*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 05:13:18|Editor: Mu Xuequan




WASHINGTON, March 7 (Xinhua) -- Chinese and American scientists have found a new way to identify non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLC), the most common type of lung cancer, non-invasively.

In a study reported on Wednesday in the journal _Science Translational Medicine_, the scientists used a radio-labeled chemical tracer to mark certain cancer mutations, which can help determine sensitivity to and the efficacy of a therapy called tyrosine kinase inhibition in NSCLC patients.

NSCLC with those mutations can be best treated with drugs called tyrosine kinase inhibitors.

The inhibitors can extend median survival time of cancer patients with a mutation in the epidermal growth factor receptor or EGFR protein to greater than two years, more than twice the survival of patients receiving only chemotherapy.

However, it is not easy for clinicians to swiftly tell which cancers have this mutation and are therefore likely to respond to tyrosine kinase inhibition, according to researchers.

Although several techniques are currently available to assess EGFR mutations, these methods require biopsied samples and can often fail because of insufficient sample quantities for analysis.

An international team from Harbin Medical University, Fudan University and Stanford University has developed a chemical tracer that can light up EGFR mutations in the tumor cells, so the positron emission tomography (PET) and computed tomography (CT) imaging scans can detect them.

"We develop a kind molecular probe called 18F-MPG that can bind specifically with EGFR mutations," Sun Xilin, the paper's lead author at the Fourth Hospital of Harbin Medical University, told Xinhua.

Researchers tested the tracer in animal models with NSCLC and in primary and metastatic tumors from people with the cancer. They found that EGFR mutation detection by labeled PET and CT scans and by traditional biopsy were in agreement nearly 85 percent of the time.

In the study, patients with the EGFR mutation, detected by the tracer, lived longer without a progression in their cancers and they responded to tyrosine kinase inhibitors at a higher rate than those without the mutation.

"When we know EGFR mutations, a total of 70 percent of cancer patients respond to the therapy, but only 20 percent respond if we don't know their mutations," Sun said.


----------



## JSCh

*New chip technology can lead to better quantum computing power: study*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-09 22:47:14|Editor: Chengcheng




LONDON, March 9 (Xinhua) -- An international team, including Chinese researchers, has demonstrated a large-scale integrated quantum photonic circuit, which may pave the way for manufacturing massive components for the realization of an optical quantum computer, according to a study recently released by the University of Bristol.

Integrated Quantum Photonics allows the routing and control of single particles of light with intrinsically high stability and precision, however to date it has been limited to small-scale demonstrations in which only a small number of components are integrated on a chip.

Scaling up these quantum circuits is of paramount importance to increasing the complexity and computational power of modern quantum information processing technologies.

In this study, published in the journal _Science_, researchers managed to integrate in a single chip 550 optical components, allowing the integrated photonic chip to entangle photons to incredible levels of precision. The chip was realized using a scalable silicon photonics technology, similar to today's electronic circuits.

"Our quantum chip allows us to reach unprecedented levels of precision and control of multidimensional entanglement, a key factor in many quantum information tasks of computing and communication," said lead author, Dr Jianwei Wang from the University of Bristol.

The chip sets a new standard for complexity and precision of quantum photonics, with immediate applications for quantum technologies, according to the study.

"The development of powerful large-scale integrated photonic quantum chips will provide an efficient route to the future applications in the fields of quantum communication, quantum computing and many others," said Prof. Qihuang Gong, the lead academic from Peking University.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*Chinese scientists find gene that increases corn yields*

2018-03-10 09:25 Xinhua _Editor: Wang Fan_

Chinese scientists have found a gene that can help grow bigger grains of corn to raise yields.

The gene, named urb2, is crucial in the growth of grains, according to the research by Henan Agricultural University and Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

The result of the research can help increase corn yields and lay a foundation for related studies in breeding, said Tang Jihua, head of the research team.

The research results were published in the journal New Phytologist.

http://www.ecns.cn/2018/03-10/295245.shtml


----------



## Galactic Penguin SST

*Construction of gravitational wave telescopes in Tibet underway*

March 13, 2018

China is under smooth progress towards the world's highest altitude gravitational wave telescopes in Tibet Autonomous Region to detect the faintest echoes resonating from the universe, a project insider disclosed.

The main part for the first stage of the "Ngari plan", which was launched by China in March 2017 to eyeball the Big Bang cosmic waves at Ngari, Tibet, is almost completed, Zhang Xinmin, chief scientist of the project said on the sidelines of the ongoing first session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

The project will start operations in 2020 and observation results will arise in 2022, added Zhang, a senior researcher at the Institute of High Energy Physics in the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

At the first stage of the two-phased project, a telescope code-named Ngari No.1 would be constructed at 5,250 meters above sea level to enable the first measurement of primordial gravitational waves in the northern hemisphere, according to the scientist.

The first telescope is expected to be installed at the end of 2019 and operational in 2020, added Zhang, also a member of the 13th CPPCC National Committee.

The second stage, according to him, involves a series of telescopes, code-named Ngari No. 2, to be located at an altitude of about 6,000 meters, to realize more accurate measurement of the waves.

Chinese scientists are now working on design of the first telescope with a team of Stanford University, and they would cooperate more in the future, he said.

The primordial gravitational waves, different from gravitational waves produced by motions and evolution of the heavenly bodies, were generated by the first tremors of the Big Bang.

Detection of the primordial gravitational waves is of great significance to studying the origin and evolution of the universe, said Zhang.

Ngari is considered as one of the world's four best places for astronomers to gaze into the faint echoes from the earliest days of the universe given its thin air, clear skies and minimal human activity.

The other three spots to detect the tiny twists in cosmic light are Atacama Desert, Chile and Antarctica in the southern hemisphere, as well as Greenland in the northern hemisphere.

The Ngari observatory, once constructed, will be the first of its kind in the northern hemisphere for China to carry out experiments regarding detection of primordial gravitational waves.

By then, the Ngari observatory, alongside the existing South Pole Telescope and the facility in Chile’s Atacama Desert, will cover both the northern and southern hemispheres.

Both space exploration and ground-based research have been employed by China to gaze into the remote universe.

The telescope in Ngari and FAST, a 500-meter aperture spherical radio telescope in southwest China’s Guizhou province, dedicate to probing waves from ground-based research facilities, while the Taiji and Tianqin projects, proposed by CAS and Sun Yat-sen University respectively, focus on detection by launch of satellites. 








Spoiler: Links



https://defence.pk/pdf/attachments/...7/?temp_hash=bb2e794117054a3680c845311932f080
http://en.people.cn/NMediaFile/2018/0313/FOREIGN201803131027000353274509026.jpg
http://en.people.cn/n3/2018/0313/c90000-9436318.html



▲ The Ngari Observatory 








Spoiler: Links



https://defence.pk/pdf/attachments/...8/?temp_hash=bb2e794117054a3680c845311932f080
http://en.people.cn/NMediaFile/2018/0313/FOREIGN201803131027000592914584468.jpg
http://en.people.cn/n3/2018/0313/c90000-9436318.html



▲ The Ngari Observatory at night

http://en.people.cn/n3/2018/0313/c90000-9436318.html

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*Chinese scientists develop bionic nanodevice to combat breast cancer*

2018-03-15 09:08 Xinhua _Editor: Gu Liping_

Chinese scientists have developed a bionic nanodevice that could provide a strategy for targeted therapy for metastatic breast cancer.

Scientists from the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica under the Chinese Academy of Sciences have constructed a nanodevice, named rHS-DTX, which has a red blood cell coating and can be sent into the body. Their research was published in Advanced Functional Materials on March 1.

The device has been tested on metastatic breast cancer in mice, and achieved a tumor inhibiting rate of 98.2 percent and a lung metastasis suppression rate of 99.6 percent. No severe toxicity was observed in the major organs and blood of the mice.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women worldwide, and there is currently no cure for metastatic breast cancer.

Chemotherapy is still the main treatment for primary tumors and metastasis of breast cancer, but it is not able to effectively differentiate cancer cells from normal cells. The new nanodevice has shown a high efficacy in suppressing targeted tumors.

China has recently seen an increase in research applying nanotechnology to medical treatments.


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese, American scientists find new way to accelerate wound healing*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-15 03:36:36|Editor: yan




WASHINGTON, March 14 (Xinhua) -- Chinese and American scientists identified a new immune target that may speed up the healing of skin wounds.

The study, published on Wednesday in the journal _Science Translational Medicine_, has found that a molecular signaling pathway helps to regulate the small, membrane-surrounded structures released by cells called extracellular vesicles from connective tissue stem cells.

The vesicles, containing the interleukin-1 receptor antagonist or IL-1RA, a kind of cytokine, can promote rapid wound healing.

It has shown that vesicles produced by gum connective tissue stem cells released larger amounts of IL-1RA in wounded gum tissue than vesicles produced by skin tissue stem cells in wounded skin, which might help explain why gum wounds in mammals heal more rapidly than skin wounds.

Led by Kou Xiaoxing, a stomatologist with Peking University School and Hospital of Stomatology in Beijing and visiting researcher at University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine, the team injected Anakinra, the FDA-approved medicine of IL-1RA which is used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, into mouse gum and skin wounds.

They found that the drug significantly accelerated wound healing compared to control mice.

Kou told Xinhua that "IL-1RA can inhibit inflammation caused by interleukin-1, which can improve the healing. Inflammation leads to progression of many diseases including rheumatoid arthritis, but they have different pathogenesis."

Small extracellular vesicles containing IL-1RA are also successful in speeding up the delayed wound healing process that occurs in diabetic mice, they have found.


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> Public Release: 23-Jan-2018
> * A new family of aerodynamic configurations of hypersonic airplanes *
> Science China Press
> 
> 
> ​This is a principle test model (left) and an artist concept for future applications (right) of HIACs. ©Science China Press
> 
> Hypersonic vehicles, which flight at Mach numbers lager than five (flight velocity more than 6000 km/h), will serve as a more convenient and efficient transport tool than present subsonic airplanes for long-distance journeys in future. Typically, it only takes a couple of hours from Beijing to New York. Recent interest in these vehicles has grown intensively, and various types of innovative designs have been proposed and studied.
> 
> Despite entering the age of hypersonic flight, there still exist many problems to resolve. How to design an advanced aerodynamic configuration is one of them. Prof. Kai Cui, Dr. Yao Xiao, Dr. Ying-Zhou Xu, and Dr. Guang-Li Li from State Key Laboratory of High Temperature Gas Dynamics, Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences tried to tackle this problem in a long time. After more than seven years investigation, they first proposed a family of innovative configurations named "Hypersonic I-shaped Aerodynamic Configurations". Their work was published as the cover article of _SCIENCE CHINA Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy_ (2018, 61(2), 024722).
> 
> In general, there are at least three objectives in designing an aerodynamic configuration, the high lift to drag ratio (L/D), the high volumetric efficiency and the high lift coefficient. Designers always take the high L/D during the cruise state as the primary goal because the flight range is linearly proportional to the L/D according to the famous Breguet's equation. In addition, a vehicle should provide sufficient space to contain equipments, passengers and cargoes as many as possible. Furthermore, the aerodynamic lift coefficient should be enhanced in whatever way possible. This is because a vehicle with high lift may elevate the vehicle to a high altitude where the aero-thermal environment is efficiently improved owing to the low atmosphere density.
> 
> Unfortunately, it is difficult to obtain a high L/D for a generic configuration due to the presence of strong shock wave drag and massive viscosity in the hypersonic regime. Moreover, there exist strong contradictions among the L/D, the volumetric efficiency and the lift coefficient. Among the existing configurations, the waverider has been deemed the most promising because the containment of flow beneath the vehicle results in a high pressure being exerted on the lower surface. Yet a pure waverider with high L/D is always too thin to provide enough volume for fuel and payloads. Typically, the volumetric efficiency of the viscous optimized waverider is lower than 0.12. Although the freestream upper surface of a pure waverider can be morphed to an upwarp to enlarge the volume, but this canopy actually forms a compression surface on the upper part of the vehicle, which leads to an increase in both the aerodynamic drag and the negative lift, causing an overall reduction in L/D.
> 
> To aim at enhancing the aerodynamic performance of hypersonic aircraft with large volume requirements, a new concept that called high-pressure capturing wing (HCW) was first proposed by Kai Cui et al. Unlike generic configurations, an extra wing called the HCW is attached to the top of an upwarp airframe. Based on the shock wave compression theory, the high-pressure airflow compressed by the upper surface of the vehicle acts on the HCW when it flies in the hypersonic regime. Therefore, the aerodynamic lift significantly augments on the vehicle with only a small increase in drag, producing a correspondingly high increase in its L/D. Furthermore, such a concept particularly fits for vehicles with large volumes because the lift produced by the HCW increases with the increase of the compression angle in the upwarp.
> 
> Expanding on the philosophy of HCWs, a family of novel configurations is proposed in this letter. There are two lift surfaces in this configuration. The lower surface is a common compression surface, while the upper one is designed according to the idea of HCWs. The parts between the two wings are the airframe and the attachment struts. Because the cross-section of the configuration appears like the letter "I", it is thus named "Hypersonic I-shaped Aerodynamic Configuration (HIAC)".
> 
> In order to validate the advantages of HIACs, a test model with the volumetric efficiency 0.175 was generated as a typical example. Moreover, the leading edge profiles of both the low wing and the HCW were optimized by combined using the computational fluid dynamics, the design of experiments method, the surrogate models method, and the genetic algorithm. Subsequently, a numerical simulation work was carried out to evaluate the aerodynamic performances of the model. The results show that both the L/D and the lift coefficient drastically improve benefiting from the innovative configuration. The maximal L/D values at Mach number 5 to 7 are more than 4.5, while the increased percentages of corresponding values of the lift coefficient are about 60% comparing with generic configurations.
> 
> In the present study, only the profiles of the leading edges were taken as design variables of the optimization. The aerodynamic performances of the configuration may be further enhanced if the surface shape of the HCW is considered as optimization variables. The authors believe their present study will promote further research in the aerodynamic design of high-speed configurations, which may ultimately offer a new candidate for hypersonic flight vehicles.
> 
> ###​
> See the article: K. Cui, Y. Xiao, Y. Z. Xu, G. L. Li, "Hypersonic I-shaped aerodynamic configurations" _SCIENCE CHINA Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy_ 61(2), 024722(2018); doi: 10.1007/s11433-017-9117-8
> 
> http://engine.scichina.com/publisher/scp/journal/SCPMA/61/2/10.1007/s11433-017-9117-8?slug=full text https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11433-017-9117-8​
> A new family of aerodynamic configurations of hypersonic airplanes | EurekAlert! Science News
> 
> View attachment 449599​


*China builds world's fastest wind tunnel to spur spaceplane development*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-19 23:01:59|Editor: Mu Xuequan 



BEIJING, March 19 (Xinhua) -- China is building the world's fastest hypersonic wind tunnel to help with the development of spaceplanes.

"The 265-meter-long tunnel can be used to test hypersonic aircraft that can travel at speeds of up to Mach 25 (30, 625 kph), 25 times the speed of sound," Han Guilai, a researcher with China's State Key Laboratory of High Temperature Gas Dynamics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), told China Central Television over the weekend.

Han said the current wind tunnel could simulate flights ranging from Mach 5 to 9. Researchers from CAS in Beijing have successfully tested one hypersonic plane in a wind tunnel at such speeds.

The research was published in the journal "Science China: Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy" in February. It unveiled the "I Plane" model, which is capable of transporting people and payloads from Beijing to New York within two hours, beating any commercial airline flight.

Wind tunnels move air around objects, making it seem like the objects are really flying. Spacecraft engineers use them to test ideas for various spacecraft designs. Long after the design work is finished, wind tunnels help make spacecrafts better and safer.

The new tunnel will help China to take the lead on wind tunnel building, though competition from other countries is still fierce, according to Han.

"The new tunnel will aid the engineering application of hypersonic technology by duplicating the environment of extreme hypersonic flights. Once issues are discovered during these ground tests, they will be ironed out before test flights begin," Han said.


----------



## onebyone

China is building the world's fastest hypersonic wind tunnel to test hypersonic aircraft that can travel at speeds of up to 25 times the speed of sound


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists analyze human brain's "CPU"*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-20 20:46:15|Editor: pengying




BEIJING, March 20 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have analyzed the developmental landscape of the human prefrontal cortex (PFC), considered the CPU of the human brain, to get a better understanding of the organ.

Scientists from the Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Peking University as well as Capital University of Medical Sciences applied single-cell transcriptional profiling to identify cell types in the developing human PFC and their developmental features. Their research was published online in the journal _Nature _on March 14.

The PFC is one of the most important brain regions. It contains billions of cells and serves as the center of advanced intellectual activity, such as memory, cognitive ability, decision making and social behavior.

According to Professor Wang Xiaoqun from CAS, there is a need for detailed knowledge of the development of the PFC, since disturbances or failures of PFC development may contribute to several cognitive deficits seen in patients with neurodevelopmental disorders, such as intellectual disabilities, autism spectrum disorders and schizophrenia.

"Although we have known that the brain has a variety of functions, we have little knowledge about the different cell types and the cell composition, which makes it hard for us to understand how the brain develops advanced cognitive function," Wang said.

In order to systematically analyze the cellular basis and molecular regulation of the PFC, scientists traced the molecular features of cells in the PFC during human brain development at gestational weeks 8 to 26.

They analyzed more than 2,300 single cells and identified 35 subtypes of cells in six main classes. They also traced their development process.

The research will provide a powerful tool for investigating the mechanisms behind neurological diseases related to abnormal structure or dysfunction of the PFC and for exploring potential therapies.

According to Wang, the ongoing cell-census projects of "The BRAIN Initiative" in the United States mainly focus on the rodent brain atlas.

"We focus more on identifying and characterizing neuronal and non-neuronal cells in the human brain, which will directly help understand the molecular and cellular mechanism of human brain disorders," Wang said.

China has seen intensified research in brain science to advance basic understanding of the brain as well as to find treatments for brain-related disease.

Wang hopes that the Chinese government will attach more importance to research on brain science and offer more support. He also said that interdisciplinary research and teamwork among people from different disciplines are vital in advancing brain science study.

"In the research, another team member, Tang Fuchou from Peking University, is an expert on single-cell sequencing in stem cell biology, and we have complementary advantages, which makes research go more smoothly," Wang said.

"Research on the human brain atlas needs interdisciplinary collaboration from different areas such as cell biology, neuroscience and computer science. We hope to see more labs focusing on the interdisciplinary study of brain science," Wang added.

Currently, Wang and his team are working on the non-neuronal cells in the human brain, which make up about half the total volume of the brain and spinal cord.

"We hope to figure out how those cells work together with neuronal cells and further explore the mystery of the human brain," Wang said.

Suijuan Zhong, Shu Zhang, Xiaoying Fan, Qian Wu, Liying Yan, Ji Dong, Haofeng Zhang, Long Li, Le Sun, Na Pan, Xiaohui Xu, Fuchou Tang, Jun Zhang, Jie Qiao & Xiaoqun Wang. *A single-cell RNA-seq survey of the developmental landscape of the human prefrontal cortex*. _Nature _(2018). DOI: 10.1038/nature25980​


----------



## JSCh

*China takes 2nd place for WIPO patent filings*
By Camilla Tenn | China Daily | Updated: 2018-03-22 07:56














China overtook Japan to become the second-largest source of international patent filings via the World Intellectual Property Organization's Patent Cooperation Treaty in 2017, despite strong growth in Japanese companies' use of the system, according to the UN agency.

WIPO said in a news release that at current trends, China is projected to overtake the United States - which currently files the most international patents annually - within three years as the largest source of patent applications via the PCT.

"This rapid rise in Chinese use of the international patent system shows that innovators there are increasingly looking outward, seeking to spread their original ideas into new markets as the Chinese economy continues its rapid transformation," said WIPO Director General Francis Gurry.

"This is part of a larger shift in the geography of innovation, with half of all international patent applications now originating in East Asia."

Last year, US-based patent applicants filed 56,624 applications using the PCT, followed by 48,882 from China and 48,208 from Japan. Germany and South Korea ranked No 4 and No 5, with 18,982 and 15,763 applications, respectively.

Two Shenzhen-based Chinese technology companies were the top filers via the PCT in 2017.




Huawei was the largest and ZTE took second place, followed by the US-based Intel, Japan's Mitsubishi and Qualcomm, also from the US.

China's LE Holdings burst into the international top 20, rising 2,257 spots from last year with 1,397 applications filed using the PCT in 2017. Tencent, Yulong Telecommunication, Oppo and Xiaomi all entered the top 50 last year.

In trademark filings via WIPO's Madrid system, China saw the fastest growth among the top 15 origins with a 36.3 percent year-on-year increase, followed by Russia with 23.9 percent, South Korea with 9.8 percent and the United Kingdom with 9.3 percent.

Both China and Russia recorded their second consecutive year of double-digit growth.

For patent, trademark and industrial design applications using WIPO's filing services, 2017 was a record year, according to the organization, marking the eighth consecutive year of growth for all three of its filing systems.

Inventors from around the world filed 243,500 international patent applications via the PCT in 2017, 4.5 percent more than the previous year, driven by strong growth from China and Japan.

Demand grew by 5 percent year-on-year for WIPO's Madrid system, which saw 56,200 trademark applications.

The number of industrial designs WIPO handled grew by 3.8 percent year-on-year to reach 19,429.


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese researchers contribute to 11 pct of Nature papers*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-25 01:36:26|Editor: Mu Xuequan




GUANGZHOU, March 24 (Xinhua) -- China has become a larger contributor to original research papers on Nature, the Greater China subsidiary of the scientific journal's publisher Springer Nature said Saturday.

Chinese researchers published more than 90 original research papers on Nature in 2016, accounting for about 11 percent of all, compared with 0.4 percent in 1997, it said.

China was the world's second largest contributor to high-quality scientific research papers, only after the United States, according to the Nature Index 2016 which tracked 68 scientific journals including Nature, Science and Cell.

Nature held an international symposium on women and children's health in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province, between Thursday and Saturday.


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *China fires up next-generation neutron-science facility*
> Beam generator puts country in elite company for doing experiments in materials science and other fields.
> 
> David Cyranoski
> 14 November 2017
> 
> 
> 
> Jin Liwang/Xinhua via ZUMAPRESS​Engineers work on an instrument at the China Spallation Neutron Source in Dongguan.
> 
> China is revving up its next-generation neutron generator and will soon start experiments there. That will lift the country into a select group of nations with facilities that produce intense neutron beams to study the structure of materials.
> 
> The China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS) in Dongguan, a 2.2-billion-yuan (US$331-million) centre, will allow the country’s growing pool of top-notch physicists and material scientists, along with international collaborators, to compete in multiple physics and engineering fields. Its designers also hope that the facility will lead to commercial products and applications ranging from batteries and bridges to aeroplane engines and cancer therapy.
> 
> “It is not only a big step forward for Chinese scientists, but also a significant event for the international scientist community,” says Wang Xun-Li, a physicist at the City University of Hong Kong who has been involved in planning the facility.
> 
> *Related stories*
> 
> Policy: Crystallography needs a governing body
> Sweden likely winner for neutron source
> Beamline bonanza for Japanese researchers
> More related stories
> 
> *Beam bombardment*
> Spallation neutron sources produce neutrons by slamming protons onto a metal target — CSNS uses tungsten. They are more cost effective and safer than other methods, which use nuclear reactors to produce neutron beams. As neutrons have no charge, they can penetrate materials more easily than some other probing methods, and they are more senstive to light elements such as hydrogen, making them useful for evaluating candidate materials for fuel cells. Similar facilities exist only in the United Kingdom, United States, Japan and Switzerland, and one is under construction in Sweden.
> 
> Fujio Maekawa, a specialist in neutron sources at the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex in Tokaimura, says that although the CSNS delivers neutrons at a lower density than other spallation sources — which means that experiments will take longer — a planned upgrade will bring it in line with other facilities. And given their scarcity, “neutron users around the world always welcome new sources”, he say_s._
> 
> The CSNS will have capacity to host 20 beam lines, supplying as many instruments. Preliminary tests of its first three instruments began on 1 November. “Neutrons arrived at the samples as expected,” says Wang Fangwei, head of the neutron-science division at CSNS. Although debugging might take a couple of years, he expects the instruments to be calibrated and ready for initial experiments by the end of 2017.
> 
> Chinese physicists are eager to use the facility to analyse the underlying magnetic properties of materials, an area in which the country has significant experience. Wang Xun-Li says that several planned instruments will give scientists the chance to move to the forefront of fields such as the physics of skyrmions — vortex-like excitations in magnetic materials — and high-temperature superconductivity. “There are a whole bunch of early- to mid-career scientists who are hungry to use the facility for studying magnetism,” says Wang Xun-Li.
> 
> *Global appeal*
> Wang Xun-Li thinks that the latest facility will encourage Chinese researchers to remain in the country instead of pursuing careers elsewhere. “In the past, it was common to see Chinese scientists go abroad for these kinds of studies,” he says.
> 
> The facility’s first instruments are also attracting international researchers. German material scientist Frank Klose says that the CSNS was a major factor when he and material scientist Christine Rehm, his wife, decided to join the new Guangdong Technion Israel Institute of Technology in Shantou, 400 kilometres east of Dongguan. Klose’s research focuses on designing data-storage devices and sensors that could be used in hydrogen-powered cars. He helped design one of the facility's instruments to investigate the magnetic properties of spintronic devices, which take advantage of the spin of electrons to store data.
> 
> But scientists contacted by _Nature_ have raised concerns about CSNS’s location, saying that Dongguan lacks services and infrastructure, such as schools and universities, that will persuade top scientists and their families to move there. “I believe CSNS is suffering from a lack of first-grade scientists who actually are based in Dongguan,” says a researcher familiar with the facility, who asked for anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. Potential users have also expressed some frustration that only 3 instruments will be ready this year, despite the facility’s capacity to host 20.
> 
> But more instruments are already being built. Shenzhen's government is funding two that are expected to be ready by the end of 2019, including one designed to model high-pressure environments, such as the Earth's core. Mao Ho-Kwang, a geophysicist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC, is keen to use it to simulate what happens to materials in high-pressure conditions. “The CSNS instruments will be a great asset for Earth, environmental and energy science, as well as physics, chemistry and material science,” says Mao. “I am very excited, and the whole neutron community is getting very excited too”.
> 
> Nature 551, 284 (16 November 2017)
> doi:10.1038/nature.2017.22976​
> 
> 
> China fires up next-generation neutron-science facility : Nature News & Comment


*Spallation neutron source passes assessment, checks*
chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2018-03-26 10:12 




A spectrometer detector at the spallation neutron source in Dongguan, South China's Guangdong province. [Photo/chinanews.com]

The Institute of High Energy Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences said Sunday China's spallation neutron source, one of the country's most important scientific facilities in Dongguan, South China's Guangdong province, has passed assessment and checks by the CAS.

The spallation neutron source is the first of its kind in the country and the fourth worldwide and will provide intense pulsed neutron beams for scientific research. It is a significant step in the country solving problems on the frontier of science.

Construction for the SNS started in September 2011, and total investment has reached 2.3 billion yuan ($364.4 million).
















​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Shanghai launches human phenotype research project*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-26 00:44:29|Editor: Chengcheng




SHANGHAI, March 25 (Xinhua) -- Shanghai on Sunday announced the launch of a human phenotype research project with aims to accelerate the development of precision medicine in China.

Scientists from China, Britain, Germany, the United States and Australia plan to conduct in-depth research into the interaction between phenotype and genotype, which could lead to more precise treatment of complicated human diseases such as cancer, according to Jin Li, chief scientist of the project.

Scientists believe that phenotype, the observable properties of human body, is produced by the interaction of the genotype and the environment.

The international human genome project has cracked the "gene book" of human body. However, human diseases are not caused solely by the factor of genes, said Jin, vice president of Fudan University.

The first phase of the project is aimed at understanding how cancer and other complicated diseases develop by addressing the the specific relationships and internal mechanisms between genes and phenotypes, said Jin.

The project will produce the first reference atlas of the full phenotypic group of healthy Chinese, which will include 20,000 measurements.


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists design bee-inspired morphing aircraft*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 23:41:14|Editor: Yamei




BEIJING, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists are designing a morphing aircraft that takes its inspiration from bees, according to the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT).

The morphing airplane is expected to reduce resistance during flight and be more fuel-efficient, CALT said on its official website.

According to the designer Hu Guotun, morphing aerospace aircraft travel through the atmosphere to space before returning to the atmosphere. In the process of re-entry, the aircraft will use its own inertial glide for a period of time. Minimizing flight resistance is vital for saving fuel.

"We have drawn inspiration from the bee's abdomen structure, which allows the bee to flex freely and control the direction of flight," said Hu.

Based on the bee's flexible abdomen structure, CALT designed a morphing nose cone for the aircraft, which changes in different stages of flight.

Through simulation, they found that the morphing nose cone can reduce aerodynamic drag by more than 20 percent.

"The morphing structure provides an efficient way for aerospace vehicles to reduce aerodynamic drag and save fuel, which is of great importance to the commercial aerospace market," Hu said.


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 27-MAR-2018
*What else can molecular perovskite do?*
SCIENCE CHINA PRESS




A new molecular perovskite energetic material. ©Science China Press​
Molecular perovskites have attracted growing attentions for high-performance solar cells, photo-detectors, and ferroelectric materials. This sort of material is rather hot recently. "What else can molecular perovskite do, we have been thinking and exploring." introduced by Profs. Wei-Xiong Zhang and Xiao-Ming Chen, from Sun Yat-Sen University, China, whose group recently reported a new sort of high-energetic materials produced by inorganic-organic perovskites, published on _Science China Materials_, 2018, doi:10.1007/s40843-017-9219-9.

"As the simplest high-symmetry structure for ternary compounds, perovskite structure is very charming." said Prof. Zhang. Molecular perovskites topologically mimic the structure of inorganic perovskites, but have at least one molecular component. "We believe that, the diverse molecular components enable them to host many interesting phenomena and functionalities waiting to be discovered. Last year, we designed a molecular perovskite to host a new 'bond-switching' ferroelectric mechanism, and this time, we discovered that the molecular perovskites could be one sort of excellent energetic materials."

"Different from traditional strategy that the oxidizer and fuel groups are combined into a single molecule, we employed perovskite structure to incorporate the molecular oxidizer and fuel components into a ternary crystal for new energetic materials with high performance, high stability and low cost." said Prof. Zhang.

Since the black powder, the first known explosive, was discovered by ancient Chinese in the seventh century, people never stop finding more powerful, stable, reliable and low-cost energetic materials for military devices and civil industry.

Although their explosive performances are escalated with increasing the number of nitro-groups and the structural tension of carbon skeleton, the classic organic energetic compounds, such as trinitrotoluene (TNT), pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN), cyclotrimethylene trinitramine (RDX), cyclotetramethylene tetranitramine (HMX), hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane (CL-20) and octanitrocubane (ONC), generally become increasingly instable, sensitive and costly along with the generation.

"It is frustrated that the best practicable explosive is yet HMX, invented during the Second World War, despite its medium performance and cost." said Prof. Chen.

"The perovskite structure allows each fuel cation to be tightly surrounded by twelve oxidative anions and each oxidative anion surrounded by four fuel cations. Such compact and alternative arrangement of fuel and oxidizer components in a proper ratio is essential to achieve sufficient combustion in a very-short time and then a rapid detonation. In addition, we found that the perovskite structure leads to obvious structural tension in the cage whose size is almost not changed by alkaline metal ions with different size. It indicates that organic cations in the cage take steric effect on the anionic frameworks.", explained by Zhang.

Based on the calculation by professional software EXPLO5, the explosive performances, such as detonation heat, detonation velocity, detonation pressure, are improved.

"Beside the classical explanation that energy release is due to the breaking and recombination of chemical bonds during the denotation reaction, the release of the structural tension in the frameworks also make a great contribution to the explosive performances." emphasized by Zhang.

"The perovskite structure is favorable for the stability." added by Zhang, "The new explosive materials have rather high thermal stability and low impact sensitivity, which is good for their storage and transportation."

Strategically, Zhang highlighted "Different from traditional design focusing on the intra-molecular functional groups, we emphasize the inter-molecular assembly in the specified crystal." As he said, low-cost fuel and oxidizer are integrated into highly-symmetric ternary crystals. "This design is rather flexible. Molecular components with suitable shape and size can assemble into such kind of ternary crystals to optimize the oxygen balance, crystal density and so on. Better explosive performances are expected", said Zhang and Chen.

###​
This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

See the article: Chen Shao-Li, Yang Zi-Run, Wang Bin-Jie, Shang Yu, Sun Lin-Yin, He Chun-Ting, Zhou Hao-Long, Zhang Wei-Xiong*, Chen Xiao-Ming*. "Molecular perovskite high-energetic materials," Sci. China Mater. (2018), doi:10.1007/s40843-017-9219-9.

This article was published online http://engine.scichina.com/publisher/scp/journal/SCMs/doi/10.1007/s40843-017-9219-9?slug=full text
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40843-017-9219-9​


What else can molecular perovskite do? | EurekAlert! Science News


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 28-MAR-2018
*A paperlike LCD -- thin, flexible, tough and cheap*
_Less than half a millimeter thick, the new flexi-LCD design could revolutionize printed media._

AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF PHYSICS



This is a combined flexible blue optically rewritable LCD. *CREDIT: *Zhang et al.​
WASHINGTON, D.C., March 28, 2018 -- Optoelectronic engineers in China and Hong Kong have manufactured a special type of liquid crystal display (LCD) that is paper-thin, flexible, light and tough. With this, a daily newspaper could be uploaded onto a flexible paperlike display that could be updated as fast as the news cycles. It sounds like something from the future, but scientists estimate it will be cheap to produce, perhaps only costing $5 for a 5-inch screen. The new optically rewritable LCD design was reported this week in _Applied Physics Letters_, from AIP Publishing.

The team focused on two key innovations for achieving highly flexible designs. The first is the recent development of optically rewritable LCDs. Like conventional LCD displays, the display is structured like a sandwich, with a liquid crystal filling between two plates. Unlike conventional liquid crystals where electrical connections on the plates create the fields required to switch individual pixels from light to dark, optically rewritable LCDs coat the plates with special molecules that realign in the presence of polarized light and switch the pixels. This removes the need for traditional electrodes, reduces the structure's bulk and allows more choices in the type and thickness of plates. Consequently, optically rewritable LCDs are thinner than traditional LCDs, at less than half a millimeter thick, can be made from flexible plastic, and weigh only a few grams. "It's only a little thicker than paper," said Jiatong Sun, a co-author from Donghua University in China.

Optically rewritable LCDs are durable and cheap to manufacture because of their simple structure. Moreover, like an electronic paper screen in an e-book, energy is only required to switch display images or text. Therefore, running costs are low because these new LCDs don't need power to sustain an image once it is written on the screen.

The second innovation involves the spacers that create the separation of the plastic or glass plates. "We put spacers between glass layers to keep the liquid crystal layer uniform," Sun said. Spacers are used in all LCDs to determine the thickness of the liquid crystal. A constant thickness is necessary for good contrast ratio, response time and viewing angle. However, when plates bend, it forces the liquid crystal away from the impact site and leaves sections of the screen blank and so alterations in spacer design are critical to prevent liquid crystal in flexible LCDs from moving excessively. Developing a flexible design that overcomes this barrier has proven challenging.

The researchers tried three different spacer designs and found that a meshlike spacer prevented liquid crystal from flowing when their LCD was bent or hit. This innovation enabled them to create the first flexible optically rewritable LCD.

An additional innovation involved improved color rendering. The scientists report that until this study, optically rewritable LCDs had only been able to display two colors at a time. Now, their optically rewritable LCD simultaneously displays the three primary colors. They achieved this by placing a special type of liquid crystal behind the LCD, which reflected red, blue and green. To make this into a commercial product, Sun wants to improve the resolution of the flexible optically rewritable LCD.

"Now we have three colours but for full colour we need to make the pixels too small for human eyes to see," Sun said.



A paperlike LCD -- thin, flexible, tough and cheap | EurekAlert! Science News

Yihong Zhang, Jiatong Sun, Yang Liu, Jianhua Shang, Hao Liu, Huashan Liu, Xiaohui Gong, Vladimir Chigrinov, Hoi Sing Kowk. *A flexible optically re-writable color liquid crystal display*. _Applied Physics Letters_, 2018; 112 (13): 131902. DOI: 10.1063/1.5021619​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*X-ray ‘ghost images’ could cut radiation doses*
By Sophia Chen
Mar. 28, 2018 , 1:00 PM

On its own, a single-pixel camera captures pictures that are pretty dull: squares that are completely black, completely white, or some shade of gray in between. All it does, after all, is detect brightness.

Yet by connecting a single-pixel camera to a patterned light source, a team of physicists in China has made detailed x-ray images using a statistical technique called ghost imaging, first pioneered 20 years ago in infrared and visible light. Researchers in the field say future versions of this system could take clear x-ray photographs with cheap cameras—no need for lenses and multipixel detectors—and less cancer-causing radiation than conventional techniques.

"Our system is much smaller and cheaper, and it could even be portable if you needed to take it into the field," says Wu Ling-An, a physicist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing whose work with her colleagues was published on 28 March in Optica.

The researchers' system still isn't ready to be used in medicine. But they have lowered the x-ray dose by about a million times compared with earlier attempts, says Daniele Pelliccia, who in 2015 made some of the first x-ray ghost images. A physicist at Instruments & Data Tools, an optics startup near Melbourne, Australia, he used a building-size source of intense x-rays called a synchrotron, but Wu's group made do with a compact tabletop source. And whereas early x-ray ghost images were simple pictures of slits cut into metal, the Chinese group produced outlines of a seashell and of initials etched into metal plates. They have made "images that look like images," Pelliccia says. "The potential payback, if it works for medical images, is big."

The key to ghost imaging is to illuminate an object with light that has passed through a filter with a known pattern, says Miles Padgett, a physicist at the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom. On the other side of the object, the single-pixel camera takes a picture—nothing more than a gray square. To end up with an image, you do this thousands of times, swapping out the filter pattern for a different one after each exposure. Wu's group used a piece of sandpaper, which is partially transparent to x-rays, and rotated it to create a different pattern after each exposure.

*Seeing ghosts*
Using a patterned light filter and a single-pixel detector, researchers can make crisp pictures of objects, even though the detector only captures unresolved, gray squares.

A computer produces the final image. Because the computer knows the filter pattern for each exposure, it can calculate the image from variations in the sequence of gray pixels captured by the camera. The result, in theory, is an x-ray image as good as any today, but without a high-resolution camera or the intense x-rays needed for conventional imaging.

Researchers have already demonstrated simple ghost imaging systems for optical and infrared light, which rely on programmable filters, says Jeffrey Shapiro, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. A computer records and resets the filter pattern as the light source projects it onto the object and the single-pixel detector.

Using an infrared system, Padgett's group has shown it can ghost-image a methane gas leak. The group's industry collaborator, M Squared Lasers, based in Glasgow, is working to commercialize the system and hoping to sell detectors to the oil and gas industry as a cheaper way to detect leaky pipelines, Padgett says.

Making a computer-programmable filter for x-rays is a bigger challenge, Wu says, because x-rays simply stream through most materials. Because her group resorted to unprogrammable sandpaper, it had to use a high-resolution camera to measure the patterns. But you could imagine a commercial x-ray system in which the manufacturer prerecords all the sandpaper patterns, Padgett says. Then, only the manufacturer would need the high-resolution camera, and individual users could simply buy a single-pixel camera and use the sandpaper filters in a specified sequence.

In order for ghost imaging to be viable in medicine, Wu says, researchers must show that the total x-ray dose needed for an image is lower than with a conventional system. One ghost image requires thousands of exposures, and the x-rays add up. In addition, the more detailed the object—for example, a human body—the more exposures you need. However, Wu says the x-ray intensity per exposure can be made low enough that ghost imaging may come out ahead.

Doing so would be important, Shapiro says. "If you could reduce the amount of x-ray exposure that women suffer in getting mammograms, or in chest exams, that would be a big deal," he says. But image quality still needs to be improved, he says. "It's got to be a good image."

doi:10.1126/science.aat7285


X-ray ‘ghost images’ could cut radiation doses | Science | AAAS


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists create pig model of Huntington's disease*
Source: Xinhua 2018-03-30 02:10:20

WASHINGTON, March 29 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese team of scientists has established a pig model of Huntington's disease (HD), an inherited neurodegenerative disease, using genetic engineering technology.

In a study published in _Cell _on Thursday, researchers anticipated that the pigs could be a practical way to test treatments for HD, which is caused by a gene encoding a toxic protein that causes brain cells to die.

Although genetically modified mice have been used widely to model neurodegenerative diseases, they lack the typical neurodegeneration or overt neuronal loss seen in human brains, according to corresponding author Li Xiaojiang, professor of human genetics in Jinan University and who runs a lab at Emory University School of Medicine.

The pig HD model is an example that suggests large animal models could better model other neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

A HD pig could be an opportunity to test if the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technique can work in larger animals before clinical applications in humans.

Li said, in comparison with mice, treatments for affected nervous system tissues could be better tested in pigs, because their size is closer to that of humans. The pig model of HD also more closely matches the symptoms of the human disease.

Compared with non-human primate models, the pigs offer advantages of faster breeding and larger litter sizes, the researchers said.

Li collaborated with his colleagues at Jinan University and Chinese Academy of Sciences in Guangzhou. The pigs are now housed in Guangzhou.

"In pigs, the pattern of neurodegeneration is almost the same as in humans, and there have been several treatments tested in mouse models that didn't translate to human," said a co-senior author Li Shihua, professor of human genetics at Emory University School of Medicine.

Symptoms displayed by the genetically altered pigs include movement problems. They show respiratory difficulties, which resemble those experienced by humans with HD and are not seen in mouse models of HD.

In addition, the pigs show degeneration of the striatum, the region of the brain most affected by HD in humans, more than other regions of the brain.

Huntington's disease is caused by a gene encoding a toxic protein (mutant huntingtin or mHTT), and mHTT contains abnormally long repeats of a single amino acid, glutamine. Symptoms commonly appear in mid-life and include uncontrolled movements, mood swings and cognitive decline.

Researchers used the CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technique to introduce a segment of a human gene causing Huntington's, with a very long glutamine repeat region, into pig fibroblast cells.

Then somatic cell nuclear transfer generated pig embryos carrying this genetic alteration. The alteration is referred to a "knock in" because the changed gene is in its natural context.


Sen Yan, Zhuchi Tu, Zhaoming Liu, Nana Fan, Huiming Yang, Su Yang, Weili Yang, Yu Zhao, Zhen Ouyang, Chengdan Lai, Huaqiang Yang, Li Li, Qishuai Liu, Hui Shi, Guangqing Xu, Heng Zhao, Hongjiang Wei, Zhong Pei, Shihua Li, Liangxue Lai, Xiao-Jiang Li. *A Huntingtin Knockin Pig Model Recapitulates Features of Selective Neurodegeneration in Huntington’s Disease*. _Cell_, 2018; DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2018.03.005​


----------



## JSCh

*How China is using military radar technology to wage war on mosquitoes*
_Scientists are developing a device to detect the insect flapping its wings up to 2km away – and it could be used to save millions of lives, researcher says_

PUBLISHED : Friday, 30 March, 2018, 10:27am
UPDATED : Friday, 30 March, 2018, 11:10am






Stephen Chen

China is developing a super-sensitive radar that can detect the wing-flapping of a mosquito up to 2 kilometres away, according to a senior scientist involved in the government research project.

A prototype of the device is being tested at a defence laboratory at the Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT), said the researcher, who declined to be named as the project involves sensitive technology used in China’s missile defence system.

“Identifying and tracking individual, mosquito-sized targets is no longer science fiction,” he said. “We are actually quite close to bringing this technology out of the laboratory and using it to save lives.”

Mosquitoes have claimed more human lives than all wars combined – their infectious bites still cause more than one million deaths each year, according to the World Health Organisation.

The insect plays host to a wide range of disease-bearing microorganisms, from malaria to newer viruses such as Zika.

China powers up new radar tech to unmask stealth fighters

Controlling the pest is a major challenge, though, as they can come and go almost without a trace – their familiar buzzing is a giveaway, but only when they are close by.

After decades of development, modern military radars can now pick up the echoes of small objects at an impressive distance. The US Missile Defence Agency’s sea-based X-band radar, for example, can detect a baseball-sized object from about 4,000km (2,500 miles) away.

China has developed radar systems with similarly advanced features to track missiles and stealth aircraft, but some scientists working on these military projects believed the technology could also be used to fight mosquitoes – and they convinced the government to fund their research.

The team, led by Long Teng, received funding of more than 82 million yuan (US$12.9 million) from the central government at the end of last year to build a full-sized mosquito detection radar that could be tested in the field.

Long is director of BIT’s Radar Technology Research Institute and a lead scientist on China’s key military radar programme, according to the university’s website. He could not be reached for comment.

How to wipe out mosquitoes and eradicate malaria? A mutant fungus may hold the answer

The radar works by emitting rapid pulses of electromagnetic waves that travel at many frequencies, according to the scientist working on the project. When the radio waves hit a mosquito they bounce back with information including species, gender, flying speed and direction, and whether the insect has eaten.

It could be mounted on a rooftop overlooking a residential community and used to pinpoint the position of major mosquito colonies, their breeding and resting areas. And if a colony was migrating to another neighbourhood, households in its way could be warned.

Scientists in other countries have used civilian radar networks to track the group movement of birds or larger insects such as locusts and moths, but this is believed to be the first attempt to use radars to monitor mosquitoes. 

The researcher said the prototype had achieved unprecedented sensitivity because the authorities had allowed the team to build the system using the latest military radar technology.

It has, for example, an advanced phased array antenna similar to those used on China’s latest warships. The antenna can beam microwaves in different directions at the same time and can detect missiles or military jets much faster than conventional radars that use a rotating dish.

It also has a separate antenna to generate radio waves oscillating in more than one direction. Known as polarisation, this provides detailed information about a target so that the researchers can distinguish a hungry, blood-sucking female mosquito from a pollen-eating male.

A fast computer then uses an algorithm to simultaneously identify and follow the movement of many mosquitoes in the same community.

China builds ‘world’s biggest air purifier’ (and it seems to be working)

The project is a collaboration between insect behaviourists and scientists from many other disciplines, according to the researcher. By providing a vast amount of data, the radar has the potential to help biologists learn more about the individual and collective behaviour of the pest, which could lead to new strategies to fight the spread of mosquito-borne diseases.

The researcher added that the team had made progress on the existing technology and it could also have military applications, without elaborating. He also declined to say when the first full-sized radar would be completed.

“We are building one or two units at the moment. In the future we hope the radar will be made in large numbers and installed across the country to form a large network to monitor the movements of airborne animals [as well as mosquitoes],” he said.
​Yi Zhenyuan, an award-winning military radar researcher and deputy director of the electrical engineering department at Harbin Institute of Technology, said identifying and tracking such a minuscule target from kilometres away was extremely difficult.

Existing military radar technology could detect small, uncooperative signals from hundreds to thousands of kilometres away, but mosquitoes were “another story”, he said.

Yi, who has knowledge of the radar but is not involved in the project, said mosquitoes would be more difficult to detect than a stealth aircraft like the F-22, which has a special coating and geometric design to avoid showing up on radar screens.

“Mosquito wings of course are a lot different from the metal wings of a military jet, and so are their structures, shapes and movements. The mosquito radar is going to need a completely new set of algorithms,” he said.

Mosquitoes also fly at low speed, sometimes just hovering in the air, which makes some of the military radar technology designed to detect fast-moving targets less useful to the project.

The biggest challenge will come from the environment, Yi said, since the radio waves from a mosquito were extremely weak and could easily be overwhelmed by background noise.

“So what works perfectly well in a laboratory may not be so successful out in the field,” he said.

Hong Kong citizen scientists localise mosquito tracking app to let people report sightings of the disease carriers

Liu Xingyue, a professor of insect studies at the China Agricultural University in Beijing, said the radar programme could allow pest controllers to closely monitor mosquito and other small insect populations in an area.

He said regions including the northeast of China, tropical countries and Africa were still troubled by mosquitoes and the diseases they carried.

Behavioural differences such as wing flapping could be picked up by the radar, giving scientists a “precision-guided weapon in our war against the deadliest creature on Earth”, he said. “Millions of lives could be saved.”


How China is using military radar technology to wage war on mosquitoes | South China Morning Post


----------



## JSCh

*Anti-aging protein alpha Klotho's molecular structure revealed*
March 29, 2018
UT Southwestern Medical Center

Researchers from UT Southwestern's Charles and Jane Pak Center for Mineral Metabolism and Clinical Research and Internal Medicine's Division of Nephrology recently published work in _Nature_ that reveals the molecular structure of the so-called "anti-aging" protein alpha Klotho (a-Klotho) and how it transmits a hormonal signal that controls a variety of biologic processes. The investigation was performed in collaboration with scientists from New York University School of Medicine and Wenzhou Medical University in China.

Studies at UTSW two decades ago by Dr. Makoto Kuro-o, Professor of Pathology, demonstrated that mice lacking either a-Klotho or the hormone FGF23 suffered from premature and multiple organ failure as well as other conditions, including early onset cardiovascular disease, cancer, and cognitive decline. Because defects in a-Klotho lead to symptoms seen in aging, researchers inferred that a-Klotho suppresses aging, leading to great interest in how the a-Klotho protein might work together with the hormone FGF23 to fulfill their roles.

a-Klotho can exist on the surface of a cell or can be released from the cell and circulate in body fluids, including the blood, as soluble a-Klotho. The cell-attached form and the circulating form of a-Klotho were previously and universally believed to serve completely different functions.

"The a-Klotho gene [then called Klotho] was cloned by Dr. Kuro-o in 1997 shortly before he was recruited here, and during his tenure at UT Southwestern he has carried out the most seminal work in this field," said Pak Center Director Dr. Orson Moe. "The gene protects against many diseases, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, aging, neurodegeneration, and kidney disease. The structure of the a-Klotho protein and how the protein functions, however, largely remained a mystery until this current work."

By providing a first look at the structure of the protein complex that includes FGF23 and its co-receptors, the FGF receptor and a-Klotho, the most recent study challenges the long-accepted belief that only the cell-attached form of aKlotho can serve as a receptor for FGF23 and hence that FGF23 action is restricted to tissues having the cell-attached form.

Study authors include Dr. Moe, Professor of Internal Medicine and Physiology, and Dr. Ming Chang Hu, Associate Professor of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics. Dr. Moe holds The Charles Pak Distinguished Chair in Mineral Metabolism, and the Donald W. Seldin Professorship in Clinical Investigation. Dr. Hu holds the Makoto Kuro-o Professorship in Bone and Kidney Research.

One of the major, paradigm-changing findings revealed by solving the protein complex structure is that the circulating form of soluble a-Klotho can actually serve as a co-receptor for FGF23. Thus, the soluble form of a-Klotho can go to any cell in the body and act as a co-receptor for FGF23, rendering every cell a possible target of FGF23, representing a major paradigm shift.

"a-Klotho researchers in cancer, aging, neurologic, cardiovascular, and kidney disease will benefit from this research," Dr. Moe said. "The knowledge of the structure of the protein, along with its molecular binding partners, will enable us to greatly advance the understanding of how a-Klotho works and also how to best design therapeutic strategies and novel agents that can either activate or block FGF23-a-Klotho interaction and signaling as needed."

Collaboratively led by NYU School of Medicine structural biologist Dr. Moosa Mohammadi, the investigation included researchers from UTSW, the Rockefeller University-based New York Structural Biology Center, and Wenzhou Medical University.

The study provides evidence for how FGF23 signals to cells by forming a complex with a-Klotho and the two other molecular partners. Made by bone cells, the FGF23 hormone travels via the bloodstream to cells in all organs, where it regulates many aspects of mineral metabolism. Abnormal FGF23 levels are found in many disease states. In chronic kidney disease, for example, high FGF23 levels are believed to cause many of the disease's complications and fatalities.

The researchers say their findings also shed new light on how kidney disease leads to an abnormal thickening of heart muscle tissue called hypertrophy, which is a leading cause of death in people with kidney disease caused by high blood pressure, diabetes, and other illnesses. When damaged kidney tubules can no longer eliminate phosphate in the urine, FGF23 rises, initially as an effort to keep blood phosphate in check. With time, FGF23 can rise to harmful levels.

A prevailing hypothesis has been that very high levels of FGF23 cause hypertrophy in the heart. But the theory remained controversial because heart tissue does not have a-Klotho, which must be present if FGF23 is to signal. The latest findings indicate that a-Klotho can be "delivered" through the bloodstream to organs where it is not normally present. This could potentially launch drug development programs for kidney disease, the researchers said.

"The solution of this protein structure will guide many future studies," Dr. Moe said. "There are numerous diseases that involve a-Klotho deficiency. Replenishment of a-Klotho by either recombinant protein injection or drugs that increase a patient's own a-Klotho will have potential therapeutic implications for neurologic, metabolic, cardiovascular and kidney disease, and cancer."

*Story Source:*

Materials provided by *UT Southwestern Medical Center*. _Note: Content may be edited for style and length._

*Journal Reference*:

Gaozhi Chen, Yang Liu, Regina Goetz, Lili Fu, Seetharaman Jayaraman, Ming-Chang Hu, Orson W. Moe, Guang Liang, Xiaokun Li, Moosa Mohammadi. *α-Klotho is a non-enzymatic molecular scaffold for FGF23 hormone signalling*. _Nature_, 2018; 553 (7689): 461 DOI: 10.1038/nature25451


Anti-aging protein alpha Klotho's molecular structure revealed -- ScienceDaily


----------



## JSCh

*Live heart cells make this material shift color like a chameleon*
*The hydrogel-based strips change hues when contracting and expanding*

BY MARIA TEMMING 
2:00PM, MARCH 28, 2018



KEEPING THE BEAT Five hydrogel strips covered in heart tissue contract when the heart cells do. That shrinkage makes the material reflect more blue light. When the cells relax, the strips extend and reflect more red light.
F. FU _ET AL_/_SCIENCE ROBOTICS_ 2018

To craft a new color-switching material, scientists have again taken inspiration from one of nature’s masters of disguise: the chameleon.

Thin films made of heart cells and hydrogel change hues when the films shrink or stretch, much like chameleon skin. This material, described online March 28 in _Science Robotics_, could be used to test new medications or possibly to build camouflaging robots.

The material is made of a paper-thin hydrogel sheet engraved with nanocrystal patterns, topped with a layer of living heart muscle cells from rats. These cells contract and expand — just as they would inside an actual rat heart to make it beat — causing the underlying hydrogel to shrink and stretch too. That movement changes the way light bounces off the etched crystal, making the material reflect more blue light when it contracts and more red light when it’s relaxed.

This design is modeled after nanocrystals embedded in chameleon skin, which also reflect different colors of light when stretched (_SN Online: 3/13/15_).

When researchers treated the material with a drug normally used to boost heart rate, the films changed color more quickly — indicating the heart cells were pulsating more rapidly. That finding suggests the material could help drug developers monitor how heart cells react to new medications, says study coauthor Luoran Shang, a physicist at Southeast University in Nanjing, China. Or these kinds of films could also be used to make color-changing skins for soft robots, Shang says.

*Citations*
F. Fu _et al_. Bioinspired living structural color hydrogels. _Science Robotics_. Published online March 28, 2018. doi: 10.1126/scirobotics.aat3911.​

Live heart cells make this material shift color like a chameleon | Science News


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese researchers develop new fire-resistant construction material*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-03 13:20:39|Editor: Mengjie




HEFEI, April 3 (Xinhua) -- Researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China have developed a new fire-retardant construction material that can resist about 1,300 degrees Celsius flame without disintegration.

A research team led by Prof. Yu Shuhong have come up with a composite aerogel with low thermal conductivity and excellent fire resistance.

The composite, synthesized from phenol-formaldehyde-resin and silica, can resist a high-temperature flame without disintegration, said researcher Yu Zhilong.

The composite is highly porous and resilient. It displays better fire-resistance than current insulation materials such as expanded polystyrene and glass wool.

According to researchers, if used in walls, the material could provide extended protection against fire-induced collapse of reinforced concrete structures, winning more time for evacuation of the building.

It can also be used to insulate older buildings.

The research results were published in Angewandte Chemie, a German academic journal.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*China to strengthen security, management of scientific data*
2018-04-03 10:52 GMT+8




China will strengthen and standardize the management of scientific data to guarantee data security and enhance data sharing, according to measures issued by the General Office of the State Council.

The measures are expected to provide better support to national scientific and technological innovation, economic and social development, as well as state security.

China has seen a scientific data boom in both quantity and quality, with growing input in science and technology research in recent years.

The data have not only impacted many scientific fields, such as bioscience, astronomy, geoscience and physics, but have also triggered important revolutions in research methods.



China has seen a scientific data boom in both quantity and quality, with growing input in science and technology research in recent years. /VCG Photo

Scientific and technological innovation has become more dependent on large, reliable sets of scientific data. China still has a lot to do in developing, utilizing, opening, sharing and protecting data.

The measures, which prioritize data security and focus on data sharing, require those who own the data to be responsible for data management.

The measures also ordered strengthening supervision of the use and sharing of scientific data.

The data users and producers must act in line with related standards to improve protection of intellectual property, according to the measures.

The data generated from scientific programs must be collected and reported, so that they can be managed in a standard fashion and stored long-term in data centers, according to the measures.

(Cover: VCG Photo)


----------



## JSCh

*Progeny of world's first cloned cashmere goat born in China*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-03 16:11:13|Editor: Lifang




HOHHOT, April 3 (Xinhua) -- Two kids have been born in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the offspring of the world's first cloned cashmere goat, the Bayannur city government said Tuesday.

The two kids, born on Wednesday and Thursday respectively after a natural reproduction process, are strong and in good conditions, according to researchers.

"The successful breeding will accelerate the application of clone technology in cashmere goat husbandry," said a researcher at the animal breeding base where the kids were born.

The father, the world's first cloned cashmere goat, was born in December 2016. To test its breeding capabilities, researchers let it mate with more than 20 female goats and most were impregnated.

The superfine cashmere fiber from the goat is less than 13.8 micrometers thick, much finer than the average of 15.8 micrometers on the famous Erlang Mountain goats in Inner Mongolia.


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 3-APR-2018
*Researchers develop nanoparticle films for high-density data storage*
New holographic data storage medium could enable wearable technology that captures and stores detailed 3-D images

THE OPTICAL SOCIETY



Researchers created a nanofilm that can store data holographically and is environmentally stable. Here, Shencheng Fu carries out experiments with the new film. *CREDIT: *Northeast Normal University

WASHINGTON -- As we generate more and more data, the need for high-density data storage that remains stable over time is becoming critical. New nanoparticle-based films that are more than 80 times thinner than a human hair may help to fill this need by providing materials that can holographically archive more than 1000 times more data than a DVD in a 10-by-10-centimeter piece of film. The new technology could one day enable tiny wearable devices that capture and store 3-D images of objects or people.

"In the future, these new films could be incorporated into a tiny storage chip that records 3-D color information that could later be viewed as a 3-D hologram with realistic detail," said Shencheng Fu, who led researchers from Northeast Normal University in China who developed the new films. "Because the storage medium is environmentally stable, the device could be used outside or even brought into the harsh radiation conditions of outer space."

In the journal _Optical Materials Express_, the researchers detail their fabrication of the new films and demonstrate the technology's ability to be used for an environmentally-stable holographic storage system. The films not only hold large amounts of data, but that data can also be retrieved at speeds up to 1 GB per second, which is about twenty times the reading speed of today's flash memory.

*Storing more data in less space*

The new films are designed for holographic data storage, a technique that uses lasers to create and read a 3-D holographic recreation of data in a material. Because it can record and read millions of bits at once, holographic data storage is much faster than optical and magnetic approaches typically used for data storage today, which record and read individual bits one at a time. Holographic approaches are also inherently high-density because they record information throughout the 3-D volume of the material, not just on the surface, and can record multiple images in the same area using light at different angles or consisting of different colors.

Recently, researchers have been experimenting with using metal-semiconductor nanocomposites as a medium for storing nanoscale holograms with high spatial resolution. Porous films made of the semiconductor titania and silver nanoparticles are promising for this application because they change color when exposed to various wavelengths, or colors, of laser light and because a set of 3-D images can be recorded at the focus area of laser beam using a single step. Although the films could be used for multiwavelength holographic data storage, exposure to UV light has been shown to erase the data, making the films unstable for long-term information storage.

Recording a holographic image into titania-silver films involves using a laser to convert the silver particles into silver cations, which have a positive charge due to extra electrons. "We noticed that UV light could erase the data because it caused electrons to transfer from the semiconductor film to the metal nanoparticles, inducing the same photo transformation as the laser," said Fu. "Introducing electron-accepting molecules into the system causes some of the electrons to flow from the semiconductor to these molecules, weakening the ability of UV light to erase the data and creating an environmentally stable high-density data storage medium."

*Changing the electron flow*

For the new films, the researchers used electron-accepting molecules that measured only 1 to 2 nanometers to disrupt the electron flow from the semiconductor to the metal nanoparticles. They fabricated semiconductor films with a honeycomb nanopore structure that allowed the nanoparticles, electron-accepting molecules and the semiconductor to all interface with each other. The ultrasmall size of the electron-accepting molecules allowed them to attach inside the pores without affecting the pore structure. The final films were just 620 nanometers thick.

The researchers tested their new films and found that holograms can be written into them efficiently and with high stability even in the presence of UV light. The researchers also demonstrated that using the electron-acceptors to change the electron flow formed multiple electron transferring paths, making the material respond faster to the laser light and greatly accelerating the speed of data writing.

"Particles made from noble metals such as silver are typically viewed as a slow-response media for optical storage," said Fu. "We show that using a new electron transport flow improves the optical response speed of the particles while still maintaining the particle's other advantages for information storage."

The researchers plan to test the environmental stability of the new films by performing outdoor tests. They also point out that real-life application of the films would require the development of high efficiency 3-D image reconstruction techniques and methods for color presentation for displaying or reading the stored data.

###​
Paper: S. Liu, S. Fu, X. Zhang, X. Wang, L. Kang, X. Han, X. Chen, J. Wu, Y. Liu, "UV-resistant holographic data storage in noble-metal/semiconductor nanocomposite films with electron-acceptors," Opt. Mater. Express Volume 8, Issue 5, 1143-1153 (2018). DOI: 10.1364/OME.8.001143.



Researchers develop nanoparticle films for high-density data storage | EurekAlert! Science News


----------



## JSCh

*China aims to lead large int'l science projects*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-04 00:07:48|Editor: Mu Xuequan




BEIJING, April 3 (Xinhua) -- China aims to organize and launch a series of large international science projects in the coming years to solve important problems in science.

China will organize and launch one or two large international science projects, and foster three to five projects by 2020. Another six to 10 large projects will be cultivated by 2035 to increase China's influence in the science and technology field, the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) said on Tuesday.

According to a plan by the ministry, China will develop more large science projects to improve its abilities in scientific and technological innovation and play an important role in international science and technology by the middle of the century.

As scientific research becomes more complicated with huge costs beyond the reach of just one country, international cooperation has become necessary, said Ye Dongbai, director of the international cooperation department of MOST.

China's State Council recently issued a set of guidelines to encourage the launch of more large international science projects. Areas such as the physical sciences, research on the evolution of the universe and the origin of life were specifically listed as priorities.

"Those large projects will also help attract high-end scientific and technological resources and talent from across the globe," Ye said.

In recent years, China has initiated or taken part in several large science projects such as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, an international nuclear fusion project commonly known as "artificial Sun," and the Square Kilometer Array, a large multi radio telescope project.

-------------

*Mega science projects to get startup support*
By ZHANG ZHIHAO | China Daily | Updated: 2018-04-04 07:43














*China has 'ability and duty' to help solve the world's major challenges*

China will incubate several international mega science and engineering projects in the future, some of which will be upgraded into China-led global projects aimed at tackling the world's most difficult scientific challenges, officials said on Tuesday.

By 2020, China plans to create three to five of these mega science projects, and then add six to 10 more by 2035.

The projects typically require huge investments, expensive equipment, complex experiments, decades of research and many interdisciplinary experts from multiple countries.

The upgraded projects will be selected from the pool based on how viable, organized and advanced the original projects are, said Ye Dongbai, director-general of the Ministry of Science and Technology's department of international cooperation.

"These types of projects are crucial for the world's innovation and progress, but are often too difficult for a single country to undertake," Ye said.

Some notable projects include the human genome, international thermonuclear experimental reactors, international ocean discovery, Earth observations and the square kilometer array.

The ability to launch and lead these kinds of projects is a key indicator of a country's scientific prowess and global influence, Ye said.

"China has been participating in some of these major projects since the 1980s," he said.

As China's science capability has improved in the last decade, it now "has the ability and duty to help solve some of the world's major scientific challenges", he said. Some of these China-led mega projects will utilize China's world-class State laboratories and scientific equipment.

"China wants to put forward an objective and collaborate with other countries to reach the goal, while providing the world with Chinese solutions and wisdom in the process," Ye said.

Luo Delong, director of the China International Nuclear Fusion Energy Program Execution Center, said the country has improved its nuclear fusion technology and management capabilities.

"Huge strides have been made in making nuclear fusion energy clean and safe under the program," he said. "These mega projects might not bear fruit in 20 or even 50 years, but when it does, it will fundamentally change the world."

Wang Qi'an, head of the National Remote Sensing Center of China, said China-led global mega science projects will need better management, services and coordination.

"Chinese scientists have to see further into the future and work productively toward that goal together with foreign scientists," he said.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Ancient origins of viruses discovered*
*New study transforms understanding of virus origins and evolution*
April 4, 2018
University of Sydney



Rendering of viruses. A new study transforms our understanding of virus origins and evolution.
_Credit: © denisismagilov / Fotolia_

Research published today in _Nature_ has found that many of the viruses infecting us today have ancient evolutionary histories that date back to the first vertebrates and perhaps the first animals in existence.

The study, a collaboration between the University of Sydney, the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Centre, looked for RNA viruses in 186 vertebrate species previously ignored when it came to viral infections.

The researchers discovered 214 novel RNA viruses (where the genomic material is RNA rather than DNA) in apparently healthy reptiles, amphibians, lungfish, ray-finned fish, cartilaginous fish and jawless fish.

"This study reveals some groups of virus have been in existence for the entire evolutionary history of the vertebrates -- it transforms our understanding of virus evolution," said Professor Eddie Holmes, of the Marie Bashir Institute for Infectious Diseases & Biosecurity at the University of Sydney.

"For the first time we can definitely show that RNA viruses are many millions of years old, and have been in existence since the first vertebrates existed.

"Fish, in particular, carry an amazing diversity of viruses, and virtually every type of virus family detected in mammals is now found in fish. We even found relatives of both Ebola and influenza viruses in fish."

However, Professor Holmes was also quick to emphasise that these fish viruses do not pose a risk to human health and should be viewed as a natural part of virus biodiversity.

"This study emphasises just how big the universe of viruses -- the virosphere -- really is. Viruses are everywhere.

"It is clear that there are still many millions more viruses still to be discovered," he said.

The newly discovered viruses appeared in every family or genus of RNA virus associated with vertebrate infection, including those containing human pathogens such as influenza virus.

Because the evolutionary histories of the viruses generally matched those of their vertebrates, the researchers were able to conclude that these viruses had long evolutionary histories.

*Story Source:*
Materials provided by *University of Sydney*. _Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
_
*Journal Reference*:

Mang Shi, Xian-Dan Lin, Xiao Chen, Jun-Hua Tian, Liang-Jun Chen, Kun Li, Wen Wang, John-Sebastian Eden, Jin-Jin Shen, Li Liu, Edward C. Holmes, Yong-Zhen Zhang. *The evolutionary history of vertebrate RNA viruses*. _Nature_, 2018; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0012-7


Ancient origins of viruses discovered: New study transforms understanding of virus origins and evolution -- ScienceDaily


----------



## JSCh

*New coronavirus emerges from bats in China, devastates young swine*
*Identified in same region, from same bats, as SARS coronavirus*
April 4, 2018
NIH/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

A newly identified coronavirus that killed nearly 25,000 piglets in 2016-17 in China emerged from horseshoe bats near the origin of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV), which emerged in 2002 in the same bat species. The new virus is named swine acute diarrhea syndrome coronavirus (SADS-CoV). It does not appear to infect people, unlike SARS-CoV which infected more than 8,000 people and killed 774. No SARS-CoV cases have been identified since 2004. The study investigators identified SADS-CoV on four pig farms in China's Guangdong Province. The work was a collaboration among scientists from EcoHealth Alliance, Duke-NUS Medical School, Wuhan Institute of Virology and other organizations, and was funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health. The research is published in the journal _Nature_.

The researchers say the finding is an important reminder that identifying new viruses in animals and quickly determining their potential to infect people is a key way to reduce global health threats.

SADS-CoV began killing piglets on a farm near Foshan in Guangdong Province in late October 2016. Investigators initially suspected porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) as the cause. PEDV is a type of coronavirus common to swine that had been identified at the Foshan farm. Detection of PEDV ceased by mid-January 2017, yet piglets continued to die, suggesting a different cause. Scientists say separating sick sows and piglets from the rest of the herd helped stop the outbreak of SADS-CoV by May 2017.

Investigators confirmed the connection of SADS-CoV to bats by identifying the new virus in the small intestine of piglets from the outbreak. They then determined that the genetic sequence of SADS-CoV is similar to that of a bat coronavirus discovered in 2007 and looked for evidence of SADS-CoV in bat specimens collected from 2013 to 2016 in Guangdong Province. The new virus appeared in 71 of 596 specimens (11.9 percent).

The researchers also tested 35 farm workers who had close contact with sick pigs, none of whom tested positive for SADS-CoV.

Currently six coronaviruses are known to cause disease in people, but so far only two of them -- SARS-CoV and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus -- have caused large outbreaks of fatal illness in people.

This research was supported by NIAID award R01AI110964.

*Story Source:*
Materials provided by *NIH/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases*. _Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
_
*Journal Reference*:

Peng Zhou, Hang Fan, Tian Lan, Xing-Lou Yang, Wei-Feng Shi, Wei Zhang, Yan Zhu, Ya-Wei Zhang, Qing-Mei Xie, Shailendra Mani, Xiao-Shuang Zheng, Bei Li, Jin-Man Li, Hua Guo, Guang-Qian Pei, Xiao-Ping An, Jun-Wei Chen, Ling Zhou, Kai-Jie Mai, Zi-Xian Wu, Di Li, Danielle E. Anderson, Li-Biao Zhang, Shi-Yue Li, Zhi-Qiang Mi, Tong-Tong He, Feng Cong, Peng-Ju Guo, Ren Huang, Yun Luo, Xiang-Ling Liu, Jing Chen, Yong Huang, Qiang Sun, Xiang-Li-Lan Zhang, Yuan-Yuan Wang, Shao-Zhen Xing, Yan-Shan Chen, Yuan Sun, Juan Li, Peter Daszak, Lin-Fa Wang, Zheng-Li Shi, Yi-Gang Tong, Jing-Yun Ma. *Fatal swine acute diarrhoea syndrome caused by an HKU2-related coronavirus of bat origin*. _Nature_, 2018; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0010-9

New coronavirus emerges from bats in China, devastates young swine: Identified in same region, from same bats, as SARS coronavirus -- ScienceDaily


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists Reveal Cryo–Electron Microscopy Structure of a Herpesvirus Capsid at 3.1 Å*
Apr 06, 2018

The herpesvirus is genetically and structurally one of the most complex viruses. It spreads within the host population efficiently, causing a range of diseases in humans, including congenital disorders and cancers.

The assembly pathway of herpesvirus produces three distinct types of capsids called A-, B- and C-capsids, respectively. The three capsid types all have mature angular shells and a similar assembly mechanism. However, little is known about the structure and assembly mechanism of the herpes simplex virus (HSV) capsid.

Using a combination of “block-based” reconstruction and accurate Ewald sphere corrections, Prof. WANG Xiangxi, Prof. RAO Zihe and Prof. ZHANG Xinzheng at the Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, together with coworkers from Hunan Normal University, and the National Institutes for Food and Drug Control, reconstructed the 3.1 Å structure of the herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) B-capsid and built the atomic model, thus expanding the understanding of the assembly mechanism of the capsid. This study was published in _Science_.

As one of the four major structural layers, the 125 nm capsid of herpesvirus not only protects the viral genome from mechanical and other damage, but also functions to release the viral genome into the host cell nucleus during initial infection and to packaging the genome during the maturation.

The researchers found that there are four major conformers of the major capsid protein VP5, which exhibits striking differences in configuration and mode of assembly to form extensive intermolecular networks.

The triplex, a heterotrimeric assembly that fits between hexamers and pentamers at quasi-three-fold positions to cement the capsid together, consists of two copies of VP23, each exhibiting remarkably different conformations, and one copy of VP19C. Six copies of the small capsid protein VP26 form a ring on the top of the hexon and further stabilize the capsid.

Based on the capsid structure, the researchers proposed a model for the ordered assembly of the capsid using a triplex and its covalently linked lasso triangle formed by three VP5s. These basic assembly units then cluster into higher-order structures conforming to twofold symmetry and guide nascent assembly intermediates into the correct T = 16 geometry, allowing the first steps toward understanding the drivers of assembly and the basis of stability of the capsid.

The study was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program, the Strategic Priority Research Program, and National Science Foundation of China.





Figure: Overview of the interactions at inner capsid surface. (Image by WANG Xiangxi)
​


Scientists Reveal Cryo–Electron Microscopy Structure of a Herpesvirus Capsid at 3.1 Å---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Shuai Yuan, Jialing Wang, Dongjie Zhu, Nan Wang, Qiang Gao, Wenyuan Chen, Hao Tang, Junzhi Wang, Xinzheng Zhang, Hongrong Liu, Zihe Rao & Xiangxi Wang. *Cryo-EM structure of a herpesvirus capsid at 3.1 Å*. _Science _(2018). DOI: 10.1126/science.aao7283.​


----------



## JSCh

*NEWS | * 05 APRIL 2018
*Beijing launches pioneering brain-science centre*
China’s much-anticipated brain initiative finally starts to take shape.





Credit: Alfred Pasieka/SPL​
Beijing has announced plans to build a brain-science centre that will rival in size some of the world’s largest neuroscience organizations. It will also serve as a core facility for the country’s long-awaited brain project — China’s version of the high-profile brain-science initiatives under way elsewhere in the world.

The Chinese Institute for Brain Research was officially established in Beijing on 22 March, with an agreement signed by representatives of the Beijing municipality and seven research organizations based in the capital. The agreement named two neuroscientists — Peking University’s Rao Yi and Luo Minmin of the National Institute of Biological Sciences in Beijing — as co-directors.

The new Beijing facility will be one of the first concrete developments in the national China brain-research project, which has been under discussion for five years but has yet to be formally announced. The United States and Europe each launched billion-dollar brain initiatives in 2013, and Japan followed with a smaller project the following year. South Korea answered with its own initiative in 2016.

The Chinese project is expected to complement these projects with its rapidly growing cadre of top neuroscientists, abundant supplies of research monkeys, the country’s heavy burden of people with neurological diseases and its big investments in brain-imaging facilities. “The brain is such a complex system that significant efforts are needed to tame this complexity at an international level,” says Katrin Amunts, scientific research director of Europe’s Human Brain Project. China has the potential to provide important insights that relate to the work of other projects, she says.

*Plans afoot*

Luo says that he will oversee the roughly 50 principal investigators who will have laboratories at the new centre, with Rao taking charge of external grants that will support around 100 investigators throughout China. Luo says that it will be similar in organization and scientific scope to the US National Institute of Mental Health, a major US brain-science funder, although on a smaller scale.

The Chinese centre will be a partnership between Beijing’s premier biomedical institutions, among them the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Military Medical Sciences, Peking University and Tsinghua University. Luo says it will support projects that use the latest biomedical methods, for example high-throughput single-gene sequencing, precise genome editing and big-data processing. He also hopes to develop better imaging tools, such as a voltage sensor that can directly record neuronal activity and high-speed imaging microscopes that will allow detailed views of brain activity.

This year, Luo plans to use 180 million Chinese yuan (US$29 million) provided by the Beijing municipal government to hire the first five or six research groups, and to install them in a building already constructed by the municipality, which is across the road from his institute. When operating at its full capacity of 50 researchers, which Luo plans to have within five years, some 400 million Chinese yuan per year will be needed, which Luo hopes to secure from the country’s brain-science project, with a substantial amount still coming from Beijing.

Luo says that it will be a “docking site” for the China brain project, which has been in planning since the United States and Europe launched their programmes. So far, few firm details about the project have been released. Scientists who spoke to _Nature_ expect that the government will officially launch the initiative some time this year.

*Staffing challenges*

In the meantime, other facilities are preparing their bids for support from the national brain project. A large science park under construction in Shanghai will house a ‘southern centre’ for neuroscience research. The project’s organizers say this will support many more principal investigators than its Beijing counterpart, which scientists are dubbing it the ‘northern centre’.

Feng Jianfeng, a computational biologist and head of Fudan University’s Institute of Science and Technology for Brain-inspired Intelligence, has been involved in organizing the Shanghai brain projects. He says that one focus will using artificial intelligence (AI) to study brain diseases. Feng adds that, with 190 million Chinese yuan from the university, he is already setting up a brain-imaging facility that will house the largest number of magnetic resonance imaging devices in Asia, and will be based at the southern centre. AI algorithms will screen the images, comparing diseased brains with healthy ones, to form part of the world’s largest brain database, he says.

Another programme expected to be integral to the country’s brain-science initiative is an international mesoscopic connectome project, being designed by Mu-Ming Poo, director of the Institute of Neuroscience in Shanghai. Connectome projects attempt to map out all the neural connections in the brain.

Finding enough researchers might be the greatest challenge for both the individual centres and the China brain-science project. Jeffrey Erlich, a neuroscientist at NYU Shanghai, says as well as hiring top neuroscientists, the brain-science initiatives will need to fund postdoctoral positions and graduate-school research posts offering internationally competitive salaries. “That would increase the number of top students going into neuroscience,” he says. “Then, in five to ten years, China could have a fresh crop of top young scientists.”


Beijing launches pioneering brain-science centre | Nature


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists find new method to induce stem cells*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-08 15:28:12|Editor: ZD




BEIJING, April 8 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have made a breakthrough in creating stem cells with a cocktail of two chemicals that can induce mature somatic cells to turn back into pluripotent stem cells.

The study by scientists from the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, will help understanding of the fate of cells and could be applied to regenerative medicine, said lead researcher Pei Duanqing.

Scientists around the world are looking for "keys" that enable humans to regrow tissue or organs lost due to illness or injury, like a gecko can regrow a tail.

Stem cells can self-renew or multiply while maintaining the potential to develop into other types of cells. They can become cells of the blood, heart, bones, skin, muscle, brain or other body parts. They are valuable research tools and might, in future, be used to treat a wide range of ailments.

But how can we get enough stem cells?

Scientists around the globe have tried different approaches to induce somatic cells into stem cells. Japanese Nobel Laureate Shinya Yamanaka utilized a virus as a carrier to generate induced stem cells, but this method is believed to have a high risk of causing cancer.

Chinese scientists have spent five years developing a method of chemical induction, which is more efficient, simpler and safer.

"The fate of cells is determined by the chromatin structure in the nucleus of cells," said Liu Jing, a member of the research team. "We use small molecular chemicals to reprogram the somatic cells by manipulating the chromatin structure from the somatic cell pattern to stem cell pattern."

Soaking various somatic cells in the chemicals can induce them to become pluripotent stem cells, including the hepatic cell, which is difficult to reprogram by other methods, Liu added.

The study is published in the latest issue of _Cell Stem Cell_.

Shangtao Cao, Shengyong Yu, Dongwei Li, Jing Ye, Xuejie Yang, Chen Li, Xiaoshan Wang, Yuanbang Mai, Yue Qin, Jian Wu, Jiangping He, Chunhua Zhou, He Liu, Bentian Zhao, Xiaodong Shu, Chuman Wu, Ruiping Chen, Waiyee Chan, Guangjin Pan, Jiekai Chen, Jing Liu, Duanqing Pei. *Chromatin Accessibility Dynamics during Chemical Induction of Pluripotency*. _Cell Stem Cell_ (2018). DOI: 10.1016/j.stem.2018.03.005​


----------



## cirr

*China develops lead-free luminescent material*

2018-04-10 14:03 Xinhua _Editor: Gu Liping_

Chinese scientists have synthesized a new lead-free light-emitting material of high commercial value and significance to the environment.

Lead-based perovskite nanocrystals (NCs) have a broad range of applications in lighting, lasers and photovoltaics, but the lead pollution they cause limits their commercial application.

A research team led by Han Keli from Chinese Academy of Sciences Dalian institute of chemical physics have synthesized a new lead-free NC and published their findings in the chemistry journal Angew. Chem. Int. Ed in March.

The team synthesized lead-free 3D perovskite NCs in 2017, and the new material is more luminescent, said Han.

When the new NCs are used in LED devices and solar panels, they will cut the cost, improve energy efficiency and reduce risks to the environment and humans, Han added.

http://www.ecns.cn/2018/04-10/298599.shtml


----------



## Adam WANG SHANGHAI MEGA

*(Astronautics) China Successfully Launched 01 Satellites of Remote Sensing Group 31*

Xinhua News Agency 2018-04-10 13:11


Xinhua News Agency, Jiuquan, April 10th (Li Guoli, Li Yufan) At 12:25 on April 10, China used the Long March 4th C carrier rocket at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center and successfully remotely detected satellites and micro/nano technologies for the 31st group of the 31st satellite. The test satellites were launched and the satellites entered the scheduled orbit.

It is understood that satellites are mainly used to carry out electromagnetic environment detection and related technical tests.

The mission was the 271st flight of the Long March series of launch vehicles.

Russian Media Says Global 5G Hegemony Battle: China Will Stand Out

2018-04-10 14:39





According to Russian media, high technology has already made preparations to overcome obstacles again. It will provide users with 5th generation wireless broadband communication (5G technology) with a transmission speed of 1-10 GB per second. At the same time, the United States' stricter restrictions on other countries forced the latter to invest in building its own "Silicon Valley," and the transfer of commercial vitality from the Euro-Atlantic to the Asia-Pacific region enabled capital and information technology professionals to follow suit.

According to the report of the website of the Russian Strategic Culture Foundation on April 8, if the main forces of the past 5G international markets were all American companies, they have now been squeezed by companies in China, Finland, Japan, and Russia. Last week, KDDI, a Japanese telecommunications company and telecom operator, took its own trump card — investing $186 million in research and development of 5G technology.

KDDI President Tanaka Takashi said: "We will build servers and let companies use our platform." This means that some of the cheap large-capacity cloud platforms offered by US companies will encounter purer competitors than Japanese Lotte Markets. Takashi Tanaka believes that KDDI is closer to users than Lotte. "We will grab the 5G technology to enter the market before Lotte."

According to the report, mobile phones and communication servers are becoming a huge super-national real-time information management system, which creates various possibilities. With the increasing demand for information transmission speeds, the continuous expansion of network coverage, the increasing need for mobile data transmission, and the rapidly increasing demand for machine communication (M2M) and mobile broadband communications, 5G technology has become the only answer to these challenges. KDDI is prepared to give this answer by 2020.

The Federal Communications Commission of the United States pointed out in its evaluation of the global 5G market that although the North American market currently has the largest share, the demand growth in the Asia Pacific region is faster due to the fact that the user base here is even greater and initiatives to develop 5G technologies continue to emerge.

The American think tank Stratford Company believes: "5G technology will improve the efficiency of the invention of advanced technology, and China will make great efforts in this regard. The United States should study various precautionary measures to prevent China from gaining too much advantage in the 5G competition. The whistle has been heard. Several telecom companies in China, the United States, South Korea and other countries have raised their sleeves and have begun to invent, test and apply technologies that will promote economic development."

According to the report, 5G incorporates numerous technological innovations and will identify the best in information and economic fields in the coming decades. It will also be used for online trading, online finance, agricultural and industrial automation, intelligent applications, electric vehicles and unmanned people. The development of the machine creates new opportunities.

However, the European Union’s Network and Information Security Bureau warned that 5G brings new danger to national security. It pointed out: "We do not have enough preventive measures to ensure the security of the new telecommunications network. The existing 4G mobile communications have been hard to defend against hackers. With the advent of 5G, more hunters who use new networks to collect big data are also Will emerge."

According to reports, China is already a leader in wireless communications and only a few companies can compete with it. Washington believes that China will stand out in the 5G competition, which causes the United States to worry that the transfer of the "innovation machine" from the United States to Asia will give new color to the human electronic technology.
Russian Media Says Global 5G Hegemony Battle: China Will Stand Out
Data Map: Chinese companies based on 5G technology remote control robot debut at the Mobile Communications Conference in Barcelona, Spain. Xinhua News Agency reporter Guo Qiuda

*China's Big Data Market Ranks Number 1 in the World*

Overseas Network 04-10 14:30



Overseas Network April 10 According to Korea’s “Korean Daily” news, this year, the global big data market is expected to be US$150 billion, and it is expected to expand to US$210 billion by 2020. Among them, China's total volume of big data will account for 20% of the world's big data, but South Korea is still relatively backward.

According to an earlier report by the "Economic Information Daily", it was learned from ministries and commissions such as the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the National Development and Reform Commission that before and after the national "two sessions" this year, the big data series promotion policy will be launched intensively. The industry has expected that China's big data industry is entering the golden period from its infancy. In 2020, China is expected to become the world’s largest data resource power.

According to South Korea's "Asian Economy," news, about 53% of the world's enterprises are actively using big data to improve services, but South Korea is still relatively backward, only 5.8% of IT-related companies use big data systems.

This data shows that China is more than 8 times that of South Korea.

On April 9, the Korea International Trade Research Institute of the Korea International Trade Association published a comparative report on China-Korea big data transactions. According to the content, the scale of China's big data market in 2016 is 2.67 billion U.S. dollars, and it is expected to increase to 9.19 billion U.S. dollars in 2020. The report pointed out that China has built a big data trading platform, and companies can freely share and purchase legitimate big data information through such platforms. However, the Korean big data market in 2016 was only US$330 million. In 2016, the scale of China's big data market is more than eight times that of South Korea.

"Asian Economics" reported that in order to increase the use of big data, China and South Korea have established big data circulation and operating agencies, and continue to develop related markets. Even if the company does not have its own database, it can purchase big data products to increase its production costs, develop marketing strategies, and improve customer service.

Park Joon-ho, chief researcher of the Korea Trade Association, said that compared with the big data market, South Korea's big data commodities trading is still in its infancy. At the same time as the transaction, it is necessary to make efforts in improving the environment for sharing big data, training related experts, and improving the legal system.

Scarcity of Talent in Related Fields in Korea Talents in China

In response to the upcoming fourth industrial revolution, South Korea's large companies and research institutes are vigorously exploring the fields of big data and artificial intelligence (AI), but they are faced with the problem of scarcity of talent. According to Korean media, the gap between the two countries has further widened in the light of the talented people in related fields.

According to relevant sources in the industry, the three major communications agencies in South Korea are currently competing with big data and artificial intelligence. Due to the scarcity of talents, they have also started the “smashing of people’s wars” while developing technologies. However, talents with doctoral degrees or above are still scarce. .

"Asian Economics" reported that the data show that South Korea's talent in the field of big data is far less than China, in terms of artificial intelligence, China also surpassed South Korea. China has an average of more than 2,000 talents with a doctoral degree or above in the related fields each year, compared with 20-30 people in South Korea.

In this regard, some experts said: "Artificial intelligence is the future development trend, this may be the beginning of the application of more fields. Focus on scientific and technological innovation, especially the cultivation of talent is essential. China's growth rate in big data and artificial intelligence has long exceeded South Korea: The South Korean government should introduce stimulus policies, vigorously train relevant talents, and enhance the competitiveness with other countries." (Overseas Web Zhu Xi)

This article is a copyrighted work and it is strictly prohibited without authorization. Overseas vision, China's position, land on the official website of the overseas version of the People's Daily - Overseas Web www.haiwainet.cn or "Hai Ke" client, one step ahead of access to authoritative information.


----------



## JSCh

10 Apr 2018 | 13:10 GMT
*Yarn-like Rechargeable Zinc Battery Could Power Smart Clothes and Wearables*
*The zinc yarn battery works when knotted, stretched cut, and washed.*
By Prachi Patel





Image: American Chemical Society​
Researchers have shaped a rechargeable zinc-ion battery into an elastic yarn that churns out power when bent, stretched, washed with water, and even cut.

The zinc yarn battery could be woven into washable sensor-laden smart clothes and integrated into commercial textiles to power wearable displays, electronics, and medical implants.

The yarn joins a line-up of innovative flexible energy-generating and -storing devices that can be integrated into power fabrics. The list includes solar cell ribbons that can be woven into fabrics, knittable supercapacitors, and power-generating yarns that harvest mechanical energy or the triboelectric effect to generate power.

Some researchers have tried to make flexible versions of the workhorse zinc-manganese alkaline battery because of its proven high capacity, low cost, and safety. But these flexible versions have had low capacities. Plus these primary batteries can’t be recharged. But researchers have recently come up with high-performance rechargeable zinc-ion batteries.







​Illustration: American Chemical Society​Schematic diagram of fabrication and encapsulation of the yarn ZIB

Chunyi Zhi of the City University of Hong Kong and his colleagues made their thread-like rechargeable zinc battery by twisting carbon nanotube fibers into yarn. They coat one piece of yarn with zinc to make an anode and another with manganese dioxide to serve as a cathode. Then they wind the two yarn pieces on an elastic fiber, soak it with a commonly used water-absorbing gel, and encase the device in elastic silicone and a water repellant.

The yarn battery, detailed in _ACS Nano_, has a energy density of 53.8 milliwatt-hours per cubic centimeter, which is around three times as much as commercial thin-film lithium-ion batteries. It retains over 98 percent of its capacity after 500 recharging cycles.

“Compared with traditional lithium-ion batteries, which suffer from intrinsic safety and cost issues, this yarn battery can work well under various severe conditions,” Zhi says. It retains 95 percent of its original capacity when bent, knotted, twisted, and stretched up to three times its length. And it retained over 96 percent of its original capacity after being soaked in water for 12 hours.

As further proof of the yarn’s forte and coolness, the team made a 1-meter-long yarn, cut it into eight pieces, and showed that each piece could power a watch. Then they weaved the pieces into a battery textile, which could power pulse monitors, a strip of 100 LEDs, and a 10 cm x 10 cm flexible electroluminescent panel.

The researchers are now trying to integrate the yarn batteries with commercial fabrics and developing a large-scale manufacturing method for the batteries, Zhi says. “We also have a plan to develop other types of yarn batteries with more functions such as self-healing ability, or self-charge capability when combined with a solar cell component.”


Yarn-like Rechargeable Zinc Battery Could Power Smart Clothes and Wearables - IEEE Spectrum

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Healthcare: Cancer breakthrough leads China’s biotech boom | Financial Times


----------



## JSCh

*Shanghai scientists make 2 breakthroughs in chemistry research*
Xu Lingchao 13:56 UTC+8, 2018-04-11 



Gao Yang / Ti Gong
A sample of a piece of silver sulphide, the world’s first inorganic semiconductor material whose bendability, discovered by scientists in Shanghai.

Scientists from Shanghai's Institute of Ceramics have made two breakthroughs in chemistry research which may in future help develop new technologies in various fields to help us in our daily lives.

One of the breakthroughs is a new theory using non-toxic nanocatalytic medicine in chemotherapy to cure cancer, which would vastly reduce side effects and more precisely target cancer cells, the institute has said. It was published in _Chemical Society Reviews_, an authoritative international journal, in February.

Traditional chemotherapy eliminates both cancer cells and normal cells, so many patients suffer serious side effects. Shi Jianlin, one of the scientists who first came up with the theory, said a large number of cancer patients eventually die because of it.

Nanocatalytic medicine, however, would in theory remain non-toxic until it reached the cancer cells. Any medicine which entered normal organs would be degraded and excreted by the body.

Chen Yu, the other scientist in the team, said nowadays medical technology is advanced enough to precisely target tumors.

“The medicine will become toxic (once it reaches a cancer cell) because of the acid microenvironment of the tumor,” said Shi. “This chemical reaction will consume large amounts of oxygen, which will suffocate the cancer cell.”

The other breakthrough was the discovery of the world’s first inorganic semiconductor material, silver sulphide.

Chen Lidong, a member of the team who made the discovery in 2013, said it was a "happy coincidence."

“A student found he couldn’t shatter the material like other semiconductors during an experiment,” said Chen. While many people might consider it an annoyance, Chen and his team realized they might have found a new feature of the material.

Bendable material is widely used in the production of "smart" clothing, lightweight military devices and integrated health monitors. Currently, metal or organic non-metal has been used.

Both of the research projects the local scientists have been undertaking are still in the experimental stages.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Science academy launches cloud platform*
By Zhang Zhihao | China Daily | Updated: 2018-04-13 07:16














The Chinese Academy of Sciences launched one of its most advanced scientific cloud platforms on Thursday, to provide scientists with accessible, accurate and secure data services to drive research and innovation, officials and scientists said.

The China Science and Technology Cloud, or CSTC, draws data from the academy's research institutes and major scientific installations, as well as many of China's top universities and private innovation centers.

"Big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence are now the three chariots driving cutting edge information technology worldwide," said Wang Shuzhi, deputy director of the academy's general office.

The CSTC combines all three fields into a single, massive platform that "will provide strong data and cloud computing services to help China become a technological powerhouse," he said.

It was created at the academy's Computer Network Information Center.

Applications are divided into five broad categories: data resources, cloud computing with AI and supercomputers, research software support, research community networks and outreach to foreign scientists and platforms.

"The CSTC aims to become the go-to platform to satisfy most data and cloud service needs from scientists and innovators in China," said Liao Fangyu, director of the information center.

"We have entered an age in which scientific discoveries often require crunching a large amount of data. This is only possible with powerful computing hardware and software," Liao said. "The CSTC will bolster China's innovation capabilities and help create more original and influential scientific achievements."

Li Jun, a researcher at the center and one of the key computer engineers behind the cloud service, said the platform already has more than 600,000 registered users and will continue to improve to satisfy ever-growing research needs.

"The platform is the cornerstone of the academy's effort to improve its data-related services and applications," he said. "It also promotes data sharing and transparency, so the next generation of young scientists can use our data to help their research."

Zhou Guangqing, a researcher at the academy's Institute of Atmospheric Physics, said the cloud platform allowed faster and more accurate climate simulations, thanks to its wealth of data and muscular processing powers.

"Data about Earth's climate is so massive and complicated that scientists typically rely on math models to glimpse into complex physical or chemical phenomena, which can lead to a large margin of error," Zhou said.

Using the platform, scientists can simulate climate change on a larger scale or across a greater period of time. It also allows researchers to add data from other science fields－marine science or the carbon cycle, for example－into the simulation to create "a more accurate and comprehensive big picture", Zhou said.

"The platform will play a major role in improving our weather research and disaster predictions, which will be invaluable to society," he said.


----------



## JSCh

*China, ASEAN launch joint sci-tech labs*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-12 22:28:37|Editor: Liangyu




BEIJING, April 12 (Xinhua) -- China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have launched joint laboratory program to enhance innovation cooperation, Ministry of Science and Technology said Thursday.

Wang Zhigang, the minister, said that China has built a series of excellent joint laboratories and promoted the opening of China's national laboratories to ASEAN countries.

Wang made the remarks at the opening ceremony of 2018 ASEAN-China Year of Innovation, at the China-ASEAN Innovation Forum held in Beijing Thursday.

Joint laboratories include the China-Indonesia joint laboratory for high temperature gas cooled reactors, the China-Thailand railway system joint research center, the China-Laos joint laboratory for new and renewable energy, and the China-Myanmar joint laboratory for radar and satellite communications, Wang said.

"Chinese innovation needs ASEAN, and ASEAN innovation needs China," he said.

China has cooperated with 158 countries and regions in science and technology projects and participated in more than 200 sci-tech international organizations.

"China will further promote openness and cooperation in science and technology innovation in a broader range and at a deeper level," Wang said.

China is willing to synergize the Belt and Road Initiative with ASEAN's development plan to build a community with a shared future for China and ASEAN, Wang said.

The innovation year and the forum were organized by China's Ministry of Science and Technology, Singapore's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the ASEAN Secretariat.


----------



## Adam WANG SHANGHAI MEGA

094A Nuc powered strategic sub marine


----------



## Three_Kingdoms

* Roundup: Chinese scientist receives Sjoberg Prize 2018 in Stockholm *


Source: Xinhua 2018-04-14 04:16:10


By Fu Yiming

STOCKHOLM, April 13 (Xinhua) -- China's cancer researcher Zhu Chen, together with two French researchers, received Sjoberg Prize 2018 in Stockholm, Sweden on Friday.

After reading citation of their achievements by Goran K. Hansson, Secretary General of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Chen, together with Anne Dejean and Hugues de The, received Sjoberg prize from Svante Lindqvist, Swedish Marshal of the Realm, Friday afternoon at Stockholm Concert Hall, where the Nobel Prizes are awarded annually.

"We used wisdom from both Chinese and Western medicine and offered a cure to one of the most deadly cancers," Chen told Xinhua, "I feel that Chinese medicine has potential to contribute more to human health."

"There are no borders in medicine, because it strives for benefiting all mankind. It's a language of peace, and of development and progress," Chen emphasized, and recalled the cooperation with his French counterparts for over 30 years.

"We are very pleased to welcome this year's Sjoberg Prize Laureates here in Stockholm. Drs Zhu Chen, Anne Dejean and Hugues de The have revolutionized the treatment of leukemia and we are very proud to honour their contributions with this important Prize,"Hansson told Xinhua.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced early February that Drs Zhu Chen, Anne Dejean and Hugues de The won The Sjoberg Prize 2018, for the unique treatment that cures a once fatal cancer.

According to a statement from the the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the prize was awarded to them "for the clarification of molecular mechanisms and the development of a revolutionary treatment for acute promyelocytic leukaemia".

This year's Sjoberg Laureates have developed a new and targeted treatment for a specific form of blood cancer called acute promyelocytic leukaemia. It was once one of the deadliest forms of cancer, but it is now possible to cure nine out of ten patients who receive the new treatment, the release reads.

The treatment is unique because it is the first standard treatment for acute leukaemia that does not include chemotherapy. Instead, a combination treatment is used, which consists of a form of vitamin A, "all-trans retinoic acid", also called ATRA, along with arsenic trioxide.

The idea of using arsenic comes from traditional medicine, but this method has been scientifically tested and proven in this form. The Laureates have made this revolutionary development possible by methodically mapping the molecular mechanisms responsible for the disease.

By identifying a specific genetic mutation and aiding the destruction of a faulty protein in specific cells, it was possible to stop the process that resulted in death for three out of four patients. This treatment means the cancer cells disappear because they lose the ability to renew themselves.

These discoveries have been made in stages since the 1980s, and the treatment's effects have been confirmed in numerous scientific studies. In many countries, this treatment combination is now the first choice of treatment for acute promyelocytic leukaemia.

Zhu Chen, born in 1953 in China, is now Professor at the prestigious Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

The prize is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and is funded by the Sjoberg Foundation. The foundation, with a donation of 2 billion Swedish krona (about 2.5 billion U.S. dollars), was founded in 2016, and serves to promote scientific research that focuses on cancer, health and the environment.

The Prize is an annual international prize in cancer research awarded to individual researchers or research groups. The prize amounts to one million U.S. dollars, of which 100,000 U.S. dollars is the prize sum and 900,000 U.S. dollars is funding for future research.

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-04/14/c_137109594.htm





*10 Chinese Scientists Who Are Pushing The Envelope*






Here are ten scientists contributing to China’s growing reputation as a global research powerhouse.
AsianScientist (Apr. 10, 2018) – From probing the corners of the Universe in search of dark matter to successfully cloning monkeys and conducting a quantum video conference, China is well on its way to becoming a scientific superpower.

In 2017, a report by the US National Science Foundation found that China had surpassed the US in the number of science publications. Nature Index ranked China’s leading scientific institution, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, as the institution with the most research outputs for the same year, ahead of America’s Harvard University and Germany’s Max Planck Society.

This might have come as a result of the country’s aggressive investment in science over the past two decades. China spent US$279 billion on research and development in 2017 alone—up 70 percent from 2012.

Not only did the financial investment for science grow over the years, the number of Chinese graduates in science and engineering courses also increased from 359,000 in 2000 to 1.65 million in 2014. In addition, a UNESCO report shows that nearly one in five of the world’s researchers reside in China.

As the world waits for the next big discovery from this science behemoth, here are ten Chinese scientists, selected from the 2018 edition of the Asian Scientist 100 list, who are making waves in their respective fields.

1. *Xie Xiaoliang Sunney*






Photo: Xie Xiaoliang Sunney Xie, the director of the Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Genomics and the Biodynamics Optical Imaging Center, received the 2017 Qiu Shi Outstanding Scientist Award for his work on single-molecule enzymes.

2. *James C. C. Chan*






Photo: Hong Kong Academy of Engineering Sciences For his contributions to the advancement of electric vehicle technologies, Chan has been selected to receive the 2018 IEEE Transportation Technologies Award.

*3. Tang Ching Wan *

*





*Photo: The Academy of Sciences of Hong Kong Tang received the 2017 IEEE Jun-ichi Nishizawa Medal for his pioneering work in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) that has paved the way for the first commercial full-color OLED displays.

*4. Wu Jianping *






Photo: Tsinghua University Wu is a 2017 inductee of the Internet Hall of Fame and the only Chinese person on the list. He was recognized for advancing internet technology in China and strengthening the country’s ties with the global internet community.

*5. Chang Meemann*






Photo: L’Oreal
The first woman to head China’s Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chang received the 2018 L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Award for her pioneering work on fossil records leading to insights on how aquatic vertebrates adapted to life on land.

*6. Shi Yigong*






Photo: Rita Allen Foundation

A structural biologist, Shi received the 2017 Future Science Prize for his studies that produced high-resolution structures of the spliceosome, a protein complex essential for mRNA processing. Using cryo-electron microscopy, Shi was able to observe the active site of the spliceosome and thereby determine how mRNA matures in the spliceosome.

*7. Zhu Yanwu*





Photo: Xiamen University

Zhu received the 2017 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Science Prize for Innovation, Research and Education for his cross-border research on graphene-based materials.

*8. Xu Chenyang*






Photo: Institute for Advanced Study

Xu was one of three recipients of the 2017 Future Science Prize for his contributions to birational algebraic geometry, a specific branch of mathematics that has applications in statistics, geometric modeling and computing.

*9. Pan Jianwe*i






Photo: The State Council of the People’s Republic of China The 2017 Future Science Prize in Physics was awarded to Pan in honor of his work on quantum optical technology.

*10. Xie Zhenhua*





Photo: International Institute for Sustainable Development China’s chief negotiator at the Paris Agreement, Xie received the 2017 LUI Che Woo Prize in Sustainable Development for his efforts in resisting climate change. ———





*Author:*





*Shai Panela *

Shai Panela is an award-winning freelance science journalist based in the Philippines. She was part of the Asian Science Journalism fellowship program of the World Federation of Science Journalists in 2013 and covers stories in science, health, technology and the environment. Read more from *Asian Scientist Magazine at: https://www.asianscientist.com/2018/04/features/chinese-asian-scientist-100-2018/*

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Posted: Apr 18, 2018
*Nanotechnology takes steps towards artificial retinas*

(_Nanowerk Spotlight_) Sensory substitution with flexible electronics is one of the intriguing fields of research that takes place in nanotechnology labs around the world. Scientists already fabricate electronic devices that can replicate, to some degree, some of the human senses, such as touch (electronic skin – e-skin), smell (e-nose), and taste (e-tongue).

In line with this focus on human senses, in the future artificial retinas integrated with the human body may not only repair damaged vision but also expand it to see a wider range wavelengths (e.g. ultraviolet light).

The human retina is a film-shaped tissue behind the vitreous body in the eye. Photosensitive cells in the retina convert incoming light energy into bioelectric signals that are carried to the brain by the optic nerve.

Researchers in China now have demonstrated a new self-powered brain-linked vision electronic skin (e-skin) for mimicking the human retina.

"The general idea of our device design of brain-linked vision electronic skin is constructing an integrated flexible system including photodetector array, information analyzer, signal transmitter, and electricity power unit," Xinyu Xue, a professor at the College of Sciences at Northeastern University, Shenyang, tells Nanowerk. "While various research groups already have reported flexible photo detecting electronics, a battery-free, flexible and efficient power-supply unit remains an important bottleneck of the flexible vision e-skin. Another problem is to input the photo detecting signal into the brain for participating in the vision perception and relevant behavior intervention."




Optical images of the vision e-skin. (Reprinted with permission by Wiley-VCH Verlag) 

Xue and collaborators from University of Electronic Science and Technology of China Chengdu and Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology have published their findings in _Advanced Functional Materials_ ("A Self-Powered Brain-Linked Vision Electronic-Skin Based on Triboelectric-Photodetecing Pixel-Addressable Matrix for Visual-Image Recognition and Behavior Intervention")

"Our self-powered vision e-skin is different from traditional complex integrated systems and combines the electricity-generating, photo-detecting, and neurobionics of signal transmission into one single chemical/physical process," explains Xue. "In this process, the photo detecting units in the e-skin harvest human-motion energy and output triboelectric signals containing the photo detecting information, acting as both the power source and the photo detecting signal for mimicking vision."

A novelty in this work is that the triboelectric and photo detecting effects are coupled in one single process.

The team's novel fabrication process employs, in successive order: standard photolithography; printed circuit board technique; PDMS soft-template method; electron beam evaporation process; and electrochemical polymerization. The resulting film device is a polypyrrole/polydimethysiloxane (Ppy/PDMS) triboelectric photo detecting pixel-addressable matrix.

"Our new fabrication technique can lower the production cost of traditional complex sensory-substitution systems and can be easily extended to various brain–machine interaction applications," Xue points out.



Fabrication process of the e-skin. (Reprinted with permission by Wiley-VCH Verlag) 

To demonstrate the workings of their self-powered vision e-skin, the scientists attached it to the corner of a person's eye and . The motion of blinking eyes generated enough output power of the triboelectric generator to power the device and, in this test setting, detect UV illumination.

"The e-skin can map single-point and multi-point illumination stimuli (visual-image recognition) via the multichannel data acquisition method," says Xue. "In the next stages of our work, we will investigate self-powered multi-perception e-skin, including tactility, gustation, olfaction and audition. And we will also try to further investigate the brain-device interaction for practical purposes."
_
By Michael Berger – Michael is author of two books by the Royal Society of Chemistry: Nano-Society: Pushing the Boundaries of Technology and Nanotechnology: The Future is Tiny. Copyright © Nanowerk

_
Nanotechnology takes steps towards artificial retinas | Nanowerk Spotlight

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Characterizing ‘keyhole’ is first step to fighting obesity at the cellular level*
Apr. 18, 2018, 1:11 PM






An international team has uncovered the potential to beat obesity at the cellular level, characterizing for the first time a complex, little-understood receptor type that, when activated, shuts off hunger.

Jens Meiler, professor of chemistry and pharmacology at Vanderbilt University, said pharmaceutical companies long have attempted to develop a small-molecule drug that could do just that. But until now, nobody knew exactly what the receptor looked like, making it nearly impossible to design the key to activating it.



​Jens Meiler’s team determined the first crystal structure for a neuropeptide Y receptor, deciphering the thousands of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and other atoms involved with it and how they bind to one another. (Brian Bender/Vanderbilt University)

*Finding the “keyhole”*
The team determined the first crystal structure for a neuropeptide Y receptor, deciphering the thousands of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and other atoms involved with it and how they bind to one another. Meiler and a Ph.D. student in his laboratory, Brian J. Bender, translated the inherently low-quality data about the atoms’ coordinates to build accurate computer models of both the inactive receptor and what it looks like when activated.

“This is a very important milestone in the drug discovery process,” Meiler said. “The big contribution of this paper is to list the atoms with all the specific coordinates of where they are sitting in space and where they are bound to each other. We’ve actually found where there are little pockets in the structure where we can build a small molecule to bind.

“Before, it was like trying to design a key without knowing the shape of the keyhole.”

Their findings are published today in the journal _Nature_. Other authors include researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai and Leipzig University in Germany.

*Next steps*
The next step in this molecular-level research is target validation: proving that the receptor really does control hunger. Past studies revealed that when the receptor is blocked from functioning in mice, they become obese.

“Once you eat, you produce this peptide, it activates the receptor, and then you don’t feel hungry anymore and you stop eating,” Meiler said. “The idea here is that we could upregulate this receptor with a small molecule and create this feeling of not being hungry, so that you eat less.”

Meiler said the _Nature_ paper is part of a much larger, ongoing study that already has produced starting points for the development of potential small-molecule therapeutics.

The breakthrough is possible through a long-standing international collaboration between Vanderbilt and Leipzig Universities with Bender spending months conducting experiments in Leipzig and several scientists from Leipzig traveling to Vanderbilt. The student exchange is supported by the Max Kade Foundation and the National Science Foundation (OISE 1157751). The research at Vanderbilt University is supported by the National Institute of Health (R01 DK097376, R01 GM080403), and the National Science Foundation (CHE 1305874).



Characterizing ‘keyhole’ is first step to fighting obesity at the cellular level | Vanderbilt News | Vanderbilt University

Zhenlin Yang, Shuo Han, Max Keller, Anette Kaiser, Brian J. Bender, Mathias Bosse, Kerstin Burkert, Lisa M. Kögler, David Wifling, Guenther Bernhardt, Nicole Plank, Timo Littmann, Peter Schmidt, Cuiying Yi, Beibei Li, Sheng Ye, Rongguang Zhang, Bo Xu, Dan Larhammar, Raymond C. Stevens, Daniel Huster, Jens Meiler, Qiang Zhao, Annette G. Beck-Sickinger, Armin Buschauer, Beili Wu. *Structural basis of ligand binding modes at the neuropeptide Y Y1 receptor*. _Nature_, 2018; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0046-x​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

18 April 2018
*Flexible TVs and high performance wearable smart tech one step closer*

Flexible televisions, tablets and phones as well as ‘truly wearable’ smart tech are a step closer thanks to a nanoscale transistor created by researchers at The University of Manchester and Shandong University in China.

The international team has developed an ultrafast, nanoscale transistor – known as a thin film transistor, or TFT, - made out of an oxide semiconductor. The TFT is the first oxide-semiconductor based transistor that is capable of operating at a benchmark speed of 1 GHz. This could make the next generation electronic gadgets even faster, brighter and more flexible than ever before.

A TFT is a type of transistor usually used in a liquid crystal display (LCD). These can be found in most modern gadgets with LCD screens such as smart phones, tablets and high-definition televisions.

How do they work? LCD features a TFT behind each individual pixel and they act as individual switches that allow the pixels to change state rapidly, making them turn on and off much more quickly.

But most current TFTs are silicon-based which are opaque, rigid and expensive in comparison to the oxide semiconductor family of transistors which the team from the UK and China are developing. Whilst oxide TFTs will improve picture on LCD displays, it is their flexibility that is even more impressive.

Aimin Song, Professor of Nanoelectronics in the School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, The University of Manchester, explains: “TVs can already be made extremely thin and bright. Our work may help make TV more mechanically flexible and even cheaper to produce.

“But, perhaps even more importantly, our GHz transistors may enable medium or even high performance flexible electronic circuits, such as truly wearable electronics.










"Wearable electronics requires flexibility and in many cases transparency, too. This would be the perfect application for our research. Plus, there is a trend in developing smart homes, smart hospitals and smart cities – in all of which oxide semiconductor TFTs will play a key role.”
*Prof Aimin Song, Professor of Nanoelectronics*

"Wearable electronics requires flexibility and in many cases transparency, too. This would be the perfect application for our research.

“Plus, there is a trend in developing smart homes, smart hospitals and smart cities – in all of which oxide semiconductor TFTs will play a key role.”

Oxide-based technology has seen rapid development when compared to its silicon counterpart which is increasingly close to some fundamental limitations. Prof Song says there has been fast progress in oxide-semiconductors in recent years and extensive efforts have been made in order to improve the speed of oxide-semiconductor-based TFTs.

So much so some oxide-based technology has already started replacing amorphous silicon in some gadgets. Prof Song thinks these latest developments have brought commercialisation much closer.

He added: “To commercialise oxide-based electronics there is still a range of research and development that has to be carried out on materials, lithography, device design, testing, and last but not the least, large-area manufacturing. It took many decades for silicon technology to get this far, and oxides are progressing at a much faster pace.

“Making a high performance device, like our GHz IGZO transistor, is challenging because not only do materials need to be optimised, a range of issues regarding device design, fabrication and tests also have to be investigated. In 2015, we were able to demonstrate the fastest flexible diodes using oxide semiconductors, reaching 6.3 GHz, and it is still the world record to date. So we’re confident in oxide-semiconductor based technologies.”


Flexible TVs and high performance wearable smart tech one step closer | University of Manchester

Yiming Wang, Jin Yang, Hanbin Wang, Jiawei Zhang, He Li, Gengchang Zhu, Yanpeng Shi, Yuxiang Li, Qingpu Wang, Qian Xin, Zhongchao Fan, Fuhua Yang, Aimin Song. *Amorphous-InGaZnO Thin-Film Transistors Operating Beyond 1 GHz Achieved by Optimizing the Channel and Gate Dimensions*. _IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices_, 2018; 1 DOI: 10.1109/TED.2018.2807621​


----------



## JSCh

*Porous Salts for Fuel Cells: Organic salts with high proton conductivity*
Thursday, April 19, 2018 8:52 am EDT

Scientists have developed a new class of crystalline porous organic salts with high proton conductivity for applications such as proton-exchange membranes for fuel cells. As reported in the journal _Angewandte Chemie_, polar channels that contain water play a critical role in proton conduction. At about 60 °C and high humidity, their proton conductivity is one of the best yet found in a porous material.




Porous organic materials are potentially useful for many applications, including catalytic systems, separation processes, and gas storage. Although these framework-like structures vary greatly, they have one thing in common: their components are connected through covalent bonds. Porous organic salts, on the other hand, are a new class of materials with components held together by ionic bonds, the attractive forces between positive and negatively charged ions. They are challenging to produce because their pores usually collapse; the ionic bonds of previously known organic salts are not strong enough to stabilize a porous structure.

Researchers working with Teng Ben at Jilin University (Changchun, China) have now successfully combined organic bases and acids to produce salts with very strong bonds and defined crystalline structures that form stable pore systems. These highly porous solids have the highest inner surface area ever found in an organic salt. The scientists demonstrated a significant correlation between the strength of the ionic bonds and the stability of the pore structure.

The pores in the salts form one-dimensional channels and can hold water. The water molecules are bound to each other and to the charged groups through hydrogen bonding. These aspects give the salts their unusually high proton conductivity. Materials with high proton conductivity have become the focus of attention because they are good electrolytes for fuel cells. In a fuel cell, two half reactions of a chemical reaction occur while physically separated. The most popular version uses the reaction oxygen and hydrogen to form water. In this case, the two cells must exchange protons (positively charged hydrogen atoms) through an electrolyte—usually through a proton-conducting polymer membrane. Scientists have been searching for more efficient, robust electrolytes. These new salts may be candidates. They are very stable at higher temperatures and their proton conductivity increases as the temperature rises.

In conventional polymer membranes, proton transport occurs through water-containing channels through which the protons within the network are transferred from one molecule to the next through hydrogen bonded water molecules. In the salts, the transport mechanism is different. Calculations indicate that the protons are sent through the channels by “courier”: A water molecule binds a proton and diffuses through the channel, releasing the proton on the other side.

*Cite and link*: Teng Ben et al., _Angewandte Chemie International Edition_, 10.1002/anie.201800423. doi.org/10.1002/anie.201800423



Porous Salts for Fuel Cells: Organic salts with high proton conductivity | Wiley News Room – Press Releases, News, Events & Media


----------



## LKJ86

2018.4.20


----------



## JSCh

*Int'l team launches project to sequence DNA of all complex life on Earth *
Source: Xinhua | 2018-04-24 07:10:33 | Editor: huaxia



The Earth BioGenome Project aims to sequence all eukaryotic species. This superkingdom of life includes all organisms except bacteria and archaea. (Xinhua/CREDIT: Graphic by Mirhee Lee)

WASHINGTON, April 23 (Xinhua) -- An international consortium of scientists is proposing the most ambitious project in the history of biology: sequencing the DNA of all known eukaryotic species on Earth.

The initiative, described on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is led by a coordinating council with members from the United States, the European Union, China, Brazil, Canada, Australia and some African countries.

The benefits of the monumental project promise to be a complete transformation of the scientific understanding of life on Earth and a vital new resource for global innovations in medicine, agriculture, conservation, technology and genomics.

The central goal of the Earth BioGenome Project (EBP) is to understand the evolution and organization of life on our planet by sequencing and functionally annotating the genomes of 1.5 million known species of eukaryotes, a massive group that includes plants, animals, fungi and other organisms whose cells have a nucleus that houses their chromosomal DNA.

To date, the genomes of less than 0.2 percent of eukaryotic species or fewer than 15,000 species have been sequenced, according to 24 interdisciplinary authors.

The project also seeks to reveal some of the estimated 10 to 15 million unknown species of eukaryotes, most of which are single cell organisms, insects and small animals in oceans.

Researchers estimated the proposed initiative will take 10 years and cost approximately 4.7 billion U.S. dollars.

Scientists compared it to the hugely successful precedent of the Human Genome Project. It costed roughly 4.8 billion in today's dollars and generated an estimated return-on-investment ratio of 141-to-one.

"The Earth BioGenome Project will give us insight into the history and diversity of life and help us better understand how to conserve it," said Gene Robinson, director of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois who chairs the project.

Advances in technology have made the project feasible. The cost of whole genome sequencing has declined to about 1,000 dollars for a draft-quality sequence of human genome size and about 30,000 dollars for a reference-quality assembly of the chromosomes of an average eukaryotic genome.

With advances in high-performance computing, data storage and bioinformatics, the high throughput assembly and characterization of genomes is now feasible, according to the researchers.

The completed project is expected to require about one exabyte (one billion gigabytes) of digital storage capacity.

The working group also sees the project as being essential for developing new drugs for infectious and inherited diseases as well as creating new biological synthetic fuels, biomaterials, and food sources for growing human population.

The Earth BioGenome Project also plans to capitalize on the "citizen scientist" movement to collect specimens.

The project will likely enable the development of new technologies, such as portable genetic sequencers and instrumented drones that can go out, identify samples in the field, and bring those samples back to the laboratory.


----------



## Adam WANG SHANGHAI MEGA

*China to commercialize 5G technology by second half of 2019*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-23 22:33:09|Editor: yan





FUZHOU, April 23 (Xinhua) -- China will apply 5G technology to terminal devices as early as the second half of 2019, leading to the primary commercialization of the technology in the near future, according to an official with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

"China started 5G research experiments in 2016, and entered the third stage of system verification this year," Wen Ku, head of the MIIT information and communication department, said at the ongoing first Digital China Summit in Fuzhou, capital of east China's Fujian Province.

China has launched 5G cooperation mechanisms with Japan, the Republic of Korea, the European Union and the United States, with international companies joining the research and development, he said.

Wen said device manufacturers such as Huawei and Ericsson had participated in development of 5G products to help create a complete 5G industrial chain.

Given the significantly greater speed -- up to 10 gigabits per second -- that 5G offers, the next-generation ultra-fast networks will see ways of life change more than in the 4G era, in virtually everything from how we "interact" with our cars to how we use the products in our homes.

KEY WORDS:_5G_


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists sequence antimalarial plant genes, finding way to extract more medicine*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-25 00:14:39|Editor: yan




WASHINGTON, April 24 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers reported on Tuesday in the journal Molecular Plant a high-quality draft genome sequence of Artemisia annua, a Chinese shrub producing a potent antimalarial compound Artemisinin and a way to extract more antimalarial medicine from the plant.

The findings can be used to metabolically engineer plant lines that produce higher levels of artemisinin as the low amount of artemisinin produced in the leaves of this sweet wormwood does not meet the global demand.

"Nearly half of the world's population is at risk of malaria," said senior study author Tang Kexuan with Shanghai Jiao Tong University. "Our strategy for the large-scale production of artemisinin will meet the increasing demand for this medicinal compound and help address this global health problem."

According to the World Health Organization, malaria affected approximately 216 million people in 91 countries in 2016 and caused an estimated 445,000 deaths worldwide that year alone.

The best available treatment for malaria is artemisinin-based combination therapy. In addition to its antimalarial activity, therapeutic effects of artemisinin have been reported for cancer, tuberculosis, and diabetes.

However, the supply of artemisinin is limited because this medicinal compound typically makes up only 0.1 percent to 1.0 percent of the dry weight of Artemisia annua leaves.

FINDING PROTEIN-CODING GENES

To fully harness this compound's therapeutic potential, researchers have developed metabolic engineering strategies aimed at enhancing the expression of artemisinin biosynthetic pathway genes.

These efforts failed to generate Artemisia annua lines that produced high levels of artemisinin, though, primarily because they focused on modifying gene expression only upstream or downstream of the artemisinin biosynthetic pathway.

A major hurdle for metabolic engineering strategies has been the lack of reference genome sequences and limited information about the genes involved in regulating artemisinin biosynthesis.

Tang and his collaborators generated a high-quality draft assembly of the 1.74 gigabase Artemisia annua genome, which contains 63,226 protein-coding genes, one of the largest numbers among sequenced plant species.

It took several years to complete the genome sequence due to its large size and high complexity.

The study added a wealth of information about Asteraceae, one of the largest families of plants consisting of more than 23,600 species of herbs, shrubs, and trees distributed throughout the world, including many with considerable medicinal, ornamental, and economic importance.

"A major impediment to the exploitation of the Asteraceae resources in basic and breeding sciences has been the absence of reference genome sequences; to date, only the sunflower and chrysanthemum genomes have been released," Tang said.

"The Artemisia annua genome and transcriptome data we provide here will be a valuable asset for fundamental biological research on plant evolution and other topics as well as applied breeding programs," Tang said.

EXTRACTING MORE MEDICINE

The Artemisia annua genome sequence provided new insights into the entire metabolic pathway involved in artemisinin biosynthesis. Analysis of the protein-coding genes and gene expression patterns revealed the regulatory networks underlying artemisinin biosynthesis.

Based on the genomic and transcriptomic data, the researchers identified novel genes involved in regulating artemisinin biosynthesis. By simultaneously increasing the activity of three genes, namely HMGR, FPS, and DBR2, spanning the entire artemisinin biosynthetic pathway, the researchers generated Artemisia annua lines that produced high artemisinin levels, 3.2 percent of the dry weight of the leaves.

Leveraging these findings, Tang and his team have sent artemisinin-rich seed samples to Madagascar, the African country that grows the most Artemisia annua, for a field trial.

"We hope our research can enhance the global supply of artemisinin and lower the price from the plant source," Tang said.


----------



## JSCh

*Your behavior in Starbucks may reveal more about you than you think*
By Dennis Normile
Apr. 25, 2018 , 2:15 PM

How you behave in Starbucks may reveal something about whether your ancestors grew wheat or rice. That’s the conclusion of a new study in China, which finds that people descended from wheat farmers—who largely rely on themselves—typically drink coffee alone, whereas descendants of rice growers—who must work with their community to build complex irrigation fields—tend to sip in groups. These differences persist, even if a person has moved to a city and their family hasn’t farmed or grown rice for generations.

"I find the study very persuasive," says Richard Nisbett, a sociologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor who was not involved in the work. "It certainly is plausible that the differences between cultures are carried across generations even though the practices that gave rise to the culture are now rare.”

Psychologists generally agree that—by very rough measure—Western cultures allow individuality to thrive, whereas most Asian cultures emphasize group responsibility. One line of thinking traces these traits back to early farming practices. Wheat farmers—such as those living in China’s north—can grow their crop pretty much on their own. But it takes a village to build the irrigation systems that flood China’s southern rice paddies. And because rice farming takes about twice as much work per hectare as wheat, early rice farming communities gave rise to cooperative systems of labor. The argument goes on to say that millennia later, these differences in behavior persist. 

Thomas Talhelm, a sociologist at the University of Chicago in Illinois, decided to test those theories in an unlikely place: Starbucks. The team observed nearly 9000 people in 256 coffee shops, including local operations and international chains such as Starbucks. They ran their experiment in six cities: Beijing and Shenyang, in China's northern wheat belt; and the southern cities of Shanghai, Nanjing, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong, all in the traditional rice-growing region. Sure enough, on weekdays, roughly 10% more people were drinking their lattes alone in the wheat region than in the rice region. On weekends, that difference dropped to about 5%. (The researchers don’t have an explanation, this is their observation.)

In a second experiment, Talhelm and his team got creative. Psychological studies have also found that when individualists run into a problem they are likely to try to change the situation, he says, whereas collectivists are more likely to adapt themselves to the circumstances. So in selected Starbucks shops, the team set up a chair trap. They would position two chairs so that their backs were separated by the width of the researcher's hips. Patrons walking through the store would have to either move the chairs or turn sideways to squeeze through them. Most of the 678 Starbucks patrons just squeezed on through. But whereas only 6% of the southerners moved the chairs, 16% of the northerners did. (Follow-up questions by the researchers found that about 90% of the people in the Starbucks shops were from the respective local rice or wheat cultural region.)

The fact that these differences appeared among mostly middle-class city people suggests that rice-wheat differences are still alive and well in modern China, the authors conclude today in Science Advances.

Nisbett thinks the study did its job. "The chair technique is clever," he says, adding that it’s far superior to observational research, survey-based research, and studies in the lab.

Zhou Xiaoyu, an economist at Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen, Germany, who is originally from Beijing, agrees. "I believe they have done a good job at demonstrating that rice versus wheat farming has profound effects on cultural norms."

Talhelm says his team is considering trying a similar study in India, where there is also a split between rice- and wheat-growing areas. Unlike the different regions in China, where there are north-south climatic differences, the differing regions in India are all in similar climatic zones. Climate is a variable that could influence culture, so taking that issue out of the equation could answer the question of whether colder climes induce individualism.

Talhelm notes that the results also raise questions about expectations that Chinese would become more individualistic as they modernized, grew wealthy, and congregated in cities. He notes the cities in the southern rice areas are wealthier, more crowded, and more developed than the northern cities of Beijing and Shenyang. Yet the northerners still appear to be more individualistic. "People’s farming legacies seem to be more important than [gross domestic product] in explaining their everyday behavior," he says.


Your behavior in Starbucks may reveal more about you than you think | Science | AAAS



After observing the behaviors of customers in cafes in several modern Chinese cities, researchers report that people from rice-growing regions showed interdependent behaviors, like sitting in groups or squeezing themselves through narrowly placed chairs, whereas people from wheat-growing regions more often displayed individualistic behaviors, sitting alone or actively moving chairs that blocked their way. *CREDIT: *Carla Schaffer / AAAS


----------



## JSCh

*FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE*
*ACS News Service Weekly PressPac: Wed Apr 25 11:29:59 EDT 2018*
*Rabies trick could help treat Parkinsons Disease*
_“Targeted Brain Delivery of Rabies Virus Glycoprotein 29-Modified Deferoxamine- Loaded Nanoparticles Reverses Functional Deficits in Parkinsonian Mice”_
_ACS Nano_

The rabies virus wreaks havoc on the brain, triggering psychosis and death. To get where it needs to go, the virus must first trick the nervous system and cross the blood brain barrier — a process that makes it of interest in drug design. Now, scientists report in _ACS Nano_ a way to exploit the rabies virus machinery to deliver a Parkinson's disease medication directly to the brain.

Parkinson's disease, the slow degeneration of the brain cells that control movement, affects about a million Americans, according to the Parkinson's Foundation, and has no cure. While the exact cause of Parkinson's disease is unknown, a common feature of the illness is the accumulation of iron in neurons, inflicting damage and cell death. Some doctors are now using a metal-grabbing compound called deferoxamine to sop up the excess iron in patients, but high doses are needed due to the drug's limited capacity to enter the brain, bringing on serious side effects. To lower the effective dose, Yan-Zhong Chang, Xin Lou, Guangjun Nie, and colleagues wanted to take advantage of a key part of the rabies virus to usher deferoxamine into the brain.

Glycoprotein 29 is a part of the rabies virus that binds to a brain cell receptor and crosses the blood brain barrier. The researchers attached glycoprotein 29 to a nanoparticle stuffed full of deferoxamine. Then, they injected the iron-grabbing nanoparticles into mouse models of Parkinson's disease. The iron levels in the mouse brains dropped, reducing the brain damage and reversing the disease symptoms, without noticeable side effects. Since all of the components in the therapeutic agent are already approved for use in the clinic, the researchers are looking toward human trials.

The authors acknowledge funding from National Natural Science Foundation of China, the National Distinguished Young Scientists program, the Innovation Research Group of the National Natural Science Foundation, the Key Research Project of Frontier Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Queensland−Chinese Academy of Sciences Collaborative Science Fund and Beijing Municipal Science & Technology Commission.

_Note: ACS does not conduct research, but publishes and publicizes peer-reviewed scientific studies._



Rabies trick could help treat Parkinsons Disease - American Chemical Society


----------



## JSCh

Scanning Electron Microscope image shows a few of the carefully designed shaped of the chalcogenide glass deposited on a clear substrate. The shapes, which the researchers call “meta-atoms,” determine how mid-infrared light is bent when passing through the material.
Courtesy of the researchers

*Improving mid-infrared imaging and sensing*
_Artificial optical materials could allow cheaper, flatter, more efficient detectors for night vision and other uses._

David L. Chandler | MIT News Office
April 26, 2018

A new way of taking images in the mid-infrared part of the spectrum, developed by researchers at MIT and elsewhere, could enable a wide variety of applications, including thermal imaging, biomedical sensing, and free-space communication.

The mid-infrared (mid-IR) band of electromagnetic radiation is a particularly useful part of the spectrum; it can provide imaging in the dark, trace heat signatures, and provide sensitive detection of many biomolecular and chemical signals. But optical systems for this band of frequencies have been hard to make, and devices using them are highly specialized and expensive. Now, the researchers say they have found a highly efficient and mass-manufacturable approach to controlling and detecting these waves.

The findings are reported in the journal _Nature Communications_, in a paper by MIT researchers Tian Gu and Juejun Hu, University of Massachusetts at Lowell researcher Hualiang Zhang, and 13 others at MIT, the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, and the East China Normal University.

The new approach uses a flat, artificial material composed of nanostructured optical elements, instead of the usual thick, curved-glass lenses used in conventional optics. These elements provide on-demand electromagnetic responses and are made using techniques similar to those used for computer chips. “This kind of metasurface can be made using standard microfabrication techniques,” Gu says. “The manufacturing is scalable.”

He adds that “there have been remarkable demonstrations of metasurface optics in visible light and near-infrared, but in the mid-infrared it’s moving slowly.” As they began this research, he says, the question was, since they could make these devices extremely thin, “Could we also make them efficient and low-cost?” That’s what the team members say they have now achieved.

The new device uses an array of precisely shaped thin-film optical elements called “meta-atoms” made of chalcogenide alloy, which has a high refractive index that can form high-performance, ultrathin structures called meta-atoms. These meta-atoms, with shapes resembling block letters like I or H, are deposited and patterned on an IR-transparent substrate of fluoride. The tiny shapes have thicknesses that are a fraction of the wavelengths of the light being observed, and collectively they can perform like a lens. They provide nearly arbitrary wavefront manipulation that’s not possible with natural materials at larger scales, but they have a tiny fraction of the thickness, and thus only a tiny amount of material is needed. “It’s fundamentally different from conventional optics,” he says.

The process “allows us to use very simple fabrication techniques,” Gu explains, by thermally evaporating the material onto the substrate. They have demonstrated the technique on 6-inch wafers with high throughput, a standard in microfabrication, and “we’re looking at even larger-scale manufacturing.”

The devices transmit 80 percent of the mid-IR light with optical efficiencies up to 75 percent, representing significant improvement over existing mid-IR metaoptics, Gu says. They can also be made far lighter and thinner than conventional IR optics. Using the same method, by varying the pattern of the array the researchers can arbitrarily produce different types of optical devices, including a simple beam deflector, a cylindrical or spherical lens, and complex aspheric lenses. The lenses have been demonstated to focus mid-IR light with the maximum theoretically possible sharpness, known as the diffraction limit.

These techniques allow the creation of metaoptical devices, which can manipulate light in more complex ways than what can be achieved using conventional bulk transparent materials, Gu says. The devices can also control polarization and other properties.

Mid-IR light is important in many fields. It contains the characteristic spectral bands of most types of molecules, and penetrates the atmosphere effectively, so it is key to detecting a wide range of substances such as in environmental monitoring, as well as for military and industrial applications, the researchers say. Since most ordinary optical materials used in the visible or near-infrared bands are totally opaque to these wavelengths, mid-IR sensors have been complex and expensive to make. So the new approach could open up entirely new potential applications, including in consumer sensing or imaging products, Gu says.

The research was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), under the Extreme Optics and Imaging Program, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.



Improving mid-infrared imaging and sensing | MIT News

Li Zhang, Jun Ding, Hanyu Zheng, Sensong An, Hongtao Lin, Bowen Zheng, Qingyang Du, Gufan Yin, Jerome Michon, Yifei Zhang, Zhuoran Fang, Mikhail Y. Shalaginov, Longjiang Deng, Tian Gu, Hualiang Zhang, Juejun Hu. *Ultra-thin high-efficiency mid-infrared transmissive Huygens meta-optics*. _Nature Communications_, 2018; 9 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-03831-7​


----------



## JSCh

*Unlocking rice gene diversity for food security*
25 April 2018




A new study published in the _Nature_ journal opens the possibility to accelerate rice breeding to achieve food security for some of the world’s most vulnerable rice farmers.

The groundbreaking research on _Genomic variation in 3,010 diverse accessions of Asian cultivated rice_ maps the largest set of genomic variants for a crop species.

“This information leads to faster and more accurate development of varieties suited to various agricultural environments, especially for unfavorable rice-growing areas where the poorest and most vulnerable farmers reside. Plant breeders can make more intelligent choices in selecting traits for improved varieties that farmers can cultivate, which leads to food and nutrition security, “ says Dr. Jacqueline Hughes, International Rice Research Institute Deputy Director General for Research. “This is how advancements in rice science can impact the lives of millions of farmers and consumers,” she added.

A collaboration among IRRI, the Institute of Crop Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS), BGI-Shenzhen, and 13 other partner institutions, the research will enable scientists to discover new gene variants and characterize known genes for important traits, such as the natural ability of a particular variety to resist diseases and withstand floods, drought, and salty water. Additionally, molecular breeders could use the genetic markers to select rice plants that are more likely to carry a desired trait before they are planted in the field.

“What could previously take up to 40 years from trait discovery to varietal development can now only take just a few years,” says Dr. Ruaraidh Sackville Hamilton, IRRI principal scientist and head of the International Rice Genebank at IRRI.

“In addition, we are also able to make the breeding process more efficient and precise, being more responsive in delivering varieties with traits that can adapt to the increasingly complex production environment, reduce environmental impact, produce higher yield with less resources, and the changing needs and demands of consumers,” Dr. Hamilton added.

This recent research revealed that, among the 3,000 rice genomes, there are significant variations in gene content and immense sequence variation. Researchers identified more than 10,000 new rice genes and over 29 million simple variations throughout the genome. Additionally, within the two major rice variety groups, the analysis revealed the existence of previously unreported populations that are unique to specific geographic origins. Other evidence revealed that Asian rice was domesticated multiple times thousands of years ago.

According to Dr. Kenneth McNally, IRRI senior scientist, this is the largest set of genomic variants discovered for a crop species that is freely and publicly available for plant breeders and scientists across the world. It already serves as material for training a new generation of plant biologists.

Dr. Zhikang Li, a collaborating scientist from CAAS, reported that the research results have ushered in a “new era of genome- and information-based breeding.” He added that it has been a vital and extensive resource for CAAS scientists as they work on large-scale trait discovery and allelic mining, identifying parents for breeding programs, and establishing a comprehensive genome-based trait database for future rice improvement.

According to Dr. Hei Leung, IRRI principal scientist and geneticist, there is still considerable work to be done to discover and understand other rice genomic variations in the collection of the International Rice Genebank at IRRI and other collections around the world.

“Next, we will explore the largely untapped diversity in wild rice species. This will greatly aid in defining genotype-phenotype relationships as well as improving our understanding of plant biology. To achieve this goal, we must continue the spirit of providing access to new information to the global community.” said Dr. Hei Leung.


IRRI - Unlocking rice gene diversity for food security


----------



## cirr

*突破新纪录！清华大学首次实现25个独立接口间的量子纠缠*

2018-04-27 20:43:33字号：A- A A+来源：科技日报

关键字:量子纠缠 量子计算机

科技日报4月27日消息，记者27日从清华大学获悉，该校交叉信息研究院段路明研究组在量子信息领域取得重要进展，首次实现25个量子接口之间的量子纠缠。相比于之前加州理工学院研究组保持的4个量子接口之间纠缠的世界纪录，段路明团队将纠缠的量子接口数目提高了约6倍。该成果相关论文近日发表在《科学·进展》上。

量子接口用于实现量子信息在光子和存储粒子（通常为原子）之间的相互转化，是连接量子存储器或量子计算单元与光量子通信通道间的重要界面。段路明介绍道，对量子网络而言，量子接口相当于现有的网络接口，量子接口越多，意味着更多的量子设备可以接入量子网络。“量子信息领域的最终目标是要实现量子互联网，而量子接口是量子互联网的基本元器件之一，能相互纠缠的接口越多越好。”

他进一步阐述道，在量子信息科学中，光子拥有最快的传输速度，是传播量子信息的最佳载体，而原子拥有很长的量子相干时间，被广泛应用于量子信息的存储。量子接口将光子和存储原子链接起来，实现量子信息在不同在载体间的高效相互转换。

量子接口虽然重要，但增加其纠缠数量难度巨大。2010年，著名量子信息和量子光学专家Kimble研究组实现4个量子接口之间的纠缠，此后多年在纠缠接口的数量上无重大进展。

“我们研发了新颖的二维量子接口阵列，解决了相关技术问题，可以方便地实现多个量子接口间的纠缠。”段路明说。研究人员通过光束复分技术，独立寻址并相干调控5 *5的量子接口阵列，制备了多体量子纠缠态，在25个量子接口之间，实验利用纠缠判据以高信度证明至少存在22体以上的真实纠缠，刷新了量子接口纠缠数量的世界纪录。审稿人对这一工作评价为，”这是一个创纪录的纠缠个数，也是构建第一个量子网络过程中的一个重要里程碑。“

段路明表示，接下来将致力于继续增加纠缠接口数量，同时进一步提高接口之间的纠缠质量。

该论文第一作者为清华大学交叉信息研究院博士研究生濮云飞，通讯作者为段路明，其他作者包括该学院博士研究生蒋楠、常炜、李畅、张胜及美国密西根大学博士研究生吴宇恺。该项目得到教育部、科技部以及清华大学的经费支持。

@Bussard Ramjet

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*HKU claims to have developed new drug to prevent and treat HIV*
2018-04-29 09:59 GMT+8




A team from Hong Kong University (HKU) claimed on Thursday that they have invented an antibody drug that can effectively prevent human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections and eliminate infected cells in mice.

After eight years’ research, the team, led by Professor Chen Zhiwei, director of HKU’s Aids Institute, found that by injecting the drug, which is an engineered tandem bispecific broadly neutralizing antibody's named ‘BiIA-SG’, to humanized mice, HIV particles can be blocked from entering target cells, making it impossible to be infected with the virus, according to a press release by HKU.

Currently, patients who are infected with HIV need to take a combination of three anti-retroviral drugs every day to suppress the virus, otherwise the “level of the virus would rebound”, Chen said at a press conference.

But in the research, when the drug is injected into a group of infected mice, it was found that the viral load dropped significantly to “an almost undetectable level” for at least four weeks before 58 percent of the mice exhibited signs of a viral rebound, which leads to a promising efficacy of eliminating HIV-I infected cells in humanized mice - rodents which carry human genes, tissues and cells.



Graphic abstract of the drug BiIA-SG. / Photo via Journal of Clinical Investigation

The research team’s goal, Chen said, was to lengthen the period of protection offered by its new antibody drug.

However, the team has so far only tested the drug on mice, but is now looking to experiment on larger animals such as monkeys, before conducting clinical trials on humans.

The findings of the study have been published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, a peer-reviewed biomedical research journal published by the American Society for Clinical Investigation.

(Cover photo to courtesy: Hong Kong University)

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## TaiShang

*Construction begins on advanced photon science facility*
Xinhua, April 28, 2018

Construction started Friday in Shanghai on a facility designed to capture the real-time movement of particles.

The hard X-ray free electron laser facility, created with a total investment of nearly 9.5 billion yuan (1.5 billion U.S. dollars), is located in a national scientific center in Zhangjiang in Shanghai.

"It is like a high-speed, super clear camera. It can 'film' molecules, atoms, and electrons," said Zhu Zhiyuan, general manager of the project with Shanghai Tech University. "It can capture their real-time movements and play them back slowly, enabling scientists to figure out details of complex chemical reactions."

It is 3,110-meters long, including 2,795 meters of underground tunnel.

Traditional facilities of photon science can only take still photographs of particles.

"The facility is expected to offer unprecedented scientific opportunities, including solving the mystery of life and designing new medicines," said Zhao Zhentang, chief scientist of the project.


----------



## Cybernetics

China's carbon fiber development documentary. Production of T300 to T1000 carbon fiber.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists unlock genetic secrets of the rose*
By Angus McNeice | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2018-05-03 01:29


















Rosa chinensis in bloom. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]​_Breakthrough could lead to brighter, more scented blooms_

Gardeners could soon be growing genetically engineered roses of new sizes, colors and scents after scientists from Europe and China sequenced the flower’s genome for the first time.

A team of geneticists from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Huazhong Agricultural University in Wuhan and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing have successfully mapped the 36,377 genes that make up the Chinese rose species Rosa chinensis, commonly known as Old Blush.

Their research has been published in the journal Nature, and the breakthrough means that researchers will now be able to pinpoint genes that control specific traits, opening the door for future strains of genetically engineered roses that are pest-resistant, last longer in the vase, and have a wider diversity of scents and colors.

“The rose is one of the most important flowers in the world,” said Mohammed Bendahmane, a geneticist from ENS Lyon university and lead author on the study. “It has a huge capacity of usage - as a garden flower, as cut flowers, for production of oils for cosmetics and medicinal purposes - it’s a really important species.”

Roses are the best sellers in the international cut flower industry, which is worth around $20 billion annually. Plant geneticist Antoine Larrieu, from Leeds University, one of the report’s co-authors, said now the genome has been mapped, editing tools such as CRISPR/Cas9 could be used to create new strains of roses.

“CRISPR has been used in different plants species like tomato, wheat, rice, and it works really well, we know that it can make very precise modifications in the genome,” Larrieu said. “It has not been used on roses yet, but now we have the reference sequence, it’s just a question of doing it and going through a period of trial and error.”

In roses, Larrieu explained, there is an inverse relationship between scent and color – meaning hybrids with a vivid color usually do not have a potent scent, and vice versa. He said gene editing could potentially resolve this, leading to “very flashy roses that have a very strong scent”.

Rosa chinensis was selected for study, said Bendahmane, because it is one of the original parent roses of most modern varieties. Around 10 species of roses were introduced to Europe in the 18th century, from which around 40,000 species have since been bred.

“Rosa chinensis … was brought to Europe from China by French and British missionaries,” he said. “By sequencing the parents, we can understand the composition of modern roses.”

Jennifer Potter, horticultural historian and author of _The Rose: A True History_, said that Chinese people were among the first to domesticate roses.

“Chinese roses came into Europe and they brought wonderful new qualities - they had brighter colors, wonderful shiny leaves, a delicate scent, and petals like silk rather than heavy damask,” Potter said.

“And they were recurrent bloomers - that is what was so precious about the Chinese roses. People fell in love with them, they had a massive impact on rose breeding.”

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*China dives into original eye research using big data*
Henry Zheng
2018-05-03 16:15 GMT+8




​China is leading the way in finding the cause of nearsightedness, or myopia, using smart wear and big data to help.

Chinese researchers will head a high-profile international collaboration relying on AI and data analytics to find the mechanism behind environmental factors that cause myopia, according to Xinhua.

Myopia is a growing global concern, especially in East Asia where it affects about 80 percent of 18-year-old students, says a 2012 study in The Lancet. The condition can even lead to more serious diseases such as glaucoma and retinal detachment, eye expert Xu Xun told SCMP.

Conventional wisdom was that reading or staring at screens for too long were the primary culprits, but a growing body of evidence in recent years suggests that exposure to strong or low lighting is linked to eye growth – myopia is the result of a longer eyeball – in children. This has led some to conclude that more time spent outside in natural light would decrease the risk of getting myopia. Therefore, the mechanism pathway of how light intensity contributes to this lengthening will be a target of study.

Although many corrective options such as eyeglasses and contacts have developed over the years, little is known about how environmental factors such as ambient light influence the eye. Previous studies linking less myopia with more time spent outdoors relied on questionnaires, in which people did not accurately recall their experiences, notes research in Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science.

Therefore, the collaborative project aims to use smart wear instead of self-reporting to measure a person’s surroundings. The Xinhua article states that a sensor called the “Clouclip,” yunjia in Chinese, will be used to record data.

According to the news agency's website, the “Clouclip” can be attached to the frames of eyeglasses while a person reads or stares at a screen. The product page says that it can detect the brightness of your surroundings, the angle of your head tilt, and time spent outdoors. It even vibrates if you spend too long looking at something. All this data, of course, can be tracked in an accompanying app for analysis, a convenience that's central to the project.

With projections that half the global population will have myopia by 2050, the stakes are higher than ever for researchers to crack the problem.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *China develops world’s first digital positron emission tomography *
> CGTN
> 2017-12-13 11:59 GMT+8
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The world’s first digital positron emission tomography (PET ) has been developed at China's Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) in Wuhan City, central China.
> 
> The medical imaging device which helps doctors detect cancer and brain diseases is expected to better fight serious diseases at a lower cost.
> 
> In early November, Professor Xie Qingguo and his team at HUST conducted full digital PET for online proton beam monitoring in Taiwan Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, which has the largest and most advanced proton radiotherapy center in Asia.
> 
> “This is the first time in human history that we monitored how the proton produced oxygen-15 on a rat. It has proven two things about digital PET: To help the proton knife locate where to hit and where it actually hits,” said Professor Xie.
> 
> The full clinical digital PET is currently in the process of installment at the Affiliated Hospital of Zhongshan University in Guangzhou. It has begun to carry out the China Food and Drug Administration clinical trials.
> 
> The formal starting up of the first digital PET will take place in early 2018.


*China’s Self-Developed Medical Imaging Device PET/CT Enters Final Clinical Trial*
DOU SHICONG 
DATE: FRI, 05/04/2018 - 14:28 / SOURCE:YICAI



China’s Self-Developed Medical Imaging Device PET/CT Enters Final Clinical Trial

(Yicai Global) May 4 -- The world’s first fully-digital PET/CT has entered the final phase of clinical tests. PET/CT is a new type of medical imaging device that combines positron emission tomography with computed tomography, two diagnosis and treatment technologies.

A team led by Prof. Xie Qingguo of Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, china's central Hubei province developed the device.

The First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University and Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center are soliciting volunteers from the public to clinically test the equipment’s safety and efficacy during imaging diagnosis, Chinese Science News reported yesterday. After 120 cases of clinical trials conclude, registration documents will be submitted to relevant authorities.

The new PET/CT device is fully digital and able to precisely sample. It can detect tumors earlier and more accurately than conventional PET/CT devices. It also finds wide use in early detection of senile dementia and Alzheimer's.

The five-year survival rate of Chinese cancer patients is a mere 31 percent, less than half of that in the US. This low ratio is in part to blame on delayed detection and treatment, and the PET/CT device can significantly improve the capability of early cancer detection through its advantages in imaging performance, noted Zhang Xiangsong, director of nuclear medicine department of the First Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University.

Xie’s team started research into fully-digital PET/CT in 2001 and developed the new device in 2016, which solved the technical problem of the inability of traditional PET devices to digitize scintillating pulse signals, and thus it significantly reduces detection time and costs.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*NEWS * 03 MAY 2018
*Water filter inspired by Alan Turing passes first test*
_Membrane's structure predicted in mathematician's lone biology paper.
_
*



*​Alan Turing, pictured in a slate sculpture by Stephen Kettle, is known as a computer scientist and codebreaker, but also made forays into mathematical biology.Credit: Steve Meddle/REX/Shutterstock

Researchers in China have developed a filter that removes salt from water up to three times as fast as conventional filters. The membrane has a unique nanostructure of tubular strands, inspired by the mathematical-biology work of codebreaker Alan Turing.

The filter is the most finely constructed example of the mathematician’s ‘Turing structures’ yet, and their first practical application, say researchers. “These 3D structures are quite extraordinary,” says Patrick Müller, a systems biologist at the Friedrich Miescher Laboratory in Tübingen, Germany. The filter’s tubular strands, just tens of nanometres in diameter, would be impossible to produce by other methods, such as 3D printing, he says. The work is published on 3 May in _Science_.

British mathematician Alan Turing is best known for his codebreaking exploits for the UK government during the Second World War, and as the father of computer science and artificial intelligence. But he also produced a seminal work in the then-nascent field of mathematical biology in 1952, just two years before his death.

In it, he proposed a mathematical model for a process by which the cells of an embryo might begin to form structures — limbs, bones and organs. In this process, two substances continuously react with each other, but diffuse through their container at very different rates. The quicker-diffusing reactant — called the inhibitor — pushes back against the slower one, called the activator, effectively corralling the resulting product into a pattern of spots or stripes. (The terminology was coined by biologists Hans Meinhardt and Alfred Gierer, who independently formulated an equivalent theory in 1972.)

*Spotting patterns*

Whether such a process actually occurs at a cellular level has been hotly debated, says Müller. But this reaction-diffusion behaviour has been invoked to explain patterns in nature and society, including zebra stripes, sand ripples and the movements of financial markets.

So far, however, attempts to synthesize such structures in the lab have mostly been limited to 2D patterns.

A team led by material scientist Lin Zhang of Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, set out to create a 3D Turing structure out of a polyamid, a material similar to nylon, formed by a reaction between the chemicals piperazine and trimesoyl chloride. In a conventional process, trimesoyl chloride diffuses faster than piperazine, but the difference is not big enough to produce a Turing structure. Zhang’s trick was to add polyvinyl alcohol to the piperazine, further lowering its diffusion rate and allowing it to act as the activator to the trimesoyl chloride’s inhibitor.

The result is a rough, porous mesh with a nanostructure resembling a Turing pattern that can be seen under an electron microscope. The team was able to produce variants showing both dots and tubes — the two types of self-organizing structure predicted by Turing’s model.



Dot-based and tube-based Turing-type membranes, seen under a scanning electron microscope.Credit: Z. Tan _et al_./_Science_

The researchers were elated to produce the Turing structures, says Zhang. But they were more surprised when they found that their membranes functioned as efficient water filters — surpassing conventional nylon-like filters in some respects.

The filter’s tubular structure gives it a larger surface area compared to conventional filters, which increases the flow of water through the membrane, says Ho Bum Park, a membrane scientist at Hanyang University in Seoul. It’s an improvement on conventional membrane structures, which resemble a series of ridges and valleys, he says. “It’s a really smart approach.”

In tests performed by Zhang’s group, one pass through the tubular Turing filter reduced the table-salt content of a slightly saline solution by half. It also filtered out other salts: magnesium chloride by more than 90%; and magnesium sulfate, or Epsom salt, by more than 99%. The authors say that 1 square metre of filter can process up to 125 litres of water per hour while being pumped at a relatively low pressure of around 5 times atmospheric pressure. This is as much as three times as fast as typical commercial filters, Zhang says. The Turing filter could be used for purifying brackish water and industrial wastewater, says Zhang.

*Other barriers*

Although the membrane is effective at removing some impurities, Park says that its relatively low effectiveness eliminating table salt could make it impractical for desalinating seawater. Zhang says could be used to pretreat seawater in desalination plants, with the table salt removed via conventional methods, such as reverse osmosis.

Müller says that if the technique can be generalized, such tubular structures could also have applications in regenerative medicine — for instance, producing artificial veins or bones. “And once you know how to make tubules, maybe you can arrange these things into higher-order structures — maybe even organs,” he says. “Now that would be the dream application.”

But Müller also notes that because of the uncertainty in predicting whether such structures will form, they could be difficult to reproduce in other materials.

Even if that proves to be the case, the membrane is a tribute to the impact of Turing’s 1952 paper, says Zhang. “It’s a part of his legacy.”

doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-05055-7


Water filter inspired by Alan Turing passes first test | Nature

Zhe Tan, Shengfu Chen, Xinsheng Peng, Lin Zhang, Congjie Gao. *Polyamide membranes with nanoscale Turing structures for water purification*. _Science _360, 518–521 (2018). DOI: 10.1126/science.aar6308.​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese, American scientists make super-tough carbon sheets at low temperature*
Source: Xinhua 2018-05-08 04:15:42

WASHINGTON, May 7 (Xinhua) -- An international research team led by Chinese and American scientists has developed high-strength, super-tough sheets of carbon that can be inexpensively fabricated at low temperatures.

The team reported on Monday in the _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_ the sheets they made by chemically stitching together platelets of graphitic carbon, which is similar to the graphite found in the soft lead of an ordinary pencil.

The fabrication process resulted in a material whose mechanical properties exceed those of carbon fiber composites that are currently used in diverse commercial products.

"These sheets might eventually replace the expensive carbon fiber composites that are used for everything from aircraft and automobile bodies to windmill blades and sports equipment," said Ray Baughman, professor of chemistry at University of Texas.

Carbon fiber composites are expensive in part because carbon fibers are produced at extremely high temperatures, which can exceed 2,500 degrees Celsius.

"In contrast, our process can use graphite that is cheaply dug from the ground and processed at temperatures below 45 degrees Celsiu," said Cheng Qunfeng, professor of chemistry at China's Beihang University.

According to Cheng, graphite consists of platelets made up of stacked layers of graphene. Graphene is simply a single layer of carbon atoms, arranged in a pattern that looks like a chicken wire mesh fence, where each hexagon in the mesh is formed by six carbon atoms.

"While scientists can continuously make large sheets of graphene by high-temperature processing, and have shown these sheets to have remarkable strength, it is impractical to make thick plates of graphite by merely stacking large-area graphene sheets," Cheng said. "One would need to stack about 150,000 graphene sheets to make a graphite sheet having about the thickness of a human hair."

The researchers found inspiration in natural nacre, also known as mother-of-pearl, which gives some seashells their strength and toughness. Nacre is composed of parallel platelets that are bound together by thin layers of organic material, similar to the way bricks in a wall are held together by mortar.

"Instead of mechanically stacking large-area graphene sheets, we oxidize micron-size graphite platelets so that they can be dispersed in water, and then filter this dispersion to inexpensively make sheets of oriented graphene oxide," Baughman said. "This process is akin to hand-making sheets of paper by filtering a slurry of fibers."

"At this stage, the sheets are neither strong nor tough, meaning they cannot absorb much energy before rupturing," said Baughman.

"The trick we use is to stitch together the platelets in these sheets using sequentially infiltrated bridging agents that interconnect overlapping neighboring platelets, and convert the oxidized graphene oxide to graphene," said Baughman.

The key to this advance is that the bridging agents separately act via formation of covalent chemical bonds and van der Waals bonds, according to Baughman.

Sheets that incorporated the bridging agents were 4.5 times stronger and 7.9 times tougher than agent-free sheets, said Wan Sijie, a Beihang University PhD student.

"While sheets of expensive carbon fiber composites can provide a similar strength in all sheet-plane directions, the energy that they can absorb before fracture is about one-third that of our sequentially bridged graphene sheets," said Wan.

"Because our sheets are fabricated at low temperatures, they are low cost. In addition to exhibiting high sheet strength, toughness and fatigue resistance, they have high electrical conductivity and are able to shield against electromagnetic radiation," said Wan.


Sijie Wan, Yuchen Li, Jiuke Mu, Ali E. Aliev, Shaoli Fang, Nicholas A. Kotov, Lei Jiang, Qunfeng Cheng, and Ray H. Baughman. *Sequentially bridged graphene sheets with high strength, toughness, and electrical conductivity*. _PNAS _(2018). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1719111115​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 8-MAY-2018
*Theory for one type of superconductor solves puzzle in another*
_'Orbital-selective pairing' theory applied to first 'heavy fermion' superconductor_

RICE UNIVERSITY



​This is Qimiao Si. *CREDIT: *Jeff Fitlow/Rice University

HOUSTON -- (May 8, 2018) -- A 2017 theory proposed by Rice University physicists to explain the contradictory behavior of an iron-based high-temperature superconductor is helping solve a puzzle in a different type of unconventional superconductor, the "heavy fermion" compound known as CeCu2Si2.

An international team from the U.S., China, Germany and Canada reported the findings this week in the _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_ (PNAS). The study focused on a cerium, copper and silicon composite whose strange behavior in 1979 helped usher in the multidisciplinary field of quantum materials.

That year, a team led by Max Planck Institute's Frank Steglich, a co-author on the PNAS paper, found that CeCu2Si2 became a superconductor at extremely cold temperatures. The mechanism of superconductivity couldn't be explained by existing theory, and the finding was so unexpected and unusual that many physicists initially refused to accept it. The 1986 discovery of superconductivity at even higher temperatures in copper ceramics crystalized interest in the field and came to dominate the career of theoretical physicists like Rice's Qimiao Si, a _PNAS_ study co-author and the Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor of Physics and Astronomy.

Si, whose decadeslong collaboration with Steglich has led to almost two dozen peer-reviewed studies, said, "In my wildest dreams, I had not thought that the theory that we proposed for the iron-based superconductors would come back to the other part of my life, which is the heavy-fermion superconductors."

Heavy fermions, like high-temperature superconductors, are what physicists call quantum materials because of the key role that quantum forces play in their behavior. In high-temperature superconductors, for example, electrons form pairs and flow without resistance at temperatures considerably warmer than those needed for conventional superconductivity. In heavy fermions, electrons appear to be thousands of times more massive than they should.

In 2001, Si, who also directs the Rice Center for Quantum Materials (RCQM), offered a pioneering theory that these phenomena arise at critical transition points, tipping points where changes in pressure or other conditions bring about a transition from one quantum state to another. At the tipping point, or "quantum critical point," electrons can develop a kind of split personality as they attempt to straddle the line between states.

The case of superconductivity illustrates how this can play out. In a normal copper wire, electrical resistance arises when flowing electrons jostle and bump against atoms in the wire. Each bump costs a small amount of energy, which is lost to heat. In superconductors, the electrons avoid this loss by pairing up and flowing in unison, without any bumps.

Because electrons are among the most antisocial of subatomic particles, they repel one another and pair up only in extraordinary circumstances. In the case of conventional superconductors, tiny variations in the spacing between atoms in a supercooled wire can coax the electrons into a marriage of convenience. The mechanism in unconventional superconductors is different.

"Our unifying understanding is that if two electrons work really hard to repel one other, there can still be an attractive force," Si said. "If I am moving because I don't like being close to you, and you are doing the same, and yet we cannot be too far apart, it becomes a kind of dance. The pairs in high-temperature superconductors move in relation to one another, not unlike two dance partners that spin, even as they move together across the dance floor."

The 2017 theory put forward by Si and then-graduate student Emilian Nica, now a postdoctoral research associate at the University of British Columbia's Quantum Materials Institute, posited that selective pairing within atomic orbitals could explain some puzzling experimental results from some of the highest-temperature superconductors, alkaline iron selenides.

Some experiments had shown that the pairs in alkaline iron selenides behaved as if they had an angular momentum of zero, which physicists refer to with the term s-wave, while other experiments indicated the pairs had an angular momentum of two, which physicists call d-wave. This difference is profound because angular momentum is a fundamental identifier for electrons. Just as apples and oranges are found in different bins at the grocery story, s-wave and d-wave pairings don't mix and are found in different materials.

"What Nica's thesis introduced was that you can have a superconducting state in which electron pairs associated with one orbital of a subshell are very different from those of another closely related orbital in the same subshell because they have an opposite sign," Si said.

"The reason we proposed this multi-orbital pairing state was because measurements of some things, like magnetic responses, would show that the alkaline iron selenides had canonical d-wave features, and other measurements, like angular resolved photo emission, revealed attributes associated with s-wave superconductors.

"The experiments in the iron-based superconductor had already been done, and we offered an explanation, a pairing state that was both stable and robust, and yet had all these seemingly contradictory properties that were experimentally observed."

When 2017 experiments in Japan revealed some puzzling properties in CeCu2Si2, Si told Steglich that the orbital-selective theory might be able to account for them. Together, they joined forces with the experimental team of physicist Huiqiu Yuan, deputy director of the Center for Correlated Matter at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, to test the idea.

Si and Nica's theory predicted that experiments would reveal a specific set of seemingly contradictory measurements from CeCu2Si2, provided the material could be cooled to a temperature even colder than the tipping point that brings about superconductivity. Yuan's group performed the experiments and confirmed the prediction.

"Historical evidence has always been that the pairing in this material is d-wave," Nica said. "But the experiments confirmed that indeed, despite all the overwhelming evidence that it is d-wave, it has a feature called 'fully opened gaps' that is normally associated with s-wave superconductors. Ours is the only theory offered so far that can account for this."

Si said, "It's enormously satisfying on several levels. One is that while condensed-matter physics offers many materials that can host fascinating properties, we ultimately are seeking unifying principles, especially as theorists. I have actively searched for these unifying principles for years, but we weren't actively seeking a unifying explanation when we proposed this theory. To see it applied, to such effect, in another completely unexpected setting was a real surprise."


Theory for one type of superconductor solves puzzle in another | EurekAlert! Science News

Guiming Pang, Michael Smidman, Jinglei Zhang, Lin Jiao, Zongfa Weng, Emilian M. Nica, Ye Chen, Wenbing Jiang, Yongjun Zhang, Wu Xie, Hirale S. Jeevan, Hanoh Lee, Philipp Gegenwart, Frank Steglich, Qimiao Si, and Huiqiu Yuan. *Fully gapped d-wave superconductivity in CeCu2Si2*. _PNAS_, 2018 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1720291115​


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese Scientists Generate a High-quality Wheat A Genome Sequence*
May 09, 2018

Bread wheat (_Triticum aestivum_ L.), feeding more than 35% human population and providing about 20% of calories and proteins consumed by humans, is a globally important crop due to its enhanced adaptability to a wide range of climates and improved grain quality for the production of baker's flour.

Due to its complex polyploidy nature (hexaploid, containing A, B and D three subgenomes) and large genome size (17 Gb), the genetic and functional analysis of bread wheat is extremely challenging.
The A genome, originates from the diploid wild einkorn wheat _Triticum urartu_ with a genome size about 5 Gb, is the basic genome of bread wheat and other polyploidy wheats. It plays a central role in wheat evolution, domestication and genetic improvement.

To illustrate the genomic structures of wheat, the wheat genome research team of State Key Laboratory of Plant Cell and Chromosome Engineering, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, collaborating with the Genomic Sequencing and Analysis Laboratory of the institute, BGI Shenzhen and Keygene in the Netherland, generated a high-quality genome sequence of _T. urartu_ by combining BAC-by-BAC sequencing, single molecule real-time whole-genome shotgun sequencing and next-generation mapping technologies.

The scientists produced seven chromosome-scale pseudomolecules, predicted 41,507 protein-coding genes, and presented an evolution model of _T. urartu_ chromosomes.
Then they found that the collinearity originated from the ancient genome duplications in _T. urartu_were strongly disrupted because of extensive amplifications of transposable elements and widespread gene loss, compared to rice, sorghum and Brachypodium.

Comparative analysis with the A, B and D subgenomes of bread wheat also showed that four large chromosomal structure variations occurred during wheat evolution.

Population genomics analysis revealed that _T. urartu_ accessions from the Fertile Crescent formed three distinct groups with different adaptation to high altitude and biostress, such as powdery mildew disease.

The genome sequence of _T. urartu_ provides a diploid reference for the analysis of polyploidy wheat genomes, and is a valuable resource for systematically studying the genome evolution and genetic variations in wheat and related grasses. It promises to facilitate the discovery of genes conferring important traits for the genetic improvement of wheat to meet the future challenges of global food security and sustainable agriculture.

The research results were published on line in a paper in _Nature _with the title "Genome sequence of the progenitor of wheat A subgenome_Triticum urartu"_. 

_



_
_Triticum urartu_, the progenitor of wheat A subgenome (Image by IGDB)​
Chinese Scientists Generate a High-quality Wheat A Genome Sequence---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Hong-Qing Ling, Bin Ma, Xiaoli Shi, Hui Liu, Lingli Dong, Hua Sun, Yinghao Cao, Qiang Gao, Shusong Zheng, Ye Li, Ying Yu, Huilong Du, Ming Qi, Yan Li, Hongwei Lu, Hua Yu, Yan Cui, Ning Wang, Chunlin Chen, Huilan Wu, Yan Zhao, Juncheng Zhang, Yiwen Li, Wenjuan Zhou, Bairu Zhang, Weijuan Hu, Michiel J. T. van Eijk, Jifeng Tang, Hanneke M. A. Witsenboer, Shancen Zhao, Zhensheng Li, Aimin Zhang, Daowen Wang & Chengzhi Liang. *Genome sequence of the progenitor of wheat A subgenome Triticum urartu*. _Nature _(2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0108-0​


----------



## JSCh

*Ultra-strong 0.12 mm sheet glass mass produced in China*
ECNS App Download



A piece of glass sheet about 0.12 millimeter thick was produced by the Glass Research Institute. (Photo/Video screenshot from CCTV)

(ECNS) -- A Chinese research institute has created super-thin, ultra-strong sheet glass that can resist the impact force of a car running at 150 kilometers an hour, China Central Television reported.

Created by the Glass Research Institute in Bengbu City, a unit of the engineering technical platform of China National Building Material Co., Ltd, the glass is only 0.12 millimeter thick — roughly as thick as a standard A4-sized piece of paper.

In an experiment led by leading researcher Cao Xin, a 55-gram steel ball was dropped from one meter to hit the glass, equivalent to the impact force made by a car at 150kph, and the glass remained intact.

The sheet glass, which came off the product line in April, is the thinnest one mass-manufactured using the float process, according to Cao.

Cao said the ultra-thin glass can be used widely in the electronic information sector, such as for screens for cellphones, computers and TVs. He said his next goal is to mass produce sheet glass at 0.1 millimeter thick.

Led by chief scientist Peng Shou, the research institute has made a series of strides in recent years, making 0.33-millimeter sheet glass in June 2014, 0.15-millimeter in April 2016 and now 0.12-millimeter.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 10-MAY-2018
*The BIG Bell Test*
_Global physics experiment challenges Einstein with the help of 100,000 volunteers_

UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY OF CHINA



An image about the BIG Bell Test. *CREDIT: *The BIG Bell Test Collaboration


Simultaneous experiments on five continents challenge Einstein's principle of local realism.
Participants contributed to the experiment generating more than 90 million bits, unpredictably choosing among measurements to escape a paradox known as the "freedom-of-choice loophole".
The study has been published in _Nature_.
On November 30th, 2016, more than 100,000 people around the world contributed to a suite of first-of-a-kind quantum physics experiments known as The BIG Bell Test. Using smartphones and other internet-connected devices, participants contributed unpredictable bits, which determined how entangled atoms, photons, and superconducting devices were measured in twelve laboratories around the world. Scientists used the human input to close a stubborn loophole in tests of Einstein's principle of local realism. The results have now been analysed, and are reported in this week's _Nature_.

In a Bell test (named for the physicist John Stewart Bell), pairs of entangled particles such as photons are generated and sent to different locations, where particle properties such as the photons' colours or time of arrival are measured. If the measurement results tend to agree, regardless of which properties we choose to measure, it implies something very surprising: either the measurement of one particle instantly affects the other particle (despite being far away), or even stranger, the properties never really existed, but rather were created by the measurement itself. Either possibility contradicts local realism, Einstein's worldview of a universe independent of our observations, in which no influence can travel faster than light.

The BIG Bell Test asked human volunteers, known as Bellsters, to choose the measurements, in order to close the so-called "freedom-of-choice loophole" - the possibility that the particles themselves influence the choice of measurement. Such influence, if it existed, would invalidate the test; it would be like allowing students to write their own exam questions. This loophole cannot be closed by choosing with dice or random number generators, because there is always the possibility that these physical systems are coordinated with the entangled particles. Human choices introduce the element of free will, by which people can choose independently of whatever the particles might be doing.

Led by ICFO-The Institute of Photonic Sciences, in Barcelona, the BIG Bell Test recruited participants worldwide to contribute unpredictable sequences of zeros and ones (bits) through an online video game. The bits were routed to state-of-the-art experiments in Brisbane, Shanghai, Vienna, Rome, Munich, Zurich, Nice, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Concepción Chile and Boulder Colorado, where they were used to set the angles of polarizers and other laboratory elements to determine how entangled particles were measured.

Participants contributed with more than 90 million bits, making possible a strong test of local realism, as well as other experiments on realism in quantum mechanics. The obtained results strongly disagree Einstein's worldview, close the freedom-of-choice loophole for the first time, and demonstrate several new methods in the study of entanglement and local realism.

Each of the twelve labs around the world carried out a different experiment, to test local realism in different physical systems and to test other concepts related to realism.

The CAS-USTC team, led by Prof. Jian-Wei Pan and Prof. Qiang Zhang, works to explore the Bell's inequality with partial perfect randomness input. Analysing the random numbers contributed by Bellsters, we may find the human random number are not perfectly random, and tend to produce patterns. However, the human generated randomness is highly attractive because of the element of human free will. True randomness, which is not controlled by hidden variables, exists in between the human choices. Remarkably, it is able to say how well the hidden variable would have to control the human choices. This is made possible by using a special type of Bell inequality, the measurement dependent local (MDL) inequality. In the experiment, a 780 nm pump laser focused on a periodically poled potassium titanyl phosphate (PPKTP) crystal to create photon pairs at 1560 nm via spontaneous parametric down conversion. The down-converted photon pairs interfere at the polarizing beam splitter (PBS) in a Sagnac based setup to create entangled pairs. The entangled state is adjusted to be a special non-maximum entangled state for the inequality. The photon pairs are then sent to two measurement stations that are ~90 meters away for measurement. This spatial separation makes sure the measurement in Alice's lab will not affect that in Bob's lab, and vice versa. The random numbers contributed by Bellsters control the Pockels cell to set the measurement basis for each pair of photons. The photons are finally detected with superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs, produced by the group led by Dr. Lixing You from CAS-SIMIT). The violation of the MDL Bell inequality gives the bound of the input human randomness to rule out local realism. With around 80 Mb random numbers contributed by Bellsters, the MDL Bell inequality violation is decided to be l = 0.10 ± 0.05.

Jian-Wei Pan, Professor at CAS-USTC: "Although there are numerous Bell test experiments, the "free will" loophole is still not closed. This experiment is a very interesting and important try. In the future, with the help of space station, one may close both "collapse locality" and "free will" loopholes in one experiment."

Carlos Abellán, researcher at ICFO and instigator of the project: "The BIG Bell Test was an incredibly challenging and ambitious project. It sounded impossibly difficult on day zero, but became a reality through the efforts of dozens of passionate scientists, science communicators, journalists and media, and especially the tens of thousands of people that contributed to the experiment during November 30th, 2016."

Morgan Mitchell, leader of the BBT project and ICREA Professor at ICFO: "What is most amazing for me is that the argument between Einstein and Niels Bohr, after more than 90 years of effort to make it rigorous and experimentally testable, still retains a human and philosophical element. We know that the Higgs boson and gravitational waves exist thanks to amazing machines, physical systems built to test the laws of physics. But local realism is a question we can't fully answer with a machine. It seems we ourselves must be part of the experiment, to keep the Universe honest."

The BIG Bell Test team once again would like to thank the thousands of participants who so generously and enthusiastically contributed to this initiative. Without this essential contribution, the experiment would have never been possible.

###​
*Reference:* https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0085-3

*Participating Institutions*

The twelve labs that ran experiments on November 30th of 2016 were:

CQC2T -- Griffith University and EQuS (Brisbane-Australia),
University of Queensland (Brisbane-Australia),
The node CEFOP/Department of Electrical Engineering of the Universidad de Concepción (Concepción-Chile), together with the Department of Electrical Engineering - Linköping University, the University of Sevilla and the Dipartimento di Fisica--Sapienza Università di Roma,
The Quantum Information Lab of the Dipartimento di Fisica - Sapienza Università di Roma with the International Institute of Physics del Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (Brazil),
CAS --University of Science and Technology of China (Hefei-China),
CITEDEF/Universidad de Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires),
ICFO (Barcelona),
IQOQI/OEAW (Vienna-Austria),
LMU-Ludwig-Maximilian University (Munich),
LPMC -- Université Nice/CNRS (Nice-France),
NIST (Boulder- USA),
QUDEV- ETH Zurich (Zurich).

The BIG Bell Test | EurekAlert! Science News


----------



## JSCh

*Thermal spring with rare gas found in Tibet*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-05-10 16:37:26|Editor: ZX




BEIJING, May 10 (Xinhua) -- A thermal spring rich in the rare gas helium has been identified in Tibet Autonomous Region, and has the potential to be exploited, the Science and Technology Daily reported Thursday.

Researchers from China and the United States believe the helium concentration could be as high as 1.11 percent in some thermal-spring gas in Ali prefecture in Tibet, the newspaper quoted a source of the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) as saying.

If helium concentration exceeds 0.1 percent it can be be industrially utilized.

Helium is a colorless and odorless inert gas with a low boiling point. It has been widely used in aerospace, low temperature superconductivity, the nuclear industry and scientific research. The concentration of helium in the atmosphere is only 5.2 parts per million, making the cost of its extraction very high.

In 2001, Chinese researchers with the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the CAS discovered thermal-spring gas with a high concentration of helium at an altitude of 4,340 meters, during a geothermal study. They and U.S. researchers with Stanford University in July gathered the gas samples and recently revealed the test results.

China has low levels of helium, and has relied on imports for a long time. There is only one natural gas field in China that can realize the industrial exploitation of helium.


----------



## JSCh

*China makes breakthrough in stem cell culture equipment*
ECNS App Download






(Photo/CCTV)​
(ECNS) -- Chinese researchers announced on Tuesday a breakthrough in developing the world's first large scale, fully automated and standardized pluripotent stem cell induction and culture equipment.

The equipment, developed by the Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health and the Chinese Academy of Science, passed review and was accepted on Tuesday. The research is listed as a key state science and technology project.

Chinese researchers overcame eight critical technical challenges in four years to achieve a number of innovative results, reported China Central Television.

The system can effectively address a range of issues arising in traditional laboratory work such as low efficiency, high labor and time requirements, and poor safety, in developing pluripotent stem cell cultures that are in great demand for various research across the globe.

The system greatly reduces costs and improves quality, said CCTV.

Stem cells can self-renew or multiply while maintaining the potential to develop into other types of cells. They are valuable research tools and might in future be used to treat a wide range of ailments.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Bioprinting builds 3D model of a brain tumour*
15 May 2018
Belle Dumé

Patients who are newly diagnosed with high-grade gliomas (GBMs), one of the most aggressive brain tumours, only have a median survival time of around 15 months – reducing to just 5–7 months for recurrent tumours. Glioma stem cells are thought to be at the root of these poor outcomes, so researchers are focusing on therapies that could target these cells. An important first step is to develop realistic models that will enable scientists to study the biology of glioma stem cells and to investigate the resistance of GBMs to chemotherapy.

To date, researchers have mainly exploited 2D monolayers of glioma lines as a model for the tumour, providing a way for studying how gliomas evolve and how they react to anti-cancer drugs. However, this model fails to take into account the 3D environment of the tumour, and it doesn’t allow researchers to study other significant factors such as cell–cell and cell–matrix interactions, spatio-temporal signalling and metabolic gradients. Unfortunatel,y this means that most anti-glioma drugs that proved to be effective _in vitro_ have failed miserably in clinical trials.

Now, a team of researchers led by Tao Xu and Qin Lan from Soochow University, Tsinghua University and the Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute, all in China, and Medprin Biotech GmbH in Germany, have turned to 3D bioprinting to create a glioma stem-cell model. “Our work shows that we can use bioprinting technology to build 3D glioma models,” explains team member Xingliang Dai. “This is just beginning of our studies on the glioma microenvironment.”


--> Bioprinting builds 3D model of a brain tumour – Physics World


----------



## JSCh

*Shanghai sets up pioneering brain science center*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-05-15 17:21:48|Editor: ZX




SHANGHAI, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Shanghai has launched a research center focusing on brain science and brain-inspired intelligence, fields closely linked with artificial intelligence (AI).

Brain science and brain-inspired intelligence studies can be applied in improving the diagnosis and prevention of brain diseases, and developing brain-inspired AI algorithms and hardware.

The move follows the establishment of a similar center in Beijing in March and comes as China is increasing its efforts to draw top talent in these fields by providing funding and facilities.

The new center is located in Zhangjiang Laboratory, a leading science facility co-established by Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Shanghai municipal government in September.

"The center will work in the most cutting-edge fields to produce world-class outcomes, " said Bai Chunli, head of the CAS. "We will also employ top scientists from all over the world."

The center is also creating a more effective management system, as well as salary and incentive mechanisms that can compete with international institutions, Bai added.

In early 2016, the CAS set up the Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, combining resources from 20 research institutions, including 80 top laboratories, across the country.

China is also launching "China Brain Project," a 15-year project approved in 2016, following related projects set up in the United States, European Union, and Japan.


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists make quantum leap with simple water molecule*
By ZHANG ZHIHAO | China Daily | Updated: 2018-05-15 07:16
















In a simulation using atomic force microscopy, four water molecules bond with a sodium ion one by one (A to D). A fifth water molecule (white spot at lower left) bonds with the hydrated sodium ion. As one sodium ion can only bond with four water molecules tightly at most, the fifth one can only bond outside. (E) An artist's rendering of a hydrated sodium ion with three water molecules. (F)

Chinese scientists have become the first to directly observe the atomic structure of a hydrated sodium ion-the basic chemical makeup of seawater.

The technology can be used to study other water-based liquids, opening new avenues for molecular and materials sciences, experts said on Monday in the science journal _Nature_.

It is the first time scientists have been able to visualize the atomic structure of hydrated ions in their natural environment since the notion was proposed more than a hundred years ago.

The same team of scientists also discovered that exactly three water molecules are needed to allow a single sodium ion to travel 10 to 100 times faster than other ion hydrates-a process that could lead to more efficient ion batteries, anti-corrosion coatings and seawater desalination plants, according to the Nature article.

Water is the most plentiful liquid on Earth. Its simple chemical structure-two hydrogen atoms bonded to one oxygen atom-is the basic building block of most life on Earth, said Wang Enge, a physicist and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

"But the science behind water, especially regarding its structure and interaction with other chemicals, is extremely hard and not well understood," Wang said. In 2005, the journal Science listed the structure of water as one of the most compelling scientific puzzles, despite a century's worth of research having been done.

Since the late 19th century, scientists have been studying ion hydration, a process in which water dissolves soluble materials such as sodium chloride, or salt. Although the process is extremely common in nature, exactly how it works at an atomic level has remained a mystery.

"The main reason for water's complexity is its simplicity," said Jiang Ying, a professor at Peking University's International Center for Quantum Materials, who was part of the study.

Because hydrogen atoms are so simple and small compared with the oxygen atom, the weird properties of quantum mechanics start to interfere with experiments and make them less predictable, he said.

"Therefore, it is crucial for scientists to directly see how water interacts with other materials at an atomic level." By using new atomic force microscopy developed by Chinese scientists, it's possible "to see even the smallest changes in a single water molecule's structure around the ions", Jiang said.

Scientists found that three water molecules surrounding a single sodium ion can travel exceptionally fast on a sodium chloride molecule's surface. This "sublime phenomenon" can occur at room temperature, but also applies with other chemical ions such as potassium ions-one of the key ions necessary for neural cell communication.

"Although the magic number for each type of ion might be different, the phenomenon is a game changer for ion-related fields," he said. For example, engineers can alter the flow speed of lithium ions in batteries to make them charge faster or store more power.

Scientists can also create special filter systems that can change the number of water molecules surrounding an ion, thus speeding up or reducing the filtering speed according to specific needs.

This discovery also allows scientists to have a better understanding of how cells communicate with each other by exchanging ions through channels on their membranes, Jiang said.

This has potentially profound scientific implications for future applications in biology and medicine, he said, adding that two Nobel Prizes were given to research related to ion channels in the last two decades-one for their discovery in 1991 and the other for their mechanisms in channeling water in 2003.





Jinbo Peng, Duanyun Cao, Zhili He, Jing Guo, Prokop Hapala, Runze Ma, Bowei Cheng, Ji Chen, Wen Jun Xie, Xin-Zheng Li, Pavel Jelínek, Li-Mei Xu, Yi Qin Gao, En-Ge Wang & Ying Jiang. *The effect of hydration number on the interfacial transport of sodium ions*. _Nature _(2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0122-2​


----------



## JSCh

*Nanfang Additive Manufacturing's EBM metal 3D printing used for oil and gas pipelines for the first time*
May 16, 2018 | By Tim Patterson

Nanfeng Co., Ltd announced that its subsidiary Nanfang Additive Manufacturing Technology Co,.Ltd reached an agreement with the Tubular Goods Research Institute of China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) for a development project for special fittings, which will make use of additive manufacturing. The two sides have signed a contract for joint technology development.











According to the contract, the CNPC Tubular Goods Research Institute will commission Nanfang Additive Manufacturing to develop special 3D printing materials and manufacturing processes for electron-beam additive manufacturing of three-way pipe fittings, to complete electron-beam additive manufacturing of two thick-walled, large-diameter three-way pipe fittings, and to develop special 3D printing materials for repairing pipeline/pipe fittings.

In an official announcement by China National Petroleum Corporation released at the end of March, the CNPC Tubular Goods Research Institute first declared its intent to use this EBM additive manufacturing technology in the production of high-grade, large-caliber, and thick-walled three-way pipe fittings. This will be the first time this is carried out in China.

Product performance for these 3D printed fittings should meet the standard requirements for OD1422 X80 hot extrusion three-way pipe fittings, which are used in the low-temperature conditions of the East Railway Station. This will be the first application of metal 3D printing technology by Nanfang Additive Manufacturing for oil and gas pipelines. Previously, the main application for the technology was in the field of nuclear power.

In early February 2018, a major breakthrough was achieved by China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN)’s technical research project. The project was looking at the use of 3D printing technology for creating spare parts, as part of the nuclear power plant repair process. The research team successfully used EBM additive manufacturing technology to fabricate an end cap for a refrigerating machine, and this part was installed in the compressed air production system of the Daya Bay Nuclear Power plant, in Guangdong province. It also successfully passed the quality check.

This was one of the first joint R&D initiatives between CGN and Nanfang Additive Manufacturing, after the two companies had signed the "CGN Nuclear Power Plant Additive Manufacturing Technology and R&D Cooperation Agreement" back in December 2017.

According to CNPC Tubular Goods Research Institute, fabricating large-diameter, high-strength thick-walled three-way pipe fittings has always been a major obstacle for the construction of high-pressure long-distance pipelines in China. The traditional hot extrusion manufacturing method is limited by the thermal processing capability of the equipment, and it is not capable of meeting the standard wall thickness requirements.

In the hot-drawing process of the branch pipe, the multiple high-temperature heat treatment and subsequent heat treatment would result in significant differences in the microstructure and properties of the surface and central parts. The yield strength and Charpy impact energy absorption at the central part were significantly decreased. Welding of the three-way pipe body would use the manual arc welding approach, which has low welding efficiency, and the weld line's impact and toughness would be the weakest part of the entire pipe fitting.

EBM 3D printing technology is a major step forward from the methods traditionally used for creating these pipe fittings. It makes use of digital models and intelligent manufacturing systems, with no mold processing. The technique faces no limitations in terms of the thickness of the parts produced, so it is capable of meeting wall thickness requirements, and the product quality is also very stable. The electron-beam 3D printed parts demonstrate excellent performance, with mechanical properties that reach or even exceed the level of those produced by forging.














According to Nanfang Additive Manufacturing, this new collaboration will see the two parties working hard to overcome the obstacles in the production of large-diameter, high-strength and thick-walled three-way pipe fittings for high-pressure long-distance pipelines. The cooperation will also help further enhance the company’s metal 3D printing technology R&D.

This partnership will open up a new field of applications for Nanfang Additive Manufacturing's heavy metal 3D printing technology. At present, pipes produced in China do not adapt well to the low temperatures and bad weather conditions that Sino-Russian oil pipelines must endure. On the other hand, the prices of imported pipes that can meet these conditions are prohibitively high. The potential of 3D printing technology to overcome this issue could prove to be highly valuable.



3ders.org - Nanfang Additive Manufacturing's EBM metal 3D printing used for oil and gas pipelines for the first time | 3D Printer News & 3D Printing News


----------



## JSCh

*Beijing Trials Smart Cones to Offer Traffic Updates Via Alibaba’s Amap*
DOU SHICONG 
DATE: FRI, 05/18/2018 - 14:56 / SOURCE:YICAI





Beijing Trials Smart Cones to Offer Traffic Updates Via Alibaba’s Amap​
(Yicai Global) May 18 -- Beijing transport authorities have installed the country’s first intelligent traffic cones to monitor and release updates on roadblocks via a digital application developed by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.'s map unit. 

The 18 sets of cones will ensure real-time distribution of information on road construction work and accidents, Beijing News reported, citing an official from Beijing Municipal Commission of Transportation. Such information was delayed in the past because it was submitted manually, the official added.

China’s leading digital map and navigation service provider, Beijing-based Autonavi Holdings Ltd., also known as Amap, will publish the data via its mobile app. The smart traffic cones are equipped with buttons which construction workers can press to immediately update the system’s database.

The smart traffic cones are mostly being tested on Beijing’s urban roads and will be deployed on highways in the future. The cones are a positive sign for roadwork safety and public travel efficiency, according to the project leader at Amap.

Alibaba acquired AutoNavi for CNY10.2 billion (USD1.6 billion) in 2014 to compete with rival internet giants Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Baidu Inc. in the sector. Amap also launched ride-sharing platforms in Chengdu, Sichuan province, and Wuhan, Hubei province, in March.


----------



## JSCh

*2018 National Science Week brings high-tech to citizens*
By Jiang Jiao, Guo Meiping
2018-05-20 22:40 GMT+8




China’s 2018 National Science Week kicked off on Saturday with its main session in Beijing attracting a crowd of tech enthusiasts, especially young people who show a great interest in some of the latest applications.

The exhibition held in Beijing Military Museum – a choice that reflects a focus on “military-civilian integration in sci-tech industry” – covers an area of 11,500 square meters with over 460 items. Among all, several sections are particularly appealing.

*A peek at 2022 Winter Olympics stadium*

A 1:120 scale model of the National Speed Skating Oval for 2022 Winter Olympic Games caught the eyes of many for its simple and clean outlook.



Scale model of the National Speed Skating Oval for 2022 Winter Olympics is on display, May 19, 2018. /Xinhua Photo

But what truly matters is the innovation behind the design. The external wall of the oval is made up of 22 “ice ribbons” that are formed by thousands of pieces of single-curved glass and plate glass. Full-locked coil cables made of vanadium alloy which is less prone to corrosion makes it more durable.

The construction of the National Speed Skating Oval will be finished by the end of 2019. The multi-sports venue for events, including ice hockey, curling and short track speed skating, will hold test competitions in 2020. After the Winter Olympics in 2022, the venue will be used as a public gymnasium like the National Swimming Center.

*Robotic endoscopic capsule*

"Internet+medical" is one of the main themes of the exhibition area. A booth which presented a robotic capsule was frequently visited by attendees.



The robotic endoscopic capsule which is developed for painless gastroscopy. /Xinhua Photo

Developed for gastroscopy, the five-gram robotic endoscopic capsule is 27 millimeters in length and 12 millimeters in diameter, just like normal capsules. Made of polymer medical materials, the capsule can be used on people from four to 97 years old.

The tiny machine consists of more than 300 high precision components include camera, sensor and battery. When used for examination, the capsule can do five types of movements – front and back, left and right, up and down, and horizontal and vertical moves – based on engineer’s operation.

During the 15-minute painless examination, nearly 20,000 pictures will be taken by the capsule. After analysis by an internal artificial intelligence system, a package of medical images will be sent to doctors for identifying lesion locations inside the patient’s intestines and stomach.

*VR and AR help explain hard technology *

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are used to better explain the technology of aerospace and navigation to attendees during the event.

Through a pair of AR glasses, Gao Yixuan was able to see the assembly and launch process of the Long March 2F carrier rocket.

“I came here to learn more about rocket and aircraft,” said the fifth grader. “I could see how the rocket got assembled step by step.”



Attendees watch China's deep-sea manned submersible through VR glasses. /Photo via ST Daily

China's deep-sea manned submersible “Deep-sea Warrior” is presented through VR glasses.

“I could see the internal structure of the submersible, which gave me a better understanding of how it works in the ocean,” said Li Yanxiong, a teacher from Hong Kong Federation of Education Workers, who attended with his students.

“(VR and AR) help popularize technology to citizens,” Yu Hui, from the China Manned Space Engineering Office, told ST Daily.

Besides the main session in Beijing, similar science and technology events are held across the country durin National Science Week.


----------



## JSCh

*Have your brain mapped out! Chinese researchers work on personalized brain mapping*
New China TV
Published on May 20, 2018

Chinese researchers have announced progress in personalized brain mapping, which gives a picture of the brain in ever-greater detail. Such a map will mark a great leap in brain disease diagnoses and surgeries. Find out more.


----------



## JSCh

*China to help ID unknown lethal viruses*
By WANG XIAODONG/SHAN JUA | China Daily | Updated: 2018-05-22 07:23















Quarantine workers at Qingdao airport in Shandong province test samples for the Ebola virus on Aug 11, 2014.[Xie Hao/For China Daily]
Global effort aims to find disease vectors that can jump from animals to humans

China will help lead a project to identify unknown viruses from wildlife to better prepare humans for major epidemics－if not global pandemics. The project is to be launched this year, according to one of the country's top health officials.

The Global Virome Project will start in China and Thailand with field work to collect samples from wild animals and analyze the viruses detected, said Gao Fu, head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Scientists will collect virus samples from animals such as bats and rats for study using techniques like next generation (DNA) sequencing to find whether new viruses exist," he said.

The project, estimated to cost up to $1.2 billion, is expected to take 10 years and involves many countries including the United States, Brazil and Nigeria.

Through more intensive and extensive study of viruses from animals that could infect humans, it may be possible to deal with viruses using preemptive controls and prevention instead of passive, reactive measures, Gao said.

"We all know there are almost certainly new viruses that could cause the next global pandemic, but based on the existing early warning capacity for diseases, we do not know, for example, which virus will cause an epidemic," Gao said.

"We are sure that new virus strains will appear in the future along with changes in our ecology, environment and human behaviors."

For instance, humans' abuse of antibiotics has lead to the potential development of superbugs.

"There are many viruses living in wild animals, so we can identify viruses and thoroughly study those that could pass to humans," Gao said. "Ideally we can develop vaccines and a diagnosis for such viruses even before they cause human epidemics."

It is known that 263 viruses can infect humans, but scientists estimate there may be more than half a million viruses that live in birds and mammals and that are unknown to humans that may be capable of infecting humans, and they are the primary subject of the project's research, Gao said.

Even if a large number of such unknown viruses are identified, it is possible that just a small fraction of them have the ability to cause major epidemics that cause human deaths, he said.

However, considering the huge cost of a major epidemic like SARS to human health and economies, the findings of the project still have the potential to greatly reduce losses through improved early diagnosis and identification of hosts vulnerable to a new virus after an outbreak, according to Gao.

A similar project carried out by the US Agency for International Development proved the feasibility of the Global Virome Project and provides helpful experience, he said.

The USAID project, known as Predict and launched in 2009, with China a participant, led to findings of more than 1,000 viruses previously unknown to humans. The project cost was over $170 million, he said.

Some of the technologies used for that project have proved reliable and economically affordable and can be used for the Global Virome Project, Gao said.


----------



## JSCh

*Tianjin University makes breakthrough in synthetic genome rearrangement*
Updated: 2018-05-23 16:57:04 | (chinadaily.com.cn) |

A synthetic biology team at Tianjin University (TJU) reported new methods and strategies for genome rearrangement and accelerated the evolution of yeast strains in three recent studies published in Nature Communications on May 22, 2018.

Produced by an international research consortium, the publications are part of an effort towards application of chemically synthesized designer yeast chromosomes (Sc 2.0).

The seven newly published papers were written by researchers from seven universities in four countries, including Tianjin University and Tsinghua University in China, New York University (NYU) and Johns Hopkins University in the US, the University of Edinburgh and Imperial College London in the UK, and the University of Potsdam in Germany.





Precise control switch mediated multiplex SCRaMbLE iterative cycles for rapid evolution.​
Designer yeast cells incorporating the Synthetic Chromosome Rearrangement and Modification by the LoxP-Mediated Evolution (SCRaMbLE) system provide a platform for generating genotype diversity. However, leaky expression of the Cre switch, high lethality rates and single strain backgrounds previously limited the application of SCRaMbLE. To overcome these challenges, synthetic biology team members Jia Bin and Wu Yi and collaborators from other colleges developed a precisely controllable SCRaMbLE system in synthetic haploid and diploid yeast.

"How to control the SCRaMbLE process is crucial for organisms with specified advantages, because leaky SCRaMbLE decreases the stability of strains with fixed phenotypes," said Bin Jia, who has constructed a genetic AND gate based on transcriptional control of the GAL promoter and intracellular location of the estrogen-binding domain.

This AND gate performed with higher reliability without observed leakage. As a proof of concept, the AND gate control of SCRaMbLE can increase the yield of carotenoids produced in synV yeast.

"The deletion of large fragments containing essential genes in haploid yeast can result in loss of viability, potentially decreasing the diversity generated by SCRaMbLE," said Yi Wu, who came up with an idea to use SCRaMbLE in diploid strains.

This strategy allowed the essential alleles in the wild-type chromosomes to remain intact and successfully improved genome diversity. Based on the precise control of SCRaMbLE in diploid strains, the TJU team developed a strategy called Multiplex SCRaMbLE Iterative Cycling (MuSIC) to increase the production of carotenoids up to 38.8-fold through 5 iterative cycles of SCRaMbLE.





Heterozygous diploid and interspecies SCRaMbLEing​
With collaborators from NYU, Yi Wu led the study of SCRaMbLEing in heterozygous and interspecies. In this research, they reported a collection of heterozygous diploids by mating synthetic yeast strains with native strains.

"Such heterozygous diploid strains take advantage of the flexible genotype of Sc2.0 yeast and robust phenotype of wild type yeast," said Yi Wu. "This study establishes that SCRaMbLE can drive phenotype evolution in heterozygous and interspecies hybrid strains."





In vitro DNA SCRaMbLE​
Additionally, synthetic biology team members Wu Yi and Zhu Ruiying and other universities' collaborators developed an in vitro DNA SCRaMbLE technology for structural varied library construction and biosynthetic pathway optimization.

"This system provides a straightforward way to correlate phenotype and genotype and a new strategy for biochemical optimization, enabling the acceleration of biological discovery and productive industrial microbe evolution," said Yi Wu.

"The SCRaMbLE methods reported are potentially a powerful tool for increasing the production of bio-based chemicals and also for mining deep knowledge," said TJU Professor Ying-Jin Yuan, "It will prove invaluable for both academic and industrial applications."

The findings are especially important, and TJU’s synthetic biology team has started a new Long March towards accelerating genome evolution to improve human health, prevent and cure disease, provide clean energy and promote a sustainable environment.

Nature Communications is an open access journal which publishes high-quality research papers in technology fields relating to biology, physics, chemistry, Earth sciences, and other areas.


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 24-MAY-2018
*Dusty rainfall records reveal new understanding of Earth's long-term climate*
Contrary to what Milankovitch suggested, the Earth's glacial/interglacial cycles may be driven by how much the sun warms the middle of the planet, rather than the northernmost region

UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA


​Weijian Zhou (left) of the Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Xi'an and Warren Beck (right) of the University of Arizona at a cross-section of a hill near Xi'an, China. The layers of loess soil shown in the photo represent thousands of years of soil deposition. *CREDIT: *© 2009 Xian Feng, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Ancient rainfall records stretching 550,000 years into the past may upend scientists' understanding of what controls the Asian summer monsoon and other aspects of the Earth's long-term climate, reports a University of Arizona-led international team of researchers in the May 25 issue of the journal _Science_.

The standard explanation of the Earth's regular shifts from ice ages to warm periods was developed by Milutin Milankovitch in the 1920s. He suggested the oscillations of the planet's orbit over tens of thousands of years control the climate by varying the amount of heat from the sun falling above the Arctic Circle in the summer.

"Here's where we turn Milankovitch on its head," said first author J. Warren Beck, a UA research scientist in physics and in geosciences. "We suggest that, through the monsoons, low-latitude climate may have as much effect on high-latitude climate as the reverse."

During the northern summer, the subtropics and tropics north of the equator warm and the tropics and subtropics south of the equator cool.

Modern observations show the difference in heat propels atmospheric changes that drive the intensity of the monsoon. Beck said the monsoon can affect wind and ocean currents as far away as the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans.

The Asian monsoon season is the biggest annual rainfall system on Earth and brings rainfall to about half the world's population. The monsoon season occurs approximately April to September.

Beck and his colleagues found that over tens of thousands of years the changes in the intensity of the Asian summer monsoon corresponded to the waxing and waning of the polar ice caps.

The researchers suggest those long-term changes in the monsoon drove global changes in wind and ocean currents in ways that affected whether the polar ice caps grew or shrank.

Beck said this new explanation of the Earth's past climate cycles will help climate modelers figure out more about the world's current and future climate.

The new explanation of what drives the Earth's climate system stems from a decade-long effort by Beck and his colleagues to develop a new record of rainfall in Asia reaching far back into the past.

Scientists have been trying to develop a quantitative proxy for ancient precipitation for more than 30 years, he said.

By analyzing thousands of years of dust from north-central China for an element called beryllium-10, Beck and his colleagues developed the first quantitative record of the region's monsoon rainfall for the past 550,000 years.

The team studied the deposits of fine soil called loess that blow year after year from central Asian deserts into north-central China. The layer-cake-like deposits, hundreds of feet thick, are a natural archive extending back millions of years.

The researchers cut stepwise into the side of a hill of loess to expose a 55-meter span of loess representing 550,000 years. The researchers collected a loess sample every five centimeters. Five centimeters represents about 500 years.

Scientists can use the amount of beryllium-10 in soil as a proxy for precipitation, because when it rains the element washes out of the atmosphere on dust particles. Because more rain means more beryllium-10 deposited on the soil, the amount of beryllium-10 deposited at a particular time reflects the intensity of the rainfall.

To put together the ancient rainfall history of the area, team members analyzed the samples for beryllium-10 at the UA Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory and for magnetic susceptibility at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Earth Environment in Xi'an.

Other investigators used the natural archive of oxygen isotopes within stalagmites from several Chinese caves to reconstruct the region's past climate. Those records only partially agree with the rainfall-based records of ancient climate developed by Beck and his colleagues.

Beck and his colleagues suggest their new explanation of the forces driving the Earth's long-term climate cycles reconciles the climate record from Chinese stalagmites and modern observations of the monsoon with the new ancient rainfall record from Chinese loess.



Dusty rainfall records reveal new understanding of Earth's long-term climate | EurekAlert! Science News

J. Warren Beck, Weijian Zhou, Cheng Li, Zhenkun Wu, Lara White, Feng Xian, Xianghui Kong & Zhisheng An. *A 550,000-year record of East Asian monsoon rainfall from 10Be in loess*. _Science _2018. DOI: 10.1126/science.aam5825​


----------



## JSCh

*Press Release*
_Angewandte Chemie International Edition_
[URL='https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.201802932']doi.org/10.1002/anie.201802932[/URL]
Nr. 16/2018
May 25, 2018​*Shine Bright Like a Nanoaggregate*
*Highly luminescent inks made from copper–iodine hybrid clusters with aggregation-induced emission*

Chinese scientists have turned copper–iodine cluster molecules into aggregated, highly luminescent nanostructures for use in light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The solid-state assemblies made of complexes of the copper–iodine cluster with phosphor–organic compounds as ligands are easily prepared, cheap, and can emit light in many colors, they report in the journal _Angewandte Chemie_. The nanoaggregates can be used as luminescent inks for invisible paintings and color coatings for LEDs.





© Wiley-VCH​
Luminescence is light emission triggered by some form of energy, which can be chemical, electrical, or radiation. For a long time, scientists thought that aggregation would be detrimental to luminescence. But in some substances, aggregation can be beneficial, researchers reported for the first time in 2001 when they observed that conformational changes turned a weak luminophore into a strong emitter. Since then, research on the so-called aggregation-induced emission (AIE) compounds has grown fast. One of the reasons: in real-world applications such as luminescent coatings and inks, the pigments usually adopt an aggregated state.

The team led by Hong-Bin Yao at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, China, explores the preparation routes to AIE compounds, with the goal to prepare inks on a larger scale and without a big budget. A stable cluster of copper and iodine grabbed their attention. In combination with common phosphine ligands, this cluster was known to exhibit strong luminescence in its aggregated state, the typical AIE phenomenon. But a reliable way to get to that state, let alone applications, were not reported.

To prepare the AIE emitter, the starting compound must be present as a single, soluble molecule, then it is assembled and turned into something nanoparticular and non-soluble. The authors tackled the problem by employing an emulsifying–demulsifying process. By shaking the non-emitting complex dissolved in an organic solvent with a surfactant, they managed to confine the copper–iodine hybrid clusters in small droplets to obtain AIE-active nanoaggregates in a simple but effective way.

The method has another advantage: when swapping the ligands of the complex, the colors changed. The scientists replaced the phosphor ligand with a set of nitrogen-containing ligands and obtained a beautiful array of luminescent inks in colors ranging from orange to blue. With which they clearly enjoyed painting: Using their aqueous inks luminescing in orange, yellow, and sky-blue, they transformed a black-and-white sketch of an underwater world into an atmospheric exquisite aquarelle visible only under UV light.

Not only inks for paintings, but also color coatings for LED lamps were prepared. Normally, white LED light is difficult to achieve. Here, the researchers coated blue LED sources with yellow luminescent copper–iodine hybrids and observed the LED emission turning white. However, some adjustments still need to be made to increase the efficiency, the authors admitted.



Angewandte Chemie International Edition : Shine Bright Like a Nanoaggregate


----------



## JSCh

*China sets new record in deep-well drilling*
By Zhou Huiying in Anda, Heilongjiang | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2018-05-26 19:53















China completed the drilling of deepest well in Asia and the first one in the world that goes through continental stratum of the cretaceous period on March 26, 2018. [Photo by Gu Landing/for chinadaily.com.cn]

China on Saturday completed the drilling of deepest well in Asia and the first one in the world that goes through continental stratum of the cretaceous period.

The project, called Songke 2, was launched in April 13, 2014, in Anda, Heilongjiang province, by the China Geological Survey and undertaken by about 20 organizations, including the Institute of Exploration Technology, SinoProbe Center, China University of Geosciences, Jilin University and Petrol China Daqing Oilfield Company Ltd.

After four years, the team finished drilling the 7,018-meter-deep well.

"On behalf of the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP), I would like to congratulate you on the project achieved at the unprecedented depth and with great success," said Ulrich Harms, head of Operational Support Group of ICDP. "These technical achievements are outstanding and will have a long-term impact on the role partnership between industry and science played in scientific drilling in China and in the world. And it will have an impact on the scientists involved."


----------



## cirr

*China-developed heavy ion cancer treatment system enters clinical testing*

2018-05-27 13:51:55 Xinhua Editor : Huang Mingrui






Heavy ion medical accelerators developed by Chinese researchers entered clinical testing for cancer patients in northwest China's Gansu Province this month, researchers said.

Cancer radiation treatments employing heavy-ion accelerators can bombard a target with high-energy electrons to kill cancer cells.

Xiao Guoqing, head of the Institute of Modern Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said it is widely considered the most effective way of fighting tumors.

Compared to traditional therapy such as radiation, heavy ion treatment is considered to have more balanced properties with less radiation on healthy cells. The treatment period is shorter and the therapy could more effectively control cancer cells.

The institute, based in Lanzhou, capital of northwest China's Gansu Province, developed the accelerators in 2015. It took two years for the accelerators to undergo medical equipment testing. Registration and testing were completed in April this year and clinical tests began.

Currently, the institute has produced two sets of the cancer treatment equipment, one each in Lanzhou and Wuwei City, which has a high rate of stomach cancer.

Patients were selected from Gansu Provincial Cancer Hospital and Wuwei Cancer Hospital. Testing is under way for cancer treatment for the head, neck, chest, abdomen, pelvis and limbs.

In order to ensure the safety of the tests, 36 leading doctors in cancer treatment were assigned to oversee the tests.

Xiao said the domestically developed equipment marks the end of China's dependence on imports. The institute started basic research into the technology in 1993.

Currently very few hospitals in China offer heavy ion cancer treatment in China. Shanghai Proton and Heavy Ion Center uses imported equipment from Germany for cancer treatment. There is a long wait for the treatment at the Shanghai hospital.

A report published by the National Cancer Center in 2017 showed that China has nearly 25 percent of the world's new cancer cases, with 10,000 cancer patients added per day. Every year, there are two million cancer-induced deaths. Lung, breast and stomach cancers are the most common types.

http://www.ecns.cn/news/sci-tech/2018-05-27/detail-ifyuqkxh5547616.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Synopsis: Magnetic Cloak Without Superconductors*
May 29, 2018
A new magnetic-cloak device works without requiring cryogenically cooled superconductors.




W. Jiang _et al._, Phys. Rev. Applied (2018)​Electromagnetic cloaks can shield objects from electromagnetic radiation, while rendering them virtually invisible. While cloaks for visible electromagnetic waves have proven difficult to realize, researchers have demonstrated schemes that work on magnetic fields. Such magnetic cloaks typically use superconducting materials, which must be cooled to cryogenic temperatures—a great drawback for practical applications. Now, Sailing He, Yungui Ma, and Wei Jiang of Zhejiang University, China, have built a room-temperature cloak that does not employ superconductors. Such a cloak could be useful in shielding sensitive devices from external magnetic fields.

A magnetic cloak should perform two basic functions: block out all magnetic fields and eliminate any magnetic-field distortions introduced by the cloaked object. Previously, researchers built cloaks out of superconductors because these materials repel magnetic fields via the so-called Meissner effect. They layered the superconductor with another material that creates a magnetic field compensating for the distortions.

The authors’ cloak consists of a hollow cylinder—12 cm in length and 4 cm in diameter—made of several foils of a high-magnetic-permeability material. Several copper wires run along the cylinder’s length. When currents pass through the wires, the cylinder and wires together shield the interior of the cylinder from external magnetic fields, mimicking the Meissner effect. The currents, in turn, can be tuned to generate the compensating field outside of the cloak. Experiments demonstrated that the device works at room temperature for static magnetic fields about 20 times stronger than Earth’s magnetic field. The current tunability gives the device an important advantage: the currents can be adjusted to optimize cloaking under different external magnetic-field or environmental conditions.

This research is published in _Physical Review Applied_.

*Static Magnetic Cloak without a Superconductor*
Wei Jiang, Yungui Ma, and Sailing He
Phys. Rev. Applied 9, 054041 (2018)
Published May 29, 2018​

Physics - Synopsis: Magnetic Cloak Without Superconductors


----------



## JSCh

*360 finds 'epic bug' worth US$10b in EOS network*
Zhu Shenshen 
22:10 UTC+8, 2018-05-30 

China’s biggest cyber security firm 360 Technology said today that it has found an “epic bug” worth US$10 billion in EOS, a popular blockchain project.

EOS is a popular cryptocurrency token adopting blockchain technology to offer investors and companies a smart contract platform and decentralized applications. It differs from Bitcoin because it is smart contract that supports industrial-scale applications and conducts millions of transactions per second without transaction fees. 

Hackers can use the bug or exploit security vulnerability to access and control the whole EOS network and transfer EOS coins belonging to other clients, damaging the whole system and bringing losses to investors, said Zhou Hongyi, 360’s chief executive.

“It’s an epic bug valued at US$10 billion (considering booming EOS investors and market value)," Zhou said.

Source: SHINE Editor: Wang Xiang


----------



## JSCh

*UV light may make brain work better, researchers find*
By Zhu Lixin | China Daily | Updated: 2018-05-31 07:42














Science has already proved that sunny days can lead to sunny dispositions, helping improve a person's mood, intelligence and memory－and researchers in East China have now shed light on why.

A team at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, Anhui province, discovered that ultraviolet light－an element of sunshine－activates a change in the brain that can make us smarter.

Tests on mice showed that moderate exposure to UV light enhances perception and learning, according to Xiong Wei, a professor at the university's School of Life Sciences who co-led the study.

Mice were exposed to 50 milijoules per square centimeter of UV, he said, which is equal to 20 to 30 minutes of ambient midday sun in Florida in summer.

The mice that received the light needed just four rounds of training to complete a rotarod test, a standard tool used to evaluate the motor skills of a rodent. Those not exposed to UV required six rounds of training to complete the same test.

Using single-cell mass spectrometry, an extremely sensitive and specific analytical technique, scientists found that a metabolic pathway in the brain was involved.

Exposure to UV increases blood urocanic acid, which is largely found in the skin and acts as a natural sunscreen. However, tests showed that the acid also reacts with brain cells to boost levels of glutamate, a neurotransmitter involved in cognitive functions such as learning and memory.

Xiong said previous research had found that urocanic acid was converted to glutamate in the liver, but this is the first time it has been demonstrated that the synthesis process can happen in the brain－a finding that surprised the team.

"Our research originated from an unexpected finding about three years ago, when we were researching small molecules in nerve cells," Xiong said. "We detected urocanic acid in nerve cells in the brain. This substance is found predominantly in the outermost layer of the skin, and in sweat and urine. So we wanted to know where the acid in the brain comes from and what role it plays."

The team's ultimate goal is to work on molecule-related mechanisms of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease.

"To diagnose the diseases in their early stages, which has been very hard, we wanted to find some small molecules that could serve as biomarkers," Xiong said.

He said the research team also includes chemists and materials scientists.

The team's findings were published this month in _Cell_, an international science journal.


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists develop bendable batteries*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-06-04 12:24:08|Editor: Yurou




BEIJING, June 4 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists say they have invented bendable lithium sulfur batteries, paving the way for producing a generation of flexible smart devices.

Traditional batteries are made by pouring liquid electrolytes into solid electrodes, yet the new approach puts electrolytes into ultrathin metal layers to form 3D networks in dishcloth-like materials.

"By doing this, electrolytes won't fall off the networks no matter how you flex or twist the flexible materials," said Zhang Hongzhang, a researcher at Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Zhang and other six researchers from DICP published their findings in the journal Advanced Functional Materials in May.

According to Zhang, flexible batteries based on this new approach can raise initial specific discharge capacity up to 1600 mAh, five times more than most commercial lithium batteries on the market.

Zhang said, these batteries should be more stable and resilient, and when used in smart devices such as mobile phones, they could be twisted and bent while still storing large amounts of charge.

"These batteries are light and have high energy density. The means of making them is cost effective and can be applied for mass production in the future," Zhang said.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese Researchers Achieve 3D Underwater Acoustic Carpet Cloak First with “Black Panther”-like Feat*
Jun 04, 2018

Cloaking is one of the most eye-catching technologies in sci-fi movies. In two 2018 Marvel films, _Black Panther_ and _Avengers: Infinity War_, Black Panther conceals his country Wakanda, a technologically advanced African nation, from the outside world using the metal vibranium. 

However, in the real world, if you want to hide something, you need to deceive not only the eyes, but also the ears, especially in the underwater environment. 

Recently, a research team led by Prof. YANG Jun from the Institute of Acoustics (IOA) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences designed and fabricated a 3D underwater acoustic carpet cloak (UACC) using transformation acoustics. 





Figure 1. Model and photograph of the 3D underwater acoustic carpet cloak composed of over 700 steel strips. Objects can hide under the cloak without being detected by sonar. (Image by IOA)

The research was published online in _Applied Physics Letters_ on June 1. 

Like a shield, the carpet cloak is a material shell that can reflect waves as if the waves were reflecting off a planar surface. Hence, the cloaked target becomes undetectable to underwater detection instruments like sonar.



Figure 2. The 3D UACC looks like a shield from the vertical view, and a pyramid from the side view. (Image by IOA)

Using transformation acoustics, the research team first finished the 2D underwater acoustic carpet cloak with metamaterial last year (_Scientific Reports_, April 6, 2017). However, this structure works only in two dimensions, and becomes immediately detectable when a third dimension is introduced.

To solve this problem, YANG Jun and his IOA team combined transformation acoustics with a reasonable scaling factor, worked out the parameters, and redesigned the unit cell of the 2D cloak. They designed the 3D underwater acoustic carpet cloak and then proposed a fabrication and assembly method to manufacture it. The 3D cloak can hide an object from top to bottom and deal with complex situations, such as acoustic detection in all directions.

The 3D underwater acoustic carpet cloak is a pyramid comprising eight triangular pyramids; each triangular pyramid is composed of 92 steel strips using a rectangle lattice, similar to a wafer biscuit. More vividly, if we remove the core from a big solid pyramid, we can hide something safely in the hollow space left.

“To make a 3D underwater acoustic carpet cloak, researchers needed to construct the structure with 2D period, survey the influence of the unit cell’s resonance, examine the camouflage effect at the ridge of the sample, and other problems. In addition, the fabrication and assembly of the 3D device required more elaborate design. The extension of the UACC from 2D to 3D represents important progress in applied physics,” said YANG.

In experimental tests, a short Gaussian pulse propagated towards the target covered with the carpet cloak, and the waves backscattered toward their origin. The cloaked object successfully mimicked the reflecting surface and was undetectable by sound detection. Meanwhile, the measured acoustic pressure fields from the vertical view demonstrated the effectiveness of the designed 3D structure in every direction.



Figure 3. Measured acoustic pressure fields. (a) The incident pressure field at 0 ms. (b)–(d) The scattered pressure fields at 1.8 ms from the soft plane (b), the soft target (c), and the cloaked soft target (d), respectively. (Image by IOA)

“As the next step, we will try to make the 3D underwater acoustic carpet cloak smaller and lighter,” said YANG.

Funding for this research came from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.11304351, 1177021304), the Youth Innovation Promotion Association of CAS (Grant No. 2017029), and the IACAS Young Elite Researcher Project (Grant No. QNYC201719).

Prof. YANG Jun and Dr. JIA Han led the research team from the Institute of Acoustics (IOA) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Prof. YANG Jun engages in research on sound, vibration and signal processing, and especially sound field control and array signal processing. They also work on other devices based on metamaterial in order to manipulate the propagation of sound waves.


Chinese Researchers Achieve 3D Underwater Acoustic Carpet Cloak First---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Viewpoint: Lost Photons Won’t Derail Quantum Sampling*

Austin P. Lund, Centre for Quantum Computation and Communications Technology, School of Mathematics and Physics, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia
June 6, 2018• _Physics_ 11, 57​*A photon-based method for demonstrating the advantage of quantum over classical machines can handle photon loss, facilitating experiments.*

A race is on to build a quantum computer that solves difficult problems much faster than a classical computer—a milestone dubbed quantum supremacy [1]. Runners in this race, however, are faced with a hazy finish line, which can move closer as quantum machines and algorithms improve or further away as their classical counterparts catch up. An experiment led by Jian-Wei Pan of the University of Science and Technology in China [2] nudges the racers forward for now. Inspired by a theoretical proposal, the researchers confirmed that a promising method for demonstrating quantum supremacy, known as boson sampling with photons (Fig. 1), produces useful output even as photons leak from the system. This means that researchers don’t have to “toss away” the output of a sampling experiment when photons are lost, as was previously assumed [3], allowing for faster computations and bringing a demonstration of quantum supremacy closer to reality.

When will we have a useful quantum computer? To make the answer concrete, consider the most famous quantum-computing algorithm—factoring large prime numbers [4]. This task will likely require millions, and possibly billions, of quantum bits (qubits) and an even larger number of the devices, or “gates,” that manipulate the qubits. Since today’s most advanced quantum computers have around 50 qubits, a quantum computer that could quickly factor large numbers is probably a long way off.


--> Physics - Viewpoint: Lost Photons Won’t Derail Quantum Sampling


*Toward Scalable Boson Sampling with Photon Loss*
Hui Wang, Wei Li, Xiao Jiang, Y.-M. He, Y.-H. Li, X. Ding, M.-C. Chen, J. Qin, C.-Z. Peng, C. Schneider, M. Kamp, W.-J. Zhang, H. Li, L.-X. You, Z. Wang, J. P. Dowling, S. Höfling, Chao-Yang Lu, and Jian-Wei Pan
Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 230502 (2018)
Published June 6, 2018​


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 6-JUN-2018
*Single molecular insulator pushes boundaries of current state of the art*
Breakthrough could pave the way for smaller transistors

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCE



​An illustration of the silicon-based single-molecule device that functions as an efficient insulator through a sigma-based quantum interference effect. *CREDIT: *Haixing Li/Columbia Engineering

New York, NY--June 6, 2018--Ever shrinking transistors are the key to faster and more efficient computer processing. Since the 1970s, advancements in electronics have largely been driven by the steady pace with which these tiny components have grown simultaneously smaller and more powerful--right down to their current dimensions on the nanometer scale. But recent years have seen this progress plateau, as researchers grapple with whether transistors may have finally hit their size limit. High among the list of hurdles standing in the way of further miniaturization: problems caused by "leakage current."

Leakage current results when the gap between two metal electrodes narrows to the point that electrons are no longer contained by their barriers, a phenomenon known as quantum mechanical tunnelling. As the gap continues to decrease, this tunnelling conduction increases at an exponentially higher rate, rendering further miniaturization extremely challenging. Scientific consensus has long held that vacuum barriers represent the most effective means to curtail tunnelling, making them the best overall option for insulating transistors. However, even vacuum barriers can allow for some leakage due to quantum tunnelling.

In a highly interdisciplinary collaboration, researchers across Columbia Engineering, Columbia University Department of Chemistry, Shanghai Normal University, and the University of Copenhagen have upended conventional wisdom, synthesizing the first molecule capable of insulating at the nanometer scale more effectively than a vacuum barrier. Their findings are published online today in _Nature_.

"We've reached the point where it's critical for researchers to develop creative solutions for redesigning insulators. Our molecular strategy represents a new design principle for classic devices, with the potential to support continued miniaturization in the near term," said Columbia Engineering physicist and co-author Latha Venkataraman, who heads the lab where researcher Haixing Li conducted the project's experimental work. Molecular synthesis was carried out in the Colin Nuckolls Lab at Columbia's Department of Chemistry, in partnership with Shengxiong Xiao at Shanghai Normal University.

The team's insight was to exploit the wave nature of electrons. By designing an extremely rigid silicon-based molecule under 1 nm in length that exhibited comprehensive destructive interference signatures, they devised a novel technique for blocking tunnelling conduction at the nanoscale.

"This quantum interference-based approach sets a new standard for short insulating molecules," said lead author Marc Garner, a chemist in the University of Copenhagen's Solomon Lab, which handled the theoretical work. "Theoretically, interference can lead to complete cancellation of tunneling probability, and we've shown that the insulating component in our molecule is less conducting than a vacuum gap of same dimensions. At the same time, our work also improves on recent research into carbon-based systems, which were thought to be the best molecular insulators until now."

Destructive quantum interference occurs when the peaks and valleys of two waves are placed exactly out of phase, annulling oscillation. Electronic waves can be thought of as analogous to sound waves--flowing through barriers just as sound waves "leak" through walls. The unique properties exhibited by the team's synthetic molecule mitigated tunneling without requiring, in this analogy, a thicker wall.

Their silicon-based strategy also presents a potentially more factory-ready solution. While recent research into carbon nanotubes holds promise for industrial applications over the next decade or so, this insulator--compatible with current industry standards--could be more readily implemented.

"Congratulations to the team on this breakthrough," said Mark Ratner, a pioneer in the field of molecular electronics and professor emeritus at Northwestern University who was not involved in the study. "Using interference to create an insulator has been ignored up to this date. This paper demonstrates the ability of interference, in a silicon-based sigma system, which is quite impressive."

This breakthrough grew out of the team's larger project on silicon-based molecule electronics, begun in 2010. The group arrived at their latest discovery by bucking the trend. Most research in this field aims to create highly conducting molecules, as low conductance is rarely considered a desirable property in electronics. Yet insulating components may actually prove to be of greater value to future optimization of transistors, due to the inherent energy inefficiencies caused by leakage currents in smaller devices.

As a result, their work has yielded new understanding of the fundamental underlying mechanisms of conduction and insulation in molecular scale devices. The researchers will build on this insight by next clarifying the details of structure-function relationships in silicon-based molecular components.

"This work has been extremely gratifying for us, because in the course of it we have repeatedly discovered new phenomena," said Venkataraman. "We have previously shown that silicon molecular wires can function as switches, and now we've demonstrated that by altering their structure, we can create insulators. There is a lot to be learned in this area that will help shape the future of nanoscale electronics."



Single molecular insulator pushes boundaries of current state of the art | EurekAlert! Science News

Marc H. Garner, Haixing Li, Yan Chen, Timothy A. Su, Zhichun Shangguan, Daniel W. Paley, Taifeng Liu, Fay Ng, Hexing Li, Shengxiong Xiao, Colin Nuckolls, Latha Venkataraman & Gemma C. Solomon. *Comprehensive suppression of single-molecule conductance using destructive σ-interference*. _Nature _(2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0197-9.​


----------



## JSCh

*2018 Annual Tables: Tsinghua joins elite group of research universities*
_Two Beijing-based universities are among the top 10 academic institutions in the Nature Index._

7 June 2018
Smriti Mallapaty


2018 annual tables: Academic institutions
Tsinghua University rises to 10th place among the world’s leading academic institutions for high-quality scientific research in the Nature Index 2018 annual tables.

The university has seen steady growth in its contribution to the articles tracked by the index, measured by fractional count (FC). Tsinghua has ascended from 20th rank three years ago, when it had an FC of 289. It has earned its top 10 debut with an FC of 353 in the current tables, taking a place in the higher echelons along with Peking University, whose FC of 384 sees it hold the number eight spot.

The 2018 annual tables assess institutions on their contribution to articles in scientific journals in which researchers would most want to publish their best work. This year, for the first time since its launch in 2014, the Nature Index has revised its original list of 68 high-quality journals to 82. The new list increases the coverage of articles in Earth and environmental sciences, life sciences and chemistry, to balance earlier over-representation of astronomy and astrophysics articles in the physical sciences.

Beijing-based Tsinghua and Peking are the first Chinese institutions to make it into the global academic top 10, but others are in hot pursuit. Nanjing Universityhas climbed from 21 to 13, and the University of Science and Technology of China has made its way to 18, from 27.

Chinese institutions are especially prominent in the areas of chemistry and physical sciences, though Nanjing also stands out as the only Chinese university among the top 10 in Earth and environmental sciences.

Tsinghua’s rise is largely driven by its chemistry contributions. Among notable work, researchers at the Department of Chemistry recently created a substance that warms up when exposed to light with potential use as an antidote to antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Among the leading 100 academic institutions in the 2018 annual tables are 44 from the United States and 16 from China. The United Kingdom and Japan contribute seven each, with six from Germany, four from Switzerland and three from Canada.

Overall, almost 90% of the 83 academic institutions from China in the top 500 have improved their positions in the last year, compared to just about 45% of the 135 from the United States.

“The global picture is changing. Chinese institutions are really gaining their place,” says Marijk van der Wende, a professor of higher education and dean of graduate studies at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. “Institutions that are going up quickly take the STEM road,” she says, with many specialising in a narrow set of subjects.

Tsinghua University is the top producer of articles in the top 10% of highly-cited research in mathematics and computer science, as well as in physical sciences and engineering, according to the CWTS Leiden Ranking 2018. Its mathematics and computer science papers in the top 10% of highly-cited articles increased from 164 in 2006–2009 to 432 in 2013–2016. In physical sciences and engineering, its papers published in this category more than doubled over the same period.

Chinese institutions also lead in several fields tracked by the 2017 Academic Ranking of World Universities. They rank first in instruments science & technology, metallurgical engineering, mining, telecom engineering, civil engineering and remote sensing. “The government’s investments and policies are apparently taking effect,” says van der Wende.

In Nature Index’s closed circuit, with institutions vying for a finite share of articles in the leading journals, as some institutions rise, others must fall. Yale University dropped from 10th place to 19 in the past year, with an FC in the current tables of 298. Some of the decline can be attributed to a growing emphasis on collaboration. As researchers at Yale and other universities increasingly look beyond their campuses for co-authors, their share of total paper authorship in the index database might decline slightly.

Other institutions in the top 10 whose FC has declined in the past year include Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US, and the University of Cambridge and University of Oxford in the UK.

Those whose FC has increased in the past year include Harvard University, Stanford University, and the University of California Berkeley in the US, The University of Tokyo in Japan, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich in Switzerland.

Harvard University, with an FC more than double that of Tsinghua, rests comfortably at the top for the third year running.

_Data analysis by Aaron Ballagh and Bo Wu.

_
2018 Annual Tables: Tsinghua joins elite group of research universities | Nature Index


----------



## JSCh

*Family Genetics Study Reveals Possible New Drug Target to Lower Blood Cholesterol*
Jun 07, 2018
staff reporter

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Researchers in China have discovered a protein that regulates the uptake of dietary cholesterol in the gut, and which might serve as a drug target to keep blood cholesterol levels in check and prevent heart disease.

A truncated version of the protein, called LIMA1, has led to unusually low levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and reduced cholesterol absorption in a family of Chinese Kazahks, the researchers found, and additional experiments in mice further explored the molecular role of LIMA1.

The team, led by scientists at Wuhan University and Xinjian Medical University, published its findings in _Science_ today.

High levels of LDL-C in the blood are a known risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Up to 50 percent of variance in LDL-C concentration are thought to be genetic, but known genetic factors only explain a fraction of the observed variation. To find new LDL-C-associated genetic variants, the researchers homed in on Chinese Kazakhs, an isolated ethnic group in western China that differs genetically from other populations and in whom lipid genetics studies had not been conducted yet.

Specifically, they focused on a Chinese Kazakh family with inherited low levels of LDL-C, sequencing the exomes of three family members with low LDL-C and one with normal LDL-C. This led them to seven candidate variants, of which only one — a truncating frameshift deletion in the LIMA1 gene (also known as EPLIN and SREBP3) — cosegregated with the low LDL-C phenotype in the family.

In general, LDL-C levels are influenced by both the body's own cholesterol synthesis and by the uptake of dietary cholesterol in the intestine. Mass spec-based analysis of cholesterol-related compounds in family members with the LIMA1 mutation showed that their intestinal cholesterol absorption was impaired, suggesting a role for LIMA1 in that process.

Targeted sequencing of LIMA1 in 509 additional Chinese Kazakh individuals with low LDL-C levels found that one carried the same mutation as the family, whereas none of 510 Chinese Kazakhs with normal LDL-C levels did. The researchers also discovered three additional families, all with low LDL-C levels, who had a different LIMA1 mutation that appears to destabilize the protein.

To further investigate the function of LIMA1 in cholesterol metabolism, they conducted a number of studies in mice. The protein appears to be most highly expressed in the small intestine, especially in the brush border membrane, and mice lacking LIMA1 in their intestines showed lower cholesterol uptake than wild-type mice.

Further studies revealed that LIMA1 probably acts as a scaffold protein that forms a triplex complex with NPC1L1, a transmembrane protein that facilitates the uptake of cholesterol through vesicles, and myosin Vb.

Ultimately, the scientists concluded, LIMA1 might serve as a new drug target to lower LDL-C in patients. "A growing body of evidence has indicated that lower LDL-C levels are associated with reduced risk of [cardiovascular disease]," they wrote, adding that although LDL-C can already be decreased by statins and other drugs, "inhibition of LIMA may provide a new direction for treating hypercholesterolemia."



Family Genetics Study Reveals Possible New Drug Target to Lower Blood Cholesterol | GenomeWeb

Ying-Yu Zhang, Zhen-Yan Fu, Jian Wei, Wei Qi, Gulinaer Baituola, Jie Luo, Ya-Jie Meng, Shu-Yuan Guo, Huiyong Yin, Shi-You Jiang, Yun-Feng Li, Hong-Hua Miao, Yong Liu, Yan Wang, Bo-Liang Li, Yi-Tong Ma & Bao-Liang Song. *A LIMA1 variant promotes low plasma LDL cholesterol and decreases intestinal cholesterol absorption*. _Science _(2018). DOI: 10.1126/science.aao6575​


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists improve fetal imaging equipment*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-06-09 20:16:03|Editor: Yamei




BEIJING, June 9 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have improved key components in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) equipment, creating clearer fetal imaging.

MRI is an important tool for discovering complex congenital diseases during fetal development. It is especially useful in the diagnosis of neurodevelopmental abnormalities and cardiovascular diseases.

Coils are a key component of MRI equipment. Due to a lack of coils that can fit the body sizes of the pregnant, standard abdominal coils are often used for fetal imaging. However, their performance is limited by insufficient coverage.

Scientists from Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology have developed a dedicated coil specifically for fetal imaging. It can increase imaging speed and achieve clearer imaging of fetal development.

The research was published in _IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging_.

The technology is being adopted by a Chinese medical imaging equipment company and is expected to be ready for clinical application by the end of the year.


----------



## JSCh

*China finds greener way to make lithium batteries*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-06-10 22:20:02|Editor: Li Xia




NANCHANG, June 10 (Xinhua) -- A new method for extracting lithium in a greener and more efficient way has passed China's state-level appraisal, paving way for its commercialization to boost the new energy sector.

Qiu Zumin, professor of the institute of environmental science and engineering in Nanchang University, said the new lithium extraction technology has passed the national scientific and technological achievements appraisal. It is expected to replace current lithium extraction methods in China, which have been blamed for producing huge amounts of waste, and have low profitability.

Lithium batteries are essential to power modern electronic devices, such as mobile phones, laptops and electronic cars. Lithium is also used in medicine, pottery, glass and other industries.

Lithium cells rely on lithium carbonate as the raw material. China imports 80 percent of its lithium carbonate, though it is rich in lithium resources, due to backward mining technology.

With traditional methods, 30-40 tonnes of waste are produced in making 1 tonne of lithium carbonate. It is also very costly to treat the waste.

The new method is jointly developed by the Jiangxi Haohai Lithium Energy, Nanchang University and other institutions. It can separate all the elements in lithium micas.

Peng Guiyong, chair of Haohai, said the company plans to invest 1 billion yuan (156 million U.S. dollars) to build a production line with an annual capacity of 40,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate.

Jiangxi boasts the world's largest lithium mica mine. The province's reserve of lithium oxide accounts for one-third of China's total.


----------



## JSCh

*CMS Collaboration Reports Observation of Higgs Particle Interaction with Top Quark*
Jun 08, 2018

The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider published the first observation of ttH production in _Physical Review Letters_ (PRL) on June 4th, 2018. This observation gives direct proof that the Higgs particle couples to the top quark, which is a key element in understanding the origin of fermion mass.

After the discovery of the Higgs boson at the ATLAS and CMS experiments in 2012, two new interactions were predicted: the Yukawa coupling between the Higgs and fermions, and the Higgs self-interaction. However, there were no direct observations in any experiments of these two interactions, until this first report of a direct observation of the Higgs interacting with one of the fermions: the top quark. This observation of ttH indicates the coupling between the Higgs and fermions does exist. 

The CMS group from the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) of Chinese Academy of Sciences was involved in the effort to hunt for ttH production, and made a significant contribution to ttH observation in the most sensitive Higgs decay channels, the WW, bb, di-photon and ZZ channels. 

To extract ttH signal from overwhelming backgrounds, they developed a dedicated method to tag jets from higgs boson decays, and introduced new variables to distinguish whether a lepton is isolated from jets or not. These methods were two of the key elements in the success of the ttHWW analysis. This analysis makes ttHWW turned out to be the most important channel contributing to the observation of ttH.

The CMS group gave the pre-approval talk within the CMS collaboration on behalf of the ttHWW analysis team. They also made a significant contribution to ttHbb analysis by introducing the b-jetness method.

However, the observed production rate of ttH is slightly higher than the prediction from the Standard Model of particle physics, within two sigma of uncertainty, leaving room for new physics. Only data taken up to 2016 was used in this observation, and further analysis with more data in future is expected to probe the details of the Higgs-top quark Yukawa coupling through ttH production.

For more information please see:

CMS press release: http://cms.cern/news/tth-announcement

CERN Courier: http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/71524

CERN press release: https://press.cern/press-releases/2018/06/higgs-boson-reveals-its-affinity-top-quark

APS Viewpoint: https://physics.aps.org/articles/v11/56






Best fit value of the ttH signal strength modifier u_ttH compared to SM expectation (Image by CMS Collaboration)
​

CMS Collaboration Reports Observation of Higgs Particle Interaction with Top Quark---Chinese Academy of Sciences


----------



## JSCh

*Day–night temperature fluctuations power hydrogen evolution*
BY ALICE STEVENSON
11 JUNE 2018

*Pyrocatalytic nanoparticles split water and produce hydrogen*

Scientists in China and Hong Kong have split water at room temperature using a special type of functional material that can generate an electric charge from the natural change in temperature from day to night. The team used nanoparticles that can convert thermal energy into an electric charge big enough to catalytically split water molecules into hydrogen gas.

‘Hydrogen fuel cells are a promising alternative energy conversion technology due to zero greenhouse gas emissions and a high energy output’, explains Hamideh Kanbareh, an expert in functional materials from the University of Bath, UK, who was not involved in this study. Using solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen is an attractive way to generate hydrogen fuel. However, the process suffers from low efficiencies and doesn’t work in the dark, which limits this idea in practice. The largely unexplored area of thermal energy harvesting for hydrogen production could solve these problems.



Source: © Royal Society of Chemistry
Scientists have used the pyroelectric nanomaterial Ba0.7Sr0.3TiO3 to generate hydrogen using cold–hot temperature fluctuations

Now, a team led by Yanmin Jia, of Zhejiang Normal University, and Haitao Huang, of Hong Kong Polytechnic University, have used pyroelectric materials to split water at room temperature. ‘Pyroelectric materials are a type of material that can generate electric charges on two oppositely polarised surfaces under a temperature change,’ explains Jia. ‘Unlike conventional water electrolysis, our technique does not require electric energy. It makes use of the daily temperature variations to produce useful hydrogen’.

The team’s pyroelectric material was made from barium strontium titanate nanoparticles. Jia and Huang noticed that the pyroelectric voltage produced by the material after a temperature change could be as large as several volts so was sufficient for electrolysing water. Jia explains that they used nanoparticles as ‘in theory, nanomaterials with small size and high surface area can speed up electric charge migration between water and the pyroelectric materials, which may increase the efficiency of hydrogen evolution’.

‘This study demonstrates a novel, efficient and eco-friendly material system, which can generate hydrogen,’ comments Hamideh. ‘I find alternative routes for energy scavenging very interesting. Their next step would be to extend the material’s performance to simultaneous oxygen production as well as hydrogen’.

*References*
This article is free to access until 23 July 2018
X Xu _et al_,_ Energy Environ. Sci._, 2018, DOI: 10.1039/c8ee01016a​

Day–night temperature fluctuations power hydrogen evolution | Research | Chemistry World


----------



## JSCh

*EDITORIAL *12 JUNE 2018
*China sets a strong example on how to address scientific fraud*
_New measures introduce what could be the world’s strongest disincentive for misconduct so far._





China has announced tough new rules to beat research fraud.Credit: Anthony Kwan/Bloomberg/Getty​
The Chinese government knows that a slice of its generous science budget — the world’s second-largest by country — goes to waste on bad science. It doesn’t want to waste any more. On 30 May, the State Council and the Communist Party of China announced a radical new system of regulations to police science and raise research standards in the country.

Certainly, reform is necessary and overdue. Various Chinese government bodies have made the case to crack down on fraud and misconduct in science over the past two decades, but with limited success. This time, the changes have serious political weight behind them and could make a significant difference. The policy might offer the greatest disincentive to cheating in research that the world has seen so far. But the devil, as always, will be in the detail — and in how well the plans are enforced.

One of the most striking conditions is that researchers will be deterred from publishing findings in journals that China deems to be of poor academic quality, poorly managed and set up merely for profit. Many such ‘predatory journals’ offer researchers a place to publish, for a fee, and shirk their editorial responsibility to evaluate papers to determine quality. China’s science ministry is working on a blacklist of those journals. In an unprecedented step, any researcher who publishes in one will get a warning and be given no credit for the publication when they are evaluated for grants or jobs. Using government grants to pay the publication fees in these journals, as many presumably do, could land Chinese scientists in deeper trouble.

As the world’s largest producer of scientific papers, China’s new rules could go as far as to put some of these rogue journals out of business, and that could be good for scientists everywhere. (Although, as we discussed in a News story last week, some scientists are anxious about how these journals are identified, while others have concerns about such blacklists and prefer ‘whitelists’ of approved publications.)

In another major shift, China is handing the responsibility for deterring and investigating scientific misconduct to the government’s science ministry. That’s quite a shake-up for China, where — as in many places — institutions are usually expected to investigate allegations against their own researchers. That is too often ineffective. With little to gain and a reputation to lose, many prefer to sit on their hands and wait for the situation to blow over.

Denmark, for instance, has designated a national agency to police science, but, too frequently, there is limited will and scant resources to pursue allegations of fraud at the government level. In the United States, for example, the Office of Research Integrity is short-staffed and has limited leverage over universities.

In China, the situation could play out differently. The new rules state explicitly that institutions that shield errant scientists can be punished through a loss of funding. That could give the policy real teeth — enough to drastically clean up Chinese research. But success will take sustained effort and pressure from the top, and because there is no guarantee of that, the policy could equally fall flat. China’s bureaucrats are not responsive to its citizens — no matter how loud the cry on social media for an investigation into a given scientist — and they make almost no effort to be transparent. The science ministry could stick its head in the sand just as deeply as some institutions do.

There are other causes for concern. The science ministry is also drawing up rules on how penalties will be meted out — including the blacklisting of scientists who have committed particularly egregious acts. To maintain fairness, harsh penalties require assurances that the judgements leading to them are based on thorough and fair evaluations.

China’s bureaucrats might not answer to the people, but they do answer to the higher echelons of power. The current push for better management of science comes as part of President Xi Jinping’s wider anti-corruption drive. Xi regularly talks up the crucial role of science and technology in making China stronger and more independent. With its new rules, China is backing words with actions.

Nature 558, 162 (2018)

doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-05417-1


China sets a strong example on how to address scientific fraud | Nature


----------



## JSCh

*Nanotechnology limits pushed*
By ZHANG ZHIHAO | China Daily | Updated: 2018-06-14 07:36














China has made several breakthroughs in cutting-edge nanotechnology in the past five years that will have significant applications in electric vehicles, industrial printing and public health, scientists said on Wednesday.

Nanoscience is the study of materials on the scale of nanometers－a unit of measurement that is a billionth of a meter. At such a tiny scale, the properties of materials are often drastically different from those at larger sizes.

Materials that are brittle can become incredibly strong, and compounds that are chemically inert can become powerful catalysts. Manipulating these novel properties will lead to a wide range of products, from batteries to water filtration systems.

In recent years, China has created a lithium-ion power battery capable of safely storing 300 watt hours per kilogram of mass, which could power a more than 500 kilometer trips in the EV 200 electric sedan produced by Beijing Automotive Group Co, said Wang Chen, a researcher from the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology.

This battery's energy density is on par with the latest battery used in Tesla's new Model 3 sedan, which has one of the cheapest and highest energy density cells on the market, according to Tesla and Panasonic, the battery's manufacturer.

Chinese scientists are now optimizing the new battery in preparation for vehicle demos, said Wang, adding that the Chinese Academy of Sciences has partnered with more than 30 battery and electric vehicle companies to introduce the new battery into the market.

At the same time, China has used nanotechnologies to make breakthroughs in the next generation of rechargeable batteries, namely lithium-sulfur and lithium-air batteries, said Li Hong, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Physics.

"For decades, the United States and Japan have held key patents and technologies on lithium-ion batteries," said Li. "But China can keep up with them or even take the lead in fields related to the next generation of rechargeable batteries."

Compared with lithium-ion batteries, lithium-sulfur batteries use sulfur rather than expensive alloys for electrodes, making them cheaper, lighter and able to store almost double the energy for the same mass. China has created a world-leading lithium-sulfur battery capable of holding 609 Wh/kg, Li said.

The lithium-sulfur battery has been successfully tested in commercial solar powered drones, he added. China has also formed its first lithium-sulfur battery production company, Zhongke Paisi Energy Storage Technology Co, located in Dalian, Liaoning province, and it has recently finished building the world's largest production line for the new battery.

The lithium-air battery takes innovation further by using oxygen from the air for electrodes. It has all the benefits of lithium-sulfur batteries plus being even more environmentally friendly. Chinese scientists have produced a lithium-air battery that can store 780 Wh/kg, Li said.

Although the technology is relatively new and still needs more testing, "it will significantly increase China's technological and engineering prowess in the global race for smaller, longer-lasting, more powerful batteries," Li said.

New nanomaterials also helped China develop a new printing method that is both cost-efficient and does not produce corrosive or poisonous waste, said Song Yanlin, a researcher from the Institute of Chemistry from the academy.

The new technology will help transform China's industrial printing industries, whose turnover was $180 billion in 2016, to be completely environmentally friendly, he said. It will also reduce the harmful chemicals used to etch prints on electronics.

Nanomaterials can also be used to create portable water filtration systems for more than 1,200 nomadic families in North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region, said Fang Shibi, a researcher at the Institute of Chemistry.

The new nanomaterial used in the water filters can effectively purify the arsenic and fluorine, and the nomads need only change the filters once per year, making clean water cheap and more accessible, he added.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 13-JUN-2018
*E- textiles control home appliances with the swipe of a finger (video)*
AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY





A newly developed e-wristband is self-powered, highly sensitive and washable. *CREDIT: *American Chemical Society​
Electronic textiles could allow a person to control household appliances or computers from a distance simply by touching a wristband or other item of clothing -- something that could be particularly helpful for those with limited mobility. Now researchers, reporting in _ACS Nano_, have developed a new type of e-textile that is self-powered, highly sensitive and washable. A video of an e-wristband in action is available here.

E-textiles are not new, but most existing versions have poor air permeability, can't be laundered or are too costly or complex to mass-produce. Jiaona Wang, Hengyu Guo, Congju Li and coworkers wanted to develop an E-textile that overcomes all of these limitations and is highly sensitive to human touch.

The researchers made a self-powered triboelectric nanogenerator by depositing an electrode array of conductive carbon nanotubes on nylon fabric. To make the E-textile washable, they incorporated polyurethane into the carbon nanotube ink, which made the nanotubes firmly adhere to the fabric. They covered the array with a piece of silk and fashioned the textile into a wristband. When swiped with a finger in different patterns, the E-textile generated electrical signals that were coupled to computers to control programs, or to household objects to turn on lights, a fan or a microwave from across the room. The E-textile is breathable for human skin, washable and inexpensive to produce on a large scale, the researchers say.



E- textiles control home appliances with the swipe of a finger (video) | EurekAlert! Science News

Ran Cao, Xianjie Pu, Xinyu Du, Wei Yang, Jiaona Wang, Hengyu Guo, Shuyu Zhao, Zuqing Yuan, Chi Zhang, Congju Li, Zhong Lin Wang. *Screen-Printed Washable Electronic Textiles as Self-Powered Touch/Gesture Tribo-Sensors for Intelligent Human–Machine Interaction*. _ACS Nano_, 2018; DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.8b02477​


----------



## JSCh

2018.06.13
*PolyU develops novel Micro-embossing Equipment for Precision Optical Microstructures
*









The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has developed a novel micro-embossing equipment for manufacturing precision glass lenses with high image quality and resolution required for state-of-the-art optical instruments and devices in varied fields – from astronomy, national defence, medical scanning, to consumer products such as cameras and mobile phones. The invention can emboss ultra-precise optical microstructures in glass in a much environmentally friendly way than conventional machines, saving electric power by 60 times and reducing manufacturing cost by two-thirds.

Developed by PolyU researchers from the Partner State Key Laboratory of Ultraprecision Machining Technology, the invention was awarded a Gold Medal at the 46th International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva 2018. The research supported by the Innovation Technology Fund has also been granted with eight patents.

Glass optical components are difficult to fabricate as it requires much higher molding temperature and extremely hard-to-machine carbide materials to make the mold, compared with plastic molding. It is also difficult to emboss micro-nano optical elements with micron-sized glass microstructures (1 micron = 1 of 1 million parts of a metre). However, with surging demand for powerful lens of small size and high resolution in advanced optical systems nowadays, there has been mounting need for using optical glass to replace optical polymers, which has much lower transmittance. Taking DVD high-definition optical pickup lens as an example, the feature size is as tiny as 0.9 micron. If conventional lithography method is used for mass production, the equipment set up cost will be high, yet the lens produced will have precision much lower than those obtained from molding or embossing. Nowadays, China has the highest output of optical lenses in the world. Yet, due to technological limitation for producing high-end lens, its total market value is still lower than Europe and Japan.

The research team led by Professor LEE Wing Bun and Dr LI Lihua from PolyU's Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering has adopted a novel molding design with graphene-like coating and self-developed heating technology to produce the micro embossing equipment that can produce micron-level microstructural optical components in glass. Compared to conventional bulky infrared heating device with large energy consumption, the novel technology is much environmentally friendly and cost effective.

The use of graphene-like coating can heat up the optical glass precisely and quickly with low energy consumption, while reducing thermal expansion and deformation of the mold. The control and monitoring software developed can also provide online and instant readings of the temperature, which allow fine-tuning and adjustment of the process parameters, and thus shorten the cycle time. Such novel features enable saving electric power by up to 60 times, compared to conventional infrared machines, and cutting the manufacturing cost by two-thirds. Being an electrical conductive material with high wear characteristic, graphene also enables smooth stripping of the glass workpiece from the mold after the embossing process. Furthermore, micro-pattern with micron accuracy can be replicated on the glass substrate.

The novel embossing equipment can have wide applications in opto-electronic products, including cell phone micro-lenses, camera lenses, DVD pickup lenses, micro shuttle lenses, f-theta lenses for laser printers, projection television magnifiers, optical communication V Gutter substrate, micro-lens array (MLA), and Frensel lens for collecting and tracking solar energy. In light field optics, the new applications of great potential include 3D camera heads, three-dimensional robotic vision systems, as well as lens for long-range shooting, detection of low-altitude drones and security monitoring.


PolyU develops novel Micro-embossing Equipment for Precision Optical Microstructures - PolyU

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists identify new mammal ancestor*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-06-14 14:10:25|Editor: ZD




KUNMING, June 14 (Xinhua) -- Chinese palaeobiologists have identified a new mammal ancestor and indicating that marsupials may not have originated in Asia.

Well-preserved skeletons of Ambolestes zhoui from 126 million years ago were found in Yixian County in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, said Professor Bi Shundong of Yunnan University palaeobiology lab, who led the research.

Over the past 20 years, fossils of 120 vertebrate species, generally known as the Jehol biota, have been found in the Mesozoic site.

The skeletons show details unknown in contemporaneous mammals after researchers used CT and 3D technology to reconstruct the structure of every bones, said Bi.

"Ambolestes zhoui is an early member of the placental lineage. It also carries mixed features both placentals and marsupials," he said.

"Our conclusion means that Asia may not be the place of origin for marsupials," he said. The oldest known marsupials are from 110 million years ago from west North America.

On the basis of the research, researchers have also established a database on the lineage of early mammals.

The research findings are published in the _Nature _science journal.


----------



## JSCh

11 JUNE 2018 • https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5043415
*New tandem upconversion device improves night vision technology *
Mara Johnson-Groh
*
An improvement on conventional organic upconversion devices demonstrates improved efficiency for converting near-infrared light to visible, and may be a promising future for low-cost, large-area imaging technology.
*



Researchers have developed a better way of seeing in the dark. In _Applied Physics Letters,_ the research team reports improving on near-infrared upconversion devices, which convert near-infrared radiation to shorter, visible wavelengths. They created a two-stage, tandem device using organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). With much higher efficiencies than previous models, the device may offer a promising alternative for low-cost, large-area imaging technologies.

--> New tandem upconversion device improves night vision technology: Scilight: Vol 2018, No 24

*Source:* “Integrated tandem device with photoactive layer for near-infrared to visible upconversion imaging,” by Shou-Jie He, Deng-Ke Wang, Zhen-Xin Yang, Jia-Xiu Man, and Zheng-Hong Lu, _Applied Physics Letters_ (2018). The article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5023430.​


----------



## JSCh

*Printed metal-polymer conductors make stretchy biodevices*
18 Jun 2018 Belle Dumé




Stretchy biodevice​
Stretchable biocompatible devices can be used in a host of medical applications, but most stretchable conductors made to date are toxic, expensive, difficult to make and break or degrade easily. A team of researchers at the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology in Beijing, China, has now printed the first flexible metal-polymer electronic circuits that are at once highly conductive and stretchable, biocompatible, non-toxic and easy and cheap to make. The circuits, which are made of eutectic gallium indium particles embedded in a polymer matrix, can take most 2D shapes and could find use in motion sensors, wearable glove keyboards, soft robotics and implantable devices to name but a few applications.

Eutectic gallium indium (EGaIn) is a liquid metal and can thus withstand large deformations. The material also boasts a high conductivity and is much less toxic than other metals that are also liquid at room temperature, such as mercury. Since it cannot be directly patterned using conventional techniques like stencil or ink-jet printing (its surface tension is too high), the researchers, led by Xingyu Jiang, embedded particles of the liquid metal onto the surface of a polymer (PMDS) instead. They did this by casting and peeling off steps rather than using a marker or nozzle.

The result is a printed conductive material with a good stretchability of 2.316 S/cm at a strain of 500% over more than 10 000 cycles of repeated stretching. Another advantage of the technique employed to make it is that the liquid metal particles remain on the surface of the substrate (rather than being buried deep inside), which means that functional electronic components can easily be mounted on top of them.

*Many applications*
The researchers used the printed metal-polymer conductors in a variety of applications, including in sensors for wearable keyboard gloves, motion sensors and in electrodes for electroporation (stimulating the passage of DNA through the membranes of live cells).

“The applications of the metal-polymer conductors depend on the polymer employed,” says study first author Lixue Tang. “We cast super-elastic polymers to make metal-polymer conductors for stretchable circuits or biocompatible and biodegradable polymers when we want to make implantable devices. In the future, we could even build soft robots by combining electroactive polymers.”

The technique can be used to make printed materials that can conform to any 2D shape, say the researchers. And they can be made in different thicknesses with varying electrical properties depending on the concentration of the liquid metal inks employed. This means that they could be used in a host of biomedical applications, including flexible patches that could even be wrapped around the heart to monitor and treat cardiac disease.

Indeed, the researchers say that they are now planning to fabricate a biodegradable cardiac patch patterned by their metal-polymer conductor electrodes to enhance the conductivity of myocardial cells and monitor electrophysiological signals. The applications are many: “Wearable electronics, implantable devices, soft robotics, future fabrics, virtual/augmented reality, flexible displays, artificial organs, brain-computer interfaces, and wherever biocompatible, soft electronics is necessary,” says Tang.

The research is detailed in _iScience _10.1016/j.isci.2018.05.013.


Printed metal-polymer conductors make stretchy biodevices – Physics World


----------



## JSCh

*DNA analysis reveals distinct lineage of ancient panda in south China*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-06-19 00:33:38|Editor: Chengcheng




WASHINGTON, June 18 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have found an ancient panda, belonging to a distinct group not found today, separated from present-day pandas 144,000 to 227,000 years ago.

In a study published on Monday in the journal _Current Biology_, they analyzed ancient mitochondrial (mt) DNA isolated from a 22,000-year-old panda found in Cizhutuo Cave in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in south China, a place where no pandas live today and revealed a new lineage of giant panda.

The newly sequenced mitochondrial genome represents the oldest DNA evidence from pandas, according to the study.

"Using a single complete mtDNA sequence, we find a distinct mitochondrial lineage, suggesting that the Cizhutuo panda, while genetically more closely related to present-day pandas than other bears, has a deep, separate history from the common ancestor of present-day pandas," said Fu Qiaomei from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Little has been known about pandas' past, especially in regions outside of their current range in Shaanxi, Gansu and Sichuan provinces in China. Evidence suggested that pandas in the past were much more widespread, but it's been unclear how those pandas were related to pandas of today.

In the new study, the researchers used sophisticated methods to fish mitochondrial DNA from the ancient cave specimen. That's a particular challenge because the specimen comes from a subtropical environment, which makes preservation and recovery of DNA difficult.

The researchers successfully sequenced nearly 150,000 DNA fragments and aligned them to the giant panda mitochondrial genome reference sequence to recover the Cizhutuo panda's complete mitochondrial genome.

They then used the new genome along with mitochondrial genomes from 138 present-day bears and 32 ancient bears to construct a family tree.

Their analysis showed that the split between the Cizhutuo panda and the ancestor of present-day pandas went back about 183,000 years.

The Cizhutuo panda also possesses 18 mutations that would alter the structure of proteins across six mitochondrial genes.

The researchers said those amino acid changes may be related to the ancient panda's distinct habitat in Guangxi or perhaps climate differences during the Last Glacial Maximum.

The findings suggested that the ancient panda's maternal lineage had a long and unique history that differed from the maternal lineages leading to present-day panda populations.

According to the researchers, their success in capturing the mitochondrial genome also suggested that they might successfully isolate and analyze DNA from the ancient specimen's much more expansive nuclear genome.

"Comparing the Cizhutuo panda's nuclear DNA to present-day genome-wide data would allow a more thorough analysis of the evolutionary history of the Cizhutuo specimen, as well as its shared history with present-day pandas," Fu said.


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *Viewpoint: Lost Photons Won’t Derail Quantum Sampling*
> 
> Austin P. Lund, Centre for Quantum Computation and Communications Technology, School of Mathematics and Physics, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia
> June 6, 2018• _Physics_ 11, 57​*A photon-based method for demonstrating the advantage of quantum over classical machines can handle photon loss, facilitating experiments.*
> 
> A race is on to build a quantum computer that solves difficult problems much faster than a classical computer—a milestone dubbed quantum supremacy [1]. Runners in this race, however, are faced with a hazy finish line, which can move closer as quantum machines and algorithms improve or further away as their classical counterparts catch up. An experiment led by Jian-Wei Pan of the University of Science and Technology in China [2] nudges the racers forward for now. Inspired by a theoretical proposal, the researchers confirmed that a promising method for demonstrating quantum supremacy, known as boson sampling with photons (Fig. 1), produces useful output even as photons leak from the system. This means that researchers don’t have to “toss away” the output of a sampling experiment when photons are lost, as was previously assumed [3], allowing for faster computations and bringing a demonstration of quantum supremacy closer to reality.
> 
> When will we have a useful quantum computer? To make the answer concrete, consider the most famous quantum-computing algorithm—factoring large prime numbers [4]. This task will likely require millions, and possibly billions, of quantum bits (qubits) and an even larger number of the devices, or “gates,” that manipulate the qubits. Since today’s most advanced quantum computers have around 50 qubits, a quantum computer that could quickly factor large numbers is probably a long way off.
> 
> 
> --> Physics - Viewpoint: Lost Photons Won’t Derail Quantum Sampling
> 
> 
> *Toward Scalable Boson Sampling with Photon Loss*
> Hui Wang, Wei Li, Xiao Jiang, Y.-M. He, Y.-H. Li, X. Ding, M.-C. Chen, J. Qin, C.-Z. Peng, C. Schneider, M. Kamp, W.-J. Zhang, H. Li, L.-X. You, Z. Wang, J. P. Dowling, S. Höfling, Chao-Yang Lu, and Jian-Wei Pan
> Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 230502 (2018)
> Published June 6, 2018​


*USTC Conducts the First Experiment on Boson Sampling with Photon Loss*
[2018-06-21]

Professor PAN Jianwei and Professor LU Chaoyang of the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) carry out an experiment on boson sampling with photon loss in collaboration with Researcher YOU Lixing’s group of Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology (SIMIT) of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). The results show that boson sampling with a few photons lost can increase the sampling rate, which brings a demonstration of quantum supremacy closer to reality. This research is published in _Physical Review Letters_ on June 6th as one of Editor’s Suggestions. The American Physical Society website Physics comments on the paper with a _Viewpoint _article entitled “_Lost Photons Won’t Derail Quantum Sampling_”.

*




*
A boson-sampling device with photons / Image from _Physics_​
Boson sampling with photons is considered as a strong candidate to demonstrate quantum computational supremacy. However, the unavoidable photon loss in the photonic experiments is a major obstacle to scaling up. PAN and colleagues’ work is the first to confirm experimentally that even as photons leak from the system, boson sampling with photons still produces useful output. This means that researchers don’t have to “toss away” the output of a sampling experiment when photons are lost, allowing for exponentially faster sampling rate. The experiment is based on a world-class single-photon source from a quantum-dot micropillar developed by the research team and high-performance superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPD) developed by SIMIT. This research suggests that our country is leading the charge internationally in the field of quantum computation and takes yet another step forward for the demonstration of quantum supremacy.





Experimental setup for lossy boson sampling / Image from _Physical Review Letters_​
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Chinese Academy of Science, the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality, the National Fundamental Research Program, the State of Bavaria, and the U.S. National Science Foundation.


*References:*
_Toward scalable boson sampling with photon loss_. _Physical Review Letters_120.23 (2018): 230502.
https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.230502

_Viewpoint_: _Lost Photons Won’t Derail Quantum Sampling_
https://physics.aps.org/articles/v11/57

(Written by YANG Ziyi, Edited by WU Qiran, USTC News Center)


http://en.ustc.edu.cn/news/201806/t20180621_317753.html


----------



## JSCh

*This ancient Chinese tomb held a royal, her extinct ape — and a warning*
By Ben Guarino
June 21 at 2:00 PM





(Sam Turvey/ZSL)​
A long-forgotten species of ape has been found buried in a 2,300-year-old tomb. It's a type of gibbon, which scientists named _Junzi imperialis_. Gibbons are the smallest apes, chatty and as lanky-limbed as Kermit the Frog. They're also more closely related to humans than they are to any monkey.

And humans, the scientists say, are the likely agents of these gibbons' extinction.

Archaeologists excavated the burial site, in the ancient Chinese capital city of Chang’an, now part of modern Xi'an, in 2004. “I'm afraid we don't know much about the tomb,” said Helen Chatterjee, a biology professor at University College London and a co-author of the study, published in Science, that describes the gibbon. The tomb is about 2,300 or 2,200 years old, and is possibly the final resting place of Lady Xia, grandmother of the Qin dynasty's first emperor.

The tomb contained several dead exotic animals in 12 pits, including a leopard and a bear, befitting a member of the ancient Chinese elite. Among these remains, excavators found a small jawbone and skull with prominent canine teeth. The gibbon bones wound up in a museum drawer until Samuel Turvey, at the Zoological Society of London, plucked them out of obscurity.

“It's just luck that Sam found this specimen and immediately suspected it was a gibbon,” Chatterjee said.

Turvey scanned the gibbon bones and sent the images to Chatterjee. With their students, the scientists began to pick apart the gibbon's features. Their analysis “revealed it to be significantly different from living gibbons,” Chatterjee said.

_Junzi imperialis _had a steeper forehead than other gibbons, narrower cheekbones and more slender brow ridges, said Alejandra Ortiz, an anthropologist at Arizona State University and a co-author of the report. Its molars were unusually sized, too.

All of these features combined, the authors say, make a strong case that the gibbon is not just a new species but a new genus. (A genus, you'll recall, ranks above a species — it's the _Homo_ in _Homo sapiens_.) Living gibbons are split into 20 species over four genera.

“There’s good reason to believe this represents a new species of gibbon,” said anthropologist Paul Garber, a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois who has studied gibbons in China and was not involved with this report. Whether it's a new genus is tough to say, he said, based on one specimen.

What's more critical, in Garber's mind, is the gibbon's extinction. 

In China, wild gibbons stick to the dense forest canopies of the southwest. One species, the Hainan gibbon, lives at the nation's southernmost point; there are only 30 of these apes left, making them one of the rarest mammals alive. The Chang’an tomb, in the central province of Shaanxi, is 750 miles from the nearest known gibbon habitat. Shaanxi is mountainous, Garber said, and though macaques and snub-nosed monkeys live there, no gibbons do.

It's possible, Ortiz said, that “Lady Xia’s gibbon was transported to Chang’an as a trade item or tribute.” (Ortiz pointed to old Chinese texts referring to the animals as “elegant” and symbols of “gentlemen.”) But the study's authors say _Junzi imperialis _could have been a local. Except for the gibbon, the other mammals found in the tomb still occur in Shaanxi.

“Gibbons had much wider ranges in the past,” Chatterjee said. “It is unlikely specimens such as _Junzi_ would have traveled this far just by humans.” Chatterjee and her colleagues suspect there are more _Junzi_ bones in the area, waiting to be found. “We are keen to find them.”

The scientists cannot say with certainty that humans wiped the gibbons off the planet. They just think it's the most likely hypothesis. (The current study of this species, after all, depended on its cultural value to long-dead humans.) And although we might think of ecological loss as a modern problem, ancient Chang’an had a dense human population. "We have been a threat for quite a while," Ortiz said.

“Probably more than any country in the world, China has transformed its landscape,” Garber said. Two thousand years ago, the Han dynasty had an estimated population of 60 million people, a quarter of the world's total.

Primate habitats shrank dramatically in China over the past two millennia. In September, Garber published a paper based on historical records of snub-nosed monkeys, taken from texts as old as 1 A.D. As the population of China boomed from the 1700s onward, references to snub-nosed monkeys in eastern and central China vanished completely.

Gibbons, who consume mostly fruits, are especially ill-equipped for shrinking forests. Because they rarely descend from the canopy, when forests splinter, the apes remain boxed in. Their ability to cross open gaps to between habitats, Ortiz said, is "extremely limited."

“The _Junzi_ find is a sobering lesson in the devastating effects that humans can have on the natural world,” Chatterjee said. “Nature cannot keep up.”

The primate vanishing act has not stopped with _Junzi_. “Unless things dramatically change over the next 25 to 75 years, there will be a major primate extinction crisis,” Garber said. “Worldwide, 60 percent of primates are threatened, endangered or critically endangered.”

China still has the opportunity to enact better policies that protect living primates, he said. But that window won't stay open forever.


This ancient Chinese tomb held a royal, her extinct ape — and a warning - The Washington Post


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *China sets new record in deep-well drilling*
> By Zhou Huiying in Anda, Heilongjiang | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2018-05-26 19:53
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> China completed the drilling of deepest well in Asia and the first one in the world that goes through continental stratum of the cretaceous period on March 26, 2018. [Photo by Gu Landing/for chinadaily.com.cn]
> 
> China on Saturday completed the drilling of deepest well in Asia and the first one in the world that goes through continental stratum of the cretaceous period.
> 
> The project, called Songke 2, was launched in April 13, 2014, in Anda, Heilongjiang province, by the China Geological Survey and undertaken by about 20 organizations, including the Institute of Exploration Technology, SinoProbe Center, China University of Geosciences, Jilin University and Petrol China Daqing Oilfield Company Ltd.
> 
> After four years, the team finished drilling the 7,018-meter-deep well.
> 
> "On behalf of the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP), I would like to congratulate you on the project achieved at the unprecedented depth and with great success," said Ulrich Harms, head of Operational Support Group of ICDP. "These technical achievements are outstanding and will have a long-term impact on the role partnership between industry and science played in scientific drilling in China and in the world. And it will have an impact on the scientists involved."


*Researchers planning drill rig capable of boring 15 km hole*
By Zhou Huiying in Harbin and Han Junhong in Changchun | China Daily | Updated: 2018-06-21 09:54















Technicians closely observe operations of the record-breaking Crust 1, one of China's most-advanced onshore drilling rigs. Provided To China Daily

Researchers plan to develop a drilling rig capable of boring a hole 15,000 meters deep, following up on the success of a domestically developed rig that reached 7,018 meters last month.

The development of the new rig will be based on knowledge gained from the Crust-1 10K ultradeep scientific rig, currently the best China has developed, said Sun Youhong, vice-president of Jilin University and the research and development director of the deep continental scientific drilling equipment program.

Crust-1, which was designed to bore 10,000 meters into the earth, showed its capability in Anda, Heilongjiang province, on May 26, when it penetrated the Cretaceous continental strata and drilled the deepest borehole for scientific purposes completed by an Asian country.

Sun said some daunting problems await researchers - high temperatures, high pressures and high stress in the earth's crust - that will become more serious as drilling depth increases.

For example, temperatures will reach 400 C at a depth of 13,000 meters, while they are about 175 C at 7,000 meters, he said. Higher stress in the crust means some of the rocks are more likely to crack and result in drilling mishaps.

Such problems are cutting-edge, and there is no mature technology and experience that can be used for reference, he said.

A deep borehole drilled by the future rig could be used as "a permanent underground observation station", he said.

Equipment at such a station could enable scientists to make "dynamic observations" of the earth, instead of the current static ones, and "greatly improve our ability to warn of major natural disasters early", he said.

Zhao Yan, a researcher on the Jilin University team, said that an initial design has been completed and awaits approval.

Zhao said they are also considering possible sites to drill a 13,000-meter borehole. Nine candidate sites include volcanic areas of Changbai Mountain and Tarim Basin in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, which has huge potential as a source of oil and natural gas.

Last month's successful Songke 2 project, which drilled to a depth of 7,018 meters, made China the third country to develop a rig capable of hitting 10,000-meters, after Germany and Russia.

Research into Crust-1, which started in April 2009, is being led by Jilin University in cooperation with several other institutes, including two under the China Geological Survey and China University of Geosciences.

The researchers at Jilin University also overcame some of the challenges of working in extreme cold weather and taking rock samples from a complex environment.

"All these achievements have fully shown the capability of China in independent research and the development of deep-drilling rigs," Sun said.

The Songke 2 project is located in the Songliao Basin, one of the largest continental sedimentary basins in the world, which holds China's most important reserves of oil and natural gas.

"The success of the project will provide key technologies and equipment for exploration and experimental research deep within the earth," said Cheng Qiuming, secretary-general of the International Union of Geological Sciences. "It will also open a new space for clean-energy prospecting in the basin."


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 22-JUN-2018
*Self-assembled energetic coordination polymers based on multidentate pentazole cyclo-N5-*
SCIENCE CHINA PRESS

​
The scheme of assembling CP 1 and CP 2. ©Science China Press​
Pentazole anion cyclo-N5- is an attractive five-membered ring comprised of only nitrogen atoms. After being recently first synthesized, it is found that the cyclo-N5- anion shows good adaptability to take part in ionic, coordination, and hydrogen bonding interactions and therefor is a possibility to form different types of derivatives.

Ming Lu and co-workers, from Nanjing University of Science and Technology, developed two new energetic coordination polymers based on multidentate pentazole cyclo-N5-, recently published in _Science China Materials_, 2018, doi: 10.1007/s40843-018-9268-0.

Lu's group was devoted to the development for high energy density materials including polynitrogen and nitrogen-rich compounds for a long time. He said "The cyclo-N5-, as a polynitrogen structure, is high-energy specie that, if properly assembled with other ions, is likely to develop into a new generation of energetic materials, breaking through the energy limits of current energetic materials. "

At present, their group has realized the synthesis of metal-N5? complexes, but the introduction of organic cations or molecules and the formation of organic salts with the assembly of N5- ions have not yet been achieved.

"Although metal-N5- compounds contain energy and can explode in certain condition, the overall energy level of them is always very low. It is necessary to introduce energetic organic ions to increase the energetic performance", he says, "At the same time, the design ability and different physicochemical properties of organic cations provides a possibility to develop other new substances such as coordination polymers."

Coordination to form polymer is emerging as a new technology for modifying or enhancing the properties of the existed energetic substances in energetic materials area. "However, compared with metal ions, organic ions often have weaker coordination ability." he says, "It is still challenging to introduce organic ions to coordinate with N5- by ion exchange."

To achieve the purpose of organic ions instead of metal ions, the strategy for using metal ions with weak coordination effect is a good choose. Lu emphasized "It is essential to the crystal growth and ion/ligand exchange processes of coordination polymer."

Prof. Lu, as the leader of the research group, tells us "Previous experience motivates us to employ sodium salt as precursor because we have prepared more than 5 kinds of metal salts from it." By self-assembling, anhydrous coordination polymers

(NaN5)5[(CH6N3)N5](N5)3- (CP 1) and (NaN5)2(C2H4N4) (CP 2) have been synthesized.

Lu says, "Experimentally, we used methanol solution containing sodium pentazole salt and guanidine or amino-triazole. Colorless crystals can be obtained by maintaining the solutions in air at room temperature naturally for several days, with more than 80% yield."

He adds "The evaporation rate of the solvent is more critical because the coordination capacity is relatively weak. If solvent evaporates too quickly, it is very likely that the coordination polymer will not be formed. Only mixed salts can be obtained."

The DSC curves for both CPs show that their decomposing temperatures are at 118.4 and 126.5°C, respectively. He highlights "These values are 7.4 and 15.5°C higher than precursor sodium pentazole salt."

"This observation indicates that coordination and hydrogen bonding interactions are beneficial for stabilizing the N5 ring." Zhang adds.

Detonation heat, detonation velocity and detonation pressure are key parameters of energetic materials. The calculated nitrogen content (>66%) and heat of formation (>800 kJ mol-1) of the two CPs are significantly higher than those of traditional energetic materials (TNT, RDX and HMX).

The detonation heat of CP 2 (1.65 kcal g-1) is higher than that of TNT, RDX, HMX and CL-20 (about 1.5 kcal g-1). Detonation and detonation pressures (7,863 m s-1, 26.44 GPa) are higher than TNT.

"If we can improve the density of organic salts, it is very promising to reach level of HMX and CL-20." Lu said. "The detonation performance of CP 1 is poor, which is attributed to the low density caused by its porous structure" he added, "From another point of view; this porous structure can load other small molecules to enhance the energy performance."

"Two breakthroughs, removing coordinated water and combining with organic ligands, are achieved here. It makes pentazole derivative a step closer to energetic materials." Lu concluded.

###​
This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11702141, 21771108 and U1530101).

*See the article:* Peng-Cheng Wang, Yuan-Gang Xu, Qian Wang, Yan-Li Shao, Qiu-Han Lin and Ming Lu. "Self-assembled energetic coordination polymers based on multidentate pentazole cyclo-N5-" _Sci. China Mater_. 2018, doi: 10.1007/s40843-018-9268-0.

http://engine.scichina.com/publisher/scp/journal/SCMs/doi/10.1007/s40843-018-9268-0?slug=full text

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40843-018-9268-0​


Self-assembled energetic coordination polymers based on multidentate pentazole cyclo-N5- | EurekAlert! Science News


----------



## JSCh

Water droplets cannot soak into a bed of cotton topped by a coating composed partially of eggshells. Credit: J. He _et al./Adv. Eng. Mater._

20 JUNE 2018
*An eggshell mixture that sheds water and shrugs off punishment*
_A layer of this eco-friendly substance could prevent corrosion and ice build-up._

Researchers have used eggshells to create a waterproof material that can withstand radiation, corrosive liquids and other abuse.

Eggshells are inexpensive, readily available and eco-friendly, unlike the ingredients of many previously developed water-repellent materials. Jinmei He, Mengnan Qu and their colleagues at Xi’an University of Science and Technology in China obtained eggs from local supermarkets, ground up the shells and mixed them with stearic acid. By combining the mixture with zinc oxide particles, the researchers created a solid substance that sheds water even after exposure to harsh treatment, such as ultraviolet irradiation and prolonged scraping by sandpaper.

The group’s invention can be used as a coating to keep surfaces clean and prevent corrosion and ice build-up. Although water does not penetrate the material, oil does. That could make the material useful in filters for treating oily wastewater.

_Adv. Eng. Mater._ (2018)​

An eggshell mixture that sheds water and shrugs off punishment : Research Highlights | Nature


----------



## JSCh

*Novel Method Using Deep Neural Network to Locate Source in Shallow Water*
Jun 21, 2018

Source localization in a shallow water environment has captured considerable attention from researchers in the past several decades. Numerous approaches to range-depth estimation have been reported for the low-frequency broadband signal. However, there are few methods for source localization based on deep neural network (DNN). 

Aiming to reduce dependence on environmental information, researchers from the Institute of Acoustics(IOA) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences applied DNNs and proposed a novel method to source localization in shallow water. Their findings were published online in _the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America_.

Researchers proposed two DNN-based methods forming this brand-new broadband source localization method. 

The first one adopts the two-stage scheme, including feature extraction and DNN analysis. The eigenvectors corresponding to the modal signal space are taken as the input feature of neural network. Then, the time delay neural network (TDNN) is trained to estimate the range and depth of sound source. 

The second method adopts a convolutional neural network-feed-forward neural network (CNN-FNN) architecture to learn the mapping relationship directly from waveforms.

The CNNs are operated as the time domain convolution filters to extract the spatial information of sound source from the raw multi-channel signals, because the signals radiated from different directions may result in different intensity differences and phase differences among the sensors. The location representation extracted by CNNs is collected by the following FNN layers.

Researchers evaluated the method under both the simulated and real environments. Experimental results showed that the proposed method achieved a better accuracy than conventional matched field processing (MFP), and boosted DNN to be available for practical applications where the experimental data collection is usually costly. 

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Innovation Foundation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. 



Source ranging using the experimental data: (a) result of the feature-based method and; (b) result of MFP. (Image by IOA)



Novel Method Using Deep Neural Network to Locate Source in Shallow Water---Chinese Academy of Sciences


----------



## JSCh

*New carbon could signal step-change for the world’s most popular batteries*
23 June 2018 09:23


Batteries in electric vehicles are one possible application for OSPC-1

Scientists have created a new type of carbon that could make the batteries in our phones, tablet computers and laptops safer, more powerful, quicker to charge and longer lasting.

An international team of researchers, led by Lancaster University and Jilin University in China, have announced the first organically synthesised porous carbon, called OSPC-1, in the journal Angewandte Chemie.

This new carbon shows exceptional potential as a material for anodes within lithium-ion batteries – the type of batteries that power millions of devices such as mobile phones, laptops, power tools, as well as being used in larger complex situations, such as space satellites, commercial airplanes and electric cars.

The industry standard material used for anodes within lithium-ion batteries is a form of carbon called graphite. The scientists compared the performance of OSPC-1 against graphite and discovered that OSPC-1 is able to store more than twice as many lithium ions, and therefore power, as graphite at the same mid-range speed of charging.

In addition, OSPC-1 is able to store lithium ions at more than double the rate as graphite – meaning charging speeds can be twice as fast. Discharge speeds can also be vastly improved with OSPC-1, which means it can also be used to power more energy-hungry applications.

Uniquely, OSPC-1 has been created at the molecular level using a complex technique called ‘Eglinton homocoupling’. This involves removing silicon from carbon-silicon groups to produce carbon to carbon links. The resulting structure is amorphous, very stable, and, crucially, highly conductive.

Another major advantage of OSPC-1 is its safety. It does not form dendrites. These are lithium metal fibres that can form when lithium gets stuck on the surface of graphite. If the dendrites build up and reach across to the cathode they can short circuit lithium-ion batteries and cause them to explode into flames.

OSPC-1 also appears to be much more longer-lasting than graphite. The team of scientists tested it over 100 charging and discharging cycles and there were no signs of deterioration. Graphite expands and contracts each time it is charged and discharged, which makes it susceptible to cracking. The open-framework structure of OSPC-1 means it is less brittle and not as prone to these weaknesses.

However, graphite is the industry standard because it is very cheap to produce and easily obtainable. The researchers acknowledge that OSPC-1 would be more costly to produce, at least initially. Therefore, the researchers believe the most likely early applications would be for situations where safety is the paramount consideration – such as within space satellites and aircraft.

Dr Abbie Trewin, from Lancaster University's Department of Chemistry and Materials Science Institute, and co-lead author of the study, said: “Our team has used an entirely new method to produce the only porous carbon designed at the molecular level.

“This new material, OSPC-1, is a highly promising anode material for lithium-ion batteries with a high lithium capacity, an impressive charge and discharge rate capability, potential for a long lifespan, and for significantly improved safety performance.

“We believe OSPC-1 has great potential in those situations where failure could lead to loss of life, or the loss of very expensive equipment in the case of satellites.”

The method used by the team of researchers has potential to be extended to other 3D carbon materials, and could see the creation of a new family of porous carbon materials, which could see benefits for energy storage, electronic devices, catalysis, gas storage, and gas separation technologies.

The findings are reported in the paper 'A 3-D Organically Synthesized Porous Carbon'.

The research benefitted from funding from the Royal Society, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council in the UK, the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

The researchers are Abbie Trewin, Colin Lambert, Pierre Fayon, Patrick Heasman, Michael Jay and Steven Bailey from Lancaster University; Teng Ben, Ziqiang Zhao, Saikat Das, Guolong Xing and Shlun Qiu of Jilin University; Hiroki Yamada and Toru Wakihara from the University of Tokyo; and Valentin Valtchev of the Universite de Caen-ENSICAEN-CNRS.


New carbon could signal step-change for the world’s most popular batteries | Lancaster University


----------



## JSCh

*Inventing the future in Chinese labs: How does China do science today?*
June 28, 2018 8.38pm AEST

*Author*
Richard P. Suttmeier
Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Oregon​
Genetic engineering, the search for dark matter, quantum computing and communications, artificial intelligence, brain science – the list of potentially disruptive research goes on. Each has significant implications for future industries, defense technologies and ethical understandings of what it means to be human.

And, increasingly, the notable achievements in these fields are coming not from the great centers of science in the West, but Beijing, Shanghai, Hefei, Shenzhen and a number of other Chinese cities that make up China’s extensive research system. Inevitably, the question arises: How much of the future is being invented in Chinese labs?

The current trade negotiations between China and United States have brought China’s rapidly developing technological capabilities into clearer focus. As China aims to achieve leadership in emerging key technologies, the U.S. is quick to attribute much of Chinese progress to the theft of American intellectual property and forced technology transfers. But, as someone who has followed China’s scientific development for years, I’ve seen dramatic improvements in China’s own innovative capacity, along with the science base needed for success in the knowledge-intensive industries it seeks to master.

In its quest for scientific achievement, China’s research and development spending has grown rapidly over the past two decades. It’s now second only to the United States. China has become a leading contributor to the world’s science and engineering literatures, with Chinese papers in selected fields attracting an increasing number of citations.

Generous government science budgets have allowed China to build world-class facilities in a number of fields. And China is home to one of the world’s largest research communities, now enriched by high-quality domestic university programs as well as scientists returning from abroad with advanced degrees from the world’s leading universities.

But how is the enterprise of science in China organized? Who sets the priorities? And are its mechanisms of governance suitable for sustained progress?



​The world’s largest radio telescope – named FAST – was built in Guizhou province under the auspices of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Reuters/China Daily CDIC

*Chinese science, by sector*
In contrast to the U.S., where basic research is concentrated in universities, where there are strong traditions of corporate R&D and where research in government labs supports the missions of government agencies, the institutional arrangements for science in China reflect a different design.

Though each has been extensively reformed, Chinese science today is still largely conducted in five institutional sectors. The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), a legacy institution from the 1950s, oversees some 120 institutes – including China’s “big science” facilities – and three institutions of higher education. Following a series of reforms over the past two decades, scientists in many of its labs now engage in world-class research across a range of disciplines, including quantum physics, mathematics and neuroscience.

Universities comprise the second institutional system, with the top schools competing with CAS for talent and prestige. University-based research was not emphasized in the pre-reform era. But over the past two decades, China’s top universities have emerged as important centers of basic and applied research, while also promoting a culture supportive of high-tech entrepreneurship.



​2017 visitors to the annual China Beijing International High-Tech Expo, a showcase for Chinese domestic technology companies and innovation. AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

China’s industrial enterprises constitute the third institutional sector. Two of the most significant changes over the past two decades have been the growth of company-based R&D, especially in information and communications technology fields, and the emergence of non-state-owned, market-oriented high tech firms. R&D expenditures in the enterprise sector now amounts to roughly 80 percent of the nation’s total.

Government research institutes under civilian ministries – such as those for agriculture, public health, environmental protection, natural resources and so on – constitute a fourth system.

Finally, research and development in support of the military constitutes a fifth sector, one which remains largely opaque. In cooperation with civilian sectors, and guided by civil-military integration policies, it’s producing increasingly sophisticated national defense systems.

In the last few years, the Chinese government has introduced policies to encourage collaborative research across these sectors. In particular, China has established national laboratories and other major new national research centers, inspired by the national lab experience in the U.S. and other countries. These new institutions – cross-disciplinary and problem-focused by design – are engaged in world-class research of international interest. For example, the University of Science and Technology in Hefei is home to a leading facility for quantum physics and quantum information.

The government has also sponsored the establishment of major government-owned national research centers within leading Chinese companies. For instance, iFlytek, a leader in voice recognition technologies, hosts one on human-machine interactions. China National Offshore Oil Corporation hosts another on natural gas hydrates.

*Encouraging policy from the top*


​Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, and Premier Li Keqiang have thrown the government’s support behind the country’s research efforts. AP Photo/Ng Han Guan

In contrast to the current U.S. administration, which has yet to define a clear policy for science and technology, China’s quest for global scientific leadership is driven by its top political leaderswho see China’s future wealth and power being derived from its research and innovation capabilities.

Chinese science policy, as a result, is characterized by a strong emphasis on national needs as defined by a top-down design process. At the national government level, funding for research has become more centralized. It’s now channeled through national programs, or “platforms,” administered by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST). These do permit “bottom-up” investigator-initiated proposals, and efforts are being made to strengthen professional reviews and assessments of research projects. Nevertheless, the funding system is still characterized by strong state direction.

The themes of national science policy are also found in the initiatives of local governments, many of which have become major funders of R&D and partners in building the country’s new research facilities.

The emphasis on national needs had, until recently, biased the nation’s research away from basic science. Chinese policymakers, however, have come to realize that leadership in science-based industries requires basic research conducted at international frontier levels. As a result, financial support for basic research is increasing.

But, a controversial administrative reorganization in March of this year changed the status of China’s key agency for supporting basic science, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). No longer an independent agency under China’s State Council, NSFC is now an entity under the broad administrative direction of the Ministry of Science and Technology.

The NSFC had been seen as a pioneer in promoting a culture of basic science through the support of original investigator-driven, peer-reviewed research. Members of the scientific community now fear that NSFC operations will succumb to the more applications-oriented, bureaucratic procedures of its new home ministry.



​Chinese researchers announced they’d cloned primates in early 2018, a step other countries had held off on taking. AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

*Socialist science*
China’s aspirations for scientific distinction, and its aggressive science policy in support of those aspirations, is occurring in a political environment that’s quite different from that of other countries with strong traditions of science.

The differences have come into sharper focus under the leadership of President and Party Chairman Xi Jinping. While Xi has redoubled political support for science, he has also altered the political climate by insisting on more demanding ideological commitments from the academic community to his own worldview, by strengthening the role of the Communist Party in research institutions and universities and by harnessing China’s technological progress to the development of a surveillance state, leaving little room for privacy and dissent.

Combined with China’s long tradition of bureaucratic rule, these initiatives set the models of science-state relations, and Chinese scientific development more generally, apart. Other leading nations in science have political systems based on law and the protection of human rights, on free and open communications and on civil society traditions, which permit the autonomous operation of professional societies.

The Chinese model, arguably, has been quite successful in producing rapid development over the past 30 years of scientific and technological “catch-up.” China has certainly caught up in selected fields and, in some, is advancing the frontier. But, whether this model of science-state relations is suitable, over time, for the kinds of original innovation and creative scientific breakthroughs envisioned by the leadership – and for managing the complex ethical issues arising from new technologies – are among the more intriguing questions about China’s future.



Inventing the future in Chinese labs: How does China do science today? | theconversation.com


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 29-JUN-2018
*Surrey makes breakthrough in perovskite solar cell technology*
UNIVERSITY OF SURREY

The University of Surrey has helped to create a technique that has produced the highest performing inverted perovskite solar cell ever recorded.

Perovskite based cells are widely viewed as the next generation of solar cells, offering similar power conversion efficiency (PCE) performance, but at a much lower cost than the market dominant crystalline silicon based solar cells.

In a study published by _Science_, a team of researchers from Peking University and the Universities of Surrey, Oxford and Cambridge detail a new way to reduce an unwanted process called non-radiative recombination, where energy and efficiency is lost in perovskite solar cells.

The team created a technique called Solution-Process Secondary growth (SSG) which increased the voltage of inverted perovskite solar cells by 100 millivolts, reaching a high of 1.21 volts without compromising the quality of the solar cell or the electrical current flowing through a device. They tested the technique on a device which recorded a PCE of 20.9 per cent, the highest certified PCE for inverted perovskite solar cells ever recorded.

?Dr Wei Zhang from the University of Surrey's Advanced Technology Institute, said: "The need for clean and sustainable energy that helps us to stop damaging our planet is what drives us at the Advanced Technology Institute. Our new technique confirms that there is a lot of promise with perovskite solar cells and we aim to explore this new and exciting area more in the future."

Professor Ravi Silva, Director of the Advanced Technology Institute at the University of Surrey, said: "It is pleasing to see the Advanced Technology Institute join in this global project that could provide a solution to the need for a truly sustainable, cheap and clean energy resource. This was a monumental effort from leading laboratories, researchers and institutions from across the world, all working together for the common good."



Surrey makes breakthrough in perovskite solar cell technology | EurekAlert! Science News

Deying Luo, Wenqiang Yang, Zhiping Wang, Aditya Sadhanala, Qin Hu, Rui Su, Ravichandran Shivanna, Gustavo F. Trindade, John F. Watts, Zhaojian Xu, Tanghao Liu, Ke Chen, Fengjun Ye, Pan Wu, Lichen Zhao, Jiang Wu, Yongguang Tu, Yifei Zhang, Xiaoyu Yang, Wei Zhang, Richard H. Friend, Qihuang Gong, Henry J. Snaith, Rui Zhu. *Enhanced photovoltage for inverted planar heterojunction perovskite solar cells*. _Science_, 2018; 360 (6396): 1442 DOI: 10.1126/science.aap9282​


----------



## cirr

*Origin Quantum Company and LQCC have successfully simulated a 64-qubit circuit*

SCIENCE CHINA PRESS



IMAGE: PLOTS OF THE LOG-TRANSFORMED MEASUREMENT OUTCOME PROBABILITIES OF 42-, 56- AND 64-QUBIT SIMULATION. view more 

CREDIT: ©SCIENCE CHINA PRESS

The quantum computer is a device that bases on the principles of quantum mechanics. Compared with classical bits, qubits can be at the superposition between "0" and "1", so the quantum computer which is composed of qubits can calculate and store more data. Adding additional qubits can exponentially increase the computational capabilities of quantum computers, and the computational capabilities of quantum computers may soon surpass state-of-the-art supercomputers for certain tasks.

The last few years have seen a series of significant advances in quantum computing, in particular regarding superconducting quantum chips with reports of devices of 20 and 50 qubits with good fidelity. In the meantime, great progress has also been made with semiconductor quantum chips. "Quantum supremacy" claims that the limit of classical computers would be transcended if a device of 50 qubits were made. Direct simulations of 50 qubits take about 16-PB of RAM to store the full vectors. Google and IBM teams have proposed some efficient methods for simulating the low-depth circuit which raised this limit to 56 qubits (e.g., deferral of entanglement gates and Feynman path method).

*Origin Quantum Company* cooperating with the team of Prof. *Guang-Can Guo* presented a scheme of simulation based on transforming two-qubit gates, achieving a 64-qubit simulation of a universal random circuit of depth 22 using a 128-node cluster, and 56- and 42-qubit circuits on a single PC. In particular, by transforming several control-Z (CZ) gates to measurement and single-qubit gates, the circuit is mapped onto an additional 2n sub-circuits. These sub-circuits are formed by two blocks without any qubit entanglement between them, thereby converting an N qubit simulation problem into a group of N/2 The results of all the sub-circuits are then added together to reconstruct the final state. *They also estimated that a 72-qubit circuit of depth 23 can be simulated in about 16 hours on a supercomputer identical to that used by the IBM team.*

Their work enables simulating more qubits with less hardware burden and provides a new perspective for classical simulations. It only needs a single PC with GTX-1080Ti to calculate 42- and 56-qubit circuits. A 64-qubit circuit was simulated with a 128-node computer cluster, but the hardware resources they used have been greatly reduced compared with other methods.

Due to the complexity growing exponentially with qubit number and depth, the simulation of more than 50 qubits will always have an upper bound in depth. Nevertheless, the simulation of more qubits system with small depth still plays an important role for the study of quantum algorithms such as QFT and unsupervised machine learning. Moreover, the partitioning scheme could be combined with other simulation methods (e.g., Feynman path integral), to further reduce the complexity. These improvements may help to realize the simulation of many other quantum algorithms.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-06/scp-oqc062218.php

https://phys.org/news/2018-06-successfully-simulate-qubit-circuit.html


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese Firm Secures World’s First Graphene Product Certificate*
DOU SHICONG 
DATE: MON, 07/02/2018 - 11:46 / SOURCE:YICAI





Chinese Firm Secures World’s First Graphene Product Certificate​
(Yicai Global) July 2 -- Chinese firm LeaderNano Tech has been granted the world’s first product certificate for cutting-edge graphene technology at an event at the Graphene 2018 show in Dresden, Germany.

The International Graphene Products Certification Center, which was jointly set up by a Chinese graphene industry body and European institution Phantoms Foundation in early 2018, granted the certificate to the Shandong-based firm, state-backed Xinhua News Agency reported.

Graphene, made from carbon just one-atom thick, is the strongest material in the world. It is completely flexible, while also more conductive than copper, and could herald a new era in the development of new materials.

Phantoms Foundation invited over 700 top graphene experts, scholars and enterprises from 49 countries and regions worldwide to the event. Liu Zhongfan, an academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences received the certificate on behalf of LeaderNano Tech.

IGCC aims for the certificates to provide buyers with reliable approaches to choosing quality graphene products, while also regulating the overall industry.

Founded in 2011, LeaderNano Tech mainly deals in the industrialized development, production and application of graphene and relevant carbon nanomaterials. The firm is able to produce 100 tons of graphene powder, 200 tons of energy materials, 30,000 tons of polymer composites, and 48,000 tons of functional coating each year.


----------



## JSCh

*New platforms to turn science into goods: report*
Xinhua | Updated: 2018-06-29 13:39
















The stand of Zhongguancun Science Park at the Fifth China Beijing International Fair for Trade in Services, or CIFTIS, on May 31. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

BEIJING - The administrative committee of Zhongguancun science park plans to offer money and workspace for enterprises to operate 10 platforms with an aim to commercialize scientific research findings, Friday's China Daily reported.

A string of measures have been published by the committee and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) to help add technology to products, as part of an effort to make Beijing a center of innovation.

Zhao Huijun, deputy director of the committee, said that Zhongguancun will build these commercialization platforms by providing subsidies for talent, hardware facilities and workspace this year.

"The platforms will hire professionals to assess the scientific findings, apply for patents and conduct market research," Zhao was cited as saying by the report.

The Beijing government and Zhongguancun, known as Beijing's Silicon Valley, have been supporting startups and high-tech research organizations through preferential policies.

"I feel very grateful to everyone involved," said Chen Tianshi from the CAS Institute of Computing Technology. "Thanks to their help, our technology and findings didn't stay on paper but were put into products."

Chen is also CEO of Cambricon Technologies Corp, a startup on artificial intelligence and AI chips.

He said that his company started research and development on AI chips two years ago. Now their products are inserted into millions of mobile phones.

"I'm glad we used the technology to serve the public," he added.

By the end of this year, the CAS and Zhongguancun will set up a database for scientific research results, which will be used for further selection and commercialization.


----------



## JSCh

*NEWS | * 02 JULY 2018
*Gigantic study of Chinese babies yields slew of health data*
Early results from birth-cohort have public-health implications, as other groups use the data to investigate the microbiome and mental health.



About 33,000 Chinese babies have been recruited for a major birth-cohort study.Credit: Liu Junxi/Xinhua/ZUMA Wire

An ambitious Chinese study tracking tens of thousands of babies and their mothers has begun to bear fruit — just six years after the study’s leaders recruited their first sets of mothers and babies.

Researchers have already published results based on the cohort study, which collects biological, environmental and social data, some with important public-health implications. And many more investigations are under way. One, in particular, will examine infants’ microbiomes, the collections of bacteria and other microorganisms that inhabit their bodies — a hot topic in health research and a key goal of the cohort study.

The Born in Guangzhou Cohort Study has recruited about 33,000 babies and their mothers since 20121. The study’s leaders are hoping to reach 50,000 baby–mother sets by 2020. And this year, investigators started recruiting 5,000 maternal grandmothers to the project, enabling studies across multiple generations.

“The data is vast, and there is space for many different groups globally to mine this information,” says Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello, a microbiologist at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, in New Brunswick, who is not involved in the study. “I really admire this effort from the Chinese team. Very few countries can achieve this scale.”

Ezra Susser, an epidemiologist from Columbia University in New York City, says the cohort is also important because it is tracking mothers and babies during a period of rapid economic development and social change in China, where previous studies of this type have been limited in scale.

The Guangzhou project aims to set itself apart from previous large birth cohort studies in Norway and Denmark by enabling detailed investigations of the links between the microbiome and disease. Two other large birth-cohort studies, in the United States and United Kingdom, had planned to include microbiome data, but both were cancelled because of trouble recruiting participants. The US study also struggled with excessive costs and management issues.

The Chinese team has so far avoided similar problems. Its rich collection of 1.6 million biological samples includes specimens of stools, blood, placental tissue and umbilical cords. Extensive surveys also record participants’ eating habits, mental health, and other lifestyle factors, such as the amount of mould in their house.

The cohort’s leaders recruit babies born at the Guangzhou Women and Children’s Medical Center. Only families planning to live in the southern Chinese city for a long time have been recruited, says Xia Huimin, a surgeon at the centre and one of the project’s co-founders. That’s because it is hoped that children will remain in the study from the time they are babies until they are 18 years old.

*First results*

Researchers are already publishing results. Incense burning is common in southern China, and one study found that exposure to the resulting fumes increases the risk of hypertension in expectant mothers2.

Another study found that progesterone, a drug used around the world to reduce the risk of a preterm birth, was prescribed too early in pregnancy in more than 40% of women studied3. The researchers found that giving women the drug before 14 weeks of gestation did not reduce their chances of a preterm birth, but put them at higher risk of needing a caesarean section and developing post-partum depression. The authors consider the findings “an urgent public-health concern”.

*Current investigations*

Other studies are in progress. A team from the University of Birmingham in the UK and BGI, one of China's largest genome-sequencing institutes, in Shenzhen, is trying to characterize how the microbiomes of babies born via the vagina — who are exposed to their mothers’ microbes on their journey down the birth canal — differ from those of infants born by caesarean section. Although similar smaller studies have been done before, Dominguez-Bello says the Guangzhou cohort will offer statistical power to separate out other variables that could influence an infant’s microbiome. These include pre- and postnatal medications, including antibiotics, and environmental pollutants.

Xiu Qiu, an epidemiologist at Guangzhou Women and Children's Medical Center and the director of the Guangzhou project, is using the cohort data to test her surprising, but tentative, finding that older mothers having a second child have a lower risk of depression during pregnancy than do women pregnant with their first child3. She had expected the opposite to be true because women who already have a baby when they are pregnant would be under more stress and face a higher financial burden, and so would be more depressed. The end of China’s one-child policy in 2016 means the birth-cohort study offers a fresh opportunity to study the mental health of an increasing number of women, many of them older, who are having a second child, she says.

Sing Sing Way, a paediatrician at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital in Ohio, meanwhile, will be looking at the data provided by the addition of grandmothers to the study to understand why cells from mothers can live on indefinitely in their offspring. Studies in mice suggest that these cells play a protective role when the offspring are pregnant, says Way, who will use the grandmother data to test this hypothesis in people4.

Xia says the Guangzhou cohort has the power to answer many more questions like this. He hopes scientists around the world will use it. “We would like scientists from everywhere to work with us.”


_doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-05522-1_


Gigantic study of Chinese babies yields slew of health data | Nature


----------



## cirr

*Chinese Paper Demonstrates World’s First 18-Qubit Entanglement With Photon*

A team of Chinese quantum physicists has demonstrated the world's first 18-qubit entanglement. This is the largest entangled state ever in all physical systems, and represents a big step towards large-scale highly efficient quantum computing.






BY SYNCED

2018-07-02

A team of Chinese quantum physicists has demonstrated the world’s first 18-qubit entanglement. This is the largest entangled state ever in all physical systems, and represents a big step towards large-scale highly efficient quantum computing. Lead researcher Pan Jianwei and colleagues at University of Science and Technology of China and CAS-Alibaba Quantum Computing Laboratory published the paper last week in _Physics Review Letter._

Qubit entanglement is a distinctive feature of qubits that distinguishes quantum computers from classical computers. A set of entangled qubits can express high-level correlation regardless of their locations, allowing quantum computers to perform specific tasks not possible in classical computers. Generating an increasing number of entangled particles is an important benchmark for quantum information processing.

_18-Qubit Entanglement with Six Photons’ Three Degrees of Freedom_ demonstrates an experimental result of an 18-qubit Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) entanglement by simultaneous exploiting three different Degree of Freedoms (DoFs) of six photons, including their paths, polarization, and orbital angular momentum (OAM). Previously, multi-qubit entanglements have been reported up to 14 trapped ions, 10 photons, and 10 superconducting qubits.

The paper presents a method of developing quantum logic operations on photons’ DoFs, which successfully enables concurrent readout of 262,144 outcome combinations of the 18-qubit state. A state fidelity of 0.708 ± 0.016 is measured, confirming the genuine entanglement of all 18 qubits.

Lead researcher Pan is widely recognized for his achievements in quantum entanglement with photons and superconducting circuits.

https://syncedreview.com/2018/07/02...rlds-first-18-qubit-entanglement-with-photon/


----------



## JSCh

*Hungry? A Newly Discovered Neural Circuit May Be to Blame*


NEUROSCIENCE NEWS JULY 5, 2018
_Summary: Researchers have identified a subset of neurons in a region of the hypothalamus that play a critical role in regulating feeding and appetite in mice._

_Source: AAAS._

A particular subset of neurons located in an enigmatic region of the hypothalamus plays a central role in regulating feeding and body weight in mice, a new study reveals. The results illuminate a previously unknown neural mechanism of feeding regulation and offer new perspectives on understanding changes in appetite.

Knowledge of the function of a region of the hypothalamus called the nucleus tuberalis lateralis, or NTL, is scarce, though scientists seek to better understand it as damage to this brain region in patients results in marked declines in appetite, and in rapid loss in body weight.

To further explore any role the NTL may have in regulation of feeding and body weight, Sarah Xinwei Luo and colleagues observed the behavior of somatostatin (SST) neurons in the NTL using a mouse model.

The authors found that the SST neurons were activated by both hunger (following overnight food deprivation) and after administration of the hunger hormone, ghrelin. Selective activation and deactivation of the neurons, using both drugs and optogenetics, demonstrated that eating behavior could be controlled – activation increased eating behavior, while inhibition significantly reduced it.

Total elimination of the neurons altogether resulted in decreased daily food intake as well as gradual weight gain.



​According to the study’s findings, SST neurons are required for controlling healthy eating and body weight. NeuroscienceNews.com image is in the public domain.

According to the study’s findings, SST neurons are required for controlling healthy eating and body weight.

In a related Perspective, Sabrina Diano notes that Luo et al.’s results are highly relevant – efforts to affect body weight and other physiological impairments associated with aberrant feeding behaviors, like obesity or anorexia nervosa, have been futile.

Despite the translational uncertainty between the neural circuitry of mice and humans, Luo et al.’s results are novel and warrant further investigation, says Diano.

*Original Research:* Abstract for “Regulation of feeding by somatostatin neurons in the tuberal nucleus” by Sarah Xinwei Luo, Ju Huang, Qin Li, Hasan Mohammad, Chun-Yao Lee, Kumar Krishna, Alison Maun-Yeng Kok, Yu Lin Tan, Joy Yi Lim, Hongyu Li, Ling Yun Yeow, Jingjing Sun, Miao He, Joanes Grandjean, Sreedharan Sajikumar, Weiping Han, and Yu Fu in _Science_. Published July 5 2018.
doi:10.1126/science.aar4983



Hungry? A Newly Discovered Neural Circuit May Be to Blame - Neuroscience News


----------



## JSCh

*Evaluations aim to help innovation*
By Zhang Zhihao | China Daily | Updated: 2018-07-06 09:54














*
New ways of measuring performance of top talent, projects offer many benefits*

To promote innovation, China has launched its most detailed performance evaluation systems so far for talented researchers, institutes and projects, officials said on Thursday. The system will be more streamlined and efficient, they said.

The systems are part of recent reforms to cut bureaucracy in the auditing, evaluation and managerial process of scientific research and projects, according to new guidelines, which were issued recently by the general offices of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council.

"The new evaluation systems are the most comprehensive and detailed mechanisms to date," said He Defang, director of the department of policy, regulation and supervision of the Ministry of Science and Technology.

"These types of institutional reforms are typically proposed by departments, but this time it is straight from the top, which proves that State leaders are paying more attention to science-related government affairs."

Earlier evaluation reforms began nearly two decades ago, but they lacked clear, enforceable guidelines, which led to issues ranging from cumbersome paperwork to conflicts of interest, He said. The situation began to improve in 2013 as more government departments began experimenting with policies to reduce bureaucratic workload.

At the same time, most science evaluations tend to focus on individual projects, but China lacked both general and mid- to long-range evaluations about the role of research institutions and the social benefits of their output, he said.

Zhang Xu, deputy director of the ministry's department of innovation and development, said the new evaluation systems aim to optimize management, unleash the potential of scientists, clarify roles and research directions for research institutes and increase their capability to better serve national needs.

The new systems will also integrate different types of evaluations across various levels, including self-evaluations and institutional, departmental and third-party evaluations, leading to more balanced and objective results, Zhang said.

Each research institute will create a charter that acts as a set of basic governing principles and the basis for evaluations, Zhang said. The main items of the charter include research targets, responsible fields and national duty.

The results of an evaluation will have more weight in policy formation, project planning, talent recruitment and other major decisions related to the functions of the institute, Zhang said, adding that the legal entity for the institutes will be granted more power to make such decisions.

More practical criteria - such as socioeconomic benefits - will be added into a scientists' evaluations' for promotions, He said.

Legacy criteria, such as awards and the number of published papers, will serve only as references and not deciding factors, as in past evaluations.

"After all, it is unfair to hold back a capable surgeon's promotion because he spent all his time doing surgery and not writing papers," He said.

As for institutes, success will be measured by their end products and social impact, not just department size or budget, He said. Users of the technology will have greater say in the evaluation.

Xie Xin, deputy director of the ministry's department of resource allocation and management, said the reform will also strengthen the credibility of evaluations and the reviewers, with a zero-tolerance stance on fraud.


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese Researchers Develop Meter-scale Single-wall Carbon Nanotube Thin Films*

Meter-scale single-wall carbon nanotube (SWCNT) thin films with an excellent optoelectrical performance has been developed for the first time by Chinese researchers from Institute of Metal Research, Chinese academy of sciences.

SWCNTs have been considered one of the most promising candidates for flexible and transparent electronic devices due to their extraordinary mechanical, electrical, and optical properties. The production of high-quality SWCNT thin films by an efficient and scalable method has become a key issue for their practical application in electronics. However, two major obstacles remain for the research and development of macro-electronics based on SWCNT thin films. First, the size of fabricated SWCNT films is usually limited to the square centimeter scale, and the batch processing used is not scalable. Second, the optoelectrical performance of SWCNT films remains unsatisfactory due to the introduction of impurities and structural defects during the fabrication processes. Therefore, the production of high-quality SWCNT thin films by an efficient and scalable process remains a big challenge.

Recently, the researchers from Institute of Metal Research, Chinese academy of Sciences (IMR, CAS), proposed a continuous synthesis, deposition, and transfer technique for the fabrication of high-quality SWCNT thin films of meter-scale dimension with excellent optoelectrical performance. Large-area, flexible, and transparent all-CNT thin-film transistors (TFTs) and various integrated circuits (ICs) were also fabricated to demonstrate the potential use of these SWCNT thin films in large-area, flexible, and transparent electronics. These results have been published on 28 June, 2018 in _Advanced Materials_ (doi: 10.1002/adma.201802057).

SWCNTs are continuously synthesized by a floating catalyst chemical vapor deposition technique, and then deposited on a moving membrane filter forming SWCNT thin films. The length of the SWCNT film is unlimited, because the as-deposited film is transferred onto a flexible poly(ethylene terephthalate) substrate with the aid of a roll-to-roll transfer system, and the membrane filter can be repeatedly used for the SWCNT film collection. More importantly, as there are no impurities and defects introduced in the production processes, the SWCNT films have an excellent optoelectrical performance including a low sheet resistance of 65 Ω/□ with a transmittance of 90% at a wavelength of 550 nm. Using these SWCNT thin films, all-CNT TFTs and ICs including 101-stage ring oscillators have been constructed that show excellent performance and uniformity.

“The present method enables us first to achieve continuous production including the growth, deposition, transfer and re-deposition of SWCNTs.” the paper’s co-first authors, WANG Bing-Wei and JIANG Song said. “The meter-scale high-quality SWCNT films and the devices fabricated from them will pave the way for future development of large-scale, flexible, and transparent electronics based on SWCNT thin films.”



Figure 1. Preparation of meter-scale SWCNT thin films. a) Schematic showing the apparatus designed for the synthesis, deposition, and transfer of SWCNT films. b) A photograph of the home-made apparatus (scale bar, 0.5 m). c) A SWCNT thin film transferred on a flexible PET substrate with a length of more than 2 m. d) A roll of uniform SWCNT thin film on the PET substrate (scale bar, 0.1 m). e) Finite-element simulation of the dependence of Vout on Vfree for an inlet gas velocity Vin = 0.068 m s-1. f) Simulation results showing a uniform velocity distribution in the gas stream in the filtration system at the equilibrium state. (Image by IMR)



Figure 2. Characterization of the as-prepared SWCNT thin films. a) Transmittance and b) sheet resistance mapping, demonstrating good uniformity of the films. c) A comparison of our SWCNT transparent conductive film with previous results. (Image by IMR)



Figure 3. All-CNT TFTs. a) Photograph of all-CNT TFT device fabricated on a flexible PEN substrate. b) Optical transmittance of the PEN substrate (black line) and the all-CNT device fabricated on the substrate (red line). Inset: optical microscopy image of a buried-gate all-CNT TFT (scale bar, 100 μm). c) Schematic cross-section of a buried-gate all-CNT TFT on a PEN substrate. (Image by IMR)



Figure 4. All-CNT logic gates and ring oscillators. a) Circuit diagram of a two-input XOR logic gate. b) Optical microscopy image of an XOR logic gate fabricated on a flexible PEN substrate (scale bar, 100 μm). c) Input–output characteristics of the XOR logic gate. d) Optical microscopy image of a 101-stage ring oscillator fabricated on a flexible PEN substrate (scale bar, 500 μm). e) Output characteristics of the ring oscillator at VDD = -4.4 V. (Image by IMR)



Chinese Researchers Develop Meter-scale Single-wall Carbon Nanotube Thin Films----Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 6-JUL-2018
*Chinese scientists achieve success in nitrogen metallization*
CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HEADQUARTERS




The team developed its own pulsed-laser heating system and ultra-fast optical detection technology. *CREDIT: *YAO Jie

A Chinese research team announced it has successfully metallized nitrogen at extreme conditions. This exciting result was published in _Nature Communications _on July 6.

The team, working at the Institute of Solid State Physics at the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (CASHIPS), developed its own pulsed-laser heating system and ultra-fast optical detection technology to conduct the experiment.

Nitrogen represents about 78 percent of air by volume. Normally, it maintains in a pretty stable molecular gas state without any color or odor. But nitrogen was expected to present quite different properties with exposure to extreme conditions.

For instance, it is believed to turn into a metal in the core of our Earth, and is considered to be one of the most energetic materials in existence.

For years, scientists have been struggling to synthesize a series of materials with extremely high energy based on nitrogen, especially polymeric and metallic nitrogen.

Moreover, it is especially relevant to explore metallic nitrogen at extremely high pressures and temperatures given the challenges of reliable achievement of another equally important material, metallic hydrogen, which is predicted to be a room-temperature superconductor.

In fact, many attempts were made via a variety of methods in previous studies, such as static pressure research with diamond anvil cell and dynamic pressure studies with a gas gun.

The previous results contributed some specific sights into the "hologram" of pressure-temperature-state corresponding information of nitrogen but limited.

"The key is to understand the whole pressure-temperature conditions concerning the transition from molecular nitrogen to metallic nitrogen," said Alexander Goncharov, a member of China's "Thousand Talent Program," who leads a study team. Goncharov also noted that a particular challenge in this kind of study is the mechanism of insulator-to-metal transition, and the existence and location of the critical point where the transition character changes.

JIANG Shuqing, the first author of the paper as well as a scientist working with CASHIPS, said the team scanned the hologram of the properties of nitrogen at a pretty wide range of extreme conditions from 0 to 170 GPa and up to about 8000 K, using the team's self-developed experimental system.

"This allowed us to determine the pressure-temperature region of metallic nitrogen. It's generally above 125 GPa and 2500 K," said JIANG. "The result provided us detailed information on insulator-to-metal transition in nitrogen."

JIANG said the team believes these observations create a better understanding of the interplay between molecular dissociation, melting, and metallization, thus revealing features that are also common in hydrogen.



Chinese scientists achieve success in nitrogen metallization | EurekAlert! Science News

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*China-made flow meter to replace foreign versions for oil, gas mining at lower cost*
By Liu Xuanzun Source:Global Times Published: 2018/7/10 23:03:40

China has successfully developed an underwater wet gas flow meter that is expected to replace imported ones in the development of deep sea oil and gas fields, its developer said.

Tianjin University's School of Electrical and Information Engineering said the underwater wet gas flow meter is the world's first to use ultrasonic technology.

China will no longer be dependent on foreign underwater flow meters after the domestically-made one is used in two years, Xu Ying, head of the flow meter's development team, told the Global Times.

The meter is crucial to developing deep sea oil gas fields. When extracting oil and gas, they are usually mixed together. The volume of the mixed wet gas must be measured in real time by a flow meter to avoid overflowing caused by low pressure, and to prolong the fields' service life, Xu said.

It is important for China to master related technologies, as about half of the world's oil and gas resources will come from the ocean in the future, Science and Technology Daily reported Tuesday.

Compared to foreign products, which are based on gamma ray technology, the new domestic product is based on ultrasonic technology, which will considerably reduce costs, Xu said. 

She added that foreign products usually cost Chinese buyers a few million dollars per unit to import, but the domestic one is expected to only cost about $500,000.

Although the technology behind the flow meter is different, it's functionally the same and the quality is comparable to imported ones, Xu said.


----------



## JSCh

*Research gets new impetus*
By XU WEI | China Daily | Updated: 2018-07-11 07:33














The State Council's decision to give greater autonomy to researchers has been widely hailed as the country seeks breakthroughs in key technologies.

According to a decision at a State Council executive meeting chaired by Premier Li Keqiang last Wednesday, researchers will be given greater control over their personnel, finance and other resources to boost enthusiasm and inject greater vitality into innovation.

Cheng Shujun, a professor with the School of Medicine at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, said the new measures rolled out by the State Council, China's Cabinet are an indicator of greater trust and respect shown to researchers.

"We have to respect the pursuit of researchers and trust their integrity. Right now too much oversight is being placed on researchers," he said.

It was decided at the meeting that government management of scientific research will be reformed so that no repeated filing of materials is required in the national scientific and technological management information system.

Examinations, evaluations and audits of various kinds will be reduced, and researchers will be allowed to purchase professional services, such as accounting, to free them from tedious chores.

The measures came as Chinese leaders made repeated calls for the country to achieve innovative breakthroughs.

"Right now we should streamline administration more thoroughly to further spur the enthusiasm of researchers and free them from the burdensome approvals and tedious chores," the premier said at the meeting.

More trust and respect will be given to researchers and other experts as well with greater autonomy to use their funds. Researchers will be allowed to change their technical routes on the condition that their research directions and targets remain unchanged, the meeting has decided.

More salary incentives will be offered to researchers who take part in tasks leading to breakthroughs in key technologies, and the annual salary mechanism will be introduced for research team leaders and high-calibre talents.

An evaluation mechanism that prioritizes results and performances will be established. Failure in programs due to uncertain factors in science will be treated differently from those that result from academic misconduct. Fraud and counterfeiting behaviors will be stringently punished.

The percentage of indirect funds for basic research will be improved so that the budget for scientific research programs will be simplified.

Li said at the meeting that the development of science and technology, especially high-end technologies, ultimately depends on brainpower, rather than the purchase of equipment.

"We need to create a more enabling environment for scientists and provide them broader space for exploration," he said.

Li also required officials from relevant central government departments to come up with concrete measures to give researchers greater autonomy.

"The more specific the better," he said.

"It is a barrier as well as a bonanza. We must unlock the various restraints for researchers as early as possible and enable them to devote themselves to their areas of research whole-heartedly," the premier said.

Li Meng, vice-minister of science, told a press briefing on Friday that authorities will introduce a peer review evaluation mechanism for researchers who are devoted to basic research.

Evaluations will also prioritize the quality of papers that researchers publish, rather than the number of papers, as well as their representative works and its contributions and influence.

"The premise of all the measures we rolled out is to give full respect to researchers as well as scientific principles," he said.

Wang Dongjie, a researcher with the Agricultural Information Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said it is important to give researchers enough patience and freedom to explore their research directions.

"Currently the research mechanism requires new outcomes each year from researchers.

"It makes it difficult for them to focus on a single direction of research, a prerequisite for achieving innovative results," he said.

He noted that administrative orders weigh too much in scientific research, and it is often the case that researchers are placed under the leadership of officials without much know-how of research areas.

Cheng, the professor, said implementation of the measures decided at the executive meeting is also crucial.

"Innovation can only be fostered by lessening restraints in formalities, improving services for them and freeing their minds," he said.


----------



## JSCh

*Snake arm robot debuts at CIROS2018*
By Wu Yong | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2018-07-11 15:06















A robot with snake-shaped arms developed by Siasun Robot and Automation Co Ltd. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

At the CIROS2018 robot exhibition, Siasun Robot and Automation Co Ltd premiered to the world its newly developed robot with snake-shaped arms, unveiling its uniqueness on the spot.

The company uses the concept of bionics to get inspiration from the dexterity of the snake. The specificity of the shape and its working mode are both completely different from traditional discrete articulated robots. This kind of robot adopts an end-following control method, which greatly improves the flexibility and adaptability of the robot and makes it more suitable for working in extremely harsh conditions.

With 12 joints and 24+1 degrees of freedom, the product can smoothly and flexibly avoid obstacles, and can also be operated by remote control. The product is mainly used in narrow spaces and harsh environments. The robot can use different tools to complete many complex tasks. These include drilling in the narrow environment of the wing rib compartment of aircraft, maintenance of reactor cooling pipelines in nuclear power plants, investigation of military targets over a field of view, and rescuing trapped people at earthquake sites.


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists Produce Ultrahigh-charge Relativistic Electron Beams in Laser-solid Interaction*
Jul 10, 2018

Laser-plasma based accelerators have undergone rapid development in the last three decades. Owing to the characteristics of plasma, the accelerating gradient of laser-plasma accelerators is thousands of times higher than that of the traditional radio frequency accelerators. This shrinks the kilometer scale large facilities to tabletop, stimulating the study of laser-plasma accelerators worldwide due to the compactness and low cost.

However, currently, the laser-plasma accelerators meet a serious bottleneck. It cannot produce electron beams with high charge and small divergence angle simultaneously.

In laser-gases interaction, the divergence angle can be very small while the beam charge is limited to only tens of picocoulombs. In laser-soild interaction, the beam charge could reach a few nanocoulombs, but with very large divergence angles, unfortunately.

Recently, MA Yong, ZHAO Jiarui, Li Yifei and Li Dazhang in Prof. CHEN Liming and Prof. ZHANG jie's group from Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, have produced relativistic electron beams with extremely high beam charge and small divergence angle.

In their experiment, the super-intense (200 TW) ultra-short (1 ps) Titan laser at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was irradiated at copper target, producing relativistic electron beams with an extremely high charge of 100 nanocoulombs level and divergence angle smaller than 3 degrees.

The researchers found out that the generation of such electron beams can be well controlled by adjusting the laser contrast and the laser energy. They also revealed a new electron acceleration mechanism in laser-solid interaction by performing computational numerical simulations.

Owing to the sub-picoseconds pulse duration, the peak current of such electron beams reaches over 100 kA. Moreover, the brightness of the beam can be as high as 1016 A/m2, which is comparable to the highest of traditional accelerators around the world.

If deposit all the energy into high-Z materials, for example, Au, the resulting energy density can be as high as 1012 J/m3. Therefore, this kind of electron beam source could be an ideal tool to drive warm and even hot dense matters.

It might also find wide applications in seeding high-flux γ-ray source, single-shot electron radiography and even serving as an ignitor in fast ignition for inertial confinement fusion.

This study entitled "Ultrahigh-charge electron beams from laser-irradiated solid surface" was published in _PNAS_.

The study was supported by the National Science Foundation, the Ministry of Science and Technology of China and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.






Fig. 1 Experimental setup. (Image by Institute of Physics) 




​Fig.2 Angular distribution of the electron beams. (Image by Institute of Physics)​





Fig. 3 Depends of electron beam charge and divergence angle on laser contrast. (Image by Institute of Physics) 






Fig. 4 Numerical simulations. (Image by Institute of Physics) 



​Scientists Produce Ultrahigh-charge Relativistic Electron Beams in Laser-solid Interaction---Chinese Academy of Sciences


----------



## JSCh

*Wireless Sensors Are To Be Self-Powered And Self-Identified Instantaneously When Triggered Mechanically *
by Jikui Luo

Sensors are a type of transducer that can convert, measure, and change information into electrical signals for analysis, monitoring, etc, and can be used to measure the temperature, pressure, etc. of physical variables, such as pH value, gas chemical concentration, glucose concentration, etc., of biochemical variables.

Sensors, particularly wireless sensor networks, are the foundation of the modern Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence, robotics, smart manufacturing, smart buildings, etc, but most of them require electricity to operate and additional electronics for wireless transmission of sensing information and have no identity by themselves. Batteries are commonly used to power wireless sensors, but it requires frequency replacement, which is not a cost-effective or viable/practical method for remote areas or sensors in harsh environments.

Nanogenerator technologies have been explored to power wireless sensors locally by utilizing piezoelectric, pyroelectric, electromagnetic, and triboelectric effects that harvest energy from the ambient environment. However, the existing nanogenerators typically require rectification diodes and energy storage units to store the electricity and to regulate the voltage to power the wireless sensor chip. As a result, nanogenerators have very low power conversion/utilization efficiency. On the other hand, current wireless communication chips require high power to operate, in the order of several milli-watts though in a short period of time, which the nanogenerators are normally unable to meet.

To fulfill the power demand for the wireless sensor chip(s), the nanogenerator embedded in the system needs to work for a relatively long period of time before the wireless transmission process takes place, which results in severe information loss or only a tiny proportion of sensing information that can be sent out for analysis. This becomes even more severe when the nanogenerator performs sensing tasks simultaneously. Although the sensor ID issue can be solved by integrating radio frequency ID (RFID) on the chip or using a special device, such as surface acoustic wave sensor which has ID capability, the ID information can only be obtained through passive triggering.

A new type of instantaneous, self-powered, self-identified wireless sensors have been developed jointly by a group of scientists from China and Britain, by utilizing triboelectric effect/device and resonant circuit integration. The sensor device produces power, wireless sensing, and identity information when it is pressed (triggered) by an external force and then transmits the signal wirelessly. The sensor device has instantaneous energy harvesting, sensing, identity generation and wireless signal transmission four functions simultaneously. The sensor is a standalone device with no need for energy supply, yet it responds to every trigger without losing any sensing information and does not need a rectification circuit, energy storage units, microprocessor, wireless communication, etc; it is totally different from the existing self-powered sensors, or passive RFIDs and surface acoustic wave sensors. It is a true self-powered wireless sensor with identity.

As TENGs are sensitive to force (pressure, stress), vibration, impact, displacement, shape change, humidity, temperature, chemicals of environment, etc, they can be made to be the sensors for the corresponding variable measurements, therefore, potential applications of these type of novel sensors are very broad, and can be used in IoT, intelligent manufacturing, smart infrastructures, agriculture and transportation, automation, security, anti-intruders, head-counting, and games, to name a few, yet the devices are simple in structure and fabrication and can be manufactured by many types of insulator materials at very low cost.



Figure 1. Schematic drawing and an equivalent circuit of the instantaneously self-powered wireless sensors with identity; it consists of a TENG, a micromechanical switch, a resonant circuit and a wireless transmission and reception device.

The device consists of a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) which is also a sensor, a capacitor-inductor oscillating circuit in parallel with the TENG and a wireless transmitter. A micromechanical switch is integrated with the TENG which has a synchronized movement with the TENG, but with a reduced period for the TENG to release accumulated charges to boost the voltage and power outputs of the TENG up to 1300V and 800mW, and reduce the output impedance by several orders of magnitudes. These allow output effectively coupled to the oscillating circuit to generate a very strong damping resonant signal (up to VPP=600V) which contains sensing and device identity (resonant frequency) information. The oscillating signal is then coupled to the transmitter (red laser in this work, and could be changed to an RF transmitter) for long distance wireless communication. The scientists have demonstrated the capability of the self-powered sensor for wireless humidity and force (pressure) sensing with the identity attached for up to 5 meters, and the wireless transmission distance can be improved greatly by utilizing better optical alignment, lens, and blue lasers.

These findings are described in the article entitled Triboelectric effect based instantaneous self-powered wireless sensing with self-determined identity, recently published in the journal _Nano Energy. _This work was conducted by Jinkai Chen (Hangzhou Dianzi University, Zhejiang University), Weipeng Xuan (Hangzhou Dianzi University), Pengfei Zhao (University of Bolton), Umar Farooq, Peng Ding, Hao Jin, Xiaozhi Wang, and Shurong Dong (Zhejiang University), Wuliang Yin (University of Manchester), Yongqing Fu (Northumbria University), and Jikui Luo (Hangzhou Dianzi University, University of Bolton).



Wireless Sensors Are To Be Self-Powered And Self-Identified Instantaneously When Triggered Mechanically | Science Trends


----------



## JSCh

Researchers found evidence of early human ancestors in a cliff-hanger expedition at Shangchen, in the Loess Plateau of China. ZHAOYU ZHU
*Our ancestors may have left Africa hundreds of thousands of years earlier than thought*
By Ann Gibbons
Jul. 11, 2018 , 1:00 PM

More than 2 million years ago, our ancestors were already world travelers, trekking all the way from Africa to Asia, according to stone tools found on a cliff face in north-central China. The age of the tools suggests that the forebears of modern humans left Africa at least 250,000 years earlier than thought; it also supports a minority view that a key human ancestor, _Homo erectus_, may have originated in Asia, not in Africa.

Until now, the oldest evidence of human ancestors outside of Africa was in Dmanisi, Georgia. Here, fossils of short people thought to be early _H. erectus_ date back to about 1.85 million years—just after the species appears in Africa. The oldest evidence of early human activity in China and Indonesia has been fossils and stone tools that date to 1.5 million to 1.7 million years ago, including a skullcap of _H. erectus_ from a site just 4 kilometers south of the newly dated tools. This trail of stones and bones has suggested that after the earliest members of our own genus _Homo_ appeared about 2.8 million years ago in Ethiopia, they didn’t leave until 2 million years ago or so—and made it to eastern Asia even later.

Now, evidence from the site of Shangchen, in the Loess Plateau approximately 1200 kilometers southwest of Beijing, is shaking up that view. On the steep cliff faces of a gully at Shangchen, a Chinese team unearthed 96 stone points, flakes, and cores that were probably used to carve up animal bones or to smash them open for marrow. Antelope, deer, and pig bones were found with the tools.

The same team, led by geologist Zhaoyu Zhu of the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, spent years nailing down dates for the layers of sediments in which the tools were embedded. The sediments at Shangchen lack volcanic minerals, which provide the gold standard for radiometric dating methods and are plentiful in Africa. Instead, the researchers used paleomagnetic dating—which detects known reversals in Earth’s magnetic field that are recorded in ancient rock—and found that the stone tools range in age from 1.6 million to 2.1 million years ago. This indicates hominins—the family that includes humans and our ancestors—got out of Africa at least a quarter of a million years earlier than thought, and occupied Shangchen on and off for more than 850,000 years, the team reports today in _Nature_.



This quartzite flake tool dates back to more than 2 million years in China. ZHAOYU ZHU

“The dates are convincing,” says geochronologist Andrew Roberts of the Australian National University in Canberra, who was not part of the team. Geoarchaeologist Reid Ferring of the University of North Texas in Denton, who dated the Dmanisi site, says the paper makes a “good case for occupations older than Dmanisi.”

Another key finding is that the new dates show that “already before 2 million years, hominins were able to cope with a range of environmental conditions,” says archaeologist Wil Roebroeks of Leiden University in the Netherlands, who is not a member of the team. During the long span of occupations at Shangchen, which is about the same latitude as Kabul, the climate fluctuated from warm and wet to cold and dry. “They must have been freezing their buns off,” adds paleoanthropologist Rick Potts of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

The early dates suggest hominins were already remarkably adaptable by 2.1 million years ago—even though they had not yet evolved the even bigger brains, long legs, or more advanced tools like hand axes seen in later humans. Although the identity of these early globetrotters is unknown, the new dates raise the possibility that _H. erectus_ wasn’t the first hominin to leave Africa. Chinese and Georgian scholars have long argued that a more primitive species of hominin got out of Africa and gave rise to _H. erectus_ in Asia. And now, these early tools show hominins were in China far before _H. erectus_ appeared in Africa—and early enough for a new species to evolve. In fact, “_H. erectus_ may have evolved in Eurasia and migrated to Africa,” Ferring says.


Our ancestors may have left Africa hundreds of thousands of years earlier than thought | Science | AAAS

Zhaoyu Zhu, Robin Dennell, Weiwen Huang, Yi Wu, Shifan Qiu, Shixia Yang, Zhiguo Rao, Yamei Hou, Jiubing Xie, Jiangwei Han, Tingping Ouyang. *Hominin occupation of the Chinese Loess Plateau since about 2.1 million years ago*. _Nature _(2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0299-4​


----------



## JSCh

*Mice Study Implicates Fat as Obesity Cause*
Jul 13, 2018

What we eat plays a big role in our ability to regulate our body weight. Over time, however, different ideas have emerged about the most important dietary factors that cause us to put on weight.

During the 1980s and 1990s, it was widely accepted that the most important factor in weight gain is the fat content of our diets. However, in the new millennium it was suggested that this focus on fat was misplaced, and that, in fact, the main factor driving obesity was our carbohydrate intake – notably, our intake of refined carbohydrates like sugars.

Several hugely popular books were published in this period suggesting that eating fat might actually protect us from obesity.

Most recently, however, attention has turned to protein, with the hypothesis that people eat food mostly to obtain protein rather than energy.

According to this idea, when the protein content of our diet falls, we eat more food to meet our target protein intake. That makes us consume too many calories and we get fat. Since our food consists of fat, protein and carbohydrates – and at different times all three have been implicated in making us obese – it is difficult to know what to eat to stay slim.

Part of the problem is that it is very difficult to do human studies that control food intake long enough to determine what dietary factors cause weight gain. Studies on animals similar to us, however, can suggest possible answers.

Now scientists at the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and the University of Aberdeen in Scotland have performed the largest study of its kind to resolve what components of the diet cause mice to put on body fat. The study was published today in the journal_CELL Metabolism_.

The study included 30 different diets that varied in their fat, carbohydrate (sugar) and protein contents. Mice of five different strains were fed these diets for 3 months, which is equivalent to 9 years in humans.

In total, over 100,000 measurements were made of the mice’s body weight changes and their body fat was measured using a micro MRI machine. The result of this enormous study was unequivocal – the only thing that made the mice get fat was eating more fat in their diets. Carbohydrates, including up to 30% of calories coming from sugar, had no effect.

Combining sugar with fat had no more impact than fat alone. There was no evidence that low protein (down to 5% of the total calories) stimulated greater intake, suggesting there is no protein target. The researchers believe that dietary fat caused weight gain because fat in the diet uniquely stimulated the reward centers in the brain, thus causing greater intake of calories.

Professor John Speakman, who led the study, said "A clear limitation of this study is that it is based on mice rather than humans. However, mice have lots of similarities to humans in their physiology and metabolism, and we are never going to do studies where the diets of humans are controlled in the same way for such long periods. So the evidence it provides is a good clue to what the effects of different diets are likely to be in humans."


Mice Study Implicates Fat as Obesity Cause---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Sumei Hu, Lu Wang, Dengbao Yang, Li Li, Jacques Togo, Yingga Wu, Quansheng Liu, Baoguo Li, Min Li, Guanlin Wang, Xueying Zhang, Chaoqun Niu, Jianbo Li, Yanchao Xu, Elspeth Couper, Andrew Whittington-Davies, Mohsen Mazidi, Lijuan Luo, Shengnan Wang, Alex Douglas, John R. Speakman. *Dietary Fat, but Not Protein or Carbohydrate, Regulates Energy Intake and Causes Adiposity in Mice*. _Cell Metabolism_ (2018). DOI: 10.1016/j.cmet.2018.06.010​




Credit: Cell Press​


----------



## JSCh

*15 Sri Lankan students awarded scholarships to study oceanology, marine sciences in China*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-07-12 16:41:38|Editor: huaxia




COLOMBO, July 12 (Xinhua) -- Fifteen Sri Lankan university students have been awarded scholarships by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) to pursue higher studies on climatology and oceanography in a bid to strengthen the education ties between China and Sri Lanka.

The scholarships were handed over on Wednesday under the "Belt and Road" Master Fellowship Program. The program was operated by the China-Sri Lanka Joint Center for Education and Research (CSL-CER), which is based on the South China Sea Institute of Oceanology of the CAS.

Out of the 15 students, three students have been awarded scholarships to pursue their PhD degree while the remaining 12 will pursue their master's degree.

This is the third year that the CAS has awarded these scholarships to Sri Lankan university students.

The students this year are selected from the University of Ruhuna, the University of Peradeniya, the University of Sabaragamuwa, the University of Jaffna and the University of Wayamba.

Speaking at the handing over ceremony, Professor. Gamini Senanayake, vice chancellor of the University of Ruhuna, said it was vital that Sri Lankan students pursue their higher studies in oceanography, as Sri Lanka being an island country deepens mostly on its sea.

However, he said Sri Lanka lacked the human resources to explore the opportunities of the ocean.

As Sri Lanka also faced natural hazards such as heavy rains every year followed by strong winds, it was vital that Sri Lanka studied the ocean surrounding it, Senanayake said.

"Being a very friendly nation, China has always helped us in various fields and especially the Chinese Academy of Sciences has a very big programme ongoing with Sri Lanka. We thank them for that as it benefits our students," Senanayake said.

Professor Mohan de Silva, Chairman of the University Grants Commission, said it was important for Sri Lankan students to pursue a higher education in marine sciences and oceanography, as it would benefit the island country.

"We are glad that the University of Ruhuna along with the CAS is taking efforts to develop this expertise in this country," de Silva said.

Rivindu Vithana, a PhD student awarded the scholarship, said it was a great honour for her to be accepted to study in a prestigious Chinese university. She assured that she would use this opportunity diligently and with care to enhance her knowledge.


----------



## JSCh

*Single-celled architects inspire new nanotechnology*
July 16, 2018

Diatoms are tiny, unicellular creatures, inhabiting oceans, lakes, rivers and soils. Through their respiration, they produce close to a quarter of the oxygen on Earth, nearly as much as the world’s tropical forests. In addition to their ecological success across the planet, they have a number of remarkable properties. Diatoms live in glasslike homes of their own design, visible under magnification in an astonishing and aesthetically beautiful range of forms.

Researchers have found inspiration in these microscopic, jewel-like products of nature since their discovery in the late 18th century. In a new study, Arizona State University scientists led by Professor Hao Yan, in collaboration with researchers from the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Shanghai Jiaotong University led by Professor Chunhai Fan, have designed a range of diatom-like nanostructures.



A selection of nanostructures built using DNA origami, alongside naturally occurring diatoms — single-celled organisms that come in many beautiful and elaborate forms. They are ubiquitous inhabitants of the world's lakes, rivers and oceans. A scale shows the sizes of the nanostructures and diatoms. Graphic by Shireen Dooling

To achieve this, they borrow techniques used by naturally occurring diatoms to deposit layers of silica — the primary constituent in glass — in order to grow their intricate shells. Using a technique known as DNA origami, the group designed nanoscale platforms of various shapes to which particles of silica, drawn by electrical charge, could stick.

The new research demonstrates that silica deposition can be effectively applied to synthetic, DNA-based architectures, improving their elasticity and durability. The work could ultimately have far-reaching applications in new optical systems, semiconductor nanolithography, nano-electronics, nano-robotics and medical applications, including drug delivery.

Yan is the Milton D. Glick Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and directs the Biodesign Center for Molecular Design and Biomimetics. The group’s findings are reported in the advanced online of the journal Nature.

Researchers like Yan and Fan create sophisticated nanoarchitectures in two and three dimensions, using DNA as a building material. The method, known as DNA origami, relies on the base-pairing properties of DNA’s four nucleotides, whose names are abbreviated A,T, C and G.

The ladder-like structure of the DNA double helix is formed when complementary strands of nucleotides bond with each other — the C nucleotides always pairing with Gs and the As always pairing with Ts. This predictable behavior can be exploited in order to produce a virtually limitless variety of engineered shapes, which can be designed in advance. The nanostructures then self-assemble in a test tube.



Base-pairing properties of DNA were used to construct tiny structures that accumulated a silica outer skeleton similar to shell-building organisms known as diatoms. Image courtesy of the Yan Lab

In the new study, researchers wanted to see if architectures designed with DNA, each measuring just billionths of a meter in diameter, could be used as structural frameworks on which diatom-like exoskeletons composed of silica could grow in a precise and controllable manner. Their successful results show the power of this hybrid marriage of nature and nanoengineering, which the authors call DNA Origami Silicification (DOS).

“Here, we demonstrated that the right chemistry can be developed to produce DNA-silica hybrid materials that faithfully replicate the complex geometric information of a wide range of different DNA origami scaffolds. Our findings established a general method for creating biomimetic silica nanostructures,” Yan said.

Among the geometric DNA frameworks designed and constructed in the experiments were 2D crosses, squares, triangles and DOS-diatom honeycomb shapes as well as 3D cubes, tetrahedrons, hemispheres, toroid and ellipsoid forms, occurring as single units or lattices.

Once the DNA frameworks were complete, clusters of silica particles carrying a positive charge were drawn electrostatically to the surfaces of the electrically negative DNA shapes, accreting over a period of several days, like fine paint applied to an eggshell. A series of transmission- and scanning-electron micrographs were made of the resulting DOS forms, revealing accurate and efficient diatom-like silicification.

The method proved effective for silicification of framelike, curved and porous nanostructures ranging in size from 10-1000 nanometers (the largest structures are roughly the size of bacteria). Precise control over silica shell thickness is achieved simply by regulating the duration of growth.

The hybrid DOS-diatom nanostructures were initially characterized using a pair of powerful tools capable of unveiling their tiny forms, Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) and Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). The resulting images reveal much clearer outlines for the nanostructures after the deposition of silica.

The method of nanofabrication is so precise, researchers were able to produce triangles, squares and hexagons with uniform pores measuring less than 10 nm in diameter — by far the smallest achieved to date, using DNA origami lithography. Further, the technique outlined in the new study equips researchers with more accurate control over the construction of 3D nanostructures in arbitrary forms that are often challenging to produce through existing methods.

One property of natural diatoms of great interests to nanoengineers like Yan and Fan is the specific strength of their silica shells. Specific strength refers to a material’s resistance to breakage relative to its density. Scientists have found that the silica architectures of diatoms are not only inspiringly elegant but exceptionally tough. Indeed, the silica exoskeletons enveloping diatoms have the highest specific strength of any biologically produced material, including bone, antlers and teeth.

In the current study, researchers used AFM to measure the resistance to breakage of their silica-augmented DNA nanostructures. Like their natural counterparts, these forms showed far greater strength and resilience, displaying a 10-fold increase in the forces they could withstand, compared with the unsilicated designs, while nevertheless retaining considerable flexibility.

The study also shows that the enhanced rigidity of DOS nanostructures increases with their growth time. As the authors note, these results are in agreement with the characteristic mechanical properties of biominerals produced by nature, coupling impressive durability with flexibility.

A final experiment involved the design of a new 3D tetrahedral nanostructure using gold nanorods as supportive struts for a DOS fabricated device. This novel structure was able to faithfully retain its shape compared with a similar structure lacking silication that deformed and collapsed.

The research opens a pathway for nature-inspired innovations in nanotechnology in which DNA architectures act as templates that may be coated with silica or perhaps other inorganic materials, including calcium phosphate, calcium carbonate, ferric oxide or other metal oxides, yielding unique properties. 

“We are interested in developing methods to create higher-order hybrid nanostructures. For example, multi-layered/multi-component hybrid materials may be achieved by a stepwise deposition of different materials to further expand the biomimetic diversity,” Fan said.

Such capabilities will open up new opportunities to engineer highly programmable solid-state nanopores with hierarchical features, new porous materials with designed structural periodicity, cavity and functionality, plasmonic and meta-materials. The bio-inspired and biomimetic approach demonstrated in this paper represents a general framework for use with inorganic device nanofabrication that has arbitrary 3D shapes and functions and offers diverse potential applications in fields such as nano-electronics, nano-photonics, and nano-robotics.

_This project was supported by National Science Foundation of China (21390414, 21329501, 21603262 and 21675167), National Key R&D Program of China (2016YFA0201200, 2016YFA0400900), Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences, CAS (QYZDJ-SSW-SLH031). L.W., C.F. and H.Y. thank National Key R&D Program of China (2016YFA0400900) and UCB Pharma, H.Y, F.Z and Y. L. thank funding from US National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research, Army Research Office, National Institutes of Health, and Department of Energy for financial supports.


_
Single-celled architects inspire new nanotechnology | ASU Now: Access, Excellence, Impact

Xiaoguo Liu, Fei Zhang, Xinxin Jing, Muchen Pan, Pi Liu, Wei Li, Bowen Zhu, Jiang Li, Hong Chen, Lihua Wang, Jianping Lin, Yan Liu, Dongyuan Zhao, Hao Yan, Chunhai Fan. *Complex silica composite nanomaterials templated with DNA origami*. _Nature _(2018); DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0332-7​


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists Develop New Generation of Deep-ultraviolet Nonlinear Optical Materials*
Jul 17, 2018

KBe2BO3F2 (KBBF) has been the only practically usable deep ultraviolet (DUV) nonlinear optical (NLO) crystal so far that can generate DUV coherent light by the direct second harmonic generation. However, the commercial production and applications are hindered by its layering habit.

Recently, Prof. YE Ning’s group at Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter of Chinese Academy of Sciences designed and synthesized two new excellent DUV NLO crystals NH4Be2BO3F2(ABBF) and γ-Be2BO3F (γ-BBF) based on the structure of KBBF. The results were published in _Angew. Chem. Int. Ed._ 

These two crystals were found to perfectly inherit the favorable structure merits of KBBF.

For ABBF, the N-H*···*F hydrogen bonds were found to effectively overcome the layering habit. As to γ-BBF, the in-site excision of A-site atoms (NH4+ or K+) was found to make the adjacent layers bridged directly by Be-F ionic bond, showing strong interlayer bonding.

Besides, they revealed that the UV cut-off edges, birefringences and second-harmonic generation effects of ABBF and γ-BBF are very close to or even better than KBBF, making their shortest type I phase-matching (PM) second-harmonic wavelength (λPM) down to 173.9 nm and 146 nm, respectively.

Their excellent DUV laser output potential demonstrated a breakthrough in the field of deep ultraviolet nonlinear optical crystal.


Scientists Develop New Generation of Deep-ultraviolet Nonlinear Optical Materials---Chinese Academy of Sciences


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *Snake arm robot debuts at CIROS2018*
> By Wu Yong | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2018-07-11 15:06
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A robot with snake-shaped arms developed by Siasun Robot and Automation Co Ltd. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]
> 
> At the CIROS2018 robot exhibition, Siasun Robot and Automation Co Ltd premiered to the world its newly developed robot with snake-shaped arms, unveiling its uniqueness on the spot.
> 
> The company uses the concept of bionics to get inspiration from the dexterity of the snake. The specificity of the shape and its working mode are both completely different from traditional discrete articulated robots. This kind of robot adopts an end-following control method, which greatly improves the flexibility and adaptability of the robot and makes it more suitable for working in extremely harsh conditions.
> 
> With 12 joints and 24+1 degrees of freedom, the product can smoothly and flexibly avoid obstacles, and can also be operated by remote control. The product is mainly used in narrow spaces and harsh environments. The robot can use different tools to complete many complex tasks. These include drilling in the narrow environment of the wing rib compartment of aircraft, maintenance of reactor cooling pipelines in nuclear power plants, investigation of military targets over a field of view, and rescuing trapped people at earthquake sites.


----------



## JSCh

*Paralyzed mice with spinal cord injury made to walk again*
*Small-molecule drug reactivates dormant nerve pathways; could complement regenerative strategies*
Date: July 19, 2018
Source: Boston Children's Hospital




A cross section of a mouse spinal cord, stained two different ways, showing increased expression of KCC2 in inhibitory neurons. This increased expression correlated with improved motor function, including ankle movement and stepping.
_Credit: Zhigang He Lab, Boston Children's Hospital_

Most people with spinal cord injury are paralyzed from the injury site down, even when the cord isn't completely severed. Why don't the spared portions of the spinal cord keep working? Researchers at Boston Children's Hospital now provide insight into why these nerve pathways remain quiet. They also show that a small-molecule compound, given systemically, can revive these circuits in paralyzed mice, restoring their ability to walk.

The study, led by Zhigang He, PhD, in Boston Children's F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center, was published online July 19 by the journal _Cell_.

"For this fairly severe type of spinal cord injury, this is most significant functional recovery we know of," says He. "We saw 80 percent of mice treated with this compound recover their stepping ability."

*Waking up dormant spinal circuits*

Many animal studies looking to repair spinal cord damage have focused on getting nerve fibers, or axons, to regenerate, or to getting new axons to sprout from healthy ones. While impressive axon regeneration and sprouting have been achieved, by He's lab and others, their impacts on the animals' motor function after a severe injury are less clear. Some studies have tried using neuromodulators such as serotonergic drugs to simulate the spinal circuits, but have gotten only transient, uncontrolled limb movement.

He and colleagues took another approach, inspired by the success of epidural electrical stimulation-based strategies, the only treatment known to be effective in patients with spinal cord injury. This treatment applies a current to the lower portion of the spinal cord; combined with rehabilitation training, it has enabled some patients to regain movement.

"Epidural stimulation seems to affect the excitability of neurons," says He. "However, in these studies, when you turn off the stimulation, the effect is gone. We tried to come up with a pharmacologic approach to mimic the stimulation and better understand how it works."

He, first author Bo Chen and colleagues selected a handful of compounds that are already known to alter the excitability of neurons, and are able to cross the blood-brain barrier. They gave each compound to paralyzed mice in groups of 10 via intraperitoneal injection. All mice had severe spinal cord injury, but with some nerves intact. Each group (plus a control group given placebo) was treated for eight to ten weeks.

*Inhibiting inhibition by re-activating KCC2*

One compound, called CLP290, had the most potent effect, enabling paralyzed mice to regain stepping ability after four to five weeks of treatment. Electromyography recordings showed that the two relevant groups of hindlimb muscles were active. The animals' walking scores remained higher than the controls' up to two weeks after stopping treatment. Side effects were minimal.

CLP290 is known to activate a protein called KCC2, found in cell membranes, that transports chloride out of neurons. The new research shows that inhibitory neurons in the injured spinal cord are crucial to recovery of motor function. After spinal cord injury, these neurons produce dramatically less KCC2. As a result, He and colleagues found, they can't properly respond to signals from the brain. Unable to process inhibitory signals, they respond only to excitatory signals that tell them to keep firing. And since these neurons' signals are inhibitory, the result is too much inhibitory signaling in the overall spinal circuit. In effect, the brain's commands telling the limbs to move aren't relayed.

By restoring KCC2, with either CLP290 or genetic techniques, the inhibitory neurons can again receive inhibitory signals from the brain, so they fire less. This shifts the overall circuit back toward excitation, the researchers found, making it more responsive to input from the brain. This had the effect of reanimating spinal circuits disabled by the injury.

"Restoring inhibition will allow the whole system to be excited more easily," He explains.

"Too much excitation not good, and too much inhibition is not good either. You really need to get a balance. This hasn't been demonstrated in a rigorous way in spinal cord injury before."

*Combination treatment?*

He and colleagues are now investigating other compounds that act as KCC2 agonists. They believe such drugs, or perhaps gene therapy to restore KCC2, could be combined with epidural stimulation to maximize a patient's function after spinal cord injury.

"We are very excited by this direction," says He. "We want to test this kind of treatment in a more clinically relevant model of spinal cord injury and better understand how KCC2 agonists work."

Bo Chen, Yi Li (Boston Children's Hospital) and Bin Yu (Nantong University, China) were co-first authors on the paper. Xiosong Gu (Nantong University) and Zhigang He are co-senior authors. Coauthors were Zicong Zhang, Benedikt Brommer, Philip Raymond Williams, Yuanyuan Liu, Shane Vincent Hegarty, Junjie Zhu and Yiming Zhang (Boston Children's Hospital); Songlin Zhou (Nantong University); Hong Guo and Yi Lu (Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston).

The study was supported by the National Major Project of Research and Development of China (2017YFA0104701), the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NS096294), the Craig Neilsen Foundation, the Paralyzed Veterans of America Research Foundation and the Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Medical Research Foundation.

*Journal Reference*: 
Bo Chen, Yi Li, Bin Yu, Zicong Zhang, Benedikt Brommer, Philip Raymond Williams, Yuanyuan Liu, Shane Vincent Hegarty, Songlin Zhou, Junjie Zhu, Hong Guo, Yi Lu, Yiming Zhang, Xiaosong Gu, Zhigang He. *Reactivation of Dormant Relay Pathways in Injured Spinal Cord by KCC2 Manipulations*. _Cell_, 2018; DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2018.06.005​

Paralyzed mice with spinal cord injury made to walk again: Small-molecule drug reactivates dormant nerve pathways; could complement regenerative strategies -- ScienceDaily

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Polymers can produce micrometre-sized spheres with various internal textures. Credit: D. Liu _et al._/_Angew. Chem. Int. Edn_

*CHEMISTRY *| 18 JULY 2018
*An interior-design guide for microscopic spaces*
Detailed polymer structures generated in water droplets can be turned into carbon spheres.

Chemists have created microscopic carbon spheres with complex interiors — structures that could have a variety of industrial applications.

Miniature carbon spheres hold promise for energy storage and as catalysts for chemical production. But it is difficult to build micrometre-scale spheres that have the intricate internal architecture needed for synthetic processes.

To produce spheres with the desired properties, Hengquan Yang at Shanxi University in Taiyuan, China, and his colleagues mixed bits of polymer into an oily liquid and suspended small amounts of the mixture inside water droplets. The oil molecules, with the help of some extra ingredients, herded some of the polymer fragments into various patterns. Other fragments migrated to the inner boundary of the water drop, forming a sphere.

After the polymer hardened, it was heated to 600 °C. The resulting carbon shells had interiors that were knobbly, smooth, porous or honeycomb-like. Such spheres could be used to catalyse chemical reactions, store energy and purify water.

_Angew. Chem. Int. Edn_ (2018)


An interior-design guide for microscopic spaces : Research Highlights | Nature.com

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

July 20, 2018
*World’s fastest man-made spinning object could help study quantum mechanics*



Tongcang Li and Jonghoon Ahn have levitated a nanoparticle in vacuum and driven it to rotate at high speed, which they hope will help them study the properties of vacuum and quantum mechanics. (Purdue University photo/Vincent Walter)

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Researchers have created the fastest man-made rotor in the world, which they believe will help them study quantum mechanics.

At more than 60 billion revolutions per minute, this machine is more than 100,000 times faster than a high-speed dental drill. The findings were published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

“This study has many applications, including material science,” said Tongcang Li, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy, and electrical and computer engineering, at Purdue University. “We can study the extreme conditions different materials can survive in.”

Li’s team synthesized a tiny dumbbell from silica and levitated it in high vacuum using a laser. The laser can work in a straight line or in a circle – when it’s linear, the dumbbell vibrates, and when it’s circular, the dumbbell spins.

A spinning dumbbell functions as a rotor, and a vibrating dumbbell functions like an instrument for measuring tiny forces and torques, known as a torsion balance. These devices were used to discover things like the gravitational constant and density of Earth, but Li hopes that as they become more advanced, they’ll be able to study things like quantum mechanics and the properties of vacuum. Watch a video to see how it happens here.



A nanodumbbell levitated by an optical tweezer in vacuum can vibrate or spin, depending on the polarization of the incoming laser. (Purdue University photo/Tongcang Li) Download image​
“People say that there is nothing in vacuum, but in physics, we know it’s not really empty,” Li said. “There are a lot of virtual particles which may stay for a short time and then disappear. We want to figure out what’s really going on there, and that’s why we want to make the most sensitive torsion balance.”

By observing this tiny dumbbell spin faster than anything before it, Li’s team may also be able to learn things about vacuum friction and gravity. Understanding these mechanisms is an essential goal for the modern generation of physics, Li said.

Researchers from Purdue, Peking University, Tsinghua University, and the Collaborative Innovation Center of Quantum Matter in Beijing also contributed to this work. The first author of this work is Jonghoon Ahn, a graduate student in Li’s research group. Li’s research was funded by the National Science Foundation and Office of Naval Research.

A YouTube video is available at 




and other multimedia can be found in a Google Drive folder at https://goo.gl/euj7BE. The video was prepared by Erin Easterling, digital producer for the Purdue College of Engineering, 765-496-3388, easterling@purdue.edu.

Writer: Kayla Zacharias, 765-494-9318, kzachar@purdue.edu
Source: Tongcang Li, 765-496-0072, tcli@purdue.edu​


World’s fastest man-made spinning object could help study quantum mechanics - Purdue University

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Flexible micro-batteries developed for smart wearable electronics*
CGTN
2018-07-21 10:44 GMT+8




Chinese scientists have developed flexible micro-batteries with high energy density and steady performance under extraordinarily high temperatures, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) announced Thursday.

A research group at CAS Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics reported the development of a prototype of all-solid-state planar lithium ion micro-batteries (LIMBs).

The rapid boom in smart wearable and integrated electronic devices has stimulated the demand for advanced intelligent energy storage systems with high performance, micro size, mechanical flexibility, and high-temperature stability.

The micro-batteries have long-term stability without capacity loss after 3,300 charge cycles at room temperature and maintain high flexibility without capacity decay under repeated bending.

They also have remarkable high-temperature performance of up to 1,000 charge cycles at 100 degrees Celsius.

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are currently the most popular type of batteries, but have shortcomings due to their large size, bulky volume, and heavy weight. They also suffer from several inherent limitations such as liquid electrolyte leakage, flammability, and unsatisfactory safety and flexibility.

Due to their lightweight and high energy density, LIMBs are currently regarded as a highly competitive candidate for on-chip energy storage.

(Top image: Illustration of CAS's all-solid-state planar lithium ion micro-battery /Photo courtesy of the Chinese Academy of Sciences)
Source(s): Xinhua News Agency

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*China Focus: Chinese helmet aimed at boosting brain power*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-07-24 11:23:20|Editor: Liangyu




SHENZHEN, July 24 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists are developing a helmet to enhance brain function through monitoring and regulating brain waves and combining artificial intelligence technology.

Wei Pengfei, of the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said his team is developing a brain function enhancement system with the goal of improving the brain's ability to perform complex tasks and regulate abnormal emotions.

The helmet could be applied in the training of special personnel to speed up an increase in memory and skills and to alleviate anxiety caused by tension.

The technology is also expected to help treat children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and people suffering depression, Alzheimer's disease, aphasia and Parkinson's disease, said Wei.

Surgically-implanted deep-brain stimulation technology first emerged in the 1960s. At the beginning of this century, scientists developed electroencephalogram feedback technology and brain-computer interface technology.

In recent years, non-invasive stimulation and regulation technology has been able to intervene in and regulate brain activities more quickly, becoming a new focus in the brain research and neuroscience field.

The helmet is based on non-invasive brain stimulation and regulation technology, said Wei. It uses flexible electrode sensors to identify brain waves when the brain is performing different tasks. Electrodes then release weak current pulses that can reach specific areas of the brain, altering brain waves, and regulating the active state of its neurons.

"Since brain tissue is very complex, we need to build a computer model first, and then determine the target area and parameters for stimulation," said Wei.

An artificial intelligence algorithm reads brain activity in real time and calculates stimulation parameters to achieve precise and personalized regulation.

The research team, based at the Institute of Brain Cognition and Brain Disease of SIAT, has a research platform for rodents, nonhuman primates and humans.

"Through animal experiments, we have analyzed specific brain areas related to attention cognition, emotional regulation, anxiety, drug addiction, stress and epilepsy. We hope we can intervene in these areas effectively," Wei said.

The team has also developed tests for cognitive ability.

For example, trial participants wore the helmet for about 15 minutes, and then were required to quickly memorize a string of numbers, English letters or words. The test found the average accuracy rate of their memories improved within two hours.

But the data is still insufficient, said Wei. Large-scale double-blind experiments among people of different ages and groups are needed to accumulate convincing data.

"We have only tested the short-term memory of those wearing the helmet, and we're planning to test their week-long memory," Wei said.

So far, researchers have developed the prototype of the first-generation helmet, which can implement feedback control on the brain waves of the cerebral cortex. The team is developing the second generation of the helmet, aiming to achieve deep-brain non-invasive stimulation.

They also intend to cooperate with hospitals in clinical tests on patients with autism, schizophrenia and children with ADHD.

The research was recently selected as one of 30 winning projects at a contest of innovative future technologies in Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong Province. The contest encouraged young Chinese scientists to conceive groundbreaking technologies and trigger innovation.

The United States, Europe and other countries and regions have launched programs to unravel the secrets of the human brain. The brain research will also help the development of artificial intelligence.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*First 10,000-ton-level casting 3D printing smart factory goes into operation in Yinchuan*
By Hu Dongmei and Zhang Xiaomin | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2018-07-24 10:43

With an annual output of 20,000 tons of sand molds or 10,000 tons of castings, the world's first 10,000-ton-level casting 3D printing smart factory went into operation in Yinchuan, Northwest China's Ningxia Hui autonomous region.

"It is the first launch of 3D printing casting industrial application," said Liu Yi, deputy general manager of the Kocel State Intelligent Casting Industry Innovation Center.





Workshop of the world's first 10,000-ton-level casting 3D printing smart factory. [Provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Invested and constructed by Kocel Group Limited, the factory is equipped with 12 sets of self-developed 3D printing devices, as well as mobile robots, truss robots, microwave drying equipment, and stereo warehouses.

The entire workshop requires only seven people per shift, all working in air-conditioned environment. There is no crane, no heavy physical labor, and zero emissions. But the production efficiency is more than five times that of traditional casting of the same scale.

Kocel Group Limited started casting 3D printing industrialization research in 2012.

According to Liu, the company has produced a total of five categories, hundreds of kinds, more than 6,000 tons of 3D printing castings.

For instance, the production of engine cylinder head castings previously used metal molds to make nearly 20 parts (sand molds), and needed high-skilled precision assembly. A senior technician must be trained for six months to do the work.

However, with the new technology of 3D printing, it can be completely printed in one session, and the error has fallen from 1 mm to 0.3 mm. Production efficiency can be raised by about three to five times and yield can be increased by 20 to 30 percent, said Liu.





Workshop of the world's first 10,000-ton-level casting 3D printing smart factory. [Provided to chinadaily.com.cn]


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1021643642749050882

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Grandy

*It's a 'flying motorbike'! Impressive homemade drone takes off with its Chinese inventor on board*

A homemade 'flying motorcycle' has taken to the skies, with its inventor on board. 
Zhao Deli, 40, was lifted into the air by eight propellers in Tangxia town, Dongguan city, south China's Guangdong province.
Mr Zhao designed and built the drone himself and - dressed in an all-black protective suit - embarked on the extraordinary flight test on Monday. 





Dream comes true: Zhao Deli, 40, took off with his homemade drone in China on Monday





Feeling fantastic: After the flight test, the man said it was like riding a motorbike in the sky





Long way to success: The 40-year-old had put his drone under 1,559 unmanned flight tests

The drone's propellers are affixed to a central frame which is designed to be as lightweight as possible. 
The aircraft has a motor installed under the seat, which provides the power for the drone while the rider perches at the top.
Before Monday's flight, the amateur inventor had put the unusual aircraft under unmanned tests for 1,559 times in the space of two years.

With the eight propellers stirring the air and the motor roaring, Mr Zhao's flying vehicle successfully carried him into the air. 
After a safe landing onto the ground, the excited Mr Zhao told a reporter from Guangzhou Daily: 'It was like riding a motorbike in the sky. 
'My dream has come true after this 1560th flight test.' 





'Magical Cloud': The flying bike is a single-seater with eight propellers and a motor to power





Costly: The repairing works are expensive - a pair of propellers costs about 3,000 yuan (£337)

A video on Chinese news site Sohu shows the man leaning forward with his hands on a control panel at the front of his contraption.
Seconds later, all eight propellers start to spin and lift Mr Zhao into the air.
The man-carrying quadcopter levitates in the sky and lands safely on the ground.
He has named the drone 'Jin Dou Yun' or 'Magical Cloud' - a flying cloud ridden by China's very own fictional superhero, Monkey King.





Inspired: Mr Zhao wanted to build a flying motorbike after reading about a hovering surfboard





Off we go: With the eight propellers, the drone successfully carried Mr Zhao into the air

Mr Zhao claimed the flying bike could carry a load of between 110 and 220 pounds (50 and 100 kilograms).
Its maximum takeoff weight of 564 pounds (256 kilograms), top speed of 44 mph (70 km/h) and battery life of 30 minutes make it a market leader, said Mr Zhao. 
Mr Zhao was born in a village in south China's Hunan Province. Like most boys, he has always dreamt of flying in the sky one day. 
He aced in science subjects at school and enjoyed fixing electrical appliances at home. 





Market leader: The aircraft has a top speed of 44 mph and a battery life of 30 minutes





Dedication: Mr Zhao spent two years making his 'dream vehicle' and even sold his house for it

In 2008, Mr Zhao set up a company to sell the drones he invented himself. By then he had invented five drone models, including a petrol drone.
Two years ago, Mr Zhao read about a hovering surfboard in Canada, and that was where he got the inspiration for the 'flying motorbike'.  
Despite his enthusiasm, Mr Zhao's road to success was by no means smooth. 

He experienced countless failures while trying to make the unmanned aircraft airbourne during the 1,559 flight tests; he even had to sell his house and borrow money from friends in order to fund his project, it is reported. 
The inventor was ecstatic after Monday's flight.
He said he hoped to fly across China's Yellow River on the aircraft. 
He also planned to modify the 'flying motorbike' before launching it as a commercial product on the market. 





Bright future: Mr Zhao hopes to put his man-carrying drone on the production line soon





Ambitious: He also hopes to fly across China's Yellow River while riding his 'Magical Cloud' 

*Read more: *

卖房搞无人机失败后 他骑着摩托飞上了天_无人机_环球网
牛X！东莞男子自制国内首架“载人飞行摩托”，试飞成功！_搜狐新闻_搜 ...

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## bobsm

*World First: Chinese Physicists Made a Cold Atomic Clock Work in Space*
By Rafi Letzter, Live Science Staff Writer | July 25, 2018 10:24am ET

Telling time precisely is important; it gets you up in the morning and coordinates everything from air travel to the GPS system. And if you do it well enough, you can even use it to navigate outer space.

But telling time is also a major technical challenge. Every clock in the world is inaccurate to some degree. Whatever technology your wristwatch uses to mark the future ticking away into the past, those ticks will be imperfectly measured. Every once in a while, a fraction of a second gets lost. Even atomic clocks — which measure time by observing the ultraprecise oscillations of individual atoms and make up the world's official timekeepers — are imperfect, which is why researchers are always striving to build one that's a bit more accurate than any that have been built before. And now, for the first time, a team of Chinese researchers has figured out how to make one of the most precise atomic-clock technologies currently available work in space.

In a paper published today (July 24) in the journal Nature Communications, a team of researchers from the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences officially announced that they had successfully operated a cold atomic clock for more than 15 months in orbit aboard the now-defunct Chinese space station Tiangong-2. (The accomplishment was originally reported in Science magazine in September 2017, when a version of the paper went live in the preprint journal arXiv before it went through peer review and the formal publication process.) [Wacky Physics: The Coolest Little Particles in Nature]

Cold atomic clocks, which work by laser-cooling atoms to near absolute zero before measuring their oscillations, can be more precise, because at very low temperatures, these "ticks" are more consistent. But actually getting atoms to those temperatures is very difficult on Earth, let alone in the confines of a spacecraft.

Cold atomic clocks measure the vibrations of atoms while they're in free fall so that they aren't interacting with anything else. On Earth, that requires constantly nudging an atom up so that it can be measured while it's falling through the detector.

Researchers have managed to make atoms ultracold in free fall before, the team wrote in the paper. But that meant more or less tossing the experiment into the air and letting it fall.

"These methods provide a microgravity environment ranging from several seconds (drop tower, parabolic flight) to several minutes (sounding rocket)," they wrote in the study.

It's difficult to make such a device function in orbit, the researchers wrote, because it has to be much smaller than its counterparts on Earth, pass the safety tests necessary to launch into space, work in microgravity, shield itself against cosmic radiation — and do all that without any quantum physicists on hand to make adjustments if anything were to go wrong. 

But space-bound cold atomic clocks do have some advantages, the researchers wrote. Most important, they can study the atomic oscillations over much longer periods. In microgravity, the atom can stay in place longer, allowing for a longer period of measurement.

As Science reported in 2017, researchers with the European Space Agency (ESA) said Tiangong-2's cold atomic clock was not as precise as it could have been. But ESA's clock — which, in theory, would be more precise — has faced delays and has never actually gone up into space.

https://www.space.com/41277-chinese-cold-atomic-clock-orbit.html

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

A process that takes advantage of powder’s tendency to cake creates a plastic that can be moulded and dyed. Credit: M. Xie _et al./Adv. Funct. Mater._

*MATERIALS SCIENCE | *24 JULY 2018
*A transformation of powder to plastic is a piece of cake*
Powder’s propensity to form lumps is put to good use.

Powdered materials often form solid lumps when exposed to moisture, a process called caking. Now, a powder’s tendency to cake — usually an annoyance to manufacturers — has been exploited to create a sturdy but mouldable plastic film.

Yun Yan at Peking University in Beijing and her colleagues formulated a powder that includes two particular types of molecule, both of which contain water-binding segments as well as sections that repel water. When the powder was exposed to moisture and pressure, its chemical bonds rearranged in a process similar to caking. This allowed the powder to congeal within seconds into a transparent film that is roughly as strong as conventional plastic, but that can be moulded into a variety of shapes at room temperature.

The team also embedded the material with dyes that change colour when exposed to certain chemicals. These versions of the film can act as sensors to detect gases such as ammonia or hydrazine, an explosive chemical widely used in industry.

_Adv. Funct. Mater._ (2018)​
A transformation of powder to plastic is a piece of cake : Research Highlights | Nature

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Academicians given priority in border clearance* 1
2018-07-26 16:39:15Ecns.cnEditor : Mo Hong'e

(ECNS) - The State Immigration Administration has announced that special border clearance channels reserved for diplomats will also be used in service of the country's top scientists.

Academicians of two leading organizations – the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) – and their entourages can use special gates to pass through land ports without leaving their cars, and enjoy priorities to complete customs clearance procedures. The policy will be used for both incumbent and retired academicians.

The State Immigration Administration established this year under the Ministry of Public Security said CAS and CAE as two top institutions in China have made great contributions to the country’s prosperity and people’s happiness, while many academicians can be called national heroes.

The two institutes have a total of 1,650 academicians, many of them traveling abroad for scientific research, lectures and academic exchanges, said the administration.

It said the move aims to support academicians in concentrating on scientific research and academic exchanges, and also reflects respect for their contributions.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Mitochondria in the Neurons Talk to the Intestine via Wnt Signaling*
Jul 27, 2018

The metabolic disorders have been reported in a range of neurodegenerative diseases. Mitochondrial dysfunction, in particular, has been implicated in the pathogenesis of many neurodegenerative disorders, including Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and Huntington's disease. The mechanism by which the nervous system elicits distal mitochondrial proteotoxic stress remains unknown.

Dr. TIAN Ye's team at the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Prof. Andrew Dillin's team at UC Berkeley, together found that retromer-dependent Wnt signaling can propagate mitochondrial proteotoxic stress (UPRmt) from the nervous system to the intestine.

The findings have been published online on July 26th in _Cell_ entitled "Mitochondrial unfolded protein response is mediated cell-non-autonomously by retromer- Dependent Wnt signaling".

Studies in _C. elegans_ have established that the expression of the HD-causing polyQ40 protein in neurons initiates the UPRmt in the intestine, a process that induces global alteration of transcription networks to maintain a functional mitochondrial proteome.
Researchers found that loss-of-function mutations of retromer complex components responsible for recycling the Wnt secretion-factor/MIG-14 prevent Wnt secretion and thereby suppress cell-non-autonomous mitochondrial proteotoxic stress. Neuronal expression of the Wnt ligand/EGL-20 is sufficient to induce UPRmt in the intestine and extend lifespan in _C. elegans_.

The study indicates that Wnt signaling propagates the mitochondrial proteotoxic stress and that Wnt pathway components should thus be viewed as therapeutic targets for age-onset neurodegenerative diseases. 

This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China, Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the National Natural Foundation of China. 



Wnt signaling mediates cell-non-autonomous mitochondrial proteostasis stress (Image by ZHANG Qian)



Mitochondria in the Neurons Talk to the Intestine via Wnt Signaling---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Desert bush spider could help develop new drugs and insecticides*
27 July 2018




Professor Glenn King​
A toxin from the desert bush spider is helping researchers understand more about human and insect biology, which could lead to new treatments for health conditions and bee-friendly insecticides.

Scientists from The University of Queensland and Princeton University have used the potent insecticidal toxin—Dc1a—to investigate the molecular structure of sodium channels, which play important roles in the nervous system of humans and insects.

Professor Glenn King from UQ’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) said to design better drugs and insecticides, you needed to know how to turn sodium channels on and off at the atomic level.

“Humans have nine sodium channels, each with different functions – for example, one type plays a central role in the perception of pain, another is essential to the function of the skeletal muscles we use for movement, and a third channel is used by the nerves that control our heart rhythm,” he said.

“If you design a drug to target one sodium channel to block pain, you have to ensure it won’t hit the others and cause paralysis or heart failure.

“And when designing insecticides, it’s critical that chemicals that disrupt sodium channels in pest insects don’t affect those found in humans or ecologically important insects such as bees.”

Professor King and PhD student Yan Jiang showed that Dc1a toxin binds to the on-off switch of an insect sodium channel, with the UQ and Princeton University researchers able to solve a high-resolution structure of the channel-toxin complex using cryo-electron microscopy.

“I think the most exciting part of this discovery is how Dc1a binds to the voltage sensor region—the on-off-switch of the sodium channel—as these regions are slightly different in each sodium channel,” Professor King said.

“By targeting the voltage sensor as opposed to the pore of the channel, you can potentially make a drug or insecticide that’s very selective.”

Professor King said the discovery provides a foundation for designing ecofriendly insecticides that will kill pest insects but won’t harm bees, humans or pets.

There is also scope for designing drugs that selectively target certain human sodium channels, which could lead to new treatments for conditions such as chronic pain, epilepsy and heart arrhythmia.

The research was published in _Science_ (DOI: 10.1126/science.aau2596) and funded by organisations included the Australian Research Council and National Health and Medical Research Council.



Desert bush spider could help develop new drugs and insecticides - UQ News - The University of Queensland, Australia

Huaizong Shen, Zhangqiang Li, Yan Jiang, Xiaojing Pan, Jianping Wu, Ben Cristofori-Armstrong, Jennifer J. Smith, Yanni K. Y. Chin, Jianlin Lei, Qiang Zhou, Glenn F. King, Nieng Yan. *Structural basis for the modulation of voltage-gated sodium channels by animal toxins*. _Science _(2018). DOI: 10.1126/science.aau2596.​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Selective functionalization of methane, ethane, and higher alkanes by cerium photocatalysis*
27 JULY 2018

The Zuo Group at the School of Physical Science and Technology recently developed a photocatalytic methane conversion methodology which can directly transform methane, ethane and other gaseous alkanes into value-added liquid product. This breakthrough in organic chemistry provides a novel, green and mild catalytic platform for natural gas utilization, and could lead to broad applications in the energy/chemical industry. Their result was published as “Selective functionalization of methane, ethane, and higher alkanes by cerium photocatalysis” in _Science_ on July 27th. Postdoctoral researchers Anhua Hu and Jingjing Guo are co-first authors, graduate student Hui Pan is the second author, and Zuo Zhiwei is the corresponding author.

Methane and other gaseous alkanes have been traditionally viewed more as clean energy fuels than economical chemical feedstocks by the chemical community. With dwindling oil supplies and the growing importance of reducing worldwide dependence on petroleum-based chemical products, the recent discovery of huge volumes of unconventional reservoirs and soaring production of natural gas has made these gaseous hydrocarbons economically attractive and strategically important basic raw materials. The intrinsic inertness of C–H bond in methane and other gaseous alkanes has, however, brought extreme challenges for catalytic systems. These challenges are not only in the activation step, but also in controlling chemoselectivity to avoid solvent functionalization and overfunctionalization under frequently utilized harsh conditions (high temperature, superacids or strong oxidants). Moreover, the gaseous substrates’ low solubility in most solvents has raised substantial practical difficulties. Elegant catalytic systems utilizing transition metals such as Pd, Ir, Rh, Ru have been reported; however, the “grand challenge” remains the development of efficient catalytic systems with inexpensive catalysts and ambient conditions.

The Zuo group has been focused on the development of sustainable catalyst for highly efficient transformations. The unique electron structure of high valence cerium complexes, as well as their unique photophysical properties, attracted their research attention to explore valuable synthetic methodologies utilizing the ligand-to-metal charge transfer (LMCT) excitation process, a common photoexcitation manifold among coordination complexes of transition metal with an empty valence shell which has been under-investigated in synthetic organic transformations via modern photoredox catalysis. In 2016, they first found that CeCl3 could act as photocatalyst in the C-C bond cleavage and amination of cycloalkanols. Then, in 2017, they demonstrated that the LMCT process could be utilized with 1,5-HAT event for the selective distal C-H functionalization of primary alcohols. On the basis of this work, after 2202 trials and optimizations, they have developed a general and highly efficient platform for the catalytic functionalization of methane and other gaseous alkanes under LED irradiation at ambient temperature with abundant and inexpensive cerium salts as photocatalysts. Critically, the use of LMCT catalysis to generate highly reactive alkoxy radicals enables the challenging HAT event from the strong C–H bonds of the light alkanes employed. This photocatalytic platform has enabled a number of direct transformations of methane and other gaseous hydrocarbons, including amination, alkylation, and arylation, and offers intriguing opportunities for further functionalization of feedstock alkanes.

Professor Kuiling Ding, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) academician and dean of Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry at CAS, said, “The direct functionalization of C–H bond in methane is one of the basic chemical transformations in energy and chemical processes. The high stability and low polarity of the C–H bond has brought extreme challenges for methane functionalization, therefore harsh conditions such as high temperature and high pressure are often required. The C–H functionalization of methane under mild conditions is considered a “holy grail” in the chemistry community. Through the exquisite design of the photocatalytic system, this work by the Zuo group showcases a new breakthrough in methane conversion at room temperature, and provides a new pathway for the extensive utilization of methane feedstock.”

Professor David MacMillan, one of the pioneers of modern photoredox catalysis, member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), distinguished professor at Princeton University said, “The results of this study by the Zuo group are simply astonishing. Over the last decade, there have been many new directions arising from photoredox with significant societal impact. This study introduces a new direction (LMCT) wherein alkanes such as methane and ethane can undergo direct amination. The potential for use in sectors such as pharmaceuticals, agrochemical, and fine chemical, among others, are clearly evident. This is a remarkable paper from a young Chinese chemist that will be widely influential on a global scale. I cannot wait to see what he will do next.”

Experts from Shell, senior principal scientist Alexander van der Made and program lead methane to product Sander Van Bavel both spoke highly of the paper, “This paper on photocatalytic functionalization of alkanes showcases excellent and intriguing chemistry on the very relevant topic of alkane activation. Moreover, the paper presents a key first step towards a green route to activate alkanes under mild conditions. Ultimately, this route could lead to more extensive use of abundantly available natural gas as feedstock by chemical industry.”

“ShanghaiTech University has been striving to construct an independent and innovative academic atmosphere with full academic freedom, allowing our PIs to release their energy and creativity to the greatest extent. The breakthrough of the Zuo Group is a positive demonstration. The research group creatively used the unique rare-earth resources of China to solve the key scientific problem of methane activation, which has great importance for China and the world, in a very short period of time.” said Peidong Yang, Founding Dean of School of Physical Science and Technology, member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) and professor at University of California, Berkeley.

This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21772121) and the “Thousand Plan” Youth Program.




​

Selective functionalization of methane, ethane, and higher alkanes by cerium photocatalysis | ShanghaiTech University

Anhua Hu, Jing-Jing Guo, Hui Pan, Zhiwei Zuo. *Selective functionalization of methane, ethane, and higher alkanes by cerium photocatalysis*. _Science _(2018). DOI: 10.1126/science.aat9750​


----------



## JSCh

*China's first stem cell hospital opens in Boao*
By Ma Zhiping and Liu Xiaoli in Boao, Hainan | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2018-07-29 14:51














China Stem Cell Group Co Ltd, a Shanghai-based company, announced the opening of its affiliated stem cell hospital in Boao Lecheng International Medical Tourism Pilot Zone in Hainan on Saturday.

The hospital, the only one in the sector in China and equipped with a hundred 100 pre-clean laminar air flow rooms for patients, will be able to handle 1,000 blood stem cell transplantations annually, said Ruan Changgeng, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and director of the Blood Research Institute of Jiangsu Province, who has been appointed as the honorary head of the hospital, together with another three academicians as chief scientists.

Ruan said the hospital will help effectively reduce the shortage of transplantation resources in the country.

Lu Wei, vice-president of China Stem Cell Group, said the hospital will focus on blood stem cell transplants while also engaging itself in developing a top-level platform for the country's stem cell industry, which will combine disease prevention, medical treatment, research on clinical applications of stem cell technology, education, and rehabilitation.

"So far the company has helped with 3,500 umbilical cord blood transplants, the largest number in the country. About 58.9 percent of the patients who have received the transplants are still alive after five years, which is at an advanced international level for the time being," Lu added.

Hainan Boao Lecheng International Medical Tourism Pilot Zone, the only one of its kind in China, enjoys nine preferential policies granted by the State Council ever since 2013, such as carrying out stem cell clinical applications without central government permission.

"The policies enable the hospital to conduct pilot applications in the sector," said Lu, adding that Hainan's new talent introduction policy is also attracting more medical professionals to come to the island province.

"A total of 27 medical projects have been completed or are under construction in the pilot zone, and another 38 projects have passed medical technology appraisals, and in total the administration office has talked with developers of 101 high-end medical and healthcare projects," He Pengfei, deputy director of the zone's administration office, said Saturday.

He added that eight of them have opened medical services to the public so far.

All projects in the pilot zone are expected to be completed in about five years. By then, the zone is estimated to receive 5 million tourists a year.


----------



## JSCh

*NEWS | * 01 AUGUST 2018
*Entire yeast genome squeezed into one lone chromosome*
In a dramatic restructuring, two teams have created versions of baker’s yeast with vastly reduced chromosome counts.

*Ewen Callaway*



Brewer’s yeast is a single-celled organism that usually has 16 chromosomes.Credit: Thomas Deerinck, NCMIR/Getty

For millions of years, brewer’s yeast and its close relatives have packed their DNA into 16 distinct chromosomes. Now, two teams have used CRISPR gene-editing to stuff all of yeast’s genetic material — save a few non-essential pieces — into just one or two chromosomes. The feat represents the most dramatic restructuring yet of a complex genome and could help scientists understand why organisms split their DNA over chromosomes. And, to the researchers’ surprise, the changes had little effect on most functions of the yeast (_Saccharomyces cerevisiae_).

“That was the biggest shocker — that you can just get away with this and yeast seem to shrug its shoulders,” says Jef Boeke, a geneticist at New York University whose team jammed the yeast genome onto a pair of chromosomes1. A China-based group used a different technique to make yeast with one ‘super-chromosome’2. Both teams report their findings in _Nature_ on 1 August.

*Genetics 101*
Yeast belongs to the eukaryotes, the branch of life that includes humans, plants and animals and whose cells store genetic material in a membrane-bound nucleus. But the number of chromosomes that eukaryotes have varies wildly and seems to have no correlation with the amount of genetic information they possess. In humans, genetic material is spread over 46 chromosomes, whereas male jack jumper ants (_Myrmecia pilosula_) have just 1. Single-celled brewer’s yeast — whose genome, at 12 million DNA letters long, is hundreds of times shorter than that of humans — boasts 16 chromosomes.

“We don’t know why they have such different numbers,” says Zhongjun Qin, a molecular biologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology, whose team created the lone-chromosome yeast strain. “I thought it was probably random.”

Qin and his colleagues reasoned that if an organism’s chromosome count were down to chance rather than an underlying rule of nature, there should be no reason that a yeast cell shouldn’t be viable with 1 chromosome instead of 16. Researchers in the past had fused two3 — even four4 — yeast chromosomes together, and another team split the 16 chromosomes into 33. All products had viable cells5. But no one had ever performed such extreme genetic surgery as Qin and his colleagues set out to do several years ago.

Their initial attempts ended in failure — until they turned to the genome-editing tool CRISPR–Cas9, which is adept at excising specific DNA sequences. Qin and his colleagues used CRISPR to remove DNA at telomeres, the ends of chromosomes that protect them from degrading. They also snipped out centromeres, sequences in the middle that are important to DNA replication.

These changes paved the way for a fit of tidying that would make home-organization guru Marie Kondo proud. The researchers first fused two chromosomes, then joined this product to another one, and in successive rounds, to another and another — until they were left with a lone-chromosome yeast strain (see ‘Minimal yeast’).



Source: Refs 1, 2

Boeke’s team also used CRISPR to remove superfluous telomeres and centromeres to create strains with progressively fewer chromosomes. They ended up with a yeast strain that had two extra-long chromosomes, but they could not get the pair to fuse into one. (Boeke is also leading a separate, international effort to synthesize an entire yeast genome from scratch.)

One explanation for the difference is that Qin’s team also jettisoned 19 repetitive stretches of DNA. These sequences might have interfered with the mechanism that cells use to stitch two chromosomes into one, suggests Qin. Or, Boeke says, it could be down to chance: there are about 10–19 different ways to arrange yeast’s 16 chromosomes into 1, and the Chinese team might simply have hit a winning combination.

*Growing pains*
Both strains of ‘minimal’ yeast looked normal under a microscope, and the changes to chromosome number had little impact on their gene activity. But while Boeke’s strain underwent normal asexual reproduction and grew as efficiently as 16-chromosome strains, the lone-chromosome yeast divided more slowly.

The only major defect — in both strains — was in sexual reproduction, in which yeast cells with two genome copies produce ‘spores’ that have only one. The Chinese team’s single-chromosome strain grew even more slowly compared with normal yeast when its genome was doubled through mating, and it produced fewer spores.

Boeke and his colleagues observed defects when they tried to coax yeast strains with differing numbers of chromosomes to produce spores. This genetic incompatability could be used to prevent synthetic yeast, released into the environment from mating with wild strains, Boeke says. He also notes that the two-chromosome yeast might qualify as a distinct species because it can’t breed with normal yeast, despite having near-identical DNA.

Scientists tend to focus on the role of DNA-sequence changes in creating new species, but these studies suggest that natural chromosome fusions could also play a part, says Gianni Liti, a geneticist at the University of Cote d’Azur in Nice, France, who reviewed the papers and wrote an accompanying essay6.

William Noble, a computational biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, says that studying such strains could help to explain why nearly all eukaryotes apportion their DNA into multiple chromosomes. “Why bother?” he says. “If you only needed one, it would be the ‘Occam’s razor’ solution.



Entire yeast genome squeezed into one lone chromosome | Nature.com

Yangyang Shao, Ning Lu, Zhenfang Wu, Chen Cai, Shanshan Wang, Ling-Li Zhang, Fan Zhou, Shijun Xiao, Lin Liu, Xiaofei Zeng, Huajun Zheng, Chen Yang, Zhihu Zhao, Guoping Zhao, Jin-Qiu Zhou, Xiaoli Xue & Zhongjun Qin. *Creating a functional single-chromosome yeast*. _Nature _(2018). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0382-x​


----------



## JSCh

*Microscale superlubricity could pave way for future improved electromechanical devices*
*
Date: *August 1, 2018
*Source: *American Friends of Tel Aviv University

Lubricity measures the reduction in mechanical friction and wear by a lubricant. These are the main causes of component failure and energy loss in mechanical and electromechanical systems. For example, one-third of the fuel-based energy in vehicles is expended in overcoming friction. So superlubricity -- the state of ultra-low friction and wear -- holds great promise for the reduction of frictional wear in mechanical and automatic devices.

A new joint Tel Aviv University/Tsinghua University study finds that robust structural superlubricity can be achieved between dissimilar, microscale-layered materials under high external loads and ambient conditions. The researchers found that microscale interfaces between graphite and hexagonal boron nitride exhibit ultra-low friction and wear. This is an important milestone for future technological applications in space, automotive, electronics and medical industries.

The research is the product of a collaboration between Prof. Oded Hod and Prof. Michael Urbakh of TAU's School of Chemistry; and Prof. Ming Ma and Prof. Quanshui Zheng of Tsinghua University's Department of Mechanical Engineering and their colleagues. It was conducted under the auspices of the joint TAU-Tsinghua collaborative XIN Center and was published in _Nature Materials_ on July 30.

*Enormous implications for computer and other devices*

The new interface is six orders of magnitude larger in surface area than earlier nanoscale measurements and exhibits robust superlubricity in all interfacial orientations and under ambient conditions.

"Superlubricity is a highly intriguing physical phenomenon, a state of practically zero or ultra-low friction between two contacting surfaces," says Prof. Hod. "The practical implications of achieving robust superlubricity in macroscopic dimensions are enormous. The expected energy savings and wear prevention are huge."

"This discovery may lead to a new generation of computer hard discs with a higher density of stored information and enhanced speed of information transfer, for example," adds Prof. Urbakh. "This can be also used in a new generation of ball bearing to reduce rotational friction and support radial and axial loads. Their energy losses and wear will be significantly lower than in existing devices."

The experimental part of the research was performed using atomic force microscopes at Tsinghua and the fully atomistic computer simulations were completed at TAU. The researchers also characterized the degree of crystallinity of the graphitic surfaces by conducting spectroscopy measurements.

*Close collaboration*

The study arose from an earlier prediction by theoretical and computational groups at TAU that robust structural superlubricity could be achieved by forming interfaces between the materials graphene and hexagonal boron nitride. "These two materials are currently in the news following the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics, which was awarded for groundbreaking experiments with the two-dimensional material graphene. Superlubricity is one of their most promising practical applications," says Prof. Hod.

"Our study is a tight collaboration between TAU theoretical and computational groups and Tsinghua's experimental group," says Prof. Urbakh. "There is a synergic cooperation between the groups. Theory and computation feed laboratory experiments that, in turn, provide important realizations and valuable results that can be rationalized via the computational studies to refine the theory."

The research groups are continuing to collaborate in this field studying the fundamentals of superlubricity, its extensive applications and its effect in ever larger interfaces.

*Journal Reference*:

Yiming Song, Davide Mandelli, Oded Hod, Michael Urbakh, Ming Ma, Quanshui Zheng. *Robust microscale superlubricity in graphite/hexagonal boron nitride layered heterojunctions*. _Nature Materials_, 2018; DOI: 10.1038/s41563-018-0144-z


Microscale superlubricity could pave way for future improved electromechanical devices -- ScienceDaily


----------



## JSCh

*NEWS AND VIEWS | *01 AUGUST 2018
*Reflection forbidden and refraction reversed in an artificial crystal*
At the interface between two facets of an artificial crystal, sound waves can be transmitted in the opposite direction to that expected, and undergo no reflection. Such wave behaviour could have many applications.

*Baile Zhang*

Waves change direction when they pass from one medium to another — a phenomenon called refraction. This effect underlies most optical lenses and instruments, and is widely found in acoustics when an acoustic beam behaves like an optical beam. In general, some of the waves are reflected during the refraction process. In a paper in _Nature_, He _et al_.1 report an impressive demonstration of a previously unobserved refraction phenomenon. They show that, in a certain artificially engineered material, an acoustic beam can be refracted in the opposite direction to that seen in ordinary materials, without reflection. The authors’ findings could lead to improved control of waves in electronic and photonic systems.

When an acoustic or optical ray strikes the interface between two different media, part of its energy passes through the interface to form a refracted ray (Fig. 1a). The remaining energy reflects from the interface to produce a reflected ray. In nature, the incident and refracted rays are always on opposite sides of the normal — an imaginary line perpendicular to the interface. But, in theory, this need not be the case.





Figure 1 | Comparison of refraction phenomena. a, In conventional refraction, when an acoustic or optical ray (red) hits the interface between two different media, a reflected ray (dark blue) and a refracted ray (light blue) are produced. The incident and refracted rays exist on opposite sides of the normal — an imaginary line perpendicular to the interface. b, In negative refraction, the refracted ray emerges on the same side of the normal as the incident ray. c, He _et al_.1 report a previously unobserved type of refraction for acoustic rays, in which not only are the incident and refracted rays on the same side of the normal, but also there is no reflected ray. (Figure adapted from ref. 1.)

In 1968, the Russian physicist Victor Veselago considered a hypothetical material that has a negative refractive index2. A refractive index describes how waves propagate in a medium, and is positive in all conventional materials. Veselago showed that the way in which refraction usually occurs could be reversed in a negative-index material: the refracted ray could emerge on the same side of the normal as the incident ray (Fig. 1b).

Although intriguing, negative refraction did not trigger much attention, and was considered impossible for more than 30 years because it was thought that negative-index materials could not exist. The situation changed in 2000, when the British physicist John Pendry made a shocking prediction3: that negative refraction could be used to make a lens that could focus light more tightly than is normally possible. He also identified a practical way to construct negative-index materials in the lab using artificial structures. Such materials, now generally referred to as metamaterials, stimulated research into concepts such as invisibility cloaking4 that had previously existed only in science fiction.



​Read the paper: Topological negative refraction of surface acoustic waves in a Weyl phononic crystal

In the years since Pendry’s work, the pursuit of negative refraction has led to developments in optics, acoustics, plasmonics (the study of how light interacts with electrons in metals) and even graphene-based electronics5. Versions of negative refraction have been realized in each of these areas. However, the phenomenon is generally accompanied by reflection, which is often undesirable. In many cases, such as in experiments involving the refraction of electrons through an interface5, reflection can even dominate negative refraction.

The property of reflection immunity is not found in natural optical materials for light. However, it does occur in exotic phases of matter known as topological quantum matter, for quantum-mechanical electronic waves. A well-studied example is the topological insulator, which is an electrical insulator in its interior, but conducts electricity on its surface through electronic waves called topological surface states. Such states are able to propagate unidirectionally — they bypass obstacles and defects, rather than being reflected.

He and colleagues’ demonstration was directly inspired by another emerging topological quantum matter: the Weyl semimetal6. The topological surface states in this material cannot propagate in all directions; propagation is confined to a certain range of directions, which connect to form what are known as Fermi arcs6. Because the limited range of propagation directions does not include the direction in which reflection would normally occur, reflection is forbidden (Fig. 1c).

In their experiment, He _et al._ used an artificial crystal that is an acoustic analogue of the Weyl semimetal. They found that, at the interface between two adjacent facets of the crystal, airborne acoustic waves could undergo negative refraction without reflection. The authors’ results represent the first realization of negative refraction for topological surface states.

There are a few limitations of the work. For instance, the refraction does not occur in a flat plane, contrary to the common impression of refraction. Moreover, the interface scatters some of the acoustic waves into the crystal’s interior, resulting in energy loss. Nevertheless, the demonstration opens the door to many exciting opportunities for further research.

The immediate question is whether He and colleagues’ refraction phenomenon could be realized in optical systems for light and condensed-matter systems for electrons. Another question, which will be of interest to both optical and condensed-matter physicists, is how to engineer the range of propagation directions — and, in turn, the Fermi arcs — to achieve greater control of negative refraction. In this sense, the authors’ work provides the first practical use of Fermi arcs, which are currently being enthusiastically explored in condensed-matter systems7,8 and in optical structures called photonic crystals9.

The refraction phenomenon could also find widespread use in acoustics. For example, the combination of negative refraction and zero reflection could lead to improved resolution in ultrasonic imaging and testing. Moreover, acoustic waves are used in biomedical microfluidic devices to trap, sort and deliver cells and drug particles. Reflection-free acoustic waves are strongly desirable in such applications, because reflections at the interfaces and sharp corners of microfluidic channels are currently a huge limitation to device efficiency. Topological acoustics is therefore a promising research field that not only can produce phenomena that are difficult to realize in other physical systems, but could also bring about transformative technologies.

Nature 560, 37-38 (2018)

doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-05806-6



Reflection forbidden and refraction reversed in an artificial crystal | Nature.com

Hailong He, Chunyin Qiu, Liping Ye, Xiangxi Cai, Xiying Fan, Manzhu Ke, Fan Zhang & Zhengyou Liu. *Topological negative refraction of surface acoustic waves in a Weyl phononic crystal*. _Nature _(2018); DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0367-9​


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *NEWS | * 01 AUGUST 2018
> *Entire yeast genome squeezed into one lone chromosome*
> In a dramatic restructuring, two teams have created versions of baker’s yeast with vastly reduced chromosome counts.
> 
> *Ewen Callaway*
> 
> 
> 
> Brewer’s yeast is a single-celled organism that usually has 16 chromosomes.Credit: Thomas Deerinck, NCMIR/Getty
> 
> For millions of years, brewer’s yeast and its close relatives have packed their DNA into 16 distinct chromosomes. Now, two teams have used CRISPR gene-editing to stuff all of yeast’s genetic material — save a few non-essential pieces — into just one or two chromosomes. The feat represents the most dramatic restructuring yet of a complex genome and could help scientists understand why organisms split their DNA over chromosomes. And, to the researchers’ surprise, the changes had little effect on most functions of the yeast (_Saccharomyces cerevisiae_).
> 
> “That was the biggest shocker — that you can just get away with this and yeast seem to shrug its shoulders,” says Jef Boeke, a geneticist at New York University whose team jammed the yeast genome onto a pair of chromosomes1. A China-based group used a different technique to make yeast with one ‘super-chromosome’2. Both teams report their findings in _Nature_ on 1 August.
> 
> *Genetics 101*
> Yeast belongs to the eukaryotes, the branch of life that includes humans, plants and animals and whose cells store genetic material in a membrane-bound nucleus. But the number of chromosomes that eukaryotes have varies wildly and seems to have no correlation with the amount of genetic information they possess. In humans, genetic material is spread over 46 chromosomes, whereas male jack jumper ants (_Myrmecia pilosula_) have just 1. Single-celled brewer’s yeast — whose genome, at 12 million DNA letters long, is hundreds of times shorter than that of humans — boasts 16 chromosomes.
> 
> “We don’t know why they have such different numbers,” says Zhongjun Qin, a molecular biologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology, whose team created the lone-chromosome yeast strain. “I thought it was probably random.”
> 
> Qin and his colleagues reasoned that if an organism’s chromosome count were down to chance rather than an underlying rule of nature, there should be no reason that a yeast cell shouldn’t be viable with 1 chromosome instead of 16. Researchers in the past had fused two3 — even four4 — yeast chromosomes together, and another team split the 16 chromosomes into 33. All products had viable cells5. But no one had ever performed such extreme genetic surgery as Qin and his colleagues set out to do several years ago.
> 
> Their initial attempts ended in failure — until they turned to the genome-editing tool CRISPR–Cas9, which is adept at excising specific DNA sequences. Qin and his colleagues used CRISPR to remove DNA at telomeres, the ends of chromosomes that protect them from degrading. They also snipped out centromeres, sequences in the middle that are important to DNA replication.
> 
> These changes paved the way for a fit of tidying that would make home-organization guru Marie Kondo proud. The researchers first fused two chromosomes, then joined this product to another one, and in successive rounds, to another and another — until they were left with a lone-chromosome yeast strain (see ‘Minimal yeast’).
> 
> 
> 
> Source: Refs 1, 2
> 
> Boeke’s team also used CRISPR to remove superfluous telomeres and centromeres to create strains with progressively fewer chromosomes. They ended up with a yeast strain that had two extra-long chromosomes, but they could not get the pair to fuse into one. (Boeke is also leading a separate, international effort to synthesize an entire yeast genome from scratch.)
> 
> One explanation for the difference is that Qin’s team also jettisoned 19 repetitive stretches of DNA. These sequences might have interfered with the mechanism that cells use to stitch two chromosomes into one, suggests Qin. Or, Boeke says, it could be down to chance: there are about 10–19 different ways to arrange yeast’s 16 chromosomes into 1, and the Chinese team might simply have hit a winning combination.
> 
> *Growing pains*
> Both strains of ‘minimal’ yeast looked normal under a microscope, and the changes to chromosome number had little impact on their gene activity. But while Boeke’s strain underwent normal asexual reproduction and grew as efficiently as 16-chromosome strains, the lone-chromosome yeast divided more slowly.
> 
> The only major defect — in both strains — was in sexual reproduction, in which yeast cells with two genome copies produce ‘spores’ that have only one. The Chinese team’s single-chromosome strain grew even more slowly compared with normal yeast when its genome was doubled through mating, and it produced fewer spores.
> 
> Boeke and his colleagues observed defects when they tried to coax yeast strains with differing numbers of chromosomes to produce spores. This genetic incompatability could be used to prevent synthetic yeast, released into the environment from mating with wild strains, Boeke says. He also notes that the two-chromosome yeast might qualify as a distinct species because it can’t breed with normal yeast, despite having near-identical DNA.
> 
> Scientists tend to focus on the role of DNA-sequence changes in creating new species, but these studies suggest that natural chromosome fusions could also play a part, says Gianni Liti, a geneticist at the University of Cote d’Azur in Nice, France, who reviewed the papers and wrote an accompanying essay6.
> 
> William Noble, a computational biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, says that studying such strains could help to explain why nearly all eukaryotes apportion their DNA into multiple chromosomes. “Why bother?” he says. “If you only needed one, it would be the ‘Occam’s razor’ solution.
> 
> 
> 
> Entire yeast genome squeezed into one lone chromosome | Nature.com
> 
> Yangyang Shao, Ning Lu, Zhenfang Wu, Chen Cai, Shanshan Wang, Ling-Li Zhang, Fan Zhou, Shijun Xiao, Lin Liu, Xiaofei Zeng, Huajun Zheng, Chen Yang, Zhihu Zhao, Guoping Zhao, Jin-Qiu Zhou, Xiaoli Xue & Zhongjun Qin. *Creating a functional single-chromosome yeast*. _Nature _(2018). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0382-x​


​



*China "creates" world's first single-chromosome eukaryote*
New China TV
Published on Aug 2, 2018

Could humans create life that doesn't exist on Earth? Researchers in China's Shanghai have fused chromosomes to create a new yeast strain.


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese students set record in RoboSub win*
2018-08-06 16:31:43Ecns.cnEditor : Mo Hong'e
ECNS App Download



A student from Harbin Engineering University operates on the computer during the 21st International RoboSub Competition held in San Diego, the United States. (Photo provided to China News Service)

(ECNS) - A student team from Harbin Engineering University has won first place in the 21st International RoboSub Competition held in San Diego, the United States, setting a record among Chinese universities.

An EV team from the university is attending the contest for the 8th time since 2011. EV teams won 4th place, 5th place, 6th place and 4th place in 2012, 2013, 2016 and 2017 respectively.

RoboSub, an underwater robotics program, allows high school and college students from around the world to design and build an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) that navigates a series of tasks, mimicking ongoing research.

Since the competition started in 1998, all previous first-place winners were students from the United States or Canada.

The 2018 International RoboSub Competition ran from July 30 to Aug. 5 and was held at the U.S. Navy Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific's TRANSDEC facility in San Diego. It is organized by RoboNation with funding from the U.S. Office of Naval Research and hosted by the U.S. Navy’s SSC Pacific.

+++++
From slayerhuahua of cjdby.net


----------



## JSCh

*Dirac-source field-effect transistors as energy-efficient, high-performance electronic switches*

Chenguang Qiu1,
Fei Liu2,
Lin Xu1,
Bing Deng3,
Mengmeng Xiao1,
Jia Si1,
Li Lin3,
Zhiyong Zhang1,*,
Jian Wang2,
Hong Guo4,
Hailin Peng3,
Lian-Mao Peng1,*

↵*Corresponding author. Email: zyzhang@pku.edu.cn (Z.Z.); lmpeng@pku.edu.cn (L.-M.P.)
 Hide authors and affiliations

Science 27 Jul 2018:
Vol. 361, Issue 6400, pp. 387-392
DOI: 10.1126/science.aap9195

*Cooler electrons for transistors*
The operating power of field-effect transistors is constrained in part by the minimum change in voltage needed to change the current output. This subthreshold swing (SS) limit is caused by hotter electrons from a thermal electron source leaking over the potential of the gate electrode. Qiu _et al._ show that graphene can act as a Dirac source that creates a narrower distribution of electron energies. When coupled to a carbon nanotube channel, the decrease in SS would allow the supply voltage to be decreased from 0.7 to 0.5 volts.

_Science_, this issue p. 387

*Abstract*
An efficient way to reduce the power consumption of electronic devices is to lower the supply voltage, but this voltage is restricted by the thermionic limit of subthreshold swing (SS), 60 millivolts per decade, in field-effect transistors (FETs). We show that a graphene Dirac source (DS) with a much narrower electron density distribution around the Fermi level than that of conventional FETs can lower SS. A DS-FET with a carbon nanotube channel provided an average SS of 40 millivolts per decade over four decades of current at room temperature and high device current _I_60 of up to 40 microamperes per micrometer at 60 millivolts per decade. When compared with state-of-the-art silicon 14-nanometer node FETs, a similar on-state current _I_on is realized but at a much lower supply voltage of 0.5 volts (versus 0.7 volts for silicon) and a much steeper SS below 35 millivolts per decade in the off-state.


Dirac-source field-effect transistors as energy-efficient, high-performance electronic switches | Science


----------



## JSCh

*China Focus: Chinese scientists make nano "Trojan horse" to strangle tumors*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-09 12:28:31|Editor: mym




BEIJING, Aug. 9 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have folded DNA molecules in an origami-like process to make a nano "Trojan horse", which is thinner than 1/4000 of a hair and can release "killers" to fight cancer tumors.

Cancer cells need a lot of nutrition to multiply, but they don't produce nutrient substances, said lead researcher Nie Guangjun, of China's National Center for Nanoscience and Technology (NCNST).

All the blood, oxygen and energy are conveyed to cancer cells through blood vessels, so many scientists are trying to create blocks on the blood vessels feeding tumors.

Through precision control, researcher Ding Baoquan folded a single-strand DNA of a phage (a type of virus) into a rectangular sheet. Then he put four "killers" -- molecules of thrombin (a clotting enzyme in blood plasma) -- on the sheet and rolled them up.

At the interface, "locks" made by fragments of nucleolin protein DNA were installed, forming a tube-shaped nano "Trojan horse" or nanorobot, which is 90 nanometers long and has a diameter of 19 nanometers.

After injection, the "Trojan horse" travels in blood vessels and only tumors have the "key" to open the "locks." Once unlocked, the killer thrombin molecules are released, attracting platelets and fibrinogen protein to form a large thrombus, or clot, in the blood vessel within hours to cut off the blood supply and "starve" the tumor to death, Nie said.

The nanorobot can be cleared out of the body after it has finished its task.

Researchers have conducted controlled experiments on more than 200 mice with melanoma, breast cancer, ovarian cancer and primary lung cancer, and found the nanorobots are effective in strangling the tumors, Nie said.

In one experiment on eight mice with melanoma, the tumors in three mice totally disappeared. The average survival life of the mice was prolonged from 20.5 days to 45 days. No metastasis was found, according to Nie.

The incidence of malignant tumors has been rising in China in recent years, becoming a major health threat. Interventional embolization therapy has become the first therapeutic choice for patients with advanced liver cancer. About 600,000 to 800,000 Chinese with liver cancer receive interventional therapy every year.

However, patients face anesthetic risks in this therapy and doctors face exposure to X-ray radiation, so a safer, more effective and convenient treatment is a priority, and nanotechnology has opened new opportunities, Nie said.

The research began five years ago, when NCNST researchers first looked at cutting off the tumor blood supply by using DNA-based nano carriers.

Shi Quanwei, another member of the research team, said laboratory verification of the nanorobot idea has been completed, but industrial production and application of the nanorobot is still a long way off.

"We hope to attract investment to improve the production technique and enlarge the manufacturing scale of the nanorobot, and conduct further research on its effect and safety before application for clinical trials," Shi said.

"We need to make breakthroughs on technical bottlenecks, and hope to transform the basic research into practical therapy to benefit patients with tumors."

The research was recently selected as one of 30 winning projects at a contest of innovative future technologies in Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong Province. The contest encouraged young Chinese scientists to conceive groundbreaking technologies and trigger innovation.


----------



## JSCh

*SILKY SMOOTH —*
*Researchers insert a spider web gene into the silkworm*
*35 percent of the silkworm's cocoon is made of spider silk protein.*

JOHN TIMMER - 8/8/2018, 11:18 PM



Missouri Department of Conservation

Spider silk is a bit of a dream material, stronger than steel by some measures yet incredibly light and flexible. Obtaining spider silk, however, is a bit of a nightmare, as most spider species are both extremely territorial and prone to cannibalism. While we have managed to identify the genes that are needed to produce silk, inserting those into other species hasn't worked out especially well, since silk formation depends on fairly precise mixtures of several proteins, as well as how the spider extrudes the fiber.

A Chinese group is now reporting some progress in overcoming at least some of these challenges. Their trick was to insert the genes into a domesticated species that already makes something like spider silk—specifically, the species that gave us the term silk. The new bit of genetic engineering has resulted in a silkworm that produces a hybrid silkworm/spider material that's not as tough but is a bit stretchier than native spider silk.

*More than meets the eye*
If you've ever watched a spider spinning a web, silk production seems remarkably simple. But there's enough going on there to make a materials scientist dizzy. Most spiders make more than one kind of silk, as the properties that might make a good web might not be the same as the ones that would effectively arrest a fall after a spider has leapt off a tree branch. The differences come in part because silk is composed of multiple proteins, and some spiders have genes for different versions of these proteins. If they have some control over which starting materials go into their silk, a spider species can adjust its properties.

But starting materials aren't the only means to alter silk. The rate at which it's extruded by the spider controls factors like the thickness of the silk, its water content, and how quickly it undergoes any reactions with oxygen. All of these can also influence the properties of the silk.

So making useful silk isn't simply a matter of getting a single gene from a spider and sticking it in bacteria. The Chinese researchers decided to focus on finding a way to produce the silk in a spider-like environment, while avoiding the cannibalism issue. That led them to an insect we domesticated many centuries ago that also produces silk: the silkworm itself. While the original silk clearly has some different material properties than spider silk, there is some overlap, including a set of proteins with functional similarities.

They weren't the first ones to try this; earlier attempts had been made to put spider genes in the silkworm. But these were based on a simple insertion of the gene from spiders, which turned out not to make much protein. The little that was made (typically five percent of the total silk or less) was also mixed in with the equivalent protein from the silkworm.

*Editing in some spider*
To get around these issues, the researchers decided to use gene editing. They designed proteins that would cut the silkworm's chromosomes on either side of a gene that encodes a major silk protein. RNA encoding those proteins was injected into silkworm eggs, along with a DNA template that would allow the egg to repair the chromosome by inserting a spider silk gene instead. This put the spider gene under the control of the factors the silkworm normally uses to create silk proteins, which worked much better, as about 35 percent of the resulting silk was composed of the spider protein.

That's not as good as the gene it replaced, which is normally about double that percentage of the silk fibers. But the spider gene is much smaller, so this wasn't a direct one-to-one replacement of the gene. In fact, the researchers suspect that the silkworm had some trouble due to the differences between the spider protein and the one that it used to make, as the silk-producing glands had some defects in the engineered animals.

The silk itself was also slightly different, shrinking in diameter by about 16 percent. Its ability to withstand stress without breaking was down by a similar percentage. But there were some good features; the spider-silkworm hybrid silk could be stretched to about 1.5 times the length that normal silk could without breaking.

Overall, this appears to be a good first step. There are clear problems due to the mismatch between the spider protein and the silkworm version it replaces. It may be possible to engineer the spider protein to increase its size; a lot of its structure is composed of repeated variations of a string of amino acids, and it's possible that the number of repeats could be expanded without causing problems. Alternatively, we can engineer more of the spider proteins into their silkworm equivalents, gradually transitioning the whole silk into something more spider-like. Whether that would allow silkworms to form cocoons (the normal purpose of the silk) isn't clear, but that may not matter for the production of large amounts of spider silk.

_PNAS_, 2017. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1806805115 (About DOIs).



Researchers insert a spider web gene into the silkworm | Ars Technica


----------



## JSCh

*Medical researcher endured pain to help others*
By Zhou Wenting in Shanghai | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2018-08-08 17:37


















Wang Yiping. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]​
This spring, Wang Yiping, a Shanghai-based researcher who focused on new drug discoveries for 30 years, planned to fly to the United States in May to attend his daughter's university graduation.

The scientist, who in 2005 developed a new drug that has benefited 15 million coronary heart disease and angina patients in China and aspired to "invent drugs that are the first choice for doctors around the world", was found dead on April 11 in his office, near his lab, at the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Wang, who had been running non-stop against time in his dedication to benefiting millions of patients and had fought against tremendous pains and deteriorating health, died suddenly at 55.

Near him was a syringe for a pain killer that he often used, which he kept secret from most coworkers.

Wang was diagnosed with Crohn's disease, an incurable chronic bowel disease, at 30 and underwent a surgical operation to remove a 1-meter length of his small intestine. He constantly endured severe abdominal pain, bloody stools, and fainting. Water sometimes triggered diarrhea, so he drank as little as possible, which caused kidney stones.

Wang's wife, Fang Jie, said during the past four years, parents of most of their daughter's classmates had visited their children in the US multiple times, but they never made a trip because Wang devoted almost all of his time to the lab, even on weekends and holidays.

"He said he was just at the prime age for a scientist to churn out research results. He had heard the sound of the hourglass and said he aimed to produce two other new drugs within a decade. That was what he said one week before he passed away," Fang said.

Xuan Lijiang, Wang's research partner, said Wang's ambition was for his heart drug to benefit patients worldwide suffering from cardiovascular disease, one of the top causes of death in the world.

"We have plans to promote the drug overseas and its registration in Europe has started," Xuan said, adding that the drug is an injection based on traditional Chinese medicine techniques and is the first and sole new drug accredited by the China Food and Drug Administration as "a paragon of adapting TCM to modern medicine".

The drug, depside salts, derived from the roots of salvia miltiorrhiza (_danshen_, a popular TCM herb) received a warm response after its market debut. Li Shuijun, a doctor at Shanghai Xuhui District Central Hospital, said the supply of the drug in its initial years often could not be guaranteed due to high demand.

Xuan said Wang had been attempting for years to change the current formulation of the injection into an oral form so that patients could easily use the medication themselves at home.

The phase II clinical trial of another new drug developed by Wang to fight against arrhythmia, or irregular heartbeat, has been completed in China and is being carried out in the United States.

Li Jun, deputy Party director of the institute, recalled Wang said in March that he suffered from pain more frequently and hormone drugs used to treat him no longer seemed to work. He suggested Wang try biologics immediately as the only remaining treatment.

"He said it was the last thing he'd like to do. It was most likely that his body gained resistance to biologics, which meant there was no other solution for him to control the disease. So he would rather double the amount of hormone drugs to gain more time to develop the two ongoing new drugs in his lab," he said.


----------



## JSCh

*China plans large quake research facility in Tianjin University*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-09 18:14:52|Editor: Yurou




TIANJIN, Aug. 9 (Xinhua) -- Tianjin University has received approval from the National Development and Reform Commission to build a large-scale earthquake simulation engineering research facility.

The facility will be used to study the impact of earthquakes on large engineering projects on land and in the sea and explore solutions to improve their abilities to withstand the impacts, said Zhong Denghua, university president and lead scientist of the project.

The project covers 77,000 square meters with an estimated investment of 1.5 billion yuan (about 220 million U.S. dollars) and will take five years to build at the university's Beiyangyuan Campus.

The planned facility is bigger than existing ones, said Zhong.

There are a growing number of high-rise buildings, cross-sea bridges, large hydropower stations, super-long tunnels, offshore wind power plants and large nuclear power stations in China, all which have a high demand for anti-seismic research, said Xie Lili, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

Collapsing buildings have high casualty and asset losses during major quakes, so it is important to identify vulnerable parts of engineering structures and improve their ability to withstand the impacts of earthquakes, he said.


----------



## JSCh

*New efficiency record for organic photovoltaic cells*
August 10, 2018 by Bob Yirka, Tech Xplore




Credit: CC0 Public Domain​
A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in China has established a new efficiency record for organic photovoltaic cells. In their paper published in the journal _Science_, the group describes their approach and the efficiency they achieved.

Over the past several years, scientists have been trying to find a way to improve the efficiency of organic photovoltaic cells, but have been stymied by the charge characteristics of organic materials. Organic materials are not only cleaner, but offer other potential benefits such as allowing for lighter-weight cells—they would also be bendable, making them useful for more applications. But they have proven to be inefficient compared to non-organic cells—some have even suggested they may never improve beyond 15 percent. Those based on silicon, by comparison, are in the 18 to 22 percent range. In this new effort, the researchers in China claim to have found a way to build an organic photovoltaic cell that tested at 17.3 percent efficiency.

The researchers report that the key to their success was the use of models they developed to predict which materials would allow for multilayer use. Organic photovoltaic cells rely on the use of pairs of organic molecules—one to absorb light and release an electron and another to grab the released electron. Because of this arrangement, organic cells are made using tandem cells made with layers of different materials. The researchers suggest that past efforts to improve efficiency have not yielded desired results because of the poor choices of materials that were available for use. They suggest the way to improve efficiency is to seek out new materials that when layered allow for improved efficiency. And that is where their model comes into play.

The researchers report that their model is theory-based and works by including the characteristics of two materials—it looks at how well the two materials would work together in converting sunlight to electrical energy and produces a rating. They report also that they believe their approach will one day lead to the discovery of materials that will allow solar cells to reach 25 percent efficiency. One downside, however, is durability—the test cells used by the team began degrading after just 166 days of continuous use.



 *Explore further:* Printable solar cells a step closer with new design principles

*More information:* Lingxian Meng et al. Organic and solution-processed tandem solar cells with 17.3% efficiency, _Science_ (2018). DOI: 10.1126/science.aat2612


New efficiency record for organic photovoltaic cells | Tech Xplore


----------



## JSCh

SHU-HONG YU​*This synthetic wood is as strong as the real thing—and won’t catch fire*
By Robert F. Service
Aug. 10, 2018 , 2:00 PM

Plastic-wood composites have long been a favorite of homeowners looking to build decks and fences that don’t require sanding, staining, and painting. But these engineered woods typically aren’t as strong as natural wood and can be even more prone to catching fire. Now, researchers report they’ve created a synthetic wood (pictured) that matches natural wood’s strength and is flame resistant to boot.

One key to wood’s strength is a component called lignin, a natural polymer with a weblike structure that binds tiny crystallites of another component called cellulose together. The new composites replace lignin with a synthetic polymer version called resol, which has a similar weblike structure. Researchers used resol to bind a variety of different synthetic crystallites together into a family of different synthetic woods in which the color and other properties could be tailored by the crystallites added.

As the composites cure, they adopt a cell-like structure that looks like natural wood’s cellular structure. This helps the materials resist compression, lending them high strength. And because resol is fire retardant, the final composites don’t catch fire even when exposed to an open flame, the researchers report today in _Science Advances_.



This synthetic wood is as strong as the real thing—and won’t catch fire | Science | AAAS

----------###----------​
*Chinese researchers develop new way to make high-quality artificial wood*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-11 02:26:49|Editor: Mu Xuequan




WASHINGTON, Aug. 10 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists developed a new strategy for large-scale fabrication of bio-inspired artificial wood that manifested lightweight and high-strength properties with the mechanical strength comparable to that of natural wood.

A study published on Friday in the journal _Science Advances_ described the high-performance polymeric materials with wood-like cellular microstructures.

A research team led by Yu Shuhong from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) transformed traditional phenolic resin and melamine resin into the artificial wood-like materials by self-assembly and the thermocuring process.

Their strategy provided a new route to fabricate and engineer a wide range of high-performance biomimetic engineering composite materials with desirable multiple functions and advantages over the traditional counterparts, having broad potential applications in many technical fields.

The liquid thermoset resins were firstly "unidirectionally" frozen to prepare a "green body" with the cellular structure, followed by the subsequent thermocuring to get the artificial polymeric woods. They are highly controllable in the pore size and wall thickness.

Starting from aqueous solution, the strategy also represented a green approach to prepare multifunctional artificial woods by compositing various nanomaterials, such as cellulose nanofibers and graphene oxide, according to the study.

Compared with natural woods, the artificial woods have better corrosion resistance to water and acid with no decrease in mechanical properties. They also have better thermal insulation and fire retardancy.

The artificial polymeric woods stand out from other engineering materials such as cellular ceramic materials and aerogels in terms of specific strength and thermal insulation properties.

As a kind of biomimetic engineering materials, this new family of bio-inspired polymeric woods is supposed to replace the natural wood when used in harsh environments, Yu told Xinhua.


----------



## JSCh

*Nanoparticles Take Solar Desalination to New Heights*
*Tellurium nanoparticles could help absorb solar radiation or be integrated into sensors and tiny antennas*
By Dexter Johnson





Image: Science Advances​
For at least the last decade, “solar thermal” technologies, in which sunlight is used to convert water into steam that runs electric turbines or performs desalination, has been a kind of darling of the investment community. About six years ago, nanoparticles started to get into this solar-thermal game when Rice University researchers added some nanoparticles to cold water and were able to make steam when they exposed the combination to sunlight.

Since then, a lot of work in what is now termed photothermal conversion has turned to the field of plasmonics, which exploits the wave of electrons that is produced when photons strike a metallic surface. However, producing plasmonic nanostructures is certainly not as straightforward as just adding some nanoparticles to water.

Now, researchers in China have combined the ease of adding nanoparticles to water with plasmonics to create a photothermal conversion process that exceeds all plasmonic or all-dielectric nanoparticles previously reported.

Researchers at Sun Yat-sen University in China demonstrated in the journal _Science Advances_ what they claim is the first material that simultaneously has both plasmonic-like and all-dielectric properties when exposed to sunlight.

The key to achieving this combination is the use of tellurium (Te) nanoparticles, which have unique optical duality, according to G. W. Yang, professor at Sun Yat-sen University and coauthor of the research.

By dispersing these nanoparticles into water, the water evaporation rate is improved by a factor of three under solar radiation. This makes it possible to increase the water temperature from 29 degrees to 85 degrees Celsius within 100 seconds.



Image: Science Advances​Thermal images show the difference in solar radiation absorbed by a bare silicon wafer (left) and a Te nanoparticle (right).

“The Te nanoparticles perform like a plasmonic nanoparticle when it is smaller than 120 nanometers (nm) and then as a high-index all-dielectric nanoparticle when those nanoparticles are larger than 120 nm,” said Yang.

The Te nanoparticles are able to achieve this duality because they have a wide size distribution (from 10 to 300 nm). This enhanced absorption can cover the whole solar radiation spectrum.

Another property of the Te nanoparticle is that when it is excited by sunlight, the excitation energy is transferred entirely to the carriers (electrons and holes). This pushes the carriers out of equilibrium and into special states of momentum with higher temperatures.

Yang explains that as the system evolves toward equilibrium, these carriers relax. As the carriers scatter, it leads to a phenomenon known as Coulomb thermalization, which forms a hot gas of thermalized carriers that couple with phonons and transfer their excess energy to the lattice. This results in the efficient heating of the Te nanoparticles.

For this approach to work for commercial desalination, Yang acknowledges that the current method of producing the Te nanoparticles with nanosecond laser ablation in liquid is limited. “Now, we are trying to prepare the Te nanoparticles by other methods,” he added.

But because the Te nanoparticles have a unique optical duality, Yang envisions other applications for the technology. “We want to apply them in sensors or nanoantennas,” he said.


Nanoparticles Take Solar Desalination to New Heights - IEEE Spectrum


----------



## JSCh

*NEWS | *15 AUGUST 2018
*‘Green revolution’ crops bred to slash fertilizer use*
Researchers have identified a molecule that increases plant growth while reducing the need for nitrogen.

Jeremy Rehm

*



*
The green revolution created hardier rice that needs more fertilizer than older varieties.Credit: Anuwar Hazarika/Reuters​
A gene that enhances plants’ ability to absorb nitrogen could be used to breed high-yield varieties of rice, wheat and other staple crops that would need less fertilizer, researchers report on 15 August in _Nature_1. That could slash costs for farmers worldwide, and help to limit the environmental damage that occurs when nitrogen-rich water and soil wash from farm fields into rivers and oceans.

The research focused on crops bred during the ‘green revolution’ of the 1960s, a period when agricultural scientists boosted yields by breeding smaller, hardier versions of common crops. Farmers used these alongside improved irrigation methods, strong pesticides and efficient fertilizers. That sent the global harvest of cereal crops soaring from 741 million tonnes in 1961 to 1.62 billion in 1985.

But the latest study shows that there is still room for improvement, says Kathryn Barton, a plant scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California. “If you thought that these green-revolution varieties were it — that they’re the end of the line — you’re wrong, because there is more we can do,” she says.

That’s because modern crops have a weakness: they can’t absorb nitrogen as well as traditional crops can, so they need a lot of fertilizer to grow. In 2015 alone, the world’s farmers used roughly 104 million tonnes of nitrogen-rich fertilizer.

That practice is costly for farmers and harmful to the environment, says study co-author Xiangdong Fu, a plant geneticist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology in Beijing. When nitrogen-rich runoff from farm fields reaches rivers, lakes and oceans, it can feed massive algal blooms that consume oxygen and suffocate aquatic organisms. “That’s why we need to look for new varieties — ones that can produce high yields but with less fertilizer,” Fu says.

To do that, he and his colleagues examined the role of molecules called DELLA proteins that had been identified as the cause of green-revolution plants’ poor nitrogen absorption and short stature. In conventional crops, these proteins are destroyed by hormones that stimulate plant growth. But DELLA proteins flourish in green-revolution crops because the plants are immune to the hormones’ influence, or produce less of them.

*Protein vs protein*
Fu and his colleagues wanted to find a way to combat the accumulation of DELLA proteins. They began their search by comparing the DNA of 36 varieties of dwarf rice, and looking at the varieties’ ability to absorb nitrogen. The scientists identified two genes that control nitrogen consumption: one that codes for DELLA proteins, and another that codes for a protein called growth-regulating factor 4 (GRF4), which had been thought to increase only grain size and yield. Fu’s team found that GRF4 counteracts the effects of DELLA proteins by encouraging plants to absorb and metabolize nitrogen and carbon to support growth.

Then the researchers bred rice plants to produce a higher concentration of the GRF4 protein. The result was short plants with high yields that required less nitrogen than conventional green-revolution varieties.

The strategy is promising, says Jennifer Volk, an environmental-quality specialist at the University of Delaware in Dover. Farmers use several methods to lessen the environmental harms caused by excess nitrogen and other plant nutrients, such as constructing wetlands whose aquatic plants filter excess nitrogen and phosphorus from water before it drains to streams and rivers, she says. “Going this next step — making the crop more effective and efficient at taking those nutrients up — would tighten that system up even more,” Volk says.

But Anna Michalak, an environmental engineer at the Carnegie Institution who has studied the link between climate change and nutrient runoff in water systems, is more cautious about the implications of the study’s findings. “Whenever something seems like a win–win situation, I immediately think there’s something we haven’t thought of,” she says. “We’re never quite smart enough to anticipate what will happen.”

Nevertheless, Fu and his colleagues are in the middle of preparing a patent, and have already begun plant-breeding programmes in China. Fu anticipates that other parts of the world might see these new breeds of crop in five years.

doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-05980-7



‘Green revolution’ crops bred to slash fertilizer use | Nature.com

Shan Li, Yonghang Tian, Kun Wu, Yafeng Ye, Jianping Yu, Jianqing Zhang, Qian Liu, Mengyun Hu, Hui Li, Yiping Tong, Nicholas P. Harberd & Xiangdong Fu. *Modulating plant growth–metabolism coordination for sustainable agriculture*. _Nature _(2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0415-5​


----------



## JSCh

*NEWS AND VIEWS | *15 AUGUST 2018
*An immune response with a sweet tooth*
A previously unknown pathway that enables mammalian cells to recognize infection and trigger an immune response requires a kinase enzyme in the host cell to bind a sugar molecule produced by infecting bacteria.

John-Demian Sauer

Bacterial infections are a major cause of disease and death worldwide. The innate branch of the mammalian immune system, which recognizes and reacts to general characteristics of pathogenic organisms, has a key protective role. Writing in _Nature_, Zhou _et al_.1 describe a mechanism by which the innate immune system is activated in response to bacterial sugar molecules. This finding broadens our understanding of the types of molecule that can be recognized as hallmarks of bacterial infection and the host proteins that can recognize such molecules.


---> An immune response with a sweet tooth | Nature.com

Ping Zhou, Yang She, Na Dong, Peng Li, Huabin He, Alessio Borio, Qingcui Wu, Shan Lu, Xiaojun Ding, Yong Cao, Yue Xu, Wenqing Gao, Mengqiu Dong, Jingjin Ding, Da-Cheng Wang, Alla Zamyatina & Feng Shao. *Alpha-kinase 1 is a cytosolic innate immune receptor for bacterial ADP-heptose*. _Nature _(2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0433-3​


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese researchers develop world's first-ever 4D printing for ceramics*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-18 02:22:19|Editor: yan




WASHINGTON, Aug. 17 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers have developed the world's first-ever 4D printing for ceramics that are mechanically robust and can have complex shapes, offering broad potential applications in telecommunications, electronics and even space exploration.

Researchers at City University of Hong Kong reported in a study published on Friday in the journal _Science Advances_ a novel "ceramic ink," a mixture of polymers and ceramic nanoparticles.

The 3D-printed ceramic precursors printed with this novel ink are soft and can be stretched three times beyond their initial length, according to the study.

These flexible and stretchable ceramic precursors allow complex shapes, such as origami folding. With proper heat treatment, ceramics with complex shapes can be made, making them the 4D ceramics.

4D printing is conventional 3D printing combined with the additional element of time as the fourth dimension, where the printed objects can re-shape or self-assemble themselves over time with external stimuli, such as mechanical force, temperature, or a magnetic field.

The existing 3D-printed ceramic precursors, which are usually difficult to deform, also hinder the 4D printing of ceramics with complex shapes.

The researchers led by Lv Jian, chair professor of mechanical engineering, made use of the elastic energy stored in the stretched precursors for shape morphing.

When the stretched ceramic precursors are released, they undergo self-reshaping and after heat treatment, the precursors turn into ceramics.

The resultant elastomer-derived ceramics are mechanically robust. They can have a high compressive strength-to-density ratio and can come in large sizes with high strength compared to other printed ceramics.

"With the versatile shape-morphing capability of the printed ceramic precursors, its application can be huge," said Lv.

One promising application will be for electronic devices because ceramic materials have much better performance in transmitting electromagnetic signals than metallic materials. With the arrival of 5G networks, ceramic products will play a more important role in the manufacture of electronic products.

Also, the artistic nature of ceramics and their capability to form complex shapes also provide the potential for consumers to tailor-make uniquely designed ceramic mobile phone back plates.

Furthermore, this innovation can be applied in aero industry and space exploration. "Since ceramic is a mechanically robust material that can tolerate high temperatures, the 4D-printed ceramic has high potential to be used as a propulsion component in the aerospace field," said Lv.


----------



## JSCh

*Robot wars: China shows off automated doctors, teachers and combat stars*
19 Aug 2018



FP/File / WANG ZHAO
By 2020, China is aiming for half of the industrial robots sold in the country to be made by Chinese companies, up from 27 percent currently -- with a target of 70 percent by 2025

Robots that can diagnose diseases, play badminton and wow audiences with their musical skills are among the machines China hopes could revolutionise its economy, with visitors to a Beijing exhibition offered a glimpse of an automated future.

The popular stars of this year's World Robot Conference, which ends Sunday, were undoubtedly the small, amateur-made "battle bots" which smashed, hammered and sawed their way through their opponents to a cacophony of cheers and shouts from a rapt audience.

"With this robot, I can fully express myself. I love the sparks," said Huang Hongsong, one of around a dozen Chinese youths whose creations went head-to-head.

But while the battle bots are designed largely to entertain onlookers, China is deadly serious about riding the robotic wave with an eye on its economy.

Cheap manufacturing propelled the populous giant to become the world's second largest economy in just a few decades.

But the country's population is ageing, leaving it facing a double whammy of a worker shortage and increased labour costs as it gets wealthier.



AFP/File / WANG ZHAO
President Xi Jinping has called for a 'robot revolution' as China faces an ageing population and higher labour costs​
Automated machines offer a possible way out with President Xi Jinping in 2014 calling for a "robot revolution".

Under the ruling Communist Party's road map for its industrial future -- dubbed "Made in China 2025" -- state subsidies are pouring into the sector.

And at the robot show, a vast array of machines demonstrated how technology may eventually replace human workers.

In one corner, a mechanical arm -- designed to teach children -- painted an elegant Chinese character while a robotic fish explored its tank and a bat flapped its mechanical wings overhead.



AFP/File / WANG ZHAO
Under the ruling Communist Party's road map for its industrial future, state subsidies are pouring into the robotics sector

- Delicate balance -

By 2020, China is aiming for half of the industrial robots sold in the country to be made by Chinese companies, up from 27 percent currently -- with a target of 70 percent by 2025.

"Robots are the jewel in the crown for the manufacturing industry... a new frontier for our industrial revolution," said Xin Guobin, China's vice minister of industry, as he opened the conference.

But it is a delicate balancing act for Chinese policy-makers due to the potential for human job losses -- a 2016 World Bank report said automation could threaten up to 77 percent of jobs in China's current labour market.

Nonetheless a great robotic leap forward has already been made.

China is now the world's number one market for industrial robots with some 141,000 units sold last year, accounting for a third of global demand, according to the International Federation of Robotics, which says demand could rise an additional 20 percent per year until 2020.

"China has huge opportunities to increase the level of its industrial automation (and) industrial robotisation," said Karel Eloot, an expert at consultancy firm McKinsey.

He notes that China still has huge room for growth given that competitors like Japan and Germany have four times the level of robotisation in their factories compared to the Asian giant.

Qu Daokui, president of local firm Siasun, which was showing off a snake-like robot that can operate in narrow passages, said China needs to increase the quality and sophistication of its robots, particularly in the field of AI.

"We used to focus on the accuracy, reliability and speed of robots -- now it's their flexibility, intelligence and adaptability that makes the difference," he said, adding robots needed to interact and adapt to their environments and "make independent decisions".



AFP/File / WANG ZHAO
Outside China's factories, robots are becoming a more visible presence, deployed in restaurants and banks and even delivering parcels

- Doctor Bot -

Outside China's factories, robots are becoming a more visible presence, deployed in restaurants and banks and even delivering parcels.

China's iFlytek, a specialist in speech recognition systems, presented a new "medical assistant" robot at the Beijing show which it said was able to help identify up to 150 diseases and ailments -- even passing a national medical qualification exam with a high score.

The robot, which operated in conjunction with a doctor, asks patients a series of diagnostic questions and can also analyse X-rays.

"It's already being used in hospitals since March and has made some 4,000 diagnoses," company president Liu Qingfeng said, adding such a device could be particularly useful for clinics in more remote parts of China.

Chindex, a subsidiary of the conglomerate Fosun, also distributes the "Da Vinci System" in China, an American built robot with arms and high-tech cameras to aid surgeons in the operating theatre.

"It transcends the limits of the (human) eye," chief operating officer Liu Yu enthused.

But like the diagnostic robot, it still needs a helping human hand.

"It only helps the doctor, it cannot replace them. It would not be ethical, the human body is still too complicated," he said.


Robot wars: China shows off automated doctors, teachers and combat stars | AFP.com


----------



## JSCh



Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists map out bread wheat genome*
By Guo Kai | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2018-08-20 11:04















Monks from the Shaolin Temple harvest wheat at a farm in Dengfeng, Henan province, June 21, 2018. [Photo/China News Service]

An international research team has recently completed the first sequence of the hexaploid bread wheat genome and published the results on _Science _magazine, and Chinese scientists joined in the research on the chromosome 7DL.

Compared to other crops, deciphering wheat genome is more complicated, since the high-repetitive hexaploid wheat genome is five times as large as human genome and 40 times of rice genome.

The International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium separated the 21 chromosomes of bread wheat Chinese Spring in 2005 and established relative bacterial artificial chromosome libraries for teams to shoulder relative work.

The Chinese team led by Song Weining, professor from the State Key Laboratory of Crop Stress Biology for Arid Areas in NWAFU, shouldered the work to decipher, assemble and order the chromosome 7DL.

Song said that it is a brand-new exploration in the construction of the wheat genomic physical mapping and deciphering, and the size of chromosome 7DL is as large as the whole rice genome.

The workload was much heavier than rice genome sequencing, but under support from the government and other relative programs, the team finally finished the mapping and sequence deciphering work in about 10 years, he said.

The mapping will give researchers the codes in better mastering the rule of wheat growth and development and is significant for selective breeding.


----------



## JSCh

*First in China! Waterproof electrical socket unveiled*
New China TV
Published on Aug 20, 2018

What happens if you drop an electrical socket on a live circuit into water? This one, invented by Chinese engineers, will turn the common sense on its head. Find out in this video. Don't blink!


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> * Reflecting on success *
> Source:Xinhua Published: 2016-4-28 1:03:01
> 
> 
> 
> Engineers at the Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences surround their newly developed silicon carbide mirror, which has a diameter of 4.03 meters. The larger the mirror, the higher the resolution and the greater the light-gathering power of the telescope or satellite in which it is used. Photo: Xinhua


我国研制出4米大口径碳化硅非球面光学反射镜_图片频道_新华网
这是8月21日拍摄的4米量级高精度碳化硅非球面反射镜。
This is a picture of the 4 meter high precision silicon carbide aspheric mirror shot on August 21.

　　当日，探索9年、经18个月加工“打磨”，一块直径4米、重达1.6吨的“大镜子”在中国科学院长春光学精密机械与物理研究所通过项目验收。这是国家重大科研装备研制项目“4米量级高精度碳化硅非球面反射镜集成制造系统”的最新成果，标志着我国大口径碳化硅非球面光学反射镜制造技术水平已经跻身国际先进行列。
On that same day, after 9 years of exploration and 18 months of processing, the “big mirror” with a diameter of 4 meters and a weight of 1.6 tons was approved by the Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. This is the latest achievement of the national major scientific research equipment development project "4-meter-scale high-precision silicon carbide aspheric mirror integrated manufacturing system", which indicates that China's large-diameter silicon carbide aspheric optical mirror manufacturing technology has now ranked best in the world.

*China develops large aperture optical mirror with high accuracy*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-22 16:29:32|Editor: ZX




CHANGCHUN, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- China has developed a high accuracy four-meter-aperture optical mirror, an important tool for deep space and astronomical observation.

Developed by Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics, and Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the silicon carbide aspheric optical mirror measures 1.6 tonnes.

The silicon carbide used in production provides more stability to the surface of the mirror, allowing for greater accuracy at 20 nanometers.

In addition to the mirror, the research group also developed the manufacturing equipment used for the mirror's production and owns the IP rights for the equipment.














4米量级反应烧结炉




4米量级大型磁控溅射镀膜机




采用磁流变抛光加工4米反射镜



​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

PHYSICS
*'Spooky' Quantum Entanglement Confirmed Using Distant Quasars*
Ryan F. Mandelbaum
Yesterday 5:10pm



A quasar
Image: NASA

If you read enough science news, you’ll know that there’s a long list of experiments attempting to “prove Einstein wrong.” None have yet contradicted his hallmark theory of relativity. But the latest effort to falsify his statements surrounding “spooky action at a distance” has gone truly cosmic.

Scientists have long performed tests demonstrating that the quantum concept of “entanglement” forces us to accept something that doesn’t make much logical sense. But in order to get around loopholes in previous iterations of the test, which are conducted fully here on Earth, scientists lately have hooked their experiments up to telescopes observing the cosmos.

“We’ve outsourced randomness to the furthest quarters of the universe, tens of billions of light years away,” David Kaiser, one of the study’s authors from MIT, told Gizmodo.

Let’s start at the beginning: Quantum mechanics describes the universe’s smallest particles as having a restricted set of innate properties, which are mostly a mystery to us humans until we measure them. The math of quantum mechanics introduces the idea that two particles can become “entangled,” so their joint properties must be described with the same mathematical machinery. But here’s the problem: If you separate these particles to opposite ends of the universe and measure them, they’ll maintain this eerie connection; you can still infer the properties of one particle by measuring the other.

Einstein, along with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, thought that one of two things could cause this “spooky action at a distance,” as Einstein described it. Either the particles somehow communicate faster than the speed of light, which Einstein’s theories demonstrated is impossible, or there was hidden information humans weren’t accessing that ensured particles took on these correlated values in the first place.

But John Stewart Bell theorized that hidden information could never accurately recreate what quantum mechanics forces the particles to do. Scientists have devised increasingly complex ways to test this theory since the 1960s.

These tests usually look rather similar. Scientists generate pairs of entangled photons, each with one of two polarization states—imagine that, viewed from a certain angle, both photons are either small vertical lines or horizontal lines. The photons, if entangled, will have the same polarization state—though which one, horizontal or vertical, is a mystery until the measurement. The scientists send the photons to two distant detectors that measure the photons from two angles: the angle from which the polarization and entanglement are visible, or a different angle (if the photons are viewed from this different angle, they become unentangled). Each detector lies in wait for the particles—which, if everything lines up, will produce a simultaneous blip. These simultaneous blips should occur more frequently for sets of entangled particles than sets of unentangled ones.

Some percentage of simultaneous blips above a certain threshold would prove Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen wrong—it would demonstrate that there are no hidden variables in the laws of physics predetermining the particles’ identities.

But there’s a loophole—perhaps the apparatus influences the measurement, somehow, and forces the photons to carry the same polarization? In order to prevent this, scientists randomly switch the detector between the two measurement angles. Then comes the next loophole: What if the random-number generator determining the measurement angle isn’t really random; what if what we see as randomness has actually been predetermined by the laws of physics that brought humans to this point?

Two teams of scientists got around this problem by hooking their random-number generator up to a pair of telescopes. In the more dramatic case, the team including Kaiser worked from two telescopes on La Palma in the Canary Islands: the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo, pointing at bright light sources called quasars on one side of the sky that emitted their light 7.78 billion and 3.22 billion years ago, and the William Herschel Telescope, pointing to a light source that emitted light 12.21 billion years ago. If each telescope observed light that was slightly bluer than a reference color, its corresponding detector would measure the light’s polarization in one setting. If the light was slightly redder, then the detector would use the other setting.

In a test of 30,000 pairs of particles, their polarizations correlated too closely to be explained by one of these local hidden variable theories, according to the paper published in Physical Review Letters. That means that any hidden force that could have influenced both particles would have needed to happen billions of years ago to somehow influence the way scientists measured these particles here on Earth. Or, the more likely explanation is that quantum mechanics remains spooky at a distance and can’t be explained by hidden variables. It appears that Einstein was wrong about this one.

The researchers took care to account for astronomical things that might have biased their measurements. For example, they chose a color of light to measure that wouldn’t be absorbed by interstellar gas, and they ensured that they took gravity and the universe’s expansion into account, explained Kaiser. The second, similar experiment, also published in Physical Review Letters, also observed the higher-than-classical correlations, bolstering both papers’ evidence.

Quantum mechanics’ weirdness continues to boggle minds. This weirdness is at the heart of the emerging field of quantum computers, which rely on entanglement in order to perform their calculations. Said Kaiser: “These devices are built on the assumption that entanglement is real.”

Scientists can perhaps further refine these tests by using of light from even deeper into the universe.

It’s the job of physicists to test the laws of physics and ensure that they continue not to break. I hope by now it’s become utterly clear: In quantum physics, spookiness is a given.



'Spooky' Quantum Entanglement Confirmed Using Distant Quasars | GIZMODO


Dominik Rauch, Johannes Handsteiner, Armin Hochrainer, Jason Gallicchio, Andrew S. Friedman, Calvin Leung, Bo Liu, Lukas Bulla, Sebastian Ecker, Fabian Steinlechner, Rupert Ursin, Beili Hu, David Leon, Chris Benn, Adriano Ghedina, Massimo Cecconi, Alan H. Guth, David I. Kaiser, Thomas Scheidl, and Anton Zeilinger. *Cosmic Bell Test Using Random Measurement Settings from High-Redshift Quasars*. _Phys. Rev. Lett._ (2018). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.080403
Ming-Han Li, Cheng Wu, Yanbao Zhang, Wen-Zhao Liu, Bing Bai, Yang Liu, Weijun Zhang, Qi Zhao, Hao Li, Zhen Wang, Lixing You, W. J. Munro, Juan Yin, Jun Zhang, Cheng-Zhi Peng, Xiongfeng Ma, Qiang Zhang, Jingyun Fan, and Jian-Wei Pan. *Test of Local Realism into the Past without Detection and Locality Loopholes*. _Phys. Rev. Lett. _(2018). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.080404


----------



## JSCh

*iHuman Team at ShanghaiTech University Deciphers the First Human Frizzled Receptor Structure*

*Aug 23, 2018 -* The Xu Laboratory at the iHuman Institute of ShanghaiTech University has deciphered the high-resolution crystal structure of the first human Frizzled receptor. As a gatekeeping protein in regulating the fundamental Wnt signaling in embryonic development and tumorigenesis, the Frizzled receptors (FZDs) have been cancer drug targets for decades without success. However, these results, which illustrate the unique architecture of Frizzled-4 in ligand-free state and explain the long-standing hurdle of identifying potent ligand for this family of receptors, will benefit basic and therapeutic research that could lead to important new drug discoveries. These new findings are published today in the advanced online edition of the journal _Nature_, titled *“Crystal structure of Frizzled 4 receptor in ligand-free state”* by Yang et al.

“In order to understand why no one has been able to develop good tool ligands or drug molecules for FZDs and to tackle the mystery of FZD signaling, we solved the intact transmembrane domain structure of Frizzled4 receptor (FZD4) at 2.4 angstrom resolution,” said Fei Xu, Assistant Professor at iHuman Institute and the School of Life Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University, and corresponding author of the study.

Surprising to the authors was the observation that the traditional orthosteric ligand binding site is very narrow making it hard for small molecules to enter or bind. “These findings improve our understanding of the FZD ligand and signaling, and show that ligand design for this pocket may require special considerations that could be inspired by this crystal structure,” said Fei Xu.

“To generate a more stable human FZD4 protein amenable for structure determination in the absence of a ligand (apo state), the team spent four years and screened hundreds of constructs, optimized purification procedures, and tried thousands of possible crystallization methods,” said Shifan Yang, postdoctoral fellow at iHuman Institute, and first author of the paper. “It turns out to be extremely challenging to obtain diffraction-quality crystals, likely due to the lack of a tool ligand to lock the flexible region in the protein.”

With further optimization of protein engineering, purification, and crystallization conditions, the team finally solved the structure of FZD4 in the apo state, which is the first structure of the Frizzled family GPCRs and the first apo structure of a ligand-regulated GPCR.

“For close personal reasons, I chose FZD4 four years ago when I started my postdoctoral career. It is an amazing protein, as it is not only a target for eye blindness given its critical role in retinal angiogenesis, but also a unique representative for us to understand other FZDs which are emerging cancer drug targets,” said Shifan Yang.

“The orthosteric ligand binding pocket is very unique in FZD4 and other FZDs,” said Yiran Wu, Research Assistant Professor at iHuman Institute, and second author of this paper. “It is not only narrow, but also highly hydrophilic making traditional GPCR ligands difficult to bind tightly.”

In addition to the discovery of a vacant pocket, this work also reveals an unusual packing in transmembrane helix VII and the short helix8, providing new insight into a potential activation mechanism of this family of receptors. “Such a remarkable structure provides a more accurate template to redirect the efforts on Frizzled drug discovery”, said Raymond Stevens, Director of iHuman Institute, ShanghaiTech University.

Other key co-authors of this paper are: Shaowei Dong, Yuxiang Chen, Yu Guo, Suwen Zhao, Bingjie Zhang, Wenqing Shui, and Mengchen Pu from ShanghaiTech University; Ting-Hai Xu, Parker W. de Waal, Yuanzheng He, Zachary J DeBruine, Eric Xu, and Karsten Melcher from the Van Andel Research Institute; and Gye Won Han, Petr Popov, and Vsevolod Katritch from the University of Southern California. Financial support for this work comes, in part, from the Shanghai Municipal Government, ShanghaiTech University, and an NSF of China grant.

Full text link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0447-x



Overall structure of Frizzled4 and highlight of the orthosteric pocket. a, Side view of ΔCRD-FZD4 with transmembrane domain shown as cartoon and coloured in white. The extracellular side (hinge domain (green), ECL1 (red), ECL2 (blue) and ECL3 (orange)) pack together to form a compact structure. b, Residues engaged in the orthosteric pocket are shown as spheres coloured in magenta. The cyan region highlights the narrow part of this pocket.





​Dr. Fei Xu, corresponding author of the study.





​Artistic illustration of the Frizzled4 protein structure surfacing on the retina of an eyeball. It demonstrates the functional role of Frizlzled4 in retinal angiogenesis and in maintaining the integrity of the blood-retinal barrier. Image created by Julie Liu.



iHuman Team at ShanghaiTech University Deciphers the First Human Frizzled Receptor Structure | iHuman Institute


----------



## JSCh

*NEWS AND VIEWS | *22 AUGUST 2018
*Role for the longevity protein SIRT6 in primate development*
Monkeys genetically engineered to lack the gene SIRT6 die a few hours after birth, displaying severe growth defects. This finding reveals a previously unknown role for the SIRT6 protein in primate development.

*Shoshana Naiman & **Haim Y. Cohen
*
For decades, biologists using model organisms such as mice and fruit flies have faced concerns about the relevance of their findings to humans. Using a model that is more evolutionarily similar to humans, such as another primate, could potentially close this frustrating gap. In a paper online in _Nature_, Zhang _et al._1 use CRISPR–Cas9 gene-editing techniques to generate macaque monkeys lacking the gene _SIRT6_. Strikingly, they show that the SIRT6 protein has a role in embryonic development in macaques that was not previously uncovered in mice.



*--->* Role for the longevity protein SIRT6 in primate development | Nature.com

Weiqi Zhang, Haifeng Wan, Guihai Feng, Jing Qu, Jiaqiang Wang, Yaobin Jing, Ruotong Ren, Zunpeng Liu, Linlin Zhang, Zhiguo Chen, Shuyan Wang, Yong Zhao, Zhaoxia Wang, Yun Yuan, Qi Zhou, Wei Li, Guang-Hui Liu & Baoyang Hu. *SIRT6 deficiency results in developmental retardation in cynomolgus monkeys*. _Nature _(2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0437-z​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*China Focus: Scientists find key gene related to primates' growth, lifespan*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-23 11:03:42|Editor: mmm




BEIJING, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have identified a gene playing an important role in regulating the development and lifespan of primates through genome-editing technology and experiments on monkeys and human stem cells.

The study may open the door to new research on human development and aging, as well as new treatments for age-related disorders, said Liu Guanghui, a professor at the Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

Understanding the genetic basis of aging is the prerequisite to delaying aging and treating age-related illnesses, Liu said.

In 1999, scientists found that the Sir2 gene plays a role in prolonging the lifespan of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a kind of yeast. Then scientists found that the SIRT6 gene, a homologue of Sir2, is involved in the regulation of aging and longevity in rodents.

Deficiency of SIRT6 from mice leads to features of accelerated aging such as loss of subcutaneous fat, spinal curvature, colitis and shortening of telomere.

However, the biological function of SIRT6 in primates remains largely unknown.

A joint research team of scientists from the CAS biophysics and zoology institutes spent three years studying how to knockout SIRT6 gene in different tissues of monkeys using CRISPR-Cas9-based gene editing technology.

Scientists injected the gene editing tools into 98 monkey zygotes, of which 48 developed into embryos with normal form and were implanted into 12 surrogate mother monkeys. Four became pregnant, giving birth to three baby monkeys 165 days later and one aborted.

They were the first primates that were deficient in SIRT6 gene. However, different from SIRT6 deficient mice that show premature aging phenomena about two to three weeks after birth, SIRT6-depleted monkeys died within hours after birth. Notably, they exhibited severe prenatal developmental retardation.

"Our results for the first time suggest that SIRT6 is involved in regulating development in non-human primates, and might provide an insight into the research of human developmental disorders," Liu said.

In addition, Chinese scientists conducted in vitro experiments to generate SIRT6-null human embryonic stem cells. This showed that SIRT6 deficiency hindered the differentiation of stem cells to mature neurons.

Their study was published in the latest issue of _Nature_.

"In future research, we plan to test whether other longevity genes also play a similar role in monkey, and continue our research to unravel the mechanism of human aging," Liu said.


----------



## JSCh

*NEWS | *22 AUGUST 2018
*230-million-year-old turtle fossil deepens mystery of reptile's origins*
Two-metre-long specimen could help researchers pin down how and when turtles developed traits such as their shell.

*Jeremy Rehm*



An artist’s impression of _Eorhynchochelys sinensis_, a turtle ancestor that lived about 230 million years ago. Credit: Yu Chen

A fossilized turtle discovered in southwestern China fills an evolutionary hole in how the reptiles developed features such as a beak and shell, researchers report1 on 22 August in _Nature_. Although the specimen can help scientists to pin down when modern turtles developed such characteristics, it’s also muddied the waters when it comes to illuminating the group’s origins.

The roughly 2-metre-long animal, dubbed _Eorhynchochelyssinensis_, lived about 230 million years ago. Its skull is similar to those of modern turtles, whereas the rest of the animal’s skeleton is more like that of a predecessor that lived 10 million years before.

This new species fits almost perfectly in the evolutionary picture that researchers conceived of years before regarding how turtles acquired their signature features, says Rainer Schoch, an amphibian and reptile palaeontologist at the Stuttgart State Museum of Natural History in Germany. “We’re really happy to see this.”

*Filling in the gaps*
Turtles haven’t changed much over the past 210 million years. They all have a top shell formed from the fusion of their spine and ribs, a bottom shell that protects their belly, a sharp beak and a mouth without any teeth. But the group lacks a feature common to most modern reptiles — two pairs of holes in their skull, behind their eyes, where jaw muscles attached.

The absence of those holes has contributed to a decades-long debate on the exact position of turtles on the reptile family tree. And this has compounded researchers’ struggle to work out when and how turtle characteristics first evolved.

A specimen discovered in 2008, called _Odontochelys semitestacea_, offered the first clues2. The roughly 220-million-year-old animal possessed teeth and a bottom shell, and its wide ribs hinted at the beginnings of a top shell. But it lacked a beak and the pairs of holes in its skull.

Then, in 2015, scientists found _Pappochelys rosinae_, a 240-million-year-old specimen that was missing a top shell, but showed the first signs of a bottom shell3. Unlike modern turtles, _P._ _rosinae_ had two pairs of openings in its skull, indicating for the first time that turtles were closely related to other modern reptiles.

Now, the discovery of _Eorhynchochelys_ fills in the gap between these two species. The fossil turtle possesses a single pair of holes behind its eyes, suggesting a gradual transition from _Pappochelys_ to modern turtles.



_Eorhynchochelys_, the latest fossilized-turtle discovery, was more than 2 metres long.Credit: Xiao-Chun Wu

But the presence of a beak on the _Eorhynchochelys_ skeleton is what really intrigued study co-author Xiao-Chun Wu, a palaeontologist at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa. It’s a trait that researchers hadn’t seen in early turtle fossils until now, and that seems to have disappeared in some species and reappeared in others millions of years later. This suggests that the evolution of a beak in modern turtles was not a straight path, Wu says.

*Family ties*
But even though _Eorhynchochelys_ helps to demonstrate the acquisition of turtle traits, Schoch says, it’s not so informative about their place on the evolutionary tree.

Most genetic studies over the past 20 years have positioned crocodilians, dinosaurs and modern birds as the turtles’ closest evolutionary relatives. But some studies looking at DNA or RNA, as well as analyses of turtle anatomy, have pointed to lizards and snakes as the group’s closest relatives.

After including _Eorhynchochelys_’s physical characteristics in an analysis with those of other fossilized reptiles, however, Wu and his colleagues say that turtles aren’t as closely related to any of those groups as other research suggests. They’re more of an offshoot from earlier ancestors, Wu says.

Schoch is sceptical of this claim, however, saying that researchers don’t know enough about the anatomy of early reptilian ancestors to know for sure where turtles fall.

We just need to find out more about those early ancestors, Schoch says. “That is now the big problem and the next step that will have to be taken.”



230-million-year-old turtle fossil deepens mystery of reptile's origins | Nature.com

Chun Li, Nicholas C. Fraser, Olivier Rieppel, Xiao-Chun Wu. *A Triassic stem turtle with an edentulous beak*. _Nature _(2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0419-1​


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *Spallation neutron source passes assessment, checks*
> chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2018-03-26 10:12
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A spectrometer detector at the spallation neutron source in Dongguan, South China's Guangdong province. [Photo/chinanews.com]
> 
> The Institute of High Energy Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences said Sunday China's spallation neutron source, one of the country's most important scientific facilities in Dongguan, South China's Guangdong province, has passed assessment and checks by the CAS.
> 
> The spallation neutron source is the first of its kind in the country and the fourth worldwide and will provide intense pulsed neutron beams for scientific research. It is a significant step in the country solving problems on the frontier of science.
> 
> Construction for the SNS started in September 2011, and total investment has reached 2.3 billion yuan ($364.4 million).
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ​


*China’s first spallation neutron source goes into operation*
By Guo Meiping
2018-08-24 11:56 GMT+8



China's first spallation neutron source (SNS) has officially begun operating on Thursday, making the country the fourth in the world to possess such a facility.

The China Spallation Neutron Source, or CSNS, is considered a “super microscope” that can provide the most intense pulsed neutron beams for scientific research.

The equipment can accelerate protons before smashing them into a target to produce neutrons. The neutrons are then sent to numerous instruments that are used by researchers to study materials.

The “super microscope” is ideal for studying the microstructure of materials, said Chen Hesheng, manager of the CSNS project.

Chen added that the CSNS can be used for researching residual stress of large metal parts, which is vital for improving the performances of key parts of high-speed trains, aircraft engines, and nuclear power plants.



An aerial view of the CSNS. /VCG Photo

The CSNS consists of a powerful linear proton accelerator, a rapid circling synchrotron, a target station and three neutron instruments.

More than 90 percent of the equipment was based on independent research and development and can be domestically produced.

Construction of the CSNS project in China started in 2011 in Dongguan City, south China's Guangdong Province, with a total investment of around 2.3 billion yuan (364 million US dollars).

As one of the largest science and technology infrastructure projects in China, the equipment is expected to have positive effects in promoting the sciences, high-tech development, and national security.

[Top image via VCG]

(With input from Xinhua.)

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Aging Connection*
Study identifies molecular link between aging and neurodegeneration

By KEVIN JIANG August 23, 2018 Research




For decades researchers have worked to shed light on the causes of neurodegenerative disorders, a group of devastating conditions, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, that involve the progressive loss of neurons and nervous system function. In recent years, numerous factors, from genetic mutations to viral infections, have been found to contribute to the development of these diseases.

Yet age remains the primary risk factor for almost all neurodegenerative disorders. A precise understanding of the links between aging and neurodegeneration has remained elusive, but research from Harvard Medical School now provides new clues.

Get more HMS news here

In a study published in _Cell_ on Aug. 23, the research team describes the discovery of a molecular link between aging and a major genetic cause of both amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD), two related neurodegenerative diseases with shared genetic risk factors.

The findings, the researchers said, reveal possible new targets for treatment of these and other neurodegenerative diseases.

“Our study provides the first description of a molecular event that connects aging with neurodegeneration,” said senior study author Junying Yuan, the HMS Elizabeth D. Hay Professor of Cell Biology. “These insights are a critical step towards understanding the mechanisms by which aging predisposes individuals to neurodegeneration.”

The results also highlight the need for a better understanding of the biology of neurodegenerative diseases in the context of aging.

“Laboratory models of neurodegenerative diseases often have a missing element, and that is the contribution of age,” Yuan said. “We have to understand better the process in its totality, not just its isolated components, to better guide clinical trials and improve our chances of finding effective treatments for these devastating diseases.”

*RIP rescue*

Also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, ALS is a progressive, incurable condition marked by the gradual death of motor neurons. It shares some clinical and genetic features with FTD, which is marked by an early and rapid onset of dementia.

Around one in 10 patients with both diseases carry genetic mutations that cause the partial dysfunction of a protein known as TBK1. Previous studies, including by Yuan and colleagues, have shown that TBK1 is involved in a form of programmed cell death and in neuroinflammation, a hallmark of neurodegenerative disorders. How TBK1 contributes to the development of ALS and FTD, however, was unclear.

In the current study, Yuan and colleagues modeled the reduced levels of TBK1 found in ALS and FTD patients by creating mice that had only one functional copy of the gene that produces TBK1. These mice were healthy and similar in appearance to normal mice. In contrast, those that lacked the gene entirely died before birth.

However, the team found that mice without TBK1 could be fully rescued—surviving birth and becoming healthy adults—by blocking the activity of RIPK1, another protein known to play a central role in programmed cell death, neuroinflammation and neurodegenerative disease. Further analyses revealed that TBK1 normally functions to inhibit the activity of RIPK1 during embryonic development.

This discovery prompted the researchers to investigate another protein, called TAK1, previously known to also inhibit RIPK1 function. When they looked at data on TAK1 expression in human brains, the scientists found that TAK1 expression declines significantly with age. In the brains of patients with ALS, TAK1 expression was further reduced compared with the brains of similarly aged people without ALS.

*Brake it down*

To model the interaction between partial loss of TBK1 and TAK1 with aging, the team created mice that expressed half the usual amount of TBK1. The mice also expressed half the usual amount of TAK1 in their microglia, the immune cells of the brain where TAK1 is normally most active. 

With reductions in both TBK1 and TAK1, these mice displayed traits associated with ALS and FTD, including motor deficits, hind limb weakness, anxiety-like behavior in new environments and changes in brain chemistry. The mice had a reduction in the number of neurons in the brain, and increased motor neuron dysfunction and cell death.

When the team inhibited RIPK1 activity independently of TBK1 and TAK1, they observed a reversal in symptoms.

Like a pair of brakes on a bicycle, TAK1 and TBK1 appear to work together to suppress the activity of RIPK1, and even if one brake fails, the other can compensate, the researchers said. But if both begin to fail, RIPK1 activity increases, leading to cell death and neuroinflammation.

This may be why individuals with TBK1 mutations do not develop ALS and FTD until they become older, when TAK1 levels decline with age, Yuan said.

Several clinical trials are underway to test the safety and efficacy of drugs that block RIPK1 activity in neurodegenerative and chronic inflammatory diseases, and these findings support the rationale for those trials, Yuan added.

“I think the next couple of years will reveal whether RIPK1 inhibitors can help ALS and FTD patients,” she said. “I think our study makes us more confident those efforts might work.”

Despite numerous large-scale clinical trials, however, no effective therapeutics have yet been developed for neurodegenerative diseases. This research now establishes a model of study that incorporates both aging and genetic risk for ALS and FTD, which may have broad implications.

“Many trials have been launched based on data from studies in mice, but how can a two-year-old mouse, for example, fully reflect what happens in an 80-year-old patient with Alzheimer’s?” Yuan said. “We need to develop new thinking on how to model these diseases to incorporate the element of aging, and we think this study is an important step toward that goal.”

The scientists are currently investigating why TAK1 levels decline with age and its potential role in other neurodegenerative diseases.

Additional authors on the study include Daichao Xu, Taijie Jin, Hong Zhu, Hongbo Chen, Dimitry Ofengeim, Chengyu Zou, Lauren Mifflin, Lifeng Pan, Palak Amin, Wanjin Li, Bing Shan, Masanori Gomi Naito, Huyan Meng, Ying Li, Heling Pan, Liviu Aron, Xian Adiconis, Joshua Z. Levin and Bruce A. Yankner.

The study was supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the National Institute on Aging and the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health (1R01NS082257, 1R01AG047231, RF1AG055521, RO1AG046174, RO1MH113279), the National Key R&D Program of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Image: wildpixel/iStockPhoto



Aging Connection | Harvard Medical School

Daichao Xu, Taijie Jin, Hong Zhu, Hongbo Chen, Dimitry Ofengeim, Chengyu Zou, Lauren Mifflin, Lifeng Pan, Palak Amin, Wanjin Li, Bing Shan, Masanori Gomi Naito, Huyan Meng, Ying Li, Heling Pan, Liviu Aron, Xian Adiconis, Joshua Z. Levin, Bruce A. Yankner, Junying Yuan. *TBK1 Suppresses RIPK1-Driven Apoptosis and Inflammation during Development and in Aging*. _Cell_, 2018; DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2018.07.041​


----------



## Grandy

*Can China build a US$145 million superconducting computer that will change the world?*
*Chinese scientists are embarking on a one-billion yuan, high-risk, high-reward plan to build low-energy top-performance computing systems*

China is building a 1 billion yuan (US$145.4 million) “superconducting computer” – an unprecedented machine capable of developing new weapons, breaking codes, analysing intelligence and – according to official information and researchers involved in the project – helping stave off surging energy demand.

Computers are power-hungry, and increasingly so. According to an estimate by the Semiconductor Industry Association, they will need more electricity than the world can generate by 2040, unless the way they are designed is dramatically improved.

The superconducting computer is one of the most radical advances proposed by scientists to reduce the environmental footprint of machine calculation.

The concept rests on sending electric currents through supercooled circuits made of superconducting materials. The system results in almost zero resistance – in theory at least – and would require just a fraction of the energy of traditional computers, from one-fortieth to one-thousandth, according to some estimates.

*INTO THE SUPER LEAGUE*
Chinese scientists have already made a number of breakthroughs in applying superconducting technology to computers. They have developed new integrated circuits with superconducting material in labs and tested an industrial process that would enable the production of relatively low cost, sophisticated superconducting chips at mass scale. They have also nearly finished designing the architecture for the computer’s systems.

*Supercomputer superpower China takes biggest lead over US in 25 years*

Now the aim is to have a prototype of the machine up and running as early as 2022, according to a programme quietly launched by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in November last year with a budget estimated to be as much as one billion yuan.

If these efforts are successful, the Chinese military would be able to accelerate research and development for new thermonuclear weapons, stealth jets and next-generation submarines with central processing units running at the frequency of 770 gigahertz or higher. By contrast, the existing fastest commercial processor runs at just 5Ghz.






The advance would give Chinese companies an upper hand in the global competition to make energy-saving data centres essential to processing the big data needed for artificial intelligence applications, according to Chinese researchers in supercomputer technology.

CAS president Bai Chunli said the technology could help China challenge the US’ dominance of computers and chips.

“The integrated circuit industry is the core of the information technology industry … that supports economic and social development and safeguards national security,” Bai said in May during a visit to the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, a major facility for developing superconducting computers.

“Superconducting digital circuits and superconducting computers … will help China cut corners and overtake [other countries] in integrated circuit technology,” he was quoted as saying on the institute’s website.

But the project is high-risk. Critics have questioned whether it is wise to put so much money and resources into a theoretical computer design that is yet to be realised, given that similar attempts by other countries have ended in failure.

*IN THE BEGINNING*
The phenomenon of superconductivity was discovered by physicists more than a century ago. After the second world war, the United States, the former Soviet Union, Japan and some European countries tried to build large-scale, cryogenically cooled circuits with low electric resistance. In the US, the effort attracted the support of the government’s spy agency, the National Security Agency (NSA) and defence department because of the technology’s potential military and intelligence applications.

But the physical properties of superconducting materials, such as niobium, was less well understood than silicon, which is used in traditional computers.

*SpaceX prepares to launch supercomputer that could help guide astronauts on future missions*

As a result, chip fabrication proved challenging, and precise control of the information system at low temperatures, sometimes close to absolute zero, or minus 273 degrees Celsius, were a headache. Though some prototypes were made, none could be scaled up.

Meanwhile, silicon-based computers advanced rapidly with increasing speed and efficiency, raising the bar for research and development for a superconducting computer.






But those big gains using silicon seem to have ended, with the high-end Intel Core i7 chips, for instance, have been on computer store shelves for nearly a decade.

And as supercomputers grow bigger, so too does their energy consumption. Today’s fastest computers, the Summit in the US and China’s Sunway TaihuLight, require 30 megawatts of power to run at full capacity, more power than a Los Angeles-class nuclear submarine can generate. And their successors, the exascale supercomputers, which are capable of 1,000 petaflops, or performing 1 million trillion floating-point operations per second, is likely to need a stand-alone power station.

Li Xiaowei, executive deputy director of the State Key Laboratory of Computer Architecture, who is well acquainted with the Chinese programme, said the main motivation to build a superconducting computer was to cut the energy demands of future high-performance computers.

“It will be a general-purpose computer capable to run different kinds of algorithms … from text processing to finding big prime numbers”, the latter an important method to decode encrypted messages, according to Li.

*Man vs machine: Supercomputer draws first blood in showdown with Go grandmaster Lee Se-dol in Seoul*

Li would not give technical details of the machine under construction but he confirmed it would not be a quantum computer.
“It is built and run on a classical structure,” he told the _South China Morning Post_.

Instead of encoding information in bits with a value of one or zero, quantum computers use qubits, which act more like switches and can be a one and a zero at the same time. Most types of quantum computers also require extremely cold environments to operate.

Quantum computers are believed to be faster than classical superconducting computers but are likely to be limited to specific jobs and take a lot longer to realise. Many technologies, though, can be shared and moved from one platform to another.

*THE RACE IS ON*
China is not the only country in the race. The NSA launched a similar project in 2014. The Cryogenic Computing Complexity programme under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has awarded contracts to research teams at IBM, Raytheon-BBN and Northrop Grumman to build a superconducting computer.

“The power, space, and cooling requirements for current supercomputers based on complementary metal oxide semiconductor technology are becoming unmanageable,” programme manager Marc Manheimer said in a statement.

“Computers based on superconducting logic integrated with new kinds of cryogenic memory will allow expansion of current computing facilities while staying within space and energy budgets, and may enable supercomputer development beyond the exascale.”

During the initial phase of the programme, the researchers would develop the critical components for the memory and logic subsystems and plan the prototype computer. The goal was to later scale and integrate the components into a working computer and test its performance using a set of standard benchmarking programs, according to NSA.






The deadline and budget of the US programme has not been disclosed.

Back in China, Xlichip, an electronics company based in Shenzhen, a growing technology hub in the country’s south, confirmed on Tuesday that it had been awarded a contract to supply test hardware for a superconducting computer programme at CAS’s Institute of Computing Technology in Beijing.

“The client has some special requirements but we have confidence to come up with the product,” a company spokeswoman said, without elaborating.

*The world’s next fastest supercomputer will help boost China’s growing sea power*

Fan Zhongchao, researcher with CAS’s Institute of Semiconductors who reviewed the contract as part of an expert panel, said the hardware was a field-programmable gate array (FPGA), a reconfigurable chip that could be used to simulate and test the design of a large-scale, sophisticated integrated circuit.

“The overall design [of the FPGA testing phase] is close to complete,” he said.
There are signs that China is getting closer to its superconducting goal.

Last year, Chinese researchers realised mass production of computer chips with 10,000 superconducting junctions, according to the academy’s website. That compares to the more than 800,000 junctions a joint research team at Stony Brook University and MIT squeezed into a chip. But most fabrication works reported so far were in small quantities in laboratories, not scaled up for factory production.

Zheng Dongning, leader of the superconductor thin films and devices group in the National Laboratory for Superconductivity at the Institute of Physics in Beijing, said that if 10,000-junction chips could be mass produced with low defect rates, they could be used as building blocks for the construction of a superconducting computer.

*CHIPPING AWAY*
Zheng said China’s determination to develop the new technology would only be strengthened by the trade war with the United States. Many Chinese companies are reliant on US computing chips and the White House’s threats in May to ban chip exports to Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE almost sent the company to the wall.

“It is increasingly difficult to get certain chips from the US this year. The change is felt by many people,” he said.

*China’s race for the mother of all supercomputers just got more crowded*

But Zheng said China should not count on the superconducting computer technology to challenge US dominance. The US and other countries such as Japan had invested many more years in this area of research than China and although their investments were smaller they were consistent, giving them a big edge in knowledge and experience.

“One billion yuan is a lot of money, but it cannot solve all the remaining problems. Some technical issues may need years to find a solution, however intensive the investment,” Zheng said.

“Year 2022 may be a bit of a rush.”






Wei Dongyuan, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Science and Technology for Development, a government think tank on science policies, said China should be more transparent about the programme and give the public more information about its applications.
“It can be used in weather forecasts or to simulate the explosion of new nuclear weapons. One challenge is to develop a new operating system. Software development has always been China’s soft spot,” he said.

Chen Quan, a supercomputer scientist at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, said superconducting was often mentioned in academic discussions on the development of the next generation of high-performance computers.
China was building more than one exascale computer, and “it is possible that one will be superconductive”, he said.

_This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: the search for Billion-dollar brain heats upChina’s search for billion-dollar brain heats up_


----------



## JSCh

*American, Chinese scientists find two new vegetable fatty acids*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-28 05:42:16|Editor: Mu Xuequan




WASHINGTON, Aug. 27 (Xinhua) -- American and Chinese scientists discovered two new fatty acids in vegetable oils, potentially to be developed as high-quality lubricants.

The study published on Monday in the journal Nature Plants revealed that two acids, Nebraskanic acid and Wuhanic acid, made up nearly half of the seed oil found in the Chinese violet cress, and named after their discoverers, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Huazhong Agricultural University in China.

"People thought maybe they'd found everything there was to find," said Nebraska's Ed Cahoon, a George Holmes University Professor of biochemistry who co-authored the paper. "It's been at least several decades since somebody has discovered a new component of vegetable oil like this."

Fatty acids represent the primary components of vegetable oils, which are best known for their role in the kitchen but have also found use in biodiesel fuels, lubricants and other industrial applications.

Most off-the-shelf vegetable oils, such as canola or soybean oil, contain the same five fatty acids. Those conventional fatty acids all contain either 16 or 18 carbon atoms and feature similar molecular structures, according to the researchers.

By contrast, Nebraskanic and Wuhanic rank among a class of "unusual" fatty acids that contain fewer or more carbon atoms and uncommon molecular branches that stem from those carbons. They both have 24 atoms.

All known fatty acids generally add two carbon atoms at the end of a four-step biochemical cycle, then continue doing so until assembly is complete.

But the Nebraskanic and Wuhanic acids seem to go in a way rarely if ever seen outside of certain bacteria. Both acids appear to follow the traditional script until adding their 10th pair of carbon atoms, Cahoon said.

After reaching that milestone, though, the acids appear to skip the last two steps of the four-step cycle, twice cutting short the routine to accelerate the addition of the 11th and 12th carbon pairs.

The process also leaves behind an oxygen-hydrogen branch, or hydroxyl group, in the fatty acid chain, according to the study.

"We believe that the fatty acids are linked to one another through the hydroxyl groups to form a complex matrix of fatty acids, which is quite different from how fatty acids are arranged in a typical vegetable oil," said Cahoon.

That unique assembly and structure could account for the corresponding oil's superior performance as a lubricant, which was tested at the University of North Texas (UNT).

Compared with castor oil, the violet cress oil reduced friction between steel surfaces by 20 percent at 25 degrees Celsius and by about 300 percent at 100 degrees Celsius.

"When we saw the long-chain molecules and their arrangement, we knew the oil found in Chinese violet cress seeds would make an excellent lubricant," said Diana Berman, assistant professor of materials science and engineering at UNT.

"This oil doesn't just have the potential to supplement or replace petroleum-based oil; it can also replace synthetics. It is a renewable solution to a limited-resource problem," said Berman.

The team also managed to pinpoint two genes that, when activated, help kick-start production of the fatty acids, thus ramping up production of the oil to an industrial scale.

"With breeding and bringing in other germplasm, maybe we can make this plant into an industrial oilseed crop," Cahoon said. "Right now, the yield is less than half that of canola, but canola's been intensively bred for more than 50 years."


----------



## JSCh

*The strength of gravity has been measured to new precision*
*Pinpointing Big G could help refine mass measurements for Earth and other celestial objects*
BY MARIA TEMMING 
1:00PM, AUGUST 29, 2018



HOMING IN Gravity (illustrated here bending spacetime) has been notoriously hard to measure. Now two new lab experiments estimate the strength of gravity, or Big G, with record precision. 
VCHAL/SHUTTERSTOCK

We now have the most precise estimates for the strength of gravity yet.

Two experiments measuring the tiny gravitational attraction between objects in a lab have measured Newton’s gravitational constant, or Big G, with an uncertainty of only about 0.00116 percent. Until now, the smallest margin of uncertainty for any G measurement has been 0.00137 percent.

The new set of G values, reported in the Aug. 30 _Nature_, is not the final word on G. The two values disagree slightly, and they don’t explain why previous G-measuring experiments have produced such a wide spread of estimates (_SN Online: 4/30/15_). Still, researchers may be able to use the new values, along with other estimates of G, to discover why measurements for this key fundamental constant are so finicky — and perhaps pin down the strength of gravity once and for all.

The exact value of G, which relates mass and distance to the force of gravity in Newton’s law of universal gravitation, has eluded scientists for centuries. That’s because the gravitational attraction between a pair of objects in a lab experiment is extremely small and susceptible to the gravitational influence of other nearby objects, often leaving researchers with high uncertainty about their measurements.

*Weighing in*
Two new measurements for the strength of gravity (red squares, with short error bars indicating uncertainty) fall close to or within the currently accepted range for Big G (shaded gray). The new estimates are much more precise than those from other experiments in the last 40 years (teal dots and longer error bars).



S. SCHLAMMINGER/_NATURE_ 2018​
The current accepted value for G, based on measurements from the last 40 years, is 6.67408 × 10−11 meters cubed per kilogram per square second. That figure is saddled with an uncertainty of 0.0047 percent, making it thousands of times more imprecise than other fundamental constants — unchanging, universal values such as the charge of an electron or the speed of light (_SN: 11/12/16, p. 24_). The cloud of uncertainty surrounding G limits how well researchers can determine the masses of celestial objects and the values of other constants that are based on G (_SN: 4/23/11, p. 28_).

Physicist Shan-Qing Yang of Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China, and colleagues measured G using two instruments called torsion pendulums. Each device contains a metal-coated silica plate suspended by a thin wire and surrounded by steel spheres. The gravitational attraction between the plate and the spheres causes the plate to rotate on the wire toward the spheres.

But the two torsion pendulums had slightly differently setups to accommodate two ways of measuring G. With one torsion pendulum, the researchers measured G by monitoring the twist of the wire as the plate angled itself toward the spheres. The other torsion pendulum was rigged so that the metal plate dangled from a turntable, which spun to prevent the wire from twisting. With that torsion pendulum, the researchers measured G by tracking the turntable’s rotation.

To make their measurements as precise as possible, the researchers corrected for a long list of tiny disturbances, from slight variations in the density of materials used to make the torsion pendulums to seismic vibrations from earthquakes across the globe. “It’s amazing how much work went into this,” says Stephan Schlamminger, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md., whose commentary on the study appears in the same issue of _Nature_. Conducting such a painstaking set of experiments “is like a piece of art.”

These torsion pendulum experiments yielded G values of 6.674184 × 10−11 and 6.674484 × 10−11 meters cubed per kilogram per square second, both with an uncertainty of about 0.00116 percent.

This record precision is “a fantastic accomplishment,” says Clive Speake, a physicist at the University of Birmingham in England not involved in the work, but the true value of G “is still a mystery.” Repeating these and other past experiments to identify previously unknown sources of uncertainty, or designing new G–measuring techniques, may help reveal why estimates for this key fundamental constant continue to disagree, he says.



The strength of gravity has been measured to new precision | Science News

Qing Li, Chao Xue, Jian-Ping Liu, Jun-Fei Wu, Shan-Qing Yang, Cheng-Gang Shao, Li-Di Quan, Wen-Hai Tan, Liang-Cheng Tu, Qi Liu, Hao Xu, Lin-Xia Liu, Qing-Lan Wang, Zhong-Kun Hu, Ze-Bing Zhou, Peng-Shun Luo, Shu-Chao Wu, Vadim Milyukov & Jun Luo. *Measurements of the gravitational constant using two independent methods*. _Nature _(2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0431-5​


----------



## JSCh

*New Study Is the Most Successful Attempt to Gene Edit Human Embryos So Far*
By Shelly Fan
Aug 28, 2018

In the quest for CRISPR supremacy, China just won another first. Last week, a team used CRISPR-Cas9 to correct a single mistaken DNA letter in over a dozen human embryos—and succeeded 16 out of 18 tries, a massive improvement over previous attempts.

The high success rate is, in part, thanks to a relatively new CRISPR method called base editing. If standard CRISPR is a pair of scissors, then base editing is a surgical knife. Introduced in 2016, the technology precisely swaps out a mistaken DNA letter for the correct variant—for example, C for a T, or G for an A—which in turn corrects the genetic disease.

Cool, right? There’s more: the edited embryos were created through IVF using standard techniques. Other than carrying a mutation—which would eventually lead to a rare disease that tears apart the body’s connective tissues—the embryos were otherwise healthy. If given the chance, they could potentially develop into full-fledged humans.

This is notably different than many previous attempts at embryo editing, which often use discarded or mutated embryos created by one egg and two sperm—embryos with no chance of ever becoming a human.

The reason is ethics: editing genes in mature cells in the body is limited to that single patient. In contrast, because embryos carry all genomic instructions—including making new eggs or sperm—any changes to their DNA will also affect their offspring. Editing embryos is essentially forcing genetic changes onto future generations that have no say in whether or not they want to accept the risk.

*CRISPR and Germline Editing: The Long Tortuous Road*
Back in 2015, a Chinese team first reported using CRISPR on human embryos in an obscure journal. A media firestorm subsequently ensued. Although the experiments were conducted on discarded embryos with an extra pair of chromosomes, experts were widely divided in opinion on whether the study was ethical, with some calling it “irresponsible.”

The success rate wasn’t great either. Only four of the 54 surviving embryos after treatment carried the intended genetic tweaks. And even those weren’t completely fixed: the “successes” were mosaics, in that only some of the cells were edited, whereas others still contained the mutated gene. The edits also triggered a sea of off-target snips in the genome, which could potentially lead to a cascade of genetic deficits.

Debates about safety partially underlies objections against using CRISPR for germline editing. And these concerns have merit: a recent study strikingly showed that edited cells may be more likely to turn cancerous, while another suggested that off-target effects are far .

Yet hypothetical nightmare scenarios of using CRISPR to create monstrous fetuses haven’t stopped scientists from further pushing boundaries.

Just two years later, another Chinese team reported that they had successfully edited cells in three normal, viable human embryos out of six attempts. While viable, these embryos were made using donated immature eggs, which need the additional step of being coaxed into mature cells inside a test tube.

Then in 2017, a team from Oregon released a blockbuster studyclaiming that they had successfully used CRISPR to correct a mutation that leads to congenital heart disease with high efficiency and few side-effects. Critics immediately pushed back—arguing that the evidence was unpersuasive—and further intensified the controversy over germline editing in a debate that still rages today.

*A Better Path?*
The new study wades into these murky waters and offers a tantalizing glimpse of a brighter CRISPR future.

The authors took a path less traveled: rather than using traditional CRISPR tools, they relied on base editing which currently seems much more precise. The classic approach works by breaking doubled-stranded DNA and letting it repair itself—which invites mistakes. Base editing works much more like autocorrect for the genome: it precisely swaps one DNA letter for another while leaving everything else alone.

The team used the tool on embryos with mutations for Marfan syndrome, a rare disorder that breaks down connective tissue and causes a myriad of unpleasant symptoms: loose joints, vision problems, or even rips in the heart. The culprit is a single letter mistake: an “A” in place of a “G” in a gene called FBN1.

Starting out with a healthy egg, the team injected sperm from a man with Marfan syndrome using a standard IVF technique. They then treated some of the embryos with the CRISPR base editor molecules and nurtured them for two days in the lab—just long enough to see if the technique worked.

At no point did the team consider transplanting the edited embryos into surrogate mothers, which isn’t currently legal in China.

By sequencing the DNA of the edited embryos, the team found that all 18 had been edited, with 16 having a “perfect correction”—healthy gene and no side-effects. The two outliers had “undesirable editing besides the correction of the mutation,” saidstudy author Dr. Xingxu Huang at Shanghai Tech University, which was a single unintended swap in both cases.

Surprisingly, the team didn’t find any signs of the sort of widespread genomic havoc that older CRISPR technologies inflict. They used an algorithm to predict with genomic sites are likely candidates for unintended editing, then carefully checked those sites—and found nothing astray.

At 89 percent success rate, the study is the most successful attempt at CRISPRing human embryos so far. It may even be sufficiently high for IVF clinics, which can then screen the embryos and only transplant those with the corrected genes into mothers.

Dr. David Liu at Harvard University, who invented the base editor but was not involved in this study, gave his nod of approval.

“[It’s] a nice demonstration that continues to expand the breadth of settings and applications suitable for base editing, including the correction of [mutations] associated with genetic diseases in human cells and human embryos,” he told _STAT News_.

That said, Liu is unwilling to proclaim that his base editor worked better than traditional CRISPR in a clinical setting.

“Despite more than 50 publications using base editors from laboratories around the world, the entire field of base editing is only about two years old, and additional studies are needed to assess as many possible consequences of base editing as can be reasonably detected,” he cautioned.

The study authors agree. “Overall, this pilot study provided proof of concept, and opened the potential of base editing-based gene therapy,” said Huang. “Nevertheless, there is still a long way to go to use it in IVF clinics.”

One thing is clear: this is just the next step in the CRISPR germline editing saga. And it won’t be the last. Although once considered morally indefensible, more recently, public attitudes and regulatory opinions are gradually shifting towards acceptance for heritable genetic editing—at least for treating inherited diseases, rather than for augmenting human abilities a la “designer babies.” With momentum on the rise, we can likely expect the next chapter soon.



New Study Is the Most Successful Attempt to Gene Edit Human Embryos So Far | SingularityHub

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Cybernetics

Chinese scientists create fire-retardant artificial wood

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists map out opium poppy genome*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-31 02:12:19|Editor: Liangyu




WASHINGTON, Aug. 30 (Xinhua) -- Chinese, British and Australian scientists have determined the DNA code of the opium poppy genome, uncovering key steps in how the plant evolved to produce the pharmaceutical compounds used to make vital medicines.

The study published on Thursday in the journal _Science_ may pave the way for scientists to improve yields and the disease resistance of the medicinal plant, securing a reliable and cheap supply of the most effective drugs for pain relief and palliative care.

The scientists from the University of York and Wellcome Sanger Institute in the United Kingdom together with colleagues from Xi'an Jiaotong University and Shanghai Ocean University in China and Sun Pharmaceutical Industries (Australia) Pty Ltd, produced a high quality assembly of the 2.7 Giga-Base genome sequence distributed across 11 chromosomes.

The findings revealed the origins of the genetic pathway leading to the production of the cough suppressant noscapine and painkiller drugs like morphine and codeine.

It enabled the researchers to identify a large cluster of 15 genes that encode enzymes involved in two distinct biosynthetic pathways involved in the production of both noscapine and the compounds leading to codeine and morphine.

According to the researchers, plants have the capacity to duplicate their genomes and when this happens the duplicated genes can evolve to develop new machinery to make a diverse array of chemical compounds that are used to defend against attack from harmful microbes and herbivores and to attract beneficial species such as bees to assist in pollination.

The genome assembly revealed the ancestral genes that came together to produce the a kind of gene fusion that is responsible for the first major step on the pathway to morphine and codeine.

This fusion event happened before a relatively recent whole genome duplication event in the opium poppy genome 7.8 million years ago, according to the study.

The paper's co-corresponding author Professor Ye Kai from Xi'an Jiaotong University said: "It is intriguing that two biosynthetic pathways came to the same genomic region due to a series of duplication, shuffling and fusion structural events, enabling concerted production of novel metabolic compounds."



Li Guo, Thilo Winzer, Xiaofei Yang, Yi Li, Zemin Ning, Zhesi He, Roxana Teodor, Ying Lu, Tim A. Bowser, Ian A. Graham, Kai Ye. *The opium poppy genome and morphinan production*. _Science_, (2018). DOI: 10.1126/science.aat4096​


----------



## JSCh

*Alkaline earth metals can form 18-electron complexes*
*The elements use d-orbital backbonding to make octacarbonyl compounds*
*by Sam Lemonick
AUGUST 30, 2018 | APPEARED IN VOLUME 96, ISSUE 35*

It’s a helpful rule of thumb: Main group elements prefer forming bonds that give them eight valence electrons; transition metals go for 18 electrons. Now scientists have shown that main group elements calcium, strontium, and barium can form 18-electron complexes with carbon monoxide at temperatures near absolute zero thanks to contributions from the metals’ d orbitals. (_Science_ 2018, DOI: 10.1126/science.aau0839).

Past research already suggested heavy alkaline earth metals like these might break the rule because their d orbitals are often involved in bonding, something usually limited to transition metals. But Pekka Pyykkö, a physical chemist at the University of Helsinki who was not involved in the work, says demonstrating the elements can form 18-electron complexes is a significant step in understanding the rules of alkaline earth metal bonding.



---> Alkaline earth metals can form 18-electron complexes | Chemical & Engineering News

Xuan Wu, Lili Zhao, Jiaye Jin, Sudip Pan, Wei Li, Xiaoyang Jin, Guanjun Wang, Mingfei Zhou & Gernot Frenking. *Observation of alkaline earth complexes M(CO)8 (M = Ca, Sr, or Ba) that mimic transition metals*. _Science_ (2018). DOI: 10.1126/science.aau0839​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *Alkaline earth metals can form 18-electron complexes*
> *The elements use d-orbital backbonding to make octacarbonyl compounds*
> *by Sam Lemonick
> AUGUST 30, 2018 | APPEARED IN VOLUME 96, ISSUE 35*
> 
> It’s a helpful rule of thumb: Main group elements prefer forming bonds that give them eight valence electrons; transition metals go for 18 electrons. Now scientists have shown that main group elements calcium, strontium, and barium can form 18-electron complexes with carbon monoxide at temperatures near absolute zero thanks to contributions from the metals’ d orbitals. (_Science_ 2018, DOI: 10.1126/science.aau0839).
> 
> Past research already suggested heavy alkaline earth metals like these might break the rule because their d orbitals are often involved in bonding, something usually limited to transition metals. But Pekka Pyykkö, a physical chemist at the University of Helsinki who was not involved in the work, says demonstrating the elements can form 18-electron complexes is a significant step in understanding the rules of alkaline earth metal bonding.
> 
> 
> 
> ---> Alkaline earth metals can form 18-electron complexes | Chemical & Engineering News
> 
> Xuan Wu, Lili Zhao, Jiaye Jin, Sudip Pan, Wei Li, Xiaoyang Jin, Guanjun Wang, Mingfei Zhou & Gernot Frenking. *Observation of alkaline earth complexes M(CO)8 (M = Ca, Sr, or Ba) that mimic transition metals*. _Science_ (2018). DOI: 10.1126/science.aau0839​


*Chemists show that the 18-electron principle is not limited to transition metals*
*August 31, 2018 by Bob Yirka, Phys.org report*
​A team of researchers from Fudan University and Nanjing Tech University, both in China, has demonstrated that the 18-electron principle is not limited to transition metals. In their paper published in the journal _Science_, the group describes their work with calcium, strontium and barium atoms and what they found. P. B. Armentrout with the University of Utah offers a Perspective piece on the work done by the team in China in the same journal issue.

As many chemistry students will remember, elements in the periodic table are classified into main group elements divided by blocks—they include the s and p blocks, the d block, which includes transition metals, and of course, the f block, which includes actinides and lanthanides. Also, the main group elements calcium, strontium and barium are known to form bonds using their orbitals, and follow what is known as the octet rule—where atoms wind up with eight electrons in their valence shell. Transition metals, on the other hand, have another five d orbitals which when filled result in a stable formation with 18 electrons. In this new effort, the researchers have shown that even main group elements like calcium, strontium and barium can be made to follow the octet rule, demonstrating that the octet rule is not limited to just transition metals. The group suggests this finding indicates that the old octet rule, which is found in virtually all chemistry textbooks, is not actually correct in some instances.

In their work, the researchers showed that main group elements could form 18-electron complexes with carbon monoxide when put in a very cold chamber. They report that they were studying Ba(CO)+ and Ba(CO)- using spectral analysis when they found something amiss—the wavenumbers for the C-O stretching mode were oddly shifted. An analysis of their findings suggested that the Ba atoms had d orbitals rather than the expected s or p orbitals. To demonstrate their theoretical findings, they placed mixes of Ba, Sr and Ca in a cold neon matrix and used infrared spectroscopy to get a better look at what was going on—they found evidence of eight CO ligands and back-bonding—a demonstration of non-transition metals following the octet rule.



https://phys.org/news/2018-08-chemists-electron-principle-limited-transition.html


----------



## cirr

*Chinese medical stent makes Lancet breakthrough*

2018-09-06 13:21:01

Global Times Editor : Li Yan

The debut of a China-developed medical device in the world's oldest and best-known medical journal has been hailed by Chinese media as a breakthrough for Chinese medical innovation. 

For the first time in its 200-year history, The Lancet published Tuesday a report on the clinical tests of a China-made device, the Firehawk stent, a drug-eluting stent independently developed by the Shanghai-based MicroPort Scientific Corporation.

The Firehawk could be a solution to a problem that has perplexed the field of cardiovascular intervention for more than 10 years, the Yangtze Evening Post reported Wednesday, citing the Lancet article.

The Firehawk is a stent that contains drugs in tiny grooves engraved by lasers on the surface. The design effectively prevents the drug from leaking during the transportation of the stent, which greatly improves efficiency and avoids wasting medication, the Yangtze Evening Post reported. 

Shao Zhanqiang, a senior surgeon at Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, told the Global Times on Wednesday that The Lancet report signals progress in medical innovation in China, but that new devices and instruments must be fully examined before they can be put into wide use. 

"Ideally, the Firehawk stent is expected to solve the problem of blood clots after [heart] surgery, which could adversely influence cardiovascular intervention therapy," Shao said.

The MicroPort Scientific Corporation has spent 15 years developing the stent, finally adopting a polymer coating technology to effectively and precisely deliver the drug within the blood vessel. 

The technology could save patients who need post-surgery medication a great deal of money, the Yangtze Evening Post reported.

Chinese medical apparatus and instruments represented by MicroPort are also being recognized by more people around the world, said the newspaper.

http://www.ecns.cn/news/sci-tech/2018-09-06/detail-ifyxtvir0544675.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

cirr said:


> *Chinese medical stent makes Lancet breakthrough*
> 
> 2018-09-06 13:21:01
> 
> Global Times Editor : Li Yan
> 
> The debut of a China-developed medical device in the world's oldest and best-known medical journal has been hailed by Chinese media as a breakthrough for Chinese medical innovation.
> 
> For the first time in its 200-year history, The Lancet published Tuesday a report on the clinical tests of a China-made device, the Firehawk stent, a drug-eluting stent independently developed by the Shanghai-based MicroPort Scientific Corporation.
> 
> The Firehawk could be a solution to a problem that has perplexed the field of cardiovascular intervention for more than 10 years, the Yangtze Evening Post reported Wednesday, citing the Lancet article.
> 
> The Firehawk is a stent that contains drugs in tiny grooves engraved by lasers on the surface. The design effectively prevents the drug from leaking during the transportation of the stent, which greatly improves efficiency and avoids wasting medication, the Yangtze Evening Post reported.
> 
> Shao Zhanqiang, a senior surgeon at Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, told the Global Times on Wednesday that The Lancet report signals progress in medical innovation in China, but that new devices and instruments must be fully examined before they can be put into wide use.
> 
> "Ideally, the Firehawk stent is expected to solve the problem of blood clots after [heart] surgery, which could adversely influence cardiovascular intervention therapy," Shao said.
> 
> The MicroPort Scientific Corporation has spent 15 years developing the stent, finally adopting a polymer coating technology to effectively and precisely deliver the drug within the blood vessel.
> 
> The technology could save patients who need post-surgery medication a great deal of money, the Yangtze Evening Post reported.
> 
> Chinese medical apparatus and instruments represented by MicroPort are also being recognized by more people around the world, said the newspaper.
> 
> http://www.ecns.cn/news/sci-tech/2018-09-06/detail-ifyxtvir0544675.shtml




I actually went through this research paper. And while yes, it is a big deal that it was featured in Lancet, Lancet also listed quite a bit of negative points about this, and actually predicted that there is limited commercial need for it right now. 

But by selectively picking up facts, this article, tries to bloat Chinese progress, a trend that is harmful to China. 

Quoting from Lancet commentary: 

However, while the primary non-inferiority clinical endpoint was met, the clinical need for a new drug-eluting stent might be questioned given that the deliverability of the FIREHAWK appeared to be worse than that of the XIENCE stent and angiographic endpoints also tended to favour XIENCE. At 86 μm, the strut thickness of the FIREHAWK is slightly larger than that of the XIENCE stent (81 μm) and larger than many other new-generation drug-eluting stents. The technical success rate in the intention-to-treat population was lower in the FIREHAWK group than in the XIENCE group (92·4% _vs_ 94·8%, difference −2·4% [95% CI −4·4% to −0·3%], p=0·025). Significantly more lesions could not be treated with the study stent compared with the XIENCE stent (assigned study stent implanted in 1148 [94·2%] patients for FIREHAWK _vs_ 1127 [95·6%] patients for XIENCE, p=0·013; crossover in nine [0·7%] _vs_ zero patients, p=0·004). Angiographic follow-up at 13 months also showed slightly greater stent late lumen loss with the FIREHAWK than with the XIENCE (0·17 mm [SD 0·52] _vs_ 0·11 mm [0·48], p=0·48) and numerically more in-stent restenosis (8·5% _vs_ 5·6%, p=0·75), although these differences were not significant. The rate of definite stent thrombosis with the FIREHAWK was not significantly different from that of the comparator stent but was higher than that seen in other trials and registries of stents with thinner struts.
8
, 
9
, 
10
These points might limit the clinical applicability of this stent and the attraction to using this particular stent of the many well performing new-generation drug-eluting stents already available, at least on the European market. In other markets with more limited stent availability and different pricing, this stent could be an important new option. The question is therefore how far from TARGET the FIREHAWK will fly.​https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)31768-9/fulltext


----------



## JSCh

*China unveils blueprint for huge underground ‘Higgs factory’*
06 Sep 2018 Michael Banks



​Planning ahead: physicists at Beijing's Institute of High Energy Physics are supporting a plan to build a huge 100 km circular collider in China to study the Higgs boson in unprecedented detail. (Courtesy: IHEP)

Scientists in China have released details for a huge particle collider that will produce over a million Higgs bosons in a seven-year period. The conceptual design report for the China Electron Positron Collider (CEPC) calls for a 100 km underground tunnel that would smash together electrons and positrons at energies of 240 GeV. The CEPC would be a successor to the Beijing Electron Positron Collider at the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) in Beijing, which is expected to shut in 2020.

The CEPC, which was first proposed in 2012, is a “Higgs factory” – a facility to measure the precise properties of the Higgs boson, which was discovered at CERN in 2012 by scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). An electron-positron machine can make much cleaner measurements than a proton collider like the LHC as its collisions do not produce as much debris. The CEPC will therefore allow the Higgs boson to be studied in unprecedented detail.

A preliminary conceptual design report for the CEPC was originally published in March 2015. That was followed by a progress report in April 2017, but the new 510-page conceptual design report, released this week on the _arXiv_preprint server, outlines the technical details of the accelerator. A second volume, featuring details of the CEPC detectors, is due to be released soon.

*Particle factory*
Estimated to cost around $6bn, the “heart” of the CEPC is a double-ring collider in which electron and positron beams will circulate in opposite directions in separate beam pipes. They will then collide at two “interaction points”, which will each contain a particle detector. The report reveals the CEPC will seek to generate over a million Higgs bosons over a seven-year period. The design also calls for the CEPC to operate at 91 GeV for two years to generate a trillion Z bosons as well as run at 160 GeV for a year to produce around 15 million pairs of W+ and W- particles.

Scientists will now build prototypes of key components of the accelerator and plan the manufacturing process required to construct the CEPC. If given the go-ahead by the government, construction of the CEPC could begin in 2022 and be complete by 2030. Following a decade of studying the Higgs, Z and W bosons, it is hoped that developments in magnet technology will be sufficient to begin construction of a proton-proton collider inside the existing tunnel in the early 2040s. This would operate in the range of 70-100 TeV and search for particles beyond the Standard Model of particle physics.

The location of the CEPC has not yet been decided with six locations currently satisfying the “technical requirements”. However, it is thought that the leading site is 300 km east of Beijing at the port city of Qinhuangdao. Speaking to _Physics World_ earlier this year, IHEP director Yifang Wang says that a more detailed investigation of the geological conditions at some of the possible sites is needed before a decision can be made. “We need to know what kind of support from the local government we will receive in terms of, for example, laboratories, living conditions, roads and power supply,” he says.

*Analysis: China could win the Higgs factory race*

The race is on to build a Higgs factory – a successor to CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. For years it was thought that the International Linear Collider (ILC) was in pole position. The ILC’s five-volume technical design report was published in June 2013, calling for a 30 km-long linear collider that would smash electrons with positrons at around 500 GeV. The Japanese physics community quickly got behind the project expressing their desire to host the machine with a site in the Tōhoku region, about 400 km north of Tokyo, chosen as a potential location.

However, the Japanese government has dragged its feet over deciding to support the project and last year — to make the ILC more palatable — physicists came up with a revised plan, reducing the ILC’s energy to 250 GeV and shortening the length of the tunnel to around 20 km. While physicists hope that the Japanese government will now get behind the facility by the end of the year, there are many other projects vying for funding, no less a major new neutrino facility in Kamioka. It is likely that a decision about the ILC will be kicked further down the road.

There is another design for a linear collider to study the Higgs. The Compact Linear Collider would smash together electron with positron at energies up to 3 TeV, but despite a three-volume conceptual design report being released in 2012, it remains behind the ILC in terms of technical development. That now leaves the door open to China and momentum seems to be on their side. Speaking to _Physics World_ earlier this year, Yifang Wang, head of China’s Institute of High Energy Physics, noted that there was “enormous interest” for the CEPC from funding agencies in the country.

Given the amount of cash that the Chinese government is ploughing into science as well as the technical ability of Chinese scientists and engineers to build world-class facilities, it would be hard to bet against the CEPC being first.​


China unveils blueprint for huge underground ‘Higgs factory’ – Physics World

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*China Focus: Chinese scientists ponder benefits of human hibernation*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-30 20:01:05|Editor: Yamei




SHENZHEN, Aug. 30 (Xinhua) -- In the Hollywood blockbuster, Interstellar, the astronauts hibernate for years during long-distance space travel.

Low-temperature dormancy is a feature in many sci-fi novels and movies. Can humans get into a low-energy consumption state like hibernating animals by reserving energy, and reducing body temperature and metabolism?

Chinese scientists are looking for the key to regulate body temperature.

Scientists have found the hypothalamus, an area in the central lower part of the brain, is responsible for regulating body temperature. But traditional methods cannot determine exactly which neurons play the key role.

Wang Hong, a brain scientist at the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, led her team to mark the neurons responsible for setting and regulating body temperature in mice by means of a cutting-edge genetic biology technique.

In the in-vitro experiment, they found 20 percent of the neurons in the hypothalamus of mice showed reaction to heat. Those neurons had a common feature: they all expressed a gene called TRPM2.

In further experiments, they injected the drug, Clozapine N-oxide, into mice to activate the neurons expressing TRPM2. The body temperatures of the mice dropped from 37 degrees centigrade to 27 degrees centigrade in two hours. With the metabolizing of the drug, their body temperatures returned to normal after about 10 hours.

The team found the change in body temperature caused no harm to the health of the mice. Their study was published in the academic journal, _Science_, in September 2016.

Chinese scientists are not alone in such research. NASA is reported to have funded SpaceWorks Enterprises aerospace engineering company to study hibernation systems that could be used in human missions to Mars.

Wang's team is focusing more on medical applications.

Studies showed that if the brain can be cooled soon after a patient has a stroke, it can help protect the nervous system. Mild hypothermia therapy was introduced into the clinical treatment of stroke in the 1990s.

However, the therapy requires sophisticated instruments, and is hard to apply in emergency treatment.

"We hope to find the target area in the brain, and develop a drug that can drop the body temperature of the patient immediately after a stroke to protect the nervous system," Wang said.

"We are still not quite clear about why low temperatures help protect the nervous system. It's commonly believed that reducing the metabolic rate of cells depresses the production of free radicals."

Next, Wang's team plan to conduct experiments on primates to find out whether the neurons expressing TRPM2 can play the same role in regulating body temperature.

"The discrepancy between different species is the most difficult problem. We don't know if we can develop a drug that can regulate human body temperature. We still need a lot of study," Wang said.

Even if the researchers master the technique to regulate human body temperature, can hibernation be realized in space travel?

"It still seems like a distant dream," Wang said. "Just solving the problem of regulating body temperature cannot realize hibernation, since many other factors such as circadian rhythms and nutrition must be taken into consideration. How to wake the dormant astronaut is another complication."

Some scientists worry about the social and ethical issues of artificial hibernation. What if a person who has slept for many years awakes to find that he or she is much younger than his or her offspring? What if they cannot adapt to a world that has changed during the long sleep?

"Luckily we still have a lot of time to discuss artificial hibernation before it is realized," said Wang. "Nevertheless, regulating body temperature according to our needs will be the first step."

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Yigong Shi’s group reports on the structure of autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease related to the PKD1/PKD2 complex*

The kidney is an important living organ of the human body. It has many physiological functions such as excreting metabolic products, regulating water and electrolyte balance and the endocrine system. Under a variety of pathological conditions, the kidneys need to excrete blood from the organs and supply it to more important organs (e.g. the heart and brain). While of such great importance, the kidneys, however, are among those most vulnerable organs. Genetic factors, hyperglycemia and hyperlipidemia are important causes of chronic kidney disease. According to the National Institute of Health, the prevalence of chronic kidney disease in US adults (approximately 200 million in total) has reached 11.3%.

Autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) is one of the most important causes of chronic kidney disease, with an incidence of 1/400-1/1000. About 12 million patients worldwide are affected by this disease. The bilateral kidneys of the patient gradually produce fluid-filled vesicles with increasing age, squeezing and destroying the surrounding normal tissues. About 50% of patients develop end-stage renal failure, requiring heterologous kidney transplantation or life-long hemodialysis. There are about 1.5 million patients with this disease in China. Every year, tens of thousands of patients are on the waiting list for donated kidney transplantation or sustaining life through continuous dialysis. ADPKD not only causes severe physical and mental suffering to the patient, but also imposes a heavy financial burden on the patient's family.

The genes associated with ADPKD pathogenesis are PKD1 and PKD2, and their gene products are the membrane proteins PKD1 and PKD2 respectively. Mutations in both accounted for approximately 85% and 10% of all patients respectively. The human pkd1 gene is located on chromosome 16, encoding a protein of PKD1 with a length of 4302 amino acids containing 11 transmembrane helices. Because of the huge molecular weight of PKD1, researchers have been challenged with great technical difficulties in their research. Since the successful sequencing of the pkd1 gene in 1993, many scientists have been investigating this protein for more than 20 years. Although these studies have broadened the perception of ADPKD, the function of the PKD1 protein and the pathogenesis of polycystic kidney disease remains controversial for lack of sufficient information. Another pathogenic protein, PKD2, is a chaperone molecule of PKD1, and plays an extremely important role in the folding of PKD1, transporting among organelles and protein maturation. PKD1 and PKD2 proteins can interact to form hetero-tetrameric complexes and may perform important physiological functions on primary cilia.

On August 10th, 2018, UTC+8, Yigong Shi's group, published a research article entitled "Structure of the human PKD1 and PKD2 complex" online in the journal _Science_, reporting the first near-atomic resolution (3.6 ？) of the polycystic kidney disease-associated protein PKD1/PKD2 complex.




Figure 1: A. schematic diagram of the topology of human PKD1 and PKD2 proteins. B. The overall structure of human PKD1 and PKD2 protein complex; C. The unique channel domain of PKD1.

Yigong Shi's group first resolved the near-atom resolution structure of human PKD1 and PKD2 complexes. This structure reveals that the PKD1 and PKD2 proteins form a distinctive one-to-three complex (1 PKD1: 3 PKD2). Based on this structural and biochemical data, the team found that PKD1 and PKD2 were able to form complexes without the protein C-terminal coiled-coil domain. This result is inconsistent with the mainstream doctrine which previously thought that “no protein complex can be formed when there is no coiled-coil domain”. Therefore, many studies based on this conclusion need to be reconsidered. In addition, the researchers found that the pore domain structure of PKD1 is different from that of all currently known voltage-gated ion channels. The S6 transmembrane helix of PKD1 has a number of positively charged amino acids protruding into the central cavity of the channel, potentially blocking the central channel path which is for calcium permeation. There have been many debates about whether PKD1 and PKD2 form calcium channels in the field. The current conformation of this structure does not support the channel hypothesis, which brings new thinking to the investigation of the mechanism of polycystic kidney disease.

Yigong Shi's research team cooperated with Prof. Mei Changlin and Prof. Yu Shengqiang from Shanghai Changzheng Hospital. Since 2013, the structure of two human proteins, PKD1 and PKD2, has been conceived. During the past five years, unremitting efforts on the protein boundary, frozen sample preparation conditions and detergent optimization have been tried and screened. Finally, the structure of PKD1 and PKD2 protein complex was resolved with an overall resolution of 3.6 ？, and the core region resolution was able to reach 3.2 ？. This was the first time that the structure of a TRP channel family heterologous complex had been obtained.

Professor Yigong Shi from the School of Life Sciences of Tsinghua University and the Center for Structural Biology and Innovation, is the corresponding author of this article; Qiang Su, a third-year doctoral student at the School of Life Sciences of Tsinghua University, and Dr. Feizhuo Hu from the School of Medicine,, are the co-first authors of this article; Ge Xuefei, an undergraduate student in the six-character class of the School of Life, Tsinghua University, helped complete some of the experiments. Dr. Lei Jianlin from Tsinghua University's cryo-electron microscopy facility provided assistance in the collection of cryo-electron microscopy data. Professor Zhou Qiang, School of Medicine, Tsinghua University, provided cryo-EM data processing guidance. Associate Professor Wang Tingliang, School of Medicine, Tsinghua University, was involved in the early operation of the subject. The electron microscope data was collected from the cryo-electron microscope facility of Tsinghua University. The calculation work was supported by the Tsinghua University High Performance Computing Platform and National Protein Facility Experimental Technology Center (Beijing). This work has received funding support from the Beijing Center for Structural Biology and the National Natural Science Foundation.

Research article link: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2018/08/08/science.aat9819

Contributor: School of Life Sciences
Editors: John Olbrich, Guo Lili



Tsinghua University News | Yigong Shi’s group reports on the structure of autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease related to the PKD1/PKD2 complex

Qiang Su, Feizhuo Hu, Xiaofei Ge, Jianlin Lei, Shengqiang Yu, Tingliang Wang, Qiang Zhou, Changlin Mei & Yigong Shi. *Structure of the human PKD1-PKD2 complex*. _Science _(2018). DOI: 10.1126/science.aat9819.​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*China’s 2018 Future Science Prize winners announced*
By Ma Danning (People's Daily Online) 14:14, September 10, 2018






China's Future Science Prize, one of the country's most prestigious non-governmental science awards, announced on Saturday the 2018 winners in the areas of life science, physical science, and mathematics and computer science.

Renowned agricultural scientist Yuan Longping, China's "Father of Hybrid Rice," in collaboration with Zhang Qifa and Li Jiayang from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), shared The Life Science Prize for their pioneering work in breeding new rice varieties with high-yield and superior quality.

Ma Dawei from the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry at CAS, Feng Xiaoming from Sichuan University, and Zhou Qilin from Nankai University received The Physical Science Prize for creative contributions to the invention of new catalysts and reactions, which have provided a new approach to the synthesis of organic molecules, especially drug molecules.

Lin Benjian, an academician from CAS and also an expert with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, world's largest dedicated independent semiconductor foundry, received The Mathematics and Computer Science Prize for expanding nanoscale integrated circuits.

The winners will also share $100 million in prize money for each award category.

Touted as China's “Nobel Prize,” as both are privately funded, the Future Science Prize aims to increase public internet in science and connect science and business.

The Future Science Prize rewards outstanding original research that was finished in China and has global impact. It is not limited to Chinese citizens and is privately funded by 12 eminent Chinese entrepreneurs who want more public involvement in the country’s development of science.

The prize was launched in 2016 by entrepreneurs aiming to utilize cutting-edge computer science technology, such as AI and big data in the business sector, and investors who understand that scientific development is the foundation of long-term prosperity. Fifteen prominent scholars worldwide form the panel of judges, including Wang Xiaodong, director of the National Institute of Biological Sciences in Beijing Li Kai, a member of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States Computer science professors Paul M. Wythes and Marcia R. Wythes, Princeton University and Luo Liqun, professor of Biology at Stanford University.


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *China unveils blueprint for huge underground ‘Higgs factory’*
> 06 Sep 2018 Michael Banks
> 
> 
> 
> ​Planning ahead: physicists at Beijing's Institute of High Energy Physics are supporting a plan to build a huge 100 km circular collider in China to study the Higgs boson in unprecedented detail. (Courtesy: IHEP)
> 
> Scientists in China have released details for a huge particle collider that will produce over a million Higgs bosons in a seven-year period. The conceptual design report for the China Electron Positron Collider (CEPC) calls for a 100 km underground tunnel that would smash together electrons and positrons at energies of 240 GeV. The CEPC would be a successor to the Beijing Electron Positron Collider at the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) in Beijing, which is expected to shut in 2020.
> 
> The CEPC, which was first proposed in 2012, is a “Higgs factory” – a facility to measure the precise properties of the Higgs boson, which was discovered at CERN in 2012 by scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). An electron-positron machine can make much cleaner measurements than a proton collider like the LHC as its collisions do not produce as much debris. The CEPC will therefore allow the Higgs boson to be studied in unprecedented detail.
> 
> A preliminary conceptual design report for the CEPC was originally published in March 2015. That was followed by a progress report in April 2017, but the new 510-page conceptual design report, released this week on the _arXiv_preprint server, outlines the technical details of the accelerator. A second volume, featuring details of the CEPC detectors, is due to be released soon.
> 
> *Particle factory*
> Estimated to cost around $6bn, the “heart” of the CEPC is a double-ring collider in which electron and positron beams will circulate in opposite directions in separate beam pipes. They will then collide at two “interaction points”, which will each contain a particle detector. The report reveals the CEPC will seek to generate over a million Higgs bosons over a seven-year period. The design also calls for the CEPC to operate at 91 GeV for two years to generate a trillion Z bosons as well as run at 160 GeV for a year to produce around 15 million pairs of W+ and W- particles.
> 
> Scientists will now build prototypes of key components of the accelerator and plan the manufacturing process required to construct the CEPC. If given the go-ahead by the government, construction of the CEPC could begin in 2022 and be complete by 2030. Following a decade of studying the Higgs, Z and W bosons, it is hoped that developments in magnet technology will be sufficient to begin construction of a proton-proton collider inside the existing tunnel in the early 2040s. This would operate in the range of 70-100 TeV and search for particles beyond the Standard Model of particle physics.
> 
> The location of the CEPC has not yet been decided with six locations currently satisfying the “technical requirements”. However, it is thought that the leading site is 300 km east of Beijing at the port city of Qinhuangdao. Speaking to _Physics World_ earlier this year, IHEP director Yifang Wang says that a more detailed investigation of the geological conditions at some of the possible sites is needed before a decision can be made. “We need to know what kind of support from the local government we will receive in terms of, for example, laboratories, living conditions, roads and power supply,” he says.
> 
> *Analysis: China could win the Higgs factory race*
> 
> The race is on to build a Higgs factory – a successor to CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. For years it was thought that the International Linear Collider (ILC) was in pole position. The ILC’s five-volume technical design report was published in June 2013, calling for a 30 km-long linear collider that would smash electrons with positrons at around 500 GeV. The Japanese physics community quickly got behind the project expressing their desire to host the machine with a site in the Tōhoku region, about 400 km north of Tokyo, chosen as a potential location.
> 
> However, the Japanese government has dragged its feet over deciding to support the project and last year — to make the ILC more palatable — physicists came up with a revised plan, reducing the ILC’s energy to 250 GeV and shortening the length of the tunnel to around 20 km. While physicists hope that the Japanese government will now get behind the facility by the end of the year, there are many other projects vying for funding, no less a major new neutrino facility in Kamioka. It is likely that a decision about the ILC will be kicked further down the road.
> 
> There is another design for a linear collider to study the Higgs. The Compact Linear Collider would smash together electron with positron at energies up to 3 TeV, but despite a three-volume conceptual design report being released in 2012, it remains behind the ILC in terms of technical development. That now leaves the door open to China and momentum seems to be on their side. Speaking to _Physics World_ earlier this year, Yifang Wang, head of China’s Institute of High Energy Physics, noted that there was “enormous interest” for the CEPC from funding agencies in the country.
> 
> Given the amount of cash that the Chinese government is ploughing into science as well as the technical ability of Chinese scientists and engineers to build world-class facilities, it would be hard to bet against the CEPC being first.​
> 
> 
> China unveils blueprint for huge underground ‘Higgs factory’ – Physics World


*CEPC Study Group Completes Accelerator Conceptual Design Report---Chinese Academy of Sciences*
Sep 10, 2018

_The Conceptual Design Report (CDR), Volume I – Accelerator_ for the Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC) was published on September 2, 2018. The CEPC Accelerator CDR has reached its goal in multiple energy ranges, including the Higgs, W and Z poles.

The CEPC Study Group has been working on the conceptual design of the CEPC since the publication of the _Preliminary Conceptual Design Report _(Pre-CDR) in March 2015. The Fully Partial Double-Ring with Crab-Waist Collision scheme is the baseline accelerator design used in the CDR. A number of accelerator designs, including Single-Ring Pretzel, Partial Double-Ring, Advanced Partial Double-Ring and Fully Partial Double-Ring, were considered and optimized by the CEPC Study Group. The detailed comparison of various design options and the final choice of the baseline was documented in _CEPC-SppC Progress Report – Accelerator_, published in April 2017.

The CEPC accelerator team completed the first draft of the current CDR in November 2017. The team soon conducted a preliminary review and revised it. A committee of international experts then reviewed the CDR from June 28-30 at Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In its subsequent report, the committee said it “unanimously congratulates the CEPC team on the completion of the CDR, with remarkable successes in various aspects of the design.” The review committee also said it believes “the CDR has already reached a sufficient level of maturity to allow approval to proceed to a Technical Design Report.” The CEPC Study Group incorporated the comments from the reviewers into the CDR and released the document on September 2, 2018.

The CEPC Accelerator CDR comprises 505 pages, 12 chapters and eight appendices. It covers machine layout, design of the collider, the booster, linac accelerator, the injector, design of the superconducting radio frequency (RF), RF power source, magnets, power supply, vacuum, and monitoring, control and mechanical systems. It also covers the cryogenic system, common facilities, civil engineering, radiation protection, and the option of upgrading to a Super proton-proton Collider (SppC). Alternative options for CEPC accelerator and opportunities for polarization at Z-pole are discussed in the appendices.

The CEPC Accelerator CDR can be found at https://arXiv.org (document 1809.00285) or at the official CEPC website: http://cepc.ihep.ac.cn/CDR_v6_201808s.pdf.


----------



## JSCh

*Regrowing dental tissue with stem cells from baby teeth | Penn Today*
A successful Phase 1 clinical trial in China, co-led by School of Dental Medicine researcher Songtao Shi, paves the way for more widespread investigation into the utility of dental stem cells.



Stem cells extracted from baby teeth were able to regenerate dental pulp (above, with fluorescent labeling) in young patients who had injured one of their adult teeth.

Sometimes kids trip and fall, and their teeth take the hit. Nearly half of children suffer some injury to a tooth during childhood. When that trauma affects an immature permanent tooth, it can hinder blood supply and root development, resulting in what is essentially a “dead” tooth.

Until now, the standard of care has entailed a procedure called apexification that encourages further root development, but it does not replace the lost tissue from the injury and, even in a best-case scenario, causes root development to proceed abnormally.

New results of a clinical trial, jointly led by Songtao Shi of the University of Pennsylvania and Yan Jin, Kun Xuan, and Bei Li of the Fourth Military Medicine University in Xi’an, China, suggest that there is a more promising path for children with these types of injuries: using stem cells extracted from the patient’s baby teeth. The work was published in the journal _Science Translational Medicine_.

“This treatment gives patients sensation back in their teeth. If you give them a warm or cold stimulation, they can feel it; they have living teeth again,” says Shi, professor and chair in the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology in Penn’s School of Dental Medicine. “So far we have follow-up data for two, two and a half, even three years, and have shown it’s a safe and effective therapy.”





Songtao Shi​
Shi has been working for a decade to test the possibilities of dental stem cells after discovering them in his daughter’s baby tooth. He and colleagues have learned more about how these dental stem cells, officially called human deciduous pulp stem cells (hDPSC), work, and how they could be safely employed to regrow dental tissue, known as pulp.

The Phase 1 trial was conducted in China, which has a research track for clinical trials. The 40 children enrolled had each injured one of their permanent incisors, and still had baby teeth. Thirty were assigned to hDPSC treatment and 10 to the control treatment, apexification.

Those who received hDPSC treatment had tissue extracted from a healthy baby tooth. The stem cells from this pulp were allowed to reproduce in a laboratory culture, and the resulting cells were implanted into the injured tooth.

Upon follow-up, the researchers found that patients who received hDPSCs had more signs than the control group of healthy root development and thicker dentin, the hard part of a tooth beneath the enamel, as well as increased blood flow.

At the time the patients were initially seen, all had little sensation in the tissue of their injured teeth. A year following the procedure, only those who received hDPSCs had regained some sensation. Examining a variety of immune-system components, the team found no evidence of safety concerns.

As further support of the treatment’s efficacy, the researchers had the opportunity to directly examine the tissue of a treated tooth when the patient re-injured it, and had to have it extracted. They found that the implanted stem cells regenerated different components of dental pulp, including the cells that produce dentin, connective tissue, and blood vessels.

“For me, the results are very exciting,” Shi says. “To see something we discovered take a step forward to potentially become a routine therapy in the clinic is gratifying.”

It is, however, just a first step. While using a patient’s own stem cells reduces the chances of immune rejection, it’s not possible in adult patients who have lost all of their baby teeth. Shi and colleagues are beginning to test the use of allogenic stem cells, or cells donated from another person, to regenerate dental tissue in adults. They are also hoping to secure FDA approval to conduct clinical trials using hDPSCs in the United States.

Eventually, they see even broader applications of hDPSCs for treating systemic disease, such as lupus, which Shi has worked on before.

“We’re really eager to see what we can do in the dental field,” Shi says, “and then building on that to open up channels for systemic disease therapy.”

The research was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China, the Natural Science Foundation of China and a pilot grant from Penn Dental Medicine.


Kun Xuan, Bei Li, Hao Guo, Wei Sun, Xiaoxing Kou, Xiaoning He, Yongjie Zhang, Jin Sun, Anqi Liu, Li Liao, Shiyu Liu, Wenjia Liu, Chenghu Hu, Songtao Shi, Yan Jin. *Deciduous autologous tooth stem cells regenerate dental pulp after implantation into injured teeth*. _Science Translational Medicine_ (2018). DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.aaf3227​


----------



## JSCh

*Synopsis: Bismuthates Are Surprisingly Conventional*
September 13, 2018

*Photoemission experiments challenge the long-held belief that the high-temperature superconductivity of certain bismuth oxides is of the unconventional type.*





C. H. P. Wen _et al._, Phys. Rev. Lett. (2018)​Certain bismuth oxides, called bismuthates, were among the first compounds found to exhibit high-temperature superconductivity. The mechanisms behind their superconductivity has, however, remained mysterious, although researchers suspected they were related to those of so-called unconventional superconductors like cuprates and iron pnictides. Now Donglai Feng at Fudan University in China and colleagues might have solved the 30-year-old bismuthate puzzle with data from new photoemission experiments. Their measurements suggest that bismuthates are not unconventional superconductors but are instead conventional Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer superconductors, in which superconductivity arises from the strong coupling between electrons and phonons.

The go-to technique to study superconductors is angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), which provides a direct measurement of a material’s electronic structure by mapping the momenta of electrons the material emits when illuminated by UV or x-ray light. However, ARPES measurements of bismuthates were previously unfeasible, as crystals with large, clean, flat surfaces—a requirement for experiments—weren’t available. Feng’s team solved this problem by improving the synthesis process for bismuthate crystals. They also deployed an ARPES technique that uses a small-spot-size light beam, allowing them to probe crystal domains as small as 50 μm .

The team’s results indicate a stronger-than-expected electron-phonon coupling in bismuthates. By comparing the measured electronic bands with density-functional-theory calculations, the authors explain that the strong coupling is due to long-range Coulomb interactions between electrons in the material—an effect that previous theoretical work had underestimated. The authors argue that accounting for such long-range interactions could help theorists predict other conventional superconductors with high critical temperatures.

This research is published in _Physical Review Letters_.

–Matteo Rini
Matteo Rini is the Deputy Editor of _Physics_.
*
Unveiling the Superconducting Mechanism of Ba0.51K0.49BiO3*
C. H. P. Wen, H. C. Xu, Q. Yao, R. Peng, X. H. Niu, Q. Y. Chen, Z. T. Liu, D. W. Shen, Q. Song, X. Lou, Y. F. Fang, X. S. Liu, Y. H. Song, Y. J. Jiao, T. F. Duan, H. H. Wen, P. Dudin, G. Kotliar, Z. P. Yin, and D. L. Feng
Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 117002 (2018)
Published September 13, 2018

​Physics - Synopsis: Bismuthates Are Surprisingly Conventional

​


----------



## JSCh

*Flawed Crystals are Beautiful in the Eyes of Scientists | Inside Science*
Defects in crystals may be useful for designing spintronic devices, which use the magnetic properties of electrons for processing information.



Rights information: CC0 Public Domain​*Thursday, September 13, 2018 - 13:15
Yuen Yiu, Staff Writer*

(Inside Science) -- Jewelers may disagree, but flaws in a crystal can be a good thing. Recently published research suggests that crystals with specific defects can be useful for making future computers more efficient.

*Enter the spin zone*
Spin, like charge and mass, is a fundamental property of subatomic particles, and is what makes certain particles magnetic and others not. And spintronic devices, as the name suggests, are a relatively new class of devices that use the spins in addition to the charges of electrons to process information. Most familiar electronic devices, in contrast, utilize only the charges.

"The electronic devices we have now all operate based on the transfer of electrons, but when the charges move through the material they generate heat and dissipate energy, which is a problem," said Feng Liu, a materials scientist from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and one of the authors of the new paper in the journal _Physical Review Letters_.

By also utilizing the spins, more information can be packed into every electron without having to increase overheads such as energy input or cooling requirements, so that computing devices can operate more efficiently than they are currently, according to Liu.

"For now, most of these imagined applications are still at the conceptual level, but scientists have already begun building prototypes," said Song Jin, a nanomaterials expert from the University of Wisconsin-Madison not involved in the study.

Unlike an electric current, a spin current can go through a material without relying on the movement of electrons. It can propagate through a material like a human wave through a stadium crowd. But just like uncoordinated fans can be bad at sustaining a human wave, these spin currents are often too incoherent for practical usage.



A spin current (top) can carry information through a material without relying on the movement of electrons (bottom).
Abigail Malate, Staff Illustrator 
Copyright, American Institute of Physics​
"We call it 'spin relaxation' and information is lost when it happens," said Liu. "We want the coherence time to be as long as possible, so that when you inject a 'spin-up' it can stay as a 'spin-up' at least until the signal is processed."

In the recent paper, Liu and his team theorize that there may be a way we can help these spin currents to keep their shape better -- by making crystals with flaws.

*Spiraling into control*
Their calculations showed that, like the spiraling grooves inside a gumball machine that help steer the candy to a waiting child’s hands, spiral-shaped defects can help guide a spin current. This is thanks to a quantum effect known as spin-orbit interaction, which happens when an electron links up its spin direction to its physical movement. The spiraling defect serves as a sort of funnel for the spin-orbit coupled electrons, helping them to keep their spins consistent as they move through the material.

As a nice little bonus, their calculations also showed that the energy range of these spin-orbit coupled electrons is isolated from that of other electrons in these flawed crystals. This means that the signal carried by the spin currents will be easy to distinguish from the noisy signals produced by the other electrons, like a FM radio station isolated by its unique, designated frequency.

With these promising claims, it is now left to the crystal growers and experimentalists to put their predictions to the test by forming flawed crystals.

"These kinds of defects and dislocations are almost like the fact of life for growing crystals. I mean, they're everywhere," said Jin. "Having them controllably formed in materials will be a little bit harder, but it's not impossible."


----------



## JSCh

*The electric plants powering China’s new agricultural revolution*
Scientists hail breakthrough as results of the world’s largest experiment confirm fruit and vegetable output can soar without chemical pesticides and fertilisers




Lettuce growing in an electro culture chamber developed as part of China’s giant experiment to find out if electricity can boost plant growth. Photo: Liu Binjiang




Stephen Chen

PUBLISHED : Sunday, 16 September, 2018, 1:00am
UPDATED : Sunday, 16 September, 2018, 1:00am​
Chinese growers have the answer to a question that has been baffling scientists for three centuries: Can electricity boost plant growth?

To find out, China has been conducting the world’s largest experiment and the results are transforming agricultural production in the world’s most populous nation with a jolt.

Across the country, from Xinjiang’s remote Gobi Desert to the developed coastal areas facing the Pacific Ocean, vegetable greenhouse farms with a combined area of more than 3,600 hectares (8,895 acres) have been taking part in an “electro culture” programme funded by the Chinese government.



​
Last month the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and other government research institutes released the findings of nearly three decades of study in areas with different climate, soil conditions and plantation habits. They are hailing the results as a breakthrough.

The technique has boosted vegetable output by 20 to 30 per cent. Pesticide use has decreased 70 to 100 per cent. And fertiliser consumption has dropped more than 20 per cent.

The vegetables grow under bare copper wires, set about three metres (10 feet) above ground level and stretching end to end under the greenhouse roof. The wires are capable of generating rapid, positive charges as high as 50,000 volts, or more than 400 times the standard residential voltage in the US.



​
The high frequency electricity kills bacteria and virus-transmitting diseases in the air or soil. It also suppresses the surface tension of water on leaves, accelerating vaporisation.

Within the plants, the transport of naturally charged particles, such as bicarbonate and calcium ions, speed up and metabolic activities, like carbon dioxide absorption and photosynthesis, also increase.

Professor Liu Binjiang, government agriculture scientist and a leading member of the project, said the electric current flowing through the wires is only a few millionths of an ampere by volume – lower than a smartphone cable’s workload.

“It does absolutely no harm to the plants or to humans standing nearby,” he said.

Thanks to the positive findings of the study, the area devoted to electrified farms in China is now growing with unprecedented speed, according to Liu, from 1,000 to 1,300 hectares each year.

That means up to 40 per cent growth in electro culture farming could be achieved within the next 12 months.

“Most recent investments have come from the private sector,” Liu said. “The business is taking off. We are supplying the technology and equipment to other countries including the Netherlands, United States, Australia and Malaysia.

“China is a step ahead of the world.”



​*
THE HISTORY*

It was not always so. In fact, China was more than 200 years late to the game.

In 1746, just a few years before Benjamin Franklin sent a kite to catch lightning in a storm, Dr Maimbray of Edinburgh in Scotland electrified two myrtles.

He observed the trees put forth new branches in October, something which had never happened before.

The news travelled. Many similar studies were carried out across Europe, some confirming Maimbray’s findings, others not.

One experiment in Turin, Italy, for instance, found the plants became unfruitful and wilted after an unusually prolific period.

In 1902, physics professor S. Lemstroem visited the Arctic region and discovered some trees grew faster under the aurora borealis than those in milder climates further south.

Lemstroem attributed the phenomenon to the natural electrical conditions produced by the aurora, also known as the northern lights. He conducted a series of experiments in the laboratory to prove it and even wrote a book to promote his hypothesis.

British physicist Sir Oliver Lodge, a key inventor in the development of radio, read the book and reportedly achieved a 24 to 39 per cent increase in wheat grain yield in an eight-hectare experiment.

It caught the attention of governments. The British and American authorities each commissioned separate studies on electro culture in the early 20th century.

The British findings were positive, while the American results were negative.



​
These experiments were mostly small and conducted in open fields, with conditions which varied from one location to another. The wide range of natural elements affected the final output and there was no universal standard for hardware design or technical details such as voltage and frequency.

The scientists in these pioneering studies also lacked advanced equipment, such as today’s portable spectrum analyser, to study the plant’s response to electricity at the molecular level.

As a consequence, explanations of the observed phenomenon remained speculative and interest waned with the advent of chemical fertilisers and pesticides to achieve mass agricultural production.

*CHINA TAKES THE LEAD*

Public interest in electro culture revived with the rise of organic farming and the Chinese government started funding experiments in the technique in 1990.

He Feng, senior technician of Yufa Jingnan Vegetable Production and Sales, one of Beijing’s largest vegetable producers, said the company had taken part in the programme since 2014 and the results were “very satisfactory”.

In just two years the electrified vegetables had brought in extra revenue of nearly 1.2 million yuan (US$175,000).

“We are still running the equipment, which consumes very little power,” he said.



​
One hectare of electrified greenhouse requires about 15 kilowatt-hours of electricity per day, which is about half the power usage of an average American family.

Inside the greenhouse the air smells like the aftermath of a summer thunderstorm. Humidity is low and the plants rarely get sick.

The biggest burden is the installation cost, He said, with the necessary hardware costing tens of thousands of yuan. Without government support, the company could not have afforded to wire up all its greenhouses.

Liu Yongyi, owner of City Luhai Xinghua Sightseeing Agriculture company in Beijing’s Daxing district, which is also engaging in electro culture, said the technology would significantly improve China’s food safety by massively reducing the use of pesticides.

“Pesticide residue is a huge threat to public health. Electricity provides a physical solution to disease and pest control. It is much cleaner than chemicals. The government should subsidise the electro culture revolution,” he said.

Liu said visitors to the farm were intrigued when they saw the system at work and he believed the public would be quick to embrace the technology.

“The theory is easy to understand. I believe people would be willing to pay a premium for electrified vegetables and fruits in the near future,” he said.

Professor Guo Yalong, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Beijing’s Institute of Botany, said the impact of electricity on plant “definitely exists”.




“Electricity is like air and water. It is part of the natural environment,” said Guo, who was not involved in the project.

“Many ionised particles in plants have either negative or positive charges. They can respond to the presence of a man-made electric field nearby,” he said.

China has greenhouses covering more than 4 million hectares, producing nearly 1 trillion yuan worth of vegetables each year.

Professor Liu said there were no plans to electrify them all, as the investment would be unaffordable for most farmers.

His project team is taking a different approach and developing a compact, all-in-one vegetable growing chamber using electro culture technology.

“Each family would be able to grow their own food in the kitchen, on the balcony or in the backyard,” he said.

The chamber uses an artificial light source and electric field to stimulate plant growth and prevent diseases. Operation is automatic and almost care and maintenance free.

“One day these tiny chambers may become an alternative to large scale farms,” Liu said. “That would trigger another agricultural revolution.”


The electric plants powering China’s new agricultural revolution | South China Morning Post

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Earthquake Detected with Fiber Optic Gyroscope at NTSC---Chinese Academy of Sciences*
*Sep 17, 2018*

An M 5.3 earthquake occurred at 19:06:34 on September 12, 2018 in Ningqiang, Hanzhong city, Shaanxi province, China. It was successfully recorded by the fiber optic gyroscope (FOG) at National Time Service Center (NTSC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences with ~85 seconds delay after the initial earthquake.





Fig.1 The detected seismic signal by FOG. (Image by NTSC) ​
The FOG is collaboratively developed by NTSC and Peking University with aim to measure the Universal Time (UT1) with high precision for the applications of national time service, space science & technology, geophysics, etc.

The FOG based on Sngnac effect is used to measure the spin rate with high precision and real-time performance. It is well known for low maintenance requirements, small environment sensitivity, high reliability and long lifetime, mostly due to its all solid structure and no moving part, thus it provides a unique method to implement the UT1 measurement systems.

As required by the high precision measurement, the FOG is put in a laboratory 30 meters below the ground, where the stable temperature & humidity conditions, as well as low level vibration provide an ideal base for the gyroscope.

The detected seismic signal shows the rotation component (1D) of this earthquake, which is an important information for the seismology and earthquake forecasting. With further improvement and upgrade, giant-FOG will become a powerful tool for UT1 measurement, geophysics, general relativity, etc.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Researchers create 'breathable' battery*
CGTN
2018-09-17 15:00 GMT+8




Chinese researchers have made breakthroughs by using composite materials with sodium carbonate to produce a rechargeable battery that pulls carbon dioxide from the air for its discharge.

A team led by Chen Jun, a professor from Nankai University's College of Chemistry in Tianjin, has assembled the battery with a 350 mAh capacity and 183 Wh/kg energy density, Science and Technology Daily reported.

It obtains oxygen from the air when discharging and releases oxygen into the air when charging, and is called a "breathable" battery.

Too much sodium will create dendrites at the negative pole, causing a short circuit, and the production of sodium will need huge energy consumption in the electrolysis of sodium chloride or sodium hydroxide.

Chinese researchers produced the composite material of sodium carbonate on multiple-walled carbon nanotubes, and by controlling the capacity of the battery, they effectively prohibited the formation of dendrites.

The sodium-carbon dioxide battery comes after the breathable lithium-air battery that uses oxygen for its discharge. In comparison, the sodium-carbon dioxide battery is much greener, and sodium carbonate is easy to produce.

The battery will provide an energy supply for the Mars probe, since the planet's air is 95 percent carbon dioxide.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*NATURE INDEX* | 19 SEPTEMBER 2018
*Movers and shakers*
Although China leads the pack, fast-moving institutions are building their research reputations the world over.



Excavations led by Griffith University at Leang Bulu Bettue, a cave on Sulawesi island, Indonesia.Credit: Justin Mott/Mott Visuals

These 16 institutions were selected from among the most improved institutions in the Nature Index between 2015 and 2017. Some showed exceptional absolute and relative growth in their overall contribution to the papers in the journals tracked by the index, measured by fractional count (FC), whereas others excelled in a specific subject category. Chinese institutions make up more than half of the top 100 rising stars, far exceeding the 20 from the United States, and 4 each from Germany and the Netherlands.


---> Movers and shakers | Nature Index 2018 Rising Stars


*++++++++++++++######++++++++++++++*​

*NATURE INDEX *| 19 SEPTEMBER 2018
*Challenger states*
Strength in different sectors, subjects and regions contributes to a country's success.

These six countries have experienced the highest absolute and percentage increases in their contribution to the Nature Index since 2015. While China is making waves among the traditional scientific powers, the other five nations are disrupting lower-tiered research strongholds.



Source: UNESCO/OECD

---> Challenger states | Nature Index 2018 Rising Stars

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*E-skin able to detect changes in wind, water drops and moving ants*
*September 20, 2018 by Bob Yirka, Tech Xplore
*


​Sensory skins mounted on the fingers of a mechanical arm. Credit: Wu et al., _Sci. Robot_. 3, eaat0429 (2018)

A team of researchers working at the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed an electronic skin that is sensitive enough to detect changes in air moving, falling drops and moving ants. In their paper published in the journal _Science Robotics_, the group describes their e-skin and possible applications.

As scientists continue to improve the look and capabilities of robots, one of the prime areas of research is skin. Robotics engineers would like to develop an e-skin that is similar to human skin. This is because it is believed that future robots will need the ability to "feel" things in order to perform sophisticated, yet subtle activities. Such activities might include responding to temperature, noticing changes in texture, or processing pleasurable sensations. In this new effort, the researchers in China have made advances in sensitivity of an electronic skin.

The new skin is able to detect very small changes in pressure and convert what it finds to pulses. It was made by covering a magnetic sensor with a hollow polymer membrane and then embedding magnetic beads in the top part of the membrane. As pressure is applied, the membrane is pushed in, which allows the embedded magnetic beads to move closer to the sensor. The resistance created is sent to an electronic circuit. The electronic circuit then converts the signals to a series of pulses of varying frequencies that reflect the amount of pressure being "felt" on the skin.



​E-skins that can “pulse” in response to pressure. Credit: Wu et al., _Sci. Robot_. 3, eaat0429 (2018)

The researchers created an artificial finger covered with the e-skin and then attached the finger to an artificial arm for testing purposes. They report that the skin they created was able to generate pulses for pressure as small as that created by a line of ants running over the surface. It was also able to detect changes in wind speed and differences in the size of water drops that impacted on its surface.

The researchers report that their e-skin was able to detect pressure changes better than human skin, in some cases. They believe their new e-skin could prove useful in robotics and as a means to improve the performance of artificial limbs.

*More information:* A skin-inspired tactile sensor for smart prosthetics, _Science Robotics_ 19 Sep 2018: Vol. 3, Issue 22, eaat0429, DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.aat0429, http://robotics.sciencemag.org/content/3/22/eaat0429


https://techxplore.com/news/2018-09-e-skin-ants.html

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*Safest random numbers generated*

2018-09-21 09:37:30 Global Times Editor : Li Yan

*Researchers eye broad applications*

A recent study by Chinese scientists for the first time revealed the safest random numbers in the world, which cannot be detected or hacked even by the most advanced computers and has a broad application in areas such as cryptography. 

The results of the study were published on Nature, the international journal of science, on Thursday. 

The project was jointly conducted by a team of top Chinese quantum physicist Pan Jianwei from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), Shanghai Institute of Microsystems and Information Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Japan's NTT Basic Research Laboratories and NTT Research Center for Theoretical Quantum Physics, according to a press release the USTC sent to the Global Times on Thursday. 

The study is about *device-independent quantum random number generation*, which produces unpredictable genuine randomness without assumptions on the inner workings of devices, and is the ultimate goal in the field of quantum information science, according to project information published on Nature.

"The generator of device-independent quantum random numbers is the safest production device for random numbers, and the random numbers it generates cannot be detected even by the world's most powerful quantum computer eavesdroppers have," the press release said.

Many countries are also researching such generators and the US' National Institute of Standards and Technology is attempting to use such a generator to establish a national standard on random numbers, according to the press release. 

"There will be a random number leakage if we accidentally used the quantum random number generator produced by a malicious third party, and our new achievement ensures that even using the malicious third party provided generator, it could still produce genuine random numbers which could not be leaked," Pan was quoted by the People's Daily as saying on Thursday. 

The random numbers have significant applications in both science and daily life in weather forecasting, research and development on medication and nuclear weapons and design of new materials, the press release said. 

The random numbers could control the evolution of the system needed in artificial intelligence, and is also the safe foundation for communication security and modern cryptography. 

Scientists from USTC will establish stable and high-speed device-independent quantum random number generators, and provide safe random numbers, and even help form a new international standard for random numbers, the People's Daily reported Thursday.

Pan's team has engaged in leading research in quantum science and technology. 

In June, Pan's team set a world record for entanglement of 18 quantum bits, keeping their lead in the field of quantum computing. 

http://www.ecns.cn/news/sci-tech/2018-09-21/detail-ifyyehna1448824.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Three_Kingdoms

JSCh said:


> *NATURE INDEX* | 19 SEPTEMBER 2018
> *Movers and shakers*
> Although China leads the pack, fast-moving institutions are building their research reputations the world over.
> 
> 
> 
> Excavations led by Griffith University at Leang Bulu Bettue, a cave on Sulawesi island, Indonesia.Credit: Justin Mott/Mott Visuals
> 
> These 16 institutions were selected from among the most improved institutions in the Nature Index between 2015 and 2017. Some showed exceptional absolute and relative growth in their overall contribution to the papers in the journals tracked by the index, measured by fractional count (FC), whereas others excelled in a specific subject category. Chinese institutions make up more than half of the top 100 rising stars, far exceeding the 20 from the United States, and 4 each from Germany and the Netherlands.
> 
> 
> ---> Movers and shakers | Nature Index 2018 Rising Stars
> 
> 
> *++++++++++++++######++++++++++++++*​
> 
> *NATURE INDEX *| 19 SEPTEMBER 2018
> *Challenger states*
> Strength in different sectors, subjects and regions contributes to a country's success.
> 
> These six countries have experienced the highest absolute and percentage increases in their contribution to the Nature Index since 2015. While China is making waves among the traditional scientific powers, the other five nations are disrupting lower-tiered research strongholds.
> 
> 
> 
> Source: UNESCO/OECD
> 
> ---> Challenger states | Nature Index 2018 Rising Stars



Wow we have over 1.6 mln researchers!

Also in the chart below, we have produced a FC of more than 9000 (2017) and that stood at less than half of the usa did.
Still a long way to go, but keep it up China 










cirr said:


> *Safest random numbers generated*
> 
> 2018-09-21 09:37:30 Global Times Editor : Li Yan
> 
> *Researchers eye broad applications*
> 
> A recent study by Chinese scientists for the first time revealed the safest random numbers in the world, which cannot be detected or hacked even by the most advanced computers and has a broad application in areas such as cryptography.
> 
> The results of the study were published on Nature, the international journal of science, on Thursday.
> 
> The project was jointly conducted by a team of top Chinese quantum physicist Pan Jianwei from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), Shanghai Institute of Microsystems and Information Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Japan's NTT Basic Research Laboratories and NTT Research Center for Theoretical Quantum Physics, according to a press release the USTC sent to the Global Times on Thursday.
> 
> The study is about *device-independent quantum random number generation*, which produces unpredictable genuine randomness without assumptions on the inner workings of devices, and is the ultimate goal in the field of quantum information science, according to project information published on Nature.
> 
> "The generator of device-independent quantum random numbers is the safest production device for random numbers, and the random numbers it generates cannot be detected even by the world's most powerful quantum computer eavesdroppers have," the press release said.
> 
> Many countries are also researching such generators and the US' National Institute of Standards and Technology is attempting to use such a generator to establish a national standard on random numbers, according to the press release.
> 
> "There will be a random number leakage if we accidentally used the quantum random number generator produced by a malicious third party, and our new achievement ensures that even using the malicious third party provided generator, it could still produce genuine random numbers which could not be leaked," Pan was quoted by the People's Daily as saying on Thursday.
> 
> The random numbers have significant applications in both science and daily life in weather forecasting, research and development on medication and nuclear weapons and design of new materials, the press release said.
> 
> The random numbers could control the evolution of the system needed in artificial intelligence, and is also the safe foundation for communication security and modern cryptography.
> 
> Scientists from USTC will establish stable and high-speed device-independent quantum random number generators, and provide safe random numbers, and even help form a new international standard for random numbers, the People's Daily reported Thursday.
> 
> Pan's team has engaged in leading research in quantum science and technology.
> 
> In June, Pan's team set a world record for entanglement of 18 quantum bits, keeping their lead in the field of quantum computing.
> 
> http://www.ecns.cn/news/sci-tech/2018-09-21/detail-ifyyehna1448824.shtml




Congrats!

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*New study finds Zika vaccine can treat brain tumors*
CGTN
2018-09-23 22:53 GMT+8





Researchers from China and the US say a Zika virus vaccine they developed can inhibit brain tumor growth.

ScienceNet.cn reported the new study which had been published earlier by mBio, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology.

According to the report, the joint study was led by Qin Chengfeng from the Academy of Military Medical Sciences in China, Man Jianghong from the National Center of Biomedical Analysis in China and Shi Peiyong from the University of Texas.

Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common and malignant form of primary brain tumor. Treatment with surgery, radiation and chemotherapy has limited effect, and the recurrence rate is almost 100 percent. The average survival time of patients is about 14 months.



Scientists said they have developed a Zika virus vaccine that can inhibit brain tumor growth. /VCG Photo

Previous studies found that the GBM stem cells played a key role in the development and recurrence of the fatal brain disease.

In 2017, researchers from the Academy of Military Medical Sciences in China and the University of Texas discovered that the Zika virus could infect and kill neural precursor cells and neural stem cells. And then, they developed a genetically modified live attenuated Zika virus vaccine (ZIKV-LAV).

They hypothesized that the Zika virus could also kill GBM stem cells, which have similar properties to neural stem cells.

Researchers injected the ZIKV-LAV into mice and it did not cause any abnormal behaviors or damage to the brain and other organs, indicating that the vaccine was safe.

Then, they found that the tumor sizes were significantly reduced, and GBM stem cells were infected and killed in the brains of mice. Healthy cells were not harmed.

After further gene analysis, researchers found the mechanism of how the Zika virus works: The virus infection triggered a strong antiviral response, which elicited inflammation that killed GBM stem cells.

In experiments, the Zika virus also prolonged the survival time of mice.

The Zika virus is spread mostly through the bite of an infected Aedes mosquito. It can be passed on by a pregnant woman to her baby.

According to researchers, the study offers a new treatment for brain tumors, and they plan to work with clinicians to test the efficacy and safety of the vaccine in patients.

(Top image: Zika is mostly spread by the bite of an infected mosquito. /VCG Photo )


----------



## JSCh

*Quantum radar tech to counter stealth*
By ZHAO LEI | China Daily | Updated: 2018-09-25 07:13

















A J-20 fighter joins a drill in this undated photo. [Yang Jun / Xinhua]​A major State-owned defense contractor has designed and built a cutting-edge quantum radar, which military observers say will eventually be able to detect stealth aircraft from great distances.​
The radar, developed and made by the Nanjing Research Institute of Electronics Technology in Jiangsu province, is able to detect and track targets more than 100 kilometers away, Sun Jun, head of the institute's Intelligent Detection Technology Laboratory, told China Daily in an exclusive interview.

The institute has been working with the University of Science and Technology of China and Nanjing University along with other research partners in carrying out field tests of the radar's prototype, and has extensively improved its accuracy and sensitivity, he said.

The radar is still undergoing tests and is more like a prototype demonstration of future capabilities, Sun said, adding that future versions will have better anti-stealth properties.

"The characteristics of quantum radar include high reliability, accuracy and viability in sophisticated electromagnetic environments. It also has good mobility that will allow it to be mounted on multiple kinds of carriers," the senior engineer said. "It has resolved traditional radar difficulties in terms of handling stealth targets and surviving enemy countermeasures."

The Nanjing institute, part of Beijing-based China Electronics Technology Group Corp, is the country's largest and most developed designer of military surveillance radar systems. Its products have a wide presence in the People's Liberation Army and have been sold to more than 20 nations in Africa and Asia, according to the institute.

Traditional military radar relies on radio waves to detect targets, which consequently make them susceptible to jamming measures. Most existing radar systems cannot detect stealth aircraft because such planes are made of radar-absorbent materials and have "stealthy" aerodynamic designs.

By comparison, quantum radars transmit subatomic particles, instead of radio waves, when they search for targets, so they will not be affected by radar-absorbent materials and low-signature designs. Moreover, quantum radars are not fooled by traditional radar-jamming tactics.

In addition to these advantages, quantum radars can also be adopted in missile defense and space exploration in the future. They will revolutionize radar arsenals, according to researchers from PLA National University of Defense Technology in Changsha, Hunan province.

China has been allotting a considerable amount of resources to quantum technologies in an attempt to lead what Chinese leaders consider one of the most important fields in tomorrow's science and technology realm.


----------



## JSCh

*Multicenter Study Finds IVUS-Guided Drug-Eluting Stent Implantation Improves Clinical Outcomes in All-Comer Patients*

*Results from the ULTIMATE Trial Reported at TCT 2018 and Published Simultaneously in JACC*

*SAN DIEGO – September 24, 2018 *– The first study designed to determine the benefits of intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) guidance over angiography guidance during drug-eluting stent (DES) implantation in all-comer patients found that IVUS improved clinical outcomes by lowering the rate of target vessel failure at one year.

Findings from the ULTIMATE trial were reported today at the 30th annual Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) scientific symposium. Sponsored by the Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF), TCT is the world’s premier educational meeting specializing in interventional cardiovascular medicine. The study was also published simultaneously in the _Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC)._

IVUS is an intravascular imaging modality that provides detailed anatomic information about reference vessel dimensions and lesion characteristics, including severity of diameter stenosis, lesion length, and morphology (vulnerable plaque), which is less well-detected by coronary angiography. Whether the routine use of IVUS is associated with improved outcomes in all-comer patients is not known.

From August 2014 to May 2017, a total of 1,448 all-comer patients from eight centers in China who were undergoing DES implantation were randomly assigned (1:1) to either IVUS guidance (n=724) or angiography guidance (n=724). Multi-vessel disease was seen in 54.9% of patients. Mean lesion length was 34.5 mm, and 66.9% of lesions were classified as Type B2/C lesions. IVUS-guided procedures were longer in duration, and on a per-lesion basis used slightly greater stent diameters and stent lengths.

The primary endpoint was target vessel failure (TVF) at 12 months, defined as the composite of cardiac death, target vessel myocardial infarction (TVMI), and clinically driven target vessel revascularization (TVR). At 30-day follow up, primary and secondary endpoints were comparable between the two groups.

One year after PCI, a total of 60 (4.2%) TVFs occurred, with 21 (2.9%) in the IVUS group and 39 (5.4%) in the angiography group (HR 0.530; 95% CI: 0.312-0.901; p=0.019). In lesion-level analyses, the IVUS group had a lower rate of target lesion revascularization (TLR) compared with the angiography group (0.9% vs. 2.3%, p=0.02). Despite the use of IVUS, 53% of patients met prespecified optimal criteria for stent implantation; in this group, TVF was 1.6%, compared with 4.4% in patients who failed to achieve all optimal IVUS criteria (HR 0.349; 95% CI: 0.135-0.898; p=0.029).

“The study demonstrated that IVUS-guided stent implantation significantly improved clinical outcomes in all-comers, particularly for patients who had an IVUS-defined optimal procedure, compared to angiography guidance,” said Junjie Zhang, MD, Vice Director of the Cardiovascular Department at Nanjing First Hospital in Nanjing Medical University (Nanjing, China). “While previous studies and this trial have demonstrated the overall favorable effect of IVUS guidance for patients with particular lesion subsets, this study further reports that achievement of IVUS-defined optimal PCI improves clinical outcomes for all-comers.”

The ULTIMATE trial was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and was jointly supported by Six Talent Peaks Project in Jiangsu Province, Nanjing Health and Family Planning Commission, Nanjing Health Youth Talent Training project, and Nanjing Municipal Commission of Science & Technology. Dr. Zhang has no conflicts of interest.



Multicenter Study Finds IVUS-Guided Drug-Eluting Stent Implantation Improves Clinical Outcomes in All-Comer Patients - Cadiovascular Research Foundation

Junjie Zhang, Xiaofei Gao, Jing Kan, Zhen Ge, Leng Han, Shu Lu, Nailiang Tian, Song Lin, Qinghua Lu, Xueming Wu, Qihua Li, Zhizhong Liu, Yan Chen, Xuesong Qian, Juan Wang, Dayang Chai, Chonghao Chen, Xiaolong Li, Bill D. Gogas, Tao Pan, Shoujie Shan, Fei Ye and Shao-Liang Chen. *Intravascular Ultrasound-Guided Versus Angiography-Guided Implantation of Drug-Eluting Stent in All-Comers: The ULTIMATE trial. * _J. Am. Coll. Cardiol. _(2018). DOI: 10.1016/j.jacc.2018.09.013​


----------



## JSCh

*Landmark China cancer drug full approval ‘first of a wave’ | Business | Chemistry World*
BY ANDY EXTANCE | 24 SEPTEMBER 2018

Chi-Med’s friquintinib is a result of China’s evolving drug innovation and regulation 

China has granted the first full approval of a drug developed in the country to have been through modern clinical trials: the colorectal cancer treatment Elunate (friquintinib). Hong Kong-headquartered Hutchison China MediTech (Chi-Med) has worked on its drug since 2007, and has seven further candidates discovered by its chemists in Shanghai in clinical trials.





Source: © Hutchison China MediTech​
China’s industry is trying to break from it’s poor reputation for innovation

‘It’s the beginning of a wave,’ Chi-Med chief executive Christian Hogg tells _Chemistry World_. ‘That wave is a result – in Hutchison China Meditech’s case – of 18 years of building a chemistry-driven research organisation in China around small molecules, focused on oncology and immunology.’

Industrial collaboration has also helped friquintinib in particular. In 2013, Chi-Med signed a partnership and licensing agreement with US-headquartered pharma giant Eli Lilly. Lilly funded a portion of fruquintinib’s clinical trials, and its sales representatives will now commercialise the potent, selective inhibitor of vascular endothelial growth factor receptors (VEGFR) 1, 2 and 3. Meanwhile, Shanghai-based WuXi Apptec will manufacture the fruquintinib active pharmaceutical ingredient (API), which Chi-Med will formulate into capsules in its newly built Suzhou facility.





Source: © Hutchison China MediTech​
Chi-Med’s R&D teams in Shanghai have a further 7 candidates progressing through clinical trials

The API relationship is possible thanks to major moves by China to refine its drug regulation system. In 2016, the China Drug Administration (CDA) announced its Marketing Authorization Holder (MAH) programme, prior to which companies were required to own manufacturing facilities for the entire process. ‘If the quality of the drug candidate is high enough and the unmet medical need is large enough, you will be assigned MAH status, which fruquintinib was,’ Hogg says.

Also in 2016, the CDA announced a priority review programme for drugs developed in China to encourage innovation, which sped up fruquintinib’s approval. Despite recent controversies over drug and vaccine quality in China, Hogg stresses that he found the review process to be ‘extremely well-run from start to finish’. ‘The regulatory authorities in China are building out the organisation to far higher levels that have ever been in place before to give them the capacity to apply such rigour across the full spectrum of their responsibility.’

In 2018, the number of CDA employees increased to more than 1000, adds Calvin Niu, associate director of global regulatory affairs at US-headquartered PRA Health Sciences. ‘Three years ago, there were only 120 reviewers,’ Niu says. ‘The drug filing backlog was very serious at that time. The priority review system is definitely important as it can shorten the launch timeline.’

Niu agrees that fruquintinib ‘can be considered the beginning of a wave of drug innovation in China as a result of government reforms’ designed to encourage domestic discoveries. He notes that in 2017 there were 104 clinical trial applications and eight marketing applications for new small molecule drugs in China, the most in the past ten years.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*CChina-SL project to end CKDu launched | Daily News.lk*
Friday, September 28, 2018 - 01:00
Disna Mudalige




Minister Rauff Hakeem. Picture by Siripala Halwala.​
The construction of a state-of-the-art water testing laboratory will begin tomorrow at the Peradeniya University premises as a China-Sri Lanka joint project to finding a scientific solution to the Chronic Kidney Disease of Unknown Origin (CKDu).

The USD 20-million project is carried out with a Chinese grant of Rs. 1,950 million and a Rs. 880 million contribution from the Sri Lankan Government.

City Planning and Water Supply Minister Rauff Hakeem said the ‘China Sri Lanka Joint Research and Demonstration Centre for Water Technology’ would be the largest drinking water testing laboratory in South Asia.

He was addressing a press conference at the Government Information Department, yesterday.

The University of Peradeniya, Chinese Academy of Sciences and the City Planning and Water Supply Ministry are partners of the project, which includes a 5,000 square metre building with advanced technology. The project is expected to be completed by May 2020.

The minister said the project grant was a result of President Maithripala Sirisena’s visit to China in 2015.

The minister said the water testing laboratory together with the fully-fledged Nephrology Hospital in Polonnaruwa, being built with another Chinese grant, would help to deliver the President’s pre-election pledge to fight CKDu.

Chinese Academy of Sciences Vice President Hou Jianguo said this project is the first China-aided project in the field of science and technology in Sri Lanka.

The project construction was undertaken by China Tiesiju Civil Engineering Group Co., Ltd. (CTCE).

Responding to a question by a journalist, the minister said the Cabinet decided to set up a separate authority to protect the country’s water resources.

“At present, water bodies come under various institutions such as the Forest Conservation Department, Wildlife Department, Mahaweli Development Authority, Irrigation Department and National Water Supply and Drainage Board.

As the responsibilities are shared, the task has become difficult.

The new authority will act as the central body to protect the water resources,” said the minister. Peradeniya University Vice Chancellor Prof. Upul Dissanayake, Chinese Embassy in Sri Lanka Commercial Counselor Yang Zuoyuan and CTCE Board Chairman Zhang Hechuan were also present.

+++++###########+++++​
*China invests in new center in Sri Lanka to strengthen collaboration on marine sciences*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-09-29 13:48:05|Editor: Yamei



Photo taken on Sept. 27, 2018 shows the China-Sri Lanka Joint Centre for Education and Research (CSL-CER) at the University of Ruhuna (UOR) in Matara, Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka and China inaugurated a new building for the China-Sri Lanka Joint Centre for Education and Research (CSL-CER) at the University of Ruhuna (UOR), in southern Sri Lanka with the aim of strengthening marine science and research in the island country, the UOR said in a statement on Saturday. (Xinhua/Tang Lu)

COLOMBO, Sept. 29 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lanka and China inaugurated a new building for the China-Sri Lanka Joint Centre for Education and Research (CSL-CER) at the University of Ruhuna (UOR), in southern Sri Lanka with the aim of strengthening marine science and research in the island country, the UOR said in a statement on Saturday.

The CSL-CER is handled by the UOR and the South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), an outcome of a national level cooperation agreement signed in 2014. It is also the CAS's first overseas research center on marine sciences.

According to the statement, the CAS has granted more than 20 Sri Lankan students to pursue their Phd/Master's degree on marine sciences in CAS's research institutes during the last three years.

The CAS along with the UOR and other Sri Lankan agencies will push this center to play a bigger role in the international cooperation on marine sciences and education in the Indian Ocean region.

Hou Jianguo, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the CAS will continue to promote comprehensive science and education cooperation with Sri Lanka using the newly launched ocean observation platform.

Acting Vice Chancellor of the UOR Nayana Alagiyawanna said the joint observation system of the tropical marine environment set up by the CAS and the UOR a few years ago had laid UOR on an important position in the field of marine research in Sri Lanka.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Mapping of Chinese brain bold journey for science*
By Zhou Wenting | China Daily | Updated: 2018-10-02 07:28





​Scientists are mapping Chinese people's brains to get a better understanding of how the influence of the Chinese language affects cognitive performance. [Photo/VCG]​
Reading, writing in characters versus alphabet may create cognitive oddities

Scientists are mapping Chinese people's brains to get a better understanding of how the influence of the Chinese language affects cognitive performance, as well as to learn more about the mechanisms behind cerebral disorders.

Hospitals and universities in Shanghai and Shenzhen, Guangdong province, are the main participants in the joint study commissioned by the Shanghai Research Center for Brain Science and Brain-Inspired Intelligence. They will carry out clinical studies into brain development, cognitive learning processes and brain-related diseases, said Zhang Xu, vice-president of the Shanghai branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and executive director of the research center, in a recent interview with China Daily.

The center employs some of China's leading brain research experts, some of whom participated in the breakthrough cloning of two monkeys using somatic cells last year.

Bai Chunli, president of the CAS, said at the unveiling ceremony of the research center in May that brain science had become a popular international discipline in recent years, and the world's major technological powers have invested a lot of resources in the field of study.

The establishment of the research center is an important measure to strengthen the country's international status in the field.

The center was established "with the ultimate goal of gaining more understanding of the human brain and improving social development and people's well-being", Zhang said in the interview during the recent 2018 World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai.

Scientists in the United States are also working on human brain mapping, Zhang said. The Shanghai center will focus more on unique Chinese elements, such as the correlation and influence of the Chinese language and calligraphy on the brain, and the identification of functional areas and their roles in neural networks and disease.

Zhang said there has been scientific research demonstrating that the functional areas of the brain stimulated when speaking Chinese and English are different.

"There will also be brain research for infants and children to find answers to various questions, such as the best time to start language learning and whether the learning processes of children are different from those of adults," he said, adding that research groups in education and psychology will participate in such studies.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*NEWS *| 02 OCTOBER 2018
*China to train African scientists as part of $60-billion development plan*
But critics worry the investment will make African countries too reliant on an outside power.

*David Cyranoski
*


An agricultural official from Namibia learns about technology to combat desertification at a Chinese lab.Credit: Chen Bin/Xinhua via Zuma

China wants to train Africa’s next generation of scientists. Its lofty goal is to improve African science in fields from agriculture and climate change to quantum physics and artificial intelligence.

The training is one element of a much larger plan adopted by Chinese and African leaders at the third Summit of the Forum on China–Africa Cooperation in Beijing last month. Chinese President Xi Jinping has pledged US$50 billion in grants and loans for infrastructure projects, medical programmes, clean-energy initiatives and other projects in Africa. Chinese companies will invest another $10 billion. The amount dedicated to training scientists is not known.

But some policy experts and scientists worry that African nations might become too reliant on other countries to provide training. Others doubt that the initiatives will truly boost African science, as similar projects planned at past forums have yet to produce noticeable benefits.

Few details have been released about how the money will be distributed among countries. But the division is likely to be controversial, says Lina Benabdallah, who studies Chinese foreign policy in Africa at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. “It will be up to African leaders, political elites and their constituents to press for specific programmes to happen,” she says.

*Research training*
Training is a pillar of the new plan. China will offer 50,000 scholarships for African people, including scientists, to study in China, and will provide short-term training opportunities for another 50,000 people to travel to seminars and workshops.

The action plan also offers scholarships for postgraduate training in China and at African institutions, such as the Sino-Africa Joint Research Centre at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology in Juja, Kenya. The centre, which opened in 2013, collaborates with Wuhan Botanical Garden in China and has produced dozens of academic papers in fields including biodiversity and climate-change monitoring.

China will also support a major expansion of the University of Health and Allied Sciences, a modern biomedical training institution in Ho, Ghana, which the country gave US$20 million in 2015.

“Developing indigenous talents locally is extremely important to the future of science in Africa,” says Tommy Karikari, a neurology researcher from Ghana who works at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. The latest plan will dramatically expand training opportunities for African scientists, he says.

Karikari says that local scholarships and training facilities are important to ensure that some researchers stay in Africa. Many people currently train abroad because of a lack of opportunities on the continent, says Karikari. “It is expensive, and many beneficiaries do not return home, which affects the pool of trained scientists in Africa,” he says.

Benabdallah says the summit focused particularly on ways to include African scientists in China’s global diplomacy programme, the Belt and Road initiative. For example, the plan encourages researchers in Africa to join the Young Scientists Exchange Program, which pays for scientists to study in China for up to a year.

China has also promised to help countries develop real-world applications in quantum physics and artificial intelligence. But Benabdallah says there is a risk that African nations might become too dependent on other countries to provide training and skills. It is important for African nations to be producers of science and technology, not just consumers, she says.

*Agriculture focus*
The plan also reaffirms China’s decades-long commitment to help improve agricultural science and practices and environmental protection in Africa. Analysts characterize this investment as a mix of profit-seeking, philanthropy and food security, as China seeks grains and oilseeds that it can bring back home.

The plan calls for new centres for joint research in environmental issues and geoscience, although their locations are yet to be announced. Other programmes will focus on safeguarding biodiversity and combating climate change and desertification. Five hundred senior agriculture experts from China will also be sent to Africa to help modernize agricultural practices.

But Ademola Adenle, who studies sustainable development at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, is sceptical about China’s intentions. He says little knowledge has been gained from the more than 20 Chinese-government-funded agricultural-technology development centres created throughout Africa since 2006. The centres lack transparency and mainly represent Chinese commercial interests, he says. One of them reportedly sells farm equipment, mushroom powder and dried mushrooms to local people.

“Since this initiative kicked off, I am not aware of any significant breakthrough in agriculture research and development or any type of innovation that could transform agricultural development,” he says.

China's agriculture ministry did not respond to questions about the agricultural-technology centres by _Nature's_ deadline.

Adenle hopes that the forum will result in training for agricultural scientists to improve local farming techniques. But if these initiatives just give China more access to Africa’s natural resources, it could spell doom for the continent, he says.

For China’s investments to help Africans harness science and technology, there will need to be more public discussion of the trade agreements and political deals as they're worked out. “There is no doubt that China has invested a lot of money in Africa,” he says. “But we need more transparency.”

Nature 562, 15-16 (2018)


China to train African scientists as part of $60-billion development plan | Nature.com


----------



## JSCh

*Project leads countries to food security*
By WANG XIAODONG | China Daily | Updated: 2018-10-04 02:30





Photo/VCG
​Green Super Rice initiative bringing African, Asian nations high-yield crops

Chinese agricultural researchers have helped plant more than 2 million hectares of superior rice species in more than a dozen Asian and African countries, yielding harvest increases of up to 30 percent per hectare in some, in an international cooperative project over the past 10 years.

The Green Super Rice project, geared at alleviating poverty through cultivation and promotion of a drought and disease resistant rice species, covers 16 Asian and African countries where rice is a staple, said Li Zhikang, a professor and researcher of rice breeding at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and a leading member of the project.

Working with authorities in the 16 countries, which include the Philippines, Vietnam, South Africa and Uganda, researchers have developed and introduced about 70 superior quality rice species, and dozens more are expected to be planted, he said.

In both the Philippines and Vietnam, about 700,000 hectares of new rice species have been planted. The new species, compared with those originally cultivated, have increased yields by 20 to 30 percent in both countries, Li said.

"Due to superior characteristics of the new species, such as being insect resistant, they require either no or less synthetic fertilizers, and that helps protect the environment," Li said. "With the planting of the new species, the concept of 'green rice' is also being promoted and gradually accepted."

The project, launched in 2008 and sponsored by the Chinese government and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is led by the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. It is China's largest international agri-technology cooperative project in recent years, Li said.

Chinese and international institutes — including the International Rice Research Institute in Manila, the Philippines; Africa Rice, in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire; and Huazhong Agricultural University in Wuhan, Hubei province — participated in the project, Li said.

"Many of the countries involved rely on imports because of insufficient agricultural production," Li said. "For example, the Philippines imports about 1 million metric tons of rice every year. By increasing harvest yields, the project can improve food security in these countries."

Li said the project is also beneficial to China, the world's biggest importer of grains, including rice. Last year, China imported 4 million metric tons and exported 1.2 metric tons of rice, according to the General Administration of Customs.

"Increased rice production in these countries can leave them with surpluses for export, which help to diversify China's rice imports and improves food security in China," he said.

Li said the project, which is due to end in March 2019, may be extended to cover more countries.

"Some other countries, like India, Bangladesh and Indonesia, have contacted us about taking part in the project," Li said.

"We hope for continued support for the project from the Chinese government in order to benefit more countries, including China," he said.

Contact the writer at wangxiaodong@chinadaily.com.cn


----------



## JSCh

*Analysis of largest set of genomes from pregnant women reveals genetic links to disease, birth outcomes*
October 4, 2018, University of California - Berkeley



​Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Analysis of the world's largest set of genome data from pregnant women, totaling 141,431 expectant mothers from across China, has uncovered unsuspected associations between genes and birth outcomes, including the birth of twins and a woman's age at first pregnancy.

The analysis also allowed researchers to reconstruct the recent movement and intermarriage of different ethnic groups in China, and promises to help identify genes that make people susceptible to infectious diseases.

"It's amazing that this is even possible—that you can take these massive samples and do association mapping to see what the genetic variants are that explain human traits," said co-author Rasmus Nielsen, a professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, who oversaw the computational analysis performed by researchers at BGI in Shenzhen, China.

It's even more amazing because the researchers sequenced, on average, only 10 percent of each mother's genome, relying on large numbers of poor-quality genomes so as to leverage cheaper tests to discover new genetic links.

The mothers-to-be had provided blood samples to be tested for fetal chromosomal abnormalities, primarily Down syndrome. This technique, called cell-free fetal DNA testing, a form of non-invasive prenatal testing, is possible because mothers have DNA from their unborn child floating in their bloodstream. With rapid shotgun sequencing, labs can break up all the free-floating DNA in the blood and sequence just enough of the bits to diagnose Down syndrome.

Though not yet widespread in the United States, non-invasive prenatal testing is common in China: 70 percent of such tests worldwide have been performed in China. Sampling the mother's blood can be done early and risk-free, whereas standard prenatal testing in the U.S. involves amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling, both of which require obtaining fetal cells from inside the uterus and risk harming the unborn child.

BGI was paid by maternity hospitals to conduct these tests, but obtained informed consent from each mother to also analyze the partially sequenced genomes for research purposes, maintaining anonymity. All the analyses were performed in China and the data is hosted in the China National GeneBank.

The data analysis revealed, for example, that variation in a gene called NRG1 is linked to a greater or lesser incidence of twins. One variant of the gene is more common in mothers with twins and is associated with hyperthyroidism, tightening a link between thyroid function and twinning that had previously been seen in mice.

A variant of another gene, EMB, was associated with older first-time mothers.



​BGI-Shenzhen researchers Siyang Liu, Xun Xu, and Xin Jin (left to right). Credit: BGI-Shenzhen

The analysis also pulled out several genes that had not previously been associated with height and body mass index.

Perhaps most interesting, Nielsen said, is what sequencing of all the DNA in maternal blood tells us about viruses circulating through the body, and thus the link between viruses and genes that determine susceptibility to disease.

A variation in one gene, for example, was associated with a higher concentration of herpesvirus 6 in a mother's blood. Herpesvirus 6 is the most common cause of the relatively benign baby rash called roseola, but a high "viral load" correlates with more severe symptoms. People with Alzheimer's disease also have higher levels of herpesvirus 6 in their brains.

"Most people are infected by herpesvirus 6 at some point in their life, but some people seem to be less affected than others. We have now found a human genetic variant that helps control the severity of the infection," Nielsen said. "This is quite interesting because we don't know much about the genetic variants that control why some people seem more susceptible to viral infection and not others."

More correlations remain to be discovered. The BGI team to date has sequenced genomes from more than 3 million pregnant women, much of it accompanied by information on the mothers' and babies' health that can be used to find genetic associations.

"If you have these genotypes and compare them to phenotypes, that is, something you can measure, you can find genetic variants that explain human traits," said Xun Xu, a leader of the BGI team and the study's lead author.

Nielsen, Xu, Siyang Liu and other BGI colleagues will report initial findings from the analysis on Oct. 4 in the journal _Cell_.

*Sequencing by imputation*

To find genes associated with human traits—height and weight, for instance—researchers typically sequence thoroughly a small number of genomes—hundreds to thousands—and scan the genomes for variations in the sequence that are more common in people with the trait. The gold standard now is to sequence each genome 60 times to insure accuracy given inherent errors in the sequencing process. Even if each genome is sequenced a mere 20 times, which is good but not great, it still gets expensive.

The new study relies on only partial genomes—which are cheaper to get—but massive numbers of them. On average, about one-tenth of each mothers' genome was sequenced, because that is all that is necessary for a doctor to diagnose a chromosomal anomaly in the fetus. For example, Down syndrome, or trisomy 21, is caused by three rather than two copies of chromosome 21. A single cycle of sequencing is enough to determine whether some genes are 50 percent more common than normal, indicative of one extra chromosome.

But partial genomes can tell researchers a lot too, Nielsen said.

Think of reconstructing a lost book from thousands of error-prone copies, complicated by the fact that you have only about 10 percent of each copy. By looking for overlaps and inferring words from context—called imputation—you could reconstruct a lost manuscript.

In reconstructing partial genomes, scientists have another important data set: all the complete human genomes sequenced to date, with all their individual variations.

Proof that imputation using more than 141,000 partial genomes works is that the reconstructed geographical distribution in China of minority groups and the dominant Han Chinese reflect known population movements in the country over the last 100 years.

"Because the sample size is so large, we can get at recent population movements, including relocations as a consequence of China's governmental policies," Nielsen said. Many populations of Han Chinese in western China are more closely related to the populations of large cities on the East Coast, for example, reflecting relocation of large numbers of people into the sparsely populated countryside.

The researchers also found that many Chinese had genetic variants common among Indians, Southeast Asians and, along the route of the old Silk Road, Europeans.

Nielsen is currently working with his BGI colleagues to analyze the genomes of 1 million Chinese women who underwent non-invasive prenatal testing.



Analysis of largest set of genomes from pregnant women reveals genetic links to disease, birth outcomes | MedicalXpress.com

Siyang Liu, Shujia Huang, Fang Chen, Lijian Zhao, Yuying Yuan, Stephen Starko Francis, Lin Fang, Zilong Li, Long Lin, Rong Liu, Yong Zhang, Huixin Xu, Shengkang Li, Yuwen Zhou, Robert W. Davies, Qiang Liu, Robin G. Walters, Kuang Lin, Jia Ju, Thorfinn Korneliussen, Melinda A. Yang, Qiaomei Fu, Jun Wang, Lijun Zhou, Anders Krogh, Hongyun Zhang, Wei Wang, Zhengming Chen, Zhiming Cai, Ye Yin, Huanming Yang, Mao Mao, Jay Shendure, Jian Wang, Anders Albrechtsen, Xin Jin, Rasmus Nielsen & Xun X. *Genomic Analyses from Non-invasive Prenatal Testing Reveal Genetic Associations, Patterns of Viral Infections, and Chinese Population History*. _Cell _(2018). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2018.08.016.​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Graphene moves from hype to reality*
By ANGUS McNEICE | China Daily | Updated: 2018-10-05 08:15 





A lightbulb with a filament made using graphene. [Photo by ANGUS McNEICE/China Daily]

It's been 14 years since the discovery of graphene, and the world is still waiting for the "wonder material" to provide the groundbreaking innovations the initial headlines promised.

We were told our cars, computers and smartphones would be enhanced by graphene, and that the ultra-versatile form of carbon would usher in an era of wearable electronics and prevent droughts by enabling the filtering of salt from seawater.

One entrepreneur promised unlimited energy from below the Earth's surface via a graphene cable, and another suggested a graphene space elevator tethered at the equator.

In a world currently void of futuristic graphene-based gadgets, many are now questioning whether the material will live up to the hype. According to James Baker, chief executive of Graphene@Manchester, it will, and that moment may be just around the corner, he said.

"We are approaching a tipping point," said Baker. "In 12 to 18 months, you will start to see graphene products hit the marketplace at an ever-increasing pace."

Baker leads business-related development of graphene at the University of Manchester, where the National Graphene Institute is known as the heart of global graphene research.

"Having all of these capabilities in one building is what attracts people from everywhere," said Xiao Ping, a professor of materials science at the University of Manchester. "They come here and say this is the place for fundamental research. We can't compete with you, so we will collaborate with you."

Both Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei and the Aero Engine Corporation of China are conducting research at the NGI, a facility President Xi Jinping toured during his state visit to the United Kingdom in 2015.

The Chinese and British governments have since formed joint graphene working groups that make it possible for researchers to work together to create a future built on graphene.

Through these efforts, Baker said graphene and many of its associated products are close to overcoming two major obstacles faced by all emergent technologies. First, the "valley of death", in which a lack of funding kills off prototypes on their journey from lab to factory. And, second, the "trough of disillusionment", which lies between the initial hype around an innovation and its eventual real-world applications.




*Looking beyond the hype*

Grab a pencil and some sticky tape, and you're holding the lab equipment necessary to win a Nobel Prize.

In 2004, Konstantin Novoselov and Andre Geim, two physicists at the University of Manchester, discovered graphene by peeling apart layers of graphite using adhesive strips.

At just the width of an atom across, graphene is the thinnest material known to humans, and also the strongest.

In graphene, carbon atoms are arranged in a hexagonal lattice formation, similar to the pattern of chicken wire.

Strong covalent bonds between the atoms give graphene a tensile strength 325 times greater than steel, while maintaining flexibility and elasticity. Graphene is also an efficient conductor of heat and electricity, and is ultra-lightweight.

The discovery instigated a whirlwind of speculation into how the new material could change the world.

"But graphene is just a teenager," said Baker. "Right now, we are in the 'trough of disillusionment', and we are starting to climb out of it."

Part of the journey through a hype cycle requires an adjustment of expectations, said Khasha Ghaffarzadeh, a director at Cambridge consultancy IDTechEx who has been conducting market research into graphene since 2006.

"There is a difference between ideal graphene, the wonder material, and commercial graphene, which is more down-to-earth," said Ghaffarzadeh.

He explains that there are numerous varieties of graphene－sheets, flakes, and powders made of multi-layered or few-layered graphene to name but a few－and most are currently used as an additive to improve the performance of other materials.

There is even debate over whether certain additives can be classed as graphene. Last year, China and the UK formed a graphene standardization working group aimed at ensuring quality control in the market.

On the nano level, single-layer graphene has fantastic properties. On a larger scale, some forms of graphene act like graphite, while others behave like an oxide.

This makes it challenging to convince industry to turn to graphene, where the material would compete with other additives that are cheaper and only marginally poorer performers.



Graphene nerve sensors control the movement of a robotic hand. [Photo provided to China Daily]

But several products enhanced by graphene are already on the market in China. Beijing Carbon Century Technology produces an energy-saving graphene modifier for engine oil. Wuxi-based GMCC Electronic Technology makes a graphene-enhanced supercapacitor that is an alternative to electrochemical batteries and has a shorter charge time. Beijing-based Xiaomi and Guangzhou-based FiiO have incorporated graphene into headphone drivers. And other Chinese companies sell optical displays, LED light bulbs, and tires that are all enhanced with graphene.

Huawei has been tipped to release a smartphone with graphene-assisted batteries in the near future. The batteries are said to be able to charge fully in a matter of minutes and have an increased capacity.

Huawei has been one of the fastest adopters of graphene in its industry. The company's founder, Ren Zhengfei, is optimistic about the material's ability to dramatically change the electronics technology.

In 2016, Huawei developed a graphene-enhanced lithiumion battery for mobile network-base stations that remains functional at extreme temperatures.

Huawei is currently three years into a joint research program at the NGI that is exploring how graphene could be used in next-generation communications technologies.

"The University of Manchester has enormous expertise and the best facilities for working with the material," said Chen Lifang, a corporate senior vice-president at Huawei.

Elsewhere within the NGI's labyrinth of laboratories, Xiao Ping is leading a project for the Beijing Institute of Aeronautical Materials, or BIAM, which is a subsidiary of the Aero Engine Corporation of China.

The project he is working on is looking to accelerate the use of graphene in the aviation industry.

"Right now, we are focused on fundamental research," said Xiao. "And we have found that graphene can be used as an additive to increase the performance of several other materials."

Xiao's research has shown that graphene can prevent the growth of cracks in ceramics, which are used in internal combustion engines.



Xiao Ping, a professor of materials science at the NGI, shows a graphene composite. [Photo by ANGUS McNEICE/China Daily]

*Bridging the valley*

Baker said that for graphene based products to move from concept to commercialization, they must overcome the "valley of death" problem.

Governments and universities will back initial research, and the private sector will invest in a product that can be replicated at scale. But there is a gap between those two development phases in which innovation is starved of funding.

To bridge this gap, the University of Manchester and the UK government have invested 60 million pounds ($78 million) into the Graphene Engineering and Innovation Center, otherwise known as GEIC (pronounced "geek"). The cavernous facility will switch on its machines later this year. It will allow companies to use the equipment to replicate prototypes by the dozen, proving to investors that inventions are scalable.

"Companies from China and elsewhere can come here with an idea for a product and develop it," said Baker. "It's a make-or-break space for some of the ideas we've come up with around graphene. If we do that successfully, we will increase the pace of graphene products into the commercial sphere."

And those Chinese companies have the support of a government that has doubled down on advanced materials.



Scientists conduct research at the National Graphene Institute in Manchester, United Kingdom. [Photo by ANGUS McNEICE/China Daily]

*China leads the way*

China has emerged as a key territory for graphene production. In China's 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020) that started in 2016, new materials development is listed among the leading sectors of the national economy.

Around 3,000 Chinese companies are exploring uses for graphene, according to government statistics, while half of the world's graphene-related patents have been filed in China.

China now has close to 75 percent of the nominal global production capacity for graphene, according to IDTechEx, and the price of graphene has fallen from several thousand dollars a gram to around $75 a kilogram during the last decade. Production capacity is expanding, as foreign companies follow demand and establish operations in China.

UK-based advanced materials engineering company Versarien is currently building a graphene factory in Jinan, Shandong province.

"It's a brand-new science, and China is trying to take the lead, and is willing to invest heavily to create that lead," said Neill Ricketts, chief executive at Versarien.

Ghaffarzadeh predicts that, during the next five to 10 years, graphene will mostly be restricted to the additive market.

"But that is not to say that there won't eventually be those truly groundbreaking results down the line," he said. "Graphene really does have fantastic properties and its potential is huge."

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*CRISPR Can Make Old Tomatoes, New Tomatoes | Discover magazine*
By Anna Groves | October 4, 2018 4:15 pm



​Ground tomatoes, still in their papery husks. _(Credit: F_studio/Shutterstock)_

It’s a big week for CRISPR! Despite being a world apart, two separate research groups had the same idea: to see if CRISPR gene editing can really mimic conventional plant breeding.

One group re-domesticated a wild tomato plant; the other used a similar approach to domesticate an entirely new crop: the ground cherry, a tomato relative.

Together, the new work demonstrates how dramatically gene editing technology could speed up crop improvement efforts worldwide.

*How to Make a Crop Worth Growing*
In the past few decades, conventional breeding of the tomato plant has dramatically increased its yield, fruit size, and shelf life.

To get a plant from its wild form to something growable as a large-scale food crop is not an easy feat. Conventional breeding requires decades of work from breeders who select the best plants, cross them, and select the best plants again from their offspring.

But this kind of plant breeding leaves quite a bit of room for Mother Nature to get in the way. A good trait and a bad trait might be coded by two genes that are just too close to each other in the DNA to ever hope to keep one while ditching the other.

And breeding for certain traits can let other traits fall through the cracks. Years of focus on breeding red, intact, storable tomatoes can result in red, intact, storable tomatoes that no longer taste like anything.

On top of all that, conventional breeders have to constantly fight to keep a certain level of genetic variation in their plants. If all the genes in their population end up the same, all the plant traits end up the same, and there are no longer any “best plants” to choose from.

To combat this, breeders traditionally have to cross-breed crop plants with wild relatives. This comes with its own challenges, including a risk of losing important crop genes in the process.

But advances in gene editing technology might make those worries disappear.

Researchers have learned a lot about which genes in the modern tomato are responsible for which traits. They can point to specific places in the DNA and say, changes here and here are what made the fruits bigger. This allows them to pinpoint, for example, which genes changed a sprawling vine into a compact plant with fruits that ripen all at the same time.

With CRISPR, changes to genes could be made in a single generation, and with a gene-level precision that doesn’t cause unintended effects.

*Tom-ay-to, Tom-ah-to*
But this idea hadn’t been thoroughly tested. In Nature Biotechnology, researchers from the State Key Laboratory of Plant Cell and Chromosome Engineering in Beijing attempted to ditch some of the genetic baggage in the conventionally bred tomato and instead “re-domesticate” it from its wild ancestor using CRISPR.

They grew wild tomatoes and engineered the DNA to alter a few key traits. They wanted compact (rather than sprawling) plants, synchronous fruit ripening, larger fruits, and higher vitamin C production, among other things.

The wild plants they used had a few bonus features, either being resistant to bacterial spot disease, tolerant of salt, or both. So when they flipped a few key switches from “wild” to “domesticated,” the resulting plants had a combination of traits that conventional breeding would have taken years to get just right.

The success of this process could have implications for all sorts of crops, dramatically speeding up the continuing quest for improved tolerance to drought, resistance to diseases, and other traits that will be critical for crops to survive future climate.

*A Brand New Tomato*
Meanwhile researchers from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Maryland domesticated, for the first time, a tomato relative — the ground cherry. Their work is published in Nature Plants.

The team wanted to see if they could use what we know about tomato genetics to achieve a similar result in a related species with untapped crop potential.

The ground cherry, a species of _Physalis_, is a weedy plant native to the Americas. Sometimes called a “strawberry tomato,” the sweet-and-sour fruit is already available commercially. But it’s relatively rare: you might come across it in a U.S. farmers market, but it hasn’t achieved the breeding attention or commodification that other crops have. Plants like this are called “orphan crops” — quinoa is probably the most well-known right now.

After quite a bit of genetic and genomic legwork, the team engineered the DNA to alter a few key traits, using tomatoes as a guide. Some of the traits will sound familiar: they wanted compact (rather than sprawling) plants and larger fruits. They also fixed a few other wild tomato problems, like stems that drop their fruits too easily.

So, should we watch for new-and-improved ground cherries in stores?

Not quite yet.

“We are not at the end yet,” says Zak Lemmon, lead author on the study. “What we were able to do is rapidly show some very rapid improvements in key traits that will be needed for a larger scale adoption into the mainstream agriculture market.”

“(_Physalis_) was a lot of fun to work on. I think it’s a really interesting specialty crop that has a lot of promise and potential for some bigger impact,” says Lemmon.


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese Materials Firm Starts Up Graphene Plant in Heilongjiang*
TANG SHIHUA 
DATE: TUE, 10/09/2018 - 17:03 / SOURCE:YICAI




Chinese Materials Firm Starts Up Graphene Plant in Heilongjiang​
(Yicai Global) Oct. 9 -- Chinese coke company Baotailong New Materials has completed construction of a CNY66.2 million (USD9.6 million) graphene production project in the north of the country and has launched trial-stage operations.

Baotailong completed all work on the facility located in its hometown of Qitaihe in northern Heilongjiang province at the end of last month, the firm said in a statement. The plant boasts an annual graphene output of 50 tons.

The company will apply to the relevant departments for production licenses after it has completed half a year of trial production. Baotailong completed construction and equipment installation at the end of July and began commissioning and product process adjustments in August.

The company will expand capacity to yearly output will to 150 tons once the project enters full-scale production, which is in addition to the 100 tons per year made through chemical techniques.

Compared with the physical technique, the chemical technique, mainly used in the civilian field, is quite complicated and produces graphene of a lower quality, despite higher output. Physical production results in a lower yield and high energy consumption but higher product quality. It is used for military and other high-end fields.


----------



## JSCh

*R&D spending reaches new levels in China*
By Ouyang Shijia | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2018-10-09 20:05





A research staff member tests new vaccine (S-IPV) against poliomyelitis at the Institute of Medical Biology of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, located in Kunming, capital of Southwest China's Yunnan province, Jan 22, 2015. [Photo/Xinhua]

China's spending on research and development accounted for 2.13 percent of the nation's gross domestic product in 2017, reaching the level of moderately developed countries, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Tuesday.

R&D spending hit 1.76 trillion yuan ($254 billion) with a whopping 12.3 percent growth year-on-year by 2017. And the country saw its annual per capita spending on R&D reach 436,000 yuan in 2017, an increase of 32,000 yuan over previous years.

The structure of R&D spending improved as more money was invested to boost fundamental research, said Zhang Peng, a senior statistician from the NBS.

The spending on fundamental research rose 18.5 percent year-on-year to 97.55 billion yuan last year, 3.6 percent points higher than the rate in 2016. Specifically, the growth rate is at its highest level in the last five years.

Eastern China continues to be the leader domestically, contributing 61.9 percent to the growth of the nation's R&D inputs. The Central China, Western China and Northeastern China regions lag behind, reporting 22.9 percent, 13.1 percent and 2.1 percent, respectively.


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 8-OCT-2018
*Success is sweet: Researchers unlock the mysteries of the sugarcane genome*
Third-generation sequencing technologies and analytical methods have enabled the once-impossible effort to assemble complete, detailed sequence for sugarcane's complex genome

CARL R. WOESE INSTITUTE FOR GENOMIC BIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN



​Harvesting sugarcane or Sugarcane field: Modern sugarcane cultivars are polyploid interspecific hybrids, combining high sugar content from _S. officinarum_ with hardiness, disease resistance and ratooning of _S. spontaneum_. The sequenced genome is a haploid accession AP85-441 generated by anther culture from octoploid _S. spontaneum_ SES208.
*CREDIT: *Ray Ming

For centuries, sugarcane has supplied human societies with alcohol, biofuel, building and weaving materials, and the world's most relied-upon source of sugar. Now, researchers have extracted a sweet scientific prize from sugarcane: its massive and complex genome sequence, which may lead to the development of hardier and more productive cultivars.

Producing the comprehensive sequence required a concerted effort by over 100 scientists from 16 institutions; the work took five years and culminated in a publication in _Nature Genetics_. But the motivation to tackle the project arose long before.

"Personally, I waited for 20 years to get this genome sequenced," said Ray Ming, a University of Illinois plant biology professor who instigated and led the sequencing effort. "I dreamed about having a reference genome for sugarcane when I worked on sugarcane genome mapping in the late 1990s." Ming is a member of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, one of a group of researchers interested in developing sugarcane and related crops to boost food and biofuel production.

The complete genome sequence was well worth the wait and the effort because of its potential to aid the effort to improve sugarcane. The sugarcane grown by most farmers is a hybrid of two species: _Saccharum officinarum_, which grows large plants with high sugar content, and _Saccharum spontaneum_, whose lesser size and sweetness is offset by increased disease resistance and tolerance of environmental stress. Lacking a complete genome sequence, plant breeders have made high-yielding, robust strains through generations of crossing and selection, but this is an arduous process relying on time and luck.

"Sugarcane is the fifth most valuable crop, and the lack of a reference genome hindered genomic research and molecular breeding for sugarcane improvement," Ming said. ". . . Sequencing technology was not ready to handle large autopolyploid genomes until 2015 when the throughput, read length, and cost of third generation sequencing technology [e.g. that developed by biotechnology company Pacific Biosciences] became competitive enough."

Why was sequencing the sugarcane genome so difficult? A naturally occurring phenomenon common in plants created a significant technical barrier. Sometime during the evolutionary history of sugarcane, its genome had been duplicated twice, resulting in four slightly different versions of each pair of chromosomes all crammed into the same nucleus together.

These events not only quadrupled the size of the genome (and therefore the sheer volume of DNA sequence), they also made highly similar sequences from the genome wide duplication much more difficult to assemble into distinct chromosomes. Genomic DNA is typically sequenced, or read, in small, overlapping fragments, and the sequence data from those fragments become overlapping pieces of an enormous linear puzzle. As the sugarcane genome size doubled, then doubled again, this puzzle didn't just get larger; it took on repeated but not-quite-identical elements into which those many tiny pieces were difficult to correctly fit.

To conquer this challenge, the sequencing team used a technique called high-throughput chromatin conformation capture or Hi-C. This method allows researchers to discover what parts of the long, tangled strands of chromosomal DNA lie in contact with one another inside the cell. When analyzed using a customized algorithm called ALLHIC developed by the team, the resulting data served the purpose of the picture on the lid of a jigsaw puzzle box, providing a rough map of which sections of sequence most likely belonged to which chromosome.

"The biggest surprise was that by combining long sequence reads and the Hi-C physical map, we assembled an autotetraploid [quadrupled] genome into 32 chromosomes and realized our goal of allele-specific annotation among homologous chromosomes," Ming said. In other words, the researchers now knew which gene sequences belonged to each of the four variations on the original, pre-duplications genome--a much higher level of detail than they expected to attain.

With this information, the researchers could form better hypotheses about the mysteries of the sugarcane genome's evolutionary history.

Through comparison with the genomes of related species, researchers knew that at some point the number of unique chromosomes had dropped from 10 to eight. To the team's surprise, the new sequence data revealed that two different chromosomes had split apart, and all four halves had then fused to different existing chromosomes, a more complex set of events than the one they hypothesized.

How does understanding these physical changes help? Along with these large physical rearrangements within the genome come changes to the genes in the affected regions. For example, Ming and his colleagues found that the large chunks of chromosome that had been moved to new locations contained many more genes that help plants resist disease than were found in other locations.

"It resolved a mystery why S. spontaneum is such a superior source of disease resistance and stress tolerance genes," Ming said. "The chromosomal rearrangements are likely the cause, not the consequence of this enrichment, although the underlining mechanism of this enrichment remains to be investigated. This discovery will accelerate mining effective alleles of disease resistance genes that have incorporated into elite modern sugarcane hybrid cultivars, and subsequently the implement of molecular breeding [of sugarcane]."

The high quality of the genome sequence also allowed researchers to identify possible origins of modern sugarcane's incredible sweetness: even in the less sweet S. spontaneum, mutations that produced multiple copies of genes for sugar-transporting proteins have accumulated. They were also able to observe that in the hybridization between S. officinarum and S. spontaneum, the S. spontaneum-derived DNA sequence is scattered randomly throughout the hybrid genome.

"The ALLHIC method has already proven to be effective for the construction of the autopolyploid sugarcane genome," Ming said. He anticipates that the techniques used successfully for the sugarcane genome will also assist researchers in sequencing other complex genomes.



Success is sweet: Researchers unlock the mysteries of the sugarcane genome | EurekAlert! Science News

Jisen Zhang, Xingtan Zhang, Haibao Tang, Qing Zhang, Xiuting Hua, Xiaokai Ma, Fan Zhu, Tyler Jones, Xinguang Zhu, John Bowers, Ching Man Wai, Chunfang Zheng, Yan Shi, Shuai Chen, Xiuming Xu, Jingjing Yue, David R. Nelson, Lixian Huang, Zhen Li, Huimin Xu, Dong Zhou, Yongjun Wang, Weichang Hu, Jishan Lin, Youjin Deng, Neha Pandey, Melina Mancini, Dessireé Zerpa, Julie K. Nguyen, Liming Wang, Liang Yu, Yinghui Xin, Liangfa Ge, Jie Arro, Jennifer O. Han, Setu Chakrabarty, Marija Pushko, Wenping Zhang, Yanhong Ma, Panpan Ma, Mingju Lv, Faming Chen, Guangyong Zheng, Jingsheng Xu, Zhenhui Yang, Fang Deng, Xuequn Chen, Zhenyang Liao, Xunxiao Zhang, Zhicong Lin, Hai Lin, Hansong Yan, Zheng Kuang, Weimin Zhong, Pingping Liang, Guofeng Wang, Yuan Yuan, Jiaxian Shi, Jinxiang Hou, Jingxian Lin, Jingjing Jin, Peijian Cao, Qiaochu Shen, Qing Jiang, Ping Zhou, Yaying Ma, Xiaodan Zhang, Rongrong Xu, Juan Liu, Yongmei Zhou, Haifeng Jia, Qing Ma, Rui Qi, Zhiliang Zhang, Jingping Fang, Hongkun Fang, Jinjin Song, Mengjuan Wang, Guangrui Dong, Gang Wang, Zheng Chen, Teng Ma, Hong Liu, Singha R. Dhungana, Sarah E. Huss, Xiping Yang, Anupma Sharma, Jhon H. Trujillo, Maria C. Martinez, Matthew Hudson, John J. Riascos, Mary Schuler, Li-Qing Chen, David M. Braun, Lei Li, Qingyi Yu, Jianping Wang, Kai Wang, Michael C. Schatz, David Heckerman, Marie-Anne Van Sluys, Glaucia Mendes Souza, Paul H. Moore, David Sankoff, Robert VanBuren, Andrew H. Paterson, Chifumi Nagai & Ray Ming. *Allele-defined genome of the autopolyploid sugarcane Saccharum spontaneum L*. _Nature Genetics_ (2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41588-018-0237-2​


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *CEPC Study Group Completes Accelerator Conceptual Design Report---Chinese Academy of Sciences*
> Sep 10, 2018
> 
> _The Conceptual Design Report (CDR), Volume I – Accelerator_ for the Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC) was published on September 2, 2018. The CEPC Accelerator CDR has reached its goal in multiple energy ranges, including the Higgs, W and Z poles.
> 
> The CEPC Study Group has been working on the conceptual design of the CEPC since the publication of the _Preliminary Conceptual Design Report _(Pre-CDR) in March 2015. The Fully Partial Double-Ring with Crab-Waist Collision scheme is the baseline accelerator design used in the CDR. A number of accelerator designs, including Single-Ring Pretzel, Partial Double-Ring, Advanced Partial Double-Ring and Fully Partial Double-Ring, were considered and optimized by the CEPC Study Group. The detailed comparison of various design options and the final choice of the baseline was documented in _CEPC-SppC Progress Report – Accelerator_, published in April 2017.
> 
> The CEPC accelerator team completed the first draft of the current CDR in November 2017. The team soon conducted a preliminary review and revised it. A committee of international experts then reviewed the CDR from June 28-30 at Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) of Chinese Academy of Sciences.
> 
> In its subsequent report, the committee said it “unanimously congratulates the CEPC team on the completion of the CDR, with remarkable successes in various aspects of the design.” The review committee also said it believes “the CDR has already reached a sufficient level of maturity to allow approval to proceed to a Technical Design Report.” The CEPC Study Group incorporated the comments from the reviewers into the CDR and released the document on September 2, 2018.
> 
> The CEPC Accelerator CDR comprises 505 pages, 12 chapters and eight appendices. It covers machine layout, design of the collider, the booster, linac accelerator, the injector, design of the superconducting radio frequency (RF), RF power source, magnets, power supply, vacuum, and monitoring, control and mechanical systems. It also covers the cryogenic system, common facilities, civil engineering, radiation protection, and the option of upgrading to a Super proton-proton Collider (SppC). Alternative options for CEPC accelerator and opportunities for polarization at Z-pole are discussed in the appendices.
> 
> The CEPC Accelerator CDR can be found at https://arXiv.org (document 1809.00285) or at the official CEPC website: http://cepc.ihep.ac.cn/CDR_v6_201808s.pdf.


*IHEP Develops First CMOS Pixel Sensor Prototype for Circular Electron Positron Collider---Chinese Academy of Sciences*
Oct 09, 2018

Scientists from the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) have developed the first pixel sensor prototype based on the 180 nm Complementary Metal–Oxide–Semiconductor (CMOS) imaging sensor process recently. This represents significant progress in the key technology of the micro-vertex detector, the core component for the detector at the Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC).

CMOS pixel sensors allow integration of the sensing element and its readout electronics on the same silicon substrate, which make them attractive for charged particle tracking. The CEPC micro-vertex detector, located closest to the e+e- interaction point, will use state-of-the-art pixel technologies that provide high spatial resolution, are capable of high readout speed and adequate radiation hardness, and feature low power consumption.

The first prototype sensors, named JadePix 1, have been characterized with radioactive resources, and recently by the electron test beam at DESY in Hamburg, Germany. Preliminary results show that spatial resolutions better than 5 μm and 3.5 μm can be achieved for pixel sizes of 33×33 μm2 and 16×16 μm2, respectively. More importantly, there is no significant resolution degradation after exposure to neutron irradiation up to 1013 1 MeV neq/cm2.

The proposed Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC) aims at measuring Higgs properties with high precision and probing new physics beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. The CEPC Study Group has completed the conceptual design report (CDR) for the e+e- collider, and is completing the CDR for the detector. The group is pursuing an R&D program involving technologies critical for realizing the CEPC.

IHEP's Experimental Physics Division (EPD) initiated the R&D project to develop the novel CMOS pixel sensors. The advanced silicon tracking detectors and associated electronics have been the focal research direction at EPD. The division has been actively participating in several international projects, including the ATLAS Inner Tracker Upgrade, to gain design and construction experience for silicon detectors.

In addition, the division has developed pixel detectors for X-ray imaging. These detectors will soon be deployed at various stations of the High Energy Photon Source (HEPS), which will be constructed near Beijing. Meanwhile, EPD is pushing forward pixel detector R&D for the CEPC using both CMOS and SOI technologies. The goal is to design a fully functional pixel sensor and construct a larger scale prototype detector in near future.






JadePix 1 prototype sensor (Image by IHEP) 






position resolutions obtained with electron test (Image by IHEP)​


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *R&D spending reaches new levels in China*
> By Ouyang Shijia | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2018-10-09 20:05
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A research staff member tests new vaccine (S-IPV) against poliomyelitis at the Institute of Medical Biology of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, located in Kunming, capital of Southwest China's Yunnan province, Jan 22, 2015. [Photo/Xinhua]
> 
> China's spending on research and development accounted for 2.13 percent of the nation's gross domestic product in 2017, reaching the level of moderately developed countries, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Tuesday.
> 
> R&D spending hit 1.76 trillion yuan ($254 billion) with a whopping 12.3 percent growth year-on-year by 2017. And the country saw its annual per capita spending on R&D reach 436,000 yuan in 2017, an increase of 32,000 yuan over previous years.
> 
> The structure of R&D spending improved as more money was invested to boost fundamental research, said Zhang Peng, a senior statistician from the NBS.
> 
> The spending on fundamental research rose 18.5 percent year-on-year to 97.55 billion yuan last year, 3.6 percent points higher than the rate in 2016. Specifically, the growth rate is at its highest level in the last five years.
> 
> Eastern China continues to be the leader domestically, contributing 61.9 percent to the growth of the nation's R&D inputs. The Central China, Western China and Northeastern China regions lag behind, reporting 22.9 percent, 13.1 percent and 2.1 percent, respectively.




The world’s largest radio telescope, the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope is one product of China’s growing spending on research. 
STR/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
*Surging R&D spending in China narrows gap with United States | Science | AAAS*
By Dennis Normile
Oct. 10, 2018 , 12:45 PM

China’s total spending on R&D rose a robust 12.3% last year to a record 1.76 trillion yuan ($254 billion), according to a government report released yesterday. Already second in the world in R&D spending behind the United States, China has narrowed the gap.

Figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) show that in 2012, China spent about 34% as much as the United States, a figure that rose to 44% in 2016, the most recent year for which data are available. In terms of purchasing power parity, however, China’s 2016 spending was equivalent to 88% of U.S. spending.

"The year-to-year growth in R&D spending indicates firm governmental and social support for making China a scientific power," says Xie Xuemei, a specialist in innovation economics at Shanghai University in China. "However, there is still a long way to go" to match the research capabilities of developed countries, she adds.

The report from the ministries of science and finance and the National Bureau of Statistics highlights other notable trends in 2017, including a 12.5% increase in spending by businesses—including foreign-owned corporations—to 1.36 trillion yuan ($196.4 billion). "More and more enterprises realize that to improve their competitive advantage, they must rely on their independent innovation capabilities, [which] rely on greater spending on R&D," Xie says. Basic research expenditures were also up, hitting 97.55 billion yuan ($14.1 billion), an increase of 18.5%. For comparison, the United States spent $86.32 billion on basic research in 2016, according to OECD. A national innovation strategy that strives to harness R&D to economic growth has been driving the increase in both government and industrial R&D spending in recent years, Xie says.

Accounting differences between China and other countries make international comparisons tricky, says Cao Cong, a science policy specialist at the University of Nottingham Ningbo in China. China’s statistics lump R&D funding with a range of other science and technology expenditures, such as support for science communications, administration, and scientific exchanges and cooperation. On the other hand, when figuring spending on basic research, China often excludes capital investment in facilities and university faculty salaries, costs typically included in the basic category by other countries. But even if basic spending is undercounted, it is probably a smaller share of overall research spending than in the United States and other advanced countries, Cao says. And that level "is not enough for China to become a scientific power."

A government mid- to long-term science and technology plan sets a spending target for R&D of 2.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2020, up from 2.13% in 2017. By comparison, the United States spent 2.7% of GDP in 2016, according to OECD. "The question is whether the increased amount of money spent on R&D is effective and efficient," Cao says. This spring the National People's Congress decided to merge the National Natural Science Foundation, which supported a large share of the country’s basic research efforts through reviewed grants, into the Ministry of Science and Technology, which has managed nationally important big science projects. The move has raised concerns that support for basic research by small groups might suffer. The future impact on science funding and management "is something worth paying attention to," Cao says.


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *Analysis of largest set of genomes from pregnant women reveals genetic links to disease, birth outcomes*
> October 4, 2018, University of California - Berkeley
> 
> 
> 
> ​Credit: CC0 Public Domain
> 
> Analysis of the world's largest set of genome data from pregnant women, totaling 141,431 expectant mothers from across China, has uncovered unsuspected associations between genes and birth outcomes, including the birth of twins and a woman's age at first pregnancy.
> 
> The analysis also allowed researchers to reconstruct the recent movement and intermarriage of different ethnic groups in China, and promises to help identify genes that make people susceptible to infectious diseases.
> 
> "It's amazing that this is even possible—that you can take these massive samples and do association mapping to see what the genetic variants are that explain human traits," said co-author Rasmus Nielsen, a professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, who oversaw the computational analysis performed by researchers at BGI in Shenzhen, China.
> 
> It's even more amazing because the researchers sequenced, on average, only 10 percent of each mother's genome, relying on large numbers of poor-quality genomes so as to leverage cheaper tests to discover new genetic links.
> 
> The mothers-to-be had provided blood samples to be tested for fetal chromosomal abnormalities, primarily Down syndrome. This technique, called cell-free fetal DNA testing, a form of non-invasive prenatal testing, is possible because mothers have DNA from their unborn child floating in their bloodstream. With rapid shotgun sequencing, labs can break up all the free-floating DNA in the blood and sequence just enough of the bits to diagnose Down syndrome.
> 
> Though not yet widespread in the United States, non-invasive prenatal testing is common in China: 70 percent of such tests worldwide have been performed in China. Sampling the mother's blood can be done early and risk-free, whereas standard prenatal testing in the U.S. involves amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling, both of which require obtaining fetal cells from inside the uterus and risk harming the unborn child.
> 
> BGI was paid by maternity hospitals to conduct these tests, but obtained informed consent from each mother to also analyze the partially sequenced genomes for research purposes, maintaining anonymity. All the analyses were performed in China and the data is hosted in the China National GeneBank.
> 
> The data analysis revealed, for example, that variation in a gene called NRG1 is linked to a greater or lesser incidence of twins. One variant of the gene is more common in mothers with twins and is associated with hyperthyroidism, tightening a link between thyroid function and twinning that had previously been seen in mice.
> 
> A variant of another gene, EMB, was associated with older first-time mothers.
> 
> 
> 
> ​BGI-Shenzhen researchers Siyang Liu, Xun Xu, and Xin Jin (left to right). Credit: BGI-Shenzhen
> 
> The analysis also pulled out several genes that had not previously been associated with height and body mass index.
> 
> Perhaps most interesting, Nielsen said, is what sequencing of all the DNA in maternal blood tells us about viruses circulating through the body, and thus the link between viruses and genes that determine susceptibility to disease.
> 
> A variation in one gene, for example, was associated with a higher concentration of herpesvirus 6 in a mother's blood. Herpesvirus 6 is the most common cause of the relatively benign baby rash called roseola, but a high "viral load" correlates with more severe symptoms. People with Alzheimer's disease also have higher levels of herpesvirus 6 in their brains.
> 
> "Most people are infected by herpesvirus 6 at some point in their life, but some people seem to be less affected than others. We have now found a human genetic variant that helps control the severity of the infection," Nielsen said. "This is quite interesting because we don't know much about the genetic variants that control why some people seem more susceptible to viral infection and not others."
> 
> More correlations remain to be discovered. The BGI team to date has sequenced genomes from more than 3 million pregnant women, much of it accompanied by information on the mothers' and babies' health that can be used to find genetic associations.
> 
> "If you have these genotypes and compare them to phenotypes, that is, something you can measure, you can find genetic variants that explain human traits," said Xun Xu, a leader of the BGI team and the study's lead author.
> 
> Nielsen, Xu, Siyang Liu and other BGI colleagues will report initial findings from the analysis on Oct. 4 in the journal _Cell_.
> 
> *Sequencing by imputation*
> 
> To find genes associated with human traits—height and weight, for instance—researchers typically sequence thoroughly a small number of genomes—hundreds to thousands—and scan the genomes for variations in the sequence that are more common in people with the trait. The gold standard now is to sequence each genome 60 times to insure accuracy given inherent errors in the sequencing process. Even if each genome is sequenced a mere 20 times, which is good but not great, it still gets expensive.
> 
> The new study relies on only partial genomes—which are cheaper to get—but massive numbers of them. On average, about one-tenth of each mothers' genome was sequenced, because that is all that is necessary for a doctor to diagnose a chromosomal anomaly in the fetus. For example, Down syndrome, or trisomy 21, is caused by three rather than two copies of chromosome 21. A single cycle of sequencing is enough to determine whether some genes are 50 percent more common than normal, indicative of one extra chromosome.
> 
> But partial genomes can tell researchers a lot too, Nielsen said.
> 
> Think of reconstructing a lost book from thousands of error-prone copies, complicated by the fact that you have only about 10 percent of each copy. By looking for overlaps and inferring words from context—called imputation—you could reconstruct a lost manuscript.
> 
> In reconstructing partial genomes, scientists have another important data set: all the complete human genomes sequenced to date, with all their individual variations.
> 
> Proof that imputation using more than 141,000 partial genomes works is that the reconstructed geographical distribution in China of minority groups and the dominant Han Chinese reflect known population movements in the country over the last 100 years.
> 
> "Because the sample size is so large, we can get at recent population movements, including relocations as a consequence of China's governmental policies," Nielsen said. Many populations of Han Chinese in western China are more closely related to the populations of large cities on the East Coast, for example, reflecting relocation of large numbers of people into the sparsely populated countryside.
> 
> The researchers also found that many Chinese had genetic variants common among Indians, Southeast Asians and, along the route of the old Silk Road, Europeans.
> 
> Nielsen is currently working with his BGI colleagues to analyze the genomes of 1 million Chinese women who underwent non-invasive prenatal testing.
> 
> 
> 
> Analysis of largest set of genomes from pregnant women reveals genetic links to disease, birth outcomes | MedicalXpress.com
> 
> Siyang Liu, Shujia Huang, Fang Chen, Lijian Zhao, Yuying Yuan, Stephen Starko Francis, Lin Fang, Zilong Li, Long Lin, Rong Liu, Yong Zhang, Huixin Xu, Shengkang Li, Yuwen Zhou, Robert W. Davies, Qiang Liu, Robin G. Walters, Kuang Lin, Jia Ju, Thorfinn Korneliussen, Melinda A. Yang, Qiaomei Fu, Jun Wang, Lijun Zhou, Anders Krogh, Hongyun Zhang, Wei Wang, Zhengming Chen, Zhiming Cai, Ye Yin, Huanming Yang, Mao Mao, Jay Shendure, Jian Wang, Anders Albrechtsen, Xin Jin, Rasmus Nielsen & Xun X. *Genomic Analyses from Non-invasive Prenatal Testing Reveal Genetic Associations, Patterns of Viral Infections, and Chinese Population History*. _Cell _(2018). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2018.08.016.​


*Country's largest genome project proves its value*
By CHAI HUA | China Daily | Updated: 2018-10-11 07:30
















Researchers at BGI work in the lab in Shenzhen, Guangdong province. [File photo/VCG]

Study will improve development of medicines and health management

A genome study of more than 140,000 people has greatly expanded China's knowledge of its vast population and ethnic groups.

Previous Chinese population studies had only involved thousands of people, mainly Han Chinese from the eastern coast.

The largest of its kind for the Chinese population to date, the study was conducted by Shenzhen-based Beijing Genomics Institute and published in the international academic journal Cell on Oct 4.

"The study is significant to the development of China's medicine and health management industry, which has relied on foreign technology and studies for a long time because we didn't have enough genome data from the Chinese population to work on," said Xu Xun, president of BGI Research and the study's lead author.

It discovered the genetic structure of the various ethnic groups, found six genes that display significant differences of people across latitudes, and identified the gene flow patterns between Europeans, South Asians, East Asians and Chinese.

For instance, people from the southern part of China have developed stronger immunity against malaria than those in the north, but a gene related to fatty acid metabolism has a much higher frequency in most of the northern provinces.

In addition, people in Gansu and Qinghai provinces, a key area of the Silk Road, share more similar genes with Europeans.

It also discovered new associations among Chinese between genes and conditions such as birth defects, infectious diseases and cancers.

About 78 percent of studies in the world about the relationship of gene and diseases are based on European individuals, Xu added.

The latest data cover all 31 provincial-level administrative units in the Chinese mainland and represent Han Chinese and 36 ethnic minorities.

"In the next three years, BGI plans to further expand the database to 1 million," Xu said. BGI started its Million Chinese Genome Project in 2016 and Xu's study represents its first phase.

Genomic study on a national level has been widely regarded as a significant factor for a nation's core competence in the biomedical field.

In the United Kingdom, the leader in the field, one study of 500,000 samples has finished and another project based on a population of five million was announced earlier this month.

BGI researchers admitted there is still a gap between China's genetic research and that in Europe and the United States, but they said it is narrowing.


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 10-OCT-2018
*Blue roses could be coming soon to a garden near you*
AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY



​By expressing bacterial genes, white rose petals can take on a blue hue. *CREDIT: *American Chemical Society

For centuries, gardeners have attempted to breed blue roses with no success. But now, thanks to modern biotechnology, the elusive blue rose may finally be attainable. Researchers have found a way to express pigment-producing enzymes from bacteria in the petals of a white rose, tinting the flowers blue. They report their results in _ACS Synthetic Biology_.

Although blue roses do not exist in nature, florists can produce blue-hued flowers by placing cut roses in dye. Also, in a painstaking 20-year effort, biotechnologists made a "blue rose" through a combination of genetic engineering and selective breeding. However, the rose is more mauve-colored than blue. Yihua Chen, Yan Zhang and colleagues wanted to develop a simple process that could produce a true-blue rose.

For this purpose, the researchers chose two bacterial enzymes that together can convert L-glutamine, a common constituent of rose petals, into the blue pigment indigoidine. The team engineered a strain of _Agrobacterium tumefaciens_ that contains the two pigment-producing genes, which originate from a different species of bacteria. _A. tumefaciens_ is often used in plant biotechnology because the bacteria readily inserts foreign DNA into plant genomes. When the researchers injected the engineered bacteria into a white rose petal, the bacteria transferred the pigment-producing genes to the rose genome, and a blue color spread from the injection site. Although the color is short-lived and spotty, the team states that the rose produced in this study is the world's first engineered blue rose. They say that the next step is to engineer roses that produce the two enzymes themselves, without the need for injections.


Blue roses could be coming soon to a garden near you | EurekAlert! Science News


----------



## JSCh

*China develops high-power laser film for aeronautics*
By Yin Han Source:Global Times Published: 2018/10/11 22:58:45

China's scientists achieved a milestone in laser fusion, long blocked by Western countries, which could be used to increase the efficiency of detectors in aeronautics and astronautics.

This high-power laser film, developed by a laboratory supported by the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, won first prize at an international competition because of its high damage threshold, Science and Technology Daily reported on Thursday.

The film's damage threshold of the China-developed film was 20 percent higher than the second placer, the report said.

The high-power laser film is an indispensable component of a laser fusion device or other intense laser systems, and would be used for research in laser inertial confinement fusion and in aeronautics and astronautics, the report said.

The film can re-direct the high-power laser without weakening its power, and the damage threshold measures the film's ability to guide the laser to its target.

The film can better focus the laser in one direction without losing much power, which could "enable detectors, communication devices, and other laser-based devices to use lower energy for a better effect," Wang Yanan, deputy editor of Aerospace Knowledge magazine, told the Global Times on Thursday.

The report also noted that preparing the high-power laser film is complex and interdisciplinary.

However, it was blocked by Western countries, with related products prevented from being sent to China.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*First Mouse Embryos Made from Two Fathers*
The bipaternal pups died soon after birth, but mice with two mothers grew into fertile adults.

Oct 11, 2018, *ABBY OLENA*



ABOVE: A healthy adult bimaternal mouse with offspring of her own
LEYUN WANG

Over the last decade or so, researchers have generated mouse pups with genetic contributions from two female parents by manipulating imprinted genomic regions, where epigenetic modifications of the DNA restrict the expression of certain genes to one parent’s copy. In a study published today (October 11) in _Cell Stem Cell__, _a team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences has improved on prior work by producing mice with two mothers that appear to grow normally—unlike the mice produced in previous efforts—and live to have pups of their own. They used a similar strategy to make embryos with two fathers, but the progeny did not survive long after birth.

“This is basically the first study that shows that you can generate a mouse from two fathers. It is impressive,” says Hendrik Marks, a biologist at Radboud University in the Netherlands who was not involved in the work. It was known that imprinting was important because of previous difficulty producing bimaternal and bipaternal embryos, he adds, “but now that [the authors] actually are able to generate these mice, this is a starting point. You can start looking at each imprinted gene and ask how it contributes.”

The most important part of this paper is that they managed to generate bipaternal embryos and let them develop to term.

—Yi Zhang, Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School​
In 2012, a team made up of many of the same researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences made mouse embryonic stem cells with half the normal number of chromosomes by injecting a single sperm into an egg without a nucleus. They followed up in 2013 by creating haploid embryonic stem cells from unfertilized eggs. Then, in 2015, the scientists injected the maternal haploid cells into oocytes to generate mice with genetic contributions from two mothers. Although the pups grew to be able to reproduce, they were overall smaller than wildtype animals.

In the current study, the authors wanted to both improve upon bimaternal mice and use their haploid stem cells to create the first mice with two fathers.

“The biggest challenge is that we didn’t know whether bipaternal reproduction” would be possible in mice, writes coauthor Baoyang Hu in an email to _The Scientist. _“Bimaternal reproduction, or parthenogenesis, is quite common among vertebrates in the nature, such as amphibians, reptiles, and fish. However, successful reproduction from two males is very rare,” and has only been shown in lab experiments in zebrafish, he adds.

Hu and colleagues found that bimaternal mice made with haploid stem cells bearing genetic deletions in two imprinted regions performed abnormally in behavioral tests and had a smaller body stature. To nudge them closer to typical mice, the team then deleted a third, 12.1-kilobase imprinted region upstream of _Rasgrf1_. They chose this gene because it is expressed differently in the brains of wildtype and bimaternal adults. They apparently chose right. The resulting offspring grew normally and showed no differences from controls in behavioral tests.

To tackle the problem of bipaternal embryos, the researchers harkened back to their 2012 work, in which they generated haploid stem cells by injecting a sperm into an enucleated egg. When the researchers inserted one of these haploid stem cells and another sperm into a fresh enucleated egg, development started to happen but the embryos stopped growing around day 8, and the placenta ceased growth shortly thereafter.

So they turned to a technique called tetraploid complementation that facilitates placenta development in embryos derived from embryonic stem cells. The authors derived diploid embryonic stem cells from a bipaternal embryo and after letting those cells grow into a blastocyst, they injected another haploid stem cell into the blastocyst.

Even with the extra steps, the research team had to delete seven imprinted regions, which had been shown previously to affect embryonic development, in order to successfully end up with bipaternal pups. Just one fewer deletion resulted in embryos that died quickly after birth from breathing problems and were double the weight of wildtype pups, with swelling throughout their bodies. The pups with seven deleted regions were still slightly larger than wildtype offspring, and died soon after being born, but two of the pups lived more than 48 hours.

“To derive an alive bipaternal mouse, we need to introduce no less than six deletions, which implied that compared to the bimaternal reproduction, more obstacles needed to be crossed,” Hu tells _The Scientist. _

Constructing embryos from same-sex parents using any of these strategies is inefficient. Only about 14 percent of attempts led to bimaternal embryos, while just 2.5 percent of tetraploid complementation attempts worked for bipaternal embryos with seven genes deleted.

“The most important part of this paper is that they managed to generate bipaternal embryos and let them develop to term,” says Yi Zhang, a biologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School who did not participate in the work. Yet, based on the efficiency issues, the short lifespan of the bipaternal pups, and the unknowns about the health of the mice with two moms, he cautions that the authors’ strategies are “still far away from real application” in people.

Z. Li et al., “Generation of uniparental mice from hypomethylated haploid ESCs with imprinting region deletions,” _Cell Stem Cell__, _doi:10.1016/j.stem.2018.09.004, 2018.


First Mouse Embryos Made from Two Fathers | The Scientist Magazine®

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Oscillations provide insights into the brain's navigation system*
Date: October 12, 2018
Source: Ruhr-University Bochum

The brain creates a map of our environment, which enables reliable spatial navigation. The Nobel Prize was awarded in 2014 for research into how this navigation system works at the cellular level. Researchers at the Medical Center -- University of Freiburg, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing have now shown that the characteristics of this navigation system are also present in brain oscillations that can be measured using depth electrodes in the human brain. The possibility of testing the neuronal navigation system in this way may open up new approaches for the early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. A worsening sense of orientation is one of the first signs of the disease. The researchers published the results in the journal _Current Biology_ on 11 October 2018.

*Insights into neural activity*

Alzheimer's disease leads to the symptom of spatial disorientation at an early stage in the course of the disease. "The loss of spatial orientation is a major limitation in everyday life for people suffering from Alzheimer's disease," says shared first-author Dr. Lukas Kunz, a scientist at the Epilepsy Centre in the Department of Neurosurgery at the Medical Center -- University of Freiburg. The disorientation may be caused by impairment of the entorhinal cortex. This brain structure is one of the first to be affected by Alzheimer's disease -- and this is where so-called grid cells are located. Together with place cells, these cells form fundamental components of the brain's navigation system.

The scientists from Freiburg, Bochum, and Beijing have now been able to show that brain oscillations can be used to draw conclusions about the activity of grid cells. They recorded brain activity in epilepsy patients using depth electrodes from the entorhinal cortex while the participants were moving in a virtual environment. This was possible because the electrodes had to be placed in the brain anyway in preparation for epilepsy surgery.

*Long-term goal: earlier Alzheimer's diagnosis*

In the brain activity, they found clear indications that important characteristics of grid cells can also be measured at the network level. "We have found a way to measure the activity of grid cells indirectly using oscillations. Over the long term, this may lead to specific tests of impaired functionality of the neuronal navigation system, such as in the context of the onset of Alzheimer's disease," says Kunz. A very early diagnosis of Alzheimer's might then enable timely therapy with drugs that would otherwise be ineffective.

*Story Source:*

Materials provided by *Ruhr-University Bochum*. _Note: Content may be edited for style and length._

*Journal Reference*:


Dong Chen, Lukas Kunz, Wenjing Wang, Hui Zhang, Wen-Xu Wang, Andreas Schulze-Bonhage, Peter C. Reinacher, Wenjing Zhou, Shuli Liang, Nikolai Axmacher, Liang Wang. *Hexadirectional Modulation of Theta Power in Human Entorhinal Cortex during Spatial Navigation*. _Current Biology_, 2018; DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2018.08.029


Oscillations provide insights into the brain's navigation system -- ScienceDaily


----------



## JSCh

*Quake warning system to be in place by 2023*
By Hou Liqiang | China Daily | Updated: 2018-10-13 07:43



Primary school students crouch under desks during an earthquake drill on Friday in Handan, Hebei province. [Photo by Hao Qunying/For China Daily]

China will build a nationwide earthquake early warning system by 2023, said a senior emergency management official.

It has already finished testing an earthquake alert system for high-speed trains, and the system is expected to be extended to the country's entire high-speed rail network, said Zheng Guoguang, vice-minister of emergency management. He made the remarks ahead of the International Day for Disaster Reduction, which falls on Saturday this year.

The early warning system, known as the National Seismic Intensity Rapid Reporting and Early Warning project, was approved by central authorities early last year. It will include more than 15,000 observation stations across the country, at a cost of almost 1.9 billion yuan ($274 million), and 3,360 service terminals in national and provincial government bodies that are related to earthquake relief, as well as in public institutions and vital infrastructure and utilities, such as nuclear power plants.

Observation stations will be set in different areas according to earthquake frequency and the potential risk of and effects from disasters. The North-South Seismic Belt, which encircles most of Sichuan, Gansu and Yunnan provinces, will be one of the key areas for such stations, said Zheng, who also is head of the China Earthquake Administration.

Seismic sensors could detect the first energy that emerges from a quake before the jolt begins. This makes it possible to warn those in affected areas before they feel the impact. The farther people are from the epicenter, the longer they would have to respond in the event of a quake.

Even before the system won approval, the administration teamed up in 2012 with the Ministry of Railways, which has since been reshuffled into China Railway Corp, to establish a team to research an earthquake alert system for high-speed railway.

The system developed by the team has been tested on several railway lines in Fujian and Shanxi provinces and works very well, Zheng said, adding that his administration will continue to cooperate with China Railway to extend the system to all high-speed trains in the country.

The completion of the field test of the alert system on the Datong-Xi'an high-speed railway in August marks the quake alert system's shift from the research and development stage to actual use, the administration said.

Zheng said the system will probably be put into operation first in Southwest China, considering the high frequency of earthquakes there. For example, the Sichuan-Tibet railway, which is under construction, crosses four earthquake faults where 14 earthquakes above magnitude 7.0 have occurred.

Although China's quake alert system for high-speed trains uses advanced technology, the nationwide early warning system is needed for it to work best, Zheng said. Therefore, the country should accelerate construction of the National Seismic Intensity Rapid Reporting and Early Warning project, he said.

Zheng said one challenge that China faces in earthquake alerts is the particular nature of earthquakes in the country. Most earthquake epicenters around the world occur along tectonic plate boundaries, many of which are located in the ocean. In China, however, most tremor epicenters occur within the plate on which the country sits, he said. Such countries as Japan and Mexico usually have more time to alert people to a quake, since it takes time for a quake originating in the ocean to affect land, Zheng added.

In addition to earthquake early warning, China also has been trying to forecast quakes, which is much more difficult, Zheng said.

"The Chinese government is the only one in the world that considers earthquake forecast research as its duty," he said.

China is among the countries that suffer the most from earthquakes. From 1900 to 2017, China was hit by an annual average of 18 earthquakes above magnitude 5.0. So far this year, the number stands at 10.


----------



## JSCh

*Sober moment: climate change predicted to push up beer prices*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-15 23:11:04|Editor: Mu Xuequan




by Xinhua Writer Yao Yuan

BEIJING, Oct. 15 (Xinhua) -- A mug of ice-cold beer might be the best cure for a hot summer's day, but as Earth turns hotter and drier, a sharp reduction in barley output may push up the cost of this inexpensive beverage beyond what many can afford.

Beer is the most popular alcoholic drink in the world by volume consumed, but a new article published in scientific journal _Nature Plants_ says that as climate change impinges on barley farming, beer may see a bitter price hike.

According to the study, the world may see beer prices double on average this century in the highest temperature increase scenario, and even in lowest increase scenarios, beer lovers will still have to dig deeper to cope with a 15-percent price rise.

Scientists from China, Britain, the United States and Mexico worked on the study, which analyzed over 300 extreme weather events predicted before 2099 under different climate change scenarios and their impact on barley and beer production.

Xie Wei, lead author of the article and researcher at China's Peking University, said concurrent drought and heat waves, which will become more frequent and severe in the backdrop of global warming, are estimated to reduce global barley output by between 3 and 17 percent this century.

"This will lead to even larger decreases in supplies to brewing industries as barley used in food production (as animal fodder) will be prioritized," he said.

As beer supplies shrink, wealthy, traditionally beer-loving countries are likely to see the most drastic price hikes. Ireland, for instance, is expected to see an average price hike of 193 percent in the worse case scenario.

Though not falling into that category, China, the largest beer-consuming country, may also witness an 83-percent rise in price, according to the study.

Co-author Nathan Mueller, assistant professor of Earth system science with the University of California, Irvine, said that if current levels of fossil fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emission remained "business as usual," the world's beer market would face the worse-case scenario.

"Our study showed that even modest warming will lead to increases in drought and heat extremes in barley-growing areas," he said.

Xie told Xinhua that the research tried to fill in the blank of climate change studies on "high value-added agricultural products," as previous research mostly focused on the impact on food crops.

He also said the world needs to be more sober about climate change by realizing that it, apart from causing extreme weather events, could also affect consumer good prices, public well-being and employment.

"The public may care more about the changing climate after realizing how it will affect their weekend parties, socialization and even their watching of the World Cup," the researcher said.


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 18-OCT-2018
*Scientists discover first high-temperature single-molecule magnet*
UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX


​Molecular structure of the high-temperature single-molecule magnet. *CREDIT: *Richard Layfield

A team of scientists led by Professor Richard Layfield at the University of Sussex has published breakthrough research in molecule-based magnetic information storage materials.

The group at the University of Sussex, working with collaborators at Sun-Yat Sen University in China and the University of Jyväskylä in Finland, report a new single-molecule magnet (SMM) - a type of material that retains magnetic information up to a characteristic blocking temperature.

Writing in the journal _Science_, Professor Layfield and his co-authors explain how they successfully designed and synthesized the first SMM with a blocking temperature above 77 K, the boiling point of liquid nitrogen, which is both cheap and readily available.

Previously, it was only possible to synthesize SMMs with blocking temperatures reachable by cooling with expensive and scarce liquid helium.

Professor of Chemistry, Richard Layfield, said: "Single-molecule magnets have been firmly stuck in the liquid-helium temperature regime for over a quarter of a century. Having previously proposed a blueprint for the molecular structure of a high-temperature SMM, we have now refined our design strategy to a level that allows access to the first such material.

"Our new result is a milestone that overcomes a major obstacle to developing new molecular information storage materials and we are excited about the prospects for advancing the field even further."

SMMs are molecules capable of remembering the direction of a magnetic field that has been applied to them over relatively long periods of time once the magnetic field is switched off.

As such, one can "write" information into molecules leading SMMs to have various potential applications, such as high-density digital storage media and as parts of microprocessors in quantum computers. Practical applications have, however, been greatly hindered by the fact that SMMs are operational only at extremely low temperatures. Their intrinsic memory properties often vanish if they are heated a few degrees above absolute zero (-273°C), meaning SMMs can be only studied under laboratory conditions by cooling them with liquid helium.

The discovery of the first high-temperature SMM means developments could be made in the future to massively increase the storage capacity of hard disks without increasing their physical size.


Scientists discover first high-temperature single-molecule magnet | EurekAlert! Science News

Fu-Sheng Guo, Benjamin M. Day, Yan-Cong Chen, Ming-Liang Tong, Akseli Mansikkamäki & Richard A. Layfield. *Magnetic hysteresis up to 80 kelvin in a dysprosium metallocene single-molecule magnet*. _Science _(2018). DOI: 10.1126/science.aav0652​

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

EDITORIAL
*Network for safe and secure labs | Science*
James W. Le Duc, Zhiming Yuan

Science 19 Oct 2018:
Vol. 362, Issue 6412, pp. 267
DOI: 10.1126/science.aav7120

The current outbreak of Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is a reminder that dangerous diseases exist in many corners of the world and that they can cause substantial human suffering and financial devastation locally and internationally. In response, institutions and nations are constructing maximum biocontainment laboratories (MCLs) to address these threats. MCLs operate at the highest level of biological containment to diagnose, perform research on, and validate cures for life-threatening diseases like Ebola. There are more than 50 MCLs that are operational, under construction, or in advanced planning around the world. The global proliferation of these facilities raises questions about how to ensure their safe and secure operations while enhancing their contributions to science and global health. One solution is to establish an MCL network that enables the sharing of best practices, collaboration, transparency, and exchange of specimens and technology.

*“These labs handle the world's most dangerous pathogens…”*

A multitude of challenges are associated with MCLs. Even at the idea stage, a serious issue is the objection of local communities to the construction of an MCL in their neighborhood. Several MCL operations were delayed or never realized because of public concern. Gaining community trust and support is therefore vital to planning and operating MCLs, so a network of such labs would be valuable for sharing experiences and providing guidance in these situations.

Besides the millions of dollars that it costs to build a modern MCL, there are annual operations—maintenance, utility, and security—that can amount to 5 to 10% of the construction costs. Moreover, there is a need for experienced guidance and qualified oversight to ensure that an MCL is built and operated safely and securely. Yet, few such resources exist, and available training opportunities are inconsistent and often costly. An MCL network could fill the personnel pipeline more efficiently by connecting experienced personnel and professional societies to develop standards for globally accepted training and create mentoring opportunities.

Importantly, MCLs must share a culture of responsibility. These labs handle the world's most dangerous pathogens known, and there must be safeguards to prevent theft or misuse. At the same time, security must be balanced against mechanisms that support collaboration, including specimen sharing. Again, by working together through an MCL network to develop standards and guidelines, a culture of responsibility could be fortified.

We direct a newly constructed MCL in Wuhan, China (Z.Y.), and an established MCL in the United States (J.W.L.), in Galveston, Texas. In preparation for the opening of the new China MCL, we engaged in short- and long-term personnel exchanges focused on biosafety training, building operations and maintenance, and collaborative scientific investigations in biocontainment. We succeeded in transferring proven best practices to the new Wuhan facility. Both labs recently signed formal cooperative agreements that will streamline future scientific and operational collaborations on dangerous pathogens, although funding for research and the logistics of exchanging specimens are challenges that we have yet to solve. Ours is a promising first step in MCL partnerships; however, wider national, regional, and international cooperation is needed. We benefited from meetings jointly sponsored by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the Chinese National Academy of Sciences, and from World Health Organization initiatives, but stakeholders are not limited to human and animal health. Our partnership still requires input from foundations and governmental agencies that are involved in security, commerce, and transportation, as well as from the commercial sector.

Not every country requires an MCL, but every country can benefit from the collaborative operation of these labs. We encourage existing MCLs to convene a forum that brings together all stakeholders to conceive of an MCL network so that these critical labs can tackle urgent global health needs safely, securely, and productively.


----------



## JSCh

*Westlake University a model of reform*
By MA ZHENHUAN | China Daily | Updated: 2018-10-22 07:41




Shi Yigong, president of Westlake University (left), joins Nobel laureate Yang Zhenning (second from left), Zhejiang Governor Yuan Jiajun (second from right) and Han Qide, former vice-chairman of the national political advisory body (center), at the founding ceremony for Westlake University on Saturday in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. CHINA DAILY

Private college in Zhejiang province will set pace for innovation, ministry says

The founding of Westlake University, China's first private university aimed at cultivating high-level talent in advanced technology, marks a significant step in efforts to reform the higher-education sector and foster innovation, the Ministry of Education said.

In a congratulatory letter sent for a founding ceremony on Saturday, the ministry said it hopes the university will focus on basic advanced scientific research and become a top higher-education institution with Chinese characteristics.

The presidents of more than 50 universities attended the ceremony in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, along with Nobel laureates Yang Zhenning, James Watson, Jean-Marie Lehn, Brian Kobilka and Fraser Stoddart.

Shi Yigong, president of Westlake University, said the university aspires to become a pioneer in China's higher-education reform and a cradle of innovative talent in advanced science and technology.

"We want to build the university into a truly international higher-education institution," he said.

Initiated by a team of seven top Chinese academics, including Shi, a Princeton University-trained molecular biologist, the university won approval from the Education Ministry in February.

Expectations have been running high, as it will be China's first private university to grant doctorates. One aim is to rival international counterparts such as Rockefeller University and the California Institute of Technology, both in the United States.

Construction of the main Yungu campus, in Hangzhou's Xihu district, began in April. The first phase of construction covers 450,000 square meters and is expected to be completed by the end of 2021.

The university launched a global recruitment campaign for academics in July 2016 and has received more than 5,000 applications. So far, it has recruited 68 academics from 13 countries to teach physics, chemistry, engineering, biology and basic medicine, among other subjects.

The first 19 PhD candidates were enrolled in September last year, with a further 120 arriving in August.

"It's a common aspiration for all of us that Westlake University－like Hangzhou's West Lake－will win acclaim at home and abroad, and eventually become one of the world's leading universities," Che Jun, Party secretary of Zhejiang, said at the founding ceremony.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *China unveils blueprint for huge underground ‘Higgs factory’*
> 06 Sep 2018 Michael Banks
> 
> 
> 
> ​Planning ahead: physicists at Beijing's Institute of High Energy Physics are supporting a plan to build a huge 100 km circular collider in China to study the Higgs boson in unprecedented detail. (Courtesy: IHEP)
> 
> Scientists in China have released details for a huge particle collider that will produce over a million Higgs bosons in a seven-year period. The conceptual design report for the China Electron Positron Collider (CEPC) calls for a 100 km underground tunnel that would smash together electrons and positrons at energies of 240 GeV. The CEPC would be a successor to the Beijing Electron Positron Collider at the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) in Beijing, which is expected to shut in 2020.
> 
> The CEPC, which was first proposed in 2012, is a “Higgs factory” – a facility to measure the precise properties of the Higgs boson, which was discovered at CERN in 2012 by scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). An electron-positron machine can make much cleaner measurements than a proton collider like the LHC as its collisions do not produce as much debris. The CEPC will therefore allow the Higgs boson to be studied in unprecedented detail.
> 
> A preliminary conceptual design report for the CEPC was originally published in March 2015. That was followed by a progress report in April 2017, but the new 510-page conceptual design report, released this week on the _arXiv_preprint server, outlines the technical details of the accelerator. A second volume, featuring details of the CEPC detectors, is due to be released soon.
> 
> *Particle factory*
> Estimated to cost around $6bn, the “heart” of the CEPC is a double-ring collider in which electron and positron beams will circulate in opposite directions in separate beam pipes. They will then collide at two “interaction points”, which will each contain a particle detector. The report reveals the CEPC will seek to generate over a million Higgs bosons over a seven-year period. The design also calls for the CEPC to operate at 91 GeV for two years to generate a trillion Z bosons as well as run at 160 GeV for a year to produce around 15 million pairs of W+ and W- particles.
> 
> Scientists will now build prototypes of key components of the accelerator and plan the manufacturing process required to construct the CEPC. If given the go-ahead by the government, construction of the CEPC could begin in 2022 and be complete by 2030. Following a decade of studying the Higgs, Z and W bosons, it is hoped that developments in magnet technology will be sufficient to begin construction of a proton-proton collider inside the existing tunnel in the early 2040s. This would operate in the range of 70-100 TeV and search for particles beyond the Standard Model of particle physics.
> 
> The location of the CEPC has not yet been decided with six locations currently satisfying the “technical requirements”. However, it is thought that the leading site is 300 km east of Beijing at the port city of Qinhuangdao. Speaking to _Physics World_ earlier this year, IHEP director Yifang Wang says that a more detailed investigation of the geological conditions at some of the possible sites is needed before a decision can be made. “We need to know what kind of support from the local government we will receive in terms of, for example, laboratories, living conditions, roads and power supply,” he says.
> 
> *Analysis: China could win the Higgs factory race*
> 
> The race is on to build a Higgs factory – a successor to CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. For years it was thought that the International Linear Collider (ILC) was in pole position. The ILC’s five-volume technical design report was published in June 2013, calling for a 30 km-long linear collider that would smash electrons with positrons at around 500 GeV. The Japanese physics community quickly got behind the project expressing their desire to host the machine with a site in the Tōhoku region, about 400 km north of Tokyo, chosen as a potential location.
> 
> However, the Japanese government has dragged its feet over deciding to support the project and last year — to make the ILC more palatable — physicists came up with a revised plan, reducing the ILC’s energy to 250 GeV and shortening the length of the tunnel to around 20 km. While physicists hope that the Japanese government will now get behind the facility by the end of the year, there are many other projects vying for funding, no less a major new neutrino facility in Kamioka. It is likely that a decision about the ILC will be kicked further down the road.
> 
> There is another design for a linear collider to study the Higgs. The Compact Linear Collider would smash together electron with positron at energies up to 3 TeV, but despite a three-volume conceptual design report being released in 2012, it remains behind the ILC in terms of technical development. That now leaves the door open to China and momentum seems to be on their side. Speaking to _Physics World_ earlier this year, Yifang Wang, head of China’s Institute of High Energy Physics, noted that there was “enormous interest” for the CEPC from funding agencies in the country.
> 
> Given the amount of cash that the Chinese government is ploughing into science as well as the technical ability of Chinese scientists and engineers to build world-class facilities, it would be hard to bet against the CEPC being first.​
> 
> 
> China unveils blueprint for huge underground ‘Higgs factory’ – Physics World


*China to build world’s largest supercollider*
By Deng Xiaoci Source:Global Times Published: 2018/10/22 21:38:39



A sketch of the future Circular Electron Positron Collider. Photo: Courtesy of Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of High Energy Physics

Chinese scientists plan to build the world's most powerful electron collider by 2030, a project that will cost 35 billion yuan ($5.05 billion), the project's leading scientist told the Global Times on Monday.

The location of the project has yet to be decided, Wang Yifang, director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of High Energy Physics in Beijing, told the Global Times on Monday.

"The collider will have a circumference of 100 kilometers, with a center-mass energy up to 240 giga electron-volts both setting a world record," Wang said. The collider should produce more Higgs boson particles, the essential, inevitable quarry of modern particle physics, He noted.

The conceptual design for the Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC) passed international examinations in September, Wang said. 

The collider will provide light at a million electron-volt power level, creating the most advanced conditions for research on new materials and nuclear physics, Wang explained. 

Scientists from the US, Europe and Japan have participated in designing the project, will work on the building process and conduct research with the collider, Wang said.

In a bid to maximize the project's service life, scientists are mulling upgrading the electron positron collider around 2040 into a proton collider, Wang noted. 

By then, the center-mass energy for the CEPC will have reached about 100 tera electron-volts, seven times as powerful as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland, Wang said.

The Swiss project near Geneva is the world's largest and most powerful particle collider and reportedly the largest machine in the world. 

Fears have also mounted over the development of the huge collider. Some Western media said there's a chance the colliders could cause a catastrophe that engulfs space itself.

It was "groundless and with no scientific basis" to speculate that a collider could create a black hole that puts lives at risk, Wang said. "Powerful cosmic rays and nuclei clash daily on Earth at forces a million times stronger than those created in any lab."

"Similar concerns were raised before the LHC began running in Europe and time has proven its safety," he said.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*NEWS | *24 OCTOBER 2018
*China hides identities of top scientific recruits amidst growing US scrutiny | Nature*
Chinese researchers fear that affiliation with the high-status Thousand Talents scheme could make them targets of FBI investigations.

*Smriti Mallapaty*

*



*​US congressman Lamar Smith accused China of planting sleeper agents in US universities to steal scientific breakthroughs at an April 2018 hearing.Credit: Scott J. Ferrell/Congressional Quarterly/Getty

China’s flagship science talent recruitment programme, the Thousand Talents Plan, has gone underground amidst intensifying scrutiny by United States government agencies for China's suspected role in the theft of US technologies and intellectual property.

A climate of fear has engulfed Chinese scientists in both countries worried that association with the previously prestigious programme will make them targets of US investigations, including by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Lists of scholars affiliated with the Thousand Talents Plan — a Chinese government scheme to attract Chinese scientists and entrepreneurs back to their homeland — have been removed from government and institutional websites in China.

A memo by a prominent official grant-funding agency, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, circulating on social media instructs interviewers of potential applicants to avoid e-mail correspondence, and not to mention the Thousand Talents Plan when inviting candidates back to the country.

Another widely circulated message on social media, claiming to be from the human resources department of an institution that was not named, urges representatives of fellow HR departments to delete information on their websites related to the Thousand Talents Plan, as “required by the Ministry of Education”. The message asserts that the FBI is investigating researchers involved with the plan.

The Thousand Talents Plan secretariat and the MoE did not respond to the Nature Index’s inquiries.

“Every scientist should be concerned — not just scientists of Chinese origin,” says Xi Xiaoxing, a physicist at Temple University. He argues the US government’s rhetoric threatens not just academic freedom but the US’s place in science and technology globally.

Xi was arrested by the FBI in 2015 and charged with sharing sensitive technology with China, but the case was abruptly dropped four months later.

Against the backdrop of an ongoing trade war, the threat to China–US scientific co-operation could also setback the global scientific enterprise. The two countries are the top collaborating pair in the production of high-quality scientific research worldwide, based on their joint authorship contributions to articles in the 82 journals tracked by the Nature Index.

The developments have had a “chilling effect on young people,” says Wang Xiao-Fan, a cell and molecular biologist at Duke University School of Medicine.

Deterring Chinese students would cost US institutions dearly, says Wang. About a third of all US science and engineering master’s and doctorate degrees in 2015 were awarded to international students. Of the doctorate recipients on temporary visas between 1995 and 2015, some 29%, or 63,576, were from China.

*Scholars or spies*
The Chinese threat to US innovation and industry has been a longstanding concern, but recent developments have put China’s talent programmes in the spotlight.

China's drives to recruit scholars and technology experts are a primary channel for harvesting US technologies and intellectual property, stated a June 2018 White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy document.

At an April 2018 hearing titled “Scholars or Spies”, organized by two subcommittees of the US House of Representatives, the commissioner of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, Michael Wessel, advised Congress to cut federal grants, loans or other assistance to participants of the Thousand Talents Plan. China has put “sleeper agents at our research universities to steal our scientific breakthroughs,” said Representative Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, at the hearing.

Foreign entities were mounting “systematic programs to influence NIH researchers and peer reviewers” warned Francis Collins, director of the largest public funder of biomedical research, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in a letter sent to thousands of research institutes on 20 August 2018. Collins, who did not directly refer to China, encouraged institutions to get in touch with FBI field offices to organise briefings on the subject.

The Thousand Talents Plan, launched in 2008 and expanded in 2011 to include younger and foreign researchers, is under particular scrutiny. It has attracted more than 7,000 individualsback to China with lucrative and prominent positions and substantial research grants. The majority of returnees have come from the US, with some top-level candidates maintaining dual US–Chinese institutional affiliations.

*Warning of threats*
In an episode that has severely rattled Chinese researchers, also in August, the FBI Houston Division held a briefing at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center to warn medical and research representatives of threats posed by foreign adversaries, including theft of proprietary information and research funds.

Accounts spread within the Chinese researcher community that several faculty at MD Anderson with ties to the Thousand Talents Plan were questioned following the briefing. In one case confirmed by Nature Index, an individual who had been offered a position through the plan, but had not accepted it, was questioned.

Connor Hagan, a public affairs officer for FBI Houston cites usual FBI policy in declining to confirm or deny the existence of an investigation. MD Anderson states that it has “not dismissed any staff or visiting scientists as a result of their participation in the Thousand Talents program”.

In a separate development, Joseph Heppert, vice-president for research at Texas Tech University, disclosed in a letter addressed to staff that a faculty of the university had been advised to suspend his application to the Thousand Talents Plan after consulting with the FBI.

*Widespread alarm*
Lin Xin, an immunologist and cancer biologist at Tsinghua University is offended at the suggestion that scholars are engaged in espionage activities.

Lin returned to China with support from the Thousand Talents Plan after several years at MD Anderson, formally resigning from his US position at the end of 2016. “It is just a recruitment plan,” he says. “We want the research community to be able to freely talk about their work.”

Some researchers who were considering applying for the Thousand Talents Plan are having second thoughts for fear they could become a target of the US administration.

The removal of information from websites in China has been unsettling, says a Chinese bioinformatics and computational biologist based in the US, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Now that everything is not transparent, we are not sure whether the selection criteria will be fair.”

Tobin Smith, vice president for policy at the 60-strong Association of American Universities, says that institutions are working to understand the government’s concerns. Researchers might have unwittingly shared sensitive information with foreign actors, he suggests. “But at this point it is still a bit unclear what the threat from the programmes actually is,” he says.

Futao Huang, a higher-education policy analyst at Hiroshima University in Japan, argues that the shroud of scepticism hanging over Chinese talent programmes will interfere with China’s goals of advancing in fields such as artificial intelligence, where the US is the current leader. “The best researchers will stay in the US,” he says.

doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-07167-6

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*NEWS AND VIEWS | *24 OCTOBER 2018
*Precise control of infrared polarization using crystal vibrations*
A natural material has been discovered that exhibits an extreme optical property known as in-plane hyperbolicity. The finding could lead to infrared optical components that are much smaller than those now available.

Hyperbolic materials are highly reflective to light along a certain axis and reflective to light along a perpendicular axis. Typically, one of these axes is in the plane of the material and the other is out of the plane. A material in which both of these axes are in the plane would enable, for example, the manufacture of ultrathin waveplates — optical components that alter the polarization of incident light. Moreover, the reflective behaviour of this material would allow light to be confined and manipulated at extremely small scales (less than one-hundredth the wavelength of the light). In a paper in _Nature_, Ma _et al._1 report the existence of such in-plane hyperbolicity in the natural material molybdenum trioxide.
​Many crystals exhibit birefringence, in which their refractive index — a measure of the speed of light in a material — is different along different axes. This property can be used to manipulate the polarization of incident light. The crystal size that is required to achieve sufficient polarization control for practical applications is directly proportional to the wavelength of the incident light and to the strength of the birefringence. Consequently, for light in the mid- to far-infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum (with wavelengths of 3–300 micrometres), the crystals typically need to be a few millimetres thick2. To overcome this requirement, a potential solution is to consider materials that exhibit hyperbolicity, which is an extreme form of birefringence.

Hyperbolicity was originally thought to exist only in artificial materials consisting of integrated reflective and transparent domains3. But in 2014, it was observed in the natural material hexagonal boron nitride4,5. The reflective behaviour of both this material and molybdenum trioxide is derived from crystal-lattice vibrations, known as optical phonons, that oscillate in a highly anisotropic (direction-dependent) way. These phonons have relatively long lifetimes (in excess of a picosecond; 1 ps is 10−12 s), which strongly suppresses the absorption of light by the material6. Since the discovery of hyperbolicity in hexagonal boron nitride, a broad array of natural hyperbolic materials has been identified7.

Preliminary investigations of molybdenum trioxide were reported earlier this year8 and showed the existence of hyperbolicity for long-wave infrared light (with wavelengths of 8–14 µm). Ma and colleagues have now demonstrated and characterized in-plane hyperbolicity for the same spectral range. They used this property to confine light to dimensions substantially smaller than its wavelength, through the formation of hybrid light–matter excitations called hyperbolic phonon polaritons. The authors report lifetimes for such polaritons of up to 20 ps, which is about ten times longer than the best values reported for hexagonal boron nitride9.

Because the crystal structure of molybdenum trioxide is highly anisotropic, all three crystal axes, which define the edges of the crystal’s unit cell, have different lengths. Consequently, there is a large difference in the phonon energies associated with these axes and therefore in the corresponding refractive indices — resulting in a birefringence of about 0.31. It should be noted that, earlier this year, a similarly large in-plane birefringence of 0.76 was reported in the natural material barium titanium sulfide for mid-infrared to long-wave infrared light10. However, hyperbolicity was not observed for this material.

The in-plane hyperbolicity of molybdenum trioxide offers opportunities to replace conventional optical components with ones that are much smaller. In particular, using the large in-plane birefringence of this material (or of barium titanium sulfide), infrared waveplates could be constructed from thin slabs that have thicknesses on the order of tens of micrometres (Fig. 1a). Such waveplates could operate in the long-wave infrared, for which commercial waveplates are not widely available and have thicknesses in excess of 1 mm.



Figure 1 | Manipulating infrared polarization. Ma _et al._1 show that the material molybdenum trioxide can be used to precisely control the polarization of infrared light.a, Optical components known as waveplates can convert linearly polarized light into circularly polarized light. In the infrared, a waveplate made of a conventional material requires a thickness in excess of 1 millimetre. This material could be replaced with a thin slab of molybdenum trioxide, with a thickness on the order of tens of micrometres. b, Components called polarizers can convert unpolarized light (in which the polarization points in all directions) into linearly polarized light. In the infrared, polarizers made from conventional materials typically need to be thick and use a large grid of metal wires. Such a structure could be replaced with a thin film of molybdenum trioxide that requires essentially no fabrication. c, Nanoscale photonic structures made from conventional materials can emit unpolarized infrared light. But if molybdenum trioxide were used, linearly polarized emission could be achieved.

Furthermore, using the material’s in-plane hyperbolicity, polarizers — components that extinguish undesired polarizations of incident light — could be made from simple 1-µm-thick films (Fig. 1b). Previously, polarizers needed to be thicker and typically required a large grid of metal wires to be patterned on their surface. The remarkable properties of molybdenum trioxide could therefore greatly reduce both the size and the cost of optical components, offering broad applicability in thin, compact infrared devices.

Beyond conventional optics, the properties of molybdenum trioxide could lead to advances in the realm of nanophotonics, which focuses on confining light to nanoscale dimensions. In the long-wave infrared, where the hyperbolicity of this material is observed, nanoscale light confinement necessarily implies defeating the diffraction limit — the usual restriction that light cannot be squeezed into dimensions much smaller than its wavelength. Molybdenum trioxide can beat this limit and, as a result, presents opportunities for producing improved infrared-emitting devices.

For instance, heating nanoscale photonic structures made from materials that can support polaritons can produce light of one or more specific frequencies — rather than light of a broad range of frequencies that that emitted by, for example, conventional light bulbs. Such structures provide an optical source that is akin to light-emitting diodes, but that can be designed to operate anywhere in the infrared. The emitted light from these photonic structures is usually unpolarized (Fig. 1c). It is only through the use of materials that exhibit in-plane hyperbolicity that light of a single, pure polarization can be generated.

Finally, hyperbolic materials such as molybdenum trioxide could serve as the basis for hyperlenses — lenses that produce magnified images of objects smaller than the wavelength of the imaging light. They could also be used in heterostructures (structures in which layers of different materials are combined) to make nanophotonic components that have controllable properties11,12.

Ma and colleagues have demonstrated that, once again, nature has more in store for us than we thought. The future of nanophotonics was once considered to be in the realization of artificial materials, but this study and others in the past few years have demonstrated that, in many cases, the best approach for finding advanced materials is to look among the vast array of natural materials. The results of these studies offer substantial advances in the fields of infrared optics and nanophotonics that could enable infrared imaging and detection to become as ubiquitous as its visible counterpart — a vision that would enable imaging through smoke for first responders, near-instant medical diagnostics and enhanced chemical spectroscopy.

Nature 562, 499-501 (2018)

doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-07087-5


Precise control of infrared polarization using crystal vibrations | Nature

Weiliang Ma, Pablo Alonso-González, Shaojuan Li, Alexey Y. Nikitin, Jian Yuan, Javier Martín-Sánchez, Javier Taboada-Gutiérrez, Iban Amenabar, Peining Li, Saül Vélez, Christopher Tollan, Zhigao Dai, Yupeng Zhang, Sharath Sriram, Kourosh Kalantar-Zadeh, Shuit-Tong Lee, Rainer Hillenbrand & Qiaoliang Bao. *In-plane anisotropic and ultra-low-loss polaritons in a natural van der Waals crystal*. _Nature _(2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0618-9​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Nation ranks 2nd in global research*
By Zhang Zhihao | China Daily | Updated: 2018-10-25 08:00



A visitor checks out a medical robot conducting simulated surgery on a grape at the opening of the Zhongguancun Innovation and Entrepreneurship Festival in Beijing. [Photo by Wang Zhuangfei/China Daily]

China leads the world in 32 out of 138 research topics in groundbreaking natural and social science fields, second only to the United States, according to the Research Fronts 2018 report published on Wednesday.

The results were based on analysis of research fronts－a cluster of highly cited papers over a five-year period－which can help determine areas where key work is being done and where the scientific community is most active. This allows researchers and officials to identify scientific trends and areas of possible collaboration.

Last year, China led in 25 topics in the report, which was compiled by the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Science and Development and Clarivate Analytics, a global analytics firm. The report has been published annually since 2014.

In 2018, the US topped the world, leading in 82 topics. Germany and United Kingdom ranked third and fourth, leading in six and four fields, respectively.

Zhang Tao, vice-president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said China must strengthen basic research and make breakthroughs in frontier sciences to become a global technological powerhouse.

"Our scientific development has entered a new era," Zhang said, adding that grasping future research trends in key fields is crucial to serving the nation's innovation and development strategies.

The report's research fronts are divided into 10 broad areas. Of those, the US leads in eight in research activity and influence, while China leads in two, chemistry/materials sciences and math/computer sciences.

Chemistry/material sciences is also a fiercely contested field between China and the US, in which both countries are highly active and influential. China has a slight edge over the US so far in 2018.

However, China is noticeably behind the US in terms of active research in fields such as clinical medicine, astronomy and astrophysics. It also needs to put more effort into researching economics, psychology and other social sciences fields, the report said.

Chen Runsheng, a CAS biophysicist and academician, said knowing about frontier sciences and global scientific trends can help nations reap the benefits of new technologies and address new challenges.

"The line between using biotechnology to benefit or harm society has now become increasingly thin," Chen said.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 25-OCT-2018
*Invention by NUS chemists opens the door to safer and less expensive X-ray imaging*
Highly sensitive X-ray detector that incorporates novel nanocrystals reduces diagnostic radiation dose

NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE

Medical imaging, such as X-ray or computerised tomography (CT), may soon be cheaper and safer, thanks to a recent discovery made by chemists from the National University of Singapore (NUS).

Professor Liu Xiaogang and his team from the Department of Chemistry under the NUS Faculty of Science had developed novel lead halide perovskite nanocrystals that are highly sensitive to X-ray irradiation. By incorporating these nanocrystals into flat-panel X-ray imagers, the team developed a new type of detector that could sense X-rays at a radiation dose about 400 times lower than the standard dose used in current medical diagnostics. These nanocrystals are also cheaper than the inorganic crystals used in conventional X-ray imaging machines.

"Our technology uses a much lower radiation dose to deliver higher resolution images, and it can also be used for rapid, real-time X-ray imaging. It shows great promise in revolutionising imaging technology for the medical and electronics industries. For patients, this means lower cost of X-ray imaging and less radiation risk," said Prof Liu.

The team's research breakthrough was the result of a collaborative effort with researchers from Australia, China, Hong Kong, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and the United States. It was first published in the online edition of _Nature_ on 27 August 2018, and a patent for this novel technology has been filed.

*Nanocrystals light the way for better imaging*

X-ray imaging technology has been widely used for many applications since the 1890s. Among its many uses are medical diagnostics, homeland security, national defence, advanced manufacturing, nuclear technology, and environmental monitoring.

A crucial part of X-ray imaging technology is scintillation, which is the conversion of high-energy X-ray photons to visible luminescence. Most scintillator materials used in conventional imaging devices comprise expensive and large inorganic crystals that have low light emission conversion efficiency. Hence, they will need a high dose of X-rays for effective imaging. Conventional scintillators are also usually produced using a solid-growth method at a high temperature, making it difficult to fabricate thin, large and uniform scintillator films.

To overcome the limitations of current scintillator materials, Prof Liu and his team developed novel lead halide perovskite nanocrystals as an alternative scintillator material. From their experiments, the team found that their nanocrystals can detect small doses of X-ray photons and convert them into visible light. They can also be tuned to light up, or scintillate, in different colours in response to the X-rays they absorb. With these properties, these nanocrystals could achieve higher resolution X-ray imaging with lower radiation exposure.

To test the application of the lead halide perovskite nanocrystals in X-ray imaging technology, the team replaced the scintillators of commercial flat-panel X-ray imagers with their nanocrystals.

"Our experiments showed that using this approach, X-ray images can be directly recorded using low-cost, widely available digital cameras, or even using cameras of mobile phones. This was not achievable using conventional bulky scintillators. In addition, we have also demonstrated that the nanocrystal scintillators can be used to examine the internal structures of electronic circuit boards. This offers a cheaper and highly sensitive alternative to current technology," explained Dr Chen Qiushui, a Research Fellow with the NUS Department of Chemistry and the first author of the study.

Using nanocrystals as scintillator materials could also lower the cost of X-ray imaging as these nanocrystals can be produced using simpler, less expensive processes and at a relatively low temperature.

Prof Liu elaborated, "Our creation of perovskite nanocrystal scintillators has significant implications for many fields of research and opens the door to new applications. We hope that this new class of high performance X-ray scintillator can better meet tomorrow's increasingly diversified needs."

*Next steps and commercialisation opportunities*

To validate the performance of their invention, the NUS scientists will be testing their abilities of the nanocrystals for longer times, and at different temperatures and humidity levels. The team is also looking to collaborate with industry partners to commercialise their novel imaging technique.


Invention by NUS chemists opens the door to safer and less expensive X-ray imaging | EurekAlert! Science News

Qiushui Chen, Jing Wu, Xiangyu Ou, Bolong Huang, Jawaher Almutlaq, Ayan A. Zhumekenov, Xinwei Guan, Sanyang Han, Liangliang Liang, Zhigao Yi, Juan Li, Xiaoji Xie, Yu Wang, Ying Li, Dianyuan Fan, Daniel B. L. Teh, Angelo H. All, Omar F. Mohammed, Osman M. Bakr, Tom Wu, Marco Bettinelli, Huanghao Yang, Wei Huang & Xiaogang Liu. *All-inorganic perovskite nanocrystal scintillators*. _Nature _(2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0451-1​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*China has strongest fibre that can haul 160 elephants – and a space elevator? | South China Morning Post*

Scientists say just 1 cubic centimetre of the carbon nanotube material won’t break under the weight of more than 800 tonnes
Tsinghua University researchers are trying to get the fibre into mass production for use in military or other areas
PUBLISHED : Friday, 26 October, 2018, 12:03am
UPDATED : Friday, 26 October, 2018, 9:21am








Stephen Chen

A research team from Tsinghua University in Beijing has developed a fibre they say is so strong it could even be used to build an elevator to space.

They say just 1 cubic centimetre of the fibre – made from carbon nanotube – would not break under the weight of 160 elephants, or more than 800 tonnes. And that tiny piece of cable would weigh just 1.6 grams.

“This is a breakthrough,” said Wang Changqing, a scientist at a key space elevator research centre at Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xian who was not involved in the Tsinghua study.

The Chinese team has developed a new “ultralong” fibre from carbon nanotube that they say is stronger than anything seen before, patenting the technology and publishing part of their research in the journal _Nature Nanotechnology_ earlier this year.

“It is evident that the tensile strength of carbon nanotube bundles is at least 9 to 45 times that of other materials,” the team said in the paper.

They said the material would be “in great demand in many high-end fields such as sports equipment, ballistic armour, aeronautics, astronautics and even space elevators”.

*Science fiction?*
The idea of building a lift that could travel from the Earth into space may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but it has been around for more than a century, and scientists have come up with various designs in recent decades.

One of them involves sending a large satellite into geostationary orbit that would lower a cable to the ground, where it would be anchored, and send another cable in the opposite direction, attached to a counterweight.

The theory is that the lift would be suspended between two cables – pulled taut by gravity and centrifugal force, and rotating with the Earth, like a weight on a piece of string being swung around in circles.

But so far, the space elevator idea has remained in the realm of physical and mathematical models because there has been no material strong enough to make the super-light, ultra-strong cables needed.



​
Those cables would need to have tensile strength – to withstand stretching – of no less than 7 gigapascals, according to Nasa. In fact, the US space agency launched a global competition in 2005 to develop such a material, with a US$2 million prize attached. No one claimed the prize.

Now, the Tsinghua team, led by Wei Fei, a professor with the Department of Chemical Engineering, says their latest carbon nanotube fibre has tensile strength of 80 gigapascals.

Carbon nanotubes are cylindrical molecules made up of carbon atoms that are linked in hexagonal shapes with diameters as small as 1 nanometre. They have the highest known tensile strength of any material – theoretically up to 300 gigapascals.

But for practical purposes, these carbon nanotubes must be bonded together in cable form, a process which is difficult and can affect the overall strength of the final product.

According to Wang, the space lift researcher, the transport system would need more than 30,000km of cable, and it would also need other structures such as a rail and a shield to protect against space debris and other environmental hazards.

“If the cable is not strong enough, it would not even be able to support its own weight. Until now, there has been no material tough enough to do the job,” said Wang, deputy executive director of the China-Russia International Space Tether System Research Centre.

Requirements for cable strength vary according to the space lift design. Wang said the carbon nanotube fibre appeared to be the most promising candidate for now, but more calculations and simulation were needed to evaluate how it would perform.

“The tether is one big problem, but it is not the only problem,” he added.




Chinese and Russian space scientists, for instance, are working together to find a safe, effective way to lower a fine, feather-light cable from a high-altitude orbit to the ground. Re-entry to the atmosphere can produce a lot of heat that could burn the cable, while the counterweight may need to be as large as an asteroid to keep the line straight.

The scale and complexity of such a project would dwarf the International Space Station, according to Wang.

But countries including China, the United States, Russia and Japan continue to support the research. So-called space tether technology has the potential to be used for military purposes, including capturing “non-cooperative targets” including enemy satellites.

Japan launched two satellites last month in an experiment to study elevator movement in space – the first time this has been done – involving a mini-lift travelling along a cable from one satellite to another. It has yet to report the results of the experiment. China has also conducted space tethering tests but the details were classified.

*Electric cars and laser cannons*
While a lift to space could still be many years away, Wei said his team was trying to get the carbon nanotube fibre into mass production for use in defence or other areas.

“This could be a game changer in many sectors,” he said.

Wei gave the example of superfast flywheels in a mechanical battery – where the flywheel stores energy in a rotating mass, lifted by magnetic levitation in a vacuum chamber. The lighter and stronger the material, the faster it spins.

Using carbon nanotube flywheels, the mechanical battery would have 40 times the energy density of a lithium battery, according to Wei. That would mean a car like a Tesla Model S could travel for 16,000km in one charge – the distance from London to Sydney.




But the technology is likely to be used for military purposes first, Wei said.

“Many new weapon systems such as rail guns and laser cannons require high performance power storage and supply systems, and our technology offers a possible solution,” he said.

The researchers made the longest carbon nanotube in the world in 2013 – measuring half a metre – and recently developed a 70cm one.

Song Liwei, who studies mechanical batteries at the Harbin Institute of Technology in Heilongjiang, said if the carbon nanotube fibre could be mass-produced and if it significantly increased the energy density of mechanical batteries, it “would kill fossil fuel engines”.

“But the flywheels can be as big as a barrel, and the fibre would need to be several kilometres long to make a battery,” he said. “There is still a long way to go.”

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*New Chinese Sequencer Promises 60 Human Genomes In A Day - Bio-IT World*
*By Bio-IT World Staff*

*October 25, 2018 | *MGI Tech (part of BGI), introduced the next iteration of its sequencer, the MGISEQ-T7, at the 13th International Conference on Genomics (ICG-13) in Shenzhen. The company also announced new library and sample prep and an application for tumor mutation detection.

The proprietary MGI technology used in T7 delivers higher accuracy and improves efficiency through upgrades to the flowcell, fluid, and biochemical and optical system. The new sequencer delivers quadruple flowcell staging that allows simultaneous but independent operation of 1 to 4 flowcells in a single run.

The platform supports whole genome sequencing, ultra-depth exome sequencing, epigenome sequencing, and large-panel tumor gene detection, and has a daily data output capacity of up to 6Tb. The company reports that MGISEQ-T7 can complete whole genome sequencing for up to 60 human genomes in a single day.

“MGI is developing at an unprecedented speed, and our technology has advanced to lead the market,” said MGI CEO Feng Mu in a statement. “This new instrument demonstrates the level of MGI’s innovation and commitment to progress: we continually challenge ourselves and drive towards our goal to make highly accurate next generation sequencing more affordable to benefit more people around the world.”

The MGISEQ-T7 includes:

*Unique Quad-Flowcell Platform, supporting independent operation of 1-4 chips*

A quad-flowcell platform enables multiple flowcells with different read lengths and applications to be processed independently at any time in a single run, saving time and cost.

*Sequencing speed has increased by over 50%, completing PE 150 in less than 24 hours*

Whether it’s a single chip or four chips running simultaneously, MGISEQ-T7 can maintain its consistently strong processing capacity. With MGISEQ-T7, PE150 takes less than 24 hours at full load to complete.

*Single chip density increased by 20%, achieving ultra-high throughput*

Terabyte-level data can be produced with a single chip. Without interruptions for 24 hours, running 4 chips independently, MGISEQ-T7 can produce up to 6Tb of data in one day.

In addition to the T7, MGI announced improved sample prep and library prep for long fragment reads, and an additional application to the MegaBOLT bioinformatics accelerator. For sample prep, MGI has developed an automated sample preparation system based on the needs of ultra-high-throughput genomic sequencing. The new MGISP-960, which has a higher throughput and can prepare 96 samples in one run, is a major advance from the previously released MGISP-100 that can automatically prepare 8 samples in one run. There is also a new library preparation kit for single tube Long Fragment Reads (stLFR) technology, which significantly reduces the cost and complexity of long fragment library preparation. It was introduced in March, and will be commercially available in December.

Finally, MegaBOLT Somatic is an extended application for tumor mutation detection based on the MegaBOLT bioinformatics accelerator released in May. MegaBOLT Somatic dramatically cuts the time needed for tumor analysis, down to two hours for WGS and 10 minutes for WES. The cost reduction and the speed increase of MegaBOLT Somatic will provide alternatives for tumor gene sequencing analysis to benefit patients and researchers.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists find neurons that help rats "make wise decisions"*
Xinhua | Updated: 2018-10-26 11:44

When facing mounting tasks, will you continue to work or indulge in a cup of coffee? Behind this choice lies key brain activity that decides "what's more important."

Scientists have said they have located a part of the rat's brain involved in this process of importance ranking, a discovery that will prompt the search for a similar mechanism in humans.

The study by a team of Chinese and American scientists was published in the prestigious journal _Science _Friday.

First author Zhu Yingjie from Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said they found that a part of the rat's brain called the paraventricular thalamus (PVT) was closely related to tracking the behavioral importance or "salience" of stimuli.

"What happens in your brain when you decide how to spend your evening, to work overtime or to drink a beer? Saliency detection is a key brain mechanism that facilitates learning and survival by enabling organisms to focus their limited attention on the most important event," Zhu said.

He explained that neurons in PVT were robustly activated by salient stimuli. Through experiments, they found PVT was highly active when a thirsty rat found water, and would remain active even when the rodent was harassed by air puffers, suggesting its brain regarded water as a very important stimulus.

PVT activity, however, fell to a low level when the rat faced heavier punishments like electric shocks, which prompted the animal to give up water to avoid pain. The salience of water, as illustrated by PVT activity, also dropped when the rat became sated after a drinking binge.

"PVT can dynamically track the salience of stimuli upon changes in internal homeostatic state and external environment," Zhu told Xinhua. "Our initial prediction is that human brains have similar mechanisms."

The rising and ebbing salience of stimuli are common in our lives, like how an old couple who experience fading passion may find love reignited when environmental factors change.

"Our future researches will focus on the possibilities that we can improve people's attention and learning by controlling PVT activities," Zhu said.

Robert Malenka, deputy director of Stanford Neurosciences Institute, who was not involved in the study, said the paper expanded the role of the thalamus and explained how it played a critical role in learning and memory.

"It also raised the possibility that pathological processes in the brain region may play an important role in a variety of common brain disorders including drug addiction and depression."


----------



## JSCh

*Novel Material Could Make Plastic Manufacturing More Energy-Efficient*
October 25, 2018

An innovative filtering material may soon reduce the environmental cost of manufacturing plastic. Created by a team including scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the advance can extract the key ingredient in the most common form of plastic from a mixture of other chemicals—while consuming far less energy than usual.

The material is a metal-organic framework (MOF), a class of substances that have repeatedly demonstrated a talent for separating individual hydrocarbons from the soup of organic molecules produced by oil refining processes. MOFs hold immense value for the plastic and petroleum industries because of this capability, which could allow manufacturers to perform these separations far more cheaply than standard oil-refinement techniques.



​Credit: N. Hanacek/NIST

This promise has made MOFs the subject of intense study at NIST and elsewhere, leading to MOFs that can separate different octanes of gasoline and speed up complex chemical reactions. One major goal has proved elusive, though: an industrially preferred method for wringing out ethylene—the molecule needed to create polyethylene, the plastic used to make shopping bags and other everyday containers. 

However, in today’s issue of the journal _Science_, the research team reveals that a modification to a well-studied MOF enables it to separate purified ethylene out of a mixture with ethane. The team’s creation—built at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) and China’s Taiyuan University of Technology and studied at the NIST Center for Neutron Research (NCNR)—represents a major step forward for the field.

Making plastic takes lots of energy. Polyethylene, the most common type of plastic, is built from ethylene, one of the many hydrocarbon molecules found in crude oil refining. The ethylene must be highly purified for the manufacturing process to work, but the current industrial technology for separating ethylene from all the other hydrocarbons is a chilly but high-energy process that cools down the crude to more than 100 degrees below zero Celsius. 

Ethylene and ethane constitute the bulk of the hydrocarbons in the mixture, and separating these two is by far the most energy-intensive step. Finding an alternative method of separation would reduce the energy needed to make the 170 million tons of ethylene manufactured worldwide each year. 

Scientists have been searching for such an alternative method for years, and MOFs appear promising. On a microscopic level, they look a bit like a half-built skyscraper of girders and no walls. The girders have surfaces that certain hydrocarbon molecules will stick to firmly, so pouring a mixture of two hydrocarbons through the right MOF can pull one kind of molecule out of the mix, letting the other hydrocarbon emerge in pure form.

The trick is to create a MOF that allows the ethylene to pass through. For the plastics industry, this has been the sticking point.

“It’s very difficult to do,” said Wei Zhou, a scientist at the NCNR. “Most MOFs that have been studied grab onto ethylene rather than ethane. A few of them have even demonstrated excellent separation performance, by selectively adsorbing the ethylene. But from an industrial perspective you would prefer to do the opposite if feasible. You want to adsorb the ethane byproduct and let the ethylene pass through.”

The research team spent years trying to crack the problem. In 2012, another research team that worked at the NCNR found that a particular framework called MOF-74 was good for separating a variety of hydrocarbons, including ethylene. It seemed like a good starting point, and the team members scoured the scientific literature for additional inspiration. An idea taken from biochemistry finally sent them in the right direction.



​This iron-based metal-organic framework decorated with peroxo groups can capture ethane while allowing ethylene to pass through, potentially providing a more efficient and cost-effective way to purify ethylene, the most important raw material for plastic production.
Credit: W. Zhou / NIST

“A huge topic in chemistry is finding ways to break the strong bond that forms between carbon and hydrogen,” said UTSA professor Banglin Chen, who led the team. “Doing that allows you to create a lot of valuable new materials. We found previous research that showed that compounds containing iron peroxide could break that bond.”

The team reasoned that to break the bond in a hydrocarbon molecule, the compound would have to attract the molecule in the first place. When they modified MOF-74’s walls to contain a structure similar to the compound, it turned out the molecule it attracted from their mixture was ethane. 

he team brought the MOF to the NCNR to explore its atomic structure. Using a technique called neutron diffraction, they determined what part of the MOF’s surface attracts ethane —a key piece of information for explaining why their innovation succeeded where other efforts have fallen short.

“Without the fundamental understanding of the mechanism, no one would believe our results,” Chen said. “We also think that we can try to add other small groups to the surface, maybe do other things. It’s a whole new research direction and we’re very excited.”

While Zhou said the team’s modified MOF does work efficiently, it may require some additional development to see action at a refinery. 

“We proved this route is promising,” Zhou said, “but we’re not claiming our materials perform so well they can’t be improved. Our future goal is to dramatically increase their selectivity. It’s worth pursuing further.”



Novel Material Could Make Plastic Manufacturing More Energy-Efficient | NIST

Libo Li, Rui-Biao Lin, Rajamani Krishna, Hao Li, Shengchang Xiang, Hui Wu, Jinping Li, Wei Zhou & Banglin Chen. *Ethane/ethylene separation in a metal-organic framework with iron-peroxo sites*. _Science _(2018). DOI: 10.1126/science.aat0586​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Tigers confirmed as six subspecies, and that is a big deal for conservation | theconversation.com*
October 26, 2018 2.19am AEDT

Tara Pirie
Postdoctoral Researcher, People and Wildlife Research Group, University of Reading

During my time as a zookeeper I had the privilege of working with both Sumatran and Amur tigers. If they did not both have stripes, you would think they were different species altogether.

The Sumatran tiger is the smallest alive today. At around 100kg, it’s “only” about the weight of a large adult male human. It is suited to the warm and wet forests of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, which is reflected in its smaller size and short, dark rusty orange coat which has many thin black stripes to conceal it in dense vegetation from their prey.

The Amur – or Siberian – tiger is much larger, averaging around 170kg (though there are historic reports of males clocking in at 300kg or more) and is now found mainly one corner of far-eastern Russia. It has a thicker but relatively pale coat, with sparse dark brown stripes, which enables it to survive in freezing and snowy winters.

Tiger experts have long debated what such differences mean scientifically. Should the biggest of the big cats be divided into various subspecies, or are all tigers simply “tigers”?

It’s an issue with serious implications for conservation. About 3,500 or so tigers remain in the wild, in just 7% of their former range. And if those tigers are all the same, or if even most of them are the same, then saving individual populations matters slightly less – and tigers can be moved around to assist breeding in the wild.



​Sumatran tigers have adapted to hiding in the jungle. tom177 / shutterstock

Traditionally, eight subspecies were considered to exist. They are the two already mentioned, plus the Bengal tiger, found mainly in India, the Indochinese, the South China tiger and then three extinct subspecies: the Bali (extinct in the 1940s) and Javan (80s), both closely related to surviving tigers on nearby Sumatra, and the Caspian tiger from Central Asia which went extinct in the 1970s.

As genetic techniques evolved, a 2004 study found there was little genetic diversity among tigers, but enough to support the separation of subspecies. It also suggested that Indochinese tigers living on the Malayan peninsular were different enough to those living further north to warrant a ninth subspecies: the Malayan tiger.

These ideas were contested by a group of researchers in 2015, who argued that the relative lack of variation among the mainland Asian subspecies and large overlaps in their shape, size and ecology meant that all tigers from India to Siberia or Thailand should be considered the same subspecies. The researchers called for just two recognised subspecies: the continental tiger, and the Sunda tiger, found on the various Indonesian islands.

However the various subspecies are classified, one of the consistent findings is that tigers follow Bergmann’s rule: a principle in zoology which states that animals within the same overall species will tend to be larger in colder environments and vice versa. The Amur tiger, for instance, benefits from the fact that larger animals are better at retaining heat as they have a smaller surface area relative to their overall mass.

*Six genetically distinct groups*
This is where a new study published in the journal Current Biology fits in. Researchers from China and the US looked at the whole genomes of 32 representative tigers and found that there were indeed nine subspecies of tiger – of which six survive today. But their work also demonstrates that the various adaptations to temperature – Amur big and hairy, Sumatran small and sleek – were triggered by significant prehistoric events that changed global and local temperatures.



​Map showing dispersal routes and range expansions of modern tigers. Liu et al. / Current Biology, CC BY-SA

The findings confirm previous speculation that the low genetic diversity in tigers was caused by a population decline during an ice age 110,000 years ago. Thousands of years later, the earliest split from a single common ancestor species occurred between island and mainland subspecies, with the former developing a smaller body size thanks to natural selection. The super eruption of the Sumatran volcano Toba 75,000 years ago followed by an extreme cooling period was the likely cause. Further splits into more specialised tigers reflect other significant extreme climatic changes.

*This affects conservation tactics*
So why is this important in terms of tiger conservation? As past research has argued, the lack of genetic and morphological differences between mainland tigers could allow them to be managed as single subspecies. Theoretically individuals from any region, wild or captive, could be relocated to repopulate former areas or increase numbers of failing local populations. This could help to increase general tiger numbers and local genetic diversity.



​Siberian tigers are bigger, hairier and have fewer stripes. Vaclav Sebek / shutterstock

But the recent study suggests that tiger adaptations may be more subtle and intricate than first appeared. If tigers are allowed to hybridise either in captive or wild populations it could drive the more vulnerable subspecies to extinction before we fully understand exactly how they have adapted to their particular area.

There is a downside to considering tigers as separate subspecies and attempting to protect them on this basis, without mixing in tigers from elsewhere. Numbers of each subspecies are very small – there are only around 500 wild Amurs, for instance – and smaller populations are more vulnerable to extinction. This could be caused by the regular threats of habitat loss and poaching or simply due to reduced genetic diversity making a small population vulnerable to disease and other selective pressures.

Genetic diversity is key for adaptation and ultimately species survival. As our understanding increases, more informed decisions can be made regarding how best to conserve the tiger. We might not have enough time to solve all the riddles but perhaps this is one step closer to ensuring one of the world’s most iconic animals does not disappear forever.


Yue-Chen Liu, Xin Sun, Carlos Driscoll, Dale G. Miquelle, Xiao Xu, Paolo Martelli, Olga Uphyrkina, James L.D. Smith, Stephen J. O'Brien, Shu-Jin Luo. *Genome-Wide Evolutionary Analysis of Natural History and Adaptation in the World's Tigers*. _Current Biology _(2018). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2018.09.019​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Watch these wooden sponges wick up spilled oil | Science | AAAS*
By Katherine Kornei Oct. 29, 2018 , 1:15 PM

Oil spills are messy and harmful to local ecosystems—just ask anyone on the Louisiana coast. So far, there’s no foolproof way to clean them up, and some methods—like burning the oil—can result in even more pollution. Now, researchers have come up with a potential solution: reusable, oil-wicking sponges made of wood that can absorb more than 40 times their weight in oil.

To make the sponges, scientists started with balsa wood, a low-density material often used in model airplanes. The researchers used chemicals to break down the wood’s cell walls and remove the polymers, lignin and hemicellulose, that make it rigid and strong. The resulting highly porous “scaffold” had a density just one-third that of balsa wood. The researchers then topped the scaffold with a coating that repelled water but readily absorbed oil.

The team tested its sponges on a variety of oils—such as motor oil and the industrial solvent dichloromethane—dispersed in water. The sponges wicked up between 16 and 41 times their weight in oil and could be used as a filter to continuously remove oil from a solution (video above). What’s more, the sponges could be reused more than 10 times after they’ve been wrung out, the researchers report this month in ACS Nano.


*Watch these wooden sponges wick up spilled oil | Science | AAAS*

Hao Guan, Zhiyong Cheng & Xiaoqing Wang. *Highly Compressible Wood Sponges with a Spring-like Lamellar Structure as Effective and Reusable Oil Absorbents*. _ACS Nano_ (2018). DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.8b05763​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 29-OCT-2018
*'Milder' ammonia synthesis method should help environment*
CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HEADQUARTERS



​This image shows production of ammonia via a chemical looping process. *CREDIT: *GAO Wenbo

A Chinese research team has developed a "milder" way to synthesize ammonia by requiring lower temperature and pressure than the current method. The process offers great promise for saving energy and reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

The new process was developed by a research team led by Prof. CHEN Ping and Dr. GUO Jianping from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It involves a new chemical looping method based on metal hydride and imide. The process operates at atmospheric pressure and 100-350°C, in contrast with the Haber-Bosch process - currently dominating world ammonia production - which operates at 100-200 bars and 350-450°C.

Ammonia helps feed humanity through its role in producing nitrogen fertilizer. It also has the potential to store and transport renewable energy. However, current ammonia production is very energy intensive - consuming1-2% of world energy output. In addition, about 1.9 metric tons of carbon dioxide is produced for every metric ton of ammonia.

"In order to address the challenges of the energy and environmental crisis, we developed an alternative process for ammonia synthesis from nitrogen gas, water and renewable energy," said CHEN, the study's lead researcher.

The process uses alkali and alkaline earth metal imides as nitrogen carriers that mediate ammonia production via a two-step chemical looping process operating under mild conditions.

"In the first step, nitrogen was fixed through the reduction of nitrogen gas by alkali or alkaline earth metal hydrides to form imides," said CHEN. "In the second step, the imides were hydrogenated to produce ammonia and regenerated the metal hydrides."

CHEN explained that the two steps could be accelerated by the catalysis of transition metals. "The chemical loop mediated by BaNH and catalyzed by Ni could produce ammonia in the temperature range of 100 to 350°C and atmospheric pressure. The production rate of ammonia was more than one order of magnitude higher than that of the thermocatalytic process," CHEN added.

CHEN noted that the study provides a "promising solution to the efficient harvest and storage of renewable energy." CHEN said the process has the advantage of operating at atmospheric pressure and also offers a means of synthesizing ammonia in a localized, distributed manner.


'Milder' ammonia synthesis method should help environment | EurekAlert! Science News

Wenbo Gao, Jianping Guo, Peikun Wang, Qianru Wang, Fei Chang, Qijun Pei, Weijin Zhang, Lin Liu & Ping Chen. *Production of ammonia via a chemical looping process based on metal imides as nitrogen carriers*. _Nature Energy_ (2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41560-018-0268-z​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 31-OCT-2018
*Changes to RNA aid the process of learning and memory*
With the help of a binding protein, the most common messenger RNA modification in mammals helps coordinate nerve cell response to memory-inducing stimulus in mice

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO MEDICAL CENTER

RNA carries pieces of instructions encoded in DNA to coordinate the production of proteins that will carry out the work to be done in a cell. But the process isn't always straightforward. Chemical modifications to DNA or RNA can alter the way genes are expressed without changing the actual genetic sequences. These epigenetic or epitranscriptome changes can affect many biological processes such as immune system response, nervous system development, various human cancers and even obesity.

Most of these changes happen through methylation, a process in which chemical molecules called methyl groups are added to a DNA or RNA molecule. Proteins that add a methyl group are known as "writers," and proteins that can remove the methyl groups are "erasers." For the methylation to have a biological effect, there must be "reader" proteins that can identify the change and bind to it.

The most common modification on messenger RNA in mammals is called N6-methyladenosine (m6A). It is widespread in the nervous system. It helps coordinate several neural functions, working through reader proteins in the YTH family of proteins.

In a new study published in _Nature_, scientists from the University of Chicago show how Ythdf1, a member of the YTH family that specifically recognizes m6A, plays an important role in the process of learning and memory formation. Using CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing tools to knock out Ythdf1in mice, they demonstrated how it promotes translation of m6A-modified messenger RNA (mRNA) in response to learning activities and direct nerve cell stimulus.

"This study opens the door to our future understanding of learning and memory," said Chuan He, PhD, the John T. Wilson Distinguished Service Professor of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at UChicago and one of the senior authors of the study. "We saw differences in long-term memory and learning between the normal and knockout mice, demonstrating that the m6A methylation plays a critical role through Ythdf1."

In 2015, He published a study in _Cell_ showing how Ythdf1 recognizes m6A-modified mRNAs and promotes their translation to proteins. The new study further demonstrates how this translation increases specifically in response to nervous system stimulation.

Hailing Shi, a graduate student in He's lab, led the new study, working with colleagues from Shanghai Tech University in China and the University of Pennsylvania. Mice express more Ythdf1 mRNAs in the hippocampus, part of the brain crucial to spatial learning and memory. So, the researchers conducted several experiments with both normal mice and mice without Ythdf1 to test the effects on their ability to learn from experiences.

In one scenario called the Morris water maze to test spatial memory, they used a water tank with a submerged platform a mouse could stand on to avoid swimming. Mice got several tries to learn where the platforms were located based on visual cues in a testing room. Then the platform was removed. The normal mice did a better job remembering where the platform used to be than the knockout mice.

The researchers also tested contextual and auditory fear memory in the different groups of mice by administering electrical shocks in combination with certain sounds in specific settings. Again, the normal mice demonstrated better contextual memory than knockout mice. They showed a fear response after being placed in the same setting again without the associated sounds, but not after hearing the sounds in a different setting.

The memory and learning deficits were reversible, however. When the researchers injected knockout mice with a virus carrying Ythdf1, their performance on memory and learning tasks improved dramatically.

The researchers also tested the response of cultured mouse neurons directly in the lab. When the normal cells were stimulated, they increased new protein production, compared to much less activity in Ythdf1 knockout cells.

"It's really an exciting finding to show how the protein can respond to a neuronal stimulus which could contribute to controlled translation," Shi said.

"It's a stimulation-dependent upregulation of translation," He added. "It makes sense because you don't want to fire up your neurons constantly, only when you have a stimulation."

While the current study identifies one important function for YTHDF1, there may be many other functions involved with other biological processes.

"This is not just limited to learning and memory. This stimulation induced translation should apply to many other systems," He said. "The same m6A modification is known to play a role in the immune system when there is an infection, or when a cell moves to a different part of the body. So, I think this is a general concept."


Changes to RNA aid the process of learning and memory | EurekAlert! Science News

Hailing Shi, Xuliang Zhang, Yi-Lan Weng, Zongyang Lu, Yajing Liu, Zhike Lu, Jianan Li, Piliang Hao, Yu Zhang, Feng Zhang, You Wu, Jary Y. Delgado, Yijing Su, Meera J. Patel, Xiaohua Cao, Bin Shen, Xingxu Huang, Guo-li Ming, Xiaoxi Zhuang, Hongjun Song, Chuan He & Tao Zhou. *m6A facilitates hippocampus-dependent learning and memory through YTHDF1*. _Nature _(2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0666-1​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 2-NOV-2018
*Spaced-out nanotwins make for stronger metals*
BROWN UNIVERSITY


​Nanotwins have been shown to improve strength and other properties of metals. A new study shows strength can be further improved by varying the amount of space between nanotwins. *CREDIT: *Gao Lab / Brown University

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- Researchers from Brown University and the Institute of Metals Research at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have found a new way to use nanotwins -- tiny linear boundaries in a metal's atomic lattice that have identical crystalline structures on either side -- to make stronger metals.

In a paper in the journal _Science_, the researchers show that varying the spacing between twin boundaries, as opposed to maintaining consistent spacing throughout, produces dramatic improvements in a metal's strength and rate of work hardening -- the extent to which a metal strengthens when deformed.

Huajian Gao, a professor in Brown's School of Engineering who co-led the work, says the research could point toward new manufacturing techniques for high-performance materials.

"This work deals with what's known as a gradient material, meaning a material in which there's some gradual variation in its internal makeup," Gao said. "Gradient materials are a hot research area because they often have desirable properties compared to homogeneous materials. In this case, we wanted to see if a gradient in nanotwin spacing produced new properties."

Gao and his colleagues have already shown that nanotwins themselves can improve material performance. Nanotwinned copper, for example, has shown to be significantly stronger than standard copper, with an unusually high resistance to fatigue. But this is the first study to test the effects of variable nanotwin spacing.

Gao and his colleagues created copper samples using four distinct components, each with different nanotwin boundary spacing. Spacings ranging from 29 nanometers between boundaries to 72 nanometers. The copper samples were comprised of different combinations of the four components arranged in different orders across the thickness of the sample. The researchers then tested the strength of each composite sample, as well as the strength of each of the four components.

The tests showed that all of the composites were stronger than the average strength of the four components from which they were made. Remarkably, one of the composites was actually stronger than the strongest of its constituent components.

"To give an analogy, we think of a chain as being only as strong as its weakest link," Gao said. "But here, we have a situation in which our chain is actually stronger than its strongest link, which is really quite amazing."

Other tests showed that the composites also had higher rates of work hardening than the average of their constituent components.

To understand the mechanism behind these increases in performance, the researchers used computer simulations of their samples' atomic structure under strain. At the atomic level, metals respond to strain through the motion of dislocations -- line defects in the crystalline structure where atoms are pushed out of place. The way in which those dislocations grow and interact with each other is what determines a metal's strength.

The simulations revealed that the density of dislocations is much higher in the gradient copper than in a normal metal.

"We found a unique type of dislocation we call bundles of concentrated dislocations, which lead to dislocations an order of magnitude denser than normal," Gao said. "This type of dislocation doesn't occur in other materials and it's why this gradient copper is so strong."

Gao said that while the research team used copper for this study, nanotwins can be produced in other metals as well. So it's possible that nanotwin gradients could improve the properties of other metals.

"We're hoping that these findings will motivate people to experiment with twin gradients in other types of materials," Gao said.


Spaced-out nanotwins make for stronger metals | EurekAlert! Science News

Zhao Cheng, Haofei Zhou, Qiuhong Lu, Huajian Gao & Lei Lu.* Extra strengthening and work hardening in gradient nanotwinned metals*. _Science _(2018). DOI: 10.1126/science.aau1925​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists bring new hope to brain tumor patients*
November 2, 2018, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology



​Sequencing data from 188 sGBM patients were collected to uncover the mutational landscape of sGBM, which reveals METex14 as a biomarker for predicting patient survival. In Phase I MET-targeted clinical trial, partial response was achieved in selected patients. Credit: HKUST

sGBM is a rare type of brain cancer in adults. The incidence varies from 2 to 5 per million people per year. For example, if Hong Kong's base population of 7.5 million people is taken as a reference, over 15 people will be diagnosed with sGBM tumors annually. sGBM starts off as low-grade glioma (LGG) tumors around nerve cells that surround the spine and brain, and its 5-year survival rate is under 10%.

Currently, sGBM tumors are treated with a chemotherapy drug called temozolomide (TMZ), first developed in Europe and became available for widespread patient use in the early 2000s. TMZ invokes non-specific DNA damage to tumor cells to prevent it from reproducing and spreading.

However, history and patient data show that sGBM patients undergoing TMZ treatment almost invariably have relapses which display mutations that allow the sGBM tumors to evade a second round of TMZ treatment, making it chemo-resistant and pushing researchers to look further afield to seek better treatment options.

For the first time, this study revealed the somatic mutational landscape of sGBM in 188 cases, and showed that a significant proportion (approximately 14%) of sGBM patients displayed a new mutation, METex14 (some of those simultaneously harbor another mutation, named ZM fusion), which led to more aggressive tumor growth. Previous studies were much smaller (typically 20 patients or less) and therefore meant that findings were inconclusive.

Promisingly, a MET kinase inhibitor molecule named PLB-1001 was identified and is able to penetrate the blood-brain barrier, a key treatment characteristic. This new molecule shows remarkable potency in selectively targeting sGBM tumors and sGBM tumors that co-display this mutation.

Beijing Tiantan Hospital has given the green light for PLB-1001 Phase I clinical trials. Successfully enrolled patients are those who display this mutation or have a history of sGBM tumors and fall within the right age bracket.

"This clinical trial and its results are quite significant in furthering the knowledge about sGBM treatment. Precision cancer medicine promises to tailor treatments according to personal cancer mutations, but it is complicated by the dynamic changes during cancer evolution. sGBM tumors are high on the list of toughest tumors to treat," said HKUST's Prof. WANG Jiguang, who led this Beijing-Hong Kong collaborative study. "Developing computational models on cancer evolution helps to predict cancer cells' future behavior and prioritize treatment options. In this study, MET is one of the running targets we have identified. By using PLB-1001 as a standalone drug, our collaborators were able to see shrinkage of the tumors over a two-month period in selected patients. More studies need to be done to see if PLB-1001 can be used in conjunction with other drugs to have longer lasting results."

Prof. Wang is Assistant Professor at HKUST's Division of Life Science and Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering.

Prof. Tao Jiang's team at Beijing Tiantan Hospital has been enrolling a large number of Chinese glioma patients for genomic sequencing and running this clinical trial, and initial findings indicate that PLB-1001 is safe to use as a monotherapy for sGBM patients and especially those who have the specified mutation. This may lead to new combinational chemotherapy cocktail treatments for patients later down the line.

Ultimately, this finding offers a new silver lining for both medical researchers and sGBM patients alike, and will continue to shed more light on how to better treat this aggressive tumor type.

*More information:* Huimin Hu et al, Mutational Landscape of Secondary Glioblastoma Guides MET-Targeted Trial in Brain Tumor, _Cell_ (2018). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2018.09.038


Scientists bring new hope to brain tumor patients | MedicaXpress

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*International B&R alliance established to tackle global scientific challenges*
By Zhang Hui Source:Global Times Published: 2018/11/4 21:08:39




Gao Fu, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, delivers a speech at The First General Assembly of the Alliance in International Science Organization in the Belt and Road region organized by the Chinese Academy of Sciences on Sunday. Photo: Zhang Hui/GT

An alliance of international science organizations under the China-proposed Belt and Road initiative was established on Sunday, aiming at tackling major world scientific challenges.

President Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory letter to the launch ceremony of the assembly on Sunday, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

Xi said in the letter that promoting cooperation in science and technology among countries constituted an important part of building the Belt and Road and played a positive role in improving people's livelihood, promoting development and coping with common challenges.

The First General Assembly of the Alliance of International Science Organizations (ANSO) in the Belt and Road Region, organized by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has witnessed about 800 participants from worldwide science organizations..

ANSO is an international, non-profit and non-governmental scientific organization, focusing on the major scientific challenges such as ecological resources, climate change, environmental protection and public health.

ANSO tries to mobilize public and private sectors to jointly address diverse development challenges, according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

ANSO has 36 founding members including Russia, Chile, Bangladesh, Belgium and Thailand as of October 30.

Qasim Jan, president of the Pakistan Academy of Sciences, told the Global Times on the sidelines of the assembly on Sunday that the assembly was a wonderful initiative which pulled human expertise from a diverse background to address global problems, and these problems can be minimized through good science.

Gao Fu, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said during his speech on Sunday that emerging and reemerging infectious diseases are still a big issue for developing counties such as diarrheal diseases, respiratory infections and HIV/AIDS.

"Public health and diseases control are first in society's development," Gao said.

"Whenever you have diseases, you have zero development," Gao noted.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Bismarck

*Chinese chip firm Fujian Jinhua denies stealing IP from Micron*

Memory chip parts of U.S. memory chip maker Micron Technology are pictured at their booth at an industrial fair in Frankfurt, Germany, July 14, 2015. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach/File Photo

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese chipmaker Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co Ltd said on Saturday it has not stolen any technology, after the U.S. Justice Department indicted the state-back firm for stealing trade secrets. 

The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday indicted Fujian Jinhua, Taiwan’s United Microelectronics Corp and three individuals for conspiring to steal trade secrets from U.S. semiconductor company Micron Technology Inc relating to its research and development of memory storage devices. 

Earlier in the week, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration took action to cut Fujian Jinhua off from U.S. suppliers. 

“Behaviour to steal another firm’s technology does not exist,” Fujian Jinhua said in a statement posted on its official website. 

“Micron regards the development of Fujian Jinhua as a threat and adopts various means to hamper and destroy the development of Fujian Jinhua,” the statement said. 

The company “always attaches great importance to the protection of intellectual property rights,” Fujian Jinhua added. 

The move to block Fujian Jinhua escalated what until now had been a business dispute into the realm of an international trade conflict between the United States and China. 

The world’s top two economies are already waging a tariff war over their trade disputes, with U.S. duties in place on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods and Chinese duties on $110 billion of U.S. goods. 

The U.S. moves could seriously damage the ambitions of Fujian Jinhua, a firm of strategic importance to China. 

*https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china-semiconductors/chinese-chip-firm-fujian-jinhua-denies-stealing-ip-from-micron-idUSKCN1N809K*


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 5-NOV-2018
*'Master key' gene has links to both ASD and schizophrenia*
Mice lacking MIR-137 show ASD-ish phenotype + increased Pde10a

EMORY HEALTH SCIENCES

Recent studies of complex brain disorders such as schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have identified a few "master keys," risk genes that sit at the center of a network of genes important for brain function. Researchers at Emory and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have now created mice partially lacking one of those master keys, called MIR-137, and have used them to identify an angle on potential treatments for ASD.

The results are scheduled for publication in _Nature Neuroscience_.

Mice partially lacking MIR-137 display learning and memory deficits, repetitive behaviors and impaired sociability. MIR-137 encodes a microRNA, which regulates hundreds of other genes, many of which are also connected to schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder.

By treating mutant mice with papaverine, a vasodilator discovered in the 19th century, scientists could improve the performance of the mice on maze navigation and social behavior tests. Papaverine is an inhibitor of the enzyme Pde10a (phosphodiesterase 10a), which is elevated in mutant mice.

Other Pde10a inhibitors have been tested in schizophrenia clinical trials, but the new results suggest this group of compounds could have potential for some individuals with ASD, says senior author Peng Jin, PhD, professor of human genetics at Emory University School of Medicine.

Having just the right level of MIR-137 function is important. Previous studies of people with genetic deletions show that a loss of MIR-137 is connected with intellectual disability and autism spectrum disorder. The reverse situation, in which a genetic variation increases MIR-137 levels, appears to contribute to schizophrenia.

"It's interesting to think about in the context of precision medicine," Jin says. "Individuals with a partial loss of MIR137 - either genomic deletions or reduced expression -- could potentially be candidates for treatment with Pde10a inhibitors."

To create the mutant mice, Jin's lab teamed up with Dahua Chen, PhD and Zhao-Qian Teng, PhD scientists at the State Key Laboratories of Stem Cell and Reproductive Biology and Membrane Biology, part of the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. Jin says that generating mice with a heritable disruption of MIR-137 was technically challenging, taking several years.

Mice completely lacking MIR-137 have problems with development and die soon after birth. The effect is similar if the deletion is restricted to the nervous system. Other "knockouts" of microRNA genes have not displayed such distinct post-natal effects, Jin notes. However, the scientists wanted to study animals that had one copy intact - a situation analogous to the humans with ASD.

"Several studies had shown an association between MIR-137 and both ASD and schizophrenia, but it was very important to show that causal relationship," Jin says.

Mice with one copy of MIR-137 disrupted in the brain learn to navigate mazes with more difficulty than controls. They also display increased repetitive behaviors (self-grooming and marble-burying) and show a limited preference to socialize with another mouse rather than an object, and do not discriminate familiar mice from strangers.

The brains of mutant mice have a higher density of dendritic spines, indicating that they have impaired synaptic pruning, a process other researchers have observed is altered in schizophrenia and autism.

Analyzing the genes in brain cells whose activities were most altered by MIR-137 loss allowed the researchers to pinpoint Pde10a. Treating mutant mice with papaverine improved their ability to learn mazes, although it did not restore their performance to that of control mice. In addition, papaverine treatment significantly increased the amounts of time mutant mice interacted with other mice.



'Master key' gene has links to both ASD and schizophrenia | EurekAlert! Science News

Ying Cheng, Zhi-Meng Wang, Weiqi Tan, Xiaona Wang, Yujing Li, Bing Bai, Yuxin Li, Shuang-Feng Zhang, Hai-Liang Yan, Zuo-Lun Chen, Chang-Mei Liu, Ting-Wei Mi, Shuting Xia, Zikai Zhou, An Liu, Gang-Bin Tang, Cong Liu, Zhi-Jie Dai, Ying-Ying Wang, Hong Wang, Xusheng Wang, Yunhee Kang, Li Lin, Zhenping Chen, Nina Xie, Qinmiao Sun, Wei Xie, Junmin Peng, Dahua Chen, Zhao-Qian Teng, Peng Jin. *Partial loss of psychiatric risk gene Mir137 in mice causes repetitive behavior and impairs sociability and learning via increased Pde10a*. _Nature Neuroscience _(2018); DOI: 10.1038/s41593-018-0261-7​


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 8-NOV-2018
*A newly discovered, naturally low-caffeine tea plant*
AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY


​Leaves and young shoots of a rare wild tea that is low in caffeine. *CREDIT: *American Chemical Society

Tea drinkers who seek the popular beverage's soothing flavor without its explosive caffeine jolt could soon have a new, naturally low-caffeine option. In a study appearing in ACS' _Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry_, scientists report that a recently discovered wild tea plant in China contains little or no caffeine and, unlike many industrially decaffeinated products, could potentially provide many of the health benefits of regular brewed teas.

In 2017, Americans drank nearly 4 billion gallons of tea, according to the Tea Association of the USA. The association estimates that up to 18 percent of those drinks were decaffeinated. To decaffeinate tea, manufacturers often use supercritical carbon dioxide or hot water treatments. However, these methods can affect the brew's flavor and destroy compounds in the tea associated with lowered cholesterol, reduced risk of heart attack or stroke, and other health benefits. Recently, scientists discovered hongyacha (HYC), a rare wild tea found in the mountains of southern China. Local residents believe it can it can cure colds, soothe stomach pain and relieve a host of other ailments. But little is known about its structural makeup or its chemical composition. Liang Chen and colleagues sought to close that gap.

The researchers used high-performance liquid chromatography to analyze HYC buds and leaves collected during the growing season. In addition to finding several potentially health-promoting compounds not found in regular tea, they determined that HYC contains virtually no caffeine. Digging deeper, they found this was because of a mutation in the gene encoding the enzyme tea caffeine synthase, which promotes caffeine production in most tea plants. The researchers conclude that naturally low-caffeine HYC could possibly become a popular drink because of its distinct composition and unique health benefits.


A newly discovered, naturally low-caffeine tea plant | EurekAlert! Science News

Ji-Qiang Jin, Yun-Feng Chai, Yu-Fei Liu, Jing Zhang, Ming-Zhe Yao, Liang Chen. *Hongyacha, a Naturally Caffeine-Free Tea Plant from Fujian, China*._ J. Agric. Food Chem. _(2018). DOI: 10.1021/acs.jafc.8b03433​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Healing kidneys with nanotechnology*
November 8, 2018



The illustration shows a diseased kidney on the left and a healthy kidney on the right, after rectangular DNA nanostructures migrated and accumulated in the kidney, acting to alleviate damage due to oxidative stress. 
Graphic by Shireen Dooling

Each year, there are some 13.3 million new cases of acute kidney injury (AKI), a serious affliction. Formerly known as acute renal failure, the ailment produces a rapid buildup of nitrogenous wastes and decreases urine output, usually within hours or days of disease onset. Severe complications often ensue. Currently, there is no known cure for AKI.

AKI is responsible for 1.7 million deaths annually. Protecting healthy kidneys from harm and treating those already injured remains a significant challenge for modern medicine.

In new research appearing in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering, Hao Yan and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and in China describe a new method for treating and preventing AKI. Their technique involves the use of tiny, self-assembling forms measuring just billionths of a meter in diameter.

Yan directs the Biodesign Center for Molecular Design and Biomimetics and is the Martin D. Glick Distinguished Professor in the School of Molecular Sciences at ASU.

Their research demonstrated that the introduction of DNA origami nanostructures (DONs) protected normal kidneys and improved functioning of kidneys damaged by AKI. The beneficial effect of the nanostructures was comparable to the current treatment modality, administration of an anti-oxidant drug known as N-acetylcysteine (NAC). New treatments are being saught because NAC is not easily absorbed in the kidneys. Further examination of stained tissue samples from mice confirmed the beneficial effects of the DONs.

The triangular, tubular and rectangular shapes are designed and built using a method known as DNA origami. Here, the base pairing properties of DNA’s four nucleotides are used to engineer and fabricate DNA origami nanostructures, which self-assemble and preferentially accumulate in kidneys.

“The interdisciplinary collaboration between nanomedicine and the in-vivo imaging team led by professor Weibo Cai at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the DNA nanotechnology team has led to a novel application—applying DNA origami nanostructures to treat acute kidney injury,” Yan says. “This represents a new horizon for DNA nanotechnology research.”

Experiments described in the new study—conducted in mice as well as human embryonic kidney cells—suggest that DONs act as a rapid and active kidney protectant and may also alleviate symptoms of AKI. The distribution of DONs was examined with positron emission tomography (PET). Results showed that the rectangular nanostructures were particularly successful, protecting the kidneys from harm as effectively as the leading drug therapy and alleviating a leading source of AKI known as oxidative stress.

The study is the first to explore the distribution of DNA nanostructures in a living system by means of quantitative imaging with PET and paves the way for a host of new therapeutic approaches for the treatment of AKI as well as other renal diseases.

“This is an excellent example of team science, with multidisciplinary and multinational collaboration,” Cai said. “The four research groups are located in different countries, but they communicate regularly and have synergistic expertise. The three equally-contributing first authors (Dawei Jiang, Zhilei Ge, Hyung-Jun Im) also have very different backgrounds, one in radiolabeling and imaging, one in DNA nanostructures, and the other in clinical nuclear medicine. Together, they drove the project forward.”

*Vital organ*

Kidneys perform essential roles in body, removing waste and extra water from the blood to form urine. Urine then flows from the kidneys to the bladder through the ureters. Wastes in the blood are produced from the normal breakdown of active muscle and from foods, which the body requires for energy and self-repair.

Acute kidney injury can range considerably in severity. In advanced AKI, kidney transplantation is required as well as supportive therapies including rehydration and dialysis. Contrast-induced AKI, a common form of the illness, is caused by contrast agents sometimes used to improve the clarity of medical imaging. An anti-oxidant drug known as N-acetylcysteine (NAC) is used clinically to protect the kidneys from toxic assault during such procedures, but poor bioavailability of the drug in the kidneys can limit its effectiveness. (Currently, there is no known cure for AKI.)

Nanomedicine—the engineering of atoms or molecules at the nanoscale for biomedical applications—represents a new and exciting avenue of medical exploration and therapy. Recent research in the field has driven advances leading to improved imaging and therapeutics for a range of diseases, including AKI, though the use of nanomaterials within living systems in order to treat kidney disease has thus far been limited.

The base-pairing properties of nucleic acids like DNA and RNA enable the design of tiny programmable structures of predictable shape and size, capable of performing a multitude of tasks. Further, these nanoarchitectures are desirable for use in living systems due to their stability, low toxicity, and low immunogenicity.

*New designs*

The current study marks the first investigation of DNA origami nanostructures within living organisms, using quantitative imaging to track their behavior. The PET imaging used in the study allowed for a quantitative and reliable real-time method to study the circulation of DONs in a living organism and to assess their physiological distribution. Rectangular DONs were identified as the most effective therapeutic to treat AKI in mice, based on the PET analysis.

Yan and his colleagues prepared a series of DONs and studied their behavior in mouse kidney, using PET imaging. The PET scans showed that the DONs had preferentially accumulated in the kidneys of healthy mice as well as those with induced AKI. Of the three shapes used in the experiments, the rectangular DONs provided the greatest benefit in terms of protection and therapy and were comparable in their effect to the drug N-acetylcysteine, considered the gold standard treatment for AKI.

Patients with kidney disease often have accompanying maladies, including a high incidence of cardiovascular disease and malignancy. Acute kidney illness may be induced through a process known as oxidative stress. This occurs when certain waste products known as reactive oxygen species cause damage to cells. The result is often inflammation, which accelerates the progression of renal disease. (Foods and supplements rich in antioxidants act to protect cells from the harmful effects of reactive oxygen species.)

*Safeguarding kidneys with DNA geometry*

The protective and therapeutic effects of the DONs described in the new study are due to the ability of the nanostructures to scavenge reactive oxygen species, thereby insulating vulnerable cells from damage due to oxidative stress. This effect was studied in human embryonic kidney cell lines as well as in living mice. The accumulation of the nanostructures in both healthy and diseased kidneys provided an increased therapeutic effect compared with traditional AKI therapy. (DONs alleviated oxidative stress within two hours of incubation with affected kidney cells.)

The authors propose several mechanisms to account for the persistence in the kidneys of properly folded origami nanostructures, including their resistance to digestive enzymes, avoidance of immune surveillance and low protein absorption.

Levels of serum creatinine and blood urea nitrogen (BUN) were used to assess renal function in mice. AKI mice treated with rectangular DONs displayed improved kidney excretion comparable to mice receiving treatment using the mainline drug N-acetylcysteine.

Further, the team established the safety of rectangular DONs, evaluating their potential to elicit an immune response in mice by examining blood levels of interleukin-6 and tumor necrosis factor alpha. Results showed the DONs were non-immunogenetic and tissue staining of heart, liver, spleen lungs and kidney revealed their low toxicity in primary organs, making them attractive candidates for clinical use in humans.

Based on the effective scavenging of reactive oxygen species by DONs in both human kidney cell culture and living mouse kidney, the study concludes that the approach may indeed provide localized protection for kidneys from AKI and may even offer effective treatment for AKI-damaged kidneys or other renal disorders.

The successful proof-of-concept study expands the potential for a new breed of therapeutic programmable nanostructures, engineered to address far-flung medical challenges, from smart drug delivery to precisely targeted organ and tissue repair. 



Written by: richard harth

Healing kidneys with nanotechnology | The Biodesign Institute | ASU

Dawei Jiang, Zhilei Ge, Hyung-Jun Im, Christopher G. England, Dalong Ni, Junjun Hou, Luhao Zhang, Christopher J. Kutyreff, Yongjun Yan, Yan Liu, Steve Y. Cho, Jonathan W. Engle, Jiye Shi, Peng Huang, Chunhai Fan, Hao Yan, Weibo Cai. *DNA origami nanostructures can exhibit preferential renal uptake and alleviate acute kidney injury*. _Nature Biomedical Engineering_ (2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41551-018-0317-8​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists Improve the Focal Intensity for Shanghai Super-intense Ultrafast Laser Facility*
Nov 01, 2018 

Ultra-fast petawatt-class laser systems have undergone rapid development by the incorporation of chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) and optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification (OPCPA) technologies.

In October 2018, Shanghai Super-intense Ultrafast Laser Facility (SULF) achieved the amplified output energy of 339J, which support the peak power of 10.3 PW. For the high-field laser- matter interaction research, the focal intensity at the target is a critical parameter. Therefore, in addition to increasing the pulse energy and shortening the pulse duration, decreasing the size of the focus spot has become another essential and economic method to increase the intensity.

Given the complex optical elements and severe aberrations of petawatt laser systems, double or more adaptive optics systems (AOSs) with cascaded correction have been required in high-power laser systems to improve the focusing ability of the laser pulse.

Recently, an experimental scheme, based on the function of double deformable mirrors (DMs) in the AOSs, was developed by State Key Laboratory of High Field Laser Physics, Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and it has succeeded in the compensation of the wavefront aberrations of the laser beam.

The major part of the large-scale aberrations was compensated by the 300mm-DM with a large stroke in the second AOS and the small-scale residual aberrations were further improved by the high-spatial-resolution 130mm-DM in the first AOS.

Focused with an f/2.5 off-axis parabolic mirror (OAP), a focal spot close to the diffraction limit was achieved, which contained approximately 27.69% energy in the full width at half-maximum (FWHM) area (2.75 × 2.87 um2).

A peak intensity of 2 × 1022 W/cm2 was also realized at the output of 5.4 PW, and it could exceed 1023 W/cm2in the SULF 10 PW laser facility using an f/1.8 OAP. The focal intensity improvement will be implanted at peak power of 10 PW very shortly.

The results, entitled "Improvement of the focusing ability by double deformable mirrors for 10-PW-level Ti: sapphire chirped pulse amplification laser system", were published in _Opt. Express_.



The phase profiles of the focal spots (a) before and (c) after the correction; (b) and (d) the corresponding focal spots focused (Image by SIOM) 


*Scientists Improve the Focal Intensity for Shanghai Super-intense Ultrafast Laser Facility---Chinese Academy of Sciences*

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Overcoming Organ Transplant Rejection with Hydrogels [Video]*




By Advanced Science News Video
Posted on November 12, 2018






Liver transplantation requires suppression of a recipient’s immune system to avoid transplant rejection. Since immune suppressants threaten patient health, precise control over their dose is required.

In _Advanced Materials_, Dr. Jindao Wu, Prof. Xuehao Wang, and Dr. Fuqiang Wang from Nanjing Medical University, Prof. Gaolin Liang from the University of Science and Technology of China, and their co-workers report a vehicle for stimulated release of the immune suppressant, tacrolimus (tac).

Prof. Xuehao Wang: “_Rejection is the key problem after liver transplantation. In clinic, we use tac to reduce rejection, to improve the survival.”_

Dr. Jindao Wu:_ “Transplant doctors often adjust tac dosage according to their clinical experience. We hope to release tac intelligently according to the immune status of recipients and minimize the risk of tac-related complications.”_

The researchers devised two peptide-based hydrogelator compounds, which co-assembled with tac into a gel.

Dr. Fuqiang Wang:_ “The activated PTK (protein tyrosine kinase) could be used to disassemble a tac-encapsulating supramolecular hydrogel for the immune-responsive release.”_

Prof. Gaolin Liang:_ “We expect that our smart, facile method of immune-responsive release of tac could be applied to overcome organ transplantation rejection in clinic in the near future.”_

To learn more about this smart approach to overcoming organ transplant rejection, please visit the_ Advanced Materials_ homepage.


Overcoming Organ Transplant Rejection with Hydrogels [Video] - Advanced Science News

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 12-NOV-2018
*Traditional eutectic alloy brings new hope for high energy density metal-O2 batteries*
CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HEADQUARTERS



​a) Comparison of oxidation and corrosion resistance of Li-Na eutectic alloy and Na metal. SEM images for Li-Na alloy b), and Na c) electrodes after five stripping/plating cycles. d) Voltage profiles for symmetric metal batteries. Cycling e), and rate f) performance of metal-O2 batteries with and without catalysts. *CREDIT: *YAN Junmin, ZHANG Yu, ZHANG Xinbo

Current lithium-ion intercalation technology, even when fully developed, is difficult to satisfy society's increasing demand of high-energy-density power sources for electric vehicles and electronics. Thus, non-aqueous alkali metal-oxygen (AM-O2: AM = Li, Na, etc.) batteries are promising to replace conventional lithium-ion battery due to their ultrahigh theoretical energy density.

However, AM is extremely reactive towards air and almost all nonaqueous electrolytes, resulting in significant parasitic reactions. Furthermore, uncontrollable Li or Na metal plating/stripping, generally emerging as dendrites, easily induces cells short circuit accompanying by fire/explosion events, plaguing AM anodes towards practical applications. Therefore, to achieve a safe and stable AM-O2 cell, it is important to solve the dendrite coupled with oxidation/corrosion issues of AM anode.

Recently, a research team led by ZHANG Xinbo from the Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry (CIAC), Chinese Academy of Sciences, YAN Junmin from Jilin University, ZHANG Yu from Beihang University Beijing developed a long-life AM-O2 battery using Li-Na eutectic alloy as novel metal anode for the first time. Their findings were published in _Nature Chemistry_.

They found that Li and Na of Li-Na alloy exhibited similar reaction activities and therefore both could be employed as active components in batteries without sacrificing the specific capacity compared with other alloys (e.g., Na-Sn alloy). In addition, alloying Li and Na improved the corrosion resistance of single metal against O2 and electrolyte and suppressed the metal dendrites growth.

Importantly, in a Li-Na alloy battery, with the help of electrolyte additive, the resultant dendrite-suppressed, oxidation-resistant, and crack-free Li-Na alloy electrode endowed the newly-proposed aprotic bimetallic Li-Na alloy-O2 battery with good performances.

Furthermore, by introducing efficient O2 reduction/evolution catalysts (e.g., Co/NCF), the cycling life and rate capability of Li-Na alloy-O2 battery were significantly improved.

"We believe that this strategy can also be applied to other metal electrodes, such as Zn, Mg, Ca, Al and so on," said ZHANG.

Meanwhile, this study provides a guidance for developing other bimetal batteries such as bimetal ion batteries and bimetal-S batteries. These batteries possess new chemistries, exhibit much better electrochemical performance than mono-metal batteries, and adopt collaborative methods to release the great potential of alkali metal anode.


Traditional eutectic alloy brings new hope for high energy density metal-O2 batteries | EurekAlert! Science News

Jin-ling Ma, Fan-lu Meng, Yue Yu, Da-peng Liu, Jun-min Yan, Yu Zhang, Xin-bo Zhang, Qing Jiang. *Prevention of dendrite growth and volume expansion to give high-performance aprotic bimetallic Li-Na alloy–O2 batteries*. _Nature Chemistry_, November 2018. DOI: 10.1038/s41557-018-0166-9​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*SynBio Workshop Boosts International Technology Transfer*
Nov 15, 2018 

More than 200 delegates from universities, research institutes, hi-tech enterprises and Sci&Tech organizations from the United States, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and countries along the “Belt and Road”, attended the 2018 Qingdao International Technology Transfer Conference - Synthetic Biology Workshop held on November 14, 2018.

Organized by the Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology (QIBEBT) of Chinese Academy of Sciences, the workshop focused on the relationship between synthetic biotechnology and four major fields: resource and environment, energy and chemindustry, pharmaceutics and health, and method and technology.

QIBEBT and Chiang Mai University in Thailand renewed their decade cooperation agreement at the workshop. According to the agreement, a "Green Biotechnology Cooperation Center" will be built focusing on the development of clean energy and natural products as well as the demonstration and industrial promotion of bioenergy including cellulosic ethanol, bio-aviation oil and bio-natural gas through co-construction of technological platforms and joint training of scientific and technological talents.

During the past decade, four projects have been launched by the two sides. “In the future, our cooperation will be upgraded to a new platform. We will also make in-depth explorations in high value-added chemicals to further solve the problem of agricultural residue waste in Thailand,” said Sujinda Sriwattana, Dean of Chiang Mai University.

A “synthetic biotechnology international partnership" was also initiated to promote and strengthen the sharing of knowledge and technology among countries along the "Belt and Road". The partnership network between members will expand the radiation effect of synthetic biotechnology to industry.

"Recent years, Chinese and German researchers have strengthened academic exchanges and held many workshops,” said Professor Rolf Schmid, Asia science and technology consultant of Baden-Wurttemberg State, “In the field of synthetic biology, QIBEBT is a very important institution in Shandong Province and even in China. German scientific research institutions are also willing to have further work exchanges and experience sharing opportunities with the Chinese researchers.”

Representatives of international well-known enterprises and institutions such as Thermo Fisher, Klein Chemical, Novo Nordisk Foundation, BGI Gene, Vland, and local enterprises, participated the workshop. More than 20 technological projects were selected for technology transfer.

Professor Petr Hladik, head of business development department of technology center of the Czech Academy of Sciences said, “Three years ago, we successfully implemented the technology transfer project in Chengdu. This time, I brought three demonstration of technology transformation. I hope to find a suitable technology transformation partner here through this platform.”

The Synthetic Biotechnology Innovation Center of Shandong Province jointly constructed by QIBEBT and other six local organizations was unveiled at the opening ceremony of the workshop.

Combining biology and engineering, synthetic biology has drawn much attention in recent years, from the research fields as well as the industry.
*
*
SynBio Workshop Boosts International Technology Transfer---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Single-manganese-atom catalyst drives key water-splitting step*
Finding may advance mission to make hydrogen fuel from water inexpensively
*
by Mitch Jacoby*
OCTOBER 25, 2018 | APPEARED IN* VOLUME 96, ISSUE 43*



Credit: _Nat. Catal._
Graphene functionalized with isolated MnN4 units undergoes a catalytic cycle to convert water (starting at top right) to O2 (top left).

An easy-to-prepare catalyst consisting of isolated metal atoms embedded at various points across functionalized graphene sheets can carry out a key step in water splitting, according to a study (_Nat. Catal._ 2018, DOI: 10.1038/s41929-018-0158-6).

If water could be split easily and inexpensively into molecular hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (O2), the world could draw a nearly limitless supply of clean-burning hydrogen fuel from the oceans. Inspired by nature’s use of a metal cluster (CaMn4O5) to generate O2 from water during photosynthesis, scientists have designed various multimetal-atom catalysts to facilitate the process, called the water oxidation reaction (WOR).

Several researchers have shown that various synthetic manganese-cluster catalysts actively mediate WOR. What remained unknown is whether a simpler, less expensive catalyst based on single manganese atoms rather than clusters can do the job actively and energy efficiently.

Yes, it can, concludes a team led by Can Li of the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics. By reacting manganese chloride, graphene oxide, and ammonia, the researchers made a material in which isolated manganese atoms are embedded across a graphene surface, each surrounded by four nitrogen atoms. The team conducted water-oxidation tests to evaluate the material’s catalytic properties.

The researchers found that in contrast with pure graphene and nitrogen-doped graphene, which were inactive, their MnN4-graphene catalyst exhibited a WOR turnover frequency of up to 215 per second. Turnover frequency is a measure of catalytic activity that describes how many times a catalyst carries out a reaction in a given period. The MnN4-graphene value is nearly 100 times as high as that of other synthetic Mn-based catalysts and in the ballpark of naturally occurring ones. The team also found that the new catalyst mediates WOR at relatively low overpotential values, an indication of high energy efficiency.

A great deal of effort has been devoted to finding efficient, low-cost catalysts that drive water splitting, says Xiao Cheng Zeng of the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, who has studied the process computationally. “The water oxidation reaction is the most challenging step,” he says, so this experimental demonstration with manganese, which is much cheaper than precious-metal catalysts, “is a significant step in the right direction.”


Single-manganese-atom catalyst drives key water-splitting step | Chemical & Engineering News

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*World's Next Supercollider Design Report Released*
Nov 14, 2018

Scientists working on the Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC), a planned next-generation particle collider in China, released its Conceptual Design Report (CDR) on Nov. 14 in Beijing.

In a special ceremony at the 2018 CEPC workshop at the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP), Prof. WANG Yifang, director of the IHEP and chair of the CEPC steering committee, released the CDR to the particle physics community and the public at large.

The two-volume report contains technical details regarding the accelerator (Volume I) and the Physics & Detector (Volume II) of the project. It outlines in great detail the design options of the future collider, which would both complement and go beyond the physics of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The report summarizes the work accomplished in the past six years by thousands of scientists and engineers both in China and abroad.

"The CDR signifies that we have completed the basic design of the accelerator, detector and civil engineering for the whole project,” said Prof. GAO Yuanning of Peking University and chair of the CEPC Institutional Board. “Now our next step will focus on the R&D of key technologies and prototypes for the CEPC.”

Volume I of the report covers the design of the accelerator complex including the linear accelerator, the damp ring, the booster, and the collider. In addition, it describes the cryogenic system, the civil engineering, the radiation protection, and the auxiliary facilities. It also discusses the option to upgrade to a Super proton proton Collider (SppC).

Volume II presents the physics case for the CEPC, describes the detector concepts and their technological options, highlights the expected detector and physics performance, and discusses future plans for detector R&D and physics investigations.

"(CDR) has built the foundation for TDR (Technical Design Report) and engineering design as the next step, and a realistic timeline for construction,” said Prof. George Wei-Shu Hou of National Taiwan University and chair of the Asia-Pacific High Energy Physics Panel (AsiaHEP).

The current two-volume CDR (“Blue Report”) was preceded by the Preliminary Conceptual Design Report (Pre-CDR, “White Report”), published in March 2015, and a Progress Report (“Yellow Report”) published in April 2017.

A five-year R&D period (2018-2022) will precede the construction. During this period, prototypes of key technical components will be built and the infrastructure will be established to support the manufacturing of a large number of required components.

Construction is expected to start in 2022 and be completed in 2030. According to the tentative operational plan, the CEPC will run for seven years as a Higgs factory, followed by two years as a Z factory and one year at the WW threshold. The SppC era could begin following the completion of the CEPC operation.

The CEPC is an important part of the global plan for high-energy physics research. It will support a comprehensive research program by scientists around the world. “Physicists from many countries will work together to explore the frontiers of science and technology, thus taking our understanding of the fundamental nature of matter, energy and the universe to a new level,” said Prof. WANG Yifang.

*About the CEPC*

The discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in July 2012 created new opportunities for a large-scale accelerator. The Higgs boson is a crucial cornerstone of the Standard Model (SM). In September 2012, Chinese scientists proposed a 240-GeV Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC), serving two large detectors for the studies of Higgs bosons. The tunnel for such a collider could also host a Super proton proton Collider (SppC) to reach energies beyond the LHC.

The CEPC is a circular e+ e-collider located in an underground tunnel of 100-km circumference. The accelerator complex consists of a linear accelerator (Linac), a damping ring, a booster, a collider and several transport lines.

The heart of the CEPC will be a double-ring collider. Electron and positron beams will circulate in opposite directions in separate beam pipes. The CEPC booster will be located in the same tunnel above the collider with 10-GeV injection energy and extraction energy equal to the beam collision energy. Top-up injection will be used to maintain constant luminosity. The 10-GeV Linac, an injector to the booster, will be built at ground level and accelerate both electrons and positrons.

In the planned ten-year operation, the CEPC will produce over one million Higgs bosons, one hundred million W bosons, and close to one trillion Z bosons. W and Z bosons are force carriers of the weak force. Billions of bottom quarks, charm quarks and tau-leptons will also be produced in the decays of the Z bosons.

*More information:*

1 Download the Conceptual Design Report (Volume I: Accelerator, Volume II: Physics & Detector)

2 Images, videos and background information for the CEPC

3 Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences​

World's Next Supercollider Design Report Released---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

China’s Circular Electron Positron Collider would be built underground in a 100-kilometer-circumference tunnel at an as-yet-undetermined site. 
IHEP​
*China unveils design for $5 billion particle smasher | Science | AAAS*
By Dennis Normile
Nov. 16, 2018 , 3:30 PM

BEIJING—The center of gravity in high energy physics could move to Asia if either of two grand plans is realized. At a workshop here last week, Chinese scientists unveiled the full conceptual design for the proposed Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC), a $5 billion machine to tackle the next big challenge in particle physics: studying the Higgs boson. (Part of the design was published in the summer.) Now, they’re ready to develop detailed plans, start construction in 2022, and launch operations around 2030—if the Chinese government agrees to fund it.

Meanwhile, Japan’s government is due to decide by the end of December whether to host an equally costly machine to study the Higgs, the International Linear Collider (ILC). How Japan’s decision might affect China’s, which is a few years away, is unclear. But it seems increasingly likely that most of the future action around the Higgs will be in Asia. Proposed “Higgs factories” in Europe are decades away and the United States has no serious plans.

The Higgs boson, key to explaining how other particles gain mass, was discovered at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, in 2012—more than 40 years after being theoretically predicted. Now, scientists want to confirm the particle’s properties, how it interacts with other particles, and whether it contributes to dark matter. Having only mass but no spin and no charge, the Higgs is really a “new kind of elementary particle” that is both “a special part of the standard model” and a “harbinger of some profound new principles,” says Nima Arkani-Hamed, a theorist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Answering the most important questions in particle physics today “involves studying the Higgs to death,” he says.

“Physicists want at least one machine,” says Joao Guimaraes da Costa, a physicist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’s Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) here, which put together the Chinese proposal. “Ideally, both should be built,” because each has its scientific merits, adds Hitoshi Murayama, a theoretical physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Tokyo’s Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe in Kashiwa, Japan.

The CERN discovery relied on the Large Hadron Collider, a 27-kilometer ring in which high-energy protons traveling in opposite directions are steered into head-on collisions. This produces showers of many types of particles, forcing physicists to sift through billions of events to spot the telltale signal of a Higgs. It’s a bit like smashing together cherry pies, Murayama says: “A lot of goo flies out when what you are really looking for is the little clinks between pits.”

Smashing electrons into their antimatter counterparts, positrons, results in cleaner collisions that typically produce one Z particle and one Higgs boson at a time, says Bill Murray of The University of Warwick in Coventry, U.K. How Z particles decay is well understood, so other signals can be attributed to the Higgs “and we can watch what it does,” Murray says.

Japan’s plan to build an electron-positron collider grew from international investigations in the 1990s. Physicists favored a linear arrangement, in which the particles are sent down two straight opposing raceways, colliding like bullets in rifles put muzzle to muzzle. That design promises higher energies, because it avoids the losses that result when charged particles are sent in a circle, causing them to shed energy in the form of x-rays. Its disadvantage is that particles that don’t collide are lost; in a circular design they continue around the ring for another chance at colliding.

Along the way, Japan signaled it might host the machine and shoulder the lion’s share of the cost, with other countries contributing detectors, other components, and expertise. A 2013 basic design envisioned a 500-giga-electronvolt (GeV) linear collider in a 31-kilometer tunnel costing almost $8 billion, not counting labor. But by then, the CERN team had already pegged the Higgs mass at 125 GeV, making the ILC design “overkill,” Murayama says. The group has since revised the plan, aiming for a 250-GeV accelerator housed in a 20-kilometer-long tunnel and costing $5 billion, says Murayama, who is also deputy director of the Linear Collider Collaboration, which coordinates global R&D work on several future colliders.

IHEP scientists made their own proposal just 2 months after the Higgs was announced. They recognized the energy required for a Higgs factory “is still in a range where circular is better,” Murray says. With its beamlines buried in a 100-kilometer-circumference tunnel at a site yet to be chosen, the CEPC would collide electrons and positrons at up to 240 GeV.

Both approaches have their advantages. The CEPC will produce Higgs at roughly five times the rate of ILC, allowing research to move faster. But Murayama notes that the ILC could easily be upgraded to higher energies by extending the tunnel by another couple of kilometers. Most physicists don’t want to choose. The two colliders “are quite complementary,” Murray says.

Whether politicians and funding agencies agree remains to be seen. Construction of the CEPC hinges on funding under China’s next 5-year plan, which starts in 2021, says IHEP Director Wang Yifang. IHEP would then also seek international contributors. Murayama says Japan needs to say yes to the ILC in time to negotiate support from the European Union under a particle physics strategy to be hammered out in 2019. Missing that opportunity could mean delaying the collider by 20 years, he says—and perhaps ceding the field to China.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Catalytic fix for nitrogen fixation*


BY EMMA STOYE
15 NOVEMBER 2018

Single-atom ruthenium catalyst doubles efficiency of electrochemical reduction of nitrogen to ammonia




Source: © Elsevier Ltd
Single ruthenium atoms efficiently catalyse nitrogen electroreduction and adding zirconium dioxide supresses the hydrogen evolution reaction

By developing a more effective ruthenium catalyst, researchers in China have improved the efficiency of electrochemical nitrogen fixation, a process that could one day replace the Haber–Bosch process as a greener way of making ammonia.

While the Haber–Bosch process is still the preferred method for producing ammonia and nitrogen-based fertilisers on an industrial scale, researchers have been exploring alternatives that don’t require such high temperatures and pressures. One approach that is potentially more sustainable is the electrochemical reduction of N2 to NH3, which renewable energy could power. But this suffers from low current-conversion efficiency, with the best electrodes and catalysts achieving around 10% efficiency at ambient temperature conditions – too low for industrial scale-up.

Now, Zhenyu Sun at Beijing University of Chemical Technology in China and colleagues have managed to improve electrochemical nitrogen fixation with clever catalyst design. Previous work had shown that single atoms of a metal catalyst dispersed on a support can be more effective than larger particles of the metal because the catalytically active sites are homogeneous and the metal can work at maximum efficiency. So Sun’s team built a single-atom catalyst for electrochemical nitrogen reduction using ruthenium – a metal that had already shown promise for the reaction – supported on nitrogen-doped porous carbon. They showed that using their catalyst with an aqueous solution of N2 could increase the current-conversion efficiency of its reduction to ammonia to 21%, far outperforming other metal-based catalysts.

They also showed that adding zirconium dioxide to their catalyst improved its specificity for nitrogen and inhibited the reduction of water to hydrogen gas, a competing reaction. This resulted in ammonia yields twice as high as that of the next best reported catalyst.

‘We believe that the development of single-atom catalysts opens a potentially alternative avenue for efficient ammonia synthesis,’ the researchers conclude, adding that the approach ‘deserves further research in N2 fixation’.

Joshua McEnaney, who works on electrochemical nitrogen reduction at Stanford University in the US, says this approach offers an ‘important path’ towards sustainably producing ammonia and fertilisers, and that Sun’s group’s work ‘taps into exciting new types of catalysts with promising NH3 selectivity’. ‘It will be interesting to see if similarly engineered sites with different core atoms or support structures can also work for this reaction, and if partial current densities toward NH3 can be improved, ‘ he says.

*References*
H Tao _et al_,_ Chem_, 2018, DOI: 10.1016/j.chempr.2018.10.007​

Catalytic fix for nitrogen fixation | Research | Chemistry World


----------



## JSCh

*New dates for ancient stone tools in China point to local invention of complex technology*
November 19, 2018 11.11am EST

You probably think of new technologies as electronics you can carry in a pocket or wear on a wrist. But some of the most profound technological innovations in human evolution have been made out of stone. For most of the time that humans have been on Earth, they’ve chipped stone into useful shapes to make tools for all kinds of work.

In a study just published in Nature, we’ve dated a distinctive and complex method for making stone tools to a much earlier timeframe in China than had previously been accepted. Archaeologists had thought that artifacts of this kind had been carried into China by groups migrating from Europe and Africa. But our new discovery, dated to between 170,000 and 80,000 years ago, suggests that they could have been invented locally without input from elsewhere, or come from much earlier cultural transmission or human migration.

Several different species of humans lived on Earth at this time, including modern ones like us. But we haven’t found any human bones from this site, so don’t know which species of human made these tools.

These Chinese artifacts provide one more piece of evidence that changes the way we think about the origin and spread of new stone tool technologies. And intriguingly we made our discovery based on artifacts that had been excavated decades ago.


_Con't ->_ New dates for ancient stone tools in China point to local invention of complex technology | The Conversation

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 19-NOV-2018
*Human images from world's first total-body scanner unveiled*
1st-of-its kind scanner to roll out in Sacramento in spring 2019

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - DAVIS





This is an EXPLORER image showing glucose metabolism throughout the entire human body. This is the first time a medical imaging scanner has been able to capture a 3D image of the entire human body simultaneously. *CREDIT: *UC Davis and Zhongshan Hospital, Shanghai

The brainchild of UC Davis scientists Simon Cherry and Ramsey Badawi, EXPLORER is a combined positron emission tomography (PET) and x-ray computed tomography (CT) scanner that can image the entire body at the same time. Because the machine captures radiation far more efficiently than other scanners, EXPLORER can produce an image in as little as one second and, over time, produce movies that can track specially tagged drugs as they move around the entire body.

The developers expect the technology will have countless applications, from improving diagnostics to tracking disease progression to researching new drug therapies.

The first images from scans of humans using the new device will be shown at the upcoming Radiological Society of North America meeting, which starts on Nov. 24th in Chicago. The scanner has been developed in partnership with Shanghai-based United Imaging Healthcare (UIH), which built the system based on its latest technology platform and will eventually manufacture the devices for the broader healthcare market.

"While I had imagined what the images would look like for years, nothing prepared me for the incredible detail we could see on that first scan," said Cherry, distinguished professor in the UC Davis Department of Biomedical Engineering. "While there is still a lot of careful analysis to do, I think we already know that EXPLORER is delivering roughly what we had promised.

Badawi, chief of Nuclear Medicine at UC Davis Health and vice-chair for research in the Department of Radiology, said he was dumbfounded when he saw the first images, which were acquired in collaboration with UIH and the Department of Nuclear Medicine at the Zhongshan Hospital in Shanghai.

"The level of detail was astonishing, especially once we got the reconstruction method a bit more optimized," he said. "We could see features that you just don't see on regular PET scans. And the dynamic sequence showing the radiotracer moving around the body in three dimensions over time was, frankly, mind-blowing. There is no other device that can obtain data like this in humans, so this is truly novel."

Badawi and Cherry first conceptualized a total-body scanner 13 years ago. Their idea was kick-started in 2011 with a $1.5 million grant from the National Cancer Institute, which allowed them to establish a wide-ranging consortium of researchers and other collaborators. And it got a giant boost in 2015 with a $15.5 million grant from the NIH. The funding allowed them to team up with a commercial partner and get the first EXPLORER scanner built.

Cherry said he expects EXPLORER will have a profound impact on clinical research and patient care because it produces higher-quality diagnostic PET scans than have ever been possible. EXPLORER also scans up to 40 times faster than current PET scans and can produce a diagnostic scan of the whole body in as little as 20-30 seconds.

Alternatively, EXPLORER can scan with a radiation dose up to 40 times less than a current PET scan, opening new avenues of research and making it feasible to conduct many repeated studies in an individual, or dramatically reduce the dose in pediatric studies, where controlling cumulative radiation dose is particularly important.

"The tradeoff between image quality, acquisition time and injected radiation dose will vary for different applications, but in all cases, we can scan better, faster or with less radiation dose, or some combination of these," Cherry said.

For the first time, an imaging scanner will be able to evaluate what is happening in all the organs and tissues of the body simultaneously. For example, it could quantitatively measure blood flow or how the body takes up glucose everywhere in the body. Researchers envision using the scanner to study cancer that has spread beyond a single tumor site, inflammation, infection, immunological or metabolic disorders and many other diseases.

UC Davis is working closely with UIH to get the first system delivered and installed at the EXPLORER Imaging Center in leased space in Sacramento, and the researchers hope to begin research projects and imaging patients using EXPLORER as early as June 2019. The UC Davis team also is working closely with Hongcheng Shi, director of Nuclear Medicine at Zhongshan Hospital in Shanghai to continue and expand the scope of early human studies on the scanner.

"I don't think it will be long before we see at a number of EXPLORER systems around the world," Cherry said. "But that depends on demonstrating the benefits of the system, both clinically and for research. Now, our focus turns to planning the studies that will demonstrate how EXPLORER will benefit our patients and contribute to our knowledge of the whole human body in health and disease."


Human images from world's first total-body scanner unveiled | EurekAlert! Science News


----------



## JSCh

*Viewpoint: Dissecting the Mass of the Proton*
André Walker-Loud, Nuclear Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA
November 19, 2018• _Physics_ 11, 118

A calculation determines four distinct contributions to the proton mass, more than 90% of which arises entirely from the dynamics of quarks and gluons.



​APS/Alan Stonebraker
Figure 1: The proton is comprised of two up quarks and one down quark, but the sum of these quark masses is a mere 1% of the proton mass. Using lattice QCD, Yang and colleagues determined the relative contributions of the four sources of the proton mass [1]. (The cumulative contributions in MeV/_c_2 are shown on the dark green rectangles.) 

Nearly all the mass of known matter is contained within protons and neutrons—the particles that make up the nuclei of atoms. But how do the protons and neutrons acquire their mass? Each of these particles, or “nucleons,” is composed of a dense, frothing mess of other particles: quarks, which have mass, and gluons, which do not. Yet the quark masses only add up to a mere 1% of a proton or neutron’s mass, with the bulk of the proton mass coming purely from the motion and confinement of quarks and gluons. Yi-Bo Yang of Michigan State University, East Lansing, and colleagues have now quantified, for the first time, four separate contributions to the proton’s mass with a calculation based on quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the fundamental theory of the strong interaction in the nucleus and a cornerstone of the standard model of particle physics [1]. While this four-part decomposition has been known for more than 20 years [2], physicists' understanding of it has been only qualitative.

The quarks that make up the proton and neutron are fundamental particles, which get their masses through the Higgs mechanism. The same mechanism doesn’t explain the mass of the proton, which is comprised of two up quarks ( 2.4MeV∕c2 each) and one down quark ( 5.0MeV∕c2) [3]. Clearly, the sum of these three masses falls far short of the actual proton mass, 938.27MeV∕c2. Now, quantum mechanics tells us there is also mass (or equivalently, energy) associated with the confinement of the quarks into the proton, whose diameter is about 10−15m. Using an uncertainty principle argument, the confined position of the particles translates into a large momentum and should add about 300MeV∕c2—in the right ball park of the proton mass but still too small. (Similar arguments apply to the neutron, which is comprised of two down quarks and an up quark.)

In fact, accurate standard model predictions of both the proton and neutron mass have existed for a decade [4]. At the low energies relevant to a nucleus, these masses can be predicted from just three parameters: an overall mass scale, which is dynamically generated in QCD, and the up and down quark parameters. The proton and neutron masses are known much more precisely from experiment than will ever be possible from standard model predictions. However, physicists would like to understand how the masses emerge from QCD, much the same way they can predict the spectrum of hydrogen from quantum theory.

Yang and colleagues have done just this, determining for the first time the various contributions to the proton mass that arise from quark and gluon dynamics [1]. The researchers rely on a powerful method known as lattice QCD, which places quarks on the sites of a lattice and gluons on the links between them. This rigorous representation of QCD can be implemented numerically, and it is the only QCD-based method that can make quantitative predictions on length scales comparable to the proton or larger. (At these scales, the interactions between quarks and gluons are so strong, they cannot be handled with Feynman diagrams and other “perturbative” methods.) However, lattice QCD is an expensive technique. The discretization creates errors, and to remove them entails taking the lattice spacing, _a_, to zero. This step is achieved in practice by performing multiple calculations at different values of _a_, at a high numerical cost that scales as _a_-6. Nevertheless, lattice QCD has matured significantly in recent years, allowing for the most precise determination of the quark masses [5] and many properties of light and heavy mesons [3], which are comprised of a quark and an antiquark.

A three-quark particle like the nucleon is exponentially more complicated for lattice QCD, and successful calculations, with all sources of uncertainty controlled, have been rare. In their work, Yang and collaborators overcome some of the complications by using new computational methods that they, along with others, developed [6–8]. These advances enabled them to compute the contribution to the proton mass from four sources [2] known as the quark condensate ( ∼9%), the quark energy ( ∼32%), the gluonic field strength energy ( ∼37%), and the anomalous gluonic contribution ( ∼23%) (Fig. 1). The smallest contribution, the quark condensate, is a mixture of the up and down quarks and a “sea” of virtual strange quarks, and it is the only one that would vanish if the quark masses were zero. The other three terms are all related to the dynamics of the quarks and gluons and their confinement within the proton. The quark energy and gluonic field strength equate to the kinetic energy of the confined quarks and confined gluons, respectively. The anomalous term is a purely quantum effect. It is associated with the QCD mass scale and consists of contributions from condensates of all quark flavors, including the strange, charm, bottom, and top quarks. The calculation by Yang and colleagues shows that, if the up, down, and strange quark masses were all zero, the proton would still have more than 90% of its experimental mass. In other words, nearly all the known mass in the Universe comes from the dynamics of quarks and gluons.

Physicists have long wanted to understand the emergence of the nucleon mass in terms of the standard model, and the findings from Yang and co-workers are an important contribution to that goal. Their work and other works like it also signify a new era, in which our understanding of nucleons is increasingly shaped by quantitative predictions based on lattice QCD. Just this year, researchers used lattice QCD to determine the nucleon axial charge, a ubiquitous quantity in nuclear physics, with an unprecedented 1% precision [9]. Lattice QCD, coupled with powerful analytic methods for simplifying QCD calculations, will lead to a better understanding of the substructure of the nucleon [10], which is being explored at various colliders around the world and would be one focus of a proposed machine called the Electron-Ion Collider. Ultimately, the hope is that lattice QCD can be applied to a nucleus (multiple nucleons). Nuclei are used as detectors in several experimental searches for beyond-standard-model physics, such as dark matter, a permanent electric dipole moment, and neutrinoless double-beta decay. Interpreting these experiments will require a quantitative understanding of nuclear physics that is rooted in the standard model. This sort of complex problem is increasingly in the realm of lattice QCD thanks to the availability of the near-exascale computers, Sierra and Summit, which are coming online now and are 10 to 15 times more powerful than even those used by Yang and co-workers.

This research is published in _Physical Review Letters_.

*Proton Mass Decomposition from the QCD Energy Momentum Tensor*
Yi-Bo Yang, Jian Liang, Yu-Jiang Bi, Ying Chen, Terrence Draper, Keh-Fei Liu, and Zhaofeng Liu
Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 212001 (2018)
Published November 19, 2018
​Physics - Viewpoint: Dissecting the Mass of the Proton


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 20-NOV-2018
*HSPC 'Seeds' reveal VCAM-1+ macrophage role in homing process*
CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HEADQUARTERS

Hematopoietic Stem and Progenitor Cells (HSPCs) give rise to all blood lineages that support people's life. HSPCs, like seeds, need a suitable microenvironment to maintain their function.

A process called "homing" allows HSPCs to anchor in their niches in order to expand and differentiate. Unique niche microenvironments, composed of various blood vessels and other niche components, including stromal cells, regulate this process.

To study the detailed architecture of the microenvironment and the regulation mechanism of homing, Prof. PAN Weijun's group at the Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health of Chinese Academy of Sciences used a zebrafish model to analyze the entire dynamic process of HSPC homing in vivo. The results entitled "VCAM-1+ macrophages guide the homing of HSPCs to a vascular niche" was published in _Nature_ on Nov. 19, 2018.

By using a combination of advanced live imaging and a cell labeling-tracing system, researchers performed a high-resolution analysis of HSPC homing in zebrafish caudal hematopoietic tissue (CHT, equivalent to the fetal liver in mammals).

Compared to itga4 mutants with homing defects, successful HSPC retention was defined in CHT as the lodgement of HSPCs for more than 30 minutes.

The researchers also found that HSPCs preferred to stay at retention "hotspots" associated with venous capillaries, which are largely localized at the venous capillary confluence points connected to the caudal vein plexus.

Further study showed that VCAM-1+ macrophages patrolling the inner surface of the venous plexus interact with HSPCs in an ITGA4-dependent manner and direct HSPC retention.

These cells, named "usher cells," guide HSCP homing to two types of vascular niches. Usher cells, together with endothelial cells, help HSPC homing through distinct mechanisms.

This study dissects the temporal-spatial rules of HSPC retention, provides new insights into the mechanism for HSPC homing, and reveals the essential role of a VCAM-1+ macrophage population with patrolling behavior in HSPC retention.



HSPC 'Seeds' reveal VCAM-1+ macrophage role in homing process | EurekAlert! Science News

Dantong Li, Wenzhi Xue, Mei Li, Mei Dong, Jianwei Wang, Xianda Wang, Xiyue Li, Kai Chen, Wenjuan Zhang, Shuang Wu, Yingqi Zhang, Lei Gao, Yujie Chen, Jianfeng Chen, Bo O. Zhou, Yi Zhou, Xuebiao Yao, Lin Li, Dianqing Wu, Weijun Pan. *VCAM-1+ macrophages guide the homing of HSPCs to a vascular niche*. _Nature _(2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0709-7​


----------



## JSCh

*The awakening of an innovative China*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-20 10:50:43|Editor: Yang Yi




BEIJING, Nov. 20 (Xinhua) -- Under a blue spotlight lies a mouse's brain immersed in liquid. A diamond blade slowly peels off a layer of brain tissue that is only one micron thick.

The layer is scanned and imaged. About 10,000 layers will be peeled off to get a map of the whole mouse brain.

The images of the colorful neural and vascular systems of the brain shown on the computer look like intricate highway networks. This is the world's clearest map of a mammal brain.

Dozens of such instruments are working round the clock in the spotless labs of the Suzhou Institute for Brainsmatics of the Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), located in the Suzhou Industrial Park, in east China's Jiangsu Province. Nearby are the ancient Suzhou Gardens, famous for their inventive and exquisite design and oriental aesthetics.

The journal Nature recently reported the construction of the brain-imaging institute in Suzhou, arousing great interest in academic circles.

"We have achieved success with mice, and are making efforts to map the brains of primates which are more advanced and complicated," says Li An'an, vice-director of the institute.

"Our ultimate goal is to lead the world to get a precise map of the human brain, which will help us uncover its secrets," Li says.

This is only one of China's achievements at the frontier of science and technology.

In his book on Science and Civilization in China, Joseph Needham, a British science historian, described China as a great country of invention and creation, but falling behind in modern times.

In the 20th Century, few Chinese participated in world's major scientific and technological advances.

But the situation is changing rapidly. From Internet development to brain study, from probing space to exploring the deep sea, from observing the universe to researching micro particles, Chinese are working in almost all fields of science and technology.

In a cave in Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei Province, scientists from HUST have measured the gravitational constant for more than 30 years, and obtained the most accurate result in the world recently.

Isaac Newton discovered the principle of gravitation more than 300 years ago, but the measurement of the gravitational constant had always been inaccurate.

"Precise measurement of gravitational constant is important for deeper understanding of gravity, and the measurement technology could be applied to searching for mineral deposits and navigation. The study might also help us figure out whether the universe has additional dimensions as surmised by Stephen Hawking, which might enable humans to traverse space and time in the future," says Tu Liangcheng, director of HUST's gravitation center.

China has intensified efforts to explore the universe in recent years to reclaim its pride in its outstanding achievements in astronomy in ancient times.

As early as 4,000 years ago, China had full-time astronomy officials and the world's earliest record of Halley's comet. The length of a year was measured and determined by Chinese astronomers more than 700 years ago, in line with today's Gregorian calendar.

China recently built the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), the world's largest single-dish radio telescope. It has discovered dozens of new pulsars.

Scientists at China's Purple Mountain Observatory (PMO) and other institutions are pushing forward the construction of an observatory on the inland icecap in Antarctica.

"That will definitely be a world leader," says Shi Shengcai, director of the department of Antarctic and radio astronomy at PMO.

Completed in 1934, PMO was the first modern observatory built by Chinese. The original intention of constructing it was to avoid the monopoly of astronomical research by Western colonialists in China.

In its beautiful newly built office park in the suburb of Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu Province, scientists are working on the next-generation space detector to search for dark matter.

Chinese ideologist and philosopher Zhuangzi, who lived more than 2,000 years ago, believed material structure could be divided infinitely. Chinese scientists today continue exploration of the microcosmic world, with many breakthroughs in recent years in fields such as quantum communication, neutrino and iron-based superconductivity.

The Suzhou Nanomicro Technology Co., Ltd. is a private nano technology firm. It develops nano material that looks like white powder, but is actually tiny spheres thinner than hair with strong absorbability, which can be used in pharmaceuticals and liquid crystal displays.

"We have broken the technical monopoly of the United States and Japan, and saved hundreds of millions of dollars in import costs for China," says Jiang Biwang, chairman of Nanomicro.

More young Chinese are involved in innovation. The Suzhou Novosense Microelectronics Co., Ltd. was set up five years ago to develop core chips for sensors and isolators. All the founders of the company were born after 1980.

Wang Shengyang, CEO of the firm, says that R&D personnel account for more than half of the staff.

Statistics show China's R&D investment in 2016 exceeded the total of the EU, and was second only to the United States, accounting for 21 percent of the global R&D investment. China has the world's largest number of R&D personnel, and ranks second in the world in the number of scientific papers published in international journals. Scientific and technological advances contribute to 55.3 percent of the economic growth in China.


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> PUBLIC RELEASE: 20-NOV-2018
> *HSPC 'Seeds' reveal VCAM-1+ macrophage role in homing process*
> CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HEADQUARTERS
> 
> Hematopoietic Stem and Progenitor Cells (HSPCs) give rise to all blood lineages that support people's life. HSPCs, like seeds, need a suitable microenvironment to maintain their function.
> 
> A process called "homing" allows HSPCs to anchor in their niches in order to expand and differentiate. Unique niche microenvironments, composed of various blood vessels and other niche components, including stromal cells, regulate this process.
> 
> To study the detailed architecture of the microenvironment and the regulation mechanism of homing, Prof. PAN Weijun's group at the Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health of Chinese Academy of Sciences used a zebrafish model to analyze the entire dynamic process of HSPC homing in vivo. The results entitled "VCAM-1+ macrophages guide the homing of HSPCs to a vascular niche" was published in _Nature_ on Nov. 19, 2018.
> 
> By using a combination of advanced live imaging and a cell labeling-tracing system, researchers performed a high-resolution analysis of HSPC homing in zebrafish caudal hematopoietic tissue (CHT, equivalent to the fetal liver in mammals).
> 
> Compared to itga4 mutants with homing defects, successful HSPC retention was defined in CHT as the lodgement of HSPCs for more than 30 minutes.
> 
> The researchers also found that HSPCs preferred to stay at retention "hotspots" associated with venous capillaries, which are largely localized at the venous capillary confluence points connected to the caudal vein plexus.
> 
> Further study showed that VCAM-1+ macrophages patrolling the inner surface of the venous plexus interact with HSPCs in an ITGA4-dependent manner and direct HSPC retention.
> 
> These cells, named "usher cells," guide HSCP homing to two types of vascular niches. Usher cells, together with endothelial cells, help HSPC homing through distinct mechanisms.
> 
> This study dissects the temporal-spatial rules of HSPC retention, provides new insights into the mechanism for HSPC homing, and reveals the essential role of a VCAM-1+ macrophage population with patrolling behavior in HSPC retention.
> 
> 
> 
> HSPC 'Seeds' reveal VCAM-1+ macrophage role in homing process | EurekAlert! Science News
> 
> Dantong Li, Wenzhi Xue, Mei Li, Mei Dong, Jianwei Wang, Xianda Wang, Xiyue Li, Kai Chen, Wenjuan Zhang, Shuang Wu, Yingqi Zhang, Lei Gao, Yujie Chen, Jianfeng Chen, Bo O. Zhou, Yi Zhou, Xuebiao Yao, Lin Li, Dianqing Wu, Weijun Pan. *VCAM-1+ macrophages guide the homing of HSPCs to a vascular niche*. _Nature _(2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0709-7​


*Shanghai team makes stem cell progress*
By Zhou Wenting in Shanghai | China Daily | Updated: 2018-11-21 08:59














Scientists in Shanghai say they have uncovered how hematopoietic stem cells find a suitable microenvironment in vivo - observation of live isolated cells - offering insights into improving the efficiency of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.

By using a combination of advanced live imaging and a cell labeling and tracing system, the scientists observed the complete dynamic process of neonatal hematopoietic stem cells finding their appropriate microenvironment in hematopoietic tissues, allowing them to self-renew or produce all types of blood cells.

"It's like there are some seats in the caudal hematopoietic tissue. The stem cells can only function after finding these seats. We call it 'homing'," said Li Mei, a researcher on the team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health.

The lack of understanding of how such stem cells find a suitable microenvironment has restricted the clinical development of hematopoietic stem cell transplants, a promising approach to treating major diseases, such as blood diseases, immune diseases and cancers, researchers said.

"In current transplantation, when millions of cells are transplanted into a patient's bone marrow, only several thousand end up playing their roles," said Jing Naihe, a principal investigator at the CAS Center for Excellence in Molecular Cell Science.

"It's exactly because the process remained unknown how such stem cells anchor in niches in order to expand and differentiate that doctors needed to collect a large amount of stem cells from donors, which is also a kind of waste," he said.

The researchers used zebrafish, a vertebrate species whose embryos are transparent so the procedure of "homing" can be observed. They found a type of cell that can identify hematopoietic stem cells in a number of blood cells and direct them into specific vascular structures to give their functions full play.

"We call such cells 'usher cells', as they function very much like the staff at the entrance of the theater and direct audience members to their seats with a flashlight," said Pan Weijun, the team's lead researcher.

A paper on their research over six years was published on the website of British scientific journal _Nature _on Tuesday.

Natalie Le Bot, a senior editor of Nature, said that understanding the process of homing in vivo and the specific cells involved is key to improving transplantation success.

Chen Tong, director of hematology at Huashan Hospital Affiliated to Fudan University, said: "The research results indicated that when doctors perform hematopoietic stem cell transplantations in the future, we may be able to guide the homing of hematopoietic stem cells, which could greatly improve the success rate of such transplantations."


----------



## JSCh

*NEWS Q&A | *23 NOVEMBER 2018
*Inside the plans for Chinese mega-collider that will dwarf the LHC*
Physicist Wang Yifang, the mastermind behind the project, gives Nature an update on the ambitious project.

*



*
Wang Yifang directs the Institute of High Energy Physics in Beijing.Credit: Tim Kramer/Ruhr-Universität Bochum​
Physicists at Beijing’s Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) are are designing the world's biggest particle smasher. If built, the 100-kilometre-circumference facility would dwarf the 27-kilometre Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Europe’s particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland — and would cost around half the price.

The ambitious 30-billion-yuan (US$4.3-billion) facility, known as the Circular Electron–Positron Collider (CEPC), is the brainchild of IHEP’s director, Wang Yifang. He has spearheaded the project since the discovery of the elementary particle called the Higgs boson at the LHC in 2012.

The CEPC will produce Higgs bosons by smashing together electrons and their antimatter counterparts, positrons. Because these are fundamental particles, their collisions are cleaner and easier to decipher than the LHC’s proton–proton collisions, so once the Chinese facility opens, in about 2030, it will allow physicists to study the mysterious particle and its decay in exquisite detail.

Last week, IHEP published a milestone report outlining the blueprint for the collider. Initial funding for research and development has come from the Chinese government, but the design is the work of an international collaboration of physicists and the team hopes to garner funding from around the world. (Researchers behind a long-planned rival ‘Higgs factory’ known as the International Linear Collider expect to learn by the end of this year whether Japan will stump up the cash to host it.)

The blueprints reveal that the Chinese collider would run in a circle 100 metres underground, at a location yet to be decided, and host two detectors. At the end of its ten-year lifespan, the electron–positron machine could be upgraded to collide protons at energies seven times those of the LHC at its peak. Ahead of the report’s publication, _Nature_ spoke to Wang about the project.

After six years of design work, an international board of experts says the collider is ready to proceed. Construction could begin as early as 2022. What happens now?[/B][/B][/SIZE]
We are working on the technology research and development (R&D) at the moment. No one has ever built a machine this large before, and we want to minimize the cost. Its specifications are different from those of any other machine in the world in the past, and we have to prove that it is feasible.

*Two years ago, the collider’s international advisory committee said the project lacked international involvement. Has there been progress on that front?*
It has not significantly changed, because international participation is still limited by the financial commitment of the international partners. They are all interested, but they need to get endorsement from their funding agencies. They are waiting to hear the Chinese government’s position on whether to fund it, and that decision depends on the outcome of the R&D. But CERN is working on a new European strategy for particle physics, so we hope that this time the CEPC can be included. A similar process will happen in the United States, probably in the next year or 2020. We hope it will be included in both.

*A Chinese collider operating in the 2030s would be in direct competition with CERN’s own plans to build a successor to the LHC. Do you think there is a need for more than one mega-collider?*
It’s too early to say this is a competition. I think it’s good to have different proposals and to explore the advantages and disadvantages of each proposal thoroughly. Then we can see which one is more feasible, and the community will decide.

*Do you think the international community would accept China becoming the global centre of high-energy physics, given that the country lacks free access to the Internet and has significant government controls?*
Such a centre would help China to become more internationalized, more open towards the world. And it is going to bring more resources to the scientific community. People at the very beginning may feel that it is not as convenient compared to Switzerland. But we hope that the collider would be a good thing, at least for the Chinese. Also, I don’t think this is going to be the only centre in the world. Historically, we always have had many particle-physics centres, although now we have fewer and fewer. But I really hope we’re not going to be the only one. If you have no competition in a field, at some point you’re going to die.

*China is undergoing something of a boom in accelerator facilities at the moment. Tell me about some of those plans.*
The spallation neutron source in Dongguan is now operating. It is small but good enough. IHEP is also planning a 1.4-kilometre-circumference light source to be built in Huairou, northern Beijing, at a cost of 4.8 billion yuan. This is a circular electron accelerator that can generate synchrotron radiation — X-rays with extremely high intensity. These are useful for almost every research discipline, including materials science, chemistry, biology, environmental science, geology and medicine. We believe the government is going to give its final approval for the project by the beginning of next year, and then we can start construction. We think it would be a world-leading machine. Most light sources are upgrades from existing machines, so they are limited. We can use the best configurations, the best technologies, without constraints.

*The institute is also pitching to fly an experiment — a detector measuring highly energetic particles known as cosmic rays — on China’s crewed space station, set to launch in 2020. What will it do and how will it improve on existing experiments?*
We want to know where cosmic rays come from, and how they get such high energy. Answers to these questions will help us to understand the Universe. We would also like to use it to search for new particles, such as dark matter, which cannot yet be generated by accelerators on Earth. One of today’s best experiments for studying this is the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) on the International Space Station, which has not yet seen clear evidence of dark matter. That means we need experiments that can detect more particles, and at higher energies. The High Energy Cosmic Radiation Detection experiment will be able to study particles roughly ten times the energy of the AMS, and measure their energies with better resolution. We’ve almost finished our design and we’re now trying to get support from the Chinese government. We’re probably talking about US$200 million to $300 million for the detector. It’s on the list of candidates for possible projects for the future Chinese space station. We have to wait, but I am optimistic.

*Do you think high levels of science funding in China will continue?*
The government is certainly interested in supporting science. They hope every penny they invest is worth something, and sometimes we in high-energy physics disappoint them — we’re not able to immediately generate results.

*Has the political situation between the United States and China affected the relationship between the two countries’ scientists?*
It’s difficult at the moment. If we organize a conference in China, people from US universities can come freely, but people working at US national laboratories say they can’t get permission. Also, going the other way, it’s very hard for Chinese scientists to get an invitation letter to those laboratories in the United States. I really hope this is just temporary and politicians can realize that the exchange of science and collaboration in science is mutually beneficial.

doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-07492-w


Inside the plans for Chinese mega-collider that will dwarf the LHC | Nature

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Ready for its close-up—a bacterium's electron transport pathway*
*November 5, 2018 by Thamarasee Jeewandara, Phys.org 
*


​Respiration in Actinomycetes and overall architecture of the Mycobacterial respiratory machine CIII2CIV2SOD2. A) The respiratory electron transfer chain in Actinomycetes (left) and the 5 major prokaryotic cytochrome c pathway variants with …more

In a recent study conducted by Hongri Gong and colleagues, a respiratory supercomplex was isolated from the bacterium Mycobacterium smegmatis, and its structure was visualized at a resolution of 3.5 Å using cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM). The bacterium is a close relative to M. tuberculosis and a popular model used to study many other bacterial species. The detailed structure revealed how electrons were transferred in the cell in a process hitherto unseen.



Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-11-ready-close-upa-bacterium-electron-pathway.html#jCp

Hongri Gong, Jun Li, Ao Xu, Yanting Tang, Wenxin Ji, Ruogu Gao, Shuhui Wang, Lu Yu, Changlin Tian, Jingwen Li, Hsin-Yung Yen, Sin Man Lam, Guanghou Shui, Xiuna Yang, Yuna Sun, Xuemei Li, Minze Jia, Cheng Yang, Biao Jiang, Zhiyong Lou, Carol V. Robinson, Luet-Lok Wong, Luke W. Guddat, Fei Sun, Quan Wang, Zihe Rao.* An electron transfer path connects subunits of a mycobacterial respiratory supercomplex*. _Science _(2018). DOI: 10.1126/science.aat8923​


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists Uncover Mechanism Safeguarding Unique Epigenome of Oocytes and Maternal Fertility*
Nov 29, 2018

In mammals, females have a limited supply of oocytes. These oocytes also have a unique epigenome with approximately half the DNA methylation of sperm and most terminally differentiated somatic cells. Until recently, regulators of this unique DNA methylation pattern and its functional significance were unknown.

Now, a novel DNA methylation regulator Stella, whose ectopic overexpression in somatic cells led to global DNA demethylation through disrupting the function of the DNA methylation regulator UHRF1, has been identified.

In a recent study published online ahead of print in _Nature_, a joint research group led by Dr. ZHU Bing from the Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences reveals that Stella sequestered UHRF1 from the nucleus through an active nuclear export process, and the dysregulation of UHRF1 by loss of Stella resulted in an accumulation of aberrant DNA methylation during postnatal oogenesis.

These findings show the first regulatory factor found to safeguard the unique methylation status of the oocyte genome.

Since Stella is highly expressed in oocytes, the researchers focused on the in vivo function of Stella during oogenesis.

Earlier studies revealed that Stella-null oocytes were incapable of supporting the development of preimplantation embryos. This study shows preferential hypermethylation at the transcriptionally inert regions of Stella null oocytes. These aberrant promoters of hypermethylation on the maternal allele severely affected zygotic genome activation and development of the preimplantation embryo.

Interestingly, a maternal genome lacking DNA methylation had been reported to not affect preimplantation embryo development, while this study suggests that keeping a uniquely hypomethylated oocyte genome is vital.

Moreover, researchers found that DNMT1, generally considered to be a maintenance DNA methyltransferase, which is only active on hemi-methylated DNA in vivo, is the major DNA methyltransferase responsible for the aberrant DNA methylation in Stella-deficient oocytes and unambiguously proves the de novo methylation activity of DNMT1 in vivo.

This discovery rewrites the textbook classification of DNA methyltransferases. Also, it sheds light on a functional role of DNMT1 in post-mitotic cells, which may help to reveal a role for DNMT1 in ageing.

The study was supported by the China National Science Foundation, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai, among others.



Stella sequesters UHRF1 to safeguard the unique methylome of oocytes. (Image by Dr. ZHU Bing’s group)


Scientists Uncover Mechanism Safeguarding Unique Epigenome of Oocytes and Maternal Fertility---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Yingfeng Li, Zhuqiang Zhang, Jiayu Chen, Wenqiang Liu, Weiyi Lai, Baodong Liu, Xiang Li, Liping Liu, Shaohua Xu, Qiang Dong, Mingzhu Wang, Xiaoya Duan, Jiajun Tan, Yong Zheng, Pumin Zhang, Guoping Fan, Jiemin Wong, Guo-Liang Xu, Zhigao Wang, Hailin Wang, Shaorong Gao, Bing Zhu. *Stella safeguards the oocyte methylome by preventing de novo methylation mediated by DNMT1*. _Nature _(2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0751-5​


----------



## JSCh

*Spider moms spotted nursing their offspring with milk*
By Elizabeth Pennisi
Nov. 29, 2018 , 2:00 PM

On a summer night in 2017, Chen Zhanqi made a curious find in his lab in China’s Yunnan province. In an artificial nest, he spotted a juvenile jumping spider attached to its mother in a way that reminded him of a baby mammal sucking its mother’s teats. On closer inspection, the spider mom really seemed to be doting on her young, he says. “She had to invest so much in caring for the baby.”

Further study by Chen and Quan Rui-Chang, behavioral ecologists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’s Center for Integrative Conservation in Menglunzhen, confirmed the jumping spider females were indeed producing milk for their offspring—and that they continued to do so even after the spiderlings became teenagers, they and colleagues report today.

Providing milk and long-term care together is virtually unheard of in insects and other invertebrates. And with the exception of mammals, it’s not even that common among vertebrates. As such, the results “help increase our understanding of the evolutionary origins of complex forms of parental care,” says Nick Royle, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom who was not involved with the work. They suggest prolonged mothering may not require the complex brain power that researchers have assumed, he says.

Females of this jumping spider species (_Toxeus magnus_) lay between two and 36 eggs at a time. As soon as the eggs hatch, the mother begins to deposit tiny milky droplets around the nest, Chen and colleagues observed in the lab. When the team members analyzed the liquid, they discovered it contained four times the protein of cow’s milk, as well as fat and sugar.

In their first couple of days, the baby spiders sipped droplets of this spider milk around the nest, the researchers observed. But soon they began to line up at the entrance of the mother’s birth canal to suckle. At 20 days, they began to hunt outside the nest, but they still supplemented their diet with mother’s milk until they were sexually mature—another 20 days.

When Chen painted over the mothers’ birth canals to cut off the milk supply, spiders younger than 20 days all died. When he removed the mother from the nest, older spiders grew more slowly, left the nest sooner, and were more likely to die before adulthood, he and his colleagues report today in Science. Other spiders may hang around their young for a few days but rarely feed them.

The “milk” may be liquified eggs that are passed out of the birth canal prematurely, Quan says. Some amphibians and other invertebrates lay similar “trophic eggs” for offspring to eat, he notes, although only when those offspring are really young. Cockroaches also produce “milk,” but that nourishment is simply absorbed passively through the eggshell of their embryos and is not part of the hatched roachlings’ diets.

The long-lasting parental care the team observed in jumping spiders mostly exists only in very few long-lived social vertebrates, such as humans and elephants, Quan says. “The extended maternal care indicates that invertebrates have also evolved [this] ability.”

Rosemary Gillespie, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley, notes some other spider species also seem to provide for their young. One study in the 1990s observed that spiderlings of the funnel web spider _Coelotes_ ate clear yellow drops of liquid or brownish clusters deposited on the web. Mothers of another spider called _Amaurobius_ lay “naked” egg sacs that spiderlings immediately devour.

Such care often signals a greater than usual offspring need, Royle says. For example, if there’s a chance there will be no food for newborns, or that young spiders are likely to be eaten by other predators before they have a chance to grow up and reproduce, then it can make sense for a mother to become a “helicopter” parent, he explains. Because this behavior taxes the mother, he adds, it likely only evolves in extreme situations.


Spider moms spotted nursing their offspring with milk | Science | AAAS

Zhanqi Chen, Richard T. Corlett, Xiaoguo Jiao, Sheng-Jie Liu, Tristan Charles-Dominique, Shichang Zhang, Huan Li, Ren Lai, Chengbo Long, Rui-Chang Quan. *Prolonged milk provisioning in a jumping spider*. _Science _(2018). DOI: 10.1126/science.aat3692​


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 14-NOV-2018
*When electric fields make spins swirl*
First example of ferroelectrically tunable skyrmions brings new hope for next-generation magnetic memory devices

INSTITUTE FOR BASIC SCIENCE



​
This study measured skyrmions in an ultra-thin material made of a ferromagnetic layer of strontium ruthenate (SrRuO3), overlaid with a ferroelectric layer of barium titanate (BaTiO3) and grown on a strontium titanate (SrTiO3) substrate. BaTiO3 is ferroelectric, meaning that it has a switchable and permanent electric polarization (), while SrRuO3 is ferromagnetic below 160 Kelvin (-113 Celsius). At the BaTiO3/SrRuO3 interface, the BaTiO3 ferroelectric polarization swirls the spins in SrRuO3, generating skyrmions. If the researchers flip the direction of polarization in BaTiO3, the density of the skyrmions changes. *CREDIT: *IBS

We are reaching the limits of silicon capabilities in terms of data storage density and speed of memory devices. One of the potential next-generation data storage elements is the magnetic skyrmion. A team at the Center for Correlated Electron Systems, within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS, South Korea), in collaboration with the University of Science and Technology of China, have reported the discovery of small and ferroelectrically tunable skyrmions. Published in _Nature Materials_, this work introduces new compelling advantages that bring skyrmion research a step closer to application.

It is envisioned that storing memory on skyrmions - stable magnetic perturbations of whirling spins (magnetic moments) - would be faster to read and write, consume less energy, and generate less heat than the currently used magnetic tunnel junctions. In future memory and logic devices, 1 and 0 bits would correspond to the existence and non-existence of a magnetic skyrmion, respectively. Although numerous skyrmion systems have been discovered in laboratories, it is still very challenging to produce controllable, nanometer-sized skyrmions for our technology needs.

In this study, the researchers found out that skyrmions with a diameter smaller than 100 nanometers spontaneously form in ultrathin material, consisting of a layer of barium titanate (BaTiO3) and a layer of strontium ruthenate (SrRuO3). Below 160 Kelvin (-113 Celsius), SrRuO3 is ferromagnetic, meaning that its spins are aligned uniformly in a parallel fashion. When the two layers are overlaid, however, a special magnetic interaction swirls SrRuO3's spins, generating magnetic skyrmions. Such peculiar magnetic structure was detected below 80 Kelvin (-193 Celsius) by using magnetic force microscopy and Hall measurements.

In addition, by manipulating the ferroelectric polarization of the BaTiO3 layer, the team was able to change the skyrmions' density and thermodynamic stability. The modulation is non-volatile (it persists when the power is turned off), reversible, and nanoscale.

"Magnetic skyrmions and ferroelectricity are two important research topics in condensed matter physics. They are usually studied separately, but we brought them together," explains Lingfei Wang, first author of the study. "This correlation provides an ideal opportunity to integrate the high tunability of well-established ferroelectric devices with the superior advantages of skyrmions into next-generation memory and logic devices."


When electric fields make spins swirl | EurekAlert! Science News


----------



## JSCh

*City scientists in cancer breakthrough*
By Li Qian | 00:06 UTC+8 November 30, 2018

Local scientists have found a new way to break the defense mechanism of malignant tumor cells, providing a possible new way to fight cancer.

Xu Chenqi and his research team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology have found a new way that T cells interact with tumors, according to a report published in the journal _Nature _yesterday.

T cells, a type of white blood cell, can recognize and decompose tumor cells. Tumor cells, however, fight back. They are able to interact with a protein (PD-1) on the surface of the T cells and suppress the cells’ function.

The team found an enzyme (FBXO38) helps maintain the integrity of the T cell. The enzyme it is not very active in the tumor microenvironment, and its performance needs to be boosted. Cancer drug IL-2 can do exactly that, reinvigorating T cells, the research showed.

IL-2 was approved by Food and Drug Administration in US in 1995 as a treatment for skin and kidney cancers, but it is not widely used because of some extreme side effects.

Researchers will now explore other ways to use IL-2 in combination with other drugs.

“There needs more research of the fundamental questions of PD-1 biology,” Xu said.

Xu’s team started to study T cells when he joined the CAS from Harvard Medical School in 2009. In 2016, results of their research into the function of T cells were also published in Nature.

Xiangbo Meng, Xiwei Liu, Xingdong Guo, Shutan Jiang, Tingting Chen, Zhiqiang Hu, Haifeng Liu, Yibing Bai, Manman Xue, Ronggui Hu, Shao-cong Sun, Xiaolong Liu, Penghui Zhou, Xiaowu Huang, Lai Wei, Wei Yang, Chenqi Xu. *FBXO38 mediates PD-1 ubiquitination and regulates anti-tumour immunity of T cells*. _Nature _(2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0756-0​


----------



## yusheng

*The First and Highest Resolution UV Super Resolution Lithography Equipment in the World*

http://english.ioe.cas.cn/ns/es/201811/t20181130_201684.html

SKLOTNM： the State Key Laboratory of Optical Technologies on Nano-fabrication and Micro-engineering (SKLOTNM), Institute of Optics and Electronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences




On the day of NOV 29th, IOE announced that it has developed the first UV super resolution lithography equipment in the world. As a result, the major engineering obstacles limiting China's development in chips, nanocomponents and optical instruments will be excluded. “We no longer fear a foreign technical blockade because we have full intellectual ownership of the new technique,” said Hu Song, the senior researcher of IOE and deputy chief designer of this project.

The new machine, which scientists began building in 2012, can etch circuitry patterns less than 22 nanometers using ultraviolet light. Combined with other techniques, it can be used in the future to create chips of around 10 nanometers.

Hu said that the machine can also be used to make small components for applications such as sensors, detectors and biochips. It is already being used by several institutions including Sichuan University and the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. However, the new machine's production capability is still small, hence it is still limited to producing key components for research.

Hu indicates that the team will focus its efforts on increasing the machine's productivity to industrial scale in future. He pointed out that there are still substantial gaps in the microengineering sector between China and developed countries, but China is catching up fast. 

【新华社】“超分辨光刻装备项目”通过国家验收 可加工22纳米芯片
作者：　发布时间：2018-11-30　阅读次数：
　　新华社成都11月29日电（记者董瑞丰、吴晓颖）国家重大科研装备研制项目“超分辨光刻装备研制”29日通过验收。该光刻机由中国科学院光电技术研究所研制，光刻分辨力达到22纳米，结合双重曝光技术后，未来还可用于制造10纳米级别的芯片。

　　中科院理化技术研究所许祖彦院士等验收组专家一致表示，该光刻机在365纳米光源波长下，单次曝光最高线宽分辨力达到22纳米。项目在原理上突破分辨力衍射极限，建立了一条高分辨、大面积的纳米光刻装备研发新路线，绕过国外相关知识产权壁垒。

　　光刻机是制造芯片的核心装备，我国在这一领域长期落后。它采用类似照片冲印的技术，把母版上的精细图形通过曝光转移至硅片上，一般来说，光刻分辨力越高，加工的芯片集成度也就越高。但传统光刻技术由于受到光学衍射效应的影响，分辨力进一步提高受到很大限制。

　　为获得更高分辨力，传统上采用缩短光波、增加成像系统数值孔径等技术路径来改进光刻机，但技术难度极高，装备成本也极高。

　　项目副总设计师胡松介绍，中科院光电所此次通过验收的*表面等离子体超分辨光刻装备*，打破了传统路线格局，形成一条全新的纳米光学光刻技术路线，具有完全自主知识产权，为超材料/超表面、第三代光学器件、广义芯片等变革性领域的*跨越式*发展提供了制造工具。

　　据了解，这种超分辨光刻装备制造的相关器件已在中国航天科技集团公司第八研究院、电子科技大学、四川大学华西医院、中科院微系统所等多家科研院所和高校的重大研究任务中得到应用。（完）

分析，摘自：http://www.hongdezk.com/26521.html

我国目前的芯片工艺还在14纳米，世界最顶尖的三星、台积电等已能量产7纳米芯片，正在研究3纳米技术。我们落后世界最尖端二三代，时间上相差3~5年。

新研制的这台光刻机，可用于制造10纳米以下的芯片，如果能够投入商用，实现量产，这就让我们追上了国际顶尖，与它们保持了一致水平。

从长远来看，还远不限于此，这台光刻机最大的亮点不在于它追上了国际水平，能制造10纳米以下级别的芯片，而在于它使用的新技术。

我们制造光刻机，一种是像ASML那样使用传统技术，再沿着它的老路走一遍；二是另辟蹊径，实现弯道超车。

光刻机技术，它类似于相片冲印，是将一个巨大的电路设计图缩印到介质上，然后芯片就这样出来了，这个过程中，光刻精度越高，性能就越好，体积也将更小。

ASML使用的传统技术中，有一个天然缺陷，那就是精度受激光“衍射极限”的限制，最终的分辨率取决于波长、数值孔径等因素。

为了提高精度，ASML采用的办法就是使用更短的波长（近紫外-深紫外-极紫外）、增大数值孔径（更复杂的物镜、液体浸没），但这样的办法，越前进，变得越困难，成本也急剧升高。

我们这台光刻机则采用了完全不同的方法，那就是使用“表面等离子体”光刻技术。

其原理是：在一定条件下，物体表面会产生一种特殊电磁波，这种电磁波便是“表面等离子体”。这种特殊电波虽然由其它电波所激发，但其波长会被大大压缩，而且压缩比例取决于材料的电磁性质等参数。

这就从根本上突破了光的“衍射极限”，意味着未来我们的在光刻机、芯片生产上不仅仅是追上国际顶尖，还有可能处于领先水平。


----------



## JSCh

*Researchers use optimized single-cell multi-omics sequencing to better understand colon cancer tumor heterogeneity*
November 30, 2018 by Bob Yirka, Medical Xpress




Cancer — Histopathologic image of colonic carcinoid. Credit: Wikipedia/CC BY-SA 3.0​
A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in China has found that using optimized single-cell multi-omics sequencing better reveals colon cancer tumor heterogeneity. In their paper published in the journal _Science_, the group describes their unique approach to understanding colorectal cancer progression.

The researchers note that most genetic studies of colorectal cancer progression involve looking at gene expression. They suggest that more study is needed to learn how colorectal tumors metastasize. To that end, they have developed a sequencing method that allows for analyzing copy number variants, methylation and gene expression simultaneously in individual cells—the method combines single-cell sequencing data with information from chromosome conformation, epigenetic data and other characteristics of tumor cells.

This work is the next step in a long-term effort to truly understand the mechanics of metastases, particularly in colorectal tumors. Two years ago, the team published a report on their work involving a single-cell triple omics sequencing technique they had developed called sc Trioseq by which they gathered information from gene expression, methylation at CpG sites and copy number alterations from 25 cells obtained from cancer patients.

In the next stage, the researchers raised the number of cells to 1,900 and improved the efficiency of the detection method. The study consisted of collecting cell samples from 12 patients, 10 of whom provided both primary and metastatic data and analyzing them. Using cell data from both sources allowed the researchers to isolate and identify genetic lineages that had developed from mutations for each patient. They used methylation data and copy number information to identify those lineages, allowing them to track the evolutionary changes they went through as they moved from primary tumor cells to metastatic cells.

The team reports that methylation was consistent among the cells within the same genetic lineage but differed when compared to other lineages—and it was also different from non-tumorous cells just next to the tumor. They also found that six chromosomes showed greater levels of demethylation than did others, three of which had recurrent chromosomal changes. They conclude by suggesting that single cell multi-omics sequencing offers the best opportunity for learning more about tumor progression and the spread of cancer.



Researchers use optimized single-cell multi-omics sequencing to better understand colon cancer tumor heterogeneity | Medical Xpress

Shuhui Bian, Yu Hou, Xin Zhou, Xianlong Li, Jun Yong, Yicheng Wang, Wendong Wang, Jia Yan, Boqiang Hu, Hongshan Guo, Jilian Wang, Shuai Gao, Yunuo Mao, Ji Dong, Ping Zhu, Dianrong Xiu, Liying Yan, Lu Wen, Jie Qiao, Fuchou Tang, Wei Fu. *Single-cell multiomics sequencing and analyses of human colorectal cancer*. _Science _(2018). DOI: 10.1126/science.aao3791​


----------



## JSCh

*Researchers Reveal Molecular Mechanism of Type III CRISPR-Cas System*
Dec 01, 2018* *

Type III CRISPR-Cas systems are characterized by the presence of Cas10 protein and are subdivided into four (III A-D) subtypes.

Types III-A system comprises a Csm effector complex which contains five different Csm proteins (Csm1-5) and one CRISPR RNA (crRNA). The crRNA-guided complexes recognize complementary RNA targets and cleave them via the Csm3 subunit.

In a recent study published in _Cell_, Prof. WANG Yanli's group and Prof. ZHANG XinZheng's group at Institute of Biophysics of Chinese Academy of Sciences reported the crystal structure of Csm and a series of cryo-EM structures of Csm in complex either with cognate or non-cognate RNA targets.

They revealed that Csm complex is composed of five Csm subunits (Csm1-5) and one crRNA with a protein stoichiometry of Csm1122334151.

The spacer region of the crRNA form base was revealed to pair with the complementary target RNA, forming crRNA-target RNA duplex with every sixth base being flipped out, and Csm3 proteins was showed to cleave the target RNA periodically.

By comparing cognate RNA and non-cognate RNA bound Csm complexes, researchers showed that the 3' anti-tag region of target RNA has two distinct binding channels depending on complementarity between the 5'-tag of crRNA and 3' anti-tag of target RNA.

Csm1 subunit undergoes a conformational change upon the cognate target RNA binding, allosterically activating the DNA cleavage and cOA synthesis.

The results provided insights into the mechanistic processes required for both crRNA-meditated, sequence-specific RNA cleavage, as well as transcription-dependent, non-specific DNA cleavage and cOAs generation, which will facilitate the research on type III CRISPR-Cas system.

CRISPR-Cas are RNA-guided adaptive immune systems that protect most archaea and approximately half of bacteria against invading foreign nucleic acids.

All the cryo electron microscopy work was performed in Center for Biological Imaging, Institute of Biophysics of Chinese Academy of Sciences. The X-ray diffraction data were collected at the BL-17U1, and BL-19U1 beamlines at the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility.



Researchers Reveal Molecular Mechanism of Type III CRISPR-Cas System---Chinese Academy of Sciences


----------



## JSCh

*China Focus: Chinese scientists aim for world's most detailed 3D map of human brain*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-12-06 11:49:06|Editor: Chengcheng

by Yu Fei, Han Song, Hu Zhe

*NANJING, Dec. 6 (Xinhua)* -- Why do some brains discover the laws of universe, while others create soul-stirring music or paintings? How is memory and consciousness generated?

We can observe billions of stars and detect ripples in space, but we still barely understand our brains, which can fathom the universe.

Their sophisticated structure and the number of neurons are only estimates.

Now Chinese scientists are planning to draw the clearest yet three-dimensional map of the intricate neurons and blood vessels in the human brain.

This ambitious project is like taking 3D photos of a huge forest of nearly 100 billion trees, seeing not only the whole forest, but also every twig and leaf on each tree.

"Our current methods cannot see both the trees and the forest. We aim to develop new methods to obtain a high-resolution map to see clearly how the neural network is connected," said Luo Qingming, leader of the research.

Luo, president of Hainan University and chief scientist of the Suzhou Institute for Brainsmatics of the Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), in east China's Jiangsu Province, said the research will help in analyzing the mechanisms of brain diseases, and promote the development of artificial intelligence.

"The continuous changes of neural networks and brain activities pose great challenges to the analysis of brain functions. But we believe that brain functions and activities depend on the basic cells, just as a circuit network depends on its basic unit - the electronic components," said Luo.

"Different types of neurons are the basis for the analysis of brain functions and for the diagnosis and treatment of brain diseases," he said.

*INNOVATIVE METHOD*

Luo, 52, was born in rural Qichun County, central China's Hubei Province. At middle school, he had to study by the light of a kerosene lamp. He still has a scar on his hand from an accident of chopping firewood after school to help feed his family.

In the 1990s, Luo was a photoelectron researcher in the United States and was the first-ever person to succeed in measuring brain activity by means of near-infrared optical imaging. His technology was awarded a U.S. patent.

However, he left the high-quality research conditions abroad and returned to China to work in his alma mater, HUST, in 1997.

"I feel that I should contribute to my country," said Luo, who launched his project with a starting budget of just 200,000 yuan (about 30,000 U.S. dollars) and a lab of 25 square meters.

Brain imaging is extremely difficult, as it requires expertise in different disciplines.

"The brain is as soft as bean curd. It is difficult to fix brain samples and mark the nerves and blood vessels inside. It took us three years to solve that problem," Luo said.

"We need researchers with different academic backgrounds, such as biologists and chemists to prepare brain samples, engineers and technicians with optical, mechanical and control technology to develop the imaging instruments, and computer talents to process data and display the results."

The team took eight years to develop a brain-imaging instrument with independent intellectual property rights.

The achievement was published on the journal, Science, at the end of 2010, and was ranked as one of the top 10 scientific advances in China in 2011.

*MAPPING BRAINS*

"If we compare the imaging system to a camera, we first made a black-and-white camera and took black-and-white pictures of a mouse brain," Luo explained.

Since then, his team has made a series of breakthroughs to take pictures in rich colors showing amazing details of the mouse brain.

In 2016, the team received an investment of 450 million yuan to set up the Suzhou Institute for Brainsmatics, a development reported in the journal, Nature.

In the spotless lab at the institute, a mouse brain sample, wrapped in resin like a piece of amber, is sliced into layers just one micron thick.

Each layer is scanned and imaged. About 10,000 layers are sliced to get a map of the whole mouse brain.

The images of the colorful neural and vascular systems shown on the computer look like intricate highway networks. This is the world's clearest map of a mammal brain.

"We have achieved success with mice, and are making efforts to map the brains of primates which are more advanced and complicated," said Li.

"Our ultimate goal is to lead the world to get a precise map of the human brain, which will help us uncover its secrets."

*TECHNICAL CHALLENGES*

Scientists estimate a mouse brain has tens of millions of neurons, and a monkey brain has billions, while a human brain has about 86 billion.

"We cannot map a human brain by just adding more instruments. The huge amount of data after imaging would pose great challenges for storage and analysis," Li said.

It's estimated that the data generated from imaging a human brain would be equivalent to 200,000 movies of 4K ultra-high-definition, which would fill all the storage space of the Sunway TaihuLight, China's most powerful supercomputer.

Computing is the biggest technical bottleneck, and mapping the human brain must wait for the development of IT technology, Luo said.

Human brain scanning and imaging also faces ethical challenges. "We mark the neurons in a mouse brain with transgenic technology and virus labeling technology, which cannot be applied to a human brain," Li said.

"There are countless technical problems to overcome, but we believe that with the development of technology, these problems will be solved."

The team cooperates with labs and institutes in the United States and provides data for brain research in Europe and other countries. But Luo is looking forward to the launch of China's own brain science program.

Brain science is listed as one of the major scientific and technological projects of China's 13th five-year plan (2016-2020).

"This research could help promote children's education, and facilitate the diagnosis and treatment of brain-related diseases such as depression, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease," said Luo.

"Once we have sufficient financial support and concentrate our efforts, it will be possible to get a high-resolution map of the human brain in five to 10 years."

(Xinhua reporters Xia Peng and Li Bo also contributed to the story.)


----------



## JSCh

*Focus: Twisted Light in a Photonic Chip*
December 7, 2018• _Physics_ 11, 125

Light waves capable of storing quantum information can propagate through a photonic chip waveguide and potentially be used for on-chip computation.



​Y. Chen _et al_., Phys. Rev. Lett. (2018)
Transmitting light, with a twist. Twisted light, with a helical wave front, can be sent through on-chip transparent glass waveguides while preserving its state of “twistedness.” In principle, each waveguide could carry several modes at once; each could represent a distinct data stream. Show less

A light beam with a corkscrew-shaped wave front can encode information based on the tightness and direction of the helix. This “twisted light” has potential uses in optical telecommunications and computing, but it is difficult to direct such light within chip-based photonic circuitry. A team in China has now demonstrated an optical waveguide that can carry twisted light efficiently on a chip and even “purify” its quantum state in the process.

Twisted light is characterized by an integer quantum number, l, that indicates (in units of Planck’s constant h) the orbital angular momentum (OAM) of each photon. Positive and negative values of l correspond to light twisted in opposite directions, like left- and right-handed corkscrews.

The possibilities for information technologies come from using these discrete quantum states to encode information, much as two-state quantum entities can act as quantum bits (qubits) encoding 1’s and 0’s. But for twisted light, l can take any integer value, so beams can encode more information. For example, three optical modes with l=−1,0, and +1 can act as a “qutrit,” with three encoding states. In principle, well-defined modes up to approximately l=300 can be produced by photonic devices [1]. Such light can also be placed in quantum combinations (superpositions) of these states, which means that it can be used for optical quantum computing.

Twisted light has previously been generated by chip-based optical devices and emitted into free space [2–4]. But keeping such light in a chip and moving it around in waveguides has proven challenging. The problem is that ordinary, fiber-optic-style channels won’t support “pure” OAM modes, in effect blurring any information encoded in them. Xian-Min Jin and co-workers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University have now made a new kind of waveguide that allows such modes to propagate cleanly.



​Y. Chen _et al_., Phys. Rev. Lett. (2018)
Sending light through a doughnut. A glass fiber waveguide having this pattern of refractive index will support twisted light with a helical wave front, in which quantum information can be encoded for communication and computation. The waveguide is about 10 micrometers across; yellow areas indicate regions of high refractive index. Show less

The key is to vary the waveguide’s refractive index in a “doughnut” pattern, as seen in cross section—lower index in the core and higher index in the surrounding ring. This principle has been known for some time [5]; the difficulty is in making such structures. “The conventional fabrication methods are unable to produce the necessary, arbitrary, three-dimensional structure,” says Jin.

The researchers used a laser-writing method in which ultrashort (few-hundred-femtosecond) pulses of green light are focused at a precisely controlled shallow depth within a borosilicate glass wafer. Absorption of the light locally transforms the transparent material and modifies its refractive index, while the shortness of the pulses ensures that the change is highly localized. The doughnut cross section was produced by fabricating 12 separate but overlapping, narrow, high-index channels arranged in a ring around the low-index core to generate a continuous cylindrical channel. In some of the waveguides, the team added an additional high-index central channel within the low-index core to improve the transmission.

The resulting waveguides were about 10 micrometers in diameter and almost 20 mm long. Jin and colleagues tested them with twisted light having l=+1,−1,0, and superpositions of those three states. They measured the intensity profiles of the beams entering and exiting the waveguides, as well as the interference between the transmitted beam and a reference beam identical to the input beam that was sent through free space. This interference revealed the helicity of the beams.

These measurements showed that the waveguides can support twisted modes and can also filter out “impure” components, leaving only photons with well-defined values of l. There was some loss of intensity within a waveguide, but the exiting beam was still 60% as bright as the input. The losses were greater still for higher values of l, but Jin says that his team is developing waveguides better suited to carrying these higher-order modes. The waveguides were also able to faithfully transmit twisted light that was so dim that just one photon at a time was sent through.

“This chip for transmitting twisted light is a significant advance, which may find applications in future on-chip optical and quantum computing,” says Haoran Ren, who works on chip-based optical technologies at RMIT University in Australia.

Jin says he hopes to see the first applications in high-capacity optical communications. But Kishan Dholakia, a specialist in optical manipulation at the University of St. Andrews, UK, warns that there is still some debate about whether twisted light can deliver on its promise of high data density [6]. However, he thinks this new chip design could potentially open up applications in quantum photonics and imaging.

This research is published in _Physical Review Letters_.

*Mapping Twisted Light into and out of a Photonic Chip*
Yuan Chen, Jun Gao, Zhi-Qiang Jiao, Ke Sun, Wei-Guan Shen, Lu-Feng Qiao, Hao Tang, Xiao-Feng Lin, and Xian-Min Jin
Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 233602 (2018)
Published December 7, 2018​

–Philip Ball
Philip Ball is a freelance science writer in London; his latest book is _Beyond Weird_, a survey of quantum mechanics (University of Chicago Press, 2018).


Physics - Focus: Twisted Light in a Photonic Chip


----------



## JSCh

*China Focus: Chinese scientists eye transforming Mars after successful sand-control*
Source: Xinhua| 2018-12-10 15:30:39|Editor: Liangyu

by Xinhua writers: Yu Fei, Hu Zhe, Tan Yuanbin

WUHAN, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- Herdsmen in Dalad Banner of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, north China, have long suffered from sandstorms. A gust of wind could force people to close their eyes. Sand buried large areas of pasture.

During the worst desertification in the 1980s, more than 100 families had to leave their homes in Jiefangtan Town at the edge of the desert in Dalad Banner.

More than a decade ago, scientists came and started spraying a green liquid on the desert step by step every summer. Gradually, the landscape changed. First came a crust-like cover. This grew thicker, and then the sand stopped moving.

The sand gradually turned into soil, attracting moss, lichens, grass and animals. The soil became thicker, and the vegetation returned.

The hero of this transformation was algae, one of the earliest plant forms to emerge on earth more than 3 billion years ago.

Algae can withstand temperatures up to 60 degrees centigrade, and ultraviolet radiation and drought, said Liu Yongding, a researcher at the Wuhan-based Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who has studied algae for over 40 years.

*SAVING LAND*

The ability of algae to live in the desert inspired Liu to fix the drifting sand.

Under natural conditions, it would take more than 10 years for desert algae to form a crust.

Liu led his team to select the best algae species from samples collected across China, and innovated technologies that could generate a crust in one year.

Almost 400 million Chinese are affected by desertification, which accounts for 27.3 percent of China's total land area. More than 7.72 million hectares of arable land have been degraded by desertification, and 670,000 hectares of farmland and 235 hectares of grassland have become drift sand or desert.

"We started this research more than 20 years ago without any financial support, but we persisted because we see the potential and the need of the country," said Liu, 74.

"We can't turn all deserts into oases, as deserts play a role in keeping the earth's heat balanced. We aim to control desertification and restore the soil," he said.

*SAND RETREAT*

Liu's team has collected desert algae samples from Hulunbuir, in Inner Mongolia, to the Taklimakan Desert, in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. They also compared samples from different times over the past six decades. From a small sample of mature algae crust, they found more than 700 types of organism.

Their desertification control technology has been widely applied in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

In areas where it was applied, the area of shifting sand fell from 60 percent to 10 percent, and the fixed sandy area rose to 90 percent. The plant coverage area rose from less than 15 percent to more than 80 percent.

"It takes 100 years to form a centimeter of fertile soil and 2,000 years to form 20 cm. It would take many generations to recover if a piece of arable land was lost. We are happy that we found a way to turn sand into soil several centimeters thick that can grow plants in a few years," Liu said.

Liu believes his technology can be used in desert areas outside China, including countries participating the Belt and Road initiative. His research has attracted scientists from Europe and the United States.

*EARTH TO SPACE*

Liu has also set his sights on the sky.

Since 1987, his team has studied algae to support astronauts' long stay in space.

They have carried out experiments on six of China's returnable satellites, and biological experiments on the Shenzhou spacecraft. They have worked with German scientists to research the life support system on the Shenzhou-8 spacecraft. They will also carry out experiments on China's future space station.

The research can be traced back to the 1970s. "We did an experiment to find out how much algae can keep a person alive in a closed submarine environment," Liu said.

Wang Gaohong, another researcher at the Institute of Hydrobiology, said algae have significant advantages in building a life support system. The oxygen generated by higher plants of about 15 square meters is equivalent to that produced by just a square meter of algae. It can also provide protein for astronauts.

"On the other hand, in near space, at an altitude of about 20 to 100 km, the environment is similar to that of Mars. Our space biology research will also help us understand possible life forms on Mars," Wang said.

*TRANSFORMING MARS*

Liu has an ambitious goal: letting algae pioneer human migration to Mars.

He first publicly proposed using algae to transform the environment of Mars about 15 years ago. "The deserts on earth have a similar environment to the Martian environment. We might use our knowledge of desert algae to transform the environment and help construct a human base on the red planet."

Science fiction writers and scientists put forward the idea of transforming Mars a long time ago, but there was no practical way to realize it. Liu's research made the idea conceivable, said Wang.

The intense radiation, low air pressure, dramatic temperature changes and bleak environment on Mars are similar to early earth. Algae are primary producers of the earth's biosphere, accounting for 30 percent to 40 percent of the global total, and playing an important role in maintaining biosphere stability, said Wang.

Algae have changed the environment of earth. Now humans are also changing the earth, but for the worse.

"If one day we have to leave earth, and build another home on another planet, algae might be our pioneer," Wang said.


----------



## JSCh

*NATURE INDEX | *12 DECEMBER 2018
*Strong spending compounds chemistry prowess | Nature*
The discipline’s historic prominence in China is underpinned by its crucial value to industrial processes. Committed funding sees it leading the way in emerging areas, such as nanomaterials.

Hepeng Jia

*




*​The science behind even basic chemical reactions is hard to prove: a silver chromate precipitation reaction recorded with a macro lens.Credit: Yan Liang/Beauty of Science/USTC

There were no research labs and no chemical testing devices when Lu Wei and colleagues joined the chemistry department of the new Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in Shenzhen in 2012. Their only teaching demonstration labs were in a makeshift building; equipment had to be set up and dismantled for each class. “Our graduate students had to cycle for several kilometres to test our samples in partner labs nearby,” says Lu, founding head of the department.

As their labs took shape around them, lively discussions stretching into the evenings, sometimes with beer, sparked ideas between young faculty members, recalls Lu. Teams rearranged themselves in new combinations to stretch limited resources further by simplifying logistics.




Nature Index 2018 China​
When state-of-the-art labs were built two years later, with generous funding from the Shenzhen municipal government, the young chemists at SUSTech quickly made breakthroughs, rising to be among the top 50 in China for high-quality chemistry research with a fractional count (FC) of 83.41 for 2015–17 in the Nature Index.

One recent study in _Science_, lead by SUSTech chemist, Tan Bin, identified a catalyst that improves the efficiency of the chemical reaction known as Ugi, which has been widely used to synthesize compounds, especially in the search for new pharmaceuticals.

From 2012 to 2017, China’s FC in the Nature Index for chemistry grew by 84% from 2,712 to 4,993, ranking it as the world’s second after the United States. By contrast, the US saw a decline of 10% from 6,026 to 5,451.

Among the chemistry sub-disciplines, China surpassed the US for top position in organic chemistry in 2015. It has run second to the US in most other chemistry sub-disciplines in recent years.

“The solid scientific foundation built by Chinese chemists over many years, the nurturing of young talent, and the state’s surging investment in research have combined to contribute to this significant growth,” says Chen Xiaoming, a chemist at Guangzhou-based Sun Yat-sen University(SYSU), who is also a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

Chemistry has long been China’s top-performing discipline in terms of international research publications. Its crucial importance to many industrial processes has guaranteed it sustained attention since modern science was introduced to the country, says Lu.

*Organic growth*
Organic chemistry, which studies compounds and materials containing carbon, is the strongest sub-discipline, due to its “wide application, easier operation and huge number of researchers,” says Lu, adding that it is very cheap and quick to set up an organic chemistry lab.

There has been rapid growth in studies on organic synthesis methods, nano-catalysts, synthetic organofluorine chemistry, visible-light-driven organic reactions, and natural product chemistry. So said a May 2017 special edition dedicated to organic chemistry of China’s most prestigious multidisciplinary journal, _National Science Review_.

Ma Shengming, guest editor of the edition and a leading chemist at CAS Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry(SIOC), pointed out the great industrial and environmental benefits of many of these studies which involved interdisciplinary collaboration with emerging areas such as nanomaterials.

For example, according to Hu Jinbo of SIOC, which topped the Nature Index in organic chemistry with an FC of 139.17 for 2015–17, Chinese chemists have made significant progress in improving synthetic organofluorine chemistry, which can reduce chemical pollution. In another example, visible-light-driven organic reactions greatly lower the energy needed for industrial organic chemical synthesis, wrote Wu Lizhu of the CAS Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry in the special issue.

The large recruitment of chemists particularly through the Young Thousand Talents Plan has provided a fresh boost to the booming study of chemistry in China, says Zhao Dongbing, a chemist at Tianjin-based Nankai University, who was enrolled as a scholar under the plan after completing his postdoctoral research at Cornell University and the University of Washington in Seattle. China launched the plan in 2008 to attract established scientists and high-tech entrepreneurs to return to China. In 2011, the programme was extended to young scholars, mostly targeting highly productive postdocs. By early 2018, China had recruited 3,535 young scientists through the programme.



Source: Nature Index/Dimensions from Digital Science

Zhao believes chemistry accounted for the second largest category of recruits under the plan, after the life sciences, though official numbers are no longer available due to political sensitivities over the recruitment of scholars from the US. Many of the returning postdocs “have good competency, smart ideas and can readily join hot research areas,” says Zhao.

These Young Thousand Talent Scholars, including Zhao, Lu and Tan, contribute a large portion of papers from China published in top chemistry journals. For example Xiong Yujie, a chemist at Hefei-based University of Science and Technology of China, who was recruited in the first batch of Young Thousand Talent Scholars in 2011, has since published more than 100 papers, including a dozen in journals tracked by the Nature Index such as _ACS Nano, Advanced Materials,_and_ Angewandte Chemie International Edition._

It is not clear whether the plan will continue to be of as much benefit to chemistry and other disciplines in China, given US accusations that it is a channel for the theft of US technology and intellectual property.

Chinese authorities and universities have removed the name lists of Thousand Talents recruits from websites and some US-based Chinese scientists who might previously have applied have shied away from the scheme.

Although figures for individual research disciplines are not available, China’s research and development expenditure has been growing, from 1.03 trillion yuan (US$150 billion) in 2012 to 1.76 trillion yuan in 2017, accounting for 2.1% of its GDP. China’s R&D surpasses that of many industrial countries in both absolute and relative terms. For example, in 2016 the R&D/GDP ratio of the United Kingdom was 1.67% when China’s was 2.08%.

Surging research investment means that expensive devices, such as infrared and nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers and elemental analysers, though unaffordable to many chemistry labs in the West, are standard equipment in Chinese research universities.

*Sustainability worries*
Chinese chemistry attracts the same criticism as Chinese science overall: that in the race to publish, China focuses on areas with international traction and quick results.

Zhao acknowledges that the heavy pressure on young principal investigators to publish stops them from delving into the mechanisms underlying basic chemistry, because proving the science behind even very conventional chemical reactions is a long and arduous process.

But, Lu of SUSTech is more optimistic. “An original innovation does not start from scratch, but from following others. Major breakthroughs need gradual accumulations. I have seen more and more Chinese innovative studies that can change our chemistry textbooks.”

Nature 564, S68-S69 (2018)

doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-07693-3

This article is part of _Nature Index 2018 China_, an editorially independent supplement. Advertisers have no influence over the content.


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 13-DEC-2018
*Chinese scientists get first look at geometric phase effect in a chemical reaction*
CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HEADQUARTERS


​This is a schematic illustration of the geometric phase effect arising in the H+HD reaction: the different interference of two reaction path. *CREDIT: *SUN Zhigang

In the simplest chemical reaction in nature, the H + H2 reaction, a well-known conical intersection exists between the ground and first excited state. Therefore, the H + H2 reaction and its isotopic variants have long been the benchmark system in the study of the geometric phase (GP) effect in chemical reactions.

Previously, efforts were made to observe and understand the GP effect in the H+H2 reaction. However, no convincing experimental evidence of the GP effect in any chemical reaction has been detected until now.

Recently, researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China and the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences carried out a combined experimental and theoretical investigation of the H+HD to H2+D reaction.

The experimental team, which was led by Prof. WANG Xingan and Prof. YANG Xueming, performed a crossed molecular beams study using the high-resolution velocity map ion imaging technique. Rapid forward-scattering oscillations of H2 (v', j') products were observed in differential cross sections at a collision energy in the vicinity of the H3 conical intersection.

Prof. SUN Zhigang developed a unique quantum theoretical approach for considering the GP effect in a chemical reaction. Based upon a newly developed accurate potential energy surface by Prof. ZHANG Donghui, the researchers found that the experimentally observed oscillation structures in the forward scatterings could only be reproduced by theoretical calculations including the geometric phase effect.

Through this study, a new reaction mechanism has also been discovered for this benchmark reaction at high collision. This investigation clearly answered a long- standing question in chemical reaction dynamics, i.e., how the GP effect profoundly influences chemical reactivity. The study certainly has important implications for dynamics studies of molecular systems with conical intersections in general.

This research, entitled "Observation of the geometric phase effect in the H+HD to H2+D reaction," was published in _Science_.

The Born-Oppenheimer approximation (BOA) is the foundation for understanding the quantum nature of molecular systems and leads to the development of important concepts such as electronic states and molecular orbits. In a molecule, non-adiabatic interactions between electronic states are ubiquitous. However, because of the complicated nature of non-adiabatic couplings, molecular systems are often treated without considering non-adiabatic couplings and the effect of excited states.

However, in the presence of conical interactions in molecular systems, such approximations could break down. Half a century ago, scientists found that by introducing a geometric phase, one could properly treat these systems quantum mechanically. Introducing a GP effect, however, could have a profound effect on the quantum systems. For example, one of the quantum Hall effects results from an electronic geometric phase effect. Therefore, the effect of the geometric phase is a fundamental question in both physics and chemistry.


Chinese scientists get first look at geometric phase effect in a chemical reaction | EurekAlert! Science News

Daofu Yuan, Yafu Guan, Wentao Chen, Hailin Zhao, Shengrui Yu, Chang Luo, Yuxin Tan, Ting Xie, Xingan Wang, Zhigang Sun, Dong H. Zhang & Xueming Yang. *Observation of the geometric phase effect in the H + HD → H2 + D reaction*. _Science_ (2018). DOI: 10.1126/science.aav1356​


----------



## JSCh

*Two Stalagmites Found in Chinese Cave Are a 'Holy Grail' for Accurate Radiocarbon Dating*


George Dvorsky
Today 2:09pm



The stalagmites from Hulu Cave, with sampling etch marks.
Image: Hai Cheng et al., 2018/Science

Since its inception in the 1950s, radiocarbon dating has proven indispensable to archaeologists and climate scientists, who rely on the technique to accurately date organic compounds. But a good thing just got better, owing to the discovery of two stalagmites in a Chinese cave containing a seamless chronological atmospheric record dating back to the last Ice Age.

An unbroken, high-resolution record of atmospheric carbon-12 and carbon-14 was found in a pair of stalagmites located within Hulu Cave near Nanjing, China, according to new research published today in _Science_. Because this record extends back to the last glacial period, to around 54,000 years ago, scientists are now equipped with a more accurate standard for use in radiocarbon calibration.

There’s no question that radiocarbon dating has revolutionized archaeology. Armed with this technique, scientists can date organic compounds, such as bone, hair, wood, seeds, and shells. The further back in time we go, however, the less reliable carbon dating becomes, as the technique is reliant upon accurate historical measurements of atmospheric carbon, specifically the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14.

Carbon-14, or C14, is a rare form of carbon that, unlike carbon-12 (so-called “normal” carbon), is radioactive. C14 is an isotope consisting of six protons and eight neutrons, and it’s in a perpetual state of decay, featuring a generous half-life of 5,370 years. Like normal carbon, C14 combines with oxygen to create carbon dioxide, which is absorbed by all living creatures, whether they’re animals or plants. Consequently, the ratio of C12 to C14 in all living organisms is always the same as the ratio in the atmosphere.

Because atmospheric levels of C12 and C14 change over time, the specific ratio in an organic sample (e.g. bones, wood) serves as a timestamp for a living creature’s death. When an organism dies, it stops acquiring new carbon. As time passes, the C14 decays like a ticking clock, but it’s not replaced. By measuring the amount of radioactive decay, scientists can determine when a formerly living organism died.

But there are limits to this dating approach, and it has to do with the C14 half-life. Organic objects can only be dated up to around 55,000 to 60,000 years ago, after which time the amount of C14 in a sample dwindles down to negligible proportions. What’s more, calibration is critical to this technique; changes in the amount of atmospheric radiocarbon over time means that radiocarbon dates have to calibrated against a chronological, or calendrical, timescale.

Building these calendars is easier said than done. Ideally, scientists would like to have an accurate and unbroken chronological record of changing C12 and C14 atmospheric concentrations over time. This can be done, for example, by counting tree rings (also known as dendrochronology), which, as any 8-year-old will happily tell you, is a reliable way of determining the age of a tree. Unfortunately, few calibrated datasets that directly sample atmospheric carbon exist further back in time than the Holocene tree ring record, at approximately 12,600 to 14,000 years ago (obviously, trees don’t live to be tens of thousands of years old, but ancient, fossilized trees can be dated using other methods). Radiocarbon dating is thus limited by the ability of a given material to provide an absolute age, while also preserving a record of changing atmospheric conditions.

But now, with the discovery and analysis of two special stalagmites in Hulu Cave, scientists have stumbled upon an unbroken record of atmospheric carbon dating back some 54,000 years. Instead of counting tree rings or studying coral reefs(another technique used to infer absolute dates), the researchers, led by Hai Cheng from the Institute of Global Environmental Change, at Xi’an Jiaotong University, analyzed the mineral composition inside the stalagmites. By dating hundreds of layers within these structures, which was done by using a highly reliable isotopic dating technique known as thorium-230 dating, the researchers were able to establish an unprecedented chronological baseline that can now be used for radiocarbon dating.

“Up to now, different approaches for C14 calibration have their own constraints,” Hai told Gizmodo. “For instance, it remains difficult [to use] tree-rings to calibrate the atmospheric C14 beyond the current limit of around 14,000 years before present. Corals do not accumulate continuously over thousands of years and are difficult to collect since those in the time range of interest are now largely submerged. Stalagmites, which can be excellent choices for thorium-230 dating, typically contain a significant fraction of carbon ultimately derived from limestone bedrock.”

UC Berkeley geologist Larry Edwards, a co-author of the new study, helped to develop the thorium-230 method back in the late 1980s, but he wasn’t able to find ideal cave deposits to perform a study like this one.

“In addition to carbon from the atmosphere, cave deposits contain carbon from the limestone around the cave,” Edwards told Gizmodo. “We thus needed to make a correction for the limestone-derived carbon. We discovered that the Hulu Cave samples contain very little limestone-derived carbon, and are therefore nearly ideal for this kind of study—hence our ability to complete a precise calibration of the C-14 timescale, a goal of the scientific community for the last nearly seven decades.” 

In the study, Hai and his colleagues present around 300 paired carbon 14 and thorium-230 dates extracted from the thin calcite layers within the Hulu Cave stalagmites. The average temporal resolution between each pair is about 170 years. These particular stalagmites, said Hai, are very special, containing “dead carbon” that’s remarkably stable and reliable.

“As such, the C14 in the Hulu samples are mainly derived from atmospheric sources, which allows us to make a milestone contribution towards the refinement of the C14 calibration curve through the paired measurements of the C12/C14 and thorium-230 ages,” said Hai, adding: “The new Hulu record has less uncertainty and resolves previously unknown fine-scale structure.”

As the researchers write in their paper, the new calendrical record represents a “holy grail” for scientists, offering a high-resolution and continuous record of atmospheric C14 that covers the full range of the radiocarbon dating method. For archaeologists, it also means they can now date organic compounds between 14,000 to 54,000 years with greater confidence, especially the older samples.

“For a sample that is actually 40,000 years old, the nominal C14 age would be about 35,000 years, and the age you would calculate from previous calibration data would be about 38,000 years, with a large uncertainty,” explained Edwards. “So a difference of 2,000 to 5,000 years, depending upon how you chose to calibrate your age, prior to our work.”

Excitingly, this research will also be of interest to climate scientists, who can use this data to study atmospheric changes over time.

It’s a very cool result from a very cool and unlikely source—the slow drip, drip, dripping within a dark cave in eastern China.

[Science]



Two Stalagmites Found in Chinese Cave Are a 'Holy Grail' for Accurate Radiocarbon Dating | Gizmodo

Hai Cheng, R. Lawrence Edwards, John Southon, Katsumi Matsumoto, Joshua M. Feinberg, Ashish Sinha, Weijian Zhou, Hanying Li, Xianglei Li, Yao Xu, Shitao Chen, Ming Tan, Quan Wang, Yongjin Wang, Youfeng Ning. *Atmospheric 14C/12C changes during the last glacial period from Hulu Cave*. _Science _(2018). DOI: 10.1126/science.aau0747​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Fu Wei, Qiao Jie and Tang Fuchou Teams publish their collaborative research findings in Science*
DEC . 11 2018

Peking University, Dec. 11, 2018: On November 30, _Science_, the international top academic journal (IF= "41.058), published the collaborative research findings by Fu Wei and Qiao Jie research teams from PKU Third Hospital and Tang Fuchou research team from Biomedical Pioneering Innovation Center of Peking University School of Life Sciences, titled “Single-Cell Multiomics Sequencing and Analyses of Human Colorectal Cancer.”

Professor Fu Wei’s research team has long been devoted to the clinical treatment and applied basic research of gastrointestinal tumors. Academician Qiao Jie’s research team has a long-term collaboration with Professor Tang Fuchou’s team and they have been dedicated to using single-cell sequencing to explore the epigenetic modifications of germ cells and embryos and the molecular mechanism of gene expression regulation during human early development so as to provide important data for understanding the characteristics of human early embryonic development.





_Overview of the workflow _​For the first time in the world, the research made an in-depth analysis of gene copy number variation, DNA methylation heterogeneity, features of gene expression changes, and their interrelationship during the onset and metastasis of human colorectal cancer (CRC) at the level of single-cell resolution and multi-omics. It pointed out a new direction for the study of the CRC metastasis mechanism and provided new theoretical evidence for the clinical treatment of metastatic CRC.

The link at _Science_: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6418/1060

Written by: Lang Lang
Edited by: Zhang Jiang
Source: PKU Third Hospital 
Link:http://bynew.bjmu.edu.cn/zhxw/2018n/200744.htm


Fu Wei, Qiao Jie and Tang Fuchou Teams publish their collaborative research findings in Science_Peking University


----------



## JSCh

*Big data reveals hints of how, when and where mental disorders start*
*New genetic complexities emerge for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and autism*

BY LAURA SANDERS 
2:49PM, DECEMBER 13, 2018



*ON THE BRAIN* Lab-grown brain organoids (one shown) mimic the real thing, analyses suggest. Along with other parts of a large research effort called PsychENCODE, the organoid results may offer new clues about psychiatric diseases such as schizophrenia.
VACCARINO LAB​
Psychiatric disorders’ many complexities have stymied scientists looking for clear genetic culprits. But a new giant dataset holds clues to how, when and where these brain disorders begin.

Called PsychENCODE, the project’s first large data release has revealed intricate insights into the behavior of genes and the stretches of genetic material between them in both healthy brains and those from people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or autism spectrum disorder.

The results, split among 10 studies published online December 13 in _Science,_ _Science Advances _and _Science Translational Medicine_, offer some of the most detailed looks yet at the links between these genetic elements and brain health. “It’s all connected, and now we have the tools to unravel those connections,” says geneticist Thomas Lehner of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Md., who oversaw the project but wasn’t involved in the research. 

Earlier studies have pinpointed certain genes and other stretches of the genome — the genetic material that makes up cells’ instruction books — as being involved in schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and autism spectrum disorder. The new collection of work goes further, both confirming and clarifying some of these roles.

“This is a massive undertaking,” says neuroscientist Christine Denny of Columbia University who was not involved in the project. “It’s pretty phenomenal.”

In part of the new research, neuroscientist Nenad Sestan of Yale University and colleagues looked at gene behavior as brains develop. Samples of postmortem brains ranging from fetal stages through adulthood revealed two major points of genetic upheaval: early prenatal development and adolescence. Activity in groups of genes linked to psychiatric disorders suggests that these are times when important genetic behavior goes awry, the researchers say.

Similar psychENCODE analyses in rhesus macaques revealed similar developmental paths, Sestan says. Those comparisons also turned up some gene behavior that’s exclusive to humans (and others exclusive to macaques), differences that “may drive unique features of the diseases in humans,” he says.

Other PsychENCODE projects scrutinized spots in the genome that aren’t necessarily located inside genes. Researchers linked many of these genetic hot spots, which are thought to differ in people with psychiatric diseases, to genes for the first time. That information could be used to predict a person’s risk of these psychiatric disorders from genomic makeup alone.

Still more research uncovered important differences in how genes behave in brains from people with autism, bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. The researchers found that RNA, a go-between molecule that helps carry out DNA's instructions, was different in the brains of people with psychiatric disorders. Those results may ultimately lead to targeted medicines for the diseases.

Some projects also focused on how to use laboratory tools including brain organoids, clumps of neural tissue grown in dishes, to further the research. By comparing the gene activity of cells in brain organoids with that of cells taken from actual brains, researchers found that the two mirror each other at early stages of development. Those similarities mean that the organoids, good mimics of young brains, might be particularly useful in understanding brain disorders that start early.

Lehner first began advocating for a group effort aimed at understanding the genetic landscape of psychiatric disorders about a decade ago. But it wasn’t until 2015 that the National Institute of Mental Health announced plans for PsychENCODE and helped organize the 15 participating research institutions. To see the first wave of results “feels really good,” Lehner says. “I’m delighted.”

The PsychENCODE group is making progress, says Columbia University psychiatrist Jeffrey Lieberman. “But the jury is still out in terms of what it will result in,” he says. “It could produce important — and if we’re lucky, game-changing — results.”

*Citations*
The PsychENCODE Consortium. Revealing the brain’s molecular architecture. _Science_. Vol. 362, December 14, 2018, p. 1263.

M. Li _et al_. Integrative functional genomic analysis of human brain development and neuropsychiatric risks. _Science_. Vol. 362, December 14, 2018, p. 1264. doi: 10.1126/science.aat7615.

M.J. Gandal _et al_. Transcriptome-wide isoform-level dysregulation in ASD, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. _Science_. Vol. 362, December 14, 2018, p. 1265. doi:10.1126/science.aat8127.

D. Wang _et al_. Comprehensive functional genomic resource and integrative model for the human brain. _Science_. Vol. 362, December 14, 2018, p. 1266. doi:10.1126/science.aat8464.

Y. Zhu _et al_. Spatiotemporal transcriptomic divergence across human and macaque brain development._Science_. Vol. 362, December 14, 2018, p. 1267. doi:10.1126/science.aat8077.

A. Amiri _et al_. Transcriptome and epigenome landscape of human cortical development modeled in organoids. _Science_. Vol. 362, December 14, 2018, p. 1268. doi:10.1126/science.aat6720.

P. Rajarajan _et al_. Neuron-specific signatures in the chromosomal connectome associated with schizophrenia risk. _Science_. Vol. 362, December 14, 2018, p. 1269. doi:10.1126/science.aat4311.

J.-Y. An _et al_. Genome-wide de novo risk score implicates promoter variation in autism spectrum disorder. _Science_. Vol. 362, December 14, 2018, p. 1270. doi:10.1126/science.aat6576.

S.L. Rhie _et al_. Using 3D epigenomic maps of primary olfactory neuronal cells from living individuals to understand gene regulation. _Science Advances_. Published online December 13, 2018. doi:10.1126/sciadv.aav8550.

C. Chen _et al_. The transcription factor POU3F2 regulates a gene coexpression network in brain tissue from patients with psychiatric disorders. _Science Translational Medicine_. Vol. 10, December 19, 2018. doi:10.1126/scitranslmed.aat8178.

Q. Meng _et al_. The DGCR5 long noncoding RNA may regulate expression of several schizophrenia-related genes. _Science Translational Medicine_. Vol. 10, December 19, 2018. doi:10.1126/scitranslmed.aat6912.​

PsychENCODE hints at the genetic origins of mental disorders | Science News


----------



## cirr

*Chinese researchers develop ultrahigh-voltage integrated micro-supercapacitors with alterable shapes*

2018-12-18 15:59:35 Xinhua Editor : Gu Liping

Chinese researchers have developed high voltage planar integrated micro-supercapacitors with superior flexibility.

The ultrahigh-voltage micro-supercapacitors were developed by a research group made up of scientists from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Institute of Metal Research of the CAS.

The boom of portable and wearable electronics has stimulated the urgent demand for miniature electrochemical energy storage devices with high flexibility and tailored performance. But the cost-effective and scalable fabrication of integrated micro-supercapacitors is yet to be achieved.

With assistance from low-cost, industrially applicable technology, the researchers demonstrated fast and scalable fabrication of graphene-based planar integrated micro-supercapacitors with shape diversity, versatility and outstanding flexibility.

The output voltage and capacitance of the integrated micro-supercapacitors are readily adjustable. To prove the validity of the concept, a tandem energy storage pack integrating 130 individual micro-supercapacitors in series can output a recorded voltage exceeding 100 volts, said the study published in the Energy and Environmental Science journal.

This work holds great potential for scalable fabrication and fast integration of other planar microscale energy storage devices, such as hybrid micro-supercapacitors and micro-batteries.

http://www.ecns.cn/news/2018-12-18/detail-ifzasznx1608884.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Fudan researchers achieve scientific breakthrough*
By Lin Shujuan in Shanghai | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2018-12-18 13:55


















A screenshot of CCTV. ​
Researchers from Fudan University in Shanghai and Cornell University in the United States have found evidence of a new type of quantum Hall effect existent in nanostructures of three-dimensional topological semimetal.

The research, published online in _Nature_ on Monday, represents a breakthrough in the research of the quantum Hall effect, which, discovered decades ago, remains one of the most studied phenomena in condensed matter physics. Studies of the quantum Hall effect is relevant to research areas such as topological phases, strong electron correlations and quantum computing.

Before the recent discovery, the quantum Hall effect was observed and investigated only in two-dimensional electron systems when subjected to low temperatures and strong magnetic fields.

While there has been intense interest in exploring the quantum Hall effect in higher dimensions, conditions for relevant observation are highly demanding. It took the research team three years to develop high-quality nanostructures of topological semimetals for the experiment, said Xiu Faxian, a professor in physics from Fudan University who is the corresponding author of the research paper in _Nature_.

Xiu's two doctoral students Zhang Cheng and Yuan Xiang, along with Zhang Yi, a Fudan alumnus and a post-doctor at Cornell University, are the co-first authors of the paper.

The team first discovered the existence of the quantum effect in three-dimensional nanostructures of semimetal last year, which was also reported in _Nature Communications_ in November 2017. The discovery was later confirmed by another two similar research projects in Japan and the United States.

Over the past year, Xiu and his students have fine tuned their experiment with extricate designs that allow a clear observation of the underlying physics of the quantum Hall effect in three-dimensional structures.

Xiu said the discovery is only a start in the exploration of quantum Hall physics in three-dimensional materials.

"Much remains unknown and we're keen to explore further," Xiu said.

Xiu added that the team and the rest of the scientific community can tap into one legacy of their recent success.

"We have proved that nanostructures of topological semimetals provide a way of exploring quantum Hall physics in three-dimensional materials with enhanced tunability," Xiu said.


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientist ranked in top 10*
chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2018-12-19 11:41





Cao Yuan [Photo/nature.com]​
British science journal _Nature _has ranked a young Chinese scientist among its top-10 people for 2018.

The scientist received the award for his work on how the properties of two-layer graphene stacks change in certain conditions.

Cao Yuan, 22, graduated from the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, Anhui province, at the age of 18, and joined Pablo Jarillo-Herrero's group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, United States.

Cao has discovered that a rotation between parallel graphene sheets of around 1.1 degrees make the stack an insulator, while the stack is exposed to a small electric field and cooled to 1.7 C above absolute zero.

The twisted sheets became a superconductor, in which electricity flowed without resistance, when a slight tweak was made to the field, according to his discovery.

Nature in March published two papers from Cao and his colleagues on the unusual behaviors of the atom-thick carbon layers. His discovery is considered a major breakthrough that could act as a catalyst for a new field of physics.

He Jiankui, who has been criticized for his work on genetically modified embryos, also features in Nature's list, ranked third. He revealed in November that he used the genome editor CRISPR on two babies in an attempt to create an HIV-resistant human.


----------



## JSCh

*Realising equity in maternal health: China's successes and challenges - The Lancet*

Yan Guo | Yangmu Huang

China has made remarkable progress in maternal and child health since the 1990s. Mortality among children younger than 5 years dropped from 54·1 deaths per 1000 livebirths in 1990 to 12·5 per 1000 livebirths in 2015,1 meeting the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 4 well ahead of schedule. Additionally, the maternal mortality ratio declined from 111·0 deaths per 100 000 livebirths in 1990 to 21·8 per 100 000 livebirths in 2015,1 achieving MDG 5 on target. China has also met the target for reducing the number of maternal deaths in Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3, but the challenge of improving equity remains.

In _The Lancet_, Juan Liang and colleagues 2 report an analysis of maternal mortality ratios down to the county level in China. They used data from China's national Annual Report System on Maternal and Child Health to analyse the progress made in achieving MDG 5 and the level and trends of maternal mortality ratios across China from 1996 to 2015, including inequalities. Overall, maternal mortality ratios declined substantially and rapidly, from 108·7 per 100 000 livebirths in 1996 to 21·8 per 100 000 livebirths in 2015, making the annualised rate 8·5%. As expected, substantial heterogeneity was found at the county level. However, at the provincial level, trends in inequality varied, showing much smaller inequalities within provinces than between provinces. This disparity illustrates the substantial geographical inequity of maternal health in China.

The Chinese Government has taken a series of actions to eliminate disparities in maternal health. For example, the programme Reducing Maternal Mortality and Eliminating Neonatal Tetanus, which was launched in 2000, was mainly targeted at rural areas, especially poverty-stricken areas. After years of effort, the urban–rural disparity of maternal mortality ratios in China has been greatly narrowed. In 2000, the maternal mortality ratio was 29·3 deaths per 100 000 livebirths in urban areas and 69·6 per 100 000 livebirths in rural areas, giving an urban-to-rural ratio of 1:2·37. By contrast, in 2015, the maternal mortality ratio had declined to 19·8 per 100 000 livebirths in urban areas and 20·8 per 100 000 livebirths in rural areas, reducing the urban-to-rural ratio to 1:1·05. 3

Because of socioeconomic imbalance between regions, however, health inequity is still substantial in China. 4 As noted by Liang and colleagues,2 191 counties had maternal mortality ratios greater than the target in SDG 3. Most of these counties were in poor rural areas in western China. If as well as maternal mortality ratios, the rate of decline in these ratios in the western regions is taken into account, the gap has been gradually shrinking. From 1990 to 2015, the total maternal mortality ratio in China declined by 4·42 times, while that in Tibet declined by 7·12 times, catching up with the national average maternal mortality ratio.5 Since the start of the 21st century, China has taken targeted measures to help people lift themselves out of poverty, improving women's status and education equity, which will all contribute to the improvement of maternal health.1

China's health reforms since the severe acute respiratory syndromes epidemic have greatly strengthened the health system in the western regions. However, improvements were mainly made in health financing and improving infrastructure, and development of the health workforce has lagged behind. 6 In 2016, the total number of health-care institutions was similar in the eastern (0·35 million) and western (0·31 million) regions, but the health workforce, especially the number of health technicians, was much higher in the eastern region (3·7 million) than in the western region (2·2 million). Due to the shortage of health-care workers, there is a gap in the quality of health between the two regions. 7 This is a challenge for China on the way to achieving universal health coverage.



Figure
Copyright © 2018 Ed Jones/Staff

Liang and colleagues provide the first estimates of the progress of maternal mortality ratios and MDG 5 and SDG 3 at the county level in China. However, a question worth exploring is whether it is appropriate to calculate and compare maternal mortality ratios by county. The population differences between provinces in China are large, and between counties are even greater. The largest county in China has a population of 2·44 million, while the smallest has a population of less than 10 000. The number of livebirths in the small counties can be less than 200 per year. 8 Many of the small counties are located in the western regions. Thus, the maternal mortality in these counties can be very unstable from year to year, which should be considered when drawing conclusions from Liang and colleagues' research.

Juan Liang; Xiaohong Li; Chuyun Kang; Yanping Wang; Xie Rachel Kulikoff; Matthew M Coates; Marie Ng; Shusheng Luo; Yi Mu; Xiaodong Wang; Rong Zhou; Xinghui Liu; Yali Zhang; Yubo Zhou; Maigeng Zhou; Qi Li; Zheng Liu; Li Dai; Mingrong Li; Yiyi Zhang; Kui Deng; Xinying Zeng; Changfei Deng; Ling Yi; Jun Zhu; Christopher J L Murray; Haidong Wang. *Maternal mortality ratios in 2852 Chinese counties, 1996–2015, and achievement of Millennium Development Goal 5 in China: a subnational analysis of the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016*. _The Lancet_ (2018). DOI: 10.1016/s0140-6736(18)31712-4.​


----------



## cirr

*Chinese scientists find quantum Hall effect in 3D materials*

2018-12-19 16:51:30 CGTN Editor : Gu Liping





The path of the electrons in three-dimensional materials when exposed to a strong magnetic field /Screenshot from CCTV

Researchers in China have found evidence of a new type of quantum Hall Effect existent in a three-dimensional topological semimetal.

The study, published in Nature on Monday, illustrated the path of the electrons in three-dimensional materials when exposed to a strong magnetic field, marking a great step for condensed matter physics research in a higher dimension.

As one of the most important discoveries in condensed matter physics, the quantum Hall effect is considered the best example of quantization. Electrons in a quantum Hall system travel without losing their energy, thus always acting as perfect conducting systems with little energy consumption.

The discovery has shown great potential when applied in the development of low-energy consumption electron devices, and offered great insights and experience in topological quantum computing research.

While there has been intense interest in exploring the quantum Hall effect in higher dimensions, conditions for relevant observations are highly demanding. 

"It took the research team three years to develop high-quality nanostructures of topological semimetals for the experiment," said Xiu Faxian, a professor in physics from Fudan University, who is the corresponding author of the research paper in Nature.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Physics - Focus: A Home for Helium inside Earth
December 21, 2018• Physics 11, 133

Computations predict the existence of a compound that could store the primordial helium that is known to be present somewhere inside the Earth.



​iStock.com/ademyan​*Hot helium mystery*. Ancient helium can emerge from the ground along with lava (here from Kilauea Crater in Hawaii). Computational studies now show that the helium source could be the compound FeO2He in rocks close to the Earth’s core.

Primordial helium—a remnant of the early Solar System—emanates from the ground at sites of lava plumes like those found in Hawaii, Iceland, and the Galapagos. But the source of this helium deep inside the Earth remains unknown. Now researchers predict the existence of a helium-bearing compound, FeO2He, that could serve to store this enigmatic element. Their calculations indicate that the compound is stable at temperatures and pressures consistent with those found at the bottom of the Earth’s mantle—the mostly-solid layer between the crust and the molten outer core. If verified, the results would support the science behind using helium to trace the age and history of cosmological bodies, since other similar planets should contain the same material.

After hydrogen, helium is the most abundant element in the Universe, and on Earth, there are two places to find it. Helium is continuously produced through radioactive decays in the crust, and it is also found in lava and gas plumes originating from the mantle [1]. This mantle helium bears signatures showing that it was present when the Earth formed. Researchers assume that it must exist somewhere in the Earth in solid form; otherwise it would have escaped long ago, thanks to helium’s low density. However, helium-bearing rocks are rare—the inert element has limited capabilities to form compounds with other elements. And so far, such compounds are absent from measurements and predictions of rocks, leaving the hypothesis unconfirmed.

Yanming Ma of Jilin University in China and his colleagues set out to solve this conundrum by computationally searching for minerals containing iron and magnesium that might react with helium. Iron and magnesium are good starting points for such an investigation, as the elements are both abundant inside the Earth, says team member Changfeng Chen of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

The team used a crystal structure search algorithm called CALYPSO—developed by Ma’s group—that finds compound candidates by calculating their energies [2]. When the presence of helium in a candidate compound lowers the energy compared with the helium-free version, the helium-containing compound is considered “favorable,” and the algorithm spits out a proposed crystal. The algorithm’s search turned up empty-handed for magnesium-based compounds. But the team found one potential iron-based compound that fit their criteria— FeO2He.

The team’s calculations show that FeO2He forms a stable structure at temperatures between 3000 and 5000 K and at pressures ranging from 135 to 300 gigapascals (GPa), conditions that correspond to those found at the core-mantle boundary. The team also carried out simulations of FeO2He at a temperature of 3000 K and a pressure of 135 GPa to find the material’s acoustic properties. They found that sound waves move through the compound at speeds equivalent to those obtained in seismic-wave measurements of the core-mantle boundary, indicating that the material’s properties are consistent with observations of this region.

Recent synthesis experiments also point to FeO2He being a strong contender for housing primordial helium. Both FeO2 and the hydrogen-containing compounds FeO2Hx have been formed in laboratory settings at the temperatures and pressures found in the lower regions of the mantle [3, 4]. Chen says that the successful creation of those materials indicates that researchers could—relatively quickly and easily—confirm in the lab that FeO2He is stable in deep Earth conditions.

Helium-bearing compounds have, until very recently, been considered unlikely to exist under the physical conditions on or inside the Earth, Chen says, but in his opinion, his team’s new predictions change that view. Chen suggests that primordial helium reacted with FeO2 back when the Earth was new, forming a solid material. The compound is sufficiently heavy that it would only rise to the surface through so-called mantle plumes, which are columns of hot, solid rock that move up to the crust. When FeO2He nears the surface and experiences a drop in temperature and pressure, it should destabilize and release helium gas.

If this result is correct, it could solve the problem of where and how primordial helium is stored, says Matt Jackson, a geochemist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Jackson studies the chemical compositions of lava plumes and has found signatures of primordial helium. “This is an exciting result,” he says, but he cautions that the predictions need to be tested with laboratory experiments. Ronald Cohen, a geophysicist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC, agrees. He and others thought that primordial helium was most likely stored as impurities in mantle minerals, so the prediction of a helium-containing compound is a surprise, he says.

This research is published in _Physical Review Letters_.

*Rare Helium-Bearing Compound FeO2He Stabilized at Deep-Earth Conditions*
Jurong Zhang, Jian Lv, Hefei Li, Xiaolei Feng, Cheng Lu, Simon A. T. Redfern, Hanyu Liu, Changfeng Chen, and Yanming Ma
Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 255703 (2018)
Published December 21, 2018​

–Katherine Wright


----------



## JSCh

*Satellites, drones and 5G: How high-tech helps China handle emergencies*
By Gong Zhe
2018-12-22 22:39 GMT+8





Natural disasters can be hard to deal with. An earthquake can destroy a city's infrastructure, cutting out cellphone signals and travel routes.

For the emergency rescue team, that's like a black box. You don't know what's going on inside or how to get in. All you can do is prepare.

That's one of the reasons why high-tech is often seen in rescuing missions.

As China's technology sector rapidly develops, rescue teams also gear up against severe disasters. Many of those technologies are very familiar to gadget lovers.

*Drones: Check out before heading out*

Vloggers love to use drones to shoot videos from above and it looks amazing.

In addition to the thrill, the gadget can also be used to check the damage from a disaster.

Take the example of earthquake again. When a big earthquake comes, it does not strike only once. As a rescuer, you don't want to get trapped by aftershocks and become a victim yourself.

So you send a drone instead. It can remain flying no matter how much the ground shakes.



A drone films a rescue drill in Huainan, east China's Anhui Province, May 18, 2016. /VCG Photo

With cameras and maybe live stream add-ons, you can sit in a safe-house getting an overview of what's going on inside the black box.

The footage can almost ensure the rescue teams come out with a better plan.

*Satellites: Detecting the slightest movement*

We at CGTN love to talk about China's space projects. When a rocket is launched, we always brief you on what kind of payload it carries. Now let's get to some details.

Some of those payloads are "remote-sensing" satellites that observe the ground and alarm rescuers when things go wrong.

China has launched many Gaofen satellites to do this job. "Gaofen" is the pinyin spelling of "high-definition" in Chinese.

Though the satellites are high above, they can monitor changes on the ground at a one-meter level.

With ground stations, these sats can do even more.

A good example is BeiDou, China's homemade GPS rival.

the GPS on your smartphone may not be very accurate. It's not always sure which side of the road you are on.

But with a fixed ground station, it can get your position at a millimeter level.

It means the BeiDou satellites can monitor small movements of the continent, thus help detect earthquakes.



A BeiDou-capable positioning terminal showcased by a Beijing company at the China Satellite Navigation Exhibition in Harbin, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, May 24, 2018. /VCG Photo‍

*5G: Video conferences on the go*

Though 4G is fast enough for video conferences, 5G can bring us multi-side video chats.

Emergency rescue work in China often involves more than one command center. It can be really hard for a rescue worker to listen to more than one commander.

Multi-side video chat can let all commanders see each other, make sure everyone is on the same page.

5G in China is still under development. But demo devices for rescue workers are already there.

This is a personal communication box. It can connect to Ethernet, 4G/5G network and satellites to send data. It also has all kinds of plugs for cameras, drones and microphones.



A rescue worker uses personal communication box to get in touch with a command center after an earthquake struck southwest China's Sichuan Province, August 8, 2017. /Photo from the Ministry of Emergency Management of China

What's more, it has an LCD monitor for video chat we just mentioned.

Older versions of the box are widely implemented in China and are in active use.

When China created a new ministry for emergency management back in April, it launched a national inspection of rescue workers. The box is used to send live video signals, saving a lot of travel time for the inspectors.

High-tech equipment in China's emergency management will increase as leaders of the ministry see technology as one of the guarantees for safety.

In a work meeting held in May, the ministry decided to "actively push forward the sci-tech advancement on security," and "reduce risks by installing better equipment."



Leaders of the ministry discuss future plans at a meeting, May 14, 2018. /Photo from the Ministry of Emergency Management of China

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*China's breakthrough technologies 2018: Year in Review*
New China TV
Published on Dec 24, 2018

From the world's longest sea bridge to the homegrown AG600 amphibious aircraft, from the world's fastest bullet train to the energy-saving "artificial sun"... China is emerging as a science and technology powerhouse. Click this video for some of China's breakthrough technologies in 2018.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*Chinese scientists find ways to make copper behave as gold in catalysis*

2018-12-25 08:41:39 Global Times Editor : Li Yan






*Copper 'can behave as gold' in catalysis*

A team led by Chinese scientist Sun Jian at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has found a way to make copper behave as gold and silver in catalysis, according to a statement the institute sent to the Global Times on Monday.

The new material based on copper could serve as a catalyst for reaction producing liquids from coal, a role only precious metals such as gold, could assume before, and the method is expected to be widely adopted in the coal chemical industry," Sun told the Global Times on Monday.

The discovery could have huge potential given China's vast coal reserves and the country's push for clean energy sources.

Although precious metals have good catalytic properties, using them for such processes is hindered by high costs. Copper, which is not a precious metal, is also more plentiful.

The experiment does not necessarily mean that "copper could turn into gold," said Sun. At the moment, production of the catalyst is still at the experimental level, and only several grams can be manufactured. If used in real production, a significant amount of these catalysts will be needed.

Sun said that his team is also exploring more possibilities involving precious metal transformation. 

"By then, the application scenario will be further expanded, and it won't be limited to the coal chemical industry," noted Sun.

One example might be the production of electronic devices, Sun said.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*China to build 700 rural SciTech museums by the end of 2018*
(People's Daily Online) 09:55, December 25, 2018



By the end of this year, a total of 700 science and technology museums will be built in middle schools throughout rural China providing better access to science and technology for 3 million students, Science and Technology Daily reported on Dec. 24.

In August 2012, the program was launched by the Foundation for the Development of Science and Technology Museums in China (FDSTMC), aimed at arousing more interest in science and technology among teenagers living in central and western regions of China.

Compared with the city SciTech museums, a rural one is much simpler, including only 20 exhibits, 3 bookcases and 8 pieces of illusionary paintings. Many students were inspired to make such inventions as a voice-controlled luminous clock, solar-powered alarm clocks embedded in vases and so on.

The public awareness of science and technology in urban areas dwarfed that of people in rural areas, according to a latest national survey on scientific literacy, noted Qi Rang, standing vice president of China Association of Senior Scientists and Technologists.

In the past six years, many efforts have been made to realize greater equality of education resources, said Qi, who is also the main promoter of the charity program.

It’s hoped that there will be 1,000 such museums by 2020, said Chu Xueji, secretary general of the Foundation. Up to now, 72 percent middle schools in west China have been equipped with SciTech museums, including 79 in Tibet.

(Compiled by Fang Tian)

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

__ https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=527068414436026




State Power Investment Corp

Break through Key Technologies: China’s Independent Development of Heavy Duty Gas Turbine Gains Ground

On the morning of December 25, China’s first level I turbine vane casting of 300MW/F class heavy duty gas turbine successfully passed the appraisal judged by 13 experts from special expert advisory committee of “two units”, Dongfang Electric Corporation, Shanghai Electric Group Company Limited, Harbin Electric Corporation, University of Science and Technology Beijing, China National Machinery Industry Corporation and Fushun Special Steel. This marks China’s solid step of breaking through foreign technology blockade on hot end core component and achieves the independent development of heavy duty gas turbine.

At the appraisal meeting, the members of the expert group reached the consensuses that CLP Heavy Duty Gas Turbine Co., Ltd. (“CLP”), Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Suvast Special Alloy Technology Co., Ltd. and other relevant units worked together and overcame difficulties, delivering not only a set of qualified physical blade but also a set of immobilized process system and quality assurance system, which laid a good foundation for the modular-design of turbine blade. As a result, they agreed to qualify the equipment for this appraisal.

Gas turbine, known as the “crown jewel” of the equipment manufacturing industry, represents the highest level of high-end manufacturing, but the core technology has been held by a few developed countries. Although China’s gas turbine development has gone through 50 years, we have simply mastered the manufacturing and assembly of heavy duty gas turbine’s cold end components, but not the core technology of hot end components’ design and manufacturing, and no independent research and development capability has been formed either. The level I turbine vane is a typical hot end component of heavy duty gas turbine, and its core manufacturing technology has long been blocked by foreign countries. CLP, Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Suvast Special Alloy Technology Co., Ltd. and other relevant units worked together, overcoming several difficulties together and setting a number of records: China’s first independent design of the large-scale level I vane of heavy duty gas turbine; China’s first smelting of the level I vane master alloy with independent intellectual property rights, conquering the purification smelting technology; China’s first independent casting of large-scale level I vane of heavy duty gas turbine, conquering the precision casting technology of large-scale complex blade.

Independent development of heavy duty gas turbine is of great strategic significance for China in becoming a strong manufacturing country, a strong technology country and achieving “Two Centenary Goals”. The Party Central Committee and State Council attached great importance to the independent innovation of heavy duty gas turbine, officially starting implementing the special project of “two units” in 2015; China’s 13th Five-Year Plan listed “two units” as the top of hundred major projects in 2016; central economic work conference emphasized that China would promote high-quality development of the manufacturing industry, and become a strong manufacturing country unswervingly in December 2018. CLP, as a subsidiary unit of SPIC and the implementer of the “two units” special project heavy duty gas turbine engineering, undertakes the glorious mission of independently developing heavy duty gas turbine. The automation of heavy duty gas turbine still has a long way to go. CLP strives to build a collaborative innovation mechanism of the whole industrial chain and gather the strength of the whole country to overcome difficulties together, working hard to realize the dream of independent research and development of China’s heavy duty gas turbine.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Ultra-strong microscopes open doors to scientific innovation*
By ZHANG ZHIHAO/YANG ZEKUN | China Daily | Updated: 2018-12-28 07:54



One researcher from the Suzhou Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Technology displays a specialized lens, one of the key components for producing high-resolution images and visualizing small structures with high clarity, Dec 26, 2018. [Photo/IC]

China is now capable of creating super-resolution optical microscopes that can see objects a mere 50 nanometers wide. This allows scientists to observe subtle molecular processes within cells in real time, potentially aiding in the development of new drugs.

Traditional light microscopes are useful for investigating small objects and structures, but they lack precision when the space between objects is smaller than half the wavelength of light used to view them, at which point the two objects can blur into one.

This issue is called the diffraction limit. Since 2000, this challenge has been gradually solved with the advent of super-resolution microscopy, which allows scientists to see and track molecules in action within a living cell. This technique is so valuable for biology and medical research that the Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to three microscopy experts in 2014.

As China forges ahead in the fields of microbiology and molecular science, demand for high-end, super-resolution optical microscopes has soared, said Tang Yuguo, director of the Suzhou Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Technology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

However, China has had to import most of the core components for these powerful microscopes, and their prohibitive costs restrict the country's innovation in biology, medicine and other cutting-edge fields, he said.

Now, after five years of research, the institute said on Wednesday that it has made breakthroughs in advanced optical microscopes, including the highly sophisticated stimulated emission depletion microscopy. The technique was created by Stefan Hell, a 2014 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry.

The institute introduced special lighting, fluorescent technology and a specialized lens－all of which are key components for producing high-resolution images and visualizing small structures with high clarity.

These feats have helped China become one of the world's leading countries in super-resolution microscopy. But it still lags behind other countries such as the United States, which currently holds the world's highest resolution microscope, capable of viewing objects of just 0.04 nm, the journal Nature said in July.

However, the Chinese super-resolution microscopes are cheaper than their global counterparts, and their resolution is sufficient for many key experiments. The institute said its machines have already been tested and used in many domestic and overseas institutes.

The academy's Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica used these powerful microscopes to track how active ingredients of drugs are being positioned and transported within cells, thus speeding up pharmaceutical development.

Stanford University, the University of Tokyo and other world-class institutes are also using Chinese microscopes to examine the activity of neurons, thus shedding light into the mechanisms by which our brain identifies information and controls behavior.

Wang Ping, a professor of biomedical engineering at Zhejiang University, said people are becoming more confident of China's high-end equipment.

Chai Zhifang, a researcher from the academy's Institute of High Energy Physics, said the microscope project has not only greatly reduced China's reliance on imports, but also has great strategic significance in improving the innovation capabilities of China's biomedical sectors.

_Yang Zekun contributed to this story._

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Han Patriot

JSCh said:


> *Ultra-strong microscopes open doors to scientific innovation*
> By ZHANG ZHIHAO/YANG ZEKUN | China Daily | Updated: 2018-12-28 07:54
> 
> 
> 
> One researcher from the Suzhou Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Technology displays a specialized lens, one of the key components for producing high-resolution images and visualizing small structures with high clarity, Dec 26, 2018. [Photo/IC]
> 
> China is now capable of creating super-resolution optical microscopes that can see objects a mere 50 nanometers wide. This allows scientists to observe subtle molecular processes within cells in real time, potentially aiding in the development of new drugs.
> 
> Traditional light microscopes are useful for investigating small objects and structures, but they lack precision when the space between objects is smaller than half the wavelength of light used to view them, at which point the two objects can blur into one.
> 
> This issue is called the diffraction limit. Since 2000, this challenge has been gradually solved with the advent of super-resolution microscopy, which allows scientists to see and track molecules in action within a living cell. This technique is so valuable for biology and medical research that the Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to three microscopy experts in 2014.
> 
> As China forges ahead in the fields of microbiology and molecular science, demand for high-end, super-resolution optical microscopes has soared, said Tang Yuguo, director of the Suzhou Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Technology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
> 
> However, China has had to import most of the core components for these powerful microscopes, and their prohibitive costs restrict the country's innovation in biology, medicine and other cutting-edge fields, he said.
> 
> Now, after five years of research, the institute said on Wednesday that it has made breakthroughs in advanced optical microscopes, including the highly sophisticated stimulated emission depletion microscopy. The technique was created by Stefan Hell, a 2014 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry.
> 
> The institute introduced special lighting, fluorescent technology and a specialized lens－all of which are key components for producing high-resolution images and visualizing small structures with high clarity.
> 
> These feats have helped China become one of the world's leading countries in super-resolution microscopy. But it still lags behind other countries such as the United States, which currently holds the world's highest resolution microscope, capable of viewing objects of just 0.04 nm, the journal Nature said in July.
> 
> However, the Chinese super-resolution microscopes are cheaper than their global counterparts, and their resolution is sufficient for many key experiments. The institute said its machines have already been tested and used in many domestic and overseas institutes.
> 
> The academy's Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica used these powerful microscopes to track how active ingredients of drugs are being positioned and transported within cells, thus speeding up pharmaceutical development.
> 
> Stanford University, the University of Tokyo and other world-class institutes are also using Chinese microscopes to examine the activity of neurons, thus shedding light into the mechanisms by which our brain identifies information and controls behavior.
> 
> Wang Ping, a professor of biomedical engineering at Zhejiang University, said people are becoming more confident of China's high-end equipment.
> 
> Chai Zhifang, a researcher from the academy's Institute of High Energy Physics, said the microscope project has not only greatly reduced China's reliance on imports, but also has great strategic significance in improving the innovation capabilities of China's biomedical sectors.
> 
> _Yang Zekun contributed to this story._


Stanford and Tokyo U are using Chinese microscopes? Where is INDIA the superpower and bestest 'talents' in the world?

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*Chinese researchers identify new risk gene for Alzheimer's disease*

2018-12-28 17:37:12 Xinhua Editor : Gu Liping

A Chinese research group has identified a gene variant that plays a key role in the development of Alzheimer's disease in Han Chinese, the largest ethnic group in China.

The study was recently published by the National Science Review, an English journal affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is an irreversible, progressive brain disorder that slowly destroys memory, thinking skills and the ability to carry out simple tasks. The disease affects about 48 million people worldwide, and the number is expected to increase with the aging population. There is no effective cure.

Both genetic and environmental factors contribute to the onset and development of the disease, and its heritability is as high as 79 percent.

Previous studies have found genes for early-onset familial Alzheimer's disease, which is diagnosed before the age of 65 but only accounts for five percent of all Alzheimer's cases. Scientists believe that there are other disease genes still to be discovered.

Recent genome-wide association studies have identified a number of AD genes in European populations, but most of the genes cannot be validated in Chinese populations.

Through gene sequencing on 107 AD patients diagnosed before the age of 55 or having a family history, researchers from the Kunming Institute of Zoology under CAS found a rare variant rs3792646 in the C7 gene. Then, they validated the association of the variant with the disease in 368 cases from eastern and southwest China.

In addition, researchers using brain imaging data found that patients with the risk gene variant showed a significantly lower volume of the right hippocampus, a major component of the brain, and worse working memory performance in early adulthood compared with healthy people. The finding indicated that the variant might affect the brain structure and function several decades before disease onset.

Further study showed that overexpression of the gene variant might cause impairment in cell viability, immune activation and neuronal activity.

According to researchers, the variant is most likely Chinese-specific after they analyzed genome sequencing data of 812 individuals of European patients.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

JSCh said:


> *Ultra-strong microscopes open doors to scientific innovation*
> By ZHANG ZHIHAO/YANG ZEKUN | China Daily | Updated: 2018-12-28 07:54
> 
> 
> 
> One researcher from the Suzhou Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Technology displays a specialized lens, one of the key components for producing high-resolution images and visualizing small structures with high clarity, Dec 26, 2018. [Photo/IC]
> 
> China is now capable of creating super-resolution optical microscopes that can see objects a mere 50 nanometers wide. This allows scientists to observe subtle molecular processes within cells in real time, potentially aiding in the development of new drugs.
> 
> Traditional light microscopes are useful for investigating small objects and structures, but they lack precision when the space between objects is smaller than half the wavelength of light used to view them, at which point the two objects can blur into one.
> 
> This issue is called the diffraction limit. Since 2000, this challenge has been gradually solved with the advent of super-resolution microscopy, which allows scientists to see and track molecules in action within a living cell. This technique is so valuable for biology and medical research that the Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to three microscopy experts in 2014.
> 
> As China forges ahead in the fields of microbiology and molecular science, demand for high-end, super-resolution optical microscopes has soared, said Tang Yuguo, director of the Suzhou Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Technology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
> 
> However, China has had to import most of the core components for these powerful microscopes, and their prohibitive costs restrict the country's innovation in biology, medicine and other cutting-edge fields, he said.
> 
> Now, after five years of research, the institute said on Wednesday that it has made breakthroughs in advanced optical microscopes, including the highly sophisticated stimulated emission depletion microscopy. The technique was created by Stefan Hell, a 2014 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry.
> 
> The institute introduced special lighting, fluorescent technology and a specialized lens－all of which are key components for producing high-resolution images and visualizing small structures with high clarity.
> 
> These feats have helped China become one of the world's leading countries in super-resolution microscopy. But it still lags behind other countries such as the United States, which currently holds the world's highest resolution microscope, capable of viewing objects of just 0.04 nm, the journal Nature said in July.
> 
> However, the Chinese super-resolution microscopes are cheaper than their global counterparts, and their resolution is sufficient for many key experiments. The institute said its machines have already been tested and used in many domestic and overseas institutes.
> 
> The academy's Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica used these powerful microscopes to track how active ingredients of drugs are being positioned and transported within cells, thus speeding up pharmaceutical development.
> 
> Stanford University, the University of Tokyo and other world-class institutes are also using Chinese microscopes to examine the activity of neurons, thus shedding light into the mechanisms by which our brain identifies information and controls behavior.
> 
> Wang Ping, a professor of biomedical engineering at Zhejiang University, said people are becoming more confident of China's high-end equipment.
> 
> Chai Zhifang, a researcher from the academy's Institute of High Energy Physics, said the microscope project has not only greatly reduced China's reliance on imports, but also has great strategic significance in improving the innovation capabilities of China's biomedical sectors.
> 
> _Yang Zekun contributed to this story._



*分辨率达到50纳米！我国已具备高端超分辨光学显微镜研制能力*

2018-12-29 07:27:57字号：A- A A+来源：科学大院

关键字:中国科技超分辨光学显微镜中国显微镜

一听到高端的光学显微镜，你是不是会立刻想到徕卡、蔡司、奥林巴斯这些国外品牌？现在，我国也具备了高端超分辨光学显微镜的研制能力。

*据“科学大院”公众号（kexuedayuan）12月29日消息，中国科学院苏州生物医学工程技术研究所（简称“苏州医工所”）已经研制出了激光扫描共聚焦显微镜、双光子显微镜、受激发射损耗(STED)超分辨显微镜、双光子-STED显微镜等高端光学显微镜。*


12月26日，由苏州医工所承担的国家重大科研装备研制项目“超分辨显微光学核心部件及系统研制”通过验收，标志着我国具备了高端超分辨光学显微镜的研制能力。






科研人员正在用自主研制的激光扫描共聚焦显微镜观察细胞结构（图片来源：中科院摄影联盟、苏州医工所）

*探索微观世界 离不开高端显微镜*

高端显微系统广泛应用于生物学和基础医学等相关前沿领域的创新研究，尤其是10-100nm尺度的超分辨显微光学成像技术，在当今生物学和基础医学研究中，发挥着不可替代的作用。

作为生物医学实验研究的必备工具，激光扫描共聚焦显微镜比传统的荧光显微镜分辨率更高，而且可以进行层析扫描3D成像。但是共聚焦显微镜能够观察的样品厚度一般小于100um，要观察更深的样品时需要借助双光子显微镜。双光子显微镜最大的优势是观察的深度。

但是无论是激光扫描共聚焦显微镜还是双光子显微镜，都无法摆脱衍射极限的限制，为了进一步探索微观世界，需要分辨率更高的显微镜。STED显微镜应运而生，它在共聚焦显微镜的基础上引入损耗光束将荧光光斑进一步压缩，从而实现超分辨成像。






数值孔径为1.45的平场复消色差显微物镜（图片来源：中科院摄影联盟、苏州医工所）

我们都知道，美国和日本都是诺贝尔奖大国，日本从2000年开始基本每年一个诺贝尔奖，其中的原因之一就是离不开显微镜等高端仪器的使用。*我国虽然是显微镜消费大国，但自己只能生产中低端产品，高端仪器基本依赖于进口，这已经严重制约了我国生物学和基础医学等相关前沿领域的创新研究。 *

*四台高端显微镜 Made in China！*

历时五年攻关，苏州医工所科研人员全面突破大数值孔径物镜、特种光源、新型纳米荧光增强试剂、系统集成与检测等关键技术，研制出四台高端显微镜，为我国高端光学显微镜的发展提供了系统解决方案。






高端平场复消色差生物显微物镜（图片来源：中科院摄影联盟、苏州医工所）

下面我们就来看看这四大国货神器吧！

*1. 激光扫描共聚焦显微镜*

传统荧光显微镜是用光源照射整个样品平面，再获得图像。由于聚焦平面上下的平面也会受到激发产生荧光，图像会被干扰；同时，同一平面上特征点周围激发的荧光也会干扰特征点的观察。

*激光扫描共聚焦显微镜采用聚焦后的激光光斑作为照明光源，同时在探测器前引入针孔将聚焦光斑外的干扰信号进行过滤，因此提高了图像信噪比，横向分辨率可达200nm左右。*此外，激光共聚焦显微镜还可以对样品逐层扫描实现三维成像，以及利用多通道采集图像的功能同时获取不同光谱段的荧光扫描图像。











激光扫描共聚焦显微镜与普通荧光显微镜成像对比（图片来源：网络）






苏州医工所研制的激光扫描共聚焦显微镜样机（图片来源：苏州医工所）

激光共聚焦显微镜可以观察细胞或亚细胞形态结构、鉴定细胞或组织内生物大分子，如：检测蛋白质抗体及其他分子，检测细胞凋亡，观察细胞骨架结构等；还能进行活体细胞或组织功能的实时检测。

目前，利用苏州医工所研制的高端光学显微镜，中科院动物所观察发育生物学中的基本现象，研究潜在调控机制；中科院药物所观察药物胞内靶向定位和输送，加速创新性新药研发。






纳米药物在Caco-2细胞亚细胞器分布共聚焦成像（图片来源：中科院上海药物所）






小鼠卵母细胞纺锤体共聚焦成像（图片来源：中科院动物所）

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## cirr

*2.双光子显微镜*

双光子显微镜结合了激光扫描共聚焦显微镜和双光子激发技术的特点。

*双光子激发技术的基本原理就是用两个波长较长的光子去激发一个荧光分子。由于光波波长较长，可实现成像深度超过600微米。那么问题来了，什么情况下可以用两个光子激发一个光子，实现能量叠加呢？答案是：提高光子密度。*

在进行双光子成像时，物镜焦点处的光子密度是最高的，双光子激发只发生在物镜的焦点附近很小的区域内，邻近区域不产生荧光，因此不需要针孔过滤信号，提高了信号收集效率。






单光子（共聚焦）激发与双光子激发（图片来源：网络）






苏州医工所研制的双光子样机图（图片来源：苏州医工所）

目前双光子成像在生物医学领域广泛应用于深层组织成像以及活体成像等。美国斯坦福大学、日本东京大学、陆军军医大学脑科学研究中心等专业实验室利用双光子显微成像技术进行了信息识别、行为控制等脑科学核心问题的研究以及动物在体成像实验，获得了高分辨实时神经元活动成像数据。






CLARITY处理的Thy1-YFP（H Line）小鼠大脑的荧光观察（图片来源：网络）

（A）从大脑皮质到海马的3-D观察图像（B）大脑皮层Ⅴ层的锥体细胞的树突图像

*3.受激发射损耗（STED）显微镜*

传统光学成像由于受到光学衍射极限的限制，分辨率很难突破200nm。这时就需要超分辨显微镜出手了。






光学衍射极限降低分辨能力（图片来源：网络）

*STED显微镜是一种超分辨显微镜，它的原理可以简单理解为在共聚焦显微镜的基础上加入一束面包圈状的光斑（我们称之为损耗光），通过受激辐射效应减小有效荧光发光面积，将被激发的荧光物质限制在衍射极限内，从而突破光学衍射极限实现超分辨成像，目前能够实现50nm分辨率。*











STED原理（图片来源：网络）






细胞骨架共聚焦与STED对比图（图片来源：苏州医工所）






苏州医工所研制的STED样机图（图片来源：苏州医工所）

STED显微镜的应用领域与共聚焦显微镜相似，主要用于观察亚细胞形态结构，活细胞内生物分子的实时成像和动态跟踪等。目前，苏州医工所正与中科院上海药物所以及中科院北京动物所开展相关合作。

*4.双光子STED显微镜*

双光子STED显微镜将双光子显微镜与STED显微镜合二为一，结合双光子显微镜成像深度深以及STED显微镜分辨率高的优点，根据不同的成像需求选择合适的成像方式。






苏州医工所研制的双光子-STED显微镜（图片来源：苏州医工所）

目前，苏州医工所已联合吉林大学第一医院、复旦大学附属华山医院以及苏州大学附属第一医院针对难治性癫痫、帕金森病及缺血性脑卒中疾病等进行研究。






科研人员正在用自主研制的双光子-STED显微镜观察亚细胞结构（图片来源：中科院摄影联盟、苏州医工所）






小鼠脑切片双光子成像（图片来源：苏州医工所）

*导师，咱们实验室也买一台？*

在高端显微镜的研制过程中，设计、加工、装配、检测等等，并无现成标准、经验可循；关键光学器件的加工难度超乎想象。

这次通过项目验收的四套超分辨率显微镜，最高分辨率达到了50纳米，而且各有特色。“*在它们的背后，是已经发展起来的显微光学设计、加工、制造、装配的完整技术和工程体系。*”例如大数值孔径显微物镜，不过两个胶囊咖啡大小的物镜，却由十几片直径为1-30毫米的特种玻璃镜片装配而成，做出这样一个镜头，需要解决一系列难题，更需要精密的检测设备和严格的检测标准。






高精度显微物镜光学元件加工（图片来源：中科院摄影联盟、苏州医工所）

*目前，苏州医工所研制的显微镜和关键部件已有部分成果实现销售*，例如：双光子显微镜已销往德国、以色列、美国等多家国外研究机构。北京大学、中科院神经科学研究所等国内科研机构也使用了该设备。具有自主知识产权的特种LED光源体系具备了国际竞争力，支撑了包括新一代投影、光医疗仪器以及远程照明等新兴产业的快速发展。共聚焦显微镜也已完成工程化，拟进行产业化生产和销售。

该项目的成功实施，极大改善了我国高端光学显微镜基本依赖进口的状况，对满足我国生物医学等前沿基础研究的定制化需求、提升创新能力，以及推动我国光学显微镜行业转型升级具有重要的战略意义。

（作者单位：中国科学院苏州生物医学工程技术研究所）

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*China building world's largest earthquake warning system*
By Gong Zhe
2018-12-31 22:55 GMT+8




​Earthquake can be destructive. Unfortunately, we don't have a reliable way to predict.

But technologies can still help us under such a desperate situation. For example, sending a message after the earthquake happens, yet before it travels from underground where we live.

China is building the world's largest earthquake alert system and it's possibly the most advanced.

Engineers are setting up more than 15,000 sensors all over the country and wiring them into a web.

When an earthquake happens, the sensors can send electrical pulses to the control center and then ordinary people's smartphones.

The signal travels at (almost) light speed and is much faster than the devastating earthquake shaking, giving local people a little bit time to prepare.

According to an internal document CGTN got from the project managers, the system can send messages to people less than two seconds after the earthquake happens.

So the time between the warning and the actual impact might only be seconds or a minute. But it's proved to be life-saving because every second matter in this situation.

Similar systems can be found in other earthquake-prone places including Japan and U.S. west coast.

But China's system can be more advanced in many ways.

"It will be the largest earthquake observation network in the world," said Li Shanyou, deputy chief engineer of the system.

"It's more integrated than the Japanese and the U.S. ones," he added.

The system can not only detect the movement of the continents but also calculate the possible impact of an earthquake.

So it will automatically warn local people, making it much faster than human observation.

"It can make experts from other countries envy," Li told CGTN.

The system, overseen by China's Ministry of Emergency Management, is set to be completed in 2022.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 31-DEC-2018
*Scientists produce 'designer triacylglycerols' in industrial microalgae*
CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HEADQUARTERS


​Producing designer triacylglycerol molecules with tailored PUFA profile in industrial microalgae. *CREDIT: *QIBEBT

Molecules of triacylglycerol (TAG), formed by attaching three molecules of fatty acid (FA) to a glycerol backbone, are the main constituents of vegetable oil in plants and fats in animals and humans. TAG plays an important role in cellular metabolism as a universal storage form and currency of energy, since its energy density is much greater than carbohydrates or proteins.

The health benefit of TAG molecules (TAGs) is dependent on which FA comprise the molecule. For example, linoleic acid (LA) can lower blood cholesterols and prevent atherosclerosis, while eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) can treat hypertension and inflammation. Can the FA composition of TAGs be customized to create "designer" TAGs that carry tailored health benefits?

The answer is yes. A research team led by Prof. XU Jian from the Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology (QIBEBT), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), has discovered two novel diacylglyceryl transferases (DGAT2s) that preferentially attach LA and EPA, respectively, to the glycerol backbone to form TAGs.

By modulating the ratio of these specialist enzymes in the cell, a strain bank of the industrial oleaginous microalga Nannochloropsis oceanica was created where the proportions of LA and EPA in TAGs varied by 18.7- and 34.7-fold, respectively.

LA and EPA are both "essential fatty acids" for humans. They are essential for human metabolism, but human genomes do not encode the enzymes that directly synthesize these fatty acids. Therefore, humans have to intake LA and EPA via plant or animal TAGs.

The discovery of novel DGATs that selectively assemble LA and EPA into microalgal TAGs thus lays the foundation for producing on a large scale "designer TAGs," whether present in nature or not, for tailored or even personalized health benefits.


Scientists produce 'designer triacylglycerols' in industrial microalgae | EurekAlert! Science News

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*SW China: An earthquake early warning system provided a 14 second warning*
People's Daily, China 人民日报
Published on Jan 3, 2019

In Yibin, SW China's Sichuan Province, an earthquake early warning system provided a 14 second warning prior to the 5.3-magnitude earthquake that struck on Jan 3 in the city. The system has successfully covered 90% population of the active earthquake zone in the nation.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists succeed in developing clonal seeds from hybrid rice*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-01-06 00:49:42|Editor: Yang Yi




HANGZHOU, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have succeeded in developing clonal seeds from hybrid rice, said an online paper published in _Nature Biotechnology_ Friday night.

The team, led by Wang Kejian, from the China National Rice Research Institute and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, conducted simultaneous genome engineering of meiosis and fertilization genes in developing the clonal seeds.

Usually, beneficial phenotypes are lost in subsequent generations owing to genetic segregation. But with the clonal seeds, the heterosis, or hybrid vigor of the hybrid rice, can be passed on to produce high-yielding crops.

"The success has proved the feasibility of apomixis for hybrid rice, which is significant theoretically. I hope that with their further research, the seeds will be put into production soon," said Yuan Longping, the "father of hybrid rice."

Statistics show that China has planted 16 million hectares of hybrid rice, about 57 percent of the total planting area of rice across the country. The annual output of hybrid rice is about 2.5 million tonnes.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*China opens first national selenium R&D center*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-01-06 22:23:23|Editor: mmm




WUHAN, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- China's first national selenium research and development (R&D) center opened Sunday in Wuhan, capital of Central China's Hubei Province.

The center aims to beef up selenium research, standardize the selenium industrial system, upgrade the sector, and offer technical support for selenium-related companies, said Cheng Shuiyuan, director of the center at a press conference.

The center began as a project in September 2018, approved by the country's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.

Selenium is an important micronutrient to boost human immune system and reduce the effects of cardiovascular diseases, according to the press conference.

China has a huge demand for selenium-enriched agricultural products because 72 percent of the country's arable land lacks the element.

Hubei's Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, however, has rich selenium deposit.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*China gives 2 military researchers top science, tech award*
By Deng Xiaoci Source:Global Times Published: 2019/1/8 17:43:39




Radar expert Liu Yongtan (right) and defense engineering expert Qian Qihu were given the 2018 State Preeminent Science and Technology Award — the nation's highest scientific award — in Beijing on Tuesday. Photo:VCG



Graphics: Prize money for major science awards

Two senior military scientists won China's annual top science and technology award on Tuesday, receiving a prize of 8 million yuan ($1.17 million) each, greater than last year's Nobel Prize amount.

Liu Yongtan, a radar expert and academician from both the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), and Qian Qihu, a defense engineering expert, who is also a CAE academician, received the 2018 State Preeminent Science and Technology Award during a conference held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. 

Chinese President Xi Jinping, who granted award medals and certificates to the winners, shook hands with them and expressed congratulations.

The cash prize for each of the two military scientists on Tuesday was 8 million yuan ($1.17 million), 3 million yuan more than last year's prize money. It is also higher than the Nobel Prize amount for 2018, which was set at Swedish kronor 9.0 million, roughly $1 million. 

During the past 20 years, 31 Chinese scientists have been granted this honor, including Nobel Prize-winning pharmacologist Tu Youyou and "Father of Hybrid Rice" Yuan Longping.

Liu, 82, is the forerunner of China's first all-time, all-weather, over-the-horizon maritime early warning system that targets enemies both from sea and air, and also spearheaded the development of the nation's sea-targeting radar.

Over his more than six-decade career, Qian, 81, helped establish the theoretical system for China's modern defense engineering theoretical system, overcoming technical difficulties for defense engineering during nuclear attacks. 

What the two senior scientists have in common is they successfully applied the national defense theories they developed in present engineering practices, which substantially enhanced the country's capability to resist external threats, Song Zhongping, a Beijing-based military expert and TV commentator, said on Tuesday. 

Yang's over-the-horizon early warning radar system lays the foundation for the "country's first line of defense," which is also why the country was able to establish the Air Defense Identification Zone in the East China Sea, Song told the Global Times. 

According to China Global Television Network on Tuesday, under Liu's direction, China's first high-frequency radar system became a leader in target detection in the 1990s. 

And it represented the modern radar and also has wide applications in aerospace, navigation, fisheries and coastal oil development.

China's nuclear strategy follows the principle of "No first use." It requires the country to have the capability to withstand a nuclear attack before it responds with its strategic weapons. 

"Qian's work achieves that to guarantee the safety of the country's strategic weapons and launch and storage facilities, as well as the commander's safety during extreme times," Song said. 

Qian compared his work to the underground "Steel Great Wall" and many places that already play a part in Chinese people's lives also have links to Qian's work, including the Nanjing Yangtze River Tunnel, the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, and the giant South-to-North Water Transfer Project, said the CGTN report.

Five foreign experts, including four from the US and one from Sweden, were also given the China International Science and Technology Cooperation Award.

China aims to turn into an innovative country by 2020, when scientific progress will contribute nearly 60 percent of the nation's economic growth, according to a national science and technology development plan.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists develop anticorrosion method for steel in marine engineering*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-01-08 14:31:57|Editor: mmm




BEIJING, Jan. 8 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have used marine bacteria to inhibit the corrosion of steel materials through genetic editing, according to the China Science Daily Tuesday.

Corrosion in the marine environment is an international problem that not only causes huge economic losses but also poses a threat to the safety of marine engineering.

Most of the traditional anti-corrosion methods rely on chemical or electrochemical means, however, they typically have a high cost and are not environmentally friendly.

Scientists from the Shanghai Maritime University and the South China Sea Institute of Oceanology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences have found that a non-pathogenic marine bacteria extracted from the South China Sea can form a biofilm on the surface of the steel. Through genetic editing, the biofilm shows lasting anticorrosion capabilities.

Based on the research, scientists are also developing new types of corrosion-resistant steel which can not only withstand the harsh marine environment but are also compatible with coral growth. They can be applied to island and reef construction as well as restoration of coral reefs.

The research was published in the journal _ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces_.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*China's homegrown anti-cancer drug wins international recognition*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-01-09 16:03:52|Editor: ZX




BEIJING, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- China's homegrown drug Sintilimab designed for treating relapsed or refractory classic Hodgkin lymphoma has won international recognition, with its clinical trial research published as the cover paper in the January issue of The _Lancet Haematology_.

Hodgkin lymphoma is a rare malignant lymphoma that occurs mostly in young people between the ages of 20 and 40. Although the cure rate of early treatment is high, patients have a 20 percent chance of recurrence after their first treatment. Patients with relapsed or refractory classic Hodgkin lymphoma lack effective treatment in China.

Sintilimab, an anti-PD-1 drug, is a kind of checkpoint inhibitor, an emerging anti-cancer therapeutic modality that boosts the immune system to help the body target and kill tumors.

Professor Shi Yuankai from the Cancer Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, led the clinical research, which enrolled 96 patients with relapsed or refractory classic Hodgkin's lymphoma from 18 hospitals in China.

Results showed that Sintilimab has favorable activity and acceptable toxicity in Chinese patients with relapsed or refractory classical Hodgkin lymphoma, with 80.4 percent of the patients showing an objective response.

Stephen M Ansell from the Division of Hematology at the Mayo Clinic commented that Sintilimab is a "highly effective treatment which potentially improves the outcomes of patients with classical Hodgkin lymphoma worldwide."

Sintilimab was approved for market authorization by China's National Medical Products Administration in December 2018.

"The approval will bring more treatment options for cancer patients in China," Shi said.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Physics - Synopsis: One-Way Sound Transport*
January 9, 2019

An array of air channels behaves as an “acoustic Chern insulator” in which sound waves travel only around the edges and only in one direction.





Y. Ding/Nanjing University​
Topological phases are defined by geometric constraints, which makes them especially robust against environmental influences. Although typically an electronic phenomenon, topological phases can also occur in acoustic systems. Researchers have now assembled an array of air channels to create the acoustic version of a topological phase known as a Chern insulator. Their acoustic device limits the propagation of sound waves to a single direction, which could benefit medical ultrasound and the control of environmental noise.

Some of the first acoustic topological systems were periodic arrays of scattering elements that blocked sound propagation except along their edges—similar to what happens for electronic transport in topological insulators. In these acoustic prototypes, the edge propagation was time-reversible, meaning sound waves could travel both forwards and backwards. The advantage of going to time-irreversible propagation is that edge-traveling sound waves would be less susceptible to scattering losses from defects.

To create their time-irreversible acoustic material, Jianchun Cheng from Nanjing University in China and co-workers connected several time-irreversible units, or “atoms,” via waveguides to make a hexagonal array. Each atom consisted of a ring cavity in which air was spun around at high speed. Previous work with single atoms had shown that sound waves enter and exit the cavity in only one direction. Cheng and co-workers managed to synchronize the acoustic modes of multiple atoms by relying on high-order acoustic resonances within each atom. They observed time-irreversible sound wave propagation along the edges of the array and verified that these one-way edge modes were immune to defects, such as cavities in which air spins the wrong way or not at all.

This research is published in _Physical Review Letters_.

*Experimental Demonstration of Acoustic Chern Insulators*
Yujiang Ding, Yugui Peng, Yifan Zhu, Xudong Fan, Jing Yang, Bin Liang, Xuefeng Zhu, Xiangang Wan, and Jianchun Cheng
Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 014302 (2019)
Published January 9, 2019​


–Michael Schirber
Michael Schirber is a Corresponding Editor for _Physics _based in Lyon, France.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists realize a three-dimensional 'topological' medium for electromagnetic waves*
January 9, 2019
by Chong Yidong, School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang Technological University




Credit: CC0 Public Domain​
Topological insulators are exotic states of matter that physicists have been intensely studying for the past decade. Their most intriguing feature is that they can be rigorously distinguished from all other materials using a mathematical concept known as "topology." This mathematical property grants topological insulators the ability to transport electric signals without dissipation, via special quantum states called "topological surface states."

However, topological insulators need not only be realized with electrons. Physicists have also devised photonic topological insulators, synthetic materials that impart light waves with distinct topological features, allowing light (rather than electric currents) to flow via topological surface states. Unlike electronic topological insulators, photonic topological insulators can operate easily at room temperature, among other advantages. As a result, photonic topological insulators could have applications in future optical devices, such as high-power lasers and optical diodes.

A team of researchers from Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, and Zhejiang University, China, has announced the development of the world's first three-dimensional (3-D) photonic topological insulator. In a paper to be published in an upcoming issue of _Nature_, the team reports that a specially-designed 3-D array of resonators can act as a topological insulator for microwaves. They have observed unambiguous evidence for the signature topological surface states, in the form of microwaves that flow effortlessly along 2-D sheets embedded within the 3-D volume of their sample.

"Previous researchers were able to make two-dimensional photonic topological insulators. But in spite of many theoretical proposals over the years, nobody had been able to realize a 3-D version," says Associate Professor Baile Zhang of NTU, who co-supervised the project. He notes that 3-D topological insulators have important capabilities, including the ability to channel topological surface states along all possible spatial directions. In one of their experiments, the researchers showed that microwaves can be guided efficiently along a 2-D surface containing zigzag-like folds.

The team constructed the 3-D photonic topological insulator out of a stack of thin plastic sheets embedded with metal antennas acting as tiny electromagnetic resonators. The key breakthrough was made when they realized how to tailor the resonators to interact with electromagnetic waves in a very specific way, granting the waves the desired topological characteristics.

"Since the sheets are made using well-established technology for printing circuit boards, this design is cheap and simple to implement," explains Professor Hongsheng Chen of Zhejiang University, another co-supervisor of the project. "By comparison, other proposals previously published in the scientific literature involved using non-standard ceramic or magnetic materials, which are very difficult to work with if you want to make a real device."

Dr. Yihao Yang, a postdoctoral researcher at NTU who was the lead author on the paper, said that the team was able to build a compelling scientific case by constructing detailed maps of how electromagnetic waves travel within the photonic topological insulator. "By carefully inserting an electromagnetic field probe into the sample, we measured the field distributions throughout the sample. This allowed us to reconstruct the 'dispersion relations' that serve as the physical signatures of topological insulators," he said.

Associate Professor Yidong Chong, another member of the NTU team, observed that this work is the first realization of a synthetic 3-D topological insulator not based on the flow of electric current. "This is an example of the universality of physics," he said. "A phenomenon arising in one setting, like quantum materials, can be reproduced in another setting, in this case an artificial medium for electromagnetic waves. The key ingredient is that they obey the same equations and theoretical concepts." He suggests that the 3-D photonic topological insulator may provide an interesting setting for studying fundamental physics, as the topological surface states are governed by the same equations as massless 2-D electrons obeying Einstein's theory of relativity.

The current 3-D photonic topological insulator is limited to electromagnetic waves, at relatively low frequencies. "If we can scale it to optical frequencies, that is to say waves of visible light, there could be applications for creating optical computer chips, lasers, and all sorts of interesting optical devices," says NTU's Professor Zhang.



https://phys.org/news/2019-01-scientists-three-dimensional-topological-medium-electromagnetic.html

Yihao Yang, Zhen Gao, Haoran Xue, Li Zhang, Mengjia He, Zhaoju Yang, Ranjan Singh, Yidong Chong, Baile Zhang, Hongsheng Chen. *Realization of a three-dimensional photonic topological insulator*. _Nature _(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0829-0​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *China is undergoing something of a boom in accelerator facilities at the moment. Tell me about some of those plans.*
> The spallation neutron source in Dongguan is now operating. It is small but good enough. IHEP is also planning a 1.4-kilometre-circumference light source to be built in Huairou, northern Beijing, at a cost of 4.8 billion yuan. This is a circular electron accelerator that can generate synchrotron radiation — X-rays with extremely high intensity. These are useful for almost every research discipline, including materials science, chemistry, biology, environmental science, geology and medicine. We believe the government is going to give its final approval for the project by the beginning of next year, and then we can start construction. We think it would be a world-leading machine. Most light sources are upgrades from existing machines, so they are limited. We can use the best configurations, the best technologies, without constraints.


*China's High Energy Photon Source Feasibility Study Report Approved*
Jan 11, 2019

China's High Energy Photon Source (HEPS) project moved one step closer to reality with approval of the HEPS Feasibility Study Report by the National Development and Reform Commission, China' s top economic planning body, on Dec. 28, 2018.

HEPS will be one of the core facilities of Huairou Science City, located in Beijing's suburban Huairou District.

It will have a beam energy of 6 GeV and an ultra-low emittance ring-based synchrotron radiation light source, allowing China to join an elite global group of high energy synchrotron radiation light sources. It will offer strong support for research fields related to domestic needs and lead to revolutionary innovation in various industries.

Construction is expected to begin in 2019 and take 6.5 years. During Phase I, 14 beamlines, the accelerator and some other auxiliary buildings will be built.

The project was originally proposed in 2008 and listed as one of China' s large research infrastructure projects in the country' s 13th Five-year Plan in 2016.



Synchrotron radiation facilities are indispensable in numerous frontier research areas. The HEPS is a kilometer-scale, 6 GeV, ultralow- emittance storage-ring-based light source, planned to be built in Beijing. (Image by Institute of High Energy Physics of Chinese Academy of Sciences) 
*

*
China's High Energy Photon Source Feasibility Study Report Approved---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*China's first 3D-printed resin bridge ready to welcome visitors in Shanghai*
CGTN
Published on Jan 12, 2019

China's first 3D-printed resin bridge was installed successfully in the central park in Shanghai's Taopu area.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*When Choosing a Mate, These Female Birds Prefer Brains Over Beauty or Brawn*
After observing initially scorned male budgies performing complex cognitive tasks, females shifted mating preferences





Budgie love triangles are more complex than you might think (Pixabay)​
By Meilan Solly
SMITHSONIAN.COM
JANUARY 11, 2019

When it comes to affairs of the heart, there are a variety of factors at play: mutual attraction, shared interests, an intangible spark that eventually leads to love. But in Darwinian terms, the recipe for reproduction is far more clinical, with animals seeking mates based on the potential evolutionary advantage—often superior cognition skills—offered by a match.

Now, a new study published in the journal _Science_ suggests that female budgerigars, a species of small Australian parrots better known as budgies, employ this selective brand of logic when playing the mating game. As Nick Carne writes for _Cosmos_, a team of Chinese and Dutch researchers found that female budgies preferred brains over beauty and brawn. The birds would even change their selection if the previously overlooked mate learned a new trick.

To test budgies’ mating preferences, a team of researchers led by Jiani Chen of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Zoology, put 34 male and 17 female birds to the test. According to _Forbes_, the animals were split into a problem-solving group of 18 males and 9 females and a control group of 16 males and 8 females.

In order to watch interactions unfold, the scientists placed three birds into a divided enclosure in which the female could only engage with one male at a time, reports Agence France-Presse. Females in both groups were observed choosing between two similar-looking males, as determined by which male the female bird opted to spent more time with. Past studies structured this way have shown that females will gravitate toward males with beautiful feathers or skilled singing, as two behavioral experts not involved in the study, Georg Striedter and Nancy Burley—both from the University of California, Irvine—explain in an editorial analyzing the new study that was also published in _Science_.

In trials, the team used food to sweeten the pot. At first, the birds were allowed to chow down freely until the female bird appeared to show a preference for one beau over the other. But once it was clear which male bird had won the female budgie’s attention, the team introduced a game-changing new element to the experimental group, upending seemingly stable pairings in favor of more complex love triangles.

While the new couple continued courting, the researchers trained the rejected budgie to open two puzzle toys—a petri dish and a three-step box—filled with food.

Next, Carne reports for _Cosmos_, the scientists brought the newly-skilled budgie back out to the mating arena. As the female bird looked on, the once-lovelorn male successfully demonstrated his new puzzle-solving abilities, while the hapless untrained male tried and failed to keep his paramour’s attention.

Following this observational period, the female budgies again chose between the two potential mates. This time, the lady birds overwhelmingly opted for the previously spurned male, leading the team to conclude, that “female budgerigars modified their mate preference in favor of trained males after observing them perform complex foraging tasks.”

Still, the study has its faults: As Striedter and Burley note, the female budgies didn’t have the opportunity to perform the foraging puzzle themselves, indicating they may not have fully understood its merits as “a problem in need of a clever solution.” Instead, it’s possible the birds saw the trained males’ food-securing abilities as a display of physical strength, or perhaps a more impressive show of foraging effort.

Alex Kacelnik, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Oxford who was not involved with the study, tells_ Forbes_ that the team’s findings speak to two distinct explanations: “The females may prefer competent males because they will provide direct benefits (i.e., better males increase the female’s access to food) or because they have heritable traits that are passed to the offspring.”

Overall, Kacelnik says, “The theoretical implications of this study are rich, and worth tackling in depth.”



When Choosing a Mate, These Female Birds Prefer Brains Over Beauty or Brawn | Smart News | Smithsonian

Jiani Chen, Yuqi Zou, Yue-Hua Sun, Carel ten Cate. *Problem-solving males become more attractive to female budgerigars*. _Science _(2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aau8181​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *China builds mammoth detector to probe mysteries of neutrino mass*
> 
> BEIJING—It isn't easy to weigh a ghost. After neutrinos were hypothesized in 1930, it took physicists 67 years to prove that these elusive particles—which zip through our bodies by the trillions each second—have mass at all. Now, a Chinese-led team is planning a mammoth neutrino detector, meant to capture enough neutrinos from nearby nuclear reactors to determine which of the three known types, or flavors, of neutrinos are heavier or lighter. That mass hierarchy could be key to explaining how neutrinos get their mass, and measuring it would be a coup for China's particle physicists.
> 
> Last month, scientists gathered in Jiangmen, in China's southern Guangdong province, to review plans for the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO). Groundbreaking is slated for later this year on the $300 million facility, which China aims to complete by 2019. The facility, which backers say will be twice as sensitive as existing detectors, should not only pin down key properties of neutrinos themselves but also detect telltale neutrinos from nuclear reactions in the sun, Earth, and supernovas.
> 
> Other planned facilities aim to reveal the mass hierarchy (see table), but China could be the first to arrive at an ironclad result. If China can pull it off, says William McDonough, a geologist at the University of Maryland, College Park, JUNO "will not only lead to breakthroughs in neutrino physics, but revolutionize the field of geology and astrophysics." A successful project would also mark another triumph for China's neutrino research, 2 years after the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment in Guangdong nailed a key parameter describing how different types of neutrinos morph into one another (Science, 16 March 2012, p. 1287).
> 
> In 1998, physicists working with the subterranean particle detector Super-Kamiokande in Japan showed that neutrinos of one flavor, muon neutrinos generated by cosmic rays in the atmosphere, can change flavor as they zip through Earth. In 2001, researchers at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Canada proved that electron neutrinos from the sun do the same. Such neutrino "oscillations" prove that neutrinos have mass: Without it, the particles would move at light speed and—according to relativity—time would stand still for them, making change impossible.
> 
> Knowing a neutrino has mass isn't the same as knowing what it weighs. In the simplest model, neutrino oscillations depend on just six parameters—the three mass differences among the neutrinos and three abstract "mixing angles." Physicists have measured all six—including the last mixing angle, which was measured by Daya Bay. They know that two of the neutrinos are close in mass and one is further off. But they don't know whether there are two lighter neutrinos and one heavier one—the so-called normal hierarchy—or an inverse hierarchy of two heavier ones and one light one.
> 
> How the masses shake out "is fundamental for a whole series of questions," says Wang Yifang, director of the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) here, including whether neutrinos, like other particles, get mass from tangling with Higgs bosons or from a more exotic mechanism. The answer depends on whether the neutrino is, oddly, its own antiparticle. Physicists may be able to tell that by searching for a weird new type of radioactive decay. But, if it even exists, that decay would occur at an observable rate only if neutrinos follow an inverse hierarchy.
> 
> To explore this frontier, an international team led by Wang will build a detector 700 meters beneath a granite hill near Jiangmen, equidistant from two nuclear power plant complexes. A sphere about 38 meters in diameter will contain 20,000 tons of a material known as a liquid scintillator. About 60 times a day, one of the sextillion or so electron neutrinos spraying from the reactors every second should bump into an atomic nucleus, sparking a flash of scintillation light that the detector can measure and analyze. In the 53 kilometers that the neutrinos will traverse from reactor to detector, about 70% will change flavor, says Cao Jun, a particle physicist at IHEP. By studying the energy spectrum of the neutrinos, physicists should be able to tease out the mass hierarchy. "But it's not going to be easy because the amount of energy to be measured is minuscule," Cao says. He estimates the measurement will require 6 years of data-taking.
> 
> The key to JUNO's success will be its energy resolution. The largest liquid scintillation detector to date—KamLAND in Japan, which has 1000 tons of detector fluid—can only make out energy differences of greater than 6%. JUNO needs to double the resolution to 3%—no mean feat, especially as the larger volume of scintillator itself absorbs more light.
> 
> If it works, JUNO should also make finer measurements of the known mixing angles and mass differences. "This is particularly important for the search for a possible fourth form of neutrinos," says Lothar Oberauer of the Technical University of Munich in Germany. If the sum of all oscillations doesn't add up to 100%, then the data would point to a fourth flavor (Science, 21 October 2011, p. 304)—a possibility that could topple the standard model of particle physics and help explain a host of astronomical puzzles.
> 
> Another mission for JUNO is to observe geoneutrinos emitted during radioactive decay in Earth's deep interior, which generates heat that helps drive plate tectonics and power our planet's magnetic field. Detecting geoneutrinos "is the only way to get a glimpse of Earth's internal heat budget and distribution," McDonough says. The three facilities now detecting geoneutrinos, including the revamped Sudbury detector, record about 45 a year in total. JUNO should spot about 500 a year, enough to test various models of Earth's composition and heat flow, McDonough says. And that would score China another triumph in neutrino physics.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> China hopes its planned JUNO detector, 38 meters across, will be the first to nail which of the three neutrino flavors is heavier or lighter.
> CREDITS: (INSET) IHEP; (SOURCE) M. BLENNOW _ET AL._ ARXIV 1311.1822 (2013)​
> 
> Source: Science Magazine
> 
> Science 7 February 2014:
> Vol. 343 no. 6171 pp. 590-591
> DOI: 10.1126/science.343.6171.590
> 
> China Builds Mammoth Detector to Probe Mysteries of Neutrino Mass
> _____________________________________________________________​
> *Public Release: 28-Jan-2015*
> *Particle physicists from Mainz University participate in JUNO neutrino experiment*
> 
> _Project designed to undertake precise measurement of neutrino oscillation should provide insight into neutrino mass hierarchy_
> 
> Johannes Gutenberg
> Universitaet Mainz
> _*This news release is available in German.*_
> 
> The construction of the facilities for the JUNO neutrino experiment has been initiated with an official groundbreaking ceremony near the south Chinese city of Jiangmen. Involved in the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) will be more than fifty institutions from China, the US and Europe - with six from Germany alone. Starting in 2020, JUNO will begin to produce new information about the particle characteristics of the neutrino. "The aim of JUNO is to precisely measure the oscillations of neutrinos for the purpose of investigating one of the major issues in neutrino physics today - the sequence or hierarchy of neutrino masses," explains Professor Michael Wurm of the Institute of Physics at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU). He is acting as one of the German JUNO partners and was at the site to watch the start of work on the underground lab.
> 
> Neutrinos are elementary particles that have next to no mass and that are emitted by processes such as fusion in the sun and radioactive decays of fission products in nuclear reactors. They have no electric charge and are subject only to the weak nuclear force. This means that they can penetrate matter almost unhindered and can only be captured using massive detectors that are usually located underground. There are three different types of neutrinos - electron, muon, and tau neutrinos. They can change from one type to another, a phenomenon known as neutrino oscillation. It is possible to determine the mass of the particles by studying the oscillation patterns.
> 
> "Oscillations only occur because neutrinos have three different masses. But which is the lightest of the three and which is the heaviest? The JUNO experiment will be sensitive enough to allow us to clearly sequence the three neutrino types," said Wurm. The particle physicist, who is also participating in the Borexino experiment that investigates solar neutrinos and is located under Italy's Gran Sasso mountain, sees this as an important step forward for the experimental efforts to find a violation of matter/antimatter symmetry in neutrino oscillations. Scientists hope to find out why matter and antimatter did not completely annihilate one another after the Big Bang.
> 
> It will only be possible to determine the sequence of neutrino masses through tiny changes in the oscillation patterns that cannot be detected by currently running experiments. The JUNO detector is thus being built in its own underground lab, which is located some 50 kilometers from two reactor complexes on China's southern coast. The neutrinos emitted by the reactors will be registered in the form of small light flashes in the liquid scintillator target located at the center of the detector. Carefully shielded from radiation background, 20,000 tons of the mineral oil-like target liquid will be contained in an acrylic sphere of 35 meter diameters. Its outer surface will be equipped by a dense array of light sensors detecting the scintillation light. Six years of construction are foreseen for the new detector that will be 100 times larger than the Borexino experiment. Upon start of data taking in 2021, the scientists expect that another five years of measurement will be necessary to answer the question of neutrino mass hierarchy.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Schematic depiction of the JUNO detector showing the shielded acrylic sphere (lower right). The detector is surrounded by a pool of water to protect it against background radiation (upper left).
> source/©: Michael Wurm​
> Particle physicists from Mainz University participate in JUNO neutrino experiment | EurekAlert! Science News
> _________________________________________________________​*
> The Sixth JUNO Collaboration Meeting Held at IHEP*
> 2016-01-05
> 
> The Sixth JUNO (Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory) Collaboration Meeting was held at IHEP on July 13-17, 2015. More than 100 scholars from institutions and universities at home plus about 50 scholars from abroad attended the meeting.
> 
> The meeting was chaired in turns by Wang Yifang, spokesperson of the JUNO Collaboration and Cao Jun, Gioacchino Ranucci, deputy spokespersons of the Collaboration. Wang Yifang introduced the progress of JUNO; he emphasized the critical milestones of the JUNO construction. JUNO is facing fierce international competition. Plans must be adequate, construction milestones must be met, and experiment must start according to the milestones.
> 
> At the meeting, Li Xiaonan and researchers from all the sub-systems reported their progress respectively. Reviews on the design of key components were performed, including the review on the central detector, the electronics and the photo-multiplier. Experts suggested that more attention should be paid to reliability, tolerance and heat radiation in the system designs. These suggestions are very significant to the detailed designs in the next phase.
> 
> The Collaboration accepted new members at this meeting. They are the University of Milan-Bicocca, the University of Maryland and the Catholic University of Chile. The Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and the Moscow State University were accepted as observers. So far, the Collaboration has boasted 55 formal members. The meeting also discussed and passed the rules on paper publication. It is decided that the next Collaboration meeting will be held in Xiamen University in January, 2016.


*Neutrino observatory is whole new game*
Yang Meiping
02:22 UTC+8, 2019-01-15 

The excavation and construction of an area 700 meters underground for the Jiangmen neutrino observatory has been completed, and lab equipment will be installed soon. It was announced yesterday at a Shanghai Jiao Tong University conference.

The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory will be ready for experiments in 2021, and is expected to run for at least 20 years.

The research team, led by Chinese scientists with participation from 600 scientists from 17 countries and regions, is expected to determine the neutrino mass hierarchy in six years.

“Neutrinos are one of the fundamental particles which make up the universe,” said Xu Donglian, a scientist from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and a member in the program.

“The findings of the neutrino mass hierarchy will help us know more about space and the world, such as the evolution of stars and black holes and also the detailed structure of the Earth core.”

Neutrinos are among the least known particles as they interact only via weak subatomic force and gravity.

They had been believed to be weightless as photons until scientists found in 1998 that they turned from one type to another when flying, a phenomenon called “neutrino oscillation.”

Three types of neutrinos are currently known but many more discoveries await, such as the precise values of their masses, their mass hierarchy and whether they are antiparticles of each other.

In 2014, the Jiangmen neutrino observatory program was launched in Jiangmen City, south China’s Guangdong Province, to examine the remaining problems.

The huge facility is being built 700m underground to avoid interference from cosmic rays.

The space has been excavated and the basic structure built. It will host a spheroidal facility, with a diameter of 35 meters and weighing 20,000 tons.

The “ball” will be assembled with numerous components attached with super acute detectors to catch and analyze neutrinos.

By studying neutrinos sent from the nearby nuclear plants in Yangjiang and Taishan, researchers hope to not only determine the neutrino mass hierarchy, but also measure neutrino oscillations more accurately.

The team will also conduct research in other cutting-edge areas, such as supernova neutrinos, atmospheric neutrinos, solar neutrinos, Earth neutrinos, sterile neutrinos, nuclear decay and detection of dark matter.

“After experiments start in Jiangmen, we will be able to find answers to many key scientific problems, such as the neutrino mass hierarchy and the supernova burst mechanism,” said Wang Yifang.

He is the director of the Jiangmen program and also director of the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

“It will make great contributions to the understanding of micro particle physic laws, cosmology, astrophysics and geophysics,” he said.

Liu Jianglai, another scientist from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and a member in the program, said the United States and Japan were also doing similar research via different approaches, but Jiangmen had the advantage in research of low-energy neutrinos and is set to be the quickest. “We plan to solve the mass hierarchy problem within six years,” he said.

Source: SHINE Editor: Zhang Liuhao






​1:12 model undergoing test in Dec 2018










​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*China’s magnetic field reaches 90T, joins world’s top 3*
(People's Daily Overseas New Media) 16:14, January 16, 2019







_Photo courtesy to Xinhua _​
China has joined the top ranks of the world’s most powerful pulsed magnets with its self-developed 90-tesla pulsed magnet, which features coils that last twice as long and cheaper batteries.

“It took China only four years to transform a 70T magnetic field into 90T one, which was accomplished last December. For comparison, it took the US and Germany 20 years and 15 years, respectively,” said Li Liang, director at Wuhan National High Magnetic Field Center at Huazhong University in central China’s Hubei Province.

While the magnetic field record remains in the hands of the US, which can produce a whopping 100T, the Chinese-designed equipment is believed to hold more advantages and is expected to break new records, experts said.

China created the world’s strongest synthetic fibers by winding multiple layers of polymer fibers, which were soaked in epoxy resin to greatly improve the bearing capacity of its reflective prosperities. The coils used in the US have a life expectancy of 500 times, whereas the Chinese coils can be used 800 times, Science and Technology Daily reported.

“We created the magnet from the scratch and designed a new frame for the battery structure, which consumes 10 times less electricity than the US’ pulsed magnet at peak power,” Li told the newspaper.

The strong magnetic field enables researchers to explore new material properties and stimulate the next generation of electronic materials and chips. For example, in November 2018, a Peking University research team in Wuhan used it to discover log-periodic oscillations in ultra-quantum topological materials.

“The strong magnet not only provides convenience for domestic scientific research, but has also attracted many overseas scholars from universities like Stanford and Cambridge to seek cooperation on research projects,” Li said.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Databank puts info at world's fingertips*
By Zhang Zhihao | China Daily | Updated: 2019-01-16 07:35
















The Chinese Academy of Sciences will release about 5 million gigabytes of data related to Earth sciences, biology and ecology from around globe, allowing scientists and officials worldwide to study and tackle issues in climate change, food security, disaster relief and environmental protection.

The data can be accessed on the CASEarth Databank at data.casearth.cn, which was launched on Tuesday. Around 1.8 million gigabytes of content are remote-sensing data, 2.6 million gigabytes is on biology and ecology, and 0.4 million gigabytes is on the atmosphere and ocean, said Guo Huadong, chief scientist of CASEarth, the academy's Big Earth Data Science Engineering Project.

The databank also includes more than 3.6 million items on China's biosphere, 420,000 items on microbes and 490,000 items on paleontology, Guo said. It will update 3 million gigabytes of data every year, making sure users have the latest and most comprehensive data.

"A data platform like this can help scientists and officials make data-driven discoveries and policy decisions, and promote the integration of different scientific disciplines as well as worldwide collaboration," Guo said.

The databank is one of the latest achievements of the academy's five-year CASEarth project, launched last January, said Zhang Yaping, vice-president of the academy. The project aims to create a world-class interdisciplinary data-sharing platform that can help countries around the world to solve their developmental issues and achieve sustainable growth, he added.

"The openness and sharing of scientific data have been major resources and driving forces for scientific development around the world," said Zhang.

Last year, Chinese scientists discovered a fossilized turtle in southwestern China that lived about 230 million years ago using big data analysis. The roughly 2-meter-long animal, dubbed Eorhynchochelys sinensis, filled an evolutionary hole in how reptiles developed features such as beaks and shells, according to the journal Nature, where the finding was published.

As for government use, the databank can grant officials better insights into economic, social and environmental issues, said He Guojin, a researcher at the academy's Aerospace Information Research Institute.

For example, the databank can keep track of rice sheath blight in a given Chinese province. This allows local officials to quickly identify and deal with the disease, thus minimizing its effect on agricultural production, he said.

The databank also has a wealth of information on natural resources, water flow, climate, population distribution, disaster hot spots and archaeological sites. Countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative can use such information to serve their developmental needs, He said.

Guo, of CASEarth, said these countries might not have the necessary infrastructures to collect or analyze scientific data in the scale or depth China can, "but China is more than happy to share its knowledge and collaborate with other countries to tackle common challenges".

At the same time, through data sharing and analysis, Chinese industries and companies can have a deeper understanding of the potential risks and opportunities of overseas investment, Guo said.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Fever Helps Fight Off Infection by Altering Immune Cells*
Jan 16, 2019 by News Staff / Source

According to a study published in the journal _Immunity_, fever alters surface proteins on immune cells to make them better able to travel via blood vessels to reach the site of infection.



​Fever is an evolutionarily conserved response in both endothermic and ectothermic species and confers survival benefits during infection and injury. Lin _et al_ identify that the Hsp90-a4-integrin axis serves as a thermal sensory pathway that responds to fever to promote T cell trafficking and enhance immune surveillance during infection. Image credit: Lin _et al_, doi: 10.1016/j.immuni.2018.11.013.

To get to an infection, lymphocytes need to adhere to the blood vessel and then transmigrate into the infected tissue or lymph node.

During this step, cell adhesion molecules known as integrins are expressed on the surface of lymphocytes. These molecules control lymphocyte trafficking during inflammation.

“One good thing about fever is that it can promote lymphocyte trafficking to the site of infection, so you will have more immune cells in the infected region that will get rid of the pathogen,” said study senior author Professor JianFeng Chen, a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, China.

Professor Chen and co-authors discovered that fever increases the expression of heat shock protein 90 (Hsp 90) in T lymphocytes.

Hsp 90 binds to a type of integrin on the lymphocytes — α4 integrins — which promote lymphocyte adhesion to the blood vessel and ultimately to expedited migration to the site of infection.

The team found that fever-induced Hsp90 binds to the integrin tail and induces integrin activation.

Moreover, one Hsp90 can bind to two integrins leading to a clustering of integrins on the lymphocyte surface.

As a result, the clustered integrins activate a signaling pathway that promotes lymphocyte transmigration.

“Our findings show that this mechanism not only applies to lymphocytes but also to innate immune cells like monocytes,” Professor Chen said.

“It is a general mechanism that can apply to lots of different immune cells expressing α4 integrins.”

The scientists also used mice in studies of bacterial infection and other fever models to confirm their findings.

“We found Hsp90 can only be induced at a temperature above 38.5 degrees Celsius (101.3 degrees Fahrenheit). The mechanism is targeted and effective, yet reversible,” Professor Chen said.

The researchers also believe other stresses, not just fever, can induce Hsp90 expression.

“That’s why we think that in different situations, such as autoimmune disease and cancer, this Hsp90-α4 integrin pathway may be involved,” Professor Chen said.

“In autoimmune disease, aberrant trafficking of immune cells to different organs or tissues may lead to disease.”

“But if you block this pathway, you can maybe inhibit the trafficking of the immune cells during chronic inflammation or in autoimmune diseases.”

_____

ChangDong Lin _et al_. 2019. Fever Promotes T Lymphocyte Trafficking via a Thermal Sensory Pathway Involving Heat Shock Protein 90 and α4 Integrins. _Immunity_ 50 (1): 137-151; doi: 10.1016/j.immuni.2018.11.013



Fever Helps Fight Off Infection by Altering Immune Cells | Medicine | Sci-News.com

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists produce genetically-enhanced human vascular cells*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-01-18 00:33:44|Editor: yan

WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists produced the world's first genetically-engineered human blood vessel cells, providing a promising option for therapeutic use.

The study published on Thursday in the journal Cell Stem Cell showed that human vascular cell function can be enhanced by editing a single longevity-related gene.

Scientists from the Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Peking University and the Institute of Zoology of CAS targeted a gene called FOXO3, an important regulator to delay cellular aging, resist stresses and enhance cardiovascular balance.

Compared with those of wildtype cells, the genetically-enhanced vascular cells could efficiently promote vascular repair and regeneration, increasing resistance to oxygen-causing injury, according to the study.

The technique can also resist the cells' transformation into tumors. The risk of tumor transformation used to be a major concern for the application of the gene-editing technology.

The researchers tested it in a mouse model with blood-shortage or ischemic injury and found that those cells promoted vascular regeneration and resisted tumor transformation both in vitro and in vivo.

They expected to use gene-editing strategies in the future to produce high-quality, safe human vascular cell grafts in a large-scale and standardized manner.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Collision Resonances between Ultracold Atom and Molecules Visualized for the First Time*
[2019-01-19]

For the first time, a team led by Prof. PAN Jianwei and Prof. ZHAO Bo at the University of Science and Technology of China, have successfully observed scattering resonances between atoms and molecules at ultralow temperatures, shedding light on the quantum nature of atom-molecule interactions that have so far only been discussed in theory. These observations greatly aid in the advancement of ultracold polar molecules and ultracold chemical physics. The new insights inform several other disciplines, such as designing high precision clocks, powerful microscopes, biological compasses and super-powerful quantum computers. 

The field of chemical physics, a subcategory of quantum chemistry, has long been focusing on understanding the interactions of atoms and molecules at their very basic levels. Specifically, the aim has been to elucidate the scattering resonances, a remarkable quantum phenomenon that is expected to be a routine rather than an exception at temperatures near absolute zero. Specific to this research, the focus has been an understanding of scattering resonances of heavy molecules at ultracold temperatures, conditions under which particles move so slowly that one has enough time to both investigate and control their structure and motion with either electric or magnetic fields.

The first-of-its-kind study is published in the journal _Science_ this week. It describes a specific type of interaction between atoms and molecules, namely potassium-40 (40K) atoms and sodium-23-potassium-40 (23Na40K) molecules. This interaction was taking place at ultralow temperatures and was manipulated by a magnetic field. The authors were thereby able to observe the specific scattering resonances, between the aforementioned atoms and molecules, which was so far only theorized.

“The molecules are heavy, and the structure of their energy field is very complex, which may result in a large amount of atom-molecule resonances,” according to ZHAO Bo. “Theory cannot predict the positions of these atom-molecule resonances. In fact, it is unclear whether the atom-molecule resonances at ultracold temperatures are resolvable and observable prior to our work,” he adds. 

The news findings offer knowledge that can be applied to better understand other atom-molecule interactions. The USTC team has devised a tool that can accurately monitor particle behavior so that a plethora of other interactions and dynamics can be visualized rather than theorized. 

In their future endeavors, the team aims to explore even more parameters in order to understand them. “The next step is to measure more resonances and try to understand them. Our hope is to collaborate with theoreticians and find an accurate and predictive model that can understand and predict the atom-molecule scattering at ultralow temperatures. This is the ultimate goal of studying ultracold collisions involving molecules,” according to ZHAO. 

This research was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (grant number: 2018YFA0306502), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number: 11521063), the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Anhui Initiative in Quantum Information Technologies.



Collision Resonances between Ultracold Atom and Molecules Visualized for the First Time | USTC News Center

Huan Yang, De-Chao Zhang, Lan Liu, Ya-Xiong Liu, Jue Nan, Bo Zhao, Jian-Wei Pan. *Observation of magnetically tunable Feshbach resonances in ultracold 23Na40K + 40K collisions*. _Science _(2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aau5322​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Researchers find the trick to molding metal at the nanoscale*
By William Weir
january 22, 2019 




Silver nanorods made with thermomechanical molding, ranging in size from (left to right) 0.57 millimeters, 10 micrometers, 375 nanometers, and 36 nanometers. (Jan Schroers Lab)


Numerous metals and alloys would be ideal for specific nanoscale applications — from solar energy to microelectronics — but accurately molding metals into such miniscule shapes has proved challenging. Researchers, though, have developed a process that allows manufacturers to essentially shape any metal and alloy and replicate even the smallest details.

The labs of Jan Schroers, professor of mechanical engineering & materials science at Yale, and professor Ze Liu of Wuhan University in China developed a method they call thermomechanical nanomolding that allows them to mold crystalline metals into shapes as small as a few nanometers in diameter. The breakthrough, said the researchers, could lead to new technologies in fields such as sensors, batteries, catalysis, biomaterials, and quantum materials. The results are published Jan. 22 in Physical Review Letters.

“It’s really a new way of nanomanufacturing,” Schroers said. “Today’s nanomanufacturing relies on a few materials that can be fabricated very specifically for a particular material. But our discovery suggests one technique for all metals and alloys: It allows us to fabricate essentially every metal and its combination in the periodic table in a predictable and precise manner to nano-sized features.”

Molding crystalline metals, which include most metals in their solid state, has generally posed a challenge for manufacturers, said the researchers. How moldable a material is typically depends on its “flowability” — that is, how easily it flows under certain conditions. Flowability is high in thermoplastics, gels, and glasses, but most metals are too hard when solid and too fluid in their liquid states to mold with conventional techniques at the nanoscale.

But by applying atomic diffusion, in which a change in pressures transports the atoms, the research team found that not only could they efficiently mold crystalline metals, but that decreasing the size of the mold actually made the process easier. As a result, they were able to create very long features at about 10 nanometers in diameter — 8,000 times smaller than a human hair — that would previously have been impossible to make.

Because the mechanism of diffusion is present in all metals and alloys, the process could theoretically be used across the board, said the researchers. To test the wide range of applications, the researchers tried molding gold, nickel, vanadium, iron, and numerous alloys. In each case, they could readily fabricate very small nanorods.



Researchers find the trick to molding metal at the nanoscale | YaleNews

Ze Liu, Guoxing Han, Sungwoo Sohn, Naijia Liu, Jan Schroers. *Nanomolding of Crystalline Metals: The Smaller the Easier*. _Phys. Rev. Lett. _(2019). DOI: 10.1103/physrevlett.122.036101​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

JANUARY 23, 2019
*Gene-edited disease monkeys cloned in China*
by Science China Press




Five Cloned Monkeys from Somatic Cells of a Gene-edited Monkey with Disease Phenotypes Credit: ©Science China Press

The first cohort of five gene-edited monkey clones made from fibroblasts of a monkey with disease phenotypes were born recently at the Institute of Neuroscience (ION) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Shanghai. The expression of BMAL1, a core circadian regulatory transcription factor, was knocked out in the donor monkey using CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene editing at the embryo stage, and the fibroblasts of the donor monkey were used to clone five monkeys using the method of somatic cell nuclear transfer, the same method that generated Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, the first two cloned monkeys, last year. This major advance, reported in two articles in the journal _National Science Review_ on January 24, demonstrates that a population of customized gene-edited macaque monkeys with uniform genetic background will soon be available for biomedical research.

The first article describes the generation of gene-edited donor monkeys using CRISPR-Cas9 to edit the BMAL1 gene of in vitro fertilized monkey embryos. These monkeys exhibited a wide range of circadian disorder phenotypes, including reduced sleep time, elevated night-time locomotive activities, dampened circadian cycling of blood hormones, increased anxiety and depression, as well as schizophrenia-like behaviors. "Disorders of circadian rhythm could lead to many human diseases, including sleep disorders, diabetes mellitus, cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. Our BMAL1 knock-out monkeys could thus be used to study the disease pathogenesis as well as therapeutic treatments," says Hung-Chun Chang, senior author and investigator of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Neuroscience.

The second article describes the cloning of macaque monkeys from the fibroblast of a BMAL1-knockout monkey using the method of somatic cell nuclear transfer. In this method, the researchers removed the nucleus from a monkey oocyte (egg cell) and replaced it with another nucleus from a fibroblast, a differentiated somatic (body) cell. This reconstructed egg then developed into an embryo that carries the genes of the replacement nucleus.

The embryo was then transferred to the womb of a surrogate female monkey that later gave birth to the cloned monkey. In the previous work, Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua were generated by using fibroblasts from an aborted fetus. The present work succeeded in using fibroblasts from a young adult gene-edited donor monkey with disease phenotypes. "Our approach is to perform gene editing in fertilized embryos to first generate a group of gene-edited monkeys, and then select one monkey that exhibits correct gene editing and most severe disease phenotypes as the donor monkey for cloning by somatic cell nuclear transfer," says Qiang Sun, senior author of the paper and director of ION's Nonhuman Primate Research Facility. "We believe that this approach of cloning gene-edited monkeys could be used to generate a variety of monkey models for gene-based diseases, including many brain diseases, as well as immune and metabolic disorders and cancer." The researchers plan to continue improving the technique in order to increase the efficiency of cloning. The group is expecting more macaque clones carrying disease-causing gene mutations to be generated in the coming years.

The Institute of Neuroscience, CAS is following strict international guidelines for animal research. "This work required coordinated efforts of many laboratories, and serves as a clear example of the efficient team work that is highly emphasized by CAS" says Mu-ming Poo, A co-author on both studies, who directs the Institute of Neuroscience and helps to supervise the project. "This line of research will help to reduce the amount of macaque monkeys currently used in biomedical research around the world." "Without the interference of genetic background, a much smaller number of cloned monkeys carrying disease phenotypes may be sufficient for pre-clinical tests of the efficacy of therapeutics," Poo says.

*More information: *

Qiu, P. et al: "BMAL1 knockout macaque monkeys display reduced sleep and psychiatric disorders". _National Science Review_. DOI: 10.1093/nsr/nwz002 , https://academic.oup.com/nsr/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/nsr/nwz002
Liu, Z. et al. "Cloning of a gene-edited macaque monkey by somatic cell nuclear transfer ". _National Science Review_. DOI: 10.1093/nsr/nwz003 , https://academic.oup.com/nsr/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/nsr/nwz003


Gene-edited disease monkeys cloned in China | MedicalXpress

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese airship sets new record in measuring high-altitude vapor*
CGTN
Published on Jan 23, 2019

The second Qinghai-Tibet research mission has set a new record by reaching 6,200 meters for high-altitude water vapor observations. This is the first time in the world that a floating airship has been used to measure water at such high altitudes.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Amazing research by Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2018*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-01-24 20:45:02|Editor: mmm

BEIJING, Jan. 24 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has made many research advances in 2018, from the depths of the ocean, to far beyond the universe. Here are some of the highlights:

1. The CAS accomplished several key tasks for the Chang'e-4 mission. More than 20 critical instruments and materials crucial to Chang'e-4's safe landing, ongoing operation on the lunar surface and scientific exploration were developed.

2. CAS researchers cloned the world's first macaques from somatic cells by the method that made Dolly the sheep. It makes research with customizable populations of genetically uniform monkeys a possibility.

3. GV-971 drug brings hope for Alzheimer's treatment. Sodium oligomannate (GV-971), an innovative, orally administered drug for treating Alzheimer's disease, completed its phase III clinical trial, the last test before reaching the market in July 2018. It is the fruit of a 21-year research effort by a team led by the Ocean University of China, CAS and Green Valley Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.

4. Majorana Bound States in iron-based superconductor was observed. A CAS research team observed Majorana bound states in an iron-based superconductor for the first time -- a major advance for building a future stable, scalable, and fault-tolerant topological quantum computer.

5. China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS) and Wuhan P4 Laboratory were put into service. The CSNS is the country's first and world's fourth pulsed spallation neutron source, and passed national acceptance on Aug. 1, 2018. The Wuhan P4 Laboratory is China's first national biosafety level 4 laboratory, helping the country play a more active role in global public health.

6. The world's first artificial single-chromosome eukaryotic cell were created. Qin Zhongjun, a CAS molecular biologist, together with his collaborators, created the world's first eukaryotic cell containing only a single chromosome.

7. Rice molecular design breeding helps variety upgrade in China. "Zhongke 804," a new rice variety developed by CAS academician Li Jiayang showed excellent performance in 2018. It is outstanding in yield, blast resistance, rice quality, lodging resistance and head-milled rice rate.

8. Eight new satellites joined the Beidou network. Four pairs of Beidou Navigation System satellites manufactured by the CAS were launched into space in 2018. Each pair of satellites was launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center by one rocket into medium Earth orbit.

9. Multiple high-end scientific instruments were developed. A series of high-performance streak cameras were developed by the CAS, a breakthrough in key technologies such as the design of electronic optical systems and the production of high-performance photocathode.

10. The earliest human occupation of the Tibetan Plateau dates to 40,000 years ago. Archaeologists from the CAS reported the oldest and highest early Stone Age archaeological site yet known anywhere in the world in November 2018. The discovery of the Nwya Devu site has yielded the earliest record of human responses to high-altitude challenges and the eventual conquest of the extreme environment.

11. A cold atomic clock in the Tiangong-2 space lab. A cold atomic space clock, developed by the CAS, was launched into space with Tiangong-2. It is the first cold atomic clock in the world operating in orbit and carrying out scientific experiments.

12. Breakthroughs in stem cell and regenerative medicine technology and equipment. Regenerative medicine experts at the CAS and doctors at Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital used human umbilical cord mesenchyme stem cells to rehabilitate a woman's damaged ovary, enabling her to give birth to a healthy boy on Jan. 12, 2018.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*Zhou Huanping's and Yan Chunhua's teams improve the operational stability for perovskite solar cells*
Peking University, Jan. 24, 2019

Long-term stability is the most intractable issue during the commercialization of perovskite solar cells (PSCs). The intrinsic degradation of perovskite materials into Pb0 & I0 defects seriously restricts the long-term durability of PSCs. Researchers from Professor Zhou Huanping’s team in the College of Engineering, PKU and Professor Yan Chunhua’s team in the College of Chemistry & Molecular Engineering proposed a new mechanism to solve this problem.

They introduced Eu3+-Eu2+ ion pair redox shuttle into perovskite layer and achieved selectively oxidation of Pb0 and reduction of I0 defects simultaneously in a cyclical transition. The resultant PSCs achieved substantially improved efficiency and long-term durability. The related paper was published in the world's top academic journal Science on January 18, 2019, entitled “A Eu3+-Eu2+ ion redox shuttle imparts operational durability to Pb-I perovskite solar cells” (doi: 10.1126/science. aau5701).

Converting solar energy into electrical energy directly via solar cells, which is based on photovoltaic effect, is one of the most effective methods for solar energy application. Devices lifetime and power conversion efficiency (PCE) are the two key factors determining the final cost of the electricity that solar cells generate. The certified PCE of perovskite solar cells has rapidly reached 23.7% over the past few years, which surpassed the commercialized Cu(In,Ga)Se2 and polycrystalline silicon solar cells. The solution-processed feature imparts huge cost advantage to PSCs and gains tremendous attentions of worldwide researchers.

However, poor device stability under operating conditions prevents the perovskite photovoltaics from occupying even a tiny market share. The components in organic-inorganic halide perovskite materials including I–, Pb2+, MA+ and FA+ are large and with low valence ions compared with traditional inorganic photovoltaic materials such as silicon (IV group) and Cu(In,Ga)Se2 solar cells (I-III-VI group). These soft ions construct soft crystal lattice prone to deform and vulnerable to various aging stresses including electric field, thermal stress, oxygen, moisture, and ultraviolet (UV) exposure.

According to the researchers, the lifetime of PSCs can be prolonged to some extent by the maturing encapsulation methods. However, some aging stresses cannot be avoided during device operation, including light illumination, electric field, and thermal stress, upon which both I– and Pb2+ in perovskites become chemically reactive to initiate the decomposition. On the one hand, I– is easily oxidized to I0, which not only serves as carrier recombination centers but also initiates chemical chain reactions to accelerate the degradation in perovskite layers. On the other hand, Pb2+ is prone to be reduced to metallic Pb0, which has been widely observed in Pb halide perovskite films. Metallic Pb0 is an important deep-level defect that severely degrades the efficiency of perovskite optoelectronic devices including solar cell, light-emitting diodes, photodetectors. This mild but irreversible degradation, which would be accumulated day by day, might be the most intractable issue for perovskite materials and the biggest obstacle for achieving operational durability of PSCs. It is urgent and essential to solve this fundamental and intrinsic degradation.





_Figure 1. Proposed mechanism diagram of cyclical elimination of Pb0 and I0 defects and regeneration of Eu3+-Eu2+ ion pair redox shuttle_​To solve this intrinsic degradation issue, researchers from Zhou Huanping team, Yan Chunhua team and collaborators proposed a new mechanism and demonstrated constant elimination of Pb0 & I0 defects simultaneously in PSCs over lifetime of PSCs, which leads to exceptional stability improvement and high PCE through incorporation of the ion pair of Eu3+ (f6) ↔ Eu2+ (f7) as the redox shuttle. In this cyclic redox transition, Pb0 defects could be oxidized by Eu3+ (2Eu3+ + Pb0 → 2Eu2+ + Pb2+), while I0 defects could be reduced by Eu2+ (Eu2+ + I0 → Eu3+ + I– ) at same time. The Eu3+-Eu2+ redox shuttle is not consumed during device operation, probably because of its nonvolatility and the suitable redox potential in this cyclic transition. Thus, the champion PCE of the corresponding device was promoted to 21.52% (certified, 20.52%) with negligible current density-voltage (J-V) hysteresis. Devices with the Eu3+-Eu2+ redox shuttle exhibited excellent thermal and light stability. The devices retained 92% and 89% of the peak PCE under 1-sun continuous illumination or heating at 85°C for 1500 hours and 91% of the original stable PCE after maximum power point tracking for 500 hours, respectively. This method provides a universal solution to the inevitable degradation issue of perovskite optoelectronic devices including solar cells, LED, photo-detectors and so on. This concept can also be extended to other inorganic semiconductor materials and devices which face similar instability problems.





_Figure 2: Long-term stability and original performance evolution of PSCs_​
The first author of this paper is Ph.D. candidate, Wang Ligang (2014), co-supervised by Yan group (College of Chemistry) and Zhou group (College of Engineering). The corresponding authors are Professor Zhou Huanping, Professor Yan Chunhua and Professor Sun Lingdong. Collaborators include researchers from Professor Huang Bolong team (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology) and the Chen Qi team (Beijing Institute of Technology). The work was jointly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Ministry of Science and Technology, Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Project, Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Beijing Key Laboratory for Theory and Technology of Advanced Battery Materials.

Edited by: Huang Weijian
Source: College of Engineering



Zhou Huanping's and Yan Chunhua's teams improve the operational stability for perovskite solar cells_Peking University

Ligang Wang, Huanping Zhou, Junnan Hu, Bolong Huang, Mingzi Sun, Bowei Dong, Guanghaojie Zheng, Yuan Huang, Yihua Chen, Liang Li, Ziqi Xu, Nengxu Li, Zheng Liu, Qi Chen, Ling-Dong Sun, Chun-Hua Yan. *A Eu3+-Eu2+ ion redox shuttle imparts operational durability to Pb-I perovskite solar cells*. _Science _(2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aau5701​

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## cirr

25 January 2019

*Battling AI algorithm tested on a quantum computer for first time*





Quantum algorithms may be on the horizon
Colin Anderson Productions/Getty

By Donna Lu

Machine learning is growing ever more sophisticated, thanks to algorithms which pit two artificial intelligences against each other. These algorithms, known as generative adversarial networks (GANs), have already been used to create art, crack encryption codes, and produce uncannily real pictures of faces and animals.

Researchers have now combined GANs with another hot technology: quantum computing. Luyan Sun at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China and his colleagues have created a GAN on a quantum circuit.

*Quantum algorithms*

GANs are formed of two neural networks, the generator …

https://www.newscientist.com/articl...-tested-on-a-quantum-computer-for-first-time/

*清华团队首次实现量子GAN*

新智元

2019-01-28 15:49






量子计算机虽然强大，但应用领域有限。清华叉院孙麓岩团队在超导电路上实现了量子生成对抗网络，精度高达98.8%，这项工作有望证明量子计算机在图像生成等领域超越经典计算机，将是量子机器学习的又一里程碑。

本文来自微信公众号：新智元（ID：AI_era），来源：Science Advances、New Scientist，编辑：金磊、闻菲、张乾

量子机器学习的新里程碑！

清华大学孙麓岩团队提出了“量子版”的生成对抗网络，并且证明了与经典的对应方法相比，具有潜在的“指数级”优势。

最近，孙麓岩团队的研究登上了Science Advances，论文首次介绍了超导量子电路中量子生成对抗学习的原理证明及实验演示。






研究结果表明，经过几轮对抗学习，可以训练一个量子态的发生器，对量子信道模拟器输出的量子数据进行统计复制，并且具有98.8%的高保真度，使得鉴别器无法区分真实数据和生成数据。

值得注意的是，证明“量子霸权”通常被认为需要至少50个量子比特，但该团队的研究使用的系统只有一个量子比特。

首次证明量子计算能利用GAN

生成对抗网络（GAN）由两个神经网络构成，即生成器和鉴别器。

生成器会生成数据，例如人脸图片；鉴别器既可以得到真实数据，也可以得到生成器创建的假数据，而且必须分辨出真假。它俩经过多轮的循环，最终生成器得到了更新，学会了如何产生更为逼真的图像，使得鉴别器无法再区分其真假。


而GAN也是近年来机器学习领域最令人兴奋的突破之一。它在图像、视频生成等各种具有挑战性的任务中表现突出，例如，能够生成无比逼真的人脸照片，以假乱真。






GAN生成的照片

从理论上讲，量子计算机在解决某些问题（如分解大数）方面比普通计算机具有速度优势。

“但就目前的技术水平而言，量子计算机还无法达到这一优势。”孙麓岩说。

研究人员认为，量子计算机上的GAN也可能具有这样的速度优势，但他们仍然需要明确证明这一点。 

于是，利用量子生成器和鉴别器制造出一种量子GAN，成为证明“量子霸权”的又一案例。

量子生成对抗网络QGAN：准确率98.8%

孙麓岩团队实验性地演示了生成对抗网络的量子版本——QGAN，其中输入和输出数据都是量子比特。

生成器G由一个超导电路构成，能够生成一个随机纯量子态的集合ρ，模拟真正的量子数据σ。其中，输入的量子数据由一个数字量子比特信道模拟器随机生成。

鉴别器D则由一个专门衡量相关映射的量子设备构成，能够生成衡量映射的结果M。

接下来的过程就与普通的生成对抗网络（GAN） 一样，生成器G不断生成虚拟数据ρ，然后鉴别器D则不断生成衡量ρ和衡量σ的结果，试图区分ρ 和σ，反过来优化生成器的生成结果，最终致使D无法区分ρ 和 σ。






量子生成对抗网络QGAN的示意图：(a) 量子生成器G和量子鉴别器D，G生成一个模拟量子态ρ，真实量子态σ则由模拟器随机生成；(b) D得到输入数据后，通过衡量机制判断模拟数据ρ 和真实量子态σ 的不同。

研究人员构建的这个量子GAN算法执行示意图如下：

σ 作为原始量子数据，ρ 作为模拟量子态分布，所以是一个概率分布。其中，衡量结果的差异β 和γ 通过FPGA阵列实现。






QGAN算法的实验协议

实验证实了生成器确实能够学会数据量子数据的模式（pattern），并生成几乎与真实量子数据一样的量子态。

不仅如此，研究人员在论文中指出，他们最高能够取得98.8%的准确率。

量子计算机有望在图像生成上实现量子霸权

研究人员得出结论，由于QGAN实验中既不需要量子随机存储设备，也不需要通用量子计算设备或对任何参数进行微调，因此可以认为，在不远的未来，量子设备就能实现可用的、含有噪音的中型量子应用。

什么是“含有噪音的中型量子”？去年，加州理工大学理论物理学家、“量子霸权 ”概念提出者 John Preskill 指出，在实现 50~100 量子比特的中型量子计算机后，人类就可以用其探索更多经典计算机无法探索的研究领域，也将由此迈进一个新的量子技术发展期，他将其称之为“含噪声的中型量子” (Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum, NISQ) 时代。

计算机体系结构顶会 MICRO 2017 的最佳论文奖，授予了这样一项工作，论文提出了一种控制超导量子计算机的微体系结构，首次有机连接了量子软件和硬件，让传统处理器的设计技术能够为量子控制处理器所用。

清华大学的这项实验工作的意义就在于，首次在超导量子电路（属于NISQ设备）上实现了量子GAN，鉴于GAN在图像生成等应用上的强大性能，这有望实现图像生成的“量子霸权”，也即用量子计算机生成图像比经典计算机更快更强。

结合MICRO 2017的最佳论文奖研究，或许能够加速清华大学这项工作实现图像量子霸权。想一想，不是很令人激动吗？

论文地址：

http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaav2761

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 30-JAN-2019
*The 'Batman' in hydrogen fuel cells*
Scientists find way to help fuel cells work better, stay clean in the cold

UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY OF CHINA



​The catalyst developed here shows great potential to thoroughly guard the fuel cell during not only the continuous operation but also during frequent cold-start periods even under extremely cold conditions. *CREDIT: *Junling Lu's research group

In a study published in _Nature_ on January 31st, researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) report advances in the development of hydrogen fuel cells that could increase its application in vehicles, especially in extreme temperatures like cold winters.

Hydrogen is considered one of the most promising clean energy sources of the future. Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles use hydrogen as fuel, which has high energy conversion efficiency, and zero emissions. But the development of hydrogen fuel cells faces many challenges, including the issue of carbon-monoxide (CO) poisoning of the fuel cell electrodes. Currently, hydrogen is mainly derived from such processes as steam reforming of hydrocarbons, such as methanol and natural gas, and water gas shift reaction. The resulting hydrogen usually contains 0.5% to 2% of trace CO. As the "heart" of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, fuel cell electrodes are easily "poisoned" by CO impurity gas, resulting in reduced battery performance and shortened life, which severely hampers the application fuel cells in vehicles.

Earlier research has identified a method, called preferential oxidation in CO in Hydrogen (PROX), as a promising way to on-board remove trace amounts of CO from hydrogen by using catalysts. However, existing PROX catalysts can only work in high temperatures (above room temperature) and within a narrow temperature range, making it impractical for civil applications, such as fuel cell vehicles, that must be reliable even in winter months (Fig. 1).

Now, a USTC team led by Junling Lu, professor at the Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, has designed a new structure of atomically dispersed iron hydroxide on platinum nanoparticles (Fig. 2) to efficiently purify hydrogen fuel over a broad temperature range of 198-380 Kelvin, which is approximately -103oF-224oF or -75oC-107oC. They also found that the material provided a thorough protection of fuel cells against CO poisoning during both frequent cold-starts and continuous operations in extremely cold temperatures.

"These findings might greatly accelerate the arrival of the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle era," said Prof. Lu.

"Our ultimate goal is to develop a cost-effective catalyst with high activity and selectivity that provides continuous on-board fuel cell protection and one that enables complete and 100% selective CO removal in a fuel cell that can be used for broader purposes," Prof. Lu adds.

One referee of the article commented: "When comparing with other catalyst systems reported in the literature, this reverse single-atom catalyst appears the best in terms of activity, selectivity, and stability in CO2-containing streams."



The 'Batman' in hydrogen fuel cells | EurekAlert! Science News

Lina Cao, Wei Liu, Qiquan Luo, Ruoting Yin, Bing Wang, Jonas Weissenrieder, Markus Soldemo, Huan Yan, Yue Lin, Zhihu Sun, Chao Ma, Wenhua Zhang, Si Chen, Hengwei Wang, Qiaoqiao Guan, Tao Yao, Shiqiang Wei, Jinlong Yang & Junling Lu .* Atomically dispersed iron hydroxide anchored on Pt for preferential oxidation of CO in H2*. _Nature _(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0869-5​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 31-JAN-2019
*China launched world's first rocket-deployed weather instruments from unmanned semi-submersible vehicle*
INSTITUTE OF ATMOSPHERIC PHYSICS, CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES



​An unmanned semi-submersible vehicle (USSV) developed by Chinese Academy of Sciences. The photo was taken at the first USSV sea trial in Bohai Bay on 13 June 2017. *CREDIT: *Siping Zheng

For the first time in history, Chinese scientists have launched a rocketsonde -- a rocket designed to perform weather observations in areas beyond the range of weather balloons -- from an unmanned semi-submersible vehicle (USSV) that has been solely designed and specially developed by China for this task.

The results of initial sea trials conducted in 2018 were published in _Advances in Atmospheric Sciences _on 31 Jan 2019.

Obtaining accurate meteorological and oceanographic (METOC) data requires conducting ocean-based meteorological and oceanographic sampling of an extensive marine environment that covers nearly three-quarters of the Earth's surface. Traditionally this has been achieved by using ocean-based observation platforms such as ships and buoys, as well as satellites and aircraft. However, because these methods are expensive and/or logistically impractical to deploy over a wide -- and often environmentally hostile -- area, the data collected is patchy and therefore unreliable for marine and meteorological research.

According to lead author, Hongbin Chen, a professor of atmospheric and marine science at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, radiosonde (a battery-powered telemetry instrument carried into the atmosphere usually by a weather balloon that records meteorological measurements and transmits them via radio to a ground receiver) is currently the principal method used to obtain the vertical distribution of meteorological data within the atmosphere, but the number of upper air sounding stations in the ocean is limited compared to land sites. Although both dropsonde weather balloons which are deployed from aircraft and record atmospheric data as they drop down to Earth, and driftsonde weather balloons containing meteorological instruments enclosed in a gondola --which depending on the pressure of the balloon, are capable of drifting in the stratosphere anywhere from five days to a few weeks or even months -- are routinely used over the ocean, these cannot meet the needs of marine weather (such as typhoon and fog) research, numerical prediction, marine atmospheric boundary layer (MABL) modeling and marine satellite product validation.

"Launched from a long-duration unmanned semi-submersible vehicle, with strong mobility and large coverage of the sea area, rocketsonde (meteorological rockets that are capable of launching weather instruments up to 8,000 meters into the atmosphere) can be used under severe sea conditions and will be more economical and applicable in the future," says Chen.

"The unmanned semi-submersible vehicle is an ideal platform for marine meteorological environmental monitoring, and the atmospheric profile information provided by rocketsonde launched from this platform can improve the accuracy of numerical weather forecasts at sea and in coastal zones," explains study co-author Dr Jun Li, a researcher at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, CAS. "Similar to Argo (the broad-scale global array of profiling floats that measures temperature/salinity in the ocean) which provides profiles of Thermohaline current, rocketsonde can provide profiles of atmospheric temperature, humidity, pressure and wind observations."

In the future the researchers plan to use unmanned semi-submersible vehicles to provide a network of observations at sea that will extend weather sounding data over the ocean similar to that of the sounding network on land, says Chen, adding that they expect the unmanned semi-submersible vehicle observation network to provide three-dimensional observations of the internal structure of typhoons/hurricanes and to improve our ability to predict changes in a typhoons path or intensity.

"We are currently developing a new generation of USSVs which can carry various sensors relevant to marine science, including conductivity-temperature-depth, acoustic Doppler current profiler, and motion sensors to provide vertical profiles of the conductivity, water temperature, current velocity, and wave height and direction," says Chen. "With that, a new interconnected USSV meteorological and oceanographic (METOC) observation network system will be developed to improve the efficiency of collecting METOC observations and provide comprehensive data at the temporal and spatial scales required to answer relevant scientific questions."

By developing specially equipped USSVs that can record marine meteorological data in real-time over a wide area of the ocean that previously went largely unmonitored, the researchers hope to be able to fill some of the current meteorological and oceanographic data gaps, providing more robust data that will in turn help scientists to better predict and monitor weather events and oceanographic phenomena.



China launched world's first rocket-deployed weather instruments from unmanned semi-submersible vehicle | EurekAlert! Science News

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *China's High Energy Photon Source Feasibility Study Report Approved*
> Jan 11, 2019
> 
> China's High Energy Photon Source (HEPS) project moved one step closer to reality with approval of the HEPS Feasibility Study Report by the National Development and Reform Commission, China' s top economic planning body, on Dec. 28, 2018.
> 
> HEPS will be one of the core facilities of Huairou Science City, located in Beijing's suburban Huairou District.
> 
> It will have a beam energy of 6 GeV and an ultra-low emittance ring-based synchrotron radiation light source, allowing China to join an elite global group of high energy synchrotron radiation light sources. It will offer strong support for research fields related to domestic needs and lead to revolutionary innovation in various industries.
> 
> Construction is expected to begin in 2019 and take 6.5 years. During Phase I, 14 beamlines, the accelerator and some other auxiliary buildings will be built.
> 
> The project was originally proposed in 2008 and listed as one of China' s large research infrastructure projects in the country' s 13th Five-year Plan in 2016.
> 
> 
> 
> Synchrotron radiation facilities are indispensable in numerous frontier research areas. The HEPS is a kilometer-scale, 6 GeV, ultralow- emittance storage-ring-based light source, planned to be built in Beijing. (Image by Institute of High Energy Physics of Chinese Academy of Sciences)
> *
> 
> *
> China's High Energy Photon Source Feasibility Study Report Approved---Chinese Academy of Sciences


*'World's brightest light' project expected to start mid 2019*
2019-02-01 16:14:04Ecns.cnEditor : Mo Hong'e



A video demonstration shows how the world's brightest synchrotron radiation light takes place. (Photo/Screenshot of CNS Video)

(ECNS) -- A project to build the world's brightest synchrotron radiation light source has passed review by national authorities, said the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) of Chinese Academy of Sciences on Thursday.

Construction of the facility will start in middle of this year at Science and Technology Town located in Beijing's suburban Huairou District, and will be finished in six and a half years.

With an investment of 320 million yuan ($48 million), the Test Facility of High Energy Photon Source (HEPS-TF), the first R&D phase before construction of the facility, is expected to produce X-rays up to 300 keV in photon energy.

A synchrotron radiation light source uses electron-magnetic radiation usually produced by a storage ring.

The first phase will consist of accelerator chains, 14 beamlines and other auxiliary facilities. 

To generate light of extreme brilliance, electrons will be accelerated nearly to the speed of light in several stages and forced to travel in a closed path.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 6-FEB-2019
*Nullifying protein YTHDF1 enhances anti-tumor response*
Power of cancer immunotherapy expanded by improved antigen presentation

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO MEDICAL CENTER

Cancer immunotherapy--an approach that removes the barriers that protect cancer cells from a patient's immune system--has revolutionized the treatment of many cancer types. About 40 percent of melanoma patients, for example, respond to immunotherapy, enabling the immune system's T cells to attack cancer cells and take control of the disease.

In a study published in the February 6, 2019 issue of _Nature_, a University of Chicago-based team working in collaboration with scientists at Tsinghua University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, demonstrates, in mice, that they can boost the tumor control rate from around 40 percent up to nearly 100 percent by opening up a parallel pathway.

This study, "Anti-tumor immunity controlled through mRNA m6A methylation and YTHDF1 in dendritic cells," relies on manipulating these cells, which are a crucial component of the immune system. The primary function of dendritic cells is to process antigens and present them to T cells. They act as messengers, connecting the innate and the adaptive immune systems.

But a protein known as YTHDF1 influences antigen processing by dendritic cells. This protein was discovered and characterized in 2015 by Chuan He, PhD, the John T. Wilson Distinguished Service Professor in chemistry, biochemistry and molecular biology, and the Institute for Biophysical Dynamics at the University of Chicago. YTHDF1 controls the level of proteases that destroy potential tumor antigens. This limits their presentation to T cells.

These limits were a problem, He said. But when he and his colleagues eliminated YTHDF1, the dendritic cells increased their ability to engulf peptides, degrade them and present them to T cells. This opened up a new and potentially effective approach to treatment of cancer in patients who do not respond well to checkpoint inhibitors.

"Once we combined YTHDF1 knock-out with the checkpoint inhibitor anti PD-L1, we got almost complete tumor control in a mouse model," He said. Instead of a 40 percent response, nearly 100 percent of treated mice with melanoma responded to anti-PD-L1.

The researchers confirmed that dendritic cells from mice that lacked YTHDF1 were more effective at antigen-presentation than dendritic cells from normal, wild-type mice. "Our data show that loss of YTHDF1 in dendritic cells attenuates antigen degradation and leads to improved cross-presentation and better cross-priming of CD8+ T cells," according to co- corresponding author Dali Han, PhD, now at the Beijing Institute of Genomics.

Together with gastroenterologist Marc Bissonnette, MD, associate professor of medicine at the University of Chicago, He's team performed an additional test using biopsies from human patients with colon cancer, a disease that is much less responsive to immunotherapy than melanoma. They found that tissue from patients with high levels of YTHDF1 had limited T cell infiltration, but patients with low levels of YTHDF1 had more T cell infiltrates. "This suggests that humans correlate nicely with our mouse data," He added.

"An important question in cancer treatment is 'how could we get better antigen presentation?'" according to co-author Ralph Weichselbaum, MD, the Daniel K. Ludwig Distinguished Service Professor and chairman of radiation oncology at the University of Chicago. "This study opens a lot of doors," he said. "It provides a whole new set of targets to the immune system, ranging from new sets of antigens to potential anti-cancer vaccines. This is the type of cross-divisional, interdisciplinary collaboration that could lead to unexpected discoveries."

This supports the notion that reduced YTHDF1 often coincides with the T cell inflamed tumor microenvironment, which is crucial for successful immunotherapy, the authors note. YTHDF1 could be a therapeutic target for immunotherapy in combination with emerging checkpoint inhibitors or dendritic cell vaccines.

"It will be really interesting to test how the human system works with potential dendritic cell vaccines or small molecule inhibitors that can suppress the activity of YTHDF1 in human cancer patients," according to corresponding author Meng Michelle Xu, PhD, a former member of the He and Weichselbaum laboratories.

"We have not yet seen any measurable toxicity, as far as we can tell, related to knocking down YTHDF1 in mice," He added. "At this point, this appears to be a very benign system. We hope to begin early testing in patients within one year."

###​
The National Key Research and Development Program of China, the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Institutes of Health, The Ludwig Center at the University of Chicago, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the National Science Fund for Excellent Young Scholars, the Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars of China, and the National Science Foundation. Additional authors include Jun Liu, Chuanyuan Chen, Lihui Dong, Yi Liu, Renbao Chang, Xiaona Huang, Yuanyuan Liu, Jianying Wang, Bin Shen, Urszula Dougherty and Marc Bissonnette.



Nullifying protein YTHDF1 enhances anti-tumor response | EurekAlert! Science News

Dali Han, Jun Liu, Chuanyuan Chen, Lihui Dong, Yi Liu, Renbao Chang, Xiaona Huang, Yuanyuan Liu, Jianying Wang, Urszula Dougherty, Marc B. Bissonnette, Bin Shen, Ralph R. Weichselbaum, Meng Michelle Xu & Chuan He. *Anti-tumour immunity controlled through mRNA m6A methylation and YTHDF1 in dendritic cells*. _Nature _(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-0916-x​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Viewpoint: A Metamaterial for Superscattering Light*
Yongmin Liu, Departments of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA
February 11, 2019• _Physics_ 12, 14

A team has engineered a subwavelength structure that features a greatly enhanced capacity to scatter microwave light.



​APS/Alan Stonebraker​Figure 1: Sketch of the superscatterer engineered by Chen, Zhang, and co-workers—a cylinder made of three concentric cylindrical metasurfaces separated by dielectric materials.

Light scattering is a common optical phenomenon, much like reflection, refraction, and absorption. Small molecules in the atmosphere scatter sunlight more efficiently at the shorter wavelengths of the solar spectrum, giving the sky its blue color on a clear day. And larger vapor droplets scatter light over the entire visible spectrum, lending clouds their white appearance. In general, the intensity and direction of the scattered light depend on its wavelength and on the characteristics of the scatterer—such as size, geometry, and refractive index. Researchers have tuned these characteristics to engineer structures that scatter light in specific—and often surprising—ways. Schemes for diminished scattering, or “cloaking,” have been proposed or realized [1, 2], as have schemes that selectively enhance scattering in a desired direction [3–5]. Now, a team led by Hongsheng Chen at Zhejiang University, China, and Baile Zhang at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, has designed a subwavelength-sized structure whose ability to scatter light is greatly enhanced, providing the first experimental demonstration of the so-called superscattering effect [6]. This phenomenon could be harnessed for a variety of applications, from boosting the efficiency of antennas and energy-harvesting devices to improving the resolution of imaging schemes.


_Continue reading -> _Physics - Viewpoint: A Metamaterial for Superscattering Light

*Experimental Observation of Superscattering*
Chao Qian, Xiao Lin, Yi Yang, Xiaoyan Xiong, Huaping Wang, Erping Li, Ido Kaminer, Baile Zhang, and Hongsheng Chen
Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 063901 (2019)
Published February 11, 2019​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *China’s first spallation neutron source goes into operation*
> By Guo Meiping
> 2018-08-24 11:56 GMT+8
> 
> 
> 
> China's first spallation neutron source (SNS) has officially begun operating on Thursday, making the country the fourth in the world to possess such a facility.
> 
> The China Spallation Neutron Source, or CSNS, is considered a “super microscope” that can provide the most intense pulsed neutron beams for scientific research.
> 
> The equipment can accelerate protons before smashing them into a target to produce neutrons. The neutrons are then sent to numerous instruments that are used by researchers to study materials.
> 
> The “super microscope” is ideal for studying the microstructure of materials, said Chen Hesheng, manager of the CSNS project.
> 
> Chen added that the CSNS can be used for researching residual stress of large metal parts, which is vital for improving the performances of key parts of high-speed trains, aircraft engines, and nuclear power plants.
> 
> 
> 
> An aerial view of the CSNS. /VCG Photo
> 
> The CSNS consists of a powerful linear proton accelerator, a rapid circling synchrotron, a target station and three neutron instruments.
> 
> More than 90 percent of the equipment was based on independent research and development and can be domestically produced.
> 
> Construction of the CSNS project in China started in 2011 in Dongguan City, south China's Guangdong Province, with a total investment of around 2.3 billion yuan (364 million US dollars).
> 
> As one of the largest science and technology infrastructure projects in China, the equipment is expected to have positive effects in promoting the sciences, high-tech development, and national security.
> 
> [Top image via VCG]
> 
> (With input from Xinhua.)


*CSNS Beam Power Reaches 50 kW---Chinese Academy of Sciences*
Feb 11, 2019

The China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS) operated smoothly at a beam power of more than 50kW on Jan. 29, marking another significant milestone for the facility.

The important achievement came less than six months after the facility went into full operation. Based on this breakthrough, scientists are expecting to meet the facility's design goal of 100kW much sooner than originally planned.

Increasing beam power for high-intensity accelerators always requires patience. Based on the experience of other facilities, designers had projected it would take three years after beam commissioning to be able to achieve the beam's design parameters. Therefore, the original plan was to reach the design goal of 100 kW by August 2021, three years after CSNS started full operation.

As the first spallation neutron source in China, CSNS decided to speed up the plan in order to meet users' needs for high neutron flux. The CSNS accelerator team has put much effort into increasing beam power. Each hardware system was stable and reliable during the whole month of January, with the facility's efficiency for user experiments exceeding 93%.

Good beam loss control is one of the key factors in increasing beam power for high-intensity accelerators. After fine-tuning and optimization, uncontrollable beam loss is lower when operating at 50kW than at 20kW, which means uncontrollable beam loss does not increase with increasing beam power.

Measurements of accelerator parts in the tunnel showed that induced radioactivity was much lower than the dose limit required for manual maintenance, thus strongly proving that CSNS's operation is smooth, safe and reliable even at high beam power.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Antenna Protein Structure Reveals the Basis of Efficient Blue-green Light Harvesting and Photoprotection in Diatoms*
Jan 31, 2019

Diatoms are abundant photosynthetic organisms in aquatic environments; they contribute 20% of global primary productivity. Their fucoxanthin (Fx) chlorophyll (Chl) a/c-binding proteins (FCPs) have exceptional light harvesting and photoprotection capabilities. However, the structure of the FCP proteins and arrangement of pigments within them remain unknown.

A research team from the Key Laboratory of Photobiology, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, solved the crystal structure of an FCP protein from a marine pennate diatom _Phaeodactylum tricornutum._ 

The study, entitled "Structural basis for blue-green light harvesting and energy dissipation in diatoms," is published in _Science_ on February 8, 2019.

The FCP membrane-protein was purified as a homodimer from P. tricornutum and crystallized. The structure was solved by X-ray diffraction at a resolution of 1.8 angstrom, which showed that each FCP monomer contains seven Chls a, two Chls c, seven Fxs, one diadinoxanthin (Ddx), two calcium cations and several lipid molecules.

Compared with light harvesting antennas from higher plants and green algae, the number of Chls is much less, whereas that of Fxs is much larger in the FCP, resulting in a much higher Fx/Chl ratio.

These features, together with the unique arrangement of pigments uncovered, indicates fast energy coupling of Chl c not only with Chl a but also with Fx.

Furthermore, each Fx is surrounded by one or more Chls, providing a basis for efficient energy transfer between them and also efficient dissipation of excess energy under high light conditions.

The binding environment of the two end groups of each Fx showed different hydrophilicities within the protein scaffold, suggesting differences in their preferred absorption region of the blue-green light.

One Ddx molecule was assigned to a position close to the monomer-monomer interface with a weak electron density, suggesting its easy dissociation from the apoprotein and possible involvement in the Ddx-deepoxidation cycle that functions in excess energy dissipation.

"The network of specific pigments demonstrated by the first and high-resolution FCP structure reveals a solid basis for blue-green light harvesting and super photochemical quenching in diatoms," said Prof. SHEN Jianren, a corresponding author of this study.

"This research provides a new model for theoretical simulations of photosynthetic energy trapping and transfer, and may also aid in designing photosynthetic organisms with enhanced light-harvesting and photoprotection capabilities," said SHEN.



The crystals of FCP in an orange-brown color (left upside) and the structure of the FCP protein embedded in the thylakoid membrane of diatoms (middle) (Image by SHEN Jianren) 



Antenna Protein Structure Reveals the Basis of Efficient Blue-green Light Harvesting and Photoprotection in Diatoms---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Wenda Wang, Long-Jiang Yu, Caizhe Xu, Takashi Tomizaki, Songhao Zhao, Yasufumi Umena, Xiaobo Chen, Xiaochun Qin, Yueyong Xin, Michihiro Suga, Guangye Han, Tingyun Kuang, Jian-Ren Shen. *Structural basis for blue-green light harvesting and energy dissipation in diatoms*. _Science _(2019). DOI: 0.1126/science.aav0365​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## 055_destroyer

*AI system spots childhood disease like a doctor*



PARIS: An artificial intelligence (AI) programme developed in China that combs through test results, health records and even handwritten notes diagnosed childhood diseases as accurately as doctors, researchers said Monday (Feb 12).

From the flu and asthma to life-threatening pneumonia and meningitis, the system consistently matched or out-performed primary care paediatricians, they reported in Nature Medicine.


Dozens of studies in recent months have detailed how AI is revolutionising the detection of diseases including cancers, genetic disorders and Alzheimer's.

AI-based technology learns and improves in a way similar to humans, but has virtually unlimited capacity for data processing and storage.

"I believe that it will be able to perform most of the jobs a doctor does," senior author Kang Zhang, a researcher at the University of California, San Diego, told AFP.

"But AI will never replace a doctor," he added, comparing the relationship to an autonomous car that remains under the supervision of a human driver.


Advertisement
"It will simply allow doctors to do a better job in less time and at lower costs."

The new technology, said Zhang, is the first in which AI absorbs unstructured data and "natural language" to imitate the process by which a physician figures out what's wrong with a patient.

"It can mimic a human paediatrician to interpret and integrate all types of medical data - patient complaints, medical history, blood and imaging tests - to make a diagnosis," he said.

The system can be easily transferred to other languages and settings, he added.

By comparing hundreds of bits of information about a single patient with a vast store of acquired knowledge, the technology unearths links that previous statistical methods - and sometimes flesh-and-blood doctors - overlook.

*IN THE NICK OF TIME*

To train the proof-of-concept system, Zhang and a team of 70 scientists injected more than 100 million data points from 1.3 million pediatrics patient visits at a major referral centre in Guangzhou, China.

The AI programme diagnosed respiratory infections and sinusitis - a common sinus infection - with 95 per cent accuracy.

More surprising, Kang said, it did as well with less common diseases: acute asthma (97 per cent), bacterial meningitis and varicella (93 per cent), and mononucleosis (90 per cent).

Such technologies may be coming in just the nick of time.

"The range of diseases, diagnostic testing and options for treatment has increased exponentially in recent years, rendering the decision-making process for physicians more complicated," Nature noted in a press release.

Experts not involved in the research said the study is further proof of AI's expanding role in medicine.

"The work has the potential to improve healthcare by assisting the clinician in making rapid and accurate diagnoses," said Duc Pham, a professor of engineering at the University of Birmingham.

"The results show that, on average, the system performed better than junior doctors."

"But it will not replace clinicians," he added.

Machine learning - which forms general rules from specific training examples - "cannot guarantee 100 per cent correct results, no matter how many training examples they use."

AI-based tools for diagnosis abound, especially for interpreting machine-generated images such as MRI and CAT scans.

A method unveiled last month in the United States to detect lesions that can lead to cervical cancer found pre-cancerous cells with 91 per cent accuracy, compared to 69 per cent for physical exams performed by doctors and 71 per cent for conventional lab tests.

Likewise, a cellphone app based on AI technology out-performed experienced dermatologists in distinguishing potentially cancerous skin lesions from benign ones, according to a study in the Annals of Oncology.


Read more at https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/health/ai-system-spots-childhood-disease-like-a-doctor-11231904

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Researchers create ultra-lightweight ceramic material that can better withstand extreme temperatures*
*UCLA-led team develops highly durable aerogel that could ultimately be an upgrade for insulation on spacecraft*

Matthew Chin | February 14, 2019



Xiangfeng Duan and Xiang Xu/UCLA
The new ceramic aerogel is so lightweight that it can rest on a flower without damaging it.

UCLA researchers and collaborators at eight other research institutions have created an extremely light, very durable ceramic aerogel. The material could be used for applications like insulating spacecraft because it can withstand the intense heat and severe temperature changes that space missions endure.

Ceramic aerogels have been used to insulate industrial equipment since the 1990s, and they have been used to insulate scientific equipment on NASA’s Mars rover missions. But the new version is much more durable after exposure to extreme heat and repeated temperature spikes, and much lighter. Its unique atomic composition and microscopic structure also make it unusually elastic.

When it’s heated, the material contracts rather than expanding like other ceramics do. It also contracts perpendicularly to the direction that it’s compressed — imagine pressing a tennis ball on a table and having the center of the ball move inward rather than expanding out — the opposite of how most materials react when compressed. As a result, the material is far more flexible and less brittle than current state-of-the-art ceramic aerogels: It can be compressed to 5 percent of its original volume and fully recover, while other existing aerogels can be compressed to only about 20 percent and then fully recover.

The research, which was published today in Science, was led by Xiangfeng Duan, a UCLA professor of chemistry and biochemistry; Yu Huang, a UCLA professor of materials science and engineering; and Hui Li of Harbin Institute of Technology, China. The study’s first authors are Xiang Xu, a visiting postdoctoral fellow in chemistry at UCLA from Harbin Institute of Technology; Qiangqiang Zhang of Lanzhou University; and Menglong Hao of UC Berkeley and Southeast University.

Other members of the research team were from UC Berkeley; Purdue University; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Hunan University, China; Lanzhou University, China; and King Saud University, Saudi Arabia.

Despite the fact that more than 99 percent of their volume is air, aerogels are solid and structurally very strong for their weight. They can be made from many types of materials, including ceramics, carbon or metal oxides. Compared with other insulators, ceramic-based aerogels are superior in blocking extreme temperatures, and they have ultralow density and are highly resistant to fire and corrosion — all qualities that lend themselves well to reusable spacecraft.

But current ceramic aerogels are highly brittle and tend to fracture after repeated exposure to extreme heat and dramatic temperature swings, both of which are common in space travel.

The new material is made of thin layers of boron nitride, a ceramic, with atoms that are connected in hexagon patterns, like chicken wire.

In the UCLA-led research, it withstood conditions that would typically fracture other aerogels. It stood up to hundreds of exposures to sudden and extreme temperature spikes when the engineers raised and lowered the temperature in a testing container between minus 198 degrees Celsius and 900 degrees above zero over just a few seconds. In another test, it lost less than 1 percent of its mechanical strength after being stored for one week at 1,400 degrees Celsius.

“The key to the durability of our new ceramic aerogel is its unique architecture,” Duan said. “Its innate flexibility helps it take the pounding from extreme heat and temperature shocks that would cause other ceramic aerogels to fail.”



Oszie Tarula/UCLA
Breath mint-sized samples of the ceramic aerogels developed by a UCLA-led research team. The material is 99 percent air by volume, making it super lightweight.

Ordinary ceramic materials usually expand when heated and contract when they are cooled. Over time, those repeated temperature changes can lead those materials to fracture and ultimately fail. The new aerogel was designed to be more durable by doing just the opposite — it contracts rather than expanding when heated.

In addition, the aerogel’s ability to contract perpendicularly to the direction that it’s being compressed — like the tennis ball example — help it survive repeated and rapid temperature changes. (That property is known as a negative Poisson’s ratio.) It also has interior “walls” that are reinforced with a double-pane structure, which cuts down the material’s weight while increasing its insulating abilities.

Duan said the process researchers developed to make the new aerogel also could be adapted to make other ultra-lightweight materials.

“Those materials could be useful for thermal insulation in spacecraft, automobiles or other specialized equipment,” he said. “They could also be useful for thermal energy storage, catalysis or filtration.”

The research was partly supported by grants from the National Science Foundation.



Researchers create ultra-lightweight ceramic material that can better withstand extreme temperatures | UCLA

Xiang Xu, Qiangqiang Zhang, Menglong Hao, Yuan Hu, Zhaoyang Lin, Lele Peng, Tao Wang, Xuexin Ren, Chen Wang, Zipeng Zhao, Chengzhang Wan, Huilong Fei, Lei Wang, Jian Zhu, Hongtao Sun, Wenli Chen, Tao Du, Biwei Deng, Gary J. Cheng, Imran Shakir, Chris Dames, Timothy S. Fisher, Xiang Zhang, Hui Li, Yu Huang, Xiangfeng Duan. *Double-negative-index ceramic aerogels for thermal superinsulation*. _Science _(2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aav7304​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Massive 1994 Bolivian earthquake reveals mountains 660 kilometers below our feet*
Liz Fuller-Wright, Office of Communications
Feb. 14, 2019 2 p.m.

*Most schoolchildren learn that the Earth has three (or four) layers: a crust, mantle and core, which is sometimes subdivided into an inner and outer core. That’s not wrong, but it does leave out several other layers that scientists have identified within the Earth, including the transition zone within the mantle.*





Princeton seismologist Jessica Irving worked with then-graduate student Wenbo Wu and another collaborator to determine the roughness at the top and bottom of the transition zone, a layer within the mantle, using scattered earthquake waves. They found that the top of the transition zone, a layer located 410 kilometers down, is mostly smooth, but the base of the transition zone, 660 km down, in some places is much rougher than the global surface average. “In other words, stronger topography than the Rocky Mountains or the Appalachians is present at the 660-km boundary,” said Wu. NOTE: This graphic is not to scale.
Image by Kyle McKernan, Office of Communications

In a study published this week in Science, Princeton geophysicists Jessica Irving and Wenbo Wu, in collaboration with Sidao Ni from the Institute of Geodesy and Geophysics in China, used data from an enormous earthquake in Bolivia to find mountains and other topography on the base of the transition zone, a layer 660 kilometers (410 miles) straight down that separates the upper and lower mantle. (Lacking a formal name for this layer, the researchers simply call it “the 660-km boundary.”)

To peer deep into the Earth, scientists use the most powerful waves on the planet, which are generated by massive earthquakes. “You want a big, deep earthquake to get the whole planet to shake,” said Irving, an assistant professor of geosciences.

Big earthquakes are vastly more powerful than small ones — energy increases 30-fold with every step up the Richter scale — and deep earthquakes, “instead of frittering away their energy in the crust, can get the whole mantle going,” Irving said. She gets her best data from earthquakes that are magnitude 7.0 or higher, she said, as the shockwaves they send out in all directions can travel through the core to the other side of the planet — and back again. For this study, the key data came from waves picked up after a magnitude 8.2 earthquake — the second-largest deep earthquake ever recorded — that shook Bolivia in 1994.

“Earthquakes this big don’t come along very often,” she said. “We’re lucky now that we have so many more seismometers than we did even 20 years ago. Seismology is a different field than it was 20 years ago, between instruments and computational resources.”

Seismologists and data scientists use powerful computers, including Princeton’s Tiger supercomputer cluster, to simulate the complicated behavior of scattering waves in the deep Earth.

The technology depends on a fundamental property of waves: their ability to bend and bounce. Just as light waves can bounce (reflect) off a mirror or bend (refract) when passing through a prism, earthquake waves travel straight through homogenous rocks but reflect or refract when they encounter any boundary or roughness.

“We know that almost all objects have surface roughness and therefore scatter light,” said Wu, the lead author on the new paper, who just completed his geosciences Ph.D. and is now a postdoctoral researcher at the California Institute of Technology. “That’s why we can see these objects — the scattering waves carry the information about the surface’s roughness. In this study, we investigated scattered seismic waves traveling inside the Earth to constrain the roughness of the Earth’s 660-km boundary.”

The researchers were surprised by just how rough that boundary is — rougher than the surface layer that we all live on. “In other words, stronger topography than the Rocky Mountains or the Appalachians is present at the 660-km boundary,” said Wu. Their statistical model didn’t allow for precise height determinations, but there’s a chance that these mountains are bigger than anything on the surface of the Earth. The roughness wasn’t equally distributed, either; just as the crust’s surface has smooth ocean floors and massive mountains, the 660-km boundary has rough areas and smooth patches. The researchers also examined a layer 410 kilometers (255 miles) down, at the top of the mid-mantle “transition zone,” and they did not find similar roughness.

“They find that Earth’s deep layers are just as complicated as what we observe at the surface,” said seismologist Christine Houser, an assistant professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology who was not involved in this research. “To find 2-mile (1-3 km) elevation changes on a boundary that is over 400 miles (660 km) deep using waves that travel through the entire Earth and back is an inspiring feat. … Their findings suggest that as earthquakes occur and seismic instruments become more sophisticated and expand into new areas, we will continue to detect new small-scale signals which reveal new properties of Earth’s layers.”



Seismologist Jessica Irving, an assistant professor of geosciences, sits with two meteorites from Princeton University’s collection that contain iron thought to come from the interiors of planetesimals. Irving uses seismology to investigate the interior of our own planet, recently finding mountain-sized topographic roughness on the 660-km boundary at the base of the mantle’s transition zone.
Photo by Denise Applewhite, Office of Communications

*What it means*
The presence of roughness on the 660-km boundary has significant implications for understanding how our planet formed and continues to function. That layer divides the mantle, which makes up about 84 percent of the Earth’s volume, into its upper and lower sections. For years, geoscientists have debated just how important that boundary is. In particular, they have investigated how heat travels through the mantle — whether hot rocks are carried smoothly from the core-mantle boundary (almost 2,000 miles down) all the way up to the top of the mantle, or whether that transfer is interrupted at this layer. Some geochemical and mineralogical evidence suggests that the upper and lower mantle are chemically different, which supports the idea that the two sections don’t mix thermally or physically. Other observations suggest no chemical difference between the upper and lower mantle, leading some to argue for what’s called a “well-mixed mantle,” with both the upper and lower mantle participating in the same heat-transfer cycle.

“Our findings provide insight into this question,” said Wu. Their data suggests that both groups might be partially right. The smoother areas of the 660-km boundary could result from more thorough vertical mixing, while the rougher, mountainous areas may have formed where the upper and lower mantle don’t mix as well.

In addition, the roughness the researchers found, which existed at large, moderate and small scales, could theoretically be caused by heat anomalies or chemical heterogeneities. But because of how heat in transported within the mantle, Wu explained, any small-scale thermal anomaly would be smoothed out within a few million years. That leaves only chemical differences to explain the small-scale roughness they found.

What could cause significant chemical differences? The introduction of rocks that used to belong to the crust, now resting quietly in the mantle. Scientists have long debated the fate of the slabs of sea floor that get pushed into the mantle at subduction zones, the collisions happening found all around the Pacific Ocean and elsewhere around the world. Wu and Irving suggest that remnants of these slabs may now be just above or just below the 660-km boundary.

“It’s easy to assume, given we can only detect seismic waves traveling through the Earth in its current state, that seismologists can’t help understand how Earth’s interior has changed over the past 4.5 billion years,” said Irving. “What’s exciting about these results is that they give us new information to understand the fate of ancient tectonic plates which have descended into the mantle, and where ancient mantle material might still reside.”

She added: “Seismology is most exciting when it lets us better understand our planet’s interior in both space and time.”

_“Inferring Earth’s discontinuous chemical layering from the 660-kilometer boundary topography,” by Wenbo Wu, Sidao Ni and Jessica Irving, appears in the Feb. 15 issue of the journal Science. The research was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program, grant 2014CB845901), the Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant XDB18000000), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant 41590854), and the National Science Foundation (grants EAR1644399 and 1736046).


_
Massive 1994 Bolivian earthquake reveals mountains 660 kilometers below our feet | Princeton University

Wenbo Wu, Sidao Ni, Jessica C. E. Irving. *Inferring Earth’s discontinuous chemical layering from the 660-kilometer boundary topography*. _Science _(2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aav0822​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

An expanse of soil and rock measuring 2.4 kilometres long and 1.2 kilometres wide tumbled down Daguangbao mountain in China after a massive earthquake. Credit: W. Hu _et al./Earth Planet. Sci. Lett._

*GEOPHYSICS * *15 FEBRUARY 2019
*The vaporized rock and extreme heat at a huge landslide’s heart*
An entire mountainside came crashing down after a devastating earthquake in China’s Sichuan Province.

A gargantuan landslide in China generated enough heat to vaporize some of the sliding material, creating superheated steam that helped the avalanche of rock to barrel downhill.

In 2008, the magnitude-8.2 Wenchuan earthquake shook loose more than a cubic kilometre of soil and stone from the summit and flank of Daguangbao mountain in central China. A team led by Runqiu Huang at Chengdu University of Technology in China analysed rock samples from the landslide to study conditions within the flow. By comparing rock samples with the results of friction experiments in the laboratory, the scientists concluded that temperatures at the boundary between the slide and the intact slope reached at least 850°C.

That would have partially vaporized a mineral called dolomite in the rock, releasing high-pressure, high-temperature carbon dioxide and steam that would have allowed the landslide to flow. At the same time, the immense pressure on the minerals would have caused them to recrystallize, lubricating the sliding surface and helping the debris to hurtle more than 4 kilometres from its original location.

The work offers clues to how big landslides travel long distances.

_Earth Planet. Sci. Lett._ (2019)​

The vaporized rock and extreme heat at a huge landslide’s heart : Research Highlights | Nature.com

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*New Technique Improves Transparent Wood*
Researchers use a more environmentally friendly approach to make larger see-through wood panels than before.



Image credits: Courtesy of Rongbo Zheng

TECHNOLOGY
Friday, February 15, 2019 - 14:45

Yuen Yiu, Staff Writer

(Inside Science) -- Inspired by a technique first developed by botanists during the 1990s, materials scientists in the past few years have been making an almost oxymoronic-sounding material: transparent wood. While the biologists, who were studying the structure of wood, needed only small pieces, materials scientists have proposed applications like load-bearing windows and have focused on scaling up the technique.

Now, researchers from China have brought see-through wood one step closer to commercial application.

According to a paper published in the _Journal of Materials Research _this month, the authors made panels of transparent wood that are bigger, thicker, and more transparent than their predecessors, while at the same time using a manufacturing process that is more environmentally friendly.

Instead of boiling the wood in bleaching solutions to strip it of its lignin -- the stuff that makes wood opaque -- the researchers steamed the wood with hydrogen peroxide over several hours before backfilling the stripped-down wood panels with transparent resin. According to the authors, their technique can remove more lignin deeper into the wood grains, which makes the final product more transparent. They also claim that by steaming instead of boiling the wood, the wood’s cellular structure can remain relatively intact (chefs would know), which makes the final product stronger.

However, the researchers might have made their experiment easier by using wood panels that were cut across the fibers instead of along the grains, which might have made it easier for the lignin to bleed out. It would be interesting to see how the technique would fare in other cuts of wood, said Lars Berglund, a materials scientist from KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden not involved in the latest research, in an article in the MRS Bulletin.

Before the material is ready for real-world applications, researchers will need to further explore its mechanical properties and the scalability of the manufacturing techniques. But when that day finally comes, we might be able to build greenhouses with tough, transparent wood panes, a sight that could confuse philosophers who say that those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.


New Technique Improves Transparent Wood | Inside Science

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Photons reveal a weird effect called the quantum pigeonhole paradox*
*Three quantum ‘birds’ can fit in two ‘pigeonholes’ without any two being in the same hole*

BY EMILY CONOVER 
6:00AM, FEBRUARY 13, 2019



STRANGE BIRDS Two pigeons can sit comfortably in two holes, but add a third bird and they’ll have to share. But three quantum particles can occupy two states without any having the same state, scientists have shown.
CHERYLRAMALHO/SHUTTERSTOCK

Quantum pigeons don’t like to share.

In keeping with a mathematical concept known as the pigeonhole principle, roosting pigeons have to cram together if there are more pigeons than spots available, with some birds sharing holes. But photons, or quantum particles of light, can violate that rule, according to an experiment reported in the Jan. 29 _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_.

The pigeonhole principle states that, if three pigeons are roosting in two holes, one hole must contain at least two birds. Though seemingly obvious, the idea helps define the fundamentals of what numbers are and what it means to count things. But in the quantum realm, scientists had predicted that three “pigeons” — technically, quantum particles — could squeeze into two holes without any one particle sharing a hole with another, in what’s known as the quantum pigeonhole effect (_SN Online: 7/18/14_).

The “quantum pigeonhole effect challenges our basic understanding…. So a clear experimental verification is highly needed,” study coauthors Chao-Yang Lu and Jian-Wei Pan, physicists at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, wrote in an e-mail. “The quantum pigeonhole may have potential applications to find more complex and fundamental quantum effects.”

In the study, three photons took the place of the pigeons. Rather than crowding the photons into holes, the researchers studied the polarization of the particles, or the orientation of the photons’ wiggling electromagnetic waves, which can be either horizontal or vertical. Since there were three photons and two polarizations, standard math would suggest that at least two must have had the same polarization. When the scientists compared the particles’ polarizations, the team found that no two particles matched, verifying that the quantum pigeonhole effect is real.

The mind-bending behavior is the result of a combination of already strange quantum effects. The photons begin the experiment in an odd kind of limbo called a superposition, meaning they are polarized both horizontally and vertically at the same time. When two photons’ polarizations are compared, the measurement induces ethereal links between the particles, known as quantum entanglement. These counterintuitive properties allow the particles to do unthinkable things.

While the result isn’t the first experimental confirmation of the idea, it improves on previous efforts. “I believe this paper is the best experiment done so far,” says Jeff Tollaksen of Chapman University in Orange, Calif., who was part of a team of theoretical physicists that originally proposed the effect in 2014.

The study is the first to confirm that quantum pigeons misbehave only under a specific condition. Tollaksen and his colleagues had predicted that, in order for the effect to occur, the measurement of the polarizations must be gentle, so as not to perturb the delicate quantum particles. The new work confirmed that the measurement has to be weak for the effect to occur.

Quantum mechanics is known for its odd animal-themed paradoxes — typically involving cats. Schrödinger’s cat is the star of a famous conundrum in which a feline appears to be simultaneously alive and dead (_SN: 6/25/16, p. 9_). And quantum “Cheshire cats” appear when particles are separated from their properties, similar to how the _Alice in Wonderland_ cat’s grin separated from its face (_SN: 9/6/14, p. 12_). Like the rest of the quantum menagerie, the quantum pigeonhole effect “shows something extremely surprising, if not at first blush seemingly impossible,” Tollaksen says.

*Citations*
M.-C. Chen _et al._ Experimental demonstration of quantum pigeonhole paradox. _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_. Vol 116, January 29, 2019, p. 1549. doi:10.1073/pnas.1815462116.​


Photons suggest the weird quantum pigeonhole paradox is real | Science News

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*High-power Lasers Drive Terahertz Pulse Energy to New Record in Laboratory*
Feb 18, 2019

Electromagnetic waves between infrared and microwaves are called as Terahertz (THz) radiation. It is a big challenge to generate intense THz radiation, which is significantly important for THz sciences and applications in many interdisciplinary fields.

Although THz sources have been generated with electronic and optical techniques for the last decades, the THz pulse energy reported is lower than a millijoule.

Results recently published in _PNAS_ show that strong terahertz bursts with tens millijoules of energy, a world record for laboratory sources, can be obtained using high-power lasers.

Prof. LI Yutong's groups from Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Prof. ZHANG Jie's group from Shanghai Jiaotong University, in collaboration with Prof. David Neely from Central Laser Facility, STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Prof. Paul McKenna from University of Strathclyde, and UK scientists from the University of York have studied THz radiation from intense laser-metal foil interactions.

Using the Vulcan laser at the Central Laser Facility, the record for the highest energy in a single pulse of terahertz radiation has been achieved in the laboratory.

The generation of such a strong THz source is mainly due to the coherent transition radiation when an energetic electron bunch crossing the rear surface of the thin foil. The electron bunch with high charge is accelerated by the high intensity laser pulses in the mm-sized solid metal foil.

Terahertz are already used in tech in many fields. For example, the full body scanners for airport security check. The powerful THz source driven by high power lasers provides opportunities to look at nonlinear dynamics in matter.

This study entitled "Multi-millijoule coherent terahertz bursts from picosecond laser-irradiated metal foils" was published on _PNAS_.

The study was supported by the National Science Foundation, the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Postdoctoral Program for Innovative Talents, Newton and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council of UK.



Fig.1 Comparison of currently available high-peak-power THz sources. The data are referenced from previously reported typical results of THz sources based on conventional accelerators (black squares), optical rectification from crystals (blue circles) like lithium niobate (LN) and organic crystals, and gas/solid-density plasmas (green triangles). The red star represents the data presented in this paper. Magenta curves represent different energy ranges for half-cycle THz pulses. (Image by Institute of Physics) 

Related link: Record result for T-ray pulse energy obtained in a laboratory so far using Vulcan laser 



High-power Lasers Drive Terahertz Pulse Energy to New Record in Laboratory---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## cirr

*Shanghai researchers make breakthrough in power-generating fabrics*

2019-02-26 16:19:42 chinadaily.com.cn Editor : Jing Yuxin





A demonstration of how the power-generating fabrics are woven and work with wearable devices. (Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn)

A research team at Donghua University in Shanghai has uncovered a way to achieve the continuous and scalable manufacture of amphibious energy yarns and textiles, which could pave the way for smart clothing.

A paper titled Continuous and Scalable Manufacture of Amphibious Energy Yarns and Textiles was published on Nature Communications, an international peer-reviewed scientific journal, on Feb 22.

According to Gong Wei, the first author of the paper, the amphibious energy yarns and textiles are composed of highly elastic polymer materials (rubber) and spiral metal fibers. The two materials produce an electro-transfer reaction during any deformation before generating power.

With the help of core-sheath structure and gain-coupled power generation mechanism, researchers found that the amphibious energy yarns and textiles can be self-generating without interaction with other objects, and can be used in various situations, even in liquids.

Hou Chengyi, associate professor of the team and school of materials science and engineering at Donghua University, said the special yearns and textiles can be made into elastic power-generating fabrics.

Power-generating yarns can also be woven with other fibers, such as nylon fiber and polyacrylonitrile fibers, so that the breathability, comfort level and power generation of textiles can be effectively controlled.

http://www.ecns.cn/news/2019-02-26/detail-ifzevinw9629759.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

Deep-time Digital Earth aims to liberate data from collections such as the British Geological Survey’s.
BRITISH GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
*Earth scientists plan to meld massive databases into a ‘geological Google’ | Science | AAAS*
By Dennis Normile Feb. 26, 2019 , 5:00 PM

The British Geological Survey (BGS) has amassed one of the world’s premier collections of geologic samples. Housed in three enormous warehouses in Nottingham, U.K., it contains about 3 million fossils gathered over more than 150 years at thousands of sites across the country. But this data trove “was not really very useful to anybody,” says Michael Stephenson, a BGS paleontologist. Notes about the samples and their associated rocks “were sitting in boxes on bits of paper.” Now, that could change, thanks to a nascent international effort to meld earth science databases into what Stephenson and other backers are describing as a “geological Google.”

This network of earth science databases, called Deep-time Digital Earth (DDE), would be a one-stop link allowing earth scientists to access all the data they need to tackle big questions, such as patterns of biodiversity over geologic time, the distribution of metal deposits, and the workings of Africa’s complex groundwater networks. It’s not the first such effort, but it has a key advantage, says Isabel Montañez, a geochemist at University of California, Davis, who is not involved in the project: funding and infrastructure support from the Chinese government. That backing “will be critical to [DDE’s] success given the scope of the proposed work,” she says.

In December 2018, DDE won the backing of the executive committee of the International Union of Geological Sciences, which said ready access to the collected geodata could offer “insights into the distribution and value of earth’s resources and materials, as well as hazards—while also providing a glimpse of the Earth’s geological future.” At a meeting this week in Beijing, 80 scientists from 40 geoscience organizations including BGS and the Russian Geological Research Institute are discussing how to get DDE up and running by the time of the International Geological Congress in New Delhi in March 2020.

DDE grew out of a Chinese data digitization scheme called the Geobiodiversity Database (GBDB), initiated in 2006 by Chinese paleontologist Fan Junxuan of Nanjing University. China had long-running efforts in earth sciences, but the data were scattered among numerous collections and institutions. Fan, who was then at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’s Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology, organized GBDB around the stacks of geologic strata called sections and the rocks and fossils in each stratum.

Norman MacLeod, a paleobiologist at the Natural History Museum in London who is advising DDE, says GBDB has succeeded where similar efforts have stumbled. In the past, he says, volunteer earth scientists tried to do nearly everything themselves, including informatics and data management. GBDB instead pays nonspecialists to input reams of data gleaned from earth science journals covering Chinese findings. Then, paleontologists and stratigraphers review the data for accuracy and consistency, and information technology specialists curate the database and create software to search and analyze the data. Consistent funding also contributed to GBDB’s success, MacLeod says. Although it started small, Fan says GBDB now runs on “several million” yuan per year.

Earth scientists outside China began to use GBDB, and it became the official database of the International Commission on Stratigraphy in 2012. BGS decided to partner with GBDB to lift its data “from the page and into cyberspace,” as Stephenson puts it. He and other European and Chinese scientists then began to wonder whether the informatics tools developed for GBDB could help create a broader union of databases. “Our idea is to take these big databases and make them use the same standards and references so a researcher could quickly link them to do big science that hasn’t been done before,” he says.

The Beijing meeting aims to finalize an organizational structure for DDE. Chinese funding agencies are putting up $75 million over 10 years to get the effort off the ground, Fan says. That level of support sets DDE apart from other cyberinfrastructure efforts “that are smaller in scope and less well funded,” Montañez says. Fan hopes DDE will also attract international support. He envisions nationally supported DDE Centers of Excellence that would develop databases and analytical tools for particular interests. Suzhou, China, has already agreed to host the first of them, which will also house the DDE secretariat.

DDE backers say they want to cooperate with other geodatabase programs, such as BGS’s OneGeology project, which seeks to make geologic maps of the world available online. But Mohan Ramamurthy, project director of the U.S. National Science Foundation–funded EarthCube project, sees little scope for collaboration with his effort, which focuses on current issues such as climate change and biosphere-geosphere interactions. “The two programs have very different objectives with little overlap,” he says.

Fan also hopes individual institutions will contribute, by sharing data, developing analytical tools, and encouraging their scientists to participate. Once earth scientists are freed of the drudgery of combing scattered collections, he says, they will have time for more important challenges, such as answering “questions about the evolution of life, materials, geography, and climate in deep time.”

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 28-FEB-2019
*Nanotechnology makes it possible for mice to see in infrared*
CELL PRESS

Mice with vision enhanced by nanotechnology were able to see infrared light as well as visible light, reports a study published February 28 in the journal _Cell_. A single injection of nanoparticles in the mice's eyes bestowed infrared vision for up to 10 weeks with minimal side effects, allowing them to see infrared light even during the day and with enough specificity to distinguish between different shapes. These findings could lead to advancements in human infrared vision technologies, including potential applications in civilian encryption, security, and military operations.

Humans and other mammals are limited to seeing a range of wavelengths of light called visible light, which includes the wavelengths of the rainbow. But infrared radiation, which has a longer wavelength, is all around us. People, animals and objects emit infrared light as they give off heat, and objects can also reflect infrared light.

"The visible light that can be perceived by human's natural vision occupies just a very small fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum," says senior author Tian Xue of the University of Science and Technology of China. "Electromagnetic waves longer or shorter than visible light carry lots of information."

A multidisciplinary group of scientists led by Xue and Jin Bao at the University of Science and Technology of China as well as Gang Han at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, developed the nanotechnology to work with the eye's existing structures.

"When light enters the eye and hits the retina, the rods and cones--or photoreceptor cells--absorb the photons with visible light wavelengths and send corresponding electric signals to the brain," says Han. "Because infrared wavelengths are too long to be absorbed by photoreceptors, we are not able to perceive them."

In this study, the scientists made nanoparticles that can anchor tightly to photoreceptor cells and act as tiny infrared light transducers. When infrared light hits the retina, the nanoparticles capture the longer infrared wavelengths and emit shorter wavelengths within the visible light range. The nearby rod or cone then absorbs the shorter wavelength and sends a normal signal to the brain, as if visible light had hit the retina.

"In our experiment, nanoparticles absorbed infrared light around 980 nm in wavelength and converted it into light peaked at 535 nm, which made the infrared light appear as the color green," says Bao.

The researchers tested the nanoparticles in mice, which, like humans, cannot see infrared naturally. Mice that received the injections showed unconscious physical signs that they were detecting infrared light, such as their pupils constricting, while mice injected with only the buffer solution didn't respond to infrared light.

To test whether the mice could make sense of the infrared light, the researchers set up a series of maze tasks to show the mice could see infrared in daylight conditions, simultaneously with visible light.

In rare cases, side effects from the injections such as cloudy corneas occurred but disappeared within less than a week. This may have been caused by the injection process alone because mice that only received injections of the buffer solution had a similar rate of these side effects. Other tests found no damage to the retina's structure following the sub-retinal injections.

"In our study, we have shown that both rods and cones bind these nanoparticles and were activated by the near infrared light," says Xue. "So we believe this technology will also work in human eyes, not only for generating super vision but also for therapeutic solutions in human red color vision deficits."

Current infrared technology relies on detectors and cameras that are often limited by ambient daylight and need outside power sources. The researchers believe the bio-integrated nanoparticles are more desirable for potential infrared applications in civilian encryption, security, and military operations. "In the future, we think there may be room to improve the technology with a new version of organic-based nanoparticles, made of FDA-approved compounds, that appear to result in even brighter infrared vision," says Han.

The researchers also think more work can be done to fine tune the emission spectrum of the nanoparticles to suit human eyes, which utilize more cones than rods for their central vision compared to mouse eyes. "This is an exciting subject because the technology we made possible here could eventually enable human beings to see beyond our natural capabilities," says Xue.



Nanotechnology makes it possible for mice to see in infrared | EurekAlert! Science News

Yuqian Ma; Jin Bao; Yuanwei Zhang; Zhanjun Li; Xiangyu Zhou; Changlin Wan; Ling Huang; Yang Zhao; Gang Han; Tian Xue. *Mammalian Near-Infrared Image Vision through Injectable and Self-Powered Retinal Nanoantennae*. _Cell _(2019). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2019.01.038​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*EDITORIAL * *27 FEBRUARY 2019
*Data mining uncovers a treasure trove of topological materials | Nature*
Sharing experimental data enhances materials discovery and engineering.


The band structure of graphene determines whether it will act as a topological semi-metal (left) or a topological insulator (right).Credit: B. Bradlyn _et al_.

Collaborative efforts to develop centralized databases have become common in some fields. To be useful, databases need appropriate support and to be annotated using standardized approaches. Whether time and resources are well spent on these tasks depends on the value gained from exploring vast data repositories.

Three papers in _Nature_ this week show that materials science is reaping the rewards of such investment (see T. Zhang _et al._, M. G. Vergniory _et al._ and F. Tang _et al._). The teams developed algorithms to scan through tens of thousands of non-magnetic materials catalogued in crystal-structure databases and, astonishingly, found that around one-quarter could be considered ‘topological’ — harbouring unusual states at their surfaces or edges that are caused by the geometry of their electronic structures.

The unusual properties of topological systems offer new possibilities for materials engineering, including the design of energy-efficient transistors and circuits. Yet only a few topological materials have been identified.

The findings in _Nature _are theoretical and, as physicist Alex Zunger points out in a Comment, many such materials might be difficult to synthesize, or could turn out not to have the predicted properties when tested experimentally. Even if researchers need to curb their enthusiasm down the line, the unimagined scale of this discovery was possible only because of the existence of large crystallographic databases.

Just as data sharing has facilitated these theoretical predictions, it will also benefit future materials discovery and engineering. But to achieve this, researchers will need to systematically release all underlying data. Topological catalogues are still in the early stages of development, so this community would do well not to miss the opportunity to push for widespread and standardized sharing of experimental data.



Tiantian Zhang, Yi Jiang, Zhida Song, He Huang, Yuqing He, Zhong Fang, Hongming Weng & Chen Fang. *Catalogue of topological electronic materials*. _Nature _(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-0944-6
M. G. Vergniory, L. Elcoro, Claudia Felser, Nicolas Regnault, B. Andrei Bernevig & Zhijun Wang. *A complete catalogue of high-quality topological materials*. _Nature _(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-0954-4
Feng Tang, Hoi Chun Po, Ashvin Vishwanath & Xiangang Wan. *Comprehensive search for topological materials using symmetry indicators*. _Nature _(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-0937-5

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*CRISPR offshoot still makes mistakes editing DNA, raising concerns about its medical use*
By Jon Cohen Feb. 28, 2019 , 2:00 PM

Variations of the genome editor CRISPR have wowed biology labs around the world over the past few years because they can precisely change single DNA bases, promising deft repairs for genetic diseases and improvements in crop and livestock genomes. But such “base editors” can have a serious weakness. A pair of studies published online in _Science_ this week shows that one kind of base editor causes many unwanted—and potentially dangerous—“off-target” genetic changes.

The mistakes are still rare overall, says David Liu, a chemist at Harvard University whose team developed the first generation of base editors, and are unlikely to interfere with laboratory uses of the technology. But they are enough to concern anyone contemplating use of the technology in patients, Liu and others say. “The two papers are very interesting and important,” says Jin-Soo Kim, a CRISPR researcher at Seoul National University. “It is now important to determine which component is responsible for the collateral mutations and how to reduce or avoid them.”

In its original form, CRISPR uses an RNA strand to guide an enzyme known as Cas9 to a specific place in a genome. The Cas9 acts as a molecular scissors on the DNA, cutting both of its strands, and the cell’s attempts to repair the brake can disable the gene. Or researchers can use the cut to insert a new sequence of DNA. Base editors instead couple the guide RNA to a Cas9 that only cuts one DNA strand. This molecular complex also includes an enzyme, called a deaminase, that can chemically change one base into another. Because such editors have more control over the specific changes than CRISPR itself, researchers did not expect them to cause off-target errors.

Now, two groups of researchers mainly based in China, working independently on rice and on mouse embryos, have discovered abundant off-target mutations in experiments that used an editor that changes the DNA base cytosine to thymine. A second base editor, also from Liu’s team, that converts adenine to guanine introduced no such mistakes.

In the rice study, a team led by plant biologist Gao Caixia of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Beijing compared the DNA in 77 plants it had altered with different base editors to sham controls or untreated plants. The researchers then assessed the low-level background mutation rates. They found that cytosine-to-thymine base editors roughly doubled the background level of off-target mutations. “We were so surprised, and worried we had to be really, really careful with our results because the whole world will be looking closely,” Gao says. “Fortunately, the other group worked with the mouse and made a very similar observation, and their system, to be honest, is even better than ours.”

In that work, a multi-institution collaboration led by researchers from CAS in Shanghai and Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, developed a clever built-in control by injecting a base editor into only one of two cells in a newly formed mouse embryo. Comparing the progeny of these two cells, researchers found the off-target effects created by the cytosine base editor were more than 20 times more common than the background mutation rate. Some of the mutations occurred in genomic regions that play a role in cancer.

Tweaking that editor’s deaminase or other components could decrease its off-target effects, says J. Keith Joung, a pathologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston who invented a popular cytosine base editor and co-founded both a biomedical and an agricultural base editor company with Liu. Kim is optimistic that the field will promptly figure out solutions for the cytosine editors. “A new problem always provides new opportunities,” he says.

Stanley Qi, a Stanford University bioengineer who has created a variation of CRISPR as well, says it’s no surprise that a new biotechnology has imperfections. “I don’t think these reports diminish my enthusiasm towards base editors or gene editing.”



CRISPR offshoot still makes mistakes editing DNA, raising concerns about its medical use | Science | AAAS


Shuai Jin, Yuan Zong, Qiang Gao, Zixu Zhu, Yanpeng Wang, Peng Qin, Chengzhi Liang, Daowen Wang, Jin-Long Qiu, Feng Zhang, Caixia Gao. *Cytosine, but not adenine, base editors induce genome-wide off-target mutations in rice*. _Science _(2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aaw7166
Erwei Zuo, Yidi Sun, Wu Wei, Tanglong Yuan, Wenqin Ying, Hao Sun, Liyun Yuan, Lars M. Steinmetz, Yixue Li, Hui Yang. *Cytosine base editor generates substantial off-target single-nucleotide variants in mouse embryos. *_Science _(2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aav9973

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists find therapeutic target of common liver cancer*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-02-28 22:46:25|Editor: zh

BEIJING, Feb. 28 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have identified a therapeutic target of early-stage hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common type of primary liver cancer in adults.

HCC is the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. Infection with the hepatitis B virus is one of the leading risk factors for developing HCC, particularly in East Asia, according to He Fuchu, chief scientist of the Chinese Human Proteome Project and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Although surgical treatment may be effective in the early stages, the five-year overall rate of survival after developing this cancer is only 50 percent to 70 percent, according to scientists.

Researchers classified the cancer into three sub-types S-I, S-II and S-III. Each of the three sub-types has a different clinical outcome, with S-III associated with the lowest overall rate of survival.

By analyzing the proteomic data of the S-III sub-type, scientists found the therapeutic target called SOAT1. The knockdown of SOAT1 can effectively suppress the proliferation and migration of HCC.

In experiments on mice, they also found that treatment with avasimibe, an inhibitor of SOAT1, markedly reduced the size of tumors that had high levels of SOAT1 expression.

The study provides insight into the tumor biology of this cancer, and suggests opportunities for personalized therapies that target it, He said.

The research was published in the latest issue of the academic journal _Nature_.

Ying Jiang, Aihua Sun, Yang Zhao, Wantao Ying, Huichuan Sun, Xinrong Yang, Baocai Xing, Wei Sun, Liangliang Ren, Bo Hu, Chaoying Li, Li Zhang, Guangrong Qin, Menghuan Zhang, Ning Chen, Manli Zhang, Yin Huang, Jinan Zhou, Yan Zhao, Mingwei Liu, Xiaodong Zhu, Yang Qiu, Yanjun Sun, Cheng Huang, Meng Yan, Mingchao Wang, Wei Liu, Fang Tian, Huali Xu, Jian Zhou, Zhenyu Wu, Tieliu Shi, Weimin Zhu, Jun Qin, Lu Xie, Jia Fan, Xiaohong Qian, Fuchu He & Chinese Human Proteome Project (CNHPP) Consortium. *Proteomics identifies new therapeutic targets of early-stage hepatocellular carcinoma*. _Nature _(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-0987-8​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> PUBLIC RELEASE: 28-FEB-2019
> *Nanotechnology makes it possible for mice to see in infrared*
> CELL PRESS
> 
> Mice with vision enhanced by nanotechnology were able to see infrared light as well as visible light, reports a study published February 28 in the journal _Cell_. A single injection of nanoparticles in the mice's eyes bestowed infrared vision for up to 10 weeks with minimal side effects, allowing them to see infrared light even during the day and with enough specificity to distinguish between different shapes. These findings could lead to advancements in human infrared vision technologies, including potential applications in civilian encryption, security, and military operations.
> 
> Humans and other mammals are limited to seeing a range of wavelengths of light called visible light, which includes the wavelengths of the rainbow. But infrared radiation, which has a longer wavelength, is all around us. People, animals and objects emit infrared light as they give off heat, and objects can also reflect infrared light.
> 
> "The visible light that can be perceived by human's natural vision occupies just a very small fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum," says senior author Tian Xue of the University of Science and Technology of China. "Electromagnetic waves longer or shorter than visible light carry lots of information."
> 
> A multidisciplinary group of scientists led by Xue and Jin Bao at the University of Science and Technology of China as well as Gang Han at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, developed the nanotechnology to work with the eye's existing structures.
> 
> "When light enters the eye and hits the retina, the rods and cones--or photoreceptor cells--absorb the photons with visible light wavelengths and send corresponding electric signals to the brain," says Han. "Because infrared wavelengths are too long to be absorbed by photoreceptors, we are not able to perceive them."
> 
> In this study, the scientists made nanoparticles that can anchor tightly to photoreceptor cells and act as tiny infrared light transducers. When infrared light hits the retina, the nanoparticles capture the longer infrared wavelengths and emit shorter wavelengths within the visible light range. The nearby rod or cone then absorbs the shorter wavelength and sends a normal signal to the brain, as if visible light had hit the retina.
> 
> "In our experiment, nanoparticles absorbed infrared light around 980 nm in wavelength and converted it into light peaked at 535 nm, which made the infrared light appear as the color green," says Bao.
> 
> The researchers tested the nanoparticles in mice, which, like humans, cannot see infrared naturally. Mice that received the injections showed unconscious physical signs that they were detecting infrared light, such as their pupils constricting, while mice injected with only the buffer solution didn't respond to infrared light.
> 
> To test whether the mice could make sense of the infrared light, the researchers set up a series of maze tasks to show the mice could see infrared in daylight conditions, simultaneously with visible light.
> 
> In rare cases, side effects from the injections such as cloudy corneas occurred but disappeared within less than a week. This may have been caused by the injection process alone because mice that only received injections of the buffer solution had a similar rate of these side effects. Other tests found no damage to the retina's structure following the sub-retinal injections.
> 
> "In our study, we have shown that both rods and cones bind these nanoparticles and were activated by the near infrared light," says Xue. "So we believe this technology will also work in human eyes, not only for generating super vision but also for therapeutic solutions in human red color vision deficits."
> 
> Current infrared technology relies on detectors and cameras that are often limited by ambient daylight and need outside power sources. The researchers believe the bio-integrated nanoparticles are more desirable for potential infrared applications in civilian encryption, security, and military operations. "In the future, we think there may be room to improve the technology with a new version of organic-based nanoparticles, made of FDA-approved compounds, that appear to result in even brighter infrared vision," says Han.
> 
> The researchers also think more work can be done to fine tune the emission spectrum of the nanoparticles to suit human eyes, which utilize more cones than rods for their central vision compared to mouse eyes. "This is an exciting subject because the technology we made possible here could eventually enable human beings to see beyond our natural capabilities," says Xue.
> 
> 
> 
> Nanotechnology makes it possible for mice to see in infrared | EurekAlert! Science News
> 
> Yuqian Ma; Jin Bao; Yuanwei Zhang; Zhanjun Li; Xiangyu Zhou; Changlin Wan; Ling Huang; Yang Zhao; Gang Han; Tian Xue. *Mammalian Near-Infrared Image Vision through Injectable and Self-Powered Retinal Nanoantennae*. _Cell _(2019). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2019.01.038​






*Scientists Enable Super Mice to See Infrared Light*



Beauty of Science
Published on Feb 28, 2019

Science fiction is becoming a reality. We created this short animation for researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China and the University of Massachusetts. They used special nanoparticles to allow mice to see in the near-infrared range without compromising their normal vision.


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese researchers find new target for tumor immunotherapy*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-05 00:02:56|Editor: Mu Xuequan

BEIJING, March 4 (Xinhua) -- A team of Chinese researchers has identified a transcription factor that affects the immunologic effects of T cells, providing a new potential target for tumor immunotherapy.

T cells are often called "the workhorses of the immune system" for their critical role in orchestrating the immune response and killing cells infected by pathogens.

One emerging immunotherapy in recent years is CAR-T cells therapy. It separates T cells from a patient's blood and genetically engineers them to produce receptors on their surface called chimeric antigen receptors or CARs. The special receptors allow T cells to recognize and attach to tumor cells. When the CAR-T cells are infused back into the patient, the engineered cells will multiply in the patient's body and recognize and kill cancer cells.

However, previous studies found that some T cells can be dysfunctional when they encounter self-antigens or are exposed to chronic infection or tumor microenvironment.

To reveal the molecular mechanism behind T cells dysfunction, researchers from China's Third Military Medical University and Tsinghua University used an in vitro T cell tolerance induction system in mice and found a high-level expression of transcription factor NR4A1.

NR4A1 is the transcription factor of the nuclear receptor NR4A. Nuclear receptors are a class of proteins that can work with other proteins to regulate the expression of specific genes. A transcription factor is a protein that binds to specific DNA sequences, thereby controlling the rate of transcription of genetic information from DNA to messenger RNA.

The researchers reported on the British journal _Nature _that over-expression of NR4A1 inhibits T cell function and deletion of NR4A1 overcame T cell tolerance and enhanced immunity against tumor and chronic virus.

They said that the study identified NR4A1 as a key general regulator in the induction of T cell dysfunction, and a potential target for tumor immunotherapy.

In recent years, immunotherapy, therapies that enlist and strengthen the power of a patient's immune system to attack tumors, has emerged as a new cancer treatment.

In 2017, two CAR-T cell therapies were approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, one for the treatment of children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and the other for adults with advanced lymphomas.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 20-FEB-2019
*Powering a pacemaker with a patient's heartbeat*
AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY



​A small, flexible device can power a pacemaker with energy from heartbeats.
*CREDIT: *American Chemical Society

Implantable pacemakers have without doubt altered modern medicine, saving countless lives by regulating heart rhythm. But they have one serious shortcoming: Their batteries last only five to 12 years, at which point they have to be replaced surgically. Now, researchers have surmounted this issue by designing a pacemaker powered by the energy of heartbeats, according to a report in _ACS Nano_. The device was successfully tested in pigs, which have a similar physiology to humans.

A conventional pacemaker is implanted just under the skin near the collarbone. Its battery and circuitry generate electrical signals that are delivered to the heart via implanted electrodes. Because surgery to replace the battery can lead to complications, including infection and bleeding, various researchers have tried to build pacemakers that use the natural energy of heartbeats as an alternative energy source. However, these experimental devices aren't powerful enough because of their rigid structure, difficulties with miniaturization and other drawbacks, so Hao Zhang, Bin Yang and colleagues searched for ways to improve the technology.

First, they designed a small, flexible plastic frame. Next they bonded the frame to piezoelectric layers, which generate energy when bent. They implanted the device in pigs and showed that a beating heart could in fact alter the frame's shape, generating enough power to match the performance of a battery-powered pacemaker. The study is a step toward making a self-powered cardiac pacemaker, the researchers say.


Powering a pacemaker with a patient's heartbeat | EurekAlert! Science News

Ning Li, Zhiran Yi, Ye Ma, Feng Xie, Yue Huang, Yingwei Tian, Xiaoxue Dong, Yang Liu, Xin Shao, Yang Li, Lei Jin, Jingquan Liu , Zhiyun Xu, Bin Yang and Hao Zhang. * Direct Powering a Real Cardiac Pacemaker by Natural Energy of a Heartbeat*. _ACS Nano_ (2019). DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.8b08567​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Study reveals how cell "gatekeeper" activates immune defense*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-01 15:40:23|Editor: Li Xia

BEIJING, March 1 (Xinhua) -- Recent Chinese research has found how cGAS (cyclic GMP-AMP synthase), an enzyme and DNA sensor dubbed as a cell's gatekeeper, activates immune responses when the body has a viral infection, providing new perspectives for treatments of some autoimmune diseases.

The recognition of microbial nucleic acids is a major mechanism by which the immune system detects pathogens. cGAS is a DNA sensor in the cytosol that activates innate immune responses. It not only plays a key role in mediating protective immune defense against infection by many DNA-containing pathogens but also detects tumor-derived DNA and generates intrinsic anti-tumor immunity.

However, aberrant activation of the cGAS pathway can also lead to autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.

In autoimmune diseases, the cell nucleus spits small DNA fragments into the cytoplasm or the cells have difficulty breaking down DNA from dead cells. DNA fragments, therefore, accumulate in the cytoplasm and the immune system cells start fighting themselves instead of pathogens from the outside.

In recent years, scientists have been trying to understand how cGAS activates immune responses and whether blocking or regulating the pathway may have an effect on autoimmune diseases.

In a paper published online in the U.S. journal _Cell_, researchers from China's Academy of Military Medical Sciences reported that acetylation inhibits cGAS activation. It is found that aspirin can directly acetylate cGAS and efficiently inhibit cGAS-mediated immune responses.

Acetylation is a chemical reaction that most of the proteins in the human body undergo. The process of acetylation is important for several main chemical reactions in the body like protein formation and drug bio-transformation.

In lab experiments, the researchers found that aspirin can effectively suppress self-DNA-induced autoimmunity in Aicardi-Goutieres syndrome (AGS) patient cells and in an AGS mouse model.

AGS is a rare inflammatory disorder most typically affecting the brain and the skin. The majority of affected individuals experience significant intellectual and physical problems.

The researchers said their study reveals that acetylation contributes to cGAS activity regulation and provides a potential therapy for treating DNA-mediated autoimmune diseases.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Baby receives stem cell transplant for rare immunity disorder*
Cai Wenjun 16:13 UTC+8, 2019-03-04



Staff from the Shanghai-based China Stem Cell Group Co take a sample of umbilical cord blood to the Children's Hospital of Fudan University for an 8-month-old girl with congenital immunity disorder to receive stem cell transplant on Monday.

An 8-month-old girl received a stem cell transplant on Monday at a local hospital to treat a rare congenital disease, marking the 4,000th stem cell transplant conducted by the Shanghai-based China Stem Cell Group Co.

The girl, a Hunan Province native, suffers a genetic disorder called severe combined immunodeficiency, which is known as the bubble boy disease because its victims are likely to suffer infection and some, such as David Vetter, become famous for living in an extremely sterile environment.

The disease usually results in serious infections within the first few months upon delivery, and most children die within one year due to infection. Stem cell transplant is an effective way to treat the disease which helps rebuild their immune system, according to doctors from the Children’s Hospital of Fudan University.

“We have treated 30 such cases and 80 percent of the patients have survived. There is a big hope that the patient can be cured after a successful stem cell transplant,” said Dr Qian Xiaowen from the hospital.

The girl’s family said they are blessed that the girl may be saved.

“My daughter started to have frequent fevers when she was 4 months old and was confirmed to have the rare disease later,” said the father, surnamed Zhang. “We are so happy we found a match at the umbilical cord blood bank. If everything goes smoothly, my daughter is expected to be discharged in late April.”



The 8-month-old girl with severe combined immunodeficiency with her mother

Source: SHINE Editor: Cai Wenjun

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists develop nanogel for antibacterial textile*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-06 17:18:24|Editor: Yurou

BEIJING, March 6 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have developed a nanogel that can be applied to textiles for durable antibacterial effects.

Since bacterial infections seriously threaten human's health, the design of nanoscale antibacterial materials has become a hot research area.

Scientists from Shanghai-based Donghua University have developed a kind of environmentally friendly nanogel with long-lasting antibacterial effects, good biocompatibility and positive effects on preventing wound infection.

The nanogel has a regular spherical structure with a size of about 200 nanometers. The nanogel grafted on the surface of cotton fibers displayed good thermal stability, which is essential for the finishing of fabrics.

The cotton fabrics finished with nanogels can prevent the adhesion and the proliferation of bacteria. After 50 rounds of machine washing, the grafted cotton fabric still had an antibacterial efficiency of more than 86 percent against certain bacteria such as Escherichia coli.

The research provides a reference for the future design of functional clothing, antibacterial dressings and other biomedical materials, according to Qin Xiaohong, one of the researchers.

The research was published in the journal_ Advanced Functional Materials_.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*These falling drops don’t splash—they spin | Science | AAAS*
By Lakshmi Supriya Mar. 5, 2019 , 11:00 AM

Falling drops usually make a splash, but these drops do the twist. Researchers have created surfaces that can make droplets spin and whirl at more than 7300 revolutions per minute when they rebound.

To make the water droplets spin, researchers first had to make sure they didn’t wet the surface they fell on—otherwise, they’d just splash. The researchers did this by coating alumina plates with a fluorinated nonstick coating, similar to those found in nonstick cooking pans. Next, they masked some regions of the surface and shone ultraviolet (UV) light on the entire plate. The regions exposed to the UV became highly “wettable,” meaning water touching those regions spread out immediately rather than bouncing back up. The team created several designs of the wettable regions, including one with spiral arms radiating out from a center, much like a pinwheel.

As the droplet bounds up from the patterned surface, the portions encountering the wettable spirals stick to the surface, whereas the parts of the droplet in contact with the water-repelling surface rebound immediately. This creates a set of unbalanced forces, pulling on the droplet more in some parts than in others, twisting it, the team reports today in Nature Communications.

Depending on the design of the wettable and nonwettable regions, not only can drops be made to rotate, but can also roll, deflect, or show a combination of different motions, making droplets dance to the tune of the surface patterns. Controlling how liquid drops bounce off a surface may be useful in many areas such self-cleaning surfaces, deicing applications, or for mixing different materials.


----------



## JSCh

*A Flexible Way to Hide the Heat*
Patricia Daukantas




Thermal image of an electric heating plate, with all but the bottom section covered with a new aerogel film developed by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The film effectively hides the hot object from infrared detection. [Image: American Chemical Society]

As long as scientists have been improving thermal imaging systems for military and commercial purposes, other scientists have sought new coatings and materials to make objects invisible to heat-seeking cameras. A team based in China has developed an inexpensive, flexible film that the researchers say renders the objects it covers virtually invisible in infrared light (ACS Nano, doi: 10.1021/acsnano.8b08913).

The film, developed by Xuetong Zhang's group at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has the consistency of an aerogel—an extremely low-density solid that looks like a frozen cloud. This particular aerogel consists of two familiar main ingredients: DuPont's Kevlar, a synthetic fiber with high tensile strength, and polyethylene glycol (PEG), a water-soluble polymer with many applications.

The burgeoning world of nanostructures and metamaterials has led to numerous schemes for using static nanopatterns to hide thermal emitters from infrared detectors, but such patterns cannot be fine-tuned, according to the researchers. Some dynamic methods for controlling infrared emissivity consume a fair amount of electricity or respond slowly to temperature changes. Plain old thermal blankets can be thick and heavy.

*Constructing the aerogel*
To create the aerogel, Zhang's team dissolved Kevlar into dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), resulting in a nanofiber solution. The researchers subsequently solidified the material, rinsed off the remaining DMSO and freeze-dried the solids. Finally, the scientists allowed the aerogel to absorb PEG, a phase-change material that can store heat, and shaped it into a film attached to a protective waterproof layer.

Adjusting the percentage of Kevlar by weight in the nanofiber solution significantly changed the pore size and mechanical properties of the resulting film. The optimal thickness and concentration was a film 150 μm thick, made of a solution of 2 percent Kevlar nanofibers by weight; that film had a tensile strength of 1.27 MPa. The film survived 20 rounds of folding and unfolding, and it can also be rolled up.

To test the aerogel film's thermal properties, the researchers exposed it to a simulated outdoor cycle of day–night lighting variations and found that its temperature rose more slowly in mock sunlight than that of the target material underneath the film. Infrared imaging showed that one, three and five layers of the Kevlar–PEG aerogel transmitted significantly less heat than the same number of layers of aerogel that did not contain PEG.

Zhang is currently a Royal Society fellow at University College London, U.K.

Publish Date: 06 March 2019


A Flexible Way to Hide the Heat | Optics & Photonics News


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists develop early diagnosis of liver cancer for hepatitis B carriers*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-12 19:33:25|Editor: ZX

BEIJING, March 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have designed a new screening method for hepatitis B carriers, to detect early-stage hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common type of primary liver cancer.

The new method was developed by researchers from Cancer Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Genetron Health, a biomedical company. Through a liquid biopsy that detects cell-free DNA somatic mutations in combination with protein markers, researchers can efficiently identify early-stage HCC cases of less than 3 cm.

According to Yan Hai, one of the researchers, the method showed 100 percent sensitivity, 94 percent specificity and 17 percent positive predictive value in the validation cohort, proving it a feasible approach to identify early stage HCC.

The research team will optimize this screening method through systematic research in a multi-center, large prospective cohort study, Yan said.

After rigorous clinical validation, this method is expected to become a more convenient, non-invasive and standardized early screening program for liver cancer.

The research was published in the U.S. journal _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_.


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 19-MAR-2019
*Uncovering the superconducting phosphine: P2H4 and P4H6*
SCIENCE CHINA PRESS



​The high pressure phase diagrams of PH3 at room temperature and low temperature. ©Science China Press

Searching high-Tc superconductor has become a hot topic in physics since superconducting mercury was first reported more than one century ago. Dense hydrogen was predicted to metalize and become superconductor at high pressure and room temperature. However, it has been very challenging and no widely accepted experimental work has been reported yet. In 2004, Ashcroft predicted hydrogen-dominant hydrides could become high-Tc superconductor at high pressure, due to the 'chemical precompression'. Later, Drozdov et al. observed the superconductive transition of H2S at 203 K and 155 GPa, which broke the highest Tc record. Very recently, LaH6 was reported to shown superconducting behavior at ~260K. Motivated by these works, extensive investigations on hydrides system have been reported.

PH3, a typical hydrogen-rich hydride, has attracted a great deal of research interest because of its superconducting transition discovered at high pressure. However, structural information was not provided, and the origin of the superconducting transition remains puzzling. Although a series of theoretical works suggested possible structures, the PH3 phase under compression has remained unknown and no relevant experimental studies have been reported.

In a recent research article published in _National Science Review_, scientists from the Center for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research, School of Physics and Electronic Engineering, Jiangsu Normal University, Key Laboratory of Carbon Materials of Zhejiang Province, College of Chemistry and Materials Engineering, Wenzhou University and Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences present their results on the studies of stoichiometric evolutions of PH3 under high pressure. It was found that PH3 is stable below 11.7 GPa and then it starts to dehydrogenate through two dimerization processes at room temperature and pressures up to 25 GPa. Two resulting phosphorus hydrides, P2H4 and P4H6, were verified experimentally and can be recovered to ambient pressure. Under further compression above 35 GPa, the P4H6 directly decomposed into elemental phosphorus. Low temperature can greatly hinder polymerization/decomposition under high pressure, and retain P4H6 up to at least 205 GPa. "Our findings suggested that P4H6 might be responsible for superconductivity at high pressures." said Dr. Lin Wang, the corresponding author of the article.

To determine the possible structure of P4H6 at high pressure, structural searches were further performed. Theoretical calculations revealed that two stable structures with space group Cmcm (< 182 GPa) and C2/m (> 182 GPa) were found. Phonon dispersions calculations of the two structures do not give any imaginary frequencies and therefore, this verifies their dynamic stabilities. The superconducting Tc of the C2/m structure at 200 GPa was estimated to be 67 K. "All of these findings confirmed P4H6 might be the corresponding superconductor, which is helpful for shedding light on the superconducting mechanism." Dr. Wang added.


Uncovering the superconducting phosphine: P2H4 and P4H6 | EurekAlert! Science News

Ye Yuan, Yinwei Li, Guoyong Fang, Guangtao Liu, Cuiying Pei, Xin Li, Haiyan Zheng, Ke Yang, Lin Wang. *Stoichiometric evolutions of PH3 under high pressure: implication for high Tc superconducting hydrides*. _Natl Sci. Rev. _ (2019). DOI: 10.1093/nsr/nwz010​


----------



## JSCh

*3D-printed electrical room starts operation in southern China*
New China TV
Published on Mar 20, 2019

Lower pollution, more efficient! A power distribution room that was built using 3-D printing technology is now operating in southern China's Guangzhou. It took the engineers only 35 days to create it.


----------



## JSCh

SPOTLIGHT * 20 MARCH 2019
*Materials science is helping to transform China into a high-tech economy*
Researchers are reaping the benefits of carefully built programmes and a surge in funding.

Sarah O’Meara

*



*​A flexi-screen mobile phone is on display at an exhibition in Chengdu last year.Credit: Wang Xiao/Chengdu Economic Daily/VCG/Getty

By the time Dawei Zhang’s study visa to the United States had been renewed, it was too late. The 29-year-old materials scientist was back in China with his wife and son, ready to begin a postdoc at the University of Science and Technology Beijing — one of the country’s leading materials institutes. The delay had prompted him to accept a position in China, rather than pursue research on self-healing materials in the United States.

Looking back, Zhang realizes that the unexpected move worked out well for him. Six years later, his research into materials corrosion has become part of a national 1-billion-yuan (US$150-million) programme to revolutionize the speed and efficiency with which China can develop new materials, known as the Materials Genome Engineering (MGE) project.

Such large-scale scientific ventures have become common in China over the past decade, forming key elements of the government’s plan to transform the country into a high-tech economy that can match, and eventually surpass, the world’s leading scientific nations.



_Continue reading ->_ Materials science is helping to transform China into a high-tech economy | Nature


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 21-MAR-2019
*Plant scraps are the key ingredient in cheap, sustainable jet fuel*
CELL PRESS

Scientists in China have developed a process for converting plant waste from agriculture and timber harvesting into high-density aviation fuel. Their research, published March 21 in the journal _Joule_, may help reduce CO2 emissions from airplanes and rockets.

Cellulose, the main component in the biofuel, is a cheap, renewable, and highly abundant polymer that forms the cell walls of plants. While chain alkanes (such as branched octane, dodecane, and hexadecane) have previously been derived from cellulose for use in jet fuel, the researchers believe this is the first study to produce more complex polycycloalkane compounds that can be used as high-density aviation fuel.

Ning Li, a research scientist at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics and an author of the study, believes this new biofuel could be instrumental in helping aviation "go green."

"Our biofuel is important for mitigating CO2 emissions because it is derived from biomass and it has higher density (or volumetric heat values) compared with conventional aviation fuels," says Li. "As we know, the utilization of high-density aviation fuel can significantly increase the range and payload of aircraft without changing the volume of oil in the tank."

To produce this biofuel, Li and his team found that cellulose can be selectively converted to 2,5-hexanedione using the chemical reaction hydrogenolysis. They then developed a method of separating the compound 2,5-hexanedione by converting the 5-methylfurfural in hydrogenolysis product to 2,5-hexanedione, while keeping 2,5-hexanedione in the product unchanged. This resulted in a 71% isolated carbon yield--a 5% increase from the product yield in their initial work. Finally, they reacted hydrogen with the 2,5-hexanedione from wheatgrass cellulose to obtain the final product: a mixture of C12 and C18 polycycloalkanes with a low freezing point and a density about 10% higher than that of conventional jet fuels. Much of the biofuel's magic lies in this high density--it can be used as either a wholesale replacement fuel or as an additive to improve the efficiency of other jet fuels.

"The aircraft using this fuel can fly farther and carry more than those using conventional jet fuel, which can decrease the flight number and decrease the CO2 emissions during the taking off (or launching) and landing," says Li.

Although the researchers produced the biofuel at a laboratory scale in this study, Li and his team believe the process' cheap, abundant cellulose feedstock, fewer production steps, and lower energy cost and consumption mean it will soon be ready for commercial use. They also predict it will yield higher profits than conventional aviation fuel production because it requires lower costs to produce a higher-density fuel. The biggest issue holding the process back is its use of dichloromethane to break down cellulose into 2,5-hexanedione; the compound is traditionally used as a solvent in paint removers and is considered an environmental and health hazard.

"In the future, we will go on to explore the environmentally friendly and renewable organic solvent that can replace the dichloromethane used in the hydrogenolysis of cellulose to 2,5-hexanedione," says Li. "At the same time, we will study the application of 2,5-hexanedione in the synthesis of other fuels and value-added chemicals."



Plant scraps are the key ingredient in cheap, sustainable jet fuel | EurekAlert! Science News

Yanting Liu; Guangyi Li; Yancheng Hu; Aiqin Wang; Fang Lu; Ji-Jun Zou; Yu Cong; Ning Li; Tao Zhang. *Integrated Conversion of Cellulose to High-Density Aviation Fuel*. _Joule _(2019). DOI: 10.1016/j.joule.2019.02.005​


----------



## JSCh

*Fossil Bonanza in China Reveals Secrets from the Dawn of Animal Life*
Newly-discovered fossil deposit contains more than 50 unknown species from the Cambrian Explosion, when most complex body plans appeared.



Team digging up Qingjiang Fossils along the Danshui River, in Hubei Province, China.
Image credits: Dong King Fu

Thursday, March 21, 2019 - 14:00

Charles Q. Choi, Contributor

(Inside Science) -- A new trove of outstandingly preserved fossils in China from the dawn of animal life rivals the horde of weird creatures found in legendary sites such as the Burgess Shale, and may shed light on many puzzles concerning the animal family tree, a new study finds.

The earliest hints of life in the roughly 4.5 billion-year history of Earth may have appeared 3.95 billion years ago, but for a long time after that, life consisted of relatively simple organisms. However, about 540 million years ago, early in the Cambrian period, the simple animal life that already existed exploded in complexity and diversity. During this outburst, known as the Cambrian explosion, all the major groups of animals seemed to appear rapidly.

Much of what scientists know about the Cambrian explosion started with the 508 million-year-old site known as the Burgess Shale, discovered in 1909 in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, which exquisitely preserved fossils of many soft body parts, including skin, eyes, guts and brains. This site not only contains members of nearly all major animal groups alive nowadays, but also creatures with strange anatomies that do not resemble any organism seen today, leading to lively debates as to how they might be related to living animals.

The past decade has seen a big jump in the discovery of new Burgess Shale-type fossil sites, with researchers examining geological maps and seeking out the kinds of rock they know have a high potential of preserving these fossils, said paleontologist Allison Daley at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.

Now scientists have revealed new Cambrian fossils from China that not only rival the quality and diversity of fossils at the Burgess Shale, but also reveal an unexpectedly large number of previously unknown species from the Cambrian explosion.

The newfound fossil bounty is located on a bank of the Danshui River in the southern Chinese province of Hubei. At roughly 518 million years old, this collection, dubbed the Qingjiang biota, is about 10 million years older than the Burgess Shale and thus closer to the start of the Cambrian explosion, said study co-author Xingliang Zhang, a paleontologist at Northwest University in Xi'an, China.

Of the 101 animal species identified from the Qingjiang biota so far, more than 50 were previously unknown to science. Moreover, "the fossils are really exceptionally preserved, including soft tissues that you don't normally see in the fossil record," said paleontologist Jean-Bernard Caron at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, who did not take part in this research. "It's basically a new window to the Cambrian world."

This fossil trove may fill gaps of knowledge concerning animals largely missing at other Cambrian sites, such as the cnidarians, stinging creatures that include jellyfish and sea anemones. "Cnidarians are extremely rare in other Cambrian sites, but are very well-preserved and make up more than a third of the specimens reported at the Qingjiang biota," Caron said.

The Qingjiang biota also includes many ctenophores or comb jellies, "which in modern seas are sort of jellyfishlike animals with beautiful coloration," said Daley, who did not participate in this work, but wrote an editorial that accompanied the published study. Scientists have debated over whether ctenophores, sponges or cnidarians are the most ancient members of the animal family tree, and fossils from the Qingjiang biota "may help solve the problem of which animal group evolved first," she said.

The discovery of creatures known as kinorhynchs, or "mud dragons," in the Qingjiang biota was highly surprising, Daley said. Today, these invertebrates are roughly 1 millimeter long or less and live buried in marine sediments, but the Qingjiang biota reveals they could get up to 4 centimeters long and apparently lived on top of the seafloor instead. "These fossils may shed light on some of these weird and poorly understood animal groups that are still alive today," Daley said.

The Qingjiang biota may also help solve mysteries regarding enigmatic ancient groups of creatures such as the somewhat tadpole-shaped vetulicolians. Scientists have faced great difficulties pinpointing how vetulicolians were related to other animals, but "the new fossils could potentially allow us to fix vetulicolians on the tree of life," Daley said.

These findings may yield key insights on the relatively sketchy picture scientists currently have of the dawn of animal life, Caron said. "Many new things remain to be found, and hold a great potential to solve many questions," Zhang said.

The scientists detailed their findings in the March 22 issue of the journal Science.


Fossil Bonanza in China Reveals Secrets from the Dawn of Animal Life | Inside Science

Dongjing Fu, Guanghui Tong, Tao Dai, Wei Liu, Yuning Yang, Yuan Zhang, Linhao Cui, Luoyang Li, Hao Yun, Yu Wu, Ao Sun, Cong Liu, Wenrui Pei, Robert R. Gaines, Xingliang Zhang. *The Qingjiang biota—A Burgess Shale–type fossil Lagerstätte from the early Cambrian of South China*. _Science _(2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aau8800​


----------



## JSCh

*Metallic Metasurface: How to Stay Under The Radar?*




By Jolke Perelaer
Posted on March 19, 2019



Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have prepared all-metallic metasurfaces as wide-angle microwave diffusers.

Metallic skin has been widely used in various engineering applications because of its excellent mechanical and physical properties, such as high strength, large flexibility, and good ductility, as well as its high temperature resistance and excellent thermal conductivity. As a typical example, aircraft and ship skins often use metal materials to meet the physical requirements.



Schematic of the heat resisting metallic metasurface, showing the electromagnetic scattering in the upper half‐space. Inset illustrates two adjacent elements and the located catenary optical field.

In stealth technology however the strong reflection of electromagnetic waves by metal is disadvantageous in order to remain undetected. Though radar scattering signal could be reduced by changing the geometries of objects to guide the reflected wave into other directions, shaping the physical geometry is usually undesired due to other physical constraints, such as the compatibility of aero- and hydrodynamics.

As a type of two-dimensional metamaterials, metasurface has been a topic of considerable interest in recent years. According to generalized Snell’s law, the reflection and transmission electromagnetic wavefronts can be reshaped by the local phase control of the metasurfaces. Recently, various building blocks based on metal-insulator-metal (MIM) structures have been presented. This approach uses the random distribution of local reflection phases of unit cells, which enables diffuse electromagnetic scattering. Consequently, the radar cross section (RCS) would be dramatically reduced.



Infrared emission characterization for the metasurface at room temperature.

A team of researchers from the State Key Laboratory of Optical Technologies on Nano-Fabrication and Micro-Engineering, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences designed an all-metallic metasurface, using high-temperature resistant metal materials.

By optimizing the catenary optical fields and dispersion, broadband and wide-angle diffusion in the microwave band was realized. Unlike previous diffusers, the echo reflection is subtly suppressed, thus minimizing the target RCS. In addition, the structure is compatible with both high temperature and infrared camouflage performance. The authors believe that this approach is expected to provide a surface coating for electromagnetic feature control.

Read more about their findings in their full article on Advanced Materials Technologies.



Metallic Metasurface: How to Stay Under The Radar? - Advanced Science News


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

JSCh said:


> *Fossil Bonanza in China Reveals Secrets from the Dawn of Animal Life*
> Newly-discovered fossil deposit contains more than 50 unknown species from the Cambrian Explosion, when most complex body plans appeared.
> 
> 
> 
> Team digging up Qingjiang Fossils along the Danshui River, in Hubei Province, China.
> Image credits: Dong King Fu
> 
> Thursday, March 21, 2019 - 14:00
> 
> Charles Q. Choi, Contributor
> 
> (Inside Science) -- A new trove of outstandingly preserved fossils in China from the dawn of animal life rivals the horde of weird creatures found in legendary sites such as the Burgess Shale, and may shed light on many puzzles concerning the animal family tree, a new study finds.
> 
> The earliest hints of life in the roughly 4.5 billion-year history of Earth may have appeared 3.95 billion years ago, but for a long time after that, life consisted of relatively simple organisms. However, about 540 million years ago, early in the Cambrian period, the simple animal life that already existed exploded in complexity and diversity. During this outburst, known as the Cambrian explosion, all the major groups of animals seemed to appear rapidly.
> 
> Much of what scientists know about the Cambrian explosion started with the 508 million-year-old site known as the Burgess Shale, discovered in 1909 in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, which exquisitely preserved fossils of many soft body parts, including skin, eyes, guts and brains. This site not only contains members of nearly all major animal groups alive nowadays, but also creatures with strange anatomies that do not resemble any organism seen today, leading to lively debates as to how they might be related to living animals.
> 
> The past decade has seen a big jump in the discovery of new Burgess Shale-type fossil sites, with researchers examining geological maps and seeking out the kinds of rock they know have a high potential of preserving these fossils, said paleontologist Allison Daley at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.
> 
> Now scientists have revealed new Cambrian fossils from China that not only rival the quality and diversity of fossils at the Burgess Shale, but also reveal an unexpectedly large number of previously unknown species from the Cambrian explosion.
> 
> The newfound fossil bounty is located on a bank of the Danshui River in the southern Chinese province of Hubei. At roughly 518 million years old, this collection, dubbed the Qingjiang biota, is about 10 million years older than the Burgess Shale and thus closer to the start of the Cambrian explosion, said study co-author Xingliang Zhang, a paleontologist at Northwest University in Xi'an, China.
> 
> Of the 101 animal species identified from the Qingjiang biota so far, more than 50 were previously unknown to science. Moreover, "the fossils are really exceptionally preserved, including soft tissues that you don't normally see in the fossil record," said paleontologist Jean-Bernard Caron at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, who did not take part in this research. "It's basically a new window to the Cambrian world."
> 
> This fossil trove may fill gaps of knowledge concerning animals largely missing at other Cambrian sites, such as the cnidarians, stinging creatures that include jellyfish and sea anemones. "Cnidarians are extremely rare in other Cambrian sites, but are very well-preserved and make up more than a third of the specimens reported at the Qingjiang biota," Caron said.
> 
> The Qingjiang biota also includes many ctenophores or comb jellies, "which in modern seas are sort of jellyfishlike animals with beautiful coloration," said Daley, who did not participate in this work, but wrote an editorial that accompanied the published study. Scientists have debated over whether ctenophores, sponges or cnidarians are the most ancient members of the animal family tree, and fossils from the Qingjiang biota "may help solve the problem of which animal group evolved first," she said.
> 
> The discovery of creatures known as kinorhynchs, or "mud dragons," in the Qingjiang biota was highly surprising, Daley said. Today, these invertebrates are roughly 1 millimeter long or less and live buried in marine sediments, but the Qingjiang biota reveals they could get up to 4 centimeters long and apparently lived on top of the seafloor instead. "These fossils may shed light on some of these weird and poorly understood animal groups that are still alive today," Daley said.
> 
> The Qingjiang biota may also help solve mysteries regarding enigmatic ancient groups of creatures such as the somewhat tadpole-shaped vetulicolians. Scientists have faced great difficulties pinpointing how vetulicolians were related to other animals, but "the new fossils could potentially allow us to fix vetulicolians on the tree of life," Daley said.
> 
> These findings may yield key insights on the relatively sketchy picture scientists currently have of the dawn of animal life, Caron said. "Many new things remain to be found, and hold a great potential to solve many questions," Zhang said.
> 
> The scientists detailed their findings in the March 22 issue of the journal Science.
> 
> 
> Fossil Bonanza in China Reveals Secrets from the Dawn of Animal Life | Inside Science
> 
> Dongjing Fu, Guanghui Tong, Tao Dai, Wei Liu, Yuning Yang, Yuan Zhang, Linhao Cui, Luoyang Li, Hao Yun, Yu Wu, Ao Sun, Cong Liu, Wenrui Pei, Robert R. Gaines, Xingliang Zhang. *The Qingjiang biota—A Burgess Shale–type fossil Lagerstätte from the early Cambrian of South China*. _Science _(2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aau8800​




In this very same Science issue, two further papers were published by Yan Nieng's previous group of Tsinghua. 

Just goes on to show how productive a good scientist can be. A single scientist like Yan Nieng has published more papers that most university biology departments of China would not have. 

But she was still denied funding, which led to her flight to USA. 

It was a big loss as Yan Nieng is almost certainly going to win a Nobel prize.


----------



## JSCh

Bussard Ramjet said:


> In this very same Science issue, two further papers were published by Yan Nieng's previous group of Tsinghua.
> 
> Just goes on to show how productive a good scientist can be. A single scientist like Yan Nieng has published more papers that most university biology departments of China would not have.
> 
> But she was still denied funding, which led to her flight to USA.
> 
> It was a big loss as Yan Nieng is almost certainly going to win a Nobel prize.


Only the address is Princeton. I see almost exclusively Tsinghua and very sure the funding would be exclusively from China.








​


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

JSCh said:


> Only the address is Princeton. I see almost exclusively Tsinghua and very sure the funding would be exclusively from China.
> 
> View attachment 549264
> 
> View attachment 549265
> ​



Yes, that's because this is research that was conducted when she was at Tsinghua. Her Tsinghua research is still pouring out into journals because it can take many years to conduct research, and then publish it, and then get it peer reviewed. 

Her present address is at princeton shows that she has left Tsinghua. It is a huge loss for China. Just imagine, 2 papers in a single issue of Science! 

For most researchers even a single paper in Science is an achievement of the life time. But she has two in a single week!


----------



## JSCh

Bussard Ramjet said:


> Yes, that's because this is research that was conducted when she was at Tsinghua. Her Tsinghua research is still pouring out into journals because it can take many years to conduct research, and then publish it, and then get it peer reviewed.
> 
> Her present address is at princeton shows that she has left Tsinghua. It is a huge loss for China. Just imagine, 2 papers in a single issue of Science!
> 
> For most researchers even a single paper in Science is an achievement of the life time. But she has two in a single week!


The team that she led would still be in Tsinghua. That Tsinghua team would be continuing research.

If Nieng Yan could convince Princeton to put up the fund to setup a research team for her, then that is good for her and good for the world.

Two CryoEm team doing research is better than one.

Anyway there is also Shi Yigong - the mentor of Nieng Yan.

He renounced his U.S. citizenship sometime back, and currently doing research in China.


----------



## Bussard Ramjet

JSCh said:


> The team that she led would still be in Tsinghua. That Tsinghua team would be continuing research.
> 
> If Nieng Yan could convince Princeton to put up the fund to setup a research team for her, then that is good for her and good for the world.
> 
> Two CryoEm team doing research is better than one.
> 
> Anyway there is also Shi Yigong - the mentor of Nieng Yan.
> 
> He renounced his U.S. citizenship sometime back, and currently doing research in China.



I am not sure if the team will be at Tsinghua. Junior Researchers and PhD students flock to good researchers wherever they are. That is why a single good professor can attract many many good students and junior researchers. 

Something like this happened with Pan Jianwei. His presence in China led to many chinese talents returning back home to do research with him. Like Lu Chaoyang. 

Shi Yigong has changed his focus from research to mentoring and bringing up the West Lake University. I don't think he will be as productive in science any more. 

I just can't wrap my head around why Chinese authorities let Yan Nieng go who was the best young bio researcher in China.


----------



## JSCh

*Physics - Synopsis: Face Recognition with Ghost Imaging*
March 26, 2019
Using a variation of a technique known as ghost imaging, researchers demonstrate a face recognition protocol that works without complex image analysis algorithms.




X. Qiu _et al_., Phys Rev. Lett. (2019)

Face recognition systems typically analyze a person’s photo to select out prominent facial features that are then searched for in a database of previously analyzed photos. But what if you could skip the analysis and use light to directly determine a match? That’s the idea proposed by Lixiang Chen and colleagues from Xiamen University in China, who have demonstrated a simple face recognition system based on ghost imaging. Their method finds matches by searching for correlations between two light beams imprinted with image information.

Ghost imaging uses correlations between photons to image objects with a minimal amount of illumination. The most common method involves shining a light beam into a special crystal that generates a stream of entangled pairs of photons. One photon in each pair travels towards the object, while the other photon (acting as a reference) takes an empty path. Both routes end with detectors, whose outputs are combined to produce an image of the object.

For face recognition, Chen’s team designed and tested an alternate setup that instead imprints the image of a face in the initial light beam. When this “structured” light reaches the crystal, it shares its information between the entangled photons. A spatial light modulator placed in one path acts like a mask that can be programmed with a series of test images. In a demonstration, the researchers used five face photos as their test pool and found a strong correlation peak in the combined detector signals when the selected test image was the same as the initial face image. The team says that their method could be used in low light situations, such as in a “covert operation” that must avoid detection by the target person.

This research is published in _Physical Review Letters_.

–Michael Schirber
Michael Schirber is a Corresponding Editor for _Physics_ based in Lyon, France.

*Structured-Pump-Enabled Quantum Pattern Recognition*
Xiaodong Qiu, Dongkai Zhang, Wuhong Zhang, and Lixiang Chen
Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 123901 (2019)

Published March 26, 2019​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 26-MAR-2019
*Rice cultivation: Balance of phosphorus and nitrogen determines growth and yield*
UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE

In the future, a newly discovered mechanism in control of plant nutrition could help to achieve higher harvests in a sustainable way. Scientists from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing (China) discovered this mechanism in their research on Asian rice in collaboration with Professor Dr Stanislav Kopriva from the University of Cologne's Botanical Institute and the Cluster of Excellence CEPLAS. The balance between nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) is decisive for crop yield. Both nutrients, which the plant absorbs from the soil through its roots, interact more strongly with each other than previously known. The study 'Nitrate-NRT1.1B-SPX4 cascade integrates nitrogen and phosphorus signalling networks in plants' has now appeared in the journal _Nature Plants_.

Kopriva said: 'For healthy and optimal growth, all living beings need a good balance of minerals. However, we know very little about how plants achieve this balance.' His colleagues in Beijing had observed that the addition of phosphate only had a positive effect on plant growth and yield if a sufficient amount of nitrogen was also available in the soil. 'Together, we have now discovered the mechanism by which nitrogen controls the absorption of phosphate', Kopriva remarked.

A detailed analysis at the molecular level revealed an entire signalling chain that the plant sets in motion - from the sensor that recognizes nitrate quantities to factors that enable the synthesis of the so-called transporters that carry the phosphate into the plant. Kopriva explained: 'Although most of the components were already known individually, it was only through this work that they were brought together into a signalling pathway. This gives us a completely new understanding of how to control plant nutrition. In addition, it enables specific manipulations to either couple the uptake of both nutrients more closely or to separate them from each other - depending on how nutrient-rich the soil on which the rice grows is.'

Professor Dr Stanislav Kopriva from the Botanical Institute of the University of Cologne is co-speaker of the Cluster of Excellence on Plant Sciences CEPLAS at the Universities of Düsseldorf and Cologne, which is funded by the Excellence Strategy of the German Federal Government and the Laender. CEPLAS wants to develop basic knowledge about 'SMART Plants for Tomorrow's Needs'.


Rice cultivation: Balance of phosphorus and nitrogen determines growth and yield | EurekAlert! Science News

Bin Hu, Zhimin Jiang, Wei Wang, Yahong Qiu, Zhihua Zhang, Yongqiang Liu, Aifu Li, Xiaokai Gao, Linchuan Liu, Yangwen Qian, Xiahe Huang, Feifei Yu, Sai Kang, Yiqin Wang, Junpeng Xie, Shouyun Cao, Lianhe Zhang, Yingchun Wang, Qi Xie, Stanislav Kopriva & Chengcai Chu. *Nitrate–NRT1.1B–SPX4 cascade integrates nitrogen and phosphorus signalling networks in plants*. _Nature Plant_ (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41477-019-0384-1​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Exotic particles containing five quarks discovered at the Large Hadron Collider*
March 27, 2019 12.48pm GMT
*Author*



Harry Cliff
Particle physicist, University of Cambridge

*Interviewed*





Liming Zhang
Associate Professor, Tsinghua University






Tomasz Skwarnicki
Professor, Syracuse University

*Disclosure statement*
Harry Cliff is a member of the LHCb Collaboration, though he was not directly involved in the work described in this article.

*Partners*




University of Cambridge provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.


Illustration of the possible layout of the quarks in a pentaquark particle. Daniel Dominguez/CERN

Everything you see around you is made up of elementary particles called quarks and leptons, which can combine to form bigger particles such as protons or atoms. But that doesn’t make them boring – these subatomic particles can also combine in exotic ways we’ve never spotted. Now CERN’s LHCb collaboration has announced the discovery of a clutch of new particles dubbed “pentaquarks”. The results can help unveil many mysteries of the theory of quarks, a key part of the standard model of particle physics.

Quarks were first proposed to explain the untidy slew of new particles discovered in cosmic ray and collider experiments in the mid 20th century. This growing “zoo” of apparently fundamental particles caused consternation among physicists, who have a natural bias towards simplicity and order – and hate having to remember more than a few basic principles. The famous Italian physicist Enrico Fermicaptured the mood of his colleagues when he said “Young man, if I could remember the names of all these particles, I would have been a botanist”.

Fortunately, in the 1960s, the American physicist Murray Gell-Mann noticed patterns in the particle zoo, similar to those spotted by Dimitri Mendeleev when he drew up the periodic table of the chemical elements. Just as the periodic table implied the existence of things smaller than atoms, Gell-Mann’s theory suggested the existence of a new class of fundamental particles. Particle physicists were eventually able to explain the hundreds of particles in the zoo as being made up of a much smaller number of truly fundamental particles called quarks.

*Mystery hadrons*
There are six types of quarks in the standard model – down, up, strange, charm, bottom and top. These also have “antimatter” companions – it is believed that every particle has an antimatter version that is virtually identical to itself, but with the opposite charge. Quarks and antiquarks get bound together to make particles known as hadrons.

According to Gell-Mann’s model, there are two broad classes of hadrons. One is particles made of three quarks called baryons (which include the protons and neutrons that make up the atomic nucleus) and the other particles made of a quark and an antiquark known as mesons.

Until recently, baryons and mesons were the only types of hadrons that had been seen in experiments. However, back in the 1960s, Gell-Mann also raised the possibility of more exotic combinations of quarks, such as tetraquarks (two quarks and two antiquarks) and pentaquarks (four quarks and one antiquark).

In 2014, LHCb, which runs one of the four giant experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, published a result showing that the snappily named Z(4430)+ particle was a tetraquark. This started a flurry of interest in new exotic hadrons. Then, in 2015, LHCb announced the discovery of the first ever pentaquark, adding a brand new class of particle to the hadron family.

The results presented by LHCb today expand upon that first pentaquark discovery by finding additional such particles. This was possible thanks to a big chunk of new data recorded during the second run of the Large Hadron Collider. Liming Zhang, an associate professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing and one of the physicists who made the measurement, said that “we now have ten times more data than in 2015, which allows us to see more exciting and finer structures than we could before.” When Liming and his colleagues examined the original pentaquark discovered in 2015, they were surprised to find that it had split in two. The original pentaquark was actually two separate pentaquark particles that had such similar masses that they originally looked like a single particle.



LHCb. Maximilien Brice et al./CERN

As if two pentaquarks for the price of one wasn’t exciting enough, LHCb also found a third pentaquark with a slightly smaller mass than the other two. All three pentaquarks are made of one down quark, two up quarks, a charm quark and a charm antiquark.

The big question now is: what is the precise internal structure of these pentaquarks? One option is that they are truly made of five quarks, with all of them mixed together evenly within a single hadron. Another possibility is that the pentaquarks are really a baryon and a meson stuck together to form a loosely bound molecule, similar to the way that protons and neutrons bind together inside the atomic nucleus.

Tomasz Skwarnicki, a professor of physics at Syracuse University in New York who also worked on the measurement, told me that the new companion state “is at a mass which offers hints about internal structure of pentaquarks”. The most likely option is that these pentaquarks are baryon-meson molecules, he added. To be absolutely sure, physicists will need more experimental data, as well as further studies from theorists, meaning that the story of these pentaquarks is far from over.

These results complete a week of exciting new announcements from LHCb, which included the discovery of a new kind of matter-antimatter asymmetry. The LHC has yet to discover any particles beyond the standard model that could help to explain mysteries like dark matter, an invisible but unknown substance that makes up the majority of matter in the universe.

But these exciting measurements show that there is still lots to learn about the particles and forces of the standard model. It may be that our best chance of finding answers to the big questions facing fundamental physics in the 21st century lies in more detailed studies of the particles we already know about rather than discovering new ones. Either way, we still have a great deal to discover.


https://theconversation.com/exotic-...iscovered-at-the-large-hadron-collider-114211

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 27-MAR-2019
*Pressure makes best cooling*
CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HEADQUARTERS



​Figure 1. Schematic diagram of the refrigeration cycle based on barocaloric effects. *CREDIT: *HUANG Chengyu

Phase transitions take place as heat (i.e., entropy) is exchanged between materials and the environment. When such processes are driven by pressure, the induced cooling effect is called the barocaloric effect, which is a promising alternative to the conventional vapor compression cycle.

For the purposes of real application, it is desirable for a material to have larger entropy changes induced by smaller pressure.

Recently, an international research team led by Prof. LI Bing from the Institute of Metal Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has found that a class of disordered materials, called plastic crystals, exhibits record-large barocaloric effects under very weak pressure.

The typical entropy changes are about several hundred joules per kilogram per kelvin, which is 10 times better than previous materials.

Utilizing large-scale facilities in Japan and Australia, the team revealed that the constituent molecules of these materials are extensively orientationally disordered on the lattices and these materials are intrinsically very deformable.

As a result, a tiny amount of pressure is able to suppress the extensive orientational disorder. As a result, pressure-induced entropy changes are obtained. These two merits make plastic crystals the best barocaloric material so far.

This research is the first report that entropy changes can exceed 100 joules per kilogram per kelvin. It represents the best results among all caloric-effect materials (barocaloric effect as well as its analogous effects such as the magnetocaloric, electrocaloric and elastocaloric effects), and is regarded as a milestone.

The microscopic physical scenario established using the neutron scattering technique is helpful for designing even better materials in the future.

As far as refrigeration application is concerned, the plastic crystals reported here are very promising given that they are abundantly available, environmentally friendly, easily driven and high-performance.

This work points to a new direction for emerging solid-state refrigeration technologies.


Pressure makes best cooling | EurekAlert! Science News

Bing Li, Yukinobu Kawakita, Seiko Ohira-Kawamura, Takeshi Sugahara, Hui Wang, Jingfan Wang, Yanna Chen, Saori I. Kawaguchi, Shogo Kawaguchi, Koji Ohara, Kuo Li, Dehong Yu, Richard Mole, Takanori Hattori, Tatsuya Kikuchi, Shin-ichiro Yano, Zhao Zhang, Zhe Zhang, Weijun Ren, Shangchao Lin, Osami Sakata, Kenji Nakajima & Zhidong Zhang. *Colossal barocaloric effects in plastic crystals*. _Nature _(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1042-5​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists develop new material for super batteries*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-28 19:02:53|Editor: ZX

TIANJIN, March 28 (Xinhua) -- Researchers from Tianjin University said Thursday that they had developed ultra-high-energy fluorinated carbon materials, the key technology to realizing ultra-energy storage.

Fluorinated carbon is a solid-state cathode material with the highest theoretical energy density in the world. It has broad application prospects in the fields of electronic devices, biomedicine and equipment power supply.

Feng Wei said his team, by altering covalent fluorocarbon structures, developed the new fluorinated carbon material with both high energy density and high power density, or long battery duration and large energy discharge, a property lacking in existing fluorinated carbon materials.

The research results show that the energy density of the new material is 2,738 Wh/kg, which is 30 percent higher than that of similar products, and can work stably under the condition of a large discharge current.

"Using the new material, the ultra-long-endurance for unmanned aerial vehicles, cardiac pacemakers with lifelong power, and bionic robotic fish traveling tens of thousands of kilometers in the ocean may be seen in the future," Feng said.

Feng said his team has realized the stable production of the new material, and has delved into its fluorination mechanisms, structural regulation and electrochemical kinetics.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*How to Free Trapped Radicals from Carboxyl*
Mar 29, 2019

*USTC young scientists develop a cheap and simple visible light catalytic system*

The removal of carboxyl groups and the release of alkyl radical fragments from the tight binding of carboxyl groups are promising directions in organic synthesis, especially in drug synthesis. Various catalysts have been designed to solve this challenge.

In a recent study published in _Science_, scientists from University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of Chinese Academy of Sciences reported their newly developed catalyst system which is cheap and simple. 

The free radical is versatile and controllable, representing a "Great Holy" in organic synthesis, but it is pressed by the "big mountain" of the carboxyl group.



Figure: Free radical, the Monkey King is bound by the "big mountain" of the carboxyl group. The mainstream photocatalytic systems are complex and costly. The novel catalyst uses a new mechanism to combine the cheap catalyst with the carboxyl group, pushes the redox reaction cycle, and easily sets free the "free radicals". (Image by CUI Jie)

Conventional decarboxylation processes have limitations in industrialization. In recent years, the scientific community has tried to use photocatalytic reaction to achieve decarboxylation conversion, which has adavantages such as simple operation, easy control, and energy saving. The photocatalytic system has been successfully applied to the synthesis of various complex functional molecules.

However, most photoredox catalysts in current use are composed of precious metal complexes such as iridium and ruthenium or are synthetically elaborate organic dyes with complicated structures. It is important to develop environmental friendly and multifunctional photocatalytic systems. The new catalyst has a new way to use the new mechanism to combine cheap catalyst with carboxyl group, push redox reaction cycle, and easily and freely rescue the "free radicals".

Based on visible light excitation for intermolecular charge transfer, scientists from USTC proposed a new concept to construct a catalytic redox cycle for organic synthesis. They discovered a simple, easily available, highly efficient and non-metallic anionic composite photocatalytic system for decarboxylative reaction of carboxylic acid derivative.

The proposed catalytic system simultaneously drives a redox cycle, simplifies the photocatalytic system, and reduces the cost of the photocatalyst. The system breaks the limitations of traditional heating method, and solves the problems of transition metals remaining in the synthesis of functional compounds and drugs.

Using this system, redox-active esters derived from various natural and unnatural amino acids successfully trigger decarboxylativr coupling reactions with high efficiency and gram scale production, indicating the feasibility of industrialization.

It is also expected to promote the scale industrialization of photocatalytic technology in the production of important functional molecules, with important synthetic chemical value and good industrial application prospects.

The results may initiate a new area of research in photoredox catalysis by introducing a tricomponent system based on a salt, a phosphine and an electron- acceptor to access redox active complexes without the need for traditional transition metal or complex dye catalysts.

This study illustrated that decarboxylative alkylation is accomplished without precious transition metals or organic dyes, which may be good news for many synthetic chemists.


How to Free Trapped Radicals from Carboxyl---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Ming-Chen Fu, Rui Shang, Bin Zhao, Bing Wang, Yao Fu. *Photocatalytic decarboxylative alkylations mediated by triphenylphosphine and sodium iodide*. _Science_ (2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aav3200​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

PROJECTS AND FACILITIES | NEWS
*Physicists in China unveil plans for underground gravitational-wave observatory*
01 Apr 2019


​Tunnel vision: The Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector in Japan (pictured), which will begin full operation later this year, is currently the world's only underground gravitational-wave detector (Courtesy: Michael Banks)

Physicists in China have revealed plans to build a massive new underground facility in the centre of the country to study gravitational waves and test Einstein’s theory of general relativity to an unprecedented precision. The Zhaoshan Long-baseline Atom Interferometer Gravitation Antenna (ZAIGA), is to be located in eastern Wuhan and cost two billion yuan (about £226m). If the project is fully funded, it could be operational by 2025.

The first phase of ZAIGA, which could be complete by the end of 2020, will involve building a 300 m vertical tunnel under the Zhaoshan Mountain – 80 km southeast of Wuhan — to study various predictions resulting from general relativity. It costs 600 million yuan (£68m) and is fully funded by local governments and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “We have just completed site exploration with tunnel excavation starting this year,” says Mingsheng Zhan, principal investigator of ZAIGA, who is based at the Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The tunnel will be mainly used to test the weak equivalence principle, which implies that the trajectory of a free-fall object is independent of its mass and internal structure. Numerous experiments have proved the principle to be correct, including a 12 m-tall “atomic fountain” – in which a cloud of atoms are tossed upwards in the Earth’s gravitational field by lasers — in Zhan’s lab in Wuhan. The atomic fountains at ZAIGA will be mounted on the top and bottom of the tunnel with a high-vacuum chamber running along it. “The idea of an atomic fountain is to let go of two slightly different atoms and compare how they fall,” says Zhan.

We hope [the experiments] will bring good surprises
Mingsheng Zhan​
Another experiment planned for the tunnel will involve installing optical clocks at both ends to measure the time difference predicted by general relativity: time goes by faster at higher elevation than at a lower elevation due to what is known as gravitational redshift. Zhan says that while atomic clocks aboard Galileo satellites have been a huge success in testing this effect, ground-based optical clocks can be controlled better and are less influenced by outside temperatures.

ZAIGA will also measure the “space-time dragging effect” caused by Earth’s rotation distorting _spacetime_. This will be done to a higher precision than that carried out by NASA’s Gravity Probe B satellite, which launched in 2004 and ended operations in 2010. “We hope [the experiments] will bring good surprises,” adds Zhan.

China is not, however, alone in such endeavours and some of those tests will also be carried out at a similar facility called the Matter-wave laser Interferometric Gravitation Antenna (MIGA) being built in Rustrel, France, by a consortium of 17 European countries. MIGA features a 300 m-long optical cavity and will carry out precision measurements of gravity as well as applications in geosciences and fundamental physics.

*Bouncing atoms*

Once the 300 m vertical tunnel is complete, physicists then hope to construct a gravitational-wave observatory, which would be under the mountain at an average depth of 200 m to reduce the effect of seismic noise. Rather than detecting gravitational waves by bouncing laser beams off mirrors as used by the LIGO gravitational-wave observatories in the US, ZAIGA-GW would instead use an atom interferometer. This would involve splitting an atom beam in half, and allowing both halves to travel for a certain distance before being recombined to look for differences in their paths. A slightly longer path would result from a tiny curvature in space-time that could be caused by a passing gravitational wave. Atom interferometers tend to be more sensitive than their laser counterparts as atomic beams travel more slowly, which therefore amplifies any signal from a passing gravitational wave.

Costing 1.5 billion yuan, of which the team have partial funding, ZAIGA-GW would consist of three 1 km-long tunnels in the shape of an equilateral triangle with each arm being an independent atom interferometer. ZAIGA-GW would then aim to detect gravitational waves in the 0.1-10 Hz frequency range, which would be most likely emitted by medium-size black-hole binaries. These black holes have masses between 100 and one million solar masses and are elusive but crucial to explain whether supermassive black holes formed from the expansion of small black holes, from the merger of multiple smaller black holes, or possibly from other scenarios.

Zhan says ZAIGA-GW will be open to international collaboration and the team currently have exchanges with Europe, US as well as Japan, which is building KAGRA — the world’s first underground gravitational-wave observatory to use cryogenic mirrors. Zhan also says that ZAIGA-GW could be later upgraded to 3 km- or 10 km-long arms, “if funding is available”.



Physicists in China unveil plans for underground gravitational-wave observatory – Physics World

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Science 12:16, 03-Apr-2019
*Transgenic monkeys carrying human gene show human-like brain development*
CGTN




Researchers from China and the United States created transgenic monkeys carrying a human gene that is important for brain development, and later observed human-like brain development in the monkeys.

Scientists have identified several genes that are linked to primate brain size. MCPH1 is a gene that is seen during fetal brain development. Mutations in MCPH1 can lead to microcephaly, a developmental disorder characterized by a small brain.

In the study published in the Beijing-based National Science Review, researchers from the Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the University of North Carolina in the United States and other research institutions reported that they successfully created 11 transgenic rhesus monkeys (eight first-generation and three second-generation) carrying human copies of MCPH1.

According to the research article, brain imaging and tissue section analysis showed an altered pattern of neuron differentiation and a delayed maturation of the neural system, which is similar to the developmental delay (neoteny) in humans.



Wild rhesus monkeys /VCG Photo

Neoteny in humans is the retention of juvenile features into adulthood. One key difference between humans and nonhuman primates is that humans require a much longer time to shape their neuro-networks during development, greatly elongating childhood, which is the so-called "neoteny."

The study also found that the transgenic monkeys exhibited better short-term memory and shorter reaction time compared to wild rhesus monkeys in the control group.

The researchers said that a transgenic monkey model is practical and to a large extent can mimic the human-specific status.

In future studies, transgenic nonhuman primates have the potential to provide important insights into basic questions of what makes humans unique, as well as into neurodegenerative and social behavior disorders that are difficult to study by other means, they said.

*Strict animal experiments*

Concerns may be raised when talking about experiment animals, while it has been worldwide recognized that the welfare of lab animals should be safeguarded.

Strict regulations and rules have been stipulated to regulate animal experiments.

A nonprofit organization, Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International (AAALAC), has been committed to promoting "the humane treatment of animals in science through voluntary accreditation and assessment programs."

Over 1,000 government agencies, enterprises and institutions from 47 countries have been certified by the association, with more than 80 from China, showing their commitment to "responsible animal care and use and good science."

Both the Chinese and U.S. institutes involved in the transgenic monkey research have got AAALAC accreditation.

At the same time, scientists are also seeking alternative methods for lab animals, according to Shanghai Institute of Materia Media, CAS, also with AAALAC accreditation, practicing the basic principles of "3R" – replace, reduce and refine.

(Cover: Rhesus macaques /VCG Photo)
(With input from Xinhua News Agency)

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 3-APR-2019
*Newly discovered mechanism of plant hormone auxin acts the opposite way*
Auxin accumulation at the inner bend of seedling leads to growth inhibition rather than stimulation as in other plant tissues

INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY AUSTRIA



​Increased auxin accumulation (blue areas) in the concave side of the apical hook of _Arabidopsis thaliana_.
*CREDIT: *IST Austria - Marçal Gallemí Rovira/Eva Benková group

Increased levels of the hormone auxin usually promote cell growth in various plant tissues. Chinese scientists together with researchers from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria) have now shown that in special areas of the seedling, increased auxin levels trigger a different gene expression pathway leading to growth inhibition. The discovery, published in the journal _Nature_, helps to explain the formation of the typical bend or so called apical hook that helps the seedling to break through the soil following germination.

Varied auxin concentrations mediate distinct developmental outcomes in different plant tissues. For instance, auxin accumulating in stem tissues triggers a gene expression pathway that ultimately leads to increased cell elongation resulting in stem growth. A growth scenario, which cannot be explained in an analogous way, however, is the development of the apical hook that the early plant forms to protect its delicate growing apex when breaking through the soil. In the cells of the inner bend of the hook, i.e. the concave side, auxin accumulates; however, to grow into the form of a hook, the seedling's shoot must grow less at the inner concave than on the outer convex side. Scientists thus faced a paradox situation and asked themselves: Can auxin do something opposite from what it has been known to do in other parts of the plants?

*One hormone--two different gene expressions*

To solve the puzzle, the research group around Tongda Xu from the Chinese Academy of Sciences collaborated with IST Austria plant cell biologist Ji?í Friml and his postdoc fellow Zuzana Gelová. By testing various mutants of the model plant _Arabidopsis thaliana_, the scientists could reveal a previously unknown gene expression pathway triggered by auxin accumulation and leading to the inhibition of growth at the concave side of the hook. While the previously known pathway is located at the nucleus and involves the receptor protein TIR1 (Transport Inhibitor Response 1), this newly discovered pathway starts at the cell surface--and involves a different perception component, Transmembrane Kinase (TMK1), the function of which had been unclear.

*A paradox and TMK1 explained*

In the newly discovered mechanism, auxin activates TMK1 at the cell surface and triggers cleavage of the intracellular part of this protein. Within the cell, the cleaved part of TMK1 interacts with specific transcriptional repressors. While auxin degrades similar repressor proteins in the nucleus-based TIR1 pathway to trigger gene expression leading to cell growth, it stabilizes the repressors connected to the TMK1 pathway, resulting in growth inhibition rather than stimulation. Thus, TIR1 and TMK1 interact with different subsets of transcriptional proteins and therefore facilitate auxin signaling by two different mechanisms, allowing the shoot to grow on one side, but not the other. Co-author Jiří Friml: "We have wanted to understand for a long time how TMK1 works as well as whether and how auxin accumulation can function in two different ways. Thanks to our persistence and the major contributions of our Chinese colleagues, we now know both." Starting from here, it would also be worthwhile to the scientists to understand the full repertoire of the developmental process beyond the apical hook controlled by this novel auxin signaling pathway.


Newly discovered mechanism of plant hormone auxin acts the opposite way | EurekAlert! Science News

Min Cao, Rong Chen, Pan Li, Yongqiang Yu, Rui Zheng, Danfeng Ge, Wei Zheng, Xuhui Wang, Yangtao Gu, Zuzana Gelová, Jiří Friml, Heng Zhang, Renyi Liu, Jun He & Tongda Xu. *TMK1-mediated auxin signalling regulates differential growth of the apical hook*. _Nature _(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1069-7​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 4-APR-2019
*Ready, steady, go: 2 new studies reveal the steps in plant immune receptor activation*

MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR PLANT BREEDING RESEARCH



​The upper image depicts the pentameric wheel-like structure of the ZAR1 resistosome from above. In the lower panel depicting the resistosome in the side view, the funnel can be seen in light brown. PBL2 is colored in green and RKS1 in mustard. All other colors denote different domains of the ZAR1 protein.
*CREDIT: *Jijie Chai

Although separated by more than one billion years of evolution, plants and animals have hit upon similar immune strategies to protect themselves against pathogens. One important mechanism is defined by cytoplasmic receptors called NLRs that, in plants, recognize so-called effectors, molecules that invading microorganisms secrete into the plant's cells. These recognition events can either involve direct recognition of effectors by NLRs or indirect recognition, in which the NLRs act as 'guards' that monitor additional host proteins or 'guardees' that are modified by effectors. Host recognition of effectors, whether direct or indirect, results in cell death to confine microbes to the site of infection. However, until now, a detailed understanding of the mechanisms of action of plant NLRs has been lacking, and much of our understanding of how these molecules function in plants has been based on comparison with animal counterparts.

In two new studies published in the journal _Science_, Jijie Chai who is affiliated with Tsinghua University in Beijing as well as the University of Cologne and the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research together with the groups of Hong-Wei Zhang and Jian-Min Zhou at Tsinghua University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing have now pieced together the sequence of molecular events that convert inactive NLR molecules into active complexes that provide disease resistance.

The authors focused their attentions on a protein called ZAR1, an ancient plant molecule that is likely to be of broad importance since it interacts with multiple 'guardees' to recognize unrelated bacterial effectors.

Using cryo-electron microscopy, Chai and co-authors observed that in the absence of bacterial effectors, ZAR1, together with the plant protein RKS1, is maintained in a latent state through interactions involving multiple domains of the ZAR1 protein. Upon infection, a bacterial effector modifies the plant 'guardee' PBL2, which then activates RKS1 resulting in huge conformational changes that first allow plants to swap ADP for ATP and then result in the assembly of a pentameric, wheel-like structure that the authors term the 'ZAR1 resistosome'.

One striking feature of this structure is its similarity with animal NLR proteins, which, once activated, also assemble into wheel-like structures that act as signaling platforms for cell death execution and immune signaling. However, one important difference between the structures offers a tantalizing clue as to how ZAR1 induces cell death. The authors could identify a highly ordered funnel-like structure in ZAR1 that tethers the resistosome to the plasma membrane and is required for cell death and disease resistance. The authors speculate that ZAR1 may form a pore in the plasma membrane and in this way perturb cellular function leading to immune signaling and cell death.

Other plant NLRs also assemble into complexes that associate with the plasma membrane and it is thus highly likely that Chai's findings have important general implications for understanding plant immunity. MPIPZ director Paul Schulze-Lefert, who was not involved in the studies, is in no doubt about the importance of the new studies: "This will become textbook knowledge."



Ready, steady, go: 2 new studies reveal the steps in plant immune receptor activation | EurekAlert! Science News

Jizong Wang, Jia Wang, Meijuan Hu, Shan Wu, Jinfeng Qi, Guoxun Wang, Zhifu Han, Yijun Qi, Ning Gao, Hong-Wei Wang, Jian-Min Zhou, Jijie Chai. *Ligand-triggered allosteric ADP release primes a plant NLR complex*. _Science_ (2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aav5868
Jizong Wang, Meijuan Hu, Jia Wang, Jinfeng Qi, Zhifu Han, Guoxun Wang, Yijun Qi, Hong-Wei Wang, Jian-Min Zhou, Jijie Chai. *Reconstitution and structure of a plant NLR resistosome conferring immunity*. _Science_ (2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aav5870

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

PUBLIC RELEASE: 4-APR-2019
*The Lancet: Moderate alcohol consumption does not protect against stroke, study shows*
Blood pressure and stroke risk increase steadily with increasing alcohol intake, and previous claims that 1-2 alcoholic drinks a day might protect against stroke are dismissed by new evidence from a genetic study involving 160,000 adults

THE LANCET

Blood pressure and stroke risk increase steadily with increasing alcohol intake, and previous claims that 1-2 alcoholic drinks a day might protect against stroke are dismissed by new evidence from a genetic study involving 160,000 adults.

Studies of East Asian genes that strongly affect how much alcohol people choose to drink show that alcohol itself directly increases blood pressure and the chances of having a stroke, according to a new study published in _The Lancet_. It was known that stroke rates were increased by heavy drinking, but it wasn't known whether they were increased or decreased by moderate drinking.

Although people who have one or two alcoholic drinks a day had previously been observed to have a slightly lower risk of stroke and heart attack than non-drinkers, it was not known whether this was because moderate drinking was slightly protective, or whether it was because non-drinkers had other underlying health problems (eg, being former drinkers who had stopped because of illness). At least for stroke, the genetic evidence now refutes the claim that moderate drinking is protective.

In East Asian populations, there are common genetic variants that greatly reduce alcohol tolerability, because they cause an extremely unpleasant flushing reaction after drinking alcohol. Although these genetic variants greatly reduce the amount people drink, they are unrelated to other lifestyle factors such as smoking. Therefore, they can be used to study the causal effects of alcohol intake.

As the genetic factors that strongly affect drinking patterns are allocated randomly at conception and persist lifelong, this study is the genetic equivalent of a large randomised trial, and can therefore sort out cause-and-effect relationships reliably - a method called "Mendelian randomisation."

Lead author Dr Iona Millwood, from the Medical Research Council Population Health Research Unit at the University of Oxford, UK, says: "Using genetics is a novel way to assess the health effects of alcohol, and to sort out whether moderate drinking really is protective, or whether it's slightly harmful. Our genetic analyses have helped us understand the cause-and-effect relationships." [1]

Researchers from Oxford University, Peking University, and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences led a large collaborative study of over 500,000 men and women in China who were asked about their alcohol intake and followed for ten years. In over 160,000 of these adults the researchers measured two genetic variants (rs671 and rs1229984) that substantially reduce alcohol intake.

Among men, these genetic variants caused a 50-fold difference in average alcohol intake, from near zero to about four units (drinks) per day. The genetic variants that decreased alcohol intake also decreased blood pressure and stroke risk. From this evidence, the authors conclude that alcohol increases the risk of having a stroke by about one-third (35%) for every four additional drinks per day (280 g of alcohol a week), with no protective effects of light or moderate drinking.

Professor Zhengming Chen, co-author from the Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, says: "There are no protective effects of moderate alcohol intake against stroke. Even moderate alcohol consumption increases the chances of having a stroke. The findings for heart attack were less clear-cut, so we plan to collect more evidence." [1]

Of the men with genetic measurements, about 10,000 had a stroke and 2,000 had a heart attack during about ten years of follow-up, so more information is needed on heart attacks.

Few women in China drink alcohol (less than 2% of women in the study drank in most weeks, and when they did drink they consumed less than men), and the genetic variants that cause alcohol intolerance had little effect on blood pressure or stroke risk. Women in this study therefore provide a useful control group, which helps confirm that the effects of these genetic variants on stroke risk in men were caused by drinking alcohol, not by some other mechanism.

The authors highlight that it would be impossible to do such a study in Western populations, where almost nobody has the relevant genetic variants. However, these findings about the effects of alcohol in Asia should be applicable worldwide. Because the study was conducted in China, the alcohol consumed was mainly spirits, but they expect the findings to apply to alcohol in other drinks.

In China, more years of life are lost to stroke than to any other disease. This study estimates that, among Chinese men, alcohol is a cause of 8% of all strokes from a blood clot in the brain and 16% of all strokes from bleeding into the brain.

Co-author Professor Liming Li, from Peking University, says: "Stroke is a major cause of death and disability. This large collaborative study has shown that stroke rates are increased by alcohol. This should help inform personal choices and public health strategies." [1]

Writing in a linked Comment, Professor Tai-Hing Lam and Dr Au Yeung, from the University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China, call for a WHO Framework Convention for Alcohol Control (FCAC), similar to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC): "Alcohol control is complex and stronger policies are required. The alcohol industry is thriving and should be regulated in a similar way to the tobacco industry."


The Lancet: Moderate alcohol consumption does not protect against stroke, study shows | EurekAlert! Science News

Iona Y Millwood, Robin G Walters, Xue W Mei, Yu Guo, Ling Yang, Zheng Bian, Derrick A Bennett, Yiping Chen, Caixia Dong, Ruying Hu, Gang Zhou, Bo Yu, Weifang Jia, Sarah Parish, Robert Clarke, George Davey Smith, Rory Collins, Michael V Holmes, Liming Li, Richard Peto, Zhengming Chen, for the China Kadoorie Biobank Collaborative Group. *Conventional and genetic evidence on alcohol and vascular disease aetiology: a prospective study of 500 000 men and women in China*. _The Lancet_ (2019). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31772-0​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists Find the Temporal Contrast Degradation Mechanisms---Chinese Academy of Sciences*
Apr 01, 2019

10-petawatt laser pulses have potential applications for the acceleration of charged particles (electrons, protons, and heavier ions) and the generation of coherent or incoherent high-energy radiation. In these applications, however, the temporal contrast of the laser should be high enough to restrict destructive preplasma dynamics.

The Shanghai Superintense Ultrafast Laser Facility (SULF) is a large-scale project that aims to deliver 10 PW laser pulses; and the output temporal contrast is a key task for SULF to satisfy the requirements of physical experiments. 

In order to improve the temporal contrast, researchers from the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, have built a high-contrast front end for the SULF-10PW laser by combining cross-polarized wave generation and femtosecond optical parametric amplification.

The research, entitled "High-contrast front end based on cascaded XPWG and femtosecond OPA for 10-PW-level Ti:sapphire laser", had been published in _Optics Express_.

Recently, based on this work, researchers further investigated the evolution of the temporal contrast in the SULF-10PW laser and found the degradation mechanisms of the temporal contrast. 

In this work, the researchers first established a simulation model to describe the temporal contrast evolution. The model considered the generation and amplification of the ASE (amplified spontaneous emission), and the amplification of the main pulses.

Then, a proof-of-principle experiment was conducted. The experimental results coincided well with the simulation results. 

The results indicated that the energy loss of clean seed pulses in the grism pair was a major factor in contrast degradation.

Because of the low transmission efficiency of the grism pair (~10%), the temporal contrast was degraded by one order of magnitude. The spectral shaping filter in the regenerative amplifier degraded the temporal contrast by increasing the intra-cavity loss.

Also, the temporal contrast was further degraded as the gain increased in multi-stage Ti:sapphire amplifiers. 

According to the investigations described above, the design of the SULF-10PW laser was further improved. It was predicted that the temporal contrast could be enhanced by more than one order of magnitude at a peak power of 10 PW following the improvements. The in-depth research could provide guidelines for improving the temporal contrast in ultrahigh-peak-power Ti:sapphire lasers. 

The research, entitled "Investigation of the temporal contrast evolution in a 10-PW-level Ti:sapphire laser facility", was published in _Optics Express_. 

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the International S&T Cooperation of China Program, the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Major Project and the Youth Innovation Promotion Association, CAS. 



Fig. (a) Layout of the current SULF-10PW laser. (b) Evolution of the temporal contrast. (Image by SIOM)


----------



## JSCh

*Physics - Synopsis: Ultrafast Oscilloscope for Ultrashort Electron Beam*
April 9, 2019
Driving an electron beam into a helical pattern with terahertz electromagnetic pulses allows researchers to measure the beam’s complete shape with femtosecond resolution.





L. Zhao _et al_., Phys. Rev. Lett. (2019)​
Ultrashort electron beams are used in applications ranging from particle accelerators to biological imaging. Optimal operation of these technologies requires an understanding of the full time-domain behavior of the electron beam. However, existing characterization methods lack sufficient temporal resolution to describe the shape and arrival time of electron bursts, particularly when the electrons have high energies. Lingrong Zhao of Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China and colleagues now demonstrate a solution to this problem with an oscilloscope device that can encode the entire temporal profile of a relativistic electron beam using a THz pulse.

Traditional cathode-ray oscilloscopes measure electrical signals using a beam of electrons. In the new oscilloscope, Zhao and colleagues characterize an electron beam using a high-frequency, circularly polarized external electromagnetic pulse. This THz pulse interacts with the beam as they both pass through a dielectric waveguide, forcing the electrons into a helical path. As a result, different parts of the beam hit the oscilloscope screen in different places, spreading the beam’s temporal profile spatially across the detector.

In their demonstration of the new method, the team measured the shape of an ultrashort relativistic electron beam with a resolution of 24 femtoseconds. They also determined the beam’s arrival time to within 3 femtoseconds. They say that their oscilloscope could be implemented in existing free-electron lasers and ultrafast electron diffraction experiments, providing these technologies with higher time-resolution imaging capabilities. Zhao and colleagues also believe that their oscilloscope could achieve subfemtosecond resolution if they either increase the electric field strength of the THz pulse or decrease the diameter of the waveguide.

This research is published in _Physical Review Letters_.

–Matthew R. Francis
Matthew R. Francis is a physicist and freelance science writer based in Cleveland, Ohio.

*Terahertz Oscilloscope for Recording Time Information of Ultrashort Electron Beams*
Lingrong Zhao, Zhe Wang, Heng Tang, Rui Wang, Yun Cheng, Chao Lu, Tao Jiang, Pengfei Zhu, Long Hu, Wei Song, Huida Wang, Jiaqi Qiu, Roman Kostin, Chunguang Jing, Sergey Antipov, Peng Wang, Jia Qi, Ya Cheng, Dao Xiang, and Jie Zhang
Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 144801 (2019)

Published April 9, 2019​


----------



## JSCh

*An integrated microfludic system for PET tracers synthesis invented in ZJU*
2019-04-10 Global Communications

Radioactive tracers are needed during the Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scan, a nuclear medicine functional imaging technique. Dependent on what to detect, different ligands are used for different imaging purposes, including the measurement of glucose metabolic rate, the quantification of cardiac perfusion or the determination of gene expression. Up to date, there are more than 100 tracers that have been designed and this number keeps increasing. However, the synthesis of PET tracers is lacking behind its application and the supply in China is highly dependent on imports.

“Low cost, multiple modules, fast synthesis and automatic reaction, these are four advantages of our system. On this platform, a varaity of PET tracers can be synthesized using modular design strategy of microfludics”, said ZHANG Hong, director, Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging. Furthermore, it is the first device of this kind in China with full IP rights with 9 patents. Several key energy consumption indicators, such as Radiation volume, preparation time, precursor volume, solvent consumption, power consumption, equipment cost, are 62%-98% lower compared to available devices. The invention of this integrated microfludic system will greatly expand clinical application of PET in personalized and precision medicine.




The whole synthetic procedure is fabricated in a small “black” box with 35 cm ×25 cm × 28 cm in dimension and about 7-8 kg in weight. The diameter of the thinnest channel is even smaller than the size of a human hair. The micro-size of the device lead to the high surface to volume ratio and resulting fast thermal heating and cooling rates of reagents can lead to reduced reaction times, increased synthesis yields and reduced by-products.

According to the synthetic requirements of different probes, multiple modules in reactors are designed in this device. This plug-and-Play strategy can be programmed remotely through a software system.



Other inventors of this system are TIAN Mei, PAN Jianzhang, FANG Qun、LEI Ming, XU Guangming and HE Qinggang. 


An integrated microfludic system for PET tracers synthesis invented in ZJU | Zhejiang University

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

APRIL 11, 2019
*Near-atomic map of parathyroid hormone complex points toward new therapies for osteoporosis*
by Van Andel Research Institute



Cryo-EM structure of LA-PTH-bound human PTH1R in complex with Gs Credit: Zhao LH _et al_. 2019. Structure and dynamics of the active human parathyroid hormone receptor-1. _Science_.

An international team of scientists has mapped a molecular complex that could aid in the development of better medications with fewer side effects for osteoporosis and cancer.

The near-atomic resolution images depict parathyroid hormone receptor-1 (PTH1R), a molecule that conveys signals to and from cells, interacting with two key messengers—a molecule that mimics parathyroid hormone, one of the most important regulators of calcium levels in the body, and a stimulatory G protein, a molecule that mediates bone turnover.

The findings, published today in _Science_, give researchers a better blueprint for designing drugs for osteoporosis and other conditions such as chachexia, which causes severe weakness and weight loss that can be fatal in cancer patients.

Globally, more than 200 million people have osteoporosis and even more have low bone density. In the coming years, public health experts expect these numbers to rise, fueled in part by an aging population. They also fear an increase in osteoporosis-related fractures due to fewer people taking current medications out of concern over rare side effects.

"The understanding of how all of these molecules fit together has been a missing piece of the puzzle since the discovery of parathyroid hormone 80 years ago," said H. Eric Xu, Ph.D., a professor at Van Andel Research Institute (VARI) and co-corresponding author of the study. "It's a big step forward that we hope will one day help people around the world."

PTH1R is a molecular communication conduit between cells and their environments that fosters development of the bones, skin and cartilage, and regulates levels of calcium in the blood.

To do this, it interacts with molecular messengers such as the parathyroid hormone, which ensures the blood stream has the appropriate amount of calcium to maintain healthy function.

However, too much parathyroid hormone can wreak havoc on the body, spiking the amount of calcium in the blood to dangerous levels, promoting the formation of kidney stones and leaching calcium from bones, which can cause devastating fractures. Too little bogs down metabolism, and contributes to fatigue, weight gain, depression and a host of other issues.

Today's findings also provide insight into G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), a family of signaling molecules to which PTH1R belongs. Taken together, GPCRs are targeted by nearly 30 percent of medications currently on the market.

GPCRs are notoriously difficult to visualize using traditional X-ray crystallography methods; to date, only about 40 out of more than 800 total GPCRs have had their structures determined. To visualize today's structure, the team used a groundbreaking technique called cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), which is capable of imaging molecules in unprecedented clarity and can more easily image molecules like GPCRs that are embedded in the cell membrane.


Near-atomic map of parathyroid hormone complex points toward new therapies for osteoporosis | MedicalXpress

Li-Hua Zhao, Shanshan Ma, Ieva Sutkeviciute, Dan-Dan Shen, X. Edward Zhou, Parker W. de Waal, Chen-Yao Li, Yanyong Kang, Lisa J. Clark, Frederic G. Jean-Alphonse, Alex D. White, Dehua Yang, Antao Dai, Xiaoqing Cai, Jian Chen, Cong Li, Yi Jiang, Tomoyuki Watanabe, Thomas J. Gardella, Karsten Melcher, Ming-Wei Wang, Jean-Pierre Vilardaga, H. Eric Xu, Yan Zhang. *Structure and dynamics of the active human parathyroid hormone receptor-1*. _Science _(2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aav7942.​


----------



## JSCh

*Physics - Focus: More Voltage from Bending Silicone Rubber*
April 12, 2019• _Physics_ 12, 42

The voltage generated by bending a flexible material is usually small, but a new trick can dramatically increase the effect.



​X. Wen _et al_., Phys. Rev. Lett. (2019)
Battery power from flexing. Adding a charge layer to silicone rubber dramatically increases its ability to produce a voltage in response to being bent, which could lead to practical devices fairly soon. Bending the material squeezes the field lines in the upper half, increasing the electric field there (arrows), while spreading the field lines and reducing the field in the lower half. 

Flexoelectric materials generate a voltage when bent, a property that could be useful in engineering delicate sensors or energy harvesting devices, such as clothes that would produce electricity when a person walks. Researchers have now shown that adding a layer of charge to the middle of a flexible polymer bar can boost the effect by 100 times. The team says that with further development, the effect could be used in real devices within five years.

Many ordinary materials such as crystals and polymers exhibit the flexoelectric effect. Bending the material causes each atomic layer to be stretched by a different amount, with the outermost layer stretched the most. This variation in stretch (a strain gradient) can create asymmetry in the positions of the material’s ions and can prevent the positive and negative charges from completely canceling, or, in other words, the material can become polarized. The polarization leads to a net electric field and thus a voltage.

Ceramics show the strongest effect, reflected in a high flexoelectric coefficient—a parameter indicating how much voltage is generated for a given bend. However, ceramics are brittle and can break from even small deformations. So researchers attempting to exploit the effect in practical devices have mostly focused on films of nanoscale thickness, which are easier to bend than thicker samples.

To produce the effect in macroscopic samples, one can use more flexible materials such as polymers, although their intrinsic flexoelectric effect is small. But now a team of researchers from Xi'an Jiaotong University in China has shown how to boost the effect in a polymer bar, merely by embedding a layer of permanent electric charge within the polymer.

Team leader Qian Deng and his colleagues experimented with a 10-cm-long bar of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS, a type of silicone rubber) with width 15 mm and thickness 10 mm. The team embedded a thin layer of negatively charged polymer into the central plane along the length of the bar. This charge layer produced an electric field that created a voltage at the surfaces above and below the central plane.

The researchers then measured the flexoelectric coefficient for different amounts of embedded charge. In each measurement, with the bar horizontal, supported at each end, they applied a controlled downward force at the center, to deform the bar, and then measured the change in voltage registered at the surface.

The flexoelectric coefficient grew in direct proportion to the embedded charge. With charge sufficient to generate 5 kV on the polymer surface, the coefficient was 100 times larger than for PDMS without any embedded charge. The technique works, the researchers argue, because the parallel, vertical field lines emanating from the charge layer become splayed when the bar is bent. The lines spread out below the central plane and are compressed above it. This asymmetry leads to a strong polarization, measurable as a voltage across the bar, from bottom to top. The experimental results agreed closely with the team’s calculations.

“The basic idea is that the charge creates an initial electric field in the material, symmetric on the two sides,” Deng says. “Bending breaks this symmetry, so there's a net electric polarization across the film.”

“The effect the authors are seeing is substantial,” says nanoscience expert Gustau Catalán of the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology in Barcelona, Spain. He thinks the results could have broad implications. “This work has an appeal that goes beyond the flexoelectric community, and it could stimulate the search for similar effects in systems where, a priori, one would not have looked for flexoelectricity.”

Deng and colleagues believe the effect will find use in practical devices fairly soon. Although, according to team member Xin Wen, a key challenge will be learning how to prevent the loss of the embedded charge in the film, as it tends to slowly leak out.

As for commercial uses, Wen expects practical devices “in the next five years,” assuming input from a range of experts in the development process. He suggests that the effect will be useful in building devices such as sensors, energy harvesters, and actuators.



This research is published in _Physical Review Letters_.

–Mark Buchanan
Mark Buchanan is a freelance science writer who splits his time between Wales, UK, and Normandy, France.

*Flexoelectret: An Electret with a Tunable Flexoelectriclike Response*
Xin Wen, Dongfan Li, Kai Tan, Qian Deng, and Shengping Shen
Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 148001 (2019)

Published April 12, 2019​


----------



## JSCh

*A new graphene foam stays squishy at the coldest temperatures*
The superelastic material could be useful in space

BY MARIA TEMMING
2:00PM, APRIL 12, 2019




DEEP FREEZE Normal materials become brittle in deep cryogenic conditions, but a new graphene-based foam (shown in this scanning electron microscopy image) stays as flexible as ever.
K. ZHAO/_SCIENCE ADVANCES_ 2019

A new graphene-based foam is the first material to remain soft and squishy even at deep cryogenic temperatures.

Most materials become stiff and brittle in extreme cold. But the new foam stays superelastic even when it’s subjected to the temperature of liquid helium: –269.15° Celsius. A material that remains pliable at such low temperatures could be used to build devices for use in space, researchers report online April 12 in _Science Advances_.

Inside this foam, oxygen atoms connect micrometer-sized patches of the superthin 2-D material graphene to create a meshlike structure (_SN: 8/13/11, p. 26_). The resulting material is flexible in deep cryogenic conditions because, even at such low temperatures, sheets of graphene are easily bendable and resistant to tearing, and the carbon-oxygen bonds that link these sheets together remain strong.

Yongsheng Chen, a materials scientist at Nankai University in Tianjin, China, and colleagues compressed samples of the material repeatedly at different temperatures. At –269.15° C, the foam behaved just as it did at room temperature, bouncing back to almost full size even after being compressed to one-tenth its original thickness. The material kept this resilience even when heated to about 1000° C and flattened hundreds of times.

Chen’s team suspects that different superthin materials, like 2-D semiconductors (_SN Online: 2/13/18_) or 2-D inorganic compounds (_SN Online: 9/21/18_) may create foams that might boast other unique properties.

*Citations*
K. Zhao _et al_. Super-elasticity of three-dimensionally cross-linked graphene materials all the way to deep cryogenic temperatures. _Science Advances_. Published online April 12, 2019. doi:10.1126/sciadv.aav2589.​


A new graphene foam stays squishy at the coldest temperatures | Science News


----------



## JSCh

*Engineered knee cartilage goes anisotropic*
15 Apr 2019 Belle Dumé



​Graphical abstract of the present study. Courtesy: D Jiang, Institute of Sports Medicine of Peking University Third Hospital

Researchers in China have succeeded in engineering knee cartilage that, for the first time, mimics the anisotropic characteristic of native tissue. The fabrication technique employed, which involves simultaneously applying biochemical and biomechanical stimuli to stem cells seeded onto a biomimetic scaffold, causes fibrochondrocytes in the bioconstruct to differentiate into layers containing two types of collagen. When transplanted in the knee joints of rabbits the material not only improves tensile strength in the knee after 24 weeks but also reduces joint cartilage degradation.

Although tissue engineering has come along in leaps and bounds over the past decade, most techniques still cannot faithfully reproduce the anisotropic nature of physiological systems that consist of heterogenous masses of connective tissue cells and an extracellular matrix (ECM).

The knee meniscus, which is an example of an anisotropic tissue, is a pad of cartilage that absorbs shocks and protects the knee from friction. It cannot fully heal after being damaged or torn, so patients suffering from such injuries would benefit from transplants of a biomimetic cartilage material.

*Complex structure*
The structure of the knee meniscus is complex however and is made up of outer and inner regions. In the outer region, fibroblast-like cells are contained with an ECM that is mainly made up of type I collagen, which makes the cartilage resistant to tensile loads. The inner region contains chondrocyte-like cells embedded within an ECM mainly made up of type II collagen and glycosaminoglycans, which make the tissue resistant to compression.

Until now, most tissue engineering techniques to reconstruct the knee meniscus were only able to produce homogenous issue. This tissue cannot withstand tensile or compressive stress and so degenerates over time.

Researchers led by Dong Jiang from the Institute of Sports Medicine of Peking University Third Hospital in China has now developed a technique in which they culture bone-marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) on a biomimetic scaffold. During the culture they apply two synergistic biochemical growth factors (cytokines) to the tissue and a loading system that simultaneously exerts both tensile and compressive stresses. The method induces the stem cells to differentiate into sperate layers of type I and type II collagen, thus mimicking the anisotropy in natural knee cartilage.

Jiang and colleagues say they have successfully tested their material on rabbits by transplanting it into the knee joints of the animals.

*Long-term knee chondroprotection*
“To our knowledge, ours is the first study to apply orchestrated biomechanical and biomechanical cues to make an anisotropic knee meniscus, as well as the first in vivo demonstration of an anisotropic-engineered meniscus for long-term knee chondroprotection,” says Jiang.



​‘Qin Se He Mong’. Courtesy: D Jiang, Institute of Sports Medicine of Peking University Third Hospital

“Interestingly, our approach has an analogy in the Chinese idiom ‘Qin Se He Mong’, which describes the harmonious concerto produced by the two traditional musical instruments, Qin and Se,” he tells _Physics World_. “The note produced by the instruments could be represented by the biochemical and biomechanical stimuli respectively. Here, the synergy between both promotes the proliferation and differentiation of the BMSCs and reconstructs the anisotropic structures of the knee meniscus.”

Full details of the research are reported in _Science Translational Medicine _10.1126/scitranslmed.aao0750.



Engineered knee cartilage goes anisotropic – Physics World


----------



## JSCh

*Ruthenium-based Catalyst Helps Water Electrolysis Rush*
Apr 15, 2019

Hydrogen fuel, with the advantages of clean, renewable and of high fuel efficiency, is seen as the "ultimate fuel" and getting more attention around the world. Water electrolysis is an ideal way to produce hydrogen, but it requires active and stable catalysts which make this process more efficient and cheaper.

In a recent study published in _Nature Catalysis_ as the cover story, Prof. WU Yuen's team from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of Chinese Academy of Sciences successfully prepared a kind of Ruthenium (Ru) single atom alloy catalyst, which greatly accelerates the process of water eletrolysis with lower overpotential (220 mV).

By surface defect engineering to capture and stabilize single atoms, this single-atom catalyst is capable of delivering a 90 mV lower overpotential to reach a current density of 10 mA/cm2, and an order of magnitude with longer lifetime than that of commercial RuO2.

Researchers constructed a series of alloy-supported Ru1 in this study using different PtCu alloys through sequential acid etching and electrochemical leaching.

They also found a volcano relation between oxygen evolution reaction (OER) activity and the lattice constant of the PtCu alloys. Through density functional theory investigation, they revealed that the compressive strain of the Pt-skin shell engineers the electronic structure of the Ru1, allowing optimized binding of oxygen species and better resistance to over-oxidation and dissolution.

Compared with Iridium-based systems which have better dissolution resistance, Ru-based ones have more abundant reserves and have been evaluated to be a more active OER catalyst due to its lower overpotential.

This study makes hydrogen production through water electrolysis easier and more efficient, and allows people to see the great potential of hydrogen as an alternative new energy in the future.

Nevertheless, till now, the stability problem of catalyst hasn't been completely resolved, and the reaction system needs further improvement.



Oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) are regarded as two trophies in the field of efficient utilization of hydrogen energy. With Ru-based catalyst, acidic OER process is significantly accelerated. (Image by CUI Jie)





​In acidic electrolyte environment, water molecules was adsorbed on the active site Ru atom, and then electrolyzed. Purple, blue, red and white balls represents Ru, Pt, O and H atoms, respectively. (Image by WU Yuen)


Ruthenium-based Catalyst Helps Water Electrolysis Rush---Chinese Academy of Sciences


----------



## JSCh

*Across China: Chinese doctors use 3D printing to make bone tissue*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-17 01:19:41|Editor: Mu Xuequan

CHANGSHA, April 16 (Xinhua) -- Chinese surgeons in a central China hospital have succeeded in performing an implant surgery to replace bone tissue using 3D printing technology.

The 39-year-old patient surnamed Tan suffered from second phrase femoral head necrosis, said Hu Yihe, an orthopedic professor with Xiangya Hospital of Central South University in Hunan province.

"Walking was really painful, I could only lie in bed all day," Tan said.

According to doctors, the structure of Tan's bone trabecula -- the beam of the bone -- was damaged, and a new beam was needed.

"Hip joint replacement is the common practice, but the patient was at an early stage and wanted to keep his hip joint, so we decided to make a porous 3D printed tantalum scaffold which could support the damaged head of his femur and save his hip joint," Hu said.

Hu and his team built the computer 3D model based on Tan's imaging data and used 3D printing technology to customize the scaffold. They also made a 3D printed guide plate which assisted in finding the precise location during the surgery, shortening the operation time to less than 30 minutes.

The patient was able to stand the second day after the surgery and barely felt any pain.

After repeatedly placing his left foot on the right leg, and then vice-versa with ease, Tan was discharged from the hospital just three days later.

Hu and his team have worked with the clinical use of 3D printing for four years, and Tan's surgery on April 4 was the first application.

"The cause of femoral head necrosis and its radical treatment have so far remained unknown. For young patients at early stages, we hope to save their hip joints and help them lead a normal life by using new materials and methods such as 3D printing," Hu said.

3D printing has been embraced by doctors in many of China's major hospitals for surgeries and training, as the technology dramatically improves surgery precision.

In 2017, doctors in the Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University in Hunan used 3D printing technology and performed two successful complex pediatric heart surgeries.

"3D printing gives patients more choices and has provided great new thoughts in clinical surgeries," Hu said.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

18 Apr 2019 | 18:07 GMT
*Better Ultrasound Imaging and Sonar Through Samarium*
Samarium can nearly double the performance of piezoelectric crystals used in many sensors

By Charles Q. Choi



Photo: iStockphoto

Piezoelectric crystals are the key ingredient in many kinds of sensors that detect vibrations, and can be found in underwater sonars and medical ultrasound imaging systems. The crystals’ performance can be dramatically improved, according to a team of researchers at Xi'an Jiaotong University in China, by adding trace amounts of a rare-earth element.

Piezoelectric materials can convert mechanical oscillations to electrical signals and vice versa. Currently, the most advanced piezoelectric devices often use a perovskite oxide crystal known as PMN-PT, which outperforms other common piezoelectric materials by roughly a factor of three in terms of efficiency. However, despite much research, progress toward improving the performance of these crystals has been slow over the past two decades, researchers say.

Now scientists have discovered that introducing relatively minuscule amounts of samarium into PMN-PT—adding about one atom per thousand atoms of the parent crystals—could greatly enhance its performance. Regular PMN-PT crystals generate about 1,200 to 2,500 picocoulombs of charge per newton of force, but the new doped crystals could generate 3,400 to 4,100 picocoulombs per newton, they say.

The researchers found that the samarium atoms make the orderly crystalline structure of the PMN-NT more heterogeneous on the atomic and nanometer scales. This in turn disrupts the orderly arrangement of its dipole moments— spots in the material where electric charges are polarized. This disruption makes the crystal “much more sensitive and responsive to an applied electric field, leading to high piezoelectricity,” says study lead author Fei Li.

The scientists also discovered that samarium doping led to more uniform piezoelectric properties throughout the crystals by counteracting variations in the crystal's electrical properties as it was grown. The doping also led to bigger crystals, potentially helping reduce production costs and waste, they note.

The researchers suggest their work could one day lead to medical-imaging devices with improved resolution, sensitivity and efficiency, as well as more powerful piezoelectric actuators for use in a wide range of industrial applications. They detailed their findings in the 19 April issue of the journal _Science_.



Better Ultrasound Imaging and Sonar Through Samarium - IEEE Spectrum

Fei Li, Matthew J. Cabral, Bin Xu, Zhenxiang Cheng, Elizabeth C. Dickey, James M. LeBeau, Jianli Wang, Jun Luo, Samuel Taylor, Wesley Hackenberger, Laurent Bellaiche, Zhuo Xu, Long-Qing Chen, Thomas R. Shrout, Shujun Zhang. *Giant piezoelectricity of Sm-doped Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-PbTiO3 single crystals*. _Science _(2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aaw2781​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*New therapy offers hope for bone marrow cancer*
By Zhou Wenting in Shanghai | China Daily | Updated: 2019-04-20 07:27


















[Photo/IC]​
A new therapy developed by Chinese researchers to treat bone marrow cancer has completed its first phase of clinical trials with a response rate of 90 percent.

The high response rate suggests the therapy might significantly raise the five-year survival rate of patients with multiple myeloma, which currently stands at 50.7 percent.

Multiple myeloma, a cancer that develops in plasma cells and accumulates in the bone marrow, is the second most common malignant tumor in the blood system, and its incidence in China is between 1 and 2 out of 100,000, according to epidemiological investigations.

The therapy, which used a CAR-T therapy independently developed by Nanjing Legend Biotechnology Co, included 17 patients in relapsed or refractory cases for the Phase I trial that started in late 2016.

Ruijin Hospital affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai Changzheng Hospital and the Jiangsu Province Hospital in Nanjing were involved in the exploratory trial, which spanned nearly two years.

CAR-T therapy has received a lot of attention in tackling tumors, but its applications in treating this cancer are still at the trial stage, doctors said during a news briefing on Tuesday.

"T-cells are like the police force in the human body. CAR-T reinforces the cells with positioning and ballistic devices," said Mi Jianqing, director of hematology at Ruijin Hospital, and a leading expert in the trial. "When the T-cells are re-injected in the body, these cell police can precisely locate cancer cells and terminate them."

Mi said that it takes a month for a patient to receive the hospitalized treatment and doctors will do follow-up evaluations after three months, six months and a year.

He said all the 17 patients suffered from side effects, mainly manifested as cytokine release syndrome, or CRS, with main manifestations including fever, liver dysfunction and hypoxemia, but all were under control as they had prepared countermeasures beforehand.

A paper about the Phase I clinical trial was published on the website of the US-based journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Tuesday.

Ma Ying, 64, was one of the patients who participated in the trial at Ruijin Hospital. Ma said she was diagnosed with the disease in 2011 and got better temporarily after receiving a stem cell transplant. But the disease reoccurred in 2015 and chemotherapy failed.

She described her situation as "wasted". All of her blood indicators became dangerously low. She suffered from hemorrhaging and had difficulty eating and drinking.

She joined the trial in April 2017. "Multiple evaluations showed that I became completely relieved from the illness in the past two years and now I can almost live a normal life," said Ma, a former physician from Ningbo, Zhejiang province.

Like Ma, more than 70 percent of the participants in the trial were "completely relieved from the illness" as the hematopoietic function of their bone marrow and immunologic function returned to normal, said Mi, director of hematology at Ruijin Hospital.

"Such a result is superior to similar therapies around the world," he said.

The therapy entered its Phase II clinical trial in China, which will include 60 patients and has been carried out at eight hospitals since last month, while the Phase I trial in the United States and the European Union began in August, said the research team.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Eye-driven wheelchair developed for ALS patients by university*
chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2019-04-19 16:11
















Zhang Wei operates the wheelchair at a residential community in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, April 17, 2019. [Photo by Chen Feibo/For chinadaily.com.cn]

Teachers and students from the artificial intelligence institute of Xidian University in Northwest China's Shaanxi province have developed a smart wheelchair for Zhang Wei, a post-1990 generation member who has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. The new device was created specifically for those with ALS, to better improve their daily lives.

According to Sun Long, who participated in the research and development, the wheelchair features a eye-tracking system and advanced technologies including AI and internet of things. The system can read the ALS patients' thoughts through identifying the patients' eyeballs movements to collect information, and then move the wheelchair automatically.

It can also move safely at night. Further improvements will be made to the system to correct for minor deviations when operating under bright light.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*CAS provides 268 mln USD for B&R science projects*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-19 14:32:57|Editor: Liangyu

BEIJING, April 19 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has provided over 1.8 billion yuan (about 268 million U.S. dollars) for Belt and Road (B&R) science and technology projects since the B&R Initiative was proposed in 2013, said CAS President Bai Chunli on Friday.

Bai made the remarks at a press conference on the science and technology cooperation between China and B&R countries.

The Alliance of International Science Organization (ANSO) was launched in the Belt and Road Region last November. According to Bai, ANSO members recently clarified its vision and mission, pledging to make it an international organization with great influence in promoting, organizing and carrying out Sci-tech innovation.

The first 37 ANSO members have formed the ANSO Action Plan for 2019-2020. It plans to set up awards, scholarships, industry associations and joint training projects, in order to build a great mechanism and platform for sci-tech cooperation, meet common challenges and promote sustainable development.

Meanwhile, the CAS has trained for B&R countries and regions nearly 5,000 high-level Sci-tech talents including more than 1,500 with Ph.D. or master degrees in science and engineering. Many of them have returned home and become a new force in building the B&R.

Bai said the CAS, based on the principle of achieving shared growth through discussion and collaboration, has built nine overseas science and education centers in B&R countries and regions and the tenth center is currently in the works.

He noted that the overseas centers have become significant platforms to carry out scientific collaborative projects, helping to resolve livelihood issues in those countries and regions.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 22-APR-2019
*Advance in CAR T-cell therapy eliminates severe side effects*
USC-led clinical trial produced remissions without toxicity in lymphoma patients

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

An advance in the breakthrough cancer treatment known as CAR T-cell therapy appears to eliminate its severe side effects, making the treatment safer and potentially available in outpatient settings, a new USC study shows.

"This is a major improvement," said Si-Yi Chen of the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, professor in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, and senior author of the study appearing online April 22 in _Nature Medicine_. "We've made a new CAR molecule that's just as efficient at killing cancer cells, but it works more slowly and with less toxicity."

This improved version of CAR T therapy produced no serious side effects in 25 patients who had lymphoma that recurred after previous treatments. Although the study was designed to look at safety, not effectiveness, six out of 11 participants receiving a commonly used dose went into complete remission.

CAR T therapy involves harvesting immune cells called T cells from a patient's blood and then modifying them in the lab to produce special structures called chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) on their surface. The altered T cells are reinfused into the patient, where the cells' new receptors enable them to recognize and latch onto cancer cells, killing them.

Approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration less than two years ago, CAR T is a literal lifesaver for some people with leukemia and lymphoma, bringing lasting remissions to those on the brink of death. The downside is that the treatment often causes severe side effects -- some of them life-threatening -- which must be managed by experienced specialists.

These side effects occur when CAR T cells rapidly proliferate and release a flood of substances called cytokines. Severe cytokine release syndrome can lead to life-threatening multi-organ damage and brain swelling. In this revised version, researchers tweaked the sequence and shape of the CAR molecules. As a result, the CAR T cells kill cancer cells but produce fewer cytokines and proliferate more slowly, giving the patient's body more time to clear cytokines in the blood.

"The improved CAR T cells proliferated and differentiated into memory cells in the patients, thus producing a potent and long-lasting anti-tumor effect without causing toxicities," Chen said. "Toxicities are currently the biggest barrier to the use of CAR T-cell therapy. My hope is that this safer version of CAR T cell therapy could someday be administered to patients in outpatient settings."

Chen's next step is to perform a multicenter phase II to test safety and effectiveness in a larger group of patients.



Advance in CAR T-cell therapy eliminates severe side effects | EurekAlert! Science News

Zhitao Ying, Xue F. Huang, Xiaoyu Xiang, Yanling Liu, Xi Kang, Yuqin Song, Xiaokai Guo, Hanzhi Liu, Ning Ding, Tingting Zhang, Panpan Duan, Yufu Lin, Wen Zheng, Xiaopei Wang, Ningjing Lin, Meifeng Tu, Yan Xie, Chen Zhang, Weiping Liu, Lijuan Deng, Shunyu Gao, Lingyan Ping, Xuejuan Wang, Nina Zhou, Junqing Zhang, Yulong Wang, Songfeng Lin, Mierzhati Mamuti, Xueyun Yu, Lizhu Fang, Shuai Wang, Haifeng Song, Guan Wang, Lindsey Jones, Jun Zhu, Si-Yi Chen. *A safe and potent anti-CD19 CAR T cell therapy*. _Nature Medicine_ (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41591-019-0421-7​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> PUBLIC RELEASE: 20-FEB-2019
> *Powering a pacemaker with a patient's heartbeat*
> AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY
> 
> 
> 
> ​A small, flexible device can power a pacemaker with energy from heartbeats.
> *CREDIT: *American Chemical Society
> 
> Implantable pacemakers have without doubt altered modern medicine, saving countless lives by regulating heart rhythm. But they have one serious shortcoming: Their batteries last only five to 12 years, at which point they have to be replaced surgically. Now, researchers have surmounted this issue by designing a pacemaker powered by the energy of heartbeats, according to a report in _ACS Nano_. The device was successfully tested in pigs, which have a similar physiology to humans.
> 
> A conventional pacemaker is implanted just under the skin near the collarbone. Its battery and circuitry generate electrical signals that are delivered to the heart via implanted electrodes. Because surgery to replace the battery can lead to complications, including infection and bleeding, various researchers have tried to build pacemakers that use the natural energy of heartbeats as an alternative energy source. However, these experimental devices aren't powerful enough because of their rigid structure, difficulties with miniaturization and other drawbacks, so Hao Zhang, Bin Yang and colleagues searched for ways to improve the technology.
> 
> First, they designed a small, flexible plastic frame. Next they bonded the frame to piezoelectric layers, which generate energy when bent. They implanted the device in pigs and showed that a beating heart could in fact alter the frame's shape, generating enough power to match the performance of a battery-powered pacemaker. The study is a step toward making a self-powered cardiac pacemaker, the researchers say.
> 
> 
> Powering a pacemaker with a patient's heartbeat | EurekAlert! Science News
> 
> Ning Li, Zhiran Yi, Ye Ma, Feng Xie, Yue Huang, Yingwei Tian, Xiaoxue Dong, Yang Liu, Xin Shao, Yang Li, Lei Jin, Jingquan Liu , Zhiyun Xu, Bin Yang and Hao Zhang. * Direct Powering a Real Cardiac Pacemaker by Natural Energy of a Heartbeat*. _ACS Nano_ (2019). DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.8b08567​


APRIL 23, 2019
*Self-powered 'pacemaker for life' in pigs unveiled*





The symbiotic pacemaker based on implantable triboelectric nanogenerator. Credit: Zhou Li

Scientists on Tuesday unveiled a battery-free pacemaker that generates its energy from the heartbeats of pigs in what could pave the way for an "implant for life" in humans suffering from heart defects.

Millions of patients rely on pacemakers —small electrical implants in the chest of abdomen—to help regulate their heartbeats after chronic or acute illness.

Even with recent technological advances, pacemaker batteries can be rigid or bulky, and may need replacing several times over the lifespan of a device.

Energy harvesters, which generate electricity from pulses sent by the body, have shown to be effective in recent years, but only in small animals such as rats, as well as cell models with low energy demands.

Now researchers in China and the United States believe they have successfully trialed a self-powered pacemaker in adult pigs—an animal remarkably physiologically similar to humans.

The animals selected suffered from irregular heartbeat similar to human pacemaker patients.

The team developed an implantable generator that sits on the surface of the heart and bends with each heartbeat, thereby generating electricity from kinetic energy.

"(The pacemaker) was fully implanted in adult pigs and all of the energy for cardiac pacing is reclaimed from the heart-beating energy of the same animal," Zhou Li, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and lead study author, told AFP.

When they powered up the devices they found that the pigs' irregular heartbeat was corrected.

Furthermore, the energy retained from every heartbeat turned out to be higher than the energy demands of most current pacemakers in humans, opening the door to someday giving patients a permanent power source for their implants.

"It could be an 'implant for life'," said Zhou. "This is our aim and the final goal of the scientific research in the field."

The team stressed however that more work was needed to determining the long-term safety and durability of the devices before human versions could be developed.

Zhou said the self-powering technology could also have a range of applications in areas such as self-charging devices and "smart" clothing.

Tim Chico, Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine and Honorary Consultant Cardiologist, University of Sheffield, who was not involved in the research, called the experiment "very encouraging".

"This study was performed in pigs, whose hearts are the same size as humans, and so are often used to test devices or treatments before use in man," he said.

The study was published in the journal _Nature Communications_.

*More information:* Symbiotic cardiac pacemaker, _Nature Communications_ (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-09851-1 , https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09851-1

© 2019 AFP



https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-04-self-powered-pacemaker-life-pigs-unveiled.html

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

NEWS AND VIEWS | 24 APRIL 2019
*The origin and spread of the Sino-Tibetan language family*
A robust computational approach with added finesse provides evidence to support the view that the Sino-Tibetan languages arose in northern China and began to split into branches about 5,900 years ago.

Randy J. LaPolla

The location and timing of the emergence of the Sino-Tibetan language family has long been debated. This family has around 1.5 billion speakers worldwide, the second largest number of speakers globally after those who speak languages in the Indo-European family. One school of thought is that the ancestral language (Proto-Sino-Tibetan) from which all the Sino-Tibetan languages evolved originated in northern China around 4,000–6,000 years ago1,2. An alternative view is that it arose 9,000 years ago in southwest China or northeast India3,4.

Writing in _Nature_, Zhang _et al_.5 report a study that might settle this debate. The authors gathered evidence about the Sino-Tibetan language family and its speakers from disciplines including genetics, computational biology, linguistics, archaeology and anthropology, and also compiled information about the development of agriculture and its possible effects on human migrations in the region. They then used a method of probability testing to assess the different language family trees that could be made on the basis of this evidence.

Historical linguists seek to determine the relationships between languages, and usually take an approach called the comparative method. They look for cognate words in different languages — words that have similar meanings and that can be shown to have a shared origin in a word from an earlier, ancestral language. Linguists then try to explain why the words often don’t look exactly alike: the changes that the sounds went through, what additions were made to the words, and what led to the words being used, in some cases, for different meanings in related languages. For example, work in Indo-European linguistics has determined that the English word cow and the French word _boeuf_ are part of a family of cognate words that have descended from a reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root word, *gwou- (the asterisk indicates a reconstructed form and the hyphen that it is a root that formed a number of different words)6. Understanding such changes enables language families such as the Indo-European family to be split into branches, such as the Romance, Germanic and Slavic languages, on the basis of shared changes.

The use of particular words found to be cognate, together with evidence from other fields, can help inferences to be made about the relationship of languages to human migrations, and the emergence of human cultures. This can then aid efforts to determine the home of the speakers of an ancestral proto-language, when these people and their language dispersed and the different branches of the language family formed. However, the vagaries of history that have led to criss-crossing migrations, contact between different languages and cultures and other sociological factors have often meant that it is difficult to identify the family tree that correctly represents the history of a language family. Competing interpretations of the same data can lead to the generation of different trees and to different models of the origin and dispersal of a particular language. And it has previously been difficult to evaluate all of the possible trees that could be made on the basis of the available data.

Modern computers now make it possible to handle large amounts of data and calculations rapidly. Software developed for biosciences research that applies a particular model of probability testing known as Bayesian phylogenetic modelling can also be used in linguistics. This software can test the many possible language trees that could be made from a data set, and thereby determine the most likely tree and the most probable time frame for language diversification.

Zhang and colleagues focused on the Sino-Tibetan family, which encompasses hundreds of languages, including Chinese, Tibetan, Burmese and many other, less widely spoken, languages. The authors used data on cognate terms that have been assembled over the past 30 years in a project called the Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus (see go.nature.com/2uombqo). This provided a solid basis of relevant data for their calculations, and set Zhang and colleagues’ study apart from earlier work that applied similar computational techniques but used random word lists from word families that had not been evaluated for cognacy, affecting the reliability of those studies.

The authors used these language data together with information from other fields, such as anthropology, and ran millions of iterations of their computer program. They determined the most likely location of the homeland of the ancestors of the modern Sino-Tibetan-speaking peoples, and the most probable time frame for when this language family began to diverge into subgroups as some members of the group of early Sino-Tibetan speakers migrated away from where the language originated. The authors also determined the most probable language family tree and which type of branching structures had the highest probability of representing the relationships between the languages.

Zhang _et al._ compared the two competing views of where the earliest Sino-Tibetan speakers originated. Their results support the theory that the homeland of the Proto-Sino-Tibetan language was in the Yellow River basin region (Fig. 1) of present-day northern China, and that the dispersal and diversification of this language family began around 5,900 years ago. At that time, this region was associated with the Yangshao culture and the later Majiayao (a culture thought to have arisen after a westward migration of people from the Yangshao culture)7. These cultures were associated with pottery and silk production, and the communities kept domesticated animals and had large, fixed settlements.



Figure 1 | Site of origin of the Sino-Tibetan languages. Zhang _et al_.5 present the results of a probability-testing approach used to analyse data relating to the origins and spread of the Sino-Tibetan languages, which are spoken today by 1.5 billion people. Their analysis indicates that, consistent with one current model1, the ancestral form of the language originated approximately 5,900 years ago in northern China, in the basin of the Yellow River. They identify the origin and earliest spread of the languages as being associated, respectively, with the Yangshao culture and the later Majiayao7 (cultures indicated in shaded regions).

The results indicate that there was a major initial split between the Sinitic languages and the Tibeto-Burman languages before each of these two groups split further into linguistic sub-branches. This contrasts with one current model3 suggesting that these two branches did not form from a major initial bifurcation. That model proposes instead that many branches formed at the same time. It suggests that the Sinitic languages do not form a major branch that is split from all of the other languages, and that what are commonly referred to as the Tibeto-Burman languages do not group into a single branch3.

Zhang and colleagues’ work is important in many ways. The history of the Sino-Tibetan languages has not been studied for as long as has the history of the Indo-European languages. Thus, by comparison, there has been much less certainty about some of the key points that provide a foundation for this area of research, such as the origins of the language. The authors’ work provides more certainty on such fundamental issues, freeing researchers to build on this and to explore the history of this language family more deeply. The work should also help to identify connections between these language studies and findings from other related fields, such as archaeology and history.


The origin and spread of the Sino-Tibetan language family | Nature

Menghan Zhang, Shi Yan, Wuyun Pan & Li Jin. *Phylogenetic evidence for Sino-Tibetan origin in northern China in the Late Neolithic*. _Nature _(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1153-z​


----------



## JSCh

*Study reveals "Achilles' heel" of pancreatic cancer*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-24 20:09:01|Editor: mingmei

BEIJING, April 24 (Xinhua)-- An international team of researchers have found a key protein that could be the "Achilles' heel" of pancreatic cancer, providing insights on possible new treatment and early diagnosis of the deadly disease.

Patients with early stage of pancreatic cancer often shows no symptoms, leading to late diagnosis after cancer cells have spread through the body.

They often responds poorly to chemotherapy as pancreatic cancer cells are encased in a "protective shield" of dense tissue called stroma.

In the microenvironment within stroma, pancreatic stellate cells (PSCs) are a major type of cells. PSCs can interact with pancreatic cancer cells and lead to progression and metastasis of the disease.

On the British journal _Nature_, researchers from China's Southern University of Science and Technology, Salk Institute in the United Sates and other research institutions reported that activated PSCs secrete a protein called LIF which sends signals to cancer cells to drive pancreatic cancer development and progressions.

Previous studies showed that pancreatic cancer gets worse if PSCs are killed. Therefore, rather than destroying PSCs, the researchers want to stop them from delivering signals to cancer cells.

After blocking LIF function in mice with pancreatic cancer, the researchers found that progression of the disease slowed down and the mice showed stronger responses to chemotherapy drugs used in treating human pancreatic cancer.

Meanwhile, high levels of LIF were also detected in tumor tissue and blood from pancreatic cancer patients, suggesting that LIF may be used as a biomarker to make a more quick and efficient diagnosis of the disease.

LIF, which usually vanishes in adults, is an important factor that helps stem cells maintain their developmental potential during the embryonic period.

According to the researchers, a Canadian company has launched a clinical trial based on their findings, testing the effect of treatment that blocks LIF from signaling in advanced pancreatic cancer and other types of cancer.

Further studies will also to be carried out in several Chinese hospitals, testing whether LIF could be used as a biomarker for diagnosing pancreatic cancer at an early stage.

Pancreatic cancer is one of the few cancers for which survival has not improved substantially for more than 40 years.

It has the highest mortality rate of all major cancers. Statistics shows that for all stages combined, about 91 percent of pancreatic cancer patients will die within five years of diagnosis.


Yu Shi, Weina Gao, Nikki K. Lytle, Peiwu Huang, Xiao Yuan, Amanda M. Dann, Maya Ridinger-Saison, Kathleen E. DelGiorno, Corina E. Antal, Gaoyang Liang, Annette R. Atkins, Galina Erikson, Huaiyu Sun, Jill Meisenhelder, Elena Terenziani, Gyunghwi Woo, Linjing Fang, Thom P. Santisakultarm, Uri Manor, Ruilian Xu, Carlos R. Becerra, Erkut Borazanci, Daniel D. Von Hoff, Paul M. Grandgenett, Michael A. Hollingsworth, Mathias Leblanc, Sarah E. Umetsu, Eric A. Collisson, Miriam Scadeng, Andrew M. Lowy, Timothy R. Donahue, Tannishtha Reya, Michael Downes, Ronald M. Evans, Geoffrey M. Wahl, Tony Pawson, Ruijun Tian, Tony Hunter. *Targeting LIF-mediated paracrine interaction for pancreatic cancer therapy and monitoring*. _Nature _(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1130-6​


----------



## JSCh

*A lack of circular RNAs may trigger lupus*
Balancing levels of these molecules could help rein in an overactive immune system

BY TINA HESMAN SAEY 
11:00AM, APRIL 25, 2019



CIRCLING LUPUS A three-dimensional image of a circular RNA reveals several places where the normally single-stranded molecule forms double strands. Those regions may be important for regulating some immune reactions. 
C.-X. LIU _ET AL_/_CELL_ 2019

A lack of certain mysterious genetic molecules may spin the immune system out of control and lead to lupus.

People with lupus have lower than normal levels of circular RNAs, triggering an immune reaction meant to fight viruses, biochemist Lingling Chen of the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology and her colleagues discovered. Switching on the body’s virus-fighting mechanisms when no harmful viruses are around may lead the immune system to attack the body. The team found that raising levels of these RNAs, known as circRNAs, in cells taken from lupus patients restored normal activity of a protein involved in rousing one arm of the immune system.

The research, reported April 25 in _Cell_, raises “an intriguing possibility that introduction of certain circRNAs can dampen autoimmunity associated with lupus, suggesting circular RNA as a therapeutic strategy,” says Howard Chang, a geneticist at Stanford University who was not involved in the work.

The most common type of lupus, systemic lupus erythematosus, is an autoimmune disorder in which the immune system attacks the body’s own tissues and organs. Though the exact number of people with this form of lupus isn’t known, estimates range between 161,000 and 322,000 people in the United States.

Scientists have known for decades that cells produce circular RNAs at low levels while making messenger RNAs, or mRNAs. During that process, DNA instructions in genes are copied into RNA. That initial copy contains both instructions for making a protein as well as stretches of information, called introns, which are not needed for making proteins. Cells then cut the long RNAs and splice together the protein-making instructions into mRNAs, leaving out the introns. Sometimes, introns and the other pieces of the original RNA get “back-spliced” into a closed loop of circular RNA. Circular RNAs are a type of noncoding RNA, which do not make proteins but may have other jobs (_SN: 5/13/19, p. 22_).

“Ever since the discovery of circular RNAs the big question is, do they do something? And if they do something, what do they do?” says Lynne Maquat, an RNA biologist and biochemist at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in New York. “This paper provides a compelling reason for us to think they are dampening the innate immune response.”

Innate immunity refers to a defense system provided by cells that patrol the body and kill invaders. A second line of immunity, called adaptive immunity, involves antibodies and other cells that learn which invaders are friends or foes.

Researchers generally have studied circular RNAs one at a time to learn their functions, if any, says Jørgen Kjems, a molecular biologist at Aarhus University in the Netherlands. But Chen’s team studied circular RNAs as a group, particularly ones that aren’t completely round. The team found that some normally single-stranded circular RNAs have segments that match up with other parts of the same circRNA to form double-stranded stretches. Viewed in two dimensions, the molecules look a bit like streets meeting in a traffic circle. Those roundabout circRNAs can block activity of a protein called PKR, which jump-starts innate immunity.

When a virus infects a cell, it activates a protein called RNase L that cuts up the circular RNAs, the researchers found. Without circRNAs, PKR is free to call in innate immune troops to go after the virus.

But in people with lupus, circular RNA levels are already lower than normal, so PKR activity is higher than usual. Circular RNAs with the double-stranded regions dampened PKR activity in cells taken from lupus patients. But circular RNAs that don’t contain double-stranded regions didn’t, the researchers found.

Chen’s group lacks the smoking gun proof that would conclusively link a lack of circular RNAs to lupus, Kjems says. “But this is an interesting idea that is supported by quite a lot of evidence.”

*Citations*
C.-X. Liu et al. Structure and degradation of circular RNAs regulate PKR activation in innate immunity. _Cell_. Vol. 177, Published online April 25, 2019. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2019.03.046.
​
A lack of circular RNAs may trigger lupus | Science News


----------



## Han Patriot

Latest technoloogy from China.

1)T1100 carbon fiber
2) Thinnest glass
3) Ceramic bearings exported to 'German, Japanese, American' turbine makers. Hmmm


----------



## JSCh

*China develops unique heat-resistant material for hypersonic aircraft*
By Liu Xuanzun Source:Global Times Published: 2019/4/28 17:47:22

Chinese composite can withstand over 3,000 C for extended periods




Pictured is an illustration of US experimental hypersonic aircraft Falcon HTV-2. Photo: IC

Chinese scientists have developed a new heat-resistant material for hypersonic aircraft which can endure over 3,000 C from friction caused by a Mach 5-20 flight within the atmosphere.

The lead scientist on the project said the material outperforms all similar foreign-made ones with its high melting point, low density and high malleability.

The new material enables a hypersonic aircraft to fly at Mach 5-20 within the atmosphere for several hours, as the high heat resulting from the friction between the aircraft and the air reaches between 2,000 C to 3,000 C, a temperature normal metal would not be able to endure. 

Normal metals melt at around 1,500 C, but this new material can bear over 3,000 C for an extended period, state-owned Hunan Television reported recently.

Unlike foreign technologies that use traditional refractory metals and carbon-carbon materials, the China-made new material is a composite of ceramics and refractory metals, Fan Jinglian, the lead scientist who developed the material and a professor at Central South University in Central China's Hunan Province, told the Global Times.

The combination of ceramics and refractory metals makes the material far more efficient than foreign-made ones, and this technology is world-leading, Fan said.

In a simple analogy, Fan likened her composite to concrete cobble. "Think of the ceramics as the cobblestones, or the pellets, and the refractory metals are like the concrete. In high temperatures, the ceramics will act as pellets that pin the refractory metals, so they will not soften and deform."

As a result, the material not only has a high melting point, but also valuable characteristics such as low density and high malleability, according to the Hunan Television report.

China launched a major hypersonic aircraft project in 2009, and most Chinese scientists considered using carbon-carbon materials instead of metals back then.

Fan was questioned for her proposal to use such a material, but she insisted on making a sample, which came into being in 2012 and showed great potential.

As of March, the material has been used for products in a variety of fields including aviation, space exploration, shipbuilding and national defense, Hunan Television reported.

Hypersonic aircraft is not the only area in which materials made of ceramics and refractory metals can shine, Fan said. Any field that involves extreme high temperature, such as engines, space rockets and nuclear reactors, will have a great demand for the material, Fan noted.

China launched the Xingkong-2 waverider hypersonic flight vehicle via a rocket in a target range located in Northwest China in August 2018.

On Tuesday, East China's Xiamen University launched the Jiageng-1 hypersonic aircraft with a double-waverider design.

The test was part of the university's project to try to quintuple the current speed of civil aircraft to achieve global direct access within two hours, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Tuesday.

It is unknown whether Fan's material was used in these two cases.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*ShenGuang-Ⅱ 5PW laser facility starts operation----Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics*
Update time： 04-25-2019

Femtosecond Peta-Watt (PW) laser facilities are important platforms for strong field physics research. Many countries and laboratories have carried out studies and developments of such large laser facilities. However, output characteristics of the PW lasers are different from other types of laser devices. Laser pulse with hundreds of nanometers in spectral bandwidth and high contrast on petawatt power scale must be focused up to the diffraction limit. To a large extent, it demands the spatiotemporal characteristics and beam directivity. Without other characteristics, a very high parameter such as power or energy can not guaranttee the laser’s availability for physical experiment. Until now, there are very few fs-PW laser facilities that can operate stably and serve physical experiments. 

The National Laboratory on High Power Laser and Physics, Shanghai Institute of Optics and fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, (NLHPLP, SIOM, CAS), have independently designed and constructed the SG-II 5PW laser facility, taking advantage of SG-II laser facility as high-quality pump source. 

In the laboratory, optical parametric chirp pulse amplification (OPCPA) is adopted as the general technical route. With three OPCPA amplification stages, SG-II 5PW laser will be capable of delivering 150J/ 30 fs to the target. Figure 1 shows the layout of SG-II 5PW laser. The device was designed in pursuit of high-quality output laser performance, independent operation and combined operation with other laser beams of SG-II laser facility. After the completement of SG-II 5PW laser facility, it will become an organic component of the integrated SG-Ⅱ laser-physics platform, which is multi-functional and can realize target shooting with pulses of various duration, energy, wavefront and light frequency.



Figure 1. The layout of SG-Ⅱ 5PW laser facility.

The construction status of SG-II 5PW facility is divided into two phases: Phase-I is the validation of petawatt laser output, and Phase-II is to promote output stability and controllability in order to meet the demands of experiment. At present, the output has reached 1.76 PW with the prior two OPCPA stages. The output of 5PW can be expected after the installation of large aperture LBO crystal (high deuterated DKDP crystal optional) for the third stage of OPCPA. For Phase-II, two rounds of online experiments, carried out since 2018, have greatly improved the comprehensive performance of the laser facility: 1) the conversion efficiency of the high energy optical parametric amplifier is 41.9%, which is the highest result reported internationally; 2) with the installation of the aberration pre-compensation unit for the whole system, the full-spectrum static optical focal spot diameter after the adaptive optical (AO) correction is measured less than 4.4 μm by CCD in the target chamber (Fig. 2 (a) (b)), and the focal-spot size is approaching the ideal diffraction limitation, which is parallel with the similar devices; 3) the full-aperture Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) measured near the focal spot is better than 108:1 (Fig. 2 (c)).



Figure 2. (a) the static optical focal spot measured by CCD with full spectrum, (b) the static distribution of focal spot along longitudinal and transverse axis, (c) SNR measured near the focal spot.

In March 2019, based on the accomplishment of SG-Ⅱ 5PW performance optimization, the group of Prof. ZHU Jianqiang and Prof. XIE Xinglong from SIOM together with the team from Shanghai Institute of Laser Plasma, China Academy of Engineering Physics, have jointly completed a latest round of proton acceleration experiment. 

In the experiment, the flat copper targets of various thickness were adopted to interact with the laser pulses. The X-ray focal spot size (FWHM) measured by pinhole camera was 21μm*21μm (Fig. 3 (a)) and the proton acceleration kinetic energy of more than 16MeV was obtained for 5μm-thick copper target. Fig. 3 (b) is the patterns recorded by RCF, the spatial distribution of which is uniform as shown in Fig. 3 (c). Both strength and mass of the proton beams can meet the needs of proton imaging experiment. A focused density exceeding 1020W/cm2 can be deduced reversely by the proton acceleration kinetic energy. 

In this physical study, 10 shots of high-energy laser have been completed, and 9 of them were successful. Using the copper targets with thickness ranging from 0.8 m to 20 m, the measuring results of the proton acceleration were all appreciable.



Figure 3. (a) X-ray focal spot distribution measured by pinhole camera under high-energy shooting, (b) RCF film recording pattern in proton acceleration experiment, (c) proton beam spatial distribution recorded by RCF.

The results prove that SG–II 5PW laser facility has achieved stable operation. It can carry out routine physical experiments in petawatt scale, which currently makes it one of the few specialized laser facilities worldwide. The development of SG–II 5PW laser facility upgrades the development of the ultra-short pulse laser technology and engineering in NLHPHP since 1990s. With SG–II 5PW laser facility, the SG-II integrated experimental platform have the ability of delivering laser pulses of nanosecond high-energy, picosecond PW and femtosecond milti-PW scales. 

It has also promoted cooperation among the teams from China, Hungary and the Czech Republic, which are installing the ELI facilities. Their joint experiments are planned in the summer of 2019. This facility has contributed to the completion of a collaborative physics project with the Hebrew university team in Israel and continues to support an ongoing research in laser plasma effects. In the future, more extensive and in-depth joint researches with laser-physics teams, both domestically and overseas, can be expected from this platform.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 30-APR-2019
*Historic number of women elected to National Academy of Sciences*
The National Academy of Sciences announced today the election of 100 new members and 25 foreign associates in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

NATIONAL ACADEMIES OF SCIENCES, ENGINEERING, AND MEDICINE

WASHINGTON -- The National Academy of Sciences announced today the election of 100 new members and 25 foreign associates in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Forty percent of the newly elected members are women -- the most ever elected in any one year to date.

...

Historic number of women elected to National Academy of Sciences | EurekAlert! Science News​===================

Two of the newly elected foreign associate are from China,

Gao, George F.; director general, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention; dean, medical school, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences; vice president, National Natural Science Foundation of China; and professor, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, People's Republic of China (People's Republic of China)

Yan, Nieng; Shirley M. Tilghman Professor of Molecular Biology, department of molecular biology, Princeton University (People's Republic of China)​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists develop new catalyst to turn CO2 into clean liquid fuel*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-05-01 08:43:06|Editor: Liu

HEFEI, May 1 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers have developed a new catalyst to convert carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, into methanol, widely considered a clean fuel for engines.

A research team, led by Zeng Jie with the University of Science and Technology of China, developed a catalyst based on single atoms of platinum, which can effectively turn carbon dioxide into methanol under an atmospheric pressure of 32 bars and at 150 degrees Celsius.

The selectivity of the platinum-based catalyst for methanol stands at 90.3 percent, about 10 percentage points higher than the commonly used catalyst based on copper, zinc and aluminium.

"The study provides a new method to produce methanol with high purity and will help scientists better understand the mechanism of single-atom catalysis," Zeng said.

The study was published in the academic journal Nature Communications.


----------



## JSCh

NEWS * 01 MAY 2019
*Biggest Denisovan fossil yet spills ancient human’s secrets*
Jawbone from China reveals that the ancient human was widespread across the world — and lived at surprising altitude.

Matthew Warren
*



*​A Denisovan jawbone was discovered on Tibetan Plateau at an altitude of more than 3,000 metres.Credit: Dongju Zhang, Lanzhou University

Scientists have uncovered the most complete remains yet from the mysterious ancient-hominin group known as the Denisovans. The jawbone, discovered high on the Tibetan Plateau and dated to more than 160,000 years ago, is also the first Denisovan specimen found outside the Siberian cave in which the hominin was uncovered a decade ago — confirming suspicions that Denisovans were more widespread than the fossil record currently suggests.

The research marks the first time an ancient human has been identified solely through the analysis of proteins. With no usable DNA, scientists examined proteins in the specimen’s teeth, raising hopes that more fossils could be identified even when DNA is not preserved.

“This is fantastic work,” says Katerina Douka, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, who runs a separate project aiming to uncover Denisovan fossils in Asia. “It tells us that we are looking at the right area.”

*Hunting for Denisovans*
Until now, everything scientists have learnt about Denisovans has come from a handful of teeth and bone fragments from Denisova Cave in Russia’s Altai Mountains. DNA from these remains revealed that the Denisovans were a sister group to Neanderthals, both descending from a population that split away from modern humans about 550,00–765,000 years ago. And at Denisova Cave, the two groups seem to have met and interbred: a bone fragment described last year belonged an ancient-human hybrid individual who had a Denisovan father and Neanderthal mother.

But many expected that it was only a matter of time before researchers found evidence of Denisovans elsewhere. Some modern humans in Asia and Oceania carry traces of Denisovan DNA, raising the possibility that the hominin lived far away from Siberia. And some researchers think that unclassified hominin fossils from China could be Denisovan.




The latest specimen, described in _Nature_1, consists of half a lower jaw, with two complete teeth. A monk found it in Baishiya Karst Cave in China in 1980, and passed on to Lanzhou University. But it wasn’t until the 2010s that archaeologist Dongju Zhang and her colleagues began studying the bone.

The team faced a problem. The Denisova Cave remains had all been identified because they still contained some DNA, which could be compared with genetic sequences from other ancient humans. But there was no DNA left in the jawbone.

Instead, the scientists looked for ancient proteins, which tend to last longer than DNA. In dentine from the teeth, they found collagen proteins suitable for analysis. The team compared these with equivalent proteins in groupsincluding Denisovans and Neanderthals, and found that they lined up closest with sequences from Denisovans.

The team were also able to piece together other snippets of information about the individual. One of the teeth was still erupting, for example, leading the authors to speculate that the jawbone belonged to an adolescent.



A virtual reconstruction of the jawbone.Credit: Jean-Jacques Hublin, MPI-EVA, Leipzig

Previous research2 identified Neanderthal remains using both proteins and DNA — but the success of the latest study could lead to a greater emphasis on getting ancient proteins out of fossils that haven’t yielded DNA, says Chris Stringer, a palaeoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London. The method could prove particularly useful for older samples or those from southeast Asia and other warm climates, where DNA degrades quickest.

But the field is still in its early stages, Stringer adds, and ancient-protein analysis currently has a smaller sample of early hominins for comparison than does DNA analysis. “Although it’s certainly very suggestive of a link with the Denisovans, I think I’d like to see bigger samples to really pin that down more,” he says.

Douka agrees: for now, ancient DNA analysis remains the “gold standard” for this kind of work, she says. Although there is no genetic material in the jawbone, Douka wonders whether researchers could still find DNA in the Tibetan cave — perhaps in sediment.

*The Roof of the World*
The altitude of the new Denisovan’s home — 3,280 metres above sea level — surprised researchers, and helps to solve a mystery about Denisovans’ genetic contribution to modern Tibetans (see ‘Denisovan hang-outs’). “It is astonishing that any ancient humans were at that altitude,” says Stringer.

Some Tibetans have a variant of a gene called _EPAS1_ that reduces the amount of the oxygen-carrying protein haemoglobin in their blood, enabling them to live at high altitudes with low oxygen levels. Researchers3 had thought that this adaptation came from Denisovans, but this was difficult to reconcile with Denisova Cave’s relatively low altitude of 700 metres. The latest study suggests that Denisovans evolved the adaptation on the Tibetan Plateau and passed it to _Homo sapiens_ when the species arrived around 30,000–40,000 years ago, says co-author Frido Welker, a molecular anthropologist at the University of Copenhagen. If Denisovans in Asia were adapted to high altitudes, similar sites could harbour more of their remains.

He points to Sel’Ungur cave in Kyrgyzstan, about 2,000 metres above sea level, where a hominin child’s arm bone was found but did not yield any DNA. “Now I ask myself — maybe that specimen is also a Denisovan and not a Neanderthal, like we usually assume,” says Bence Viola, a palaeoanthropologist at the University of Toronto in Canada.

*Re-evaluating fossils*
And the fossil is likely to prompt scientists to reconsider the classification of other remains. “We can kind of work ourselves through the fossil record, and link up more and more specimens with the Denisovans,” says Viola.

One candidate is a jawbone known as Penghu 1, which was caught in a fishing net near Taiwan and has many similarities to the latest mandible. Welker and his colleagues hypothesize that this jaw could be Denisovan — but the ultimate proof will come from DNA or protein analysis, says Welker.

Sampling any remains for proteins or DNA is by its nature destructive, so there must good justification for doing so, he adds. “It’s not a light-hearted decision to make.”


Biggest Denisovan fossil yet spills ancient human’s secrets | Nature

Fahu Chen, Frido Welker, Chuan-Chou Shen, Shara E. Bailey, Inga Bergmann, Simon Davis, Huan Xia, Hui Wang, Roman Fischer, Sarah E. Freidline, Tsai-Luen Yu, Matthew M. Skinner, Stefanie Stelzer, Guangrong Dong, Qiaomei Fu, Guanghui Dong, Jian Wang, Dongju Zhang & Jean-Jacques Hublin. *A late Middle Pleistocene Denisovan mandible from the Tibetan Plateau*. _Nature _(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1139-x​


----------



## JSCh

> *China’s science silk road - Nature*
> 
> How China is redrawing the map of world science
> Scientists in Pakistan and Sri Lanka bet their futures on China
> Coming soon: A path to Europe
> Coming soon: The Latin American Gambit
> Coming soon: Transforming Africa


*How China is redrawing the map of world science*
The Belt and Road Initiative, China’s mega-plan for global infrastructure, will transform the lives and work of tens of thousands of researchers.

By Ehsan Masood
1 MAY 2019

On a freezing November morning, Ashraf Islam is 3,000 kilometres from his family in balmy Bangladesh, but the weather is far from his mind as he gushes about the science opportunities he has encountered in Beijing.

“We have good facilities at home, but the facilities here are nothing like what I’ve used before,” says Islam, who is working towards a PhD in China researching techniques to remove organic matter from wastewater, an acute problem in Bangladesh.

Htet Aung Phyo, a PhD student from Myanmar, is using his Chinese-funded fellowship in Beijing to develop ways to use bacteria to extract copper from low-grade ore. If his project succeeds, it could help to extend the lives of copper mines in Myanmar, some of which are operated by a Chinese company. A breakthrough would also mean more jobs in his own country. “This is why I am here,” he says proudly.

Phyo and Islam are two of 1,300 graduate students from dozens of countries who are spending up to four years in Beijing carrying out research to help solve scientific problems back home. Two hundred positions are funded each year by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in conjunction with The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) in Trieste, Italy. But this is no ordinary fellowship scheme. Each of the 200 is a small part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the world’s largest programme of loans and investments, including some grants, which China is brokering with 126 countries.

Across much of the world, China’s government, companies and local business partners have been building motorways, designing high-speed rail, mining fossil-fuel reserves, switching on power plants, installing thousands of surveillance cameras and unveiling air and sea ports (see ‘Making connections’). This is all part of a vast venture conceived by President Xi Jinping to transform global trade networks that both supply China and provide a market for its products.



Sources: World bank: go.nature.com/2ddj42p; Road and rail lengths: go.nature.com/2xspngh; Biodiversity: go.nature.com/2vbnbzq


Source: http://go.nature.com/2xspngh

Xi and other Chinese leaders see science as a central element in building bridges with other countries and Bai Chunli, president of CAS, emphasized that point last year in the _Bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences_ (_CAS Bulletin_). “Science, technology and innovation are the core driving force for the BRI development,” he wrote.

For the past six months, _Nature_ has been travelling to countries participating in the BRI. From Beijing to Islamabad, Colombo to Nairobi to Lima, we are exploring in a series of five articles over the next two weeks how China is transforming the world of science. China’s universities — along with a vast network of CAS institutes — are fanning out across the globe. They are offering scientific assistance and signing collaborative agreements on a scale not seen since the United States and the former Soviet Union vied with each other to fund researchers in allied nations during the cold war. On 19 April, Bai announced that CAS has invested more than 1.8 billion yuan (almost US$268 million) in science and technology projects as part of the BRI.

In Sri Lanka, China is co-funding a centre focused on safe drinking water and supporting investigations into a kidney-disease crisis in the country’s rural population. In Pakistan, it is co-sponsoring a range of research centres that are studying topics from rice agriculture to artificial intelligence and railway engineering. In the heart of the European Union, a Chinese–Belgian science park provides homes for companies trying to expand trade in medical devices, solar power and other technologies. And in South America, China has partnered with Chile and Argentina on astronomical centres and has gained access to some of the best observatories in the world. In total, the scientific side of the BRI involves tens of thousands of researchers and students, and hundreds of universities. There are few regions of the developing world where China’s scientific outreach does not have a footprint.

This marks a profound shift in where low- and middle-income countries are drawing scientific support — a sphere in which China is emerging as a competitor to the United States, Japan and the wealthier European nations. And as China rises as a science-development superpower, it brings a different perspective from those of other leading science nations.



China has been supporting dam construction in southeast Asia, including the Nam Tha 1 hydropower plant in Laos. Credit: Taylor Weidman/Bloomberg/Getty

First, there is the concept of win–win that pervades all BRI projects, says Theresa Fallon, director of the Centre for Russia Europe Asia Studies in Brussels. Every major investment brings benefits not only to the host country but also to China, which is hoping to gain both scientifically and economically from the ventures. Another difference is that China sees itself as a more appropriate partner for poorer nations because it still recalls what it was like to be poor, says Li Yin, deputy director of CAS’s international cooperation department in Beijing.

China’s approach through the BRI has earned it many fans in countries where it has invested, including Sri Lanka’s President Maithripala Sirisena and Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan. Khan said in his victory speech last year that he’s keen to learn how China went from being a poor country to an emerging superpower.

But there’s another view of China’s scientific rise — the narrative that low- and middle-income countries are sleepwalking into the arms of an authoritarian and neocolonial state, and that everything else, including technology agreements and research alliances, are part of that trajectory. In this narrative, struggling nations are sagging under billions of dollars of debt to China and are giving away the keys to untold amounts of economically valuable and sensitive resources — from oceanic-current readings to biological samples to next-generation communication systems. Another concern is that China is only now beginning to acknowledge the environmental harm that BRI projects could cause as they pave routes through ecologically fragile habitats in Pakistan’s northern mountains and other regions, and dam up rivers across southeast Asia and South America.

From a science perspective, the overall goal of the BRI is clear — to restore China’s place as one of the world’s great civilizations, and that includes being seen by all other nations as a source of scientific power, too. But Christopher Cullen, a historian of Chinese science at the Needham Institute in Cambridge, UK, says it is too early to say how China’s dealings with other countries will evolve.

*Many Paths*
For well over 2,000 years, the silk roads linked the Far East to Europe, and Chinese leaders have been invoking the rhetoric of reviving these ancient trade routes since the early 2000s. But when Xi became China’s president in 2013, he made this goal a priority as he launched the BRI with fanfare and ancient proverbs. “The sea is big because it admits all rivers,” he said during launch events in Indonesia and Kazakhstan.

The sea is even bigger than Xi’s plans originally indicated. Over the past six years, the BRI has grown to incorporate a complex, global network of ocean and overland routes, with China as the focal point (see ‘Growing network’). The full scope of the BRI is impossible to judge, because China’s government has never released a list of all the projects that are in the works or planned. But estimates of its size cover a wide range from $1 trillion to $8 trillion.



Sources: http://ceec-china-latvia.org/page/about and http://anso2018.csp.escience.cn/dct/page/70002

As one component of this massive initiative, China is creating what it calls a 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, a giant oceanic loop that links the country’s shipping to the nations bordering each of the great oceans, including some in Africa and South America. Then there’s the Silk Road Economic Belt, a complicated network of six overland corridors that connect China to some of Asia and Europe’s major cities through railways, roads and maritime paths.

The signs of a scientific BRI emerged soon after Xi visited central Asia in September 2013. The following year, CAS funded an upgrade to a 1-metre telescope at Uzbekistan’s Ulugh Beg Astronomical Institute. The improvement paved the way for the Uzbekistan institute to survey the northern sky in collaboration with China’s Xinjiang Astronomical Observatory. Uzbekistan has no experience in telescope making, observatory director Shuhrat Ehgamberdiev told the _CAS Bulletin_, so the most important technological part was done by China’s engineers. This was the beginning of much grander plans by CAS.

The BRI’s scientific component is being masterminded by Bai. Trained in China as an X-ray crystallographer, Bai worked with John Baldeschwieler at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena in the mid-1980s on scanning tunnelling microscopy.

Even early in Bai’s career, it was clear he would go far, says Baldeschwieler, who remembers predicting that Bai would one day become president of CAS. During a visit to Beijing in 1995, Baldeschwieler was amazed to find that Bai had arranged a meeting with China’s then-president Jiang Zemin. “We were picked up in a small bus and taken by police escort with flashing lights through Tiananmen Square to the Great Hall of the People.” Young boys and girls were lining the stairs on a red carpet, he recalls.

Under Bai, the science BRI has been running on three parallel tracks. In China, CAS has established five centres of excellence at its institutes, and these host the 200 PhD students that the academy trains every year.

Outside China, it has opened nine research and training centres, in Africa, central Asia, South America and south and southeast Asia — often co-funded by their host countries. The China–Brazil Joint Laboratory for Space Weather in São José dos Campos, for example, is monitoring space weather changes and developing forecast models. In Bangkok, the CAS Innovation Cooperation Center helps Thailand’s universities and technology companies to work with Chinese counterparts, and at the same time gives China a foothold in the region. And then there are hundreds of individual collaborations between CAS and universities in China and elsewhere.

The third track is what CAS is calling the Digital Belt and Road, a platform for participating countries to share the data obtained as part of their collaborative projects with each other and with China. These data include satellite images as well as quantitative data on natural hazards, water resources and cultural heritage sites.



Souvenir plates in Beijing honour Chinese leaders, including President Xi Jinping (bottom centre). Credit: Kim Kyung Hoon/Reuters

To draw these and other activities together, CAS established a super committee of scientific research organizations in 2016. This network goes by the acronym ANSO, short for Alliance of International Science Organizations in the Belt and Road Region. Its 37 members span the globe, stretching from the Russian Academy of Sciences to the University of Chile. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in Paris is also a founding member. As part of its activities, ANSO plans to support and organize research in BRI countries on sustainable development, including improving food security and reducing water scarcity.

*Trouble spots*
As the infrastructure projects take off and China increases its scientific activities overseas, concerns are starting to emerge over how it is carrying out its work.

Much of the criticism comes from countries not currently involved in the BRI. India’s government, for example, is angry that it has not been consulted about activities taking place in what it regards as its backyard, and more than once has warned Sri Lanka’s policymakers to scale back the extent of their scientific cooperation with China.

Another potential flashpoint is how China is building the information-technology infrastructure for the Digital Belt and Road. The United States and some other countries have warned in particular about signing agreements with Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei to build the next generation 5G mobile communications network. They say that this potentially gives the Chinese government surveillance opportunities, because Huawei is also providing BRI countries with surveillance tools — including facial recognition technology. Huawei, however, strenuously denies that it has installed access routes in its equipment for unauthorized users, such as might be used by the Chinese government.

One of the strongest concerns in BRI countries is about the environmental impacts of the projects, which are transforming the landscape in dozens of nations. The conservation group WWF reports that the main BRI connections between Asia and Europe cross through 1,739 areas that have been identified as important for biodiversity conservation, affecting 265 threatened species, including 81 endangered species such as the saiga antelope (_Saiga tatarica_), tigers (_Panthera tigris_) and giant pandas (_Ailuropoda melanoleuca_).

One project that has environmentalists worried is a planned 350-kilometre, $3.8-billion Hungary-to-Serbia railway. This has also attracted the attention of EU authorities and is still awaiting regulatory approval. In addition, China has not ratified the Espoo Convention, which requires member states to assess the environmental and health impacts of development projects at an early stage.

Pervez Hoodbhoy, a physicist at Forman Christian College in Lahore, Pakistan, says that few — if any — of China’s scientific collaborations are evaluating the environmental impacts of BRI infrastructure projects. “There’s a real lack of research on a regulatory framework for the BRI projects themselves and this leads to the rest of us having to make guesses as to what is happening and what the impacts might be,” he says. “There needs to be research on these questions, too,” says Hoodbhoy. “Without environmental safeguards in place, there are risks of exacerbating environmental problems, putting pressure on dwindling natural resources and displacing communities,” agrees Aban Marker Kabraji, Asia director at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in Bangkok.



Bai Chunli, president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has been the architect of the science component of the Belt and Road Initiative. Credit: Pang Xinglei/Xinhua/Alamy

One obstacle to environmental due diligence, says Qi Ye, director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy in Beijing, is that institutions in both China and BRI countries are reluctant to do anything that could slow construction. Chinese companies, he says, are often “operating in an environment where the local government or contracting party needs or wants quick results”. Strategic environmental impact assessments take time to do properly, and can result in changes to original specifications — all of which can lead to projects being delayed. “That is not a popular option,” says Qi.

Another problem is that contracts can state that environmental impact assessments are the responsibility of the host country. But because poor countries often have little monitoring or evaluation capacity for such assessments, construction projects sometimes go ahead without proper scrutiny, environmental advocates say.

There are signs that China is starting to address such concerns. China’s own conservation research organizations, such as the Dunhuang Academy, and environmental scientists including Ma Keping from CAS’s Institute of Botany in Beijing, have been warning about the environmental impacts of its vast network of transcontinental routes for some years.

Wang Xudong, the director of the Dunhuang Academy, says his colleagues have mapped 130 World Heritage sites along the original silk routes, including parts of the BRI. “In China, development is forbidden near archaeological sites, or surrounding areas.” Wang says. He adds that countries participating in the BRI should start to establish protected areas as China has done. “Foreign countries should also avoid building roads or rail near earthquake epicentres or near heritage sites,” he says.

The environmental concerns about the BRI are beginning to catch the attention of China’s top leaders, too. The IUCN, whose president is China’s former vice-minister for education Zhang Xinsheng, has been commissioned to study the environmental impacts of BRI construction in two countries: Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Research teams including Chinese government officials were in these nations conducting fieldwork in February — around the same time that _Nature_ was visiting them. The expectation is that this study will have traction in China because it is being done at the request of the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, a body of the world’s top environment specialists that reports to China’s government.

And last week, China’s government convened a two-day forum — a first for the government — in Beijing to discussing environmental concerns surrounding the BRI. The conclusions of the meeting are expected to feed into a conference of heads of governments of BRI countries, called the Belt and Road Forum, which started on 25 April. The forum is being chaired by Xi, which means that environmental discussions have been propelled to the highest of high tables.

Arthur Hanson, chief international adviser to the China environment cooperation council, says that one ambition is to be able to persuade China’s leadership to make environmental- and social-impact assessments essential elements in BRI projects, along with ensuring that there is public participation in decisions and open access to data.

Andrew Small, a China scholar with the German Marshall Fund, a think tank in Washington DC, says that, in his experience, China’s policymakers are highly sensitive to criticisms and will be keen to work to resolve them. As the BRI takes shape, Small says, the Chinese government will look to work with more international organizations, including conservation groups and universities.

*Looking east*
As China increases its scientific investments in BRI countries, it is shifting how researchers around much of the planet look to the future. China has emerged as the scientific partner of choice for a large swathe of the developing world. Whereas previous generations of researchers in Africa, Asia and, to some extent, South America trained in Western countries and had their intellectual roots there, the same cannot be said for the current generation (see ‘China’s collaborations’).



Source: Science-Metrix

Several of the older scientists who spoke to _Nature_ for this series of articles remarked that junior colleagues — particularly those returning from China after PhD training or postdoctoral work — are now often lacking in Western scientific contacts. “As more young people go to China instead of the US, the links they will have with Western countries will further weaken,” says Kamini Mendis, a malariologist from Sri Lanka formerly with the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland.

But there is another side to this story: the prospect that China’s scientific encounters with other countries could, in a small way, start to change China, too. At a meeting in Beijing last November with PhD students who had come from BRI countries around the world, _Nature_asked whether any wished to extend their stay. Might they consider working and living in China on a more permanent basis — just as their predecessors at home had done in Europe and North America? The room fell momentarily silent, until an academy official pointed out that the students’ contracts stipulate that they must return home once their PhDs are complete. “We do not want to cause brain drain,” she emphasized.

But she didn’t have the last word. One of the academy’s principal investigators interjected. “Are you saying that if these students stay and work here, perhaps China will become a more multicultural society?” he asked. “That would not be such a bad thing.”

How China is redrawing the map of world science | Nature


----------



## JSCh

*Int'l research team completes peanut genome sequencing*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-05-06 17:22:46|Editor: xuxin




FUZHOU, May 6 (Xinhua) -- An international research team has completed the genome sequencing of the cultivated peanut plant, providing an insight into oil crop domestication.

It was the first genome sequencing of the entire peanut plant in the world, based on which the plant's gene functional groups implicated in seed oil content and disease resistance were found.

The research was led by the Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University in eastern China's Fujian Province and jointly carried out by 78 researchers from 23 institutions in countries including China, the United States and India.

Professor Zhuang Weijian, the leading scientist of the research at the Fujian university, said that the peanut is one of the most important oil crops in the world, and China is the world's largest peanut producer.

The genome of the cultivated peanut is large, complex and difficult to be decoded, Zhuang said.

"This basic biological research deciphers the entire genome of the cultivated peanut, making it possible to carry out genome-wide selection breeding, precision molecular breeding and genome-wide editing breeding in peanuts, as well as greatly improving the genetic efficiency of peanuts," said Zhuang.

He said the R gene cluster of peanuts resistant to late leaf spot and rust diseases was obtained for the first time through the fine mapping of the genome, which will be helpful to breed new peanut varieties with high yield and good quality.

High oleic acid seeds from peanuts can help prevent human cardiovascular diseases and prolong the shelf life of peanut products. Through resequencing and other methods, scientists can breed new strains of high oleic acid, Zhuang said.

The paper on the research was published in the May issue of Nature Genetics, a top international science journal.

"This is a major breakthrough in peanut genetic research around the world. It will benefit not only China but the world as a whole," said Rajeev K. Varshney, a researcher at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics in India and one of the authors of the paper.


----------



## JSCh

*First performance test of a 30 mm iron-based superconductor single pancake coil under a 24 T background field*
Dongliang Wang1,2,5, Zhan Zhang3,5, Xianping Zhang1,2, Donghui Jiang4, Chiheng Dong1, He Huang1,2, Wenge Chen4, Qingjin Xu3,6 and Yanwei Ma1,2,6

Published 8 March 2019 • © 2019 IOP Publishing Ltd
Superconductor Science and Technology, Volume 32, Number 4

*Abstract*
A 30 mm inner diameter iron-based superconductor (IBS) single pancake coil (SPC) was firstly fabricated and tested under a 24 T background field. This SPC was successfully made using the seven-filamentary Ba1−xKxFe2As2 (Ba122) tape by the wind-and-react method. This IBS coil shows the highest _I_ c value at a magnetic field reported so far. For example, the transport critical current of this Ba122 SPC achieved 35 A at 4.2 K and 10 T, which is about half of that of a short sample. This indicates that the non-insulation winding process together with the stainless steel tape is suitable for an IBS. Even more encouraging is the fact that the _I_ c of this SPC is still as high as 26 A under a 24 T background field, which is still about 40% of that at zero external magnetic field. These results clearly demonstrate that IBSs are very promising for high-field magnet applications.


First performance test of a 30 mm iron-based superconductor single pancake coil under a 24 T background field - IOPscience


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists develop new material to tackle oil pollution*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-05-07 13:30:13|Editor: Li Xia

BEIJING, May 7 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have developed new biomimetic polypropylene foams for oil-water separation, which can be used to prevent and control oil pollution.

Oil-water separation is a global challenge due to increasing industrial oil-containing waste water and frequent oil spills. Consequently, research on high-efficiency oil-water separation materials and technologies has scientific significance and application value.

Some conventional methods for tackling oil pollution such as combustion and filtration have shortcomings including high energy consumption, long duration and possible secondary pollution.

Scientists from the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering under the Chinese Academy of Sciences have designed new biomimetic polypropylene foams with a novel structure that can separate water and oil with high efficiency in complex environments.

The bio-inspired foam has a rough surface, and a hollow tubular structure resembling a honeycomb. It exhibited both superior absorption and filtration ability during the oil-water separation. When the oil-water mixture passes through the foam, pure water can quickly pass through it, with the foam absorbing the oil in seconds.

The foam is easy to prepare, cheap and environmentally friendly, thus offering a great potential application for large-scale oil-water separation. The team has filed patents for this technology.

The research was published in the Chemical Engineering Journal.


----------



## JSCh

MAY 8, 2019
*Chinese researchers try brain implants to treat drug addicts*
by Erika Kinetz



This Monday, Oct. 29, 2018 photo shows a brain scan of a methamphetamine addict with the path of electrodes that doctors at Ruijin Hospital in Shanghai, China implanted to stimulate an area of the brain associated with addiction. Western attempts to push forward with human trials of deep brain stimulation for drug addiction have foundered, even as China has emerged as a hub for this kind of research. But the vast suffering wrought by the U.S. opioid epidemic may be changing the risk-reward calculus. Now, the experimental surgery for addiction is coming to America. (AP Photo/Erika Kinetz)

Patient Number One is a thin man, with a scabby face and bouncy knees. His head, shaved in preparation for surgery, is wrapped in a clean, white cloth.

Years of drug use cost him his wife, his money and his self-respect, before landing him in this drab yellow room at a Shanghai hospital, facing the surgeon who in 72 hours will drill two small holes in his skull and feed electrodes deep into his brain.

The hope is that technology will extinguish his addiction, quite literally, with the flip of a switch.

The treatment—deep brain stimulation—has long been used for movement disorders like Parkinson's. Now, the first clinical trial of DBS for methamphetamine addiction is being conducted at Shanghai's Ruijin Hospital, along with parallel trials for opioid addicts. And this troubled man is the very first patient.

The surgery involves implanting a device that acts as a kind of pacemaker for the brain, electrically stimulating targeted areas. While Western attempts to push forward with human trials of DBS for addiction have foundered, China is emerging as a hub for this research.

Scientists in Europe have struggled to recruit patients for their DBS addiction studies, and complex ethical, social and scientific questions have made it hard to push forward with this kind of work in the United States, where the devices can cost $100,000 to implant.

China has a long, if troubled, history of brain surgery on drug addicts. Even today, China's punitive anti-drug laws can force addicts into years of compulsory treatment, including "rehabilitation" through labor. It has a large patient population, government funding and ambitious medical device companies ready to pay for DBS research.



Dr. Li Dianyou uses a tablet computer to adjust the settings of a deep brain stimulation device implanted in the brain of a methamphetamine addict named Yan, left, on Monday, Oct. 29, 2018, at Ruijin Hospital in Shanghai, China. Western attempts to push forward with human trials of DBS for drug addiction have foundered, even as China has emerged as a hub for this kind of research. But the vast suffering wrought by the U.S. opioid epidemic may be changing the risk-reward calculus. Now, the experimental surgery Yan underwent is coming to America. (AP Photo/Erika Kinetz)

There are eight registered DBS clinical trials for drug addiction being conducted in the world, according to a U.S. National Institutes of Health database. Six are in China.

But the suffering wrought by the opioid epidemic may be changing the risk-reward calculus for doctors and regulators in the United States. Now, the experimental surgery Patient Number One is about to undergo is coming to America. In February, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration greenlighted a clinical trial in West Virginia of DBS for opioid addicts.

___

*HUMAN EXPERIMENTS*

Patient Number One insisted that only his surname, Yan, be published; he fears losing his job if he is identified.

He said doctors told him the surgery wasn't risky. "But I still get nervous," he said. "It's my first time to go on the operating table."

Three of Yan's friends introduced him to meth in a hotel room shortly after the birth of his son in 2011. They told him: Just do it once, you've had your kid, you won't have problems.





A brain surgery patient walks down the main corridor of Ruijin Hospital's functional neurosurgery center in Shanghai, China on Monday, Oct. 29, 2018. Doctors at Ruijin are experimenting with brain surgery to treat a range of psychiatric conditions, including anorexia, Tourette syndrome and addiction. (AP Photo/Erika Kinetz)

Smoking made Yan feel faint and slightly unhinged. Later, he found meth brought crystalline focus to his mind, which he directed at one thing: Cards. Every time Yan smoked, he gambled. And every time he gambled, he lost—all told, around $150,000 since he started using drugs, he estimated.

His wife divorced him. He rarely saw his son.

Yan checked into a hospital for detox, moved to another town to get away from bad influences, took Chinese traditional medicine. But he relapsed every time. "My willpower is weak," he said.

Last year his father, who had a friend who had undergone DBS surgery at Ruijin, gave him an ultimatum: Back to rehab or brain surgery. "Of course, I chose surgery," Yan said. "With surgery, I definitely have the chance to get my life back."

Before there were brain implants in China there was brain lesioning. Desperate families of heroin addicts paid thousands of dollars for unproven and risky surgeries in which doctors destroyed small clumps of brain tissue. Brain lesioning quickly became a profit center at some hospitals, but it also left a trail of patients with mood disorders, lost memories and altered sex drives.

In 2004, China's Ministry of Health ordered a halt to brain lesioning for addiction at most hospitals. Nine years later, doctors at a military hospital in Xi'an reported that roughly half of the 1,167 addicts who had their brains lesioned stayed off drugs for at least five years.

DBS builds on that history. But unlike lesioning, which irreversibly kills brain cells, the devices allow brain interventions that are—in theory—reversible. The technology has opened a fresh field of human experimentation globally.





Bloodied white mesh covers the head of a methamphetamine addict named Yan on Monday, Oct. 29, 2018, three days after he had a deep brain stimulation device implanted as part of a clinical trial at Ruijin Hospital in Shanghai, China. The hope is that DBS will extinguish his addiction, quite literally, with the flip of a switch. Critics say such human experiments are premature and risky, but U.S. regulators in February greenlighted a human trial of DBS for opioid addiction at West Virginia University. (AP Photo/Erika Kinetz)

"As doctors we always need to think about the patients," said Dr. Sun Bomin, director of Ruijin Hospital's functional neurosurgery department. "They are human beings. You cannot say, 'Oh, we do not have any help, any treatment for you guys.'"

Sun said he has served as a consultant for two Chinese companies that make deep brain stimulators—SceneRay Corp. and Beijing PINS Medical Co. He has tried to turn Ruijin into a center of DBS research, not just for addiction, but also Tourette syndrome, depression and anorexia.

In China, DBS devices can cost less than $25,000. Many patients pay cash.

"You can rest assured for the safety of this operation," Yan's surgeon, Dr. Li Dianyou, told him. "It is no problem. When it comes to effectiveness, you are not the first one, nor the last one. You can take it easy because we have done this a lot."

In fact, there are risks. There is a small chance Yan could die of a brain hemorrhage. He could emerge with changes to his personality, seizures, or an infection. And in the end, he may go right back on drugs.

____





Doctors discuss a plan on how to implant a deep brain stimulation device in the brain of a methamphetamine addict named Yan on Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. Western attempts to push forward with human trials of DBS for drug addiction have foundered, even as China has emerged as a hub for this kind of research. But the vast suffering wrought by the U.S. opioid epidemic may be changing the risk-reward calculus. Now, the experimental surgery Yan underwent is coming to America. (AP Photo/Erika Kinetz)

*A BUZZING DRILL*

Some critics believe this surgery should not be allowed.

They argue that such human experiments are premature, and will not address the complex biological, social and psychological factors that drive addiction. Scientists don't fully understand how DBS works and there is still debate about where electrodes should be placed to treat addiction. There is also skepticism in the global scientific community about the general quality and ethical rigor—particularly around issues like informed consent—of clinical trials done in China.

"It would be fantastic if there were something where we could flip a switch, but it's probably fanciful at this stage," said Adrian Carter, who heads the neuroscience and society group at Monash University in Melbourne. "There's a lot of risks that go with promoting that idea."

The failure of two large-scale, U.S. clinical trials on DBS for depression around five years ago prompted soul-searching about what threshold of scientific understanding must be met in order to design effective, ethical experiments.

"We've had a reset in the field," said Dr. Nader Pouratian, a neurosurgeon at UCLA who is investigating the use of DBS for chronic pain. He said it's "a perfectly appropriate time" to research DBS for drug addiction, but only "if we can move forward in ethical, well-informed, well-designed studies."

In China, meanwhile, scientists are charging ahead.

At 9 a.m. on a grey October Friday in Shanghai, Dr. Li drilled through Yan's skull and threaded two electrodes down to his nucleus accumbens, a small structure near the base of the forebrain that has been implicated in addiction.





People walk past an entrance to Ruijin Hospital on Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018, in Shanghai, China. Doctors at Ruijin have tried to turn the hospital into a center of deep brain stimulation research. The hope is that the technology will heal a host of conditions, including addiction, with the flip of a switch. Western attempts to push forward with human trials of DBS for addiction have foundered, even as China emerged as a hub for this kind of research. (AP Photo/Erika Kinetz)

Yan was awake during the surgery. The buzzing of the drill made him tremble.

At 4 p.m. the same day, Yan went under general anesthesia for a second surgery to implant a battery pack in his chest to power the electrodes in his skull.

Three hours later, Yan still hadn't woken from the anesthesia. His father began weeping. His doctors wondered if drug abuse had somehow altered his sensitivity to anesthesia.

Finally, after 10 hours, Yan opened his eyes.

___

*BODY COUNT*

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 500,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in the decade ending in 2017—increasingly, from synthetic opioids that come mainly from China, U.S. officials say. That's more than the number of U.S. soldiers who died in World War II and Vietnam combined.





A nurse walks through the functional neurosurgery center at Shanghai's Ruijin Hospital on Monday, Oct. 29, 2018. Doctors at Ruijin are experimenting with brain surgery to treat a range of psychiatric conditions, including anorexia, Tourette syndrome and addiction. Six of the eight human trials of deep brain stimulation for addiction underway globally are being done in China, according to a U.S. government database. (AP Photo/Erika Kinetz)

The body count has added urgency to efforts to find new, more effective treatments for addiction. While doctors in the U.S. are interested in using DBS for addiction, work funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health is still focused on experiments in animals, not people.

At least two U.S. laboratories dropped clinical trials of DBS for treating alcoholism over concerns about study design and preliminary results that didn't seem to justify the risks, investigators who led the studies told The Associated Press.

"The lack of scientific clarity, the important but strict regulatory regime, along with the high cost and risk of surgery make clinical trials of DBS for addiction in the U.S. difficult at the present time," said Dr. Emad Eskandar, the chairman of neurological surgery at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

China's studies have offered mixed results. Sun and his colleagues have published one case study, describing a heroin addict who fatally overdosed three months after getting DBS. But a separate pilot study published in January by doctors at a military hospital in Xi'an showed that five of eight heroin addicts stayed off drugs for two years after DBS surgery.

Based on those results, SceneRay is seeking Chinese regulatory approval of its DBS device for addiction, and funding a multi-site clinical trial targeting 60 heroin addicts. SceneRay chairman Ning Yihua said his application for a clinical trial in the U.S. was blocked by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

But in February, the FDA greenlighted a separate, pilot trial of DBS for four opioid addicts, said Dr. Ali Rezai, who is leading the study at the West Virginia University Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute. They hope to launch the trial in June, with funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

The FDA declined comment.





Orderlies roll a brain surgery patient out of the functional neurosurgery center at Ruijin Hospital in Shanghai, China on Monday, Oct. 29, 2018. Doctors at Ruijin are experimenting with deep brain stimulation as a treatment for addiction. The hope is that the technology will extinguish addiction, quite literally, with the flip of a switch. Critics say such experiments are premature and risky, but U.S. regulators in February greenlighted a human trial of DBS for opioid addiction at West Virginia University. (AP Photo/Erika Kinetz)

"People are dying," Rezai said. "Their lives are devastated. It's a brain issue. We need to explore all options."

___

*'YOU CAME TOO LATE'*

Two unsteady days after Yan's surgery, doctors switched on his DBS device. As the electrodes activated, he felt a surge of excitement. The current running through his body kept him awake; he said he spent the whole night thinking about drugs.

The next day, he sat across from Dr. Li, who used a tablet computer to remotely adjust the machine thrumming inside Yan's head.

"Cheerful?" Li asked as the touched the controls on the tablet.

"Yes," Yan answered.





A stereotactic device presses into the head of a brain surgery patient at Ruijin Hospital's functional neurosurgery center in Shanghai, China on Monday, Oct. 29, 2018. Doctors at Ruijin are experimenting with deep brain stimulation as a treatment for addiction. The hope is that the technology will extinguish addiction, quite literally, with the flip of a switch. Critics say such experiments are premature and risky, but U.S. regulators in February greenlighted a human trial of DBS for opioid addiction at West Virginia University. (AP Photo/Erika Kinetz)

Li changed the settings. "Now?"

"Agitated," Yan said. He felt heat in his chest, then a beating sensation, numbness and fatigue. Yan began to sweat.

Li made a few more modifications. "Any feelings now?"

"Pretty happy now," Yan said.

He was in high spirits. "This machine is pretty magical. He adjusts it to make you happy and you're happy, to make you nervous and you're nervous," Yan said. "It controls your happiness, anger, grief and joy."

Yan left the hospital the next morning.

More than six months later, he said he's still off drugs. With sobriety, his skin cleared and he put on 20 pounds. When his friends got back in touch, he refused their drugs. He tried to rekindle his relationship with his ex-wife, but she was pregnant with her new husband's child.





A man leaves the Center for Functional Neurosurgery at Ruijin Hospital in Shanghai, China on Monday, Oct. 29, 2018. Doctors at Ruijin have tried to turn the hospital into a center of deep brain stimulation research. (AP Photo/Erika Kinetz)

"The only shame is that you came too late," she told him.

Sometimes, in his new life, he touches the hard cable in his neck that leads from the battery pack to the electrodes in his brain. And he wonders: What is the machine is doing inside his head?

Explore further
Meds can help recovering meth addicts stay sober​
© 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.


Chinese researchers try brain implants to treat drug addicts | MedicalXpress


----------



## JSCh

*China's big radiation facility project eyes big growth*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-05-08 10:50:02|Editor: Li Xia

BEIJING, May 8 (Xinhua) -- The Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility will see its research capability more than double within the next three years, the China Daily reported Wednesday.

There will be 40 beam lines and 60 laboratories in operation at the facility by 2022, up from the current 15 beam lines and 19 laboratories, the newspaper quoted Zhao Zhentang, the facility's director, as saying.

The facility operates 7,000 hours a year. It is involved in frontier scientific research in various fields, including life sciences, new materials, physics, chemistry, environmental sciences and archaeology, Zhao said on its 10-year anniversary.

While there were only 300 users when the facility opened in 2009, the number has surged to more than 24,600, including 100 overseas users mainly from the Republic of Korea, Japan, Australia and Canada, the newspaper said.


----------



## JSCh

Continue with Part 3 & 4 of China's science silk road from _Nature_.


> *China’s science silk road: Part 3*
> 
> How China is redrawing the map of world science
> Scientists in Pakistan and Sri Lanka bet their futures on China
> China charts a path into European science
> South America is embracing Beijing’s science silk road
> Coming soon: Transforming Africa


----------



## JSCh

An artist’s illustration of _Ambopteryx_ 
MIN WANG/INSTITUTE OF VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY AND PALEOANTHROPOLOGY/CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
*New batlike dinosaur was early experiment in flight*
By John Pickrell
May. 8, 2019 , 1:00 PM

A number of tiny, bat-winged dinosaurs flew the Jurassic skies, according to the strongest evidence yet for such creatures—a well-preserved fossil of a starling-size fluffball that may have looked a little like a flying squirrel. The find, recovered near a farming village in northeastern China, suggests dinosaurs were experimenting with several methods of flight during this period, but many were an evolutionary dead end.

“This fossil seals the deal—there really were bat-winged dinosaurs,” says Stephen Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved with the study.

Scientists were already confident that a number of dinosaurs could fly. There are birds, of course, which are technically dinosaurs and appeared during the Jurassic period, at least 150 million years ago. Other dinosaurs sported feathers on their hind- and forelimbs, effectively giving them four birdlike wings.

Then, in 2015, researchers discovered a dinosaur that may have flown more like a bat. Named _Yi qi_ (Mandarin for “strange wing”) and discovered in northwestern China, the crow-size creature appeared to have a flap of skin stretched between its body and arm bones that was supported by a rod of cartilage. But the fossil, which belongs to an enigmatic group of dinosaurs called the scansoriopterygids, was partial and poorly preserved, so scientists couldn’t be sure it actually flew like a bat. “There’s been debate about whether the skin flap was really an airfoil or used for another purpose,” Brusatte says.

The new fossil, named _Ambopteryx longibrachium _(meaning “both-wing” and “long arm,” referring to this second method of dinosaur flight) and dated to about 163 million years ago during the Jurassic period, doesn’t have that problem. Nearly every part of the little dino—which was uncovered by a farmer who provides the fossils he finds to the Chinese Academy of Sciences’s Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing—is well-preserved, including membranous batlike wings similar to those of _Yi qi_. “You could have fit it in your hand,” says IVPP paleontologist and study author Jingmai O’Connor. “It would have been this tiny, bizarre-looking, buck-toothed thing like nothing alive today.”



The new _Ambopteryx_ fossil, with two folded wings in the center and the remains of fuzzy feathers along the neck 
MIN WANG/INSTITUTE OF VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY AND PALEOANTHROPOLOGY/CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

Even _Ambopteryx_’s stomach contents were preserved. Researchers recovered pieces of bone and small rocks called gastroliths, which modern birds use to grind plant material, indicating the species may have been omnivorous. Though the creature was replete with feathers, these were a downy fuzz and not used for flight. O’Connor also speculates that males of the species may have sported long ornamental tail feathers, possibly to woo females, as can be seen in other scansoriopterygid fossils.

The complete skeleton has allowed scientists to make the first detailed analysis of differences in wing design and mode of flight between these dinosaurs and birds. Researchers measured the bones of the arms and fingers in each type of wing and compared them using statistical methods.

_Ambopteryx_’s wings were formed by elongating the humerus and ulna, the bones of the upper and lower arm in humans, the team reports today in Nature. Birds instead achieved flight by elongating their metacarpals, analogous to our fingers. “The main lift-generating surface of birds’ wings is formed by feathers,” O’Connor explains. “In bats, pterosaurs [dinosaur-era reptiles that flew similar to bats], and now scansoriopterygids—you instead have flaps of skin that are stretched out in between skeletal elements.”

“This new discovery shows _Yi qi_ was not an aberrant species, but that there was an entire group of bat dinosaurs taking to the skies in the [Jurassic],” says Darla Zelenitsky, a paleontologist at the University of Calgary in Canada who has studied feathered dinosaurs.

However, although nearly 10,000 species of birds live today, no scansoriopterygids survived past the end of the Jurassic. That suggests their early experiment in flight was far less successful, O’Connor says. Still, she says, their existence is remarkable, given that flight has only evolved in a handful of groups of animals across the entire history of life. “The idea that flight evolved more than once in dinosaurs is incredibly exciting and hasn’t quite sunk into the scientific community yet.”

“The evolution of flight wasn’t a gradual march from dinosaur to bird,” Brusatte adds. “It involved lots of experimentation and tinkering.”



New batlike dinosaur was early experiment in flight | Science | AAAS

Min Wang, Jingmai K. O’Connor, Xing Xu & Zhonghe Zhou. *A new Jurassic scansoriopterygid and the loss of membranous wings in theropod dinosaurs. *_Nature _(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1137-z


----------



## JSCh

*Plants and the art of microbial maintenance*
9th May 2019




It’s been known for centuries that plants produce a diverse array of medically-valuable chemicals in their roots.

The benefits for human health are clear, but it’s been less apparent how and why plants expend 20 percent of their energy building these exotic chemicals. Is it for defence? Is it waste? What is it for?

A joint study from the John Innes Centre and the Chinese Academy of Sciences has shed new light on this fundamental question of plant specialised metabolism.

Appearing in the journal Science, the study reveals that plants use their root-derived chemicals to muster and maintain communities of microbes. It suggests that across the plant kingdom diverse plant chemistry may provide a basis for communication that enables the sculpting of microbial communities tailored to the specific needs of the host plant, be that a common weed or major crops such as rice or wheat.

The findings provide researchers with a gateway to engineering plant root microbiota in a range of major crops.

“This question has fascinated people for hundreds of years and we’ve found this chemistry enables plants to direct the assembly and maintenance of microbial communities in and around the roots,” says Professor Anne Osbourn of the John Innes Centre, a co-author of the study.

“We assume that the plant is shaping the root microbiota for its own benefit. If we can understand what the plant is doing and what kind of microbes are responding to it and what the benefits are then we may be able to use that knowledge to design improved crops or to engineer the root microbiome for enhanced productivity and sustainability and to move away from fertilizers and pesticides,” adds Professor Osbourn.

In this study the team uncovered a metabolic network expressed in the roots of the well-known model plant _Arabidopsis thaliana_. This network, organised primarily around gene clusters, can make over 50 previously undescribed molecules belonging to a diverse family of plant natural products called Triterpenes.

The researchers generated plants altered in the production of these root-derived chemicals and working with Professor Yang Bai of the Chinese Academy of Sciences grew these plants in natural soil from a farm in Beijing.

The results showed clear differences in the types of microbial communities that these plants assembled compared with the wild plants.

In further experiments the group synthesized many of these newly-discovered chemicals and tested their effect on communities of cultured microbes in a laboratory re-enactment of plant-microbial interactions in the soil.

“Using this approach, we can see that very small differences in chemical structures can have profound effects on whether a particular molecule will inhibit or promote the growth of a particular bacteria. Taken together we can clearly see that very subtle, selective modulation of microbes by this cocktail of chemicals,” says first author of the paper Dr Ancheng Huang.

Comparisons with root bacterial profiles in rice and wheat that do not make these _Arabidopsis _triterpenes demonstrated that these genetic networks were modulating bacteria towards the assembly of an _Arabidopsis-_specific root microbiota_._

The next steps for the researchers is to explore further the benefits of this sculpting of the microbial community for the plant and observe other influences on plant chemistry such as nutrient limitation and pathogen challenge.

The full study: A specialized metabolic network selectively modulates _Arabidopsis _root microbiota, appears in Science.


Plants and the art of microbial maintenance | John Innes Centre

Ancheng C. Huang, Ting Jiang, Yong-Xin Liu, Yue-Chen Bai, James Reed, Baoyuan Qu, Alain Goossens, Hans-Wilhelm Nützmann, Yang Bai, Anne Osbourn. *A specialized metabolic network selectively modulates Arabidopsis root microbiota*. _Science _(2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aau6389​


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *Quake warning system to be in place by 2023*
> By Hou Liqiang | China Daily | Updated: 2018-10-13 07:43
> 
> 
> 
> Primary school students crouch under desks during an earthquake drill on Friday in Handan, Hebei province. [Photo by Hao Qunying/For China Daily]
> 
> China will build a nationwide earthquake early warning system by 2023, said a senior emergency management official.
> 
> It has already finished testing an earthquake alert system for high-speed trains, and the system is expected to be extended to the country's entire high-speed rail network, said Zheng Guoguang, vice-minister of emergency management. He made the remarks ahead of the International Day for Disaster Reduction, which falls on Saturday this year.
> 
> The early warning system, known as the National Seismic Intensity Rapid Reporting and Early Warning project, was approved by central authorities early last year. It will include more than 15,000 observation stations across the country, at a cost of almost 1.9 billion yuan ($274 million), and 3,360 service terminals in national and provincial government bodies that are related to earthquake relief, as well as in public institutions and vital infrastructure and utilities, such as nuclear power plants.
> 
> Observation stations will be set in different areas according to earthquake frequency and the potential risk of and effects from disasters. The North-South Seismic Belt, which encircles most of Sichuan, Gansu and Yunnan provinces, will be one of the key areas for such stations, said Zheng, who also is head of the China Earthquake Administration.
> 
> Seismic sensors could detect the first energy that emerges from a quake before the jolt begins. This makes it possible to warn those in affected areas before they feel the impact. The farther people are from the epicenter, the longer they would have to respond in the event of a quake.
> 
> Even before the system won approval, the administration teamed up in 2012 with the Ministry of Railways, which has since been reshuffled into China Railway Corp, to establish a team to research an earthquake alert system for high-speed railway.
> 
> The system developed by the team has been tested on several railway lines in Fujian and Shanxi provinces and works very well, Zheng said, adding that his administration will continue to cooperate with China Railway to extend the system to all high-speed trains in the country.
> 
> The completion of the field test of the alert system on the Datong-Xi'an high-speed railway in August marks the quake alert system's shift from the research and development stage to actual use, the administration said.
> 
> Zheng said the system will probably be put into operation first in Southwest China, considering the high frequency of earthquakes there. For example, the Sichuan-Tibet railway, which is under construction, crosses four earthquake faults where 14 earthquakes above magnitude 7.0 have occurred.
> 
> Although China's quake alert system for high-speed trains uses advanced technology, the nationwide early warning system is needed for it to work best, Zheng said. Therefore, the country should accelerate construction of the National Seismic Intensity Rapid Reporting and Early Warning project, he said.
> 
> Zheng said one challenge that China faces in earthquake alerts is the particular nature of earthquakes in the country. Most earthquake epicenters around the world occur along tectonic plate boundaries, many of which are located in the ocean. In China, however, most tremor epicenters occur within the plate on which the country sits, he said. Such countries as Japan and Mexico usually have more time to alert people to a quake, since it takes time for a quake originating in the ocean to affect land, Zheng added.
> 
> In addition to earthquake early warning, China also has been trying to forecast quakes, which is much more difficult, Zheng said.
> 
> "The Chinese government is the only one in the world that considers earthquake forecast research as its duty," he said.
> 
> China is among the countries that suffer the most from earthquakes. From 1900 to 2017, China was hit by an annual average of 18 earthquakes above magnitude 5.0. So far this year, the number stands at 10.


*China's Sichuan to offer quake early warning services by year-end*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-05-10 22:40:31|Editor: yan

CHENGDU, May 10 (Xinhua) -- Sichuan, a quake-prone province in southwest China, will provide its residents earthquake early warning services by the end of this year, according to the Sichuan Earthquake Administration.

The early warning services include alerting residents seconds before seismic waves arrive through multiple broadcasting systems, using the theory that radio waves travel faster than seismic waves.

Earthquake research has found that being aware of an earthquake three seconds beforehand can save 14 percent of casualties, 10 seconds can save 39 percent of casualties, and 20 seconds can save 63 percent of casualties.

The services will also offer residents brief information about the quake one to two minutes after a quake strikes, its magnitude two to five minutes later, and an assessment of the disaster within two hours.

China's capacity in earthquake monitoring and disaster relief has improved since 2008, when the Wenchuan Earthquake in Sichuan killed more than 69,000 people and left nearly 18,000 missing, said a report submitted to the country's top legislature last year.

A new generation of earthquake monitoring and warning systems have been installed along more than 20 high-speed railway lines spanning 6,642 km, said the report.

+++###+++​ 
*China seismic experimental site launches 360 observation stations*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-05-10 23:21:04|Editor: yan

BEIJING, May 10 (Xinhua) -- A total of 360 observation stations have been established in the China Seismic Experimental Site (CSES) so far, Zheng Guoguang, head of the China Earthquake Administration, said Friday.

China announced on May 12, 2018 to build the CSES, a natural laboratory in earthquake science and technology, in Sichuan and Yunnan regions.

It aims to facilitate investigator-driven research on continental strong earthquake preparation and occurrence, and enhance the disaster resilience of the society, according to Zheng.

So far, a total of 360 observation stations have been established in the experimental site. Thirteen countries including the United States and Russia have participated in the research.

China will step up the pace of experimental site construction to obtain more underground observation data, and promote data sharing for further research, Zheng said.


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese physicist says revolutionary technique means alloys can be developed in hours instead of years*

Inspired by early colour television, method can create thousands of alloys quickly
Leader of Beijing team says a ‘revolution in material science’ is close to hand



Stephen Chen 
Published: 7:10pm, 7 May, 2019




Speedy development of alloys may accelerate programmes to explore the harsh environments of space and ocean depths. Photo: Xinhua

Chinese physicists say they have developed a method that can cut the time involved in the discovery of alloys from years to hours.

The technique has led to the creation of high performance alloys, including the world's toughest amorphous metal, or metallic glass, for use in extremely hot environments.

The search for an alloy typically takes years, but now it can be done in less than two hours, the Chinese researchers said.

Part of their findings was published in the journal _Nature_ this month.



Inspired by the colour gun method used to create images for television sets, the Beijing team speeds up alloy discovery. Photo: Handout

In the conventional method, metals needed to be weighed, melted to an alloy and tested for performance. To find the right formula, researchers might need to test more than a thousand combinations and each test might take a day or two.

Professor Wang Weihua, researcher with the institute of physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and lead scientist of the study, said his team’s research was inspired by early colour televisions, which used three electric devices known as guns that fired red, green and blue light onto the back of the screen to create real-world colours for the viewer.

Wang’s team’s alloy technology also involved three guns, but instead of electronic pulses they fired “bullets” made of different metals. These struck a silicon board simultaneously and fused to form alloys.

Sensors quickly measured the alloys’ properties and picked the most appropriate for the researchers.

This approach allowed scientists to create more than 1,000 samples, test their performance and select the most promising within a couple of hours.

“We proved it works,” Wang said. “It will increase people's confidence. There will be a revolution in material science.”

The alloy reported in the _Nature_ paper contained iridium, nickel and tantalum. It had a distorted atomic structure similar to that of glass. Metallic glasses can be extremely strong but they usually weaken by temperatures of 400 degrees Celsius or more.



The Beijing team hopes artificial intelligence, in tandem with its technique, will start a materials revolution. Photo: Handout

The new alloy can maintain a tensile strength nearly eight times that of steel at more than 700 degrees Celsius, researchers said.

It can also remain intact for months in aqua regia, the mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid that can dissolve gold and platinum.

Such properties make the alloy an ideal candidate material for manufacturing critical components for use in harsh environments such as space, ocean depths and battlefields.

“We are introducing artificial intelligence into the design and search for new amorphous metals,” Wang said. “It can further increase the speed of discoveries. In the near future, we may even be able to create material on demand.

“The potential application is almost unlimited.”



Chinese physicist says revolutionary technique means alloys can be developed in hours instead of years | South China Morning Post

Ming-Xing Li, Shao-Fan Zhao, Zhen Lu, Akihiko Hirata, Ping Wen, Hai-Yang Bai, MingWei Chen, Jan Schroers, YanHui Liu, Wei-Hua Wang. *High-temperature bulk metallic glasses developed by combinatorial methods*. _Nature _(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1145-z​

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

*China eyes earthquake warning and prediction technology*
By Chen Xi Source:Global Times Published: 2019/5/12 22:13:17



A depiction of one firemen and one soldier rescuing victims from the rubble exhibited at the Wenchuan Earthquake Museum. Photo: Li Hao/GT

China's earthquake early warning system is the "fastest in the world," Chinese seismologists asserted on Sunday, crediting high-technology and artificial intelligence to a delay of 6.2 seconds.

"The average response time of the earthquake early warning system in China is 6.2 seconds now, 30 percent quicker than Japan, which is nine seconds," Wang Tun, head of the Chengdu-based Institute of Care-life, which specializes in earthquake early warnings, told the Global Times on Sunday.

This made the average response time of China's system "the fastest in the world," Wang said.

Wang's remark came on the 11th anniversary of the 8.0-magnitude Wenchuan earthquake of May 12, 2008, in which more than 69,000 people died.

Wang said if there was an early warning system at that time, perhaps there would have been 30 percent fewer deaths.

Studies suggest that a three-second early warning time can reduce casualties by 14 percent and a 10-second early warning time can reduce them by 39 percent, Wang said.

China's early warning system also covers the largest area in the world, according to a document that the public affairs department of the Institute of Care-life sent to the Global Times on Sunday.

The system includes 31 provinces and regions, 2.2 million square kilometers and 660 million people, about 90 percent of densely populated quake-prone areas.

Warning messages are dispatched via mobile phone, radio and television, government microblogs and dedicated receiving terminals.

Warnings were sent during 50 earthquakes including the 7.0-magnitude quake in Lushan, Sichuan Province in 2013 and the 6.5-magnitude quake in Ludian county, Southwest China's Yunnan Province in 2014, the document noted.

The early warning success rate came about through the introduction of cutting-edge technology, according to Wang. Artificial intelligence identifies seismic waveforms and reduces false alarms, he noted.

The warning system can still be improved, experts agree.

Electromagnetic waves travel faster than seismic waves, meaning people in areas outside the epicenter can use the time difference to protect themselves, "but it cannot play a role in reducing disasters in the hardest-hit areas," Sun Shihong, a China Earthquake Networks Center researcher, told the Global Times on Sunday.

And earthquake prediction remains a largely experimental topic.

China in 2018 began using the world's first cloud image system based on sensory technology to release more timely and reliable warnings for earthquakes.

Wang's team uses a cloud image system that involves deep-buried sensors that can detect stress and energy dynamics 8 to 20 kilometers below the surface.

"Earthquake prediction technology, an unsolved global and technological problem, is expected to be well tested within three years," Wang said.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 13-MAY-2019
*Just like toothpaste: fluoride radically improves the stability of perovskite solar cells*
EINDHOVEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY



​The atomic structure of fluoride (NaF) containing metal halide perovskite (FAPbI3). Due to its high eletronegativity, fluoride stabilizes the perovskite lattice by forming strong hydrogen bonds and ionic bonds on the surface of the material. *CREDIT: *Eindhoven University of Technology

Solar cells made of perovskite hold much promise for the future of solar energy. The material is cheap, easy to produce and almost as efficient as silicon, the material traditionally used in solar cells. However, perovskite degrades quickly, severely limiting its efficiency and stability over time. Researchers from Eindhoven University of Technology, energy research institute DIFFER, Peking University and University of Twente have discovered that adding a small amount of fluoride to the perovskite leaves a protective layer, increasing stability of the materials and the solar cells significantly. The solar cells retain 90 percent of their efficiency after 1000 hours operation at various extreme testing conditions. The findings are published today in the leading scientific journal _Nature Energy_.

Because they are so cheap to make, perovskite solar cells have been at the center of much recent solar research. As a consequence, their efficiency has risen from less than 4 percent in 2009 to over 24 percent at present, which is close to traditional silicon cells. So-called tandem cells, which combine silicon and perovskite cells, achieve an efficiency of more than 28 percent.

Despite this success, perovskite has a number of defects due to the nature of the material and the way it is manufactured. Over time, vacancies in the atomic structure of the metal halide trigger the degradation of the perovskite under the influence of moisture, light and heat.

*Protective layer*

The researchers in Eindhoven, Twente and Beijing have experimented with a new type of perovskite, by adding a small amount of fluoride in the production process. Just like fluoride in toothpaste, the fluoride ions form a protective layer around the crystal, preventing the diffusion of the harmful defects.

"Our work has improved the stability of perovskite solar cells considerably", says Shuxia Tao, assistant professor at the Center for Computational Energy Research, a joint center of the Department of Applied Physics of TU/e and DIFFER, and co-author of the paper. "Our cells maintain 90 percent of their efficiency after 1000 hours under extreme light and heat conditions. This is many times as long as traditional perovskite compounds. We achieve an efficiency of 21.3 percent, which is a very good starting point for further efficiency gains".

Due to its high eletronegativity, fluoride stabilizes the perovskite lattice by forming strong hydrogen bonds and ionic bonds on the surface of the material.

Much of the work of the team from Eindhoven has gone into explaining why fluoride is such an effective ingredient compared to other halogens. Using computer simulations they conclude that part of its success is due to the small size and high electronegativity of fluoride ions. The higher the electronegativity of an element, the easier it attracts electrons of neighbouring elements. This helps fluoride ions to form strong bonds with the other elements in the perovskite compound, forming a stable protective layer.

*Future research*

The study is seen as an important step towards the successful implementation of perovskite solar cells in the future. However, much work remains to be done. The gold standard in the solar industry is a retention rate of at least 85 percent of original efficiency after ten to fifteen years, a standard which is still some way off for perovskite cells.

"We expect it will take another five to ten years for these cells to become a commercially viable product. Not only do we need to further improve their efficiency and stability, we also need to gain a better theoretical understanding of the relevant mechanisms at the atomic scale. We still don't have all the answers to why some materials are more effective than others in increasing the long-term stability of these cells", says Tao.


Just like toothpaste: fluoride radically improves the stability of perovskite solar cells | EurekAlert! Science News

Nengxu Li, Shuxia Tao, Yihua Chen, Xiuxiu Niu, Chidozie K. Onwudinanti, Chen Hu, Zhiwen Qiu, Ziqi Xu, Guanhaojie Zheng, Ligang Wang, Yu Zhang, Liang Li, Huifen Liu, Yingzhuo Lun, Jiawang Hong, Xueyun Wang, Yuquan Liu, Haipeng Xie, Yongli Gao, Yang Bai, Shihe Yang, Geert Brocks, Qi Chen, Huanping Zhou. *Cation and anion immobilization through chemical bonding enhancement with fluorides for stable halide perovskite solar cells*. _Nature Energy_ (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41560-019-0382-6​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*China cracks cheap lithium production in electric car breakthrough | South China Morning Post*

Scientific breakthrough leads to record low costs for essential battery ingredient
US and Europe seek to break Chinese dominance in global supply chain


Stephen Chen 
Published: 11:00pm, 14 May, 2019

The production of lithium – an essential ingredient in batteries for electric cars – has become easier and significantly cheaper, thanks to a technological breakthrough, just as US concerns about China’s dominance in the supply chain are on the rise.

The cost of extracting the mineral has been slashed to a “record low” of 15,000 yuan (US$2,180) per ton by the new process, a Chinese government report said.

That compares to an international price for lithium ranging from $12,000 to $20,000 per ton – and a long-term contract price of about $17,000 – over the past year, according to some industrial estimates.

The precise production costs of lithium are a closely guarded business secret, but industry insiders interviewed by the _South China Morning Post_agreed that the rate quoted in the report could be considered one of, if not the lowest, around.

While China’s lithium output is still relatively low, it dominates supply of the end product, producing nearly two-thirds of the world’s lithium-ion batteries, compared with 5 per cent for the United States, and also controls most of the world’s lithium processing facilities, according to data from Benchmark Minerals Intelligence.

The US has moved to offset China’s dominance in the electric car supply chain, with draft legislation aimed at streamlining regulation and permitting requirements for the development of mines for lithium, graphite and other minerals used in the process.

Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, who introduced the Minerals Security Act alongside Democrat Senator Joe Manchin at the beginning of May, said China’s lead in the electric car supply chain sector gave it an edge in the ongoing trade dispute.

“My greatest challenge right now is to educate other members of Congress as to why this needs to be a national priority,” she said.

“Our challenge is still a failure to understand the vulnerability we are in as a nation when it comes to reliance on others for our minerals.”

The US is not the only country playing catch-up with China. France and Germany have also asked the European Commission to support a 1.7 billion euro (US$1.9 billion) battery cell consortium, aimed at reducing China’s dominance.

The scientific breakthrough could change the amount of lithium China is able to produce in future. State-owned company Qinghai Lithium Industries – which has been taking advantage of the new process – has enjoyed an average profit margin of more than 50 per cent over the past three years, with total revenues exceeding three billion yuan, according to the Chinese government report.

Li Jian, an executive manager of the company, said the estimate on production costs was “quite accurate” but did not include tax and bank loan interest. He also predicted production costs would “likely decline further in the future with continued technical advancement”.

Lithium is extracted from brine but separating it from other elements present in the salts remains a challenge worldwide. Magnesium, in particular, is extremely difficult to separate from lithium because the two minerals have similar ionic properties.

According to the report, a 15-year research project funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences has cracked a cost-effective way of unbinding lithium from other minerals, especially magnesium, through multiple processing stages with complex electronic and membrane filtering treatments.

Dr Ren Dongming, director of the Centre for Renewable Energy Development under China’s National Development and Reform Commission, said the attractive economic return would increase the number of lithium suppliers, helping to bring the price of batteries down and eventually benefit consumers.

“Cheaper lithium will benefit electric car makers such as Tesla,” he said.

Half to 30 per cent of the cost of an electric car currently goes on the battery, according to some industrial estimates. Lower prices, increased range and improving infrastructure such as charge stations would make zero-emission vehicles a more attractive option for car buyers, Ren said.

About four per cent of the cars on the road last year were running on electricity, according to the Centre of Automotive Management, a Germany-based research institute. The biggest stock – nearly one million cars – was registered in China, believed to be one of the world’s most lithium-rich countries.

According to a 2017 Chinese government estimate, the salt lakes on the Tibetan Plateau – where the new technology is being used – hold more than 60 per cent of the world’s lithium reserves. The US Geological Survey estimate last year was significantly lower, placing just 7 per cent of the world’s reserves in China. Meanwhile, other estimates have ranked China’s lithium reserves in second place, after Chile.

China’s lithium production remains low, however, with Chinese mines contributing just 9 per cent to global lithium production last year.

In contrast, Chinese factories are consuming more of the metal than any other country, mostly for battery production. Top lithium producers such as Australia and Chile sell most of their output to China and, in recent years, Chinese companies have been buying up mines in lithium-rich countries such as Argentina and Australia.

The buying spree has prompted suspicions that Beijing is hoarding its domestic resources while trying to control the global lithium supply.

Xu Hong, a professor at the China University of Geosciences in Beijing, said hoarding was not the main reason for China’s low rate of lithium production.

Instead, the isolation and harsh environment of the Tibetan Plateau – including high altitudes and low oxygen levels – prohibited large-scale mining at the salt lakes.

“The lithium reserves in China may be rich, but many are difficult to exploit,” she said.

The separation technology was a recent breakthrough, so adaptation of the method and construction of more factories would take time. and there were also concerns that mining activity could damage the sensitive local environment.

“These all need to be considered as costs,” Xu said.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*China Focus: New technology enables large-scale production of artemisinin for malaria*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-05-13 18:36:56|Editor: Xiang Bo

BEIJING, May 13 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers have developed a new technology to produce artemisinin, a top malaria treatment, on a large scale.

Sweet wormwood was used in ancient Chinese therapy to treat various illnesses, including fevers typical of malaria. Nearly five decades ago, Chinese scientists identified its active ingredient, artemisinin.

In 2005, the World Health Organization recommended artemisinin-based Combination Therapies (ACTs) as the most effective malaria treatment available. Global demand for artemisinin increased, but the quality and supply have not been stable.

According to researchers from the Institute of Process Engineering (IPE), Chinese Academy of Sciences, due to its complex structure, artemisinin is currently difficult and not economically feasible to chemically synthesize.

The traditional industrial method to produce artemisinin is to treat sweet wormwood leaves with organic solvents like petroleum ether.

The extraction process is long, energy consumption is high and productivity is low.

In the study, the IPE researchers proposed enhancing contact between the solvent and the leaves by reflux to speed up the artemisinin extraction. The extraction time was reduced from seven hours to four and a half.

After treating sweet wormwood leaves with solvents, they optimized the evaporation process with a thin film evaporator, an apparatus that provides a continuous evaporation process, especially for heat-sensitive products, to retrieve the solvents.

Compared to the traditional process, the time it takes to produce the artemisinin concentrate is reduced by 87.5 percent.

Meanwhile, the purity of the final product is increased to more than 99 percent, and energy consumption is also reduced.

The new technology puts the recovery of the solvents at 99.9 percent, while energy consumption per ton of artemisinin drops by 43 percent and the product purity rises to higher than 99 percent, said Wang Hui from the IPE.

"This technology solves the main shortcomings in the traditional artemisinin production process and could also provide ideas for other natural products production," said Zhang Suojiang, IPE director.

The new technology has been deployed at a plant of Tianyuan Biotechnology in Yuzhou in Henan province.

Jiang Hongge, manager of the company, said that the production line using the new technology had been in stable operation for a year at the plant with an annual production of 60 tons of artemisinin.

Sixty tons of artemisinin corresponds to about 150 million treatment courses of ACT.

The WHO says an estimated 409 million treatment courses of ACT were procured by countries in 2016.

Artemisinin produced at the plant has been sold to India, Sudan and other developing countries. The company also plans to build artemisinin production lines in Ghana.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Researchers Build a Self-Driving Parallel Testing System*
May 13, 2019

Realizing autonomous driving is one of the most challenging tasks in Artificial Intelligence research. The solution lies in building a new Turing test system, which is able to test and verify the autonomous vehicle's capability in understanding complex traffic scenario and making driving decision, and thus stimulate the development of autonomous driving technology. 

How to test the system intelligence is a vital research issue in Artificial Intelligence. Based on Turing, safe and reliable AI systems can be achieved if and only if the tests have clear definitions of tasks and efficient methods to generate abundant data for tests. 

Recently, researchers from the Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CASIA), Tsinghua University, and Xi'an Jiaotong University built a new self-driven closed-loop parallel testing system. The system focuses on implementing more challenging tests to accelerate the building and testing of autonomous vehicles.

They constructed an intelligent closed-loop parallel testing system with an recognition mechanism to realize self-upgrading under human experts' guidance.

This system contains three parts. The first part establishes a set of semantic definitions to characterize the tasks that should be finished by autonomous vehicles. The second part implements the tests for specified task instances. The field test and simulation test are tightly integrated into a parallel testing system which keeps collecting new field data to update the simulation system. The third part evaluates both vehicle performances and task difficulties to seek the most challenging new tasks. 

Specially, an adversarial learning model was designed to automatically generate new task instances that may be harder than existing task instances based on the past testing results, aiming to push the autonomous vehicles to improve its capability in adjusting to complex environment. It is believed that the system can effectively accelerate the progress of autonomous driving technology. 

The study, published in _Science Robotics_, was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China. 





System overview flowchart. (Image by CASIA)
​

Researchers Build a Self-Driving Parallel Testing System---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*3D Quantum Hall effect confirmed by experiment - In the Focus - Southern University of Science and Technology*
May 9, 2019 
Research News

Recently, Associate Professor Zhang Liyuan from the Department of Physics at Southern University of Science and Technology worked with Professor Qiao Zhenhua of the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), and Associate Professor Shengyuan Yang of Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). The three of them have proved, through experimentation, the 3D quantum Hall effect from the ZrTe5 crystal. The research was published in the top academic journal _Nature_, in a paper entitled “Three-dimensional quantum Hall effect and metal–insulator transition in ZrTe5.”

In the 1980s, scientists discovered the quantum Hall effect (QHE) in two-dimensional electronic systems, making the topology play a central role in condensed matter physics. For decades, there have been theoretical predictions about the possibility of extending QHE to a three-dimensional electronic system, but it has never been proven experimentally.




The researchers measured the low-temperature electrical transmission of bulk ZrTe5 crystals under magnetic field and calculated the quantum limit at a relatively low magnetic field. The researchers observed a non-dissipative longitudinal resistivity, close to zero, proportional to half of the Fermi wavelength along the field in the Hall resistivity platform. This response has a 3D QHE characteristic that strongly suggests that Fermi surface instability is driven by enhanced interaction effects at extreme quantum limits.




By further increasing the magnetic field, both the longitudinal and Hall resistivity increase significantly and exhibit a metal-insulator transition behavior, indicating another quantum phase transition driven by the magnetic field.




The results of this study provide reliable experimental evidence for 3D QHE, providing a useful platform for further exploration of singular quantum phases and transitions in 3D systems.

Brookhaven National Laboratory, Florida Strong Magnetic Field Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Singapore University of Technology and Design and Renmin University of China are participating units. Associate Professor Zhang Liyuan, Professor Qiao Zhenhua (USTC), and SUTD Associate Professor Shengyuan a. Yang are co-authors.

This work has been strongly supported by the Guangdong Innovation and Entrepreneurship Team, the Shenzhen Peacock Team, and the Basic Research-Disciplinary Layout Project.

Paper link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1180-9


Source: Department of Physics
Translated and Adapted: Chris Edwards​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

The Chinese Academy of Science announce that recently, the Institute of Physics and Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has successfully developed a 500W@2K cold compressor prototype, with various performance indicators meeting the predetermined requirements. It is used for superfluid helium cooling technology and is the key technology to ensure the stable operation of the next generation of higher energy superconducting accelerators.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Focus: Longer Movies at Four Trillion Frames per Second*
May 17, 2019• _Physics_ 12, 55

A new technique produces long-lasting movies of nonluminous objects with just a few hundred femtoseconds between frames.



​Y. Lu _et al_., Phys. Rev. Lett. (2019)
*Movie short.* Images of the letter A written in dye, acquired at eight distinct wavelengths and at four different time delays: 0, 4, 8, and 12 picoseconds (ps). Each of the four columns comes from a single laser pulse. The technique captures both spatial and spectral information on the picosecond timescale. (See video below.) 

Generating images at a rate of more than a trillion per second, today's fastest cameras can catch molecules as they react with one another. But despite this high rate, when observing nonluminous objects, they can only produce a handful of images in a single sequence. Engineers have now demonstrated a rate of nearly four trillion frames per second, capturing as many as 60 consecutive images. The technique should allow video analysis of ultrafast processes such as the interaction of light with eye tissue in laser surgery.

High-quality, fast cameras use semiconductor structures called CCD arrays to rapidly store image data before moving them off to longer-term storage. At the highest speeds, these cameras can only produce a handful of consecutive frames, mainly because of the limited CCD space. The images must be stored in nonoverlapping subregions of the CCD, so increasing the number of images leads to a reduction in image resolution. To overcome this limitation, researchers led by photonics specialist Feng Chen of the Xi’an Jiaotong University in China have now exploited a technique called compressive sampling, which allows the storage of images in overlapping CCD regions.

...

--> Physics - Focus: Longer Movies at Four Trillion Frames per Second

Compressed Ultrafast Spectral-Temporal Photography
Yu Lu, Terence T. W. Wong, Feng Chen, and Lidai Wang
Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 193904 (2019)

Published May 17, 2019​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 20-MAY-2019
*Thinking outside the box: 'Seeing' clearer and deeper into live organs*
Scientists using a unique approach have developed a new biomedical imaging contrast agent

UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY SYDNEY

Scientists using a unique approach have developed a new biomedical imaging contrast agent. They say the breakthrough overcomes a major challenge to "seeing" deeper into live tissue, and opens the way for significant improvements in optical imaging technology.

The development, a result of international collaboration between Fudan University in China and the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), has the potential to take bio-imaging resolution beyond what is currently possible with CT and PET imaging technology. The research is published in _Nature Photonics_.

Professor Dayong Jin, a senior author on the study and Director of the UTS Institute for Biomedical Materials & Devices (IBMD), said "this outcome is a great example that shows how we transform advances in photonics and material sciences into revolutionary biotechnologies at IBMD".

Optical contrast agents are used primarily to improve the visualisation and differentiation in tissue and blood vessels in both clinical and research settings.

To optimize the brightness of a contrast agent, and to efficiently illuminate single cells and biomolecules, the challenge lies in overcoming a limitation in physics, called "concentration quenching". This is caused by the cross relaxation of energy between emitters when they are too close to each other, so that having too many emitters leads to a quenching of the overall brightness.

"The new approach in this research was to unlock the concentration quenching effect by using the pure rare earth element ytterbium that only has a single excited state to avoid inter-system cross relaxation", explained by Professor Jin, "so that a network of over 5,000 pure ytterbium emitters can be tightly condensed within a space of 10 nm in diameter, a thousand times smaller than a cell".

At this emitter density all possible atomic doping sites are occupied by ytterbium within the crystal lattice structure, and once properly passivated (made unreactive), by a thin layer of biocompatible calcium fluoride, the material is free of concentration quenching.

"This enables the efficiency of photonics conversion to approach the theoretical limit of 100%. This not only benchmarks a new record in photonics and material sciences, but also opens up a lot of potential applications", Professor Jin said.

Lead author on the paper, Mr Yuyang Gu, a PhD student at Fudan University, said "using this new contrast agent in a mouse model allowed us to see through whole mice".

The fundamental physics of the fluorescent probes used in optical imaging means there is only a narrowly defined near infrared (NIR) "window" [optical transparency window] beyond which visible light cannot penetrate tissue. To design a contrast agent that both absorbs and emits in the NIR without losing the energy is difficult.

"Although ytterbium has a 'pure energy' level that helps protect photons absorbed in the NIR band before being emitted, with negligible loss of energy, the simple excited state only permits emissions in the very similar band of NIR, which makes it impractical to use the conventional colour filters to discriminate the emissions from the highly scattering environment of laser excitation", Professor Jin said.

"The research needed 'new physics'. We really had to think outside the box."

Instead of spectrally "filtering" the signal emissions, the researchers further employed a time-resolved technique that paused the excitation light, and took advantage of the "photon storage" property of ytterbium emitters, slowing down the emission of light, long enough to allow a clearer separation between the excitation and emission of light in the time domain. Professor Jin likens this phenomena to the scenario when, after powering off a TV, the long-lived fluorescence of a "ghost" image is seen as an afterglow in the darkness.

For the past five years, Professor Jin and his team have developed a library of Super Dots, ?-Dots, Hyper Dots and Thermal Dots as multiphoton luminescent probes for sensing and imaging applications.

"This outcome is another quantum leap, bringing us a new set of research capacities towards the development of more efficient and functional nanoscale sensors and biomolecular probes" Professor Jin added.

Fudan University Chief Investigator, Professor Fuyou Li said "This is a 'new' luminescent process with high efficiency. We hope to find more suitable applications based on the fine tuning of the decay process of such kind of probes."

The combined use of high density of ytterbium emitters and time-resolved approach meant it was possible to maximise the number of emitters, the light conversion efficiency and the overall brightness of the contrast agent, and thereby significantly improving detection sensitivity, resolution and depth.

Professor Jin said that it was another example of how breakthroughs in physics can lead to the development of new and improved medical technologies citing the evolution, and revolution, in diagnostic methods such as X-rays, CT and PET imaging.


Thinking outside the box: 'Seeing' clearer and deeper into live organs | EurekAlert! Science News

Yuyang Gu, Zhiyong Guo, Wei Yuan, Mengya Kong, Yulai Liu, Yongtao Liu, Yilin Gao, Wei Feng, Fan Wang, Jiajia Zhou, Dayong Jin, Fuyou Li. *High-sensitivity imaging of time-domain near-infrared light transducer*. _Nature Photonics_ (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41566-019-0437-z​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 22-MAY-2019
*How to enlarge 2D materials as single crystals?*
Turn it around and find the right symmetric code

INSTITUTE FOR BASIC SCIENCE



(a-c), schematic of edge-coupling-guided hBN growth on a Cu (110) vicinal surface with atomic step edges along the <211> direction. (b) shows the top view and (c) shows a side view. *CREDIT: *IBS

What makes something a crystal? A transparent and glittery gemstone? Not necessarily in the microscopic world. When all of its atoms are arranged in accordance with specific mathematical rules, we call the material a single crystal. Like the natural world has its unique symmetry just as snowflakes or honeycombs,, the atomic world of crystals is designed by its own structure and symmetry. This material structure has a profound effect on its physical properties as well. Specifically, single crystals play an important role in inducing material's intrinsic properties to its full extent. Faced with the coming end of the miniaturization process that the silicon-based integrated circuit has allowed up to this point, huge efforts have been dedicated to find a single crystalline replacement for silicon.

In search for the transistor of the future, two-dimensional (2D) materials, especially graphene have been the subject of intense research around the world. Being thin and flexible as a result of being only a single layer of atoms, this 2D version of carbon even features unprecedented electricity and heat conductivity. However, the last decade's efforts for graphene transistors have been held up by physical restraints graphene allows no control over electricity flow due to the lack of band gap. Then, what about other 2D materials? A number of interesting 2D materials have been reported to have similar or even superior properties. Still, the lack of understanding in creating ideal experimental conditions for large-area 2D materials has limited their maximum size to just a few mm 2.

Scientists at the Center for Multidimensional Carbon Material (CMCM) within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) (located in the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST)) have presented a novel approach to synthesize large-scale of silicon wafer size, single crystalline 2D materials. Prof. Feng Ding and Ms. Leining Zhang in collaboration with their colleagues in Peking University, China and other institutes have found a substrate with a lower order of symmetry than that of a 2D material that facilitates the synthesis of single crystalline 2D materials in a large area. "It was critical to find the right balance of rotational symmetries between a substrate and a 2D material," notes Prof. Feng Ding, one of corresponding authors of this study. The researchers successfully synthesized hBN single crystals of 10*10 cm2 by using a new substrate: a surface nearby Cu (110) that has a lower symmetry of (1) than hBN with (3).

Then, why does symmetry matters? Symmetry, in particular rotational symmetry, describes how many times a certain shape fits on to itself during a full rotation of 360 degrees. The most efficient method to synthesize large-area and single crystals of 2D materials is to arrange layers over layers of small single crystals and grow them upon a substrate. In this epitaxial growth, it is quite challenging to ensure all of the single crystals are aligned in a single direction. Orientation of the crystals is often affected by the underlying substrate. By theoretical analysis, the IBS scientists found that an hBN island (or a group of hBN atoms forming a single triangle shape) has two equivalent alignments on the Cu(111) surface that has a very high symmetry of (6). "It was a common view that a substrate with high symmetry may lead to the growth of materials with a high symmetry. It seemed to make sense intuitively, but this study found it is incorrect," says Ms. Leining Zhang, the first author of the study.

Previously, various substrates such as Cu(111) have been used to synthesize single crystalline hBN in a large area, but none of them were successful. Every effort ended with hBN islands aligning along in several different directions on the surfaces. Convinced by the fact that the key to achieve unidirectional alignment is to reduce the symmetry of the substrate, the researchers made tremendous efforts to obtain vicinal surfaces of a Cu(110) orientation; a surface obtained by cutting a Cu(110) with a small tilt angle. It is like forming physical steps on Cu. As a hBN island tends to place in parallel to the edge of each step, it gets only one preferred alignment. The small tilt angle lowers the symmetry of the surface as well.

They eventually found that a class of vicinal surfaces of Cu (110) can be used to support the growth of hBN with perfect alignment. On a carefully selected substrate with the lowest symmetry or the surface will repeat itself only after a 360degree rotation, hBN has only one preferred direction of alignment. The research team of Prof. Kaihui Liu in Peking University, has developed a unique method to anneal a large Cu foil, up to 10*10 cm2, into a single crystal with the vicinal Cu (110) surface and, with it, they have achieved the synthesis of hBN single crystals of same size.

Besides flexibility and ultrathin thickness, emerging 2D materials can present extraordinary properties when they get enlarged as single crystals. "This study provides a general guideline for the experimental synthesis of various 2D materials. Besides the hBN, many other 2D materials could be synthesized with the large area single crystalline substrates with low symmetry," says Prof. Feng Ding. Notably, hBN is the most representative 2D insulator, which is different from the conductive 2D materials, such as graphene, and 2D semiconductors, such as molybdenum disulfide (MoS2). The vertical stacking of various types of 2D materials, such as hBN, graphene and MoS2, would lead to a large number of new materials with exceptional properties and can be used for numerous applications, such as high-performance electronics, sensors, or wearable electronics."


How to enlarge 2D materials as single crystals? | EurekAlert! Science News

Li Wang, Xiaozhi Xu, Leining Zhang, Ruixi Qiao, Muhong Wu, Zhichang Wang, Shuai Zhang, Jing Liang, Zhihong Zhang, Zhibin Zhang, Wang Chen, Xuedong Xie, Junyu Zong, Yuwei Shan, Yi Guo, Marc Willinger, Hui Wu, Qunyang Li, Wenlong Wang, Peng Gao, Shiwei Wu, Yi Zhang, Ying Jiang, Dapeng Yu, Enge Wang, Xuedong Bai, Zhu-Jun Wang, Feng Ding, Kaihui Liu. *Epitaxial growth of a 100-square-centimetre single-crystal hexagonal boron nitride monolayer on copper*. _Nature _(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1226-z​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*China-developed 3D mapping camera ready for commercial use*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-05-23 21:10:26|Editor: Li Xia

CHANGCHUN, May 23 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese science academy has come up with an independently-developed camera for capturing three dimensional (3D) photographs for geographic mapping.

The research was done by scientists of the Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics, affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Ding Yalin, the chief scientist of the project, said the resolution of the camera developed by the team can reach 0.08 meters when taking photos from the height of 2,000 meters, which is almost twice as high as that of the most advanced products of the same kind abroad.

The camera has wide application potential for geographic mapping, general surveying of agriculture and forestry, natural resource exploration and island mapping, Ding said.

The team has achieved a number of scientific breakthroughs in the development of optical lenses, which include large aspheric surface design and processing and high-precision flexible lens adjusting technology.

It has developed a software system for automatic processing of data captured by the camera.

Ding said the camera's application has been tested in a number of surveying and mapping projects under a variety of geographic conditions. The photos are evaluated to have a high resolution and mapping accuracy.

The team is working on the commercialization of the camera.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists Propose to Advance Material Sustainability Through Plainification---Chinese Academy of Sciences*
May 24, 2019

Extensive alloying makes material development more resource-dependent. Alloyed materials with complicated compositions become more difficult to synthesis and to recycle. With increasing alloying, material cost continues to spiral while property enhancements level off. The sustainability of materials, especially metals, has gained more and more attentions.

In a study published in_ Science_, Prof. LI Xiuyan and Prof. LU Ke from Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science (SYNL), Institute of Metal Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences proposed to advance material properties by plainification, which means tailoring stable interfaces at different length scales instead of alloying.

The newly proposed strategy intends to lower materials cost and increase their resource-independence and recyclability, therefore advancing material sustainability.

Plainification of materials aims to reduce alloying in material development. Although with sound principle, plainification of metals is facing challenges due to the intrinsic instability of microstructures at the nanometer scale where property variations are dramatically elevated.

Previous studies from Prof. LI Xiuyan and Prof. LU Ke, published respectively in _Science_ in 2018 and _Phys. Rev. Lett._ in 2019, revealed that nano-sized grains in pure copper and nickel produced from plastic deformation exhibit notable thermal and mechanical stability against coarsening below a critical grain size, thanks to an autonomous grain boundary relaxation to low-energy states.

This finding offers new possibilities for developing stable nanostructured metals and alloys with novel properties, foundation of the material plainification strategy. Stabilization of nanoscale grains in metals takes advantage of their ability to suppress dislocation nucleation, providing a strengthening mechanism that is distinct from the conventional way of resisting dislocation slip.

The strengthening mechanism highlights new opportunities of plainification for greatly advancing material properties by tailoring stable interfaces at different length scales with fewer or no alloying elements.

As the chief scientist, Prof. LI Xiuyan leads the Key R&D Project on “Plainification of materials with low-energy interfaces” which is financially supported by Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) starting in 2018.



The performance of materials is often improved by stabilizing interfaces between grains by alloying with other elements. Plainifield materials accomplish this goal by tailoring stable interfaces with fewer or no alloying elements, which can improve resource sustainability. (Image by SYNL)

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese researchers discover 300,000-year-old ancient human fossils*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-05-24 17:59:19|Editor: Li Xia

HEFEI, May 24 (Xinhua) -- Chinese paleontologists have discovered more than 30 ancient human fossils that dated back to about 300,000 years, at an excavation site in Dongzhi County in east China's Anhui Province.

They have also found more than 100 stone artifacts used by ancient humans as well as mammalian fossils of over 40 species. The discoveries are expected to shed new light on how ancient humans in the East Asia continent had evolved, according to the paleontologists.

The fossils and artifacts were discovered during archaeological excavations over the past 15 years at the site, which experts believe to be a collapsed cave, said Wu Xiujie, a member of the research team and a professor with the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

"In the cave, we not only have discovered a large number of ancient human fossils, but also found a variety of evidences of ancient human behaviors, which could shed light on scenarios of their life," Wu said.

The fossils include a human skull of the Middle Pleistocene period (from 781,000 to 126,000 years ago) that contains a largely complete facial structure, most of the brain cranium, and one side of the mandible.

The site was first discovered in 2004, when mammalian fossils were accidentally found when a local farmer was building a sheep-holding pen. The first excavation of the site was conducted in the summer of 2006, which yielded a partial human frontal bone, a molar, and stone artifacts.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Grandy

Science 
*Chinese scientists develop transistors about the width of a human DNA strand*

Beijing team believes it has solved problem of powering tens of billions of nanometre-sized transistors without burning out the chip



Stephen Chen  

Published: 12:00am, 27 May, 2019





Chinese scientists have created 3nm transistors with “high potential for real, serious applications”. Photo: Shutterstock

Chinese scientists say they have created a transistor that will increase the performance of microchips exponentially and dramatically reduce their energy use.

The most advanced computer chips on the market today use seven-nanometre transistors. Professor Yin Huaxiang said his team had developed 3nm transistors – about the width of a human DNA strand – and that tens of billions of them could fit on a fingernail-size chip.

The smaller transistors become, the more can be fitted onto chips, increasing the performance of a processor exponentially, said Yin, deputy director of microelectronics device and integrated technology at the Institute of Microelectronics, the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

Transistors are the building blocks of processors. Those built with 3nm transistors would increase computing speed and cut energy consumption, Yin said. So, a smartphone user, for instance, could play games that demanded lots of computing power all day without the need to recharge batteries.





Chip developers at the Institute of Microelectronics believe their breakthroughs in transistors and microchips will propel Chinese technology into a serious rivalry with companies such as Samsung. Photo: AP

The Chinese team, whose research was published in part in peer-reviewed journal IEEE Electron Device Letters this month, had to overcome major obstacles, Yin said. One was the Boltzmann Tyranny, 19th century Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann’s description of a problem involving the distribution of electrons in a space.

For chip developers, this meant that as more and smaller transistors went into microchips, the heat generated by the electricity the transistors needed would burn the chip.

Physicists have proposed solutions to this problem. Yin’s team, using a method known as negative capacitance, was able to power transistors by using half the theoretical minimum amount of electricity required, he said.
*https://www.scmp.com/business/artic...reaks-chip-makers-software-developers-bolster*
*China offers five-year tax breaks to chip makers, software developers to bolster industry as trade war stretches to tech*

Commercialisation could take a few years as the team worked on materials and quality control.

“This is the most exciting part of our work. It is not just another new finding in a laboratory. It has a high potential for real, serious applications,” Yin said. “And we have the patent.”

The breakthrough would put China into a “head-on competition with the world’s top players at the very front line of chip development”, Yin said.

“In the past, we were watching others fight. Now we are fighting the others.”





While scientists develop a new generation of transistors, the groundbreaking commercial potential of the technology is some time away, they say. Photo: Reuters

In Beijing, a Tsinghua University professor who studied future chip technology said China’s development was rapidly catching up with Western countries as a result of the trade tariffs war being fought out by Beijing and Washington.

“A gap remains, [and] it is unlikely to close overnight with a single breakthrough,” said the academic who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the work.

While there are transistors about the size of an atom – half a nanometre – in development in China, other countries have joined the race to bring 3nm transistors to market.

Samsung in South Korea said it planned to complete the development of a 3nm transistor by the first half of next year.

Compared to 7-nm technology, Samsung said a processor built with its 3-nm transistors would use half as much power to achieve a 35 per cent higher performance.

The company did not say when it expected those chips to enter production.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

↑↑↑
*IMECAS Developed High Performance Negative Capacitance FinFETs Featuring with both Ultra-Steep Subthreshold Swing and Enhanced Driving Current *
Author： CUI Dongmeng
Update time： 2019-05-17

　　With the aggressive downscaling of Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) technology into sub-5 nm nodes, Si-based Field Effect Transistor, the key block of modern Integrated Circuit (IC), is confronted with a serious challenge _i.e._ tremendously increasing power consumption in a chip consisting of billons of transistors. Transistors of novel architectures, such as multi-gate (_e.g._ FinFET) or gate-all-around (GAA) devices with high-k/metal gate (HKMG), are able to work properly at small supply voltage with lowered power consumption. Nevertheless, a physical limit of Boltzmann tyranny originating from basic thermodynamics theory renders the subthreshold swing (SS) of a Si-based transistor no less than 60 mV/dec at room temperature, which unfortunately leads to the reluctant reduction of power consumption in state-of-the-art transistors. 

　　By integrating hafnium based ferroelectric materials in the HKMG process, so-called differential negative capacitances (NC) can be realized under certain conditions to amplify the surface potential of the channel, thus breaking through the traditional Boltzmann tyranny and obtaining a steeper SS for significantly improved switching behavior. Consequently, a smaller supply voltage can be employed for the operation of IC. It is worth noting that even some progress has been made in recent years, the exploration of novel ferroelectric materials in mainstream FinFETs is, however, still in the inception phase and as-fabricated devices generally show poor performance due to numerous challenges of materials and integration process. 

　　In order to cope with these challenges and accomplish the goal of reduced power consumption and improved device performance simultaneously, researchers from Integrated Circuit Advanced Process Center (ICAC) of Institute of Microelectronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IMECAS) have developed new processes for the growth of ferroelectric Hafnium Zirconium Oxide (HZO) and integration in FinFETs etc. High performance NC p-FinFETs of different gate lengths featuring with an ultra-thin 3-nm-thick ferroelectric HZO are demonstrated. 

　　In detail, in order to realize a low interface defect density of HZO/SiO2/Si, both the atomic-layer deposition (ALD) process and post-annealing process have been carefully modulated during the growth of ultra-thin HZO. Thanks to the fully depleted Fin channels under strong 3D gate control, low interface defect density of HZO/SiO2/Si and appropriate engineering of capacitance matching, as-fabricated FinFETs show greatly improved subthreshold swing (SS) values _i.e._ 34.5 mV/dec with 500 nm gate length (LG) and 53 mV/dec with 20 nm LG, and small hysteresis voltages _i.e._ ~9 mV with 500 nm LG and ~40 mV with 20 nm LG. The SS is much smaller than Boltzmann tyranny of 60 mV/dec and the hysteresis voltage is well controlled to an acceptable level. In addition, compared to that of conventional FinFETs with general HfO2, a prominent enhancement of driving current by 260% is also obtained for as-fabricated NC FinFETs. The ratio between Ion and Ioff is as high as 1.23×106. Taking ultra-steep SS, enhanced driving current and small hysteresis into account, as-fabricated NC FinFETs in this work pave a way for developing core transistors with almost identical performance while remarkably lowered power consumption in the future. The latest results have been published in a prestigious journal “IEEE Electron Device Letters” (DOI: 10.1109/LED.2019.2891364). 

　　This work was financially supported by the National Science and Technology Major Project 02 and the National Key Research and Development Program. 




Fig. 1 (a) 3D schematic of NC FinFETs; (b-c) TEM images of NC p-FinFETs across AA’ directions; (d) Measured _IDS-VGS_ curves of NC p-FinFET, where steep average SSfor and SSrev of 43.2 and 34.5 mV/decade are achieved,(e) extracted SS as a function of the _IDS_ of the device in (d); (f) comparison between our work and reported NC FETs from other groups.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*China develops underground experimental facility with world’s most intense beam*
By Sun Haoran Source:Global Times Published: 2019/5/28 21:37:19



Photo of a high-current high-voltage accelerator - an underground experimental facility with the world's highest beam intensity, that was developed by the China Institute of Atomic Energy under the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC). Photo: WeChat account of the CNNC

China has developed a high-current high-voltage accelerator - an underground experimental facility with the world's highest beam intensity.

The accelerator was developed by the China Institute of Atomic Energy (CIAE) under the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), according to the CNNC website on Tuesday.

It reached an advanced level among similar devices in the world, indicating that China has mastered the manufacturing technology of high-current, high-voltage accelerators, the statement said.

"This device can enhance the anti-radiation reinforcement of chips that would help promote development in aeronautics, space and satellites," a CIAE research fellow told the Global Times on Tuesday.

"It can also be used in the military, including research on nuclear physics and the establishment of nuclear data, or archaeological studies, such as measuring the age of ancient artifacts," the research fellow said.

The accelerator will be installed at the China Jinping Underground Laboratory, according to the CNNC website.

Proton and helium ion beams it produced have already been used in nuclear astrophysics experiments in Jinping for 400 hours, CNNC said. 

The Jinping lab, which is 2,400 meters under a mountain in Southwest China's Sichuan Province, is now the deepest underground laboratory in the world.

It provides a unique and good environment for studies in many major fundamental frontier topics, such as dark matter detection, nuclear astrophysics and neutrino experiments, according to CNNC.

It is expected to gradually develop into a national basic research platform that will open up to the whole world, the CNNC added.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Atomically thin material could cut need for transistors in half*
It can do AND or OR logic in a single transistor, switch states using light.

JOHN TIMMER - 5/29/2019, 3:20 AM

With the development of carbon nanotubes and graphene, scientists were given an entirely new collection of materials to work with: sheets and tubes that could be consistently made with thicknesses roughly those of individual atoms. These materials hold the promise of building electronic devices with dimensions smaller than is currently possible through any other process and with properties that can be tuned by using different starting materials.

So far, most of the attention has gone to re-creating new versions of familiar devices. But a new paper by a group of researchers in Shanghai looks into what can be done if you're not constrained by the sorts of devices we currently make in silicon. The result is a device that can perform basic logic in half the transistors silicon needs, can be switched between different logical operations using light, and can store the output of the operation in the device itself.

*OR or AND?*
Computer instructions can be distilled down to a series of simple logical operations. Of these, the simplest are AND and OR. AND produces a value of 1 only if both of its two inputs are also 1; OR does so if either of the two inputs are 1.

But there's a mismatch between these logical operations and what we can do with silicon: a silicon transistor can only take input from a single source instead of the two required here. As a result, these operations require two transistors on a processor.

Transistors made of an atomically thin material can have fundamentally different structures, though. To test some of these, the researchers used molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), which forms graphene-like sheets slightly thicker than its component atoms. Like silicon, MoS2 is a semiconductor; unlike silicon, putting input gates both above and below a single layer of the material is relatively easy to do. This allows for the layer to take input from two different sources, making it a direct match for the logical operation's input.

Better yet, the researchers found they could make extremely similar devices that performed different logical operations. MoS2's individual layers may be atomically thin, but it's possible to stack multiple layers on top of each other. Initially, with just a few sheets stacked, the MoS2 formed a single semiconducting layer that would switch to conducting only if the gates both above and below it were in the "on" state. This makes for a perfect match to the AND function.

But keep adding layers, and the thickness would eventually reach a point where the upper and lower gates could independently control the conduction of the sheets of MoS2 nearest them. The authors compared it to having two "channels" on the same device. If either of those channels was set to "on," then some current would flow through the device, making its global state "on." This was a perfect match to the logical OR function.

The critical thickness turned out to be four nanometers, or less than half the size of existing features in cutting-edge chips. If the MoS2 sheets were stacked into a layer above 4nm, then the transistor would behave as an OR gate. Below that thickness, and it would perform AND operations.

*Light and memory*
At this point, the paper switched into something like "but wait, there's more!" One demonstration was that it's possible to switch an AND device into something that performs OR operations using the right wavelength of light. The gist of this is that the input gates work by exciting electrons within MoS2 into a state where they contribute to carrying current. In a thin layer of MoS2, both inputs have to be pushing electrons into the conduction band to get any current flowing. This gives us an AND function.

But light of the appropriate wavelength can also push electrons into the conduction band. As a result, light lowers the requirement for having conducting electrons induced by the input. As a result, you only need one of the two input gates to be in the "on" state for the transistor to conduct. Thus, shining light on a thin sheet of MoS2 is enough to convert an AND device into an OR device.

The researchers didn't stop there, either. For their final demonstration, they slipped in a layer of graphene next to the MoS2. Graphene is capable of capturing some of the conducting electrons and storing them. If the transistor ends up in the "on" state, enough of these electrons will spill over into the graphene that it will have sufficient charge to keep it in the "on" state. And that's where the transistor will stay until the electrons are specifically drained from the graphene. In this way, the graphene can act as a one-bit memory, storing the results of one past operation until the device is reset.

*How many transistors do we really need?*
Overall, the work serves as a good reminder that atomically thin materials have distinctive properties compared to the things we're currently working with, and it's worthwhile to think about how to leverage those properties effectively. Cutting the number of transistors needed for basic logic operations in half seems like a good way to significantly reduce the complexity of chips.

To an extent, the light-based switching demonstrated here runs counter to that since access to the transistor has to be maintained for light to pump into it. Still, there are probably some cases where optical circuitry is integrated with a chip when this might be useful. Having a situation where results of operations can be stored in the transistor that performed the operation could potentially be useful, but it would require a radically different programming model to do anything with it.

Because of these complications, it's not clear if anything much will come of these specific demonstrations. But should MoS2 find its way into chips for any reason, you can expect people will be looking for ways to fully take advantage of its abilities.


Atomically thin material could cut need for transistors in half | Ars Technica

Chunsen Liu, Huawei Chen, Xiang Hou, Heng Zhang, Jun Han, Yu-Gang Jiang, Xiaoyang Zeng, David Wei Zhang, Peng Zhou. *Small footprint transistor architecture for photoswitching logic and in situ memory*. _Nature Nanotechnology_ (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41565-019-0462-6​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 31-MAY-2019
*Breaking the symmetry in the quantum realm*
UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY OF CHINA



​The figure describes the dynamics of two spins as a harmonious couple-dance. Different from a solo-dance of a single spin, the couple-dance would present more unique and charming features, such as parity-time symmetry breaking demonstrated in the work. *CREDIT: *images created by Guoyan Wang & Lei Chen

For the first time, researchers have observed a break in a single quantum system. The observation--and how they made the observation--has potential implications for physics beyond the standard understanding of how quantum particles interact to produce matter and allow the world to function as we know it.

The researchers published their results on May 31st, in the journal _Science_.

Called Parity-Time (PT) Symmetry, the mathematical term describes the properties of a quantum system--the evolution of time for a quantum particle, as well as if the particle is even or odd. Whether the particle moves forward or backward in time, the state of oddness or evenness remains the same in the balanced system. When the parity changes, the balance of system -- the symmetry of the system -- breaks.

In order to better understand quantum interactions and develop next-generation devices, researchers must be able to control the symmetry of systems. If they can break the symmetry, they could manipulate the spin state of the quantum particles as they interact, resulting in controlled and predicted outcomes.

"Our work is about that quantum control," said Yang Wu, an author on the paper and a PhD student in the Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale and Department of Modern Physics at the University of Science and Technology of China. Wu is also a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Key Laboratory of Microscale Magnetic Resonance.

Wu, his PhD supervisor Rong and colleagues used a nitrogen-vacancy center in a diamond as their platform. The nitrogen atom with an extra electron, surrounded by carbon atoms, creates the perfect capsule to further investigate the PT symmetry of the electron. The electron is a single-spin system, meaning the researchers can manipulate the entire system just by changing the evolution of the electron spin state.

Through what Wu and Rong call a dilation method, the researchers applied a magnetic field to the axis of the nitrogen-vacancy center, pulling the electron into a state of excitability. They then applied oscillating microwave pulses, changing the parity and time direction of the system and causing it to break and decay with time.

"Due to the universality of our dilation method and the highly controllability of our platform, this work paves the way to study experimentally some new physical phenomena related to PT symmetry," Wu said.

Corresponding authors Jiangfeng Du and Xing Rong, professors with the Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale and Department of Modern Physics at the University of Science and Technology of China, were in agreement.

"The information extracted from such dynamics extends and deepens the understanding of quantum physics," said Du, who is also an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. "The work opens the door to the study of exotic physics with non-classical quantum systems."

The other authors include Wenquan Liu, Jianpei Geng, Xingrui Song, Xiangyu Ye, Chang-Kui Duan and Xing Rong. All of the authors are affiliated with the Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale and Department of Modern Physics at the University of Science and Technology of China. Liu, Ye, Duan, Rong and Du are also affiliated with both the University's CAS Key Laboratory of Microscale Magnetic Resonance, and the University's Synergetic Innovation Center of Quantum Information and Quantum Physics.


Breaking the symmetry in the quantum realm | EurekAlert! Science News

Yang Wu, Wenquan Liu, Jianpei Geng, Xingrui Song, Xiangyu Ye, Chang-Kui Duan, Xing Rong, Jiangfeng Du. *Observation of parity-time symmetry breaking in a single-spin system*. _Science_ (2019); DOI: 10.1126/science.aaw8205​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Cameras can watch for people who need help, but a system of microphones and speakers uses sound to do the same task. Credit: Artyom Geodakyan/TASS/Getty

APPLIED PHYSICS * 31 MAY 2019
*Deep learning monitors human activity based on sound alone*
Reflected sound waves can distinguish a sitting person from a walking person.

A combination of microphones and artificial-intelligence algorithms can identify whether a person in a room is sitting, standing, walking or falling.

The use of deep-learning algorithms for identifying human activity from video feeds has promising applications, such as alerting caregivers of a medical emergency. But continuous video surveillance raises the possibility of leaks, hacks and loss of privacy.

As an alternative to video, a team led by Xinhua Guo at the Wuhan University of Technology in China and Kentaro Nakamura of the Tokyo Institute of Technology turned to high-frequency sound waves. The researchers designed an acoustical array with four speakers that emit a signal of 40 kHz — above the range of human hearing — into a room. Surrounding the speakers are 256 small microphones that pick up the high-pitched tones reflected back by the environment.

The team used the array to track volunteers as they sat, stood, walked or fell. After deep-learning algorithms were trained on the reflected high-frequency sounds, the programs could identify an individual’s activity with up to 97.5% accuracy.

Monitoring devices like these, which rely on high-frequency sounds, could assuage privacy concerns, the authors write.

_App. Phys. Lett._ (2019)​

Deep learning monitors human activity based on sound alone : Research Highlights | Nature


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists make breakthrough in injectable cartilage*
2019-06-04 15:49:53






(Photo/Video screenshot on CNSTV)​
(ECNS) -- The Chinese team that constructed the world’s first ear in a lab and grafted it onto a patient last year has made new progress by developing injectable cartilage that can be used in human tissue repair and plastic surgery. 

The regeneration technique involves taking a small part of cartilage tissue from behind the ear of a patient, culturing seed cells in the lab and reproducing cells in a sufficient amount to fill a biodegradable mould made by 3D-printing. 

Professor Cao Yilin, director of National Tissue Engineering Research Center, said it marks a breakthrough from previous technology as the cultured cells can be injected into a patient’s body parts like the nose and chin where they continue to develop into normal tissue, a minimally invasive treatment similar to natural growth. 

The technology can effectively avoid many side-effects caused by hyaluronic acid and is now used in clinical applications. It’s expected to be applied in surgeries and organ reconstruction. 

Shi Junli, an instructor in cartilage regeneration, said the technology’s advantage lies in the use of a patient’s own cells so it’s safe and has little chance of rejection.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists find 5 million tons of lithium deposits in Yunnan*
Source:Global Times Published: 2019/6/4 22:08:40



A plant worker in Changxing county, East China's Zhejiang Province, checks lithium-ion batteries automatically produced for electronic vehicles (EVs) on Tuesday. Changxing is the province's first EV industry development base, with EV-related company output reaching 30.55 billion yuan ($4.49 billion) in 2017. Photo: VCG

Chinese scientists have found a major lithium deposit in Southwest China's Yunnan Province, estimated to contain more than 5 million tons.

There are approximately 40 million tons of proven lithium reserves in the world, the Xinhua News Agency's Globe magazine reported.

A team led by research fellow Wen Hanjie from the Institute of Geochemistry under the Chinese Academy of Sciences found 340,000 tons of lithium oxide in a test site in central Yunnan.

They estimated the total amount of lithium to be in excess of 5 million tons. The lithium discovered is a new type in carbonate formation, the institute said on its website on Monday.

Lithium, a chemical element mainly contained in brines, pegmatite and clay, is viewed by some analysts as one of the most valuable metals in the first half of the 21st century.

The increasing reliance of the high-tech industry on lithium makes it an essential strategic resource for industrialized countries, analysts said.

The prices of lithium carbonate increased from less than 50,000 yuan ($7,236) per ton in October 2015 to 80,000 yuan per ton by the end of 2018. The value of the global lithium market is expected to rise from $60 trillion in 2017 to $100 trillion in 2025, the Globe magazine reported.

About 80 percent of lithium used in China from 2011 to 2015 was imported, Xinhua reported. The Institute of Geochemistry said on its website that it is urgently necessary for China to find new sources of lithium, as the country has abundant carbonate clay resources.

The discovery was the result of a national project to search for mineral resource bases, experts said.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Dancing on Pine Needle Tip: Significant Evolution of Catalyst Structure for Hydrogen Generation by Water Electrolysis*
Jun 06, 2019

In a study published in _Nature Energy_ on June 3, Prof. SONG Li and Prof. JIANG Jun from University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences reported their ingenious design of a pin-point catalyst with pine-ball structure using platinum metal. Compared with commercial platinum-carbon catalysts, the amount of platinum metal was reduced by nearly 75 times and the cost of the catalyst was greatly reduced while the catalytic hydrogen production remained almost unchanged.

In the story of _Hongloumeng_ (The Story of the Stone), a few people are busy in Jiafu while most people have nothing to do. Similar problem exists in traditional catalysts for hydrogen generation. Catalytic processes generally occur on the surface of catalysts and involve a single or several neighboring atoms. The platinum atoms on the surface manufactured in the traditional way are very busy, while the platinum atoms inside contribute little. To make these platinum atoms in catalysts move without eating from the same pot, Prof. SONG's team came up with a idea to maximize the platinum atoms on the surface of catalysts.

They first chose the sphere with the largest surface per unit mass, and made the flat catalysts into "spheres" one by one, transforming the previously confined two-dimensional reactions into three-dimensional. Once a small bungalow was transformed into a spherical high-rise, and the number of people that could be accommodated-that is, the site where reactions could take place-increased greatly. At the same time, each platinum atom is located on the spherical surface, which ensures that they are on the "production line". In this way, the catalyst forms a "ball" full of needle tips, each of which is a single atom of platinum, and no "human" can "hide" behind.

"This design also brings a surprising additional effect. Theoretical simulation shows that the curved sphere will form a very strong local electric field at the tip of the platinum atom, which is equivalent to adding an accelerating track to the foot of platinum atom, resulting in further enhancement of the catalytic efficiency." Prof. JIANG said.

The rate of hydrogen formation increases greatly when the reactants in the electrolytic solution pass through the "loose balls" of needle tips on one surface after another. "With the same hydrogen production, the catalyst we designed only needs one platinum, while the traditional commercial platinum-carbon catalyst needs seventy or eighty platinum, which greatly reduces the cost of the catalyst." Prof. SONG said.

Platinum metal plays an important role in hydrogen generation by water electrolysis reaction. This study minimizes the amount of platinum without affecting the catalytic effect of hydrogen evolution reaction, and points out the direction for further optimizing the performance of catalyst.

Hydrogen energy is an efficient and clean energy. Hydrogen generation by water electrolysis has attracted great attention because of its advantages of zero emission and zero pollution.



The design of the structure of platinum atom catalyst, which greatly improves the hydrogen generation efficiency of electrolytic solution when it passed through pinpoint catalyst "pine ball". (Image by LI Jin)



Dancing on Pine Needle Tip: Significant Evolution of Catalyst Structure for Hydrogen Generation by Water Electrolysis---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Daobin Liu, Xiyu Li, Shuangming Chen, Huan Yan, Changda Wang, Chuanqiang Wu, Yasir A. Haleem, Sai Duan, Junling Lu, Binghui Ge, Pulickel M. Ajayan, Yi Luo, Jun Jiang, Li Song. *Atomically dispersed platinum supported on curved carbon supports for efficient electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution*. _Nature Energy_ (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41560-019-0402-6​


----------



## JSCh

*NEWS AND VIEWS ** 05 JUNE 2019
*How to make the thinnest possible free-standing sheets of perovskite materials*
2D crystalline membranes are easily made from some materials, but not from those with strong 3D lattices, such as technologically useful perovskite oxides. Free-standing perovskite monolayers have finally been made.

*Yorick A. Birkhölzer & **Gertjan Koster
*
Science often benefits from the discovery of extremes. Once we have proved the existence of an extreme, it can help us to build models that explain scientific phenomena. In the field of materials science, an outstanding experimental goal has been to prepare sheets of technologically useful transition-metal oxides, such as perovskites, at their fundamental minimum thickness. In a paper in _Nature_, Ji _et al._1 report the preparation of the first such sheets for the perovskite oxides strontium titanate (SrTiO3) and bismuth ferrite (BiFeO3), and provide a glimpse of their properties.

Many technologically beneficial materials are crystalline, including transition-metal oxides. The atomic or molecular order in a crystal is defined by the unit cell, which is the smallest repeating unit of the crystal structure. In the case of strontium titanate, for example, the unit cell is a cube that has edges about 0.4 nanometres long2. This represents the smallest possible length or thickness of the objects (2D sheets, 1D rods or 0D ‘dots’) that can be made from this material — and is therefore of interest to nanotechnologists, who try to reduce the size of materials in search of previously unseen properties and functions.


...

How to make the thinnest possible free-standing sheets of perovskite materials | Nature

Dianxiang Ji, Songhua Cai, Tula R. Paudel, Haoying Sun, Chunchen Zhang, Lu Han, Yifan Wei, Yipeng Zang, Min Gu, Yi Zhang, Wenpei Gao, Huaixun Huyan, Wei Guo, Di Wu, Zhengbin Gu, Evgeny Y. Tsymbal, Peng Wang, Yuefeng Nie & Xiaoqing Pan. *Freestanding crystalline oxide perovskites down to the monolayer limit*. _Nature _(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1255-7​


----------



## Grandy

Science 
*China’s ‘artificial sun’ project just got a whole lot hotter, scientists say*

New facility in Sichuan province will enable researchers to recreate the ‘extreme environments’ necessary to harness nuclear fusion
Plasma-generating machine capable of producing temperatures 13 times as hot as the sun



Stephen Chen  
Published: 11:15pm, 6 Jun, 2019





Chinese scientists hope a new research facility will help them take another step forward in harnessing the power of the sun. Photo: EPA

A new research facility that will enable Chinese scientists to carry out vital experiments in the development of a nuclear fusion reactor – or so-called artificial sun – is set to open later this year, according to the company behind the project.

The new centre, in Chengdu, capital of southwest China’s Sichuan province, will have at its heart an “HL-2M machine”, which is capable of generating plasma – another name for hot gas – at temperatures of up to 200 million degrees Celsius, China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) said in a statement on its website on Thursday.

The ability to generate such intense heat is essential to the fusion process, which is how the sun produces energy, though it operates at a temperature of a mere 15 million degrees.

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), currently under construction in southern France, is designed to operate at up to 150 million degrees.





The HL-2M machine will be able to generate plasma as hot as 200 million degrees Celsius, says China National Nuclear Corporation. Photo: Weibo

The development of the Sichuan facility is another step forward in the nation’s push to build the China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor by 2021, CNNC said.

“This device [the HL-2M] is a critical platform,” the company said.

China is among the world’s leading players in the development of fusion technology – which has the potential to generate an endless supply of clean energy – and plans to build an experimental reactor as early as 2021, finish an industrial prototype by 2035 and go into large-scale commercial use by 2050.

The principle challenge for scientists is how to control the energy they produce. In Sichuan, researchers will be able to carry out “unprecedented experiments in extreme environments”, CNNC said.

The HL-2M uses a doughnut-shaped chamber known as tokamak to study how to produce and contain the fusion power.

Electric currents of up to 3 million amps will flow through a 90-tonne copper coil to generate a powerful magnetic field that in turn “contains” the plasma produced by the fusion process and prevents it from causing the facility to go into meltdown.

The coil developed for the HL-2M is among the facility’s key achievements as it has shown immense ability to withstand shocks, the CNNC said.





Scientists hope nuclear fusion might one day provide the answer to the world’s energy needs. Photo: Alamy

Gao Zhe, a physics professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, said that scientists around the world still had many problems to overcome in the field of nuclear fusion, not least the issue of containing plasma.

Man-made fusion is far less stable than the natural process inside the sun and the hot gas sometimes produces random flares that can break through the magnetic cage and damage the inner wall of the reaction chamber.

New facilities, like the HL-2M, would give researchers more scope to study and find solutions to such issues, Gao said.

“There is no guarantee that all these problems will be solved. But if we don’t do it, the problems will definitely not be solved,” he said.
*https://www.scmp.com/business/compa...l-china-use-nuclear-option-banning-rare-earth*
Gao said scientists were likely to use the new machine in conjunction with other facilities already in operation, such as the EAST superconducting tokamak in Hefei, capital of the southeast China province of Anhui.

The CNNC said the new facility in Sichuan will also support the development of the ITER project, of which China is a member nation, along with the United States, India, Japan, Russia and South Korea.

The ITER is the world’s largest and costliest international scientific collaboration project, with a price tag of about €20 billion (US$22.5 billion). The construction phase is expected to be completed in 2025.

_This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Ray of hope over ‘artificial sun’ research facility_


----------



## JSCh

10:03, 09-Jun-2019
*E China's Zhejiang University makes key advances in graphene sector*
Peng Xiaoyun




Graphene, a one-atom-thick layer of carbon atoms, is a kind of material that will boost 5G's potential. And Zhejiang University in east China has made breakthroughs in the field of graphene, with two graphene products granted international patents.

Graphene manufacturers are clustered in the UK, China, and the United States. China boasts the most manufacturers with over 4,000. According to China Daily's report, half of the world's graphene-related patents have been filed in China.

Graphene's flexible properties can be used to develop a number of high-tech products. The thinnest material is one that has a research focus in China. A graphene research team from Zhejiang University has been developing the emerging sector for several years.

The team has introduced a number of graphene products to the market. Two of those, single-layer graphene oxide and graphene composite fiber, have been granted international patents.
​





Professor Gao Chao from the team said that the annual output of graphene products is expected to reach 10 tons. "We have made great progress in the sector. The graphene industry has entered a new era. China is now leading the international graphene technology," Gao noted.

The graphene sector's production value reached 18 million U.S. dollars in 2017, jumping nearly 70 percent from the previous year, accounting for a little more than one-fifth of the global market. And the global graphene industry is expected to grow at an annualized rate of 40 percent from 2018 to 2026.

In 2017, the demand for graphene for lithium batteries constituted more than 50 percent of the total. But that proportion will decrease in the future as graphene is increasingly used in new energy, composite materials, wearables, thermal management, energy conservation and environmental protection.


----------



## JSCh

*DNA Base Editing Induces Substantial Off-target RNA Mutations and Their Elimination by Mutagenesis*
Jun 11, 2019

In a study published in _Nature_ on June 10, researchers from Dr. YANG Hui’s Lab at the Institute of Neuroscience of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and collaborators from the CAS-MPG Partner Institute for Computational Biology of CAS and Sichuan University demonstrated that DNA base editors generated tens of thousands of off-target RNA single nucleotide variants (SNVs) and these off-target SNVs could be eliminated by introducing point mutations to the deaminases. 

This study revealed a previously overlooked aspect of the risk of DNA base editors and further provided a solution to the problem by engineering deaminases. 

DNA base-editing methods have enabled direct point mutation correction in genomic DNA without generating any double-strand breaks (DSBs), but the potential off-target effects have limited the application of these methods. Adeno-associated viruses (AAV) are the most common delivery system for DNA editing gene therapies. Since these viruses can sustain long-term gene expression in vivo, the extent of potential RNA off-target effects induced by DNA base editors is of great concern for their clinical application. 

Several previous studies have evaluated off-target mutations in genomic DNA by DNA base editors. Meanwhile, the deaminases integral to commonly used DNA base editors often exhibit RNA binding activities. For example, the cytosine deaminase APOBEC1 used in cytosine base editors (CBEs) was found to target both DNA and RNA, and the adenine deaminase TadA used in adenine base editors (ABEs) was found to induce site-specific inosine formation on RNA. However, any potential RNA mutations caused by DNA base editors had not been evaluated. 

In order to evaluate the off-target effect of DNA base editors at the level of RNA, the researchers counted the off-target RNA SNVs in each replicate of CBE- or ABE-treated cells, and then explored the possibility of eliminating the off-target RNA SNVs by engineering deaminases of DNA base editors. 

They transfected one type of CBE, BE3 (APOBEC1-nCas9-UGI), or ABE, ABE7.10 (TadA-TadA*-nCas9), together with GFP and with or without single-guide RNA (sgRNA), into HEK293T-cultured cells. After validating the high on-target efficiency of DNA editing by both BE3 and ABE7.10 in these HEK293T cells, they performed RNA-seq at an average depth of 125X on these samples and quantitively evaluated the RNA SNVs in each replicate. 

The on-target editing efficiency was evaluated in each replicate of the CBE- or ABE-treated cells to guarantee efficient editing. Then the number of off-target RNA SNVs in CBE- and ABE-treated groups was compared with the GFP-only control group. They found strikingly higher numbers of RNA SNVs in DNA base editor-treated cells. 

Furthermore, the researchers found that the mutation bias in BE3- or ABE7.10-treated cells was the same as that of APOBEC1 or TadA, respectively, indicating the off-target effects were caused by the overexpression of DNA base editors. They also identified CBE- and ABE-specific motifs and genetic regions of these off-target RNA SNVs. 

To eliminate the RNA off-target activity of base editors, they examined the effect of introducing point mutations on APOBEC1 or TadA. Three high-fidelity variants, BE3W90Y+R126E, BE3 (hA3AR128A) and BE3 (hA3AY130F), reduced RNA off-target SNVs to the base level. Similarly, an ABE variant ABE7.10F148A also showed complete elimination of off-target effects. 

This study obtained both high-fidelity variants for both CBEs and ABEs by introducing point mutations to the deaminases and provided a proposed method using rational engineering to increase the specificity of base editors. 



DNA Base Editing Induces Substantial Off-target RNA Mutations and Their Elimination by Mutagenesis---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Changyang Zhou, Yidi Sun, Rui Yan, Yajing Liu, Erwei Zuo, Chan Gu, Linxiao Han, Yu Wei, Xinde Hu, Rong Zeng, Yixue Li, Haibo Zhou, Fan Guo & Hui Yang. *Off-target RNA mutation induced by DNA base editing and its elimination by mutagenesis*. _Nature_ (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1314-0​


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 10-JUN-2019
*Light energy and biomass can be converted to diesel fuel and hydrogen*
CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HEADQUARTERS

Scientists recently developed a method to produce diesel fuel and hydrogen by exploiting light energy (solar energy or artificial light energy) and biomass-derived feedstocks. Their findings were published in _Nature Energy_.

Biomass, including agricultural straw and forest waste, is the largest source of sustainable carbon resources in nature and is able to replace petrochemical resources to provide abundant derivative products. As an alternative to photocatalytic water splitting to provide hydrogen, splitting of biomass or its derivatives usually yields higher light transformation efficiencies and higher rates of hydrogen production.

Nevertheless, oxidative products derived from biomass are mostly useless, causing waste of sustainable biomass resources and environmental pollution. Therefore, developing technologies that merge hydrogen production and biomass conversion into value-added chemicals or fuels is expected to bring about a "double guarantee" of materials and energy for industrial manufacture and daily life.

Prof. WANG Feng and his group at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences developed a process for using light energy to drive the valorization of downstream biomass products, namely methyl furan compounds, to produce hydrogen and diesel fuel precursors simultaneously.

The reactions were carried out at room temperature and pressure, and produced hydrogen and diesel fuel precursors that are constituted by isomeric oxygenates with variety of carbon numbers typical of diesel fuel. Removal of the oxygen contents from the diesel fuel precursors produced sustainable diesel fuels with components close to current petroleum diesel; hydrogen could be used to remove the oxygen from the diesel fuel precursors or be used alone.

This process realizes the directional transformation of light energy and biomass to hydrogen energy and diesel fuels, and provides a way to produce clean energy using solar energy and sustainable carbon sources present on the earth's surface.


Light energy and biomass can be converted to diesel fuel and hydrogen | EurekAlert! Science News

Nengchao Luo, Tiziano Montini, Jian Zhang, Paolo Fornasiero, Emiliano Fonda, Tingting Hou, Wei Nie, Jianmin Lu, Junxue Liu, Marc Heggen, Long Lin, Changtong Ma, Min Wang, Fengtao Fan, Shengye Jin & Feng Wang. *Visible-light-driven coproduction of diesel precursors and hydrogen from lignocellulose-derived methylfurans*. _Nature Energy_ (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41560-019-0403-5​


----------



## JSCh

*Oldest evidence of marijuana use discovered in 2500-year-old cemetery in peaks of western China | Science | AAAS*
By Andrew Lawler
Jun. 12, 2019 , 2:00 PM

Today, more than 150 million people regularly smoke cannabis, making it one of the world's most popular recreational drugs. But when and where humans began to appreciate the psychoactive properties of weed has been more a matter of speculation than science. Now, a team led by archaeologists Yang Yimin and Ren Meng of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing reports clear physical evidence that mourners burned cannabis for its intoxicating fumes on a remote mountain plateau in Central Asia some 2500 years ago.

The study, published today in _Science Advances_, relies on new techniques that enable researchers to identify the chemical signature of the plant and even evaluate its potency. "We are in the midst of a really exciting period," says team member Nicole Boivin of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (MPI-SHH) in Jena, Germany. The paper is part of a wider effort to track how the drug spread along the nascent Silk Road, on its way to becoming the global intoxicant it is today.

Cannabis, also known as hemp or marijuana, evolved about 28 million years ago on the eastern Tibetan Plateau, according to a pollen study published in May. A close relative of the common hop found in beer, the plant still grows wild across Central Asia. More than 4000 years ago, Chinese farmers began to grow it for oil and for fiber to make rope, clothing, and paper.

Pinpointing when people began to take advantage of hemp's psychoactive properties has proved tricky. Archaeologists had made claims of ritual cannabis burning in Central Asian sites as far back as 5000 years ago. But new analyses of those plant remains by other teams suggest that early cannabis strains had low levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the plant's most powerful psychoactive component, and so lacked mind-altering properties. One academic who works in Central Asia said he and colleagues tried to smoke and eat wild varieties—but got no buzz.



Ancient people put cannabis leaves and hot stones in this brazier, and likely inhaled the resulting smoke.

XINHUA WU
The cannabis burned 2500 years ago at the Jirzankal cemetery, 3000 meters high in the Pamir Mountains in far western China, was different. Excavations there have uncovered skeletons and wooden plates, bowls, and Chinese harps, as well as wooden braziers that held burning material. All are typical of the Sogdians, a people of western China and Tajikistan who generally followed the Persian faith of Zoroastrianism, which later celebrated the mind-expanding properties of cannabis in sacred texts. At Jirzankal, glass beads typical of Western Asia and silk from China confirm the long-distance trade for which the Sogdians became famous, and isotopic analysis of 34 skeletons showed that nearly a third were migrants. Radiocarbon analysis put the burials at about 500 B.C.E.

The wooden braziers were concentrated in the more elite tombs. Yang's and Ren's team ground bits of brazier into powder and applied gas chromatography and mass spectrometry to identify chemical compounds left behind. They found unusually high levels of THC compared with typical wild cannabis, although much less than in today's highly bred plants. The cannabis was apparently burned in an enclosed space, so mourners almost certainly inhaled THC-laced fumes, the authors say, making this the earliest solid evidence of cannabis use for psychoactive purposes.

Archaeologists have spotted signs of ancient cannabis use from western China to the Caucasus.

0250KmCHINAPamir MountainsJirzankal cemeteryTAJIKISTANCaucasusMountainsIRANCaspian Sea
N. DESAI/_SCIENCE_
The region's high altitude could have stressed the cannabis, creating plants naturally high in THC, says co-author Robert Spengler, also of MPI-SHH. "It is quite likely that people came across cannabis plants at higher elevations that were naturally producing higher THC levels," he says. But humans may also have intervened to breed a more wicked weed, he adds.

"The methods are convincing, and the data are unambiguous regarding early use of cannabis as a psychoactive substance," says Tengwen Long, an environmental scientist at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom who has researched cannabis origins. But Megan Cifarelli, an art historian at Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York, who has studied ancient drug use, notes the aromatic fumes might also have had another purpose: to mask the smell of a putrefying corpse.

Yang's and Ren's team thinks cannabis use was restricted to elites until potent pot began to spread across Central Asia through the Silk Road linking China with Iran. In 440 B.C.E., the Greek historian Herodotus wrote that the nomadic Scythians, who controlled vast areas from Siberia to Eastern Europe, made tents and heated rocks in order to inhale hemp vapors that made them "shout for joy." And Andrei Belinski, an archaeologist based at the heritage museum in Stavropol, Russia, in 2013 began to excavate a nearby 2400-year-old Scythian tomb that held gold vessels bearing residues of both opium and cannabis, supporting the idea that elites used the drug first.

Ancient artwork and textual references from Syria to China hint at even earlier cannabis drug use, and the new analytical methods could soon provide concrete evidence of this, says Michael Frachetti, an archaeologist at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. But it's already clear that the ancient Silk Road trafficked in more than spices, grains, and ideas. "Crops weren't just about food," he says. "They were also about making contact with another world."

Posted in: 

Archaeology
Asia
doi:10.1126/science.aay3693


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 12-JUN-2019
*Scientists develop a primate model for autism by genome-editing*
CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HEADQUARTERS

A China-U.S. joint research team reported the generation of germline-transmittable cynomolgus macaques with Shank3 mutations, known to cause a form of autism.

The study, published in _Nature_, was conducted by scientists from the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sun Yat-Sen University and South China Agricultural University.

Through the genome-editing system CRISPR, they engineered macaque monkeys to express a gene mutation linked to autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders in humans. These monkeys showed some behavioral traits and brain connectivity patterns similar to those in humans with these conditions.

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) is complex developmental disorders with a strong genetic basis. Scientists have identified hundreds of genetic variants associated with ASD, many of which individually confer only a small degree of risk. In this study, the researchers focused on one gene with a strong association, known as Shank3.

"The new type of model, however, could help scientists to develop better treatment options for some neurodevelopmental disorders," said FENG Guoping, who is the James W. and Patricia Poitras Professor of Neuroscience, a member of MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and one of the senior authors of the study.

Mouse models of ASD, due to their neural and behavioral differences from primates, haven't worked out very well. The reported behavioral and neural traits of Shank3 mutant primates provide new insights into the circuit-based pathophysiological model of ASD.

The primate model is close to humans in evolution and has many similarities to humans in brain structure. For example, the prefrontal cortex in nonhuman primates is well developed, which plays important roles in decision-making, attention and social interactions. Deficits in these cognitive functions have been associated with brain disorders including autism. Therefore, "nonhuman primates are hopeful to become an ideal animal model for simulating some human brain diseases," said Prof. ZHOU Huihui from SIAT.

The Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care (AAALAC) is a private, nonprofit organization that promotes the humane treatment of animals in science through voluntary accreditation and assessment programs. SIAT received AAALAC accreditation in 2018 for its primate experiment platform, which laid a foundation for collaboration with international pharmaceutical companies to pursue new treatments of brain disorders in the future.

"We urgently need new treatment options for autism spectrum disorder, and treatments developed in mice have so far been disappointing. While the mouse research remains very important, we believe that primate genetic models will help us to develop better medicines and possibly even gene therapies for some severe forms of autism," says Robert Desimone, the director of MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research, the Doris and Don Berkey Professor of Neuroscience, and an author of the paper.


Scientists develop a primate model for autism by genome-editing | EurekAlert! Science News

Yang Zhou, Jitendra Sharma, Qiong Ke, Rogier Landman, Jingli Yuan, Hong Chen, David S. Hayden, John W. Fisher, Minqing Jiang, William Menegas, Tomomi Aida, Ting Yan, Ying Zou, Dongdong Xu, Shivangi Parmar, Julia B. Hyman, Adrian Fanucci-Kiss, Olivia Meisner, Dongqing Wang, Yan Huang, Yaqing Li, Yanyang Bai, Wenjing Ji, Xinqiang Lai, Weiqiang Li, Lihua Huang, Zhonghua Lu, Liping Wang, Sheeba A. Anteraper, Mriganka Sur, Huihui Zhou, Andy Peng Xiang, Robert Desimone, Guoping Feng, Shihua Yang. *Atypical behaviour and connectivity in SHANK3 -mutant macaques*. _Nature _(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1278-0​


----------



## JSCh

JUNE 14, 2019 REPORT
*Using carbon nanotubes to strengthen graphene-based membranes used for desalination*
by Bob Yirka , Phys.org




A large-area atomically thin graphene nanomesh membrane with excellent mechanical strength for ionic and molecular nanofiltration. Credit: Quan Yuan

A team of researchers from China, the U.S. and Japan has developed a way to strengthen graphene-based membranes intended for use in desalination projects—by fortifying them with nanotubes. In their paper published in the journal _Science_, the group describes how they created their fortified membranes and how well the membranes worked when tested. Baoxia Mi, with the University of California, has published a Perspective piece on the work by the team in the same journal issue.

As time passes and the human population grows, access to water becomes more of a serious problem for many people around the world. To address the problem, scientists have been putting a lot of effort into creating better water filtration systems to remove salt from water. Part of this effort has focused on finding better filters. One idea is to use a graphene membrane; prior research has shown that it would be faster and more efficient than current materials. But graphene sheets are also prone to defects and damage if struck by objects in the water, and they deteriorate quickly under the constant flow of water. In this new effort, the researchers have found a way to improve the strength of graphene-based membranes by using carbon nanotubes.

Prior research had shown that graphene-based membranes are more likely to have defects and are more prone to damage as their surface area increases. To get around that problem, the researchers created small cells of graphene nanomesh connected and held together by single-walled carbon nanotubes. The result was a centimeter-sized mesh with a honeycomb appearance—one that was large enough to test as a membrane in a filtration system. The researchers report that testing showed their membrane to be highly efficient, and just as important, less prone to damage migration—if damage occurred to the mesh in one of the cells, it was constrained to that cell alone.

The researchers claim that their technique could be used to produce membranes large enough for commercial applications. Mi points out, however, that despite the good work done by the team in creating the membrane, more work is required before graphene can be used in any kind of real-world application.



https://phys.org/news/2019-06-carbon-nanotubes-graphene-based-membranes-desalination.html

Yanbing Yang, Xiangdong Yang, Ling Liang, Yuyan Gao, Huanyu Cheng, Xinming Li, Mingchu Zou, Renzhi Ma, Quan Yuan, Xiangfeng Duan. *Large-area graphene-nanomesh/carbon-nanotube hybrid membranes for ionic and molecular nanofiltration*. _Science _(2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aau5321​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Nobel laureate Tu Youyou's team makes breakthrough in artemisinin resistance against malaria*
By Liu Caiyu Source:Global Times Published: 2019/6/17 11:13:57

Nobel laureate Tu Youyou's team makes breakthrough in tackling artemisinin resistance against malaria

Nobel Prize winner Tu Youyou's team announced on Monday that they have made fresh breakthroughs in treating artemisinin resistance, which is regarded as the biggest technical challenge facing the world against malaria.

After more than three years of scientific research, Tu's team proposed that the artemisinin resistance would be solved by appropriately extending the duration of treatment from three to five - or even seven - days, and replacing the ancillary drugs that are resistant to drugs in the artemisinin combination therapy, the Xinhua News Agency reported Monday.

Artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) are the primary anti-malarial therapies promoted by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the most important global weapon against malaria. But the widespread resistance to artemisinin-resistant parasites has concerned scientists around the world.

Research has shown that in countries in the Greater Mekong subregion, such as Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar and Vietnam, the parasite in patients who undergo three-day periodic treatment against malaria shows signs of slow speed in being cleaned up and generate resistance to artemisinin.

Solving the artemisinin resistance is of great significance because artemisinin will continue to be the primary drug to fight malaria and the drug, due to its low cost, is suitable to people living in poverty-stricken Africa where malaria is rampant, according to Tu's team.

Artemisinin, a high-efficient, safe and low toxic anti-malaria drug, has become the first choice for the international community in the treatment of malaria.

The discovery of the anti-malaria compound artemisinin won Chinese scientist Tu a Nobel Prize in science in 2015.

According to the World Malaria Report released by the WHO on November 19, 2018, an estimated 219 million cases of malaria occurred worldwide in 2017, and 15 countries in sub-Saharan Africa and India carried almost 80 percent of the global malaria burden.

Tu's research was recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Grandy

Science 
*Polar bear’s fur inspires Chinese breakthrough in super insulator for space*

Synthetic material that mimics and improves on nature could be used in China’s hypersonic space plane





 Stephen Chen  
Published: 1:34pm, 17 Jun, 2019. 





Chinese researchers have developed a super insulator based on the unique properties of polar bear fur. Photo: TNS

What can withstand heat of more than 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,832 Fahrenheit), maintain its elasticity in extreme cold, and dry almost instantly after being submerged in water?

The answer is a new synthetic fur which has been developed by Chinese scientists, who set out to mimic – and improve upon – the unique properties of the polar bear’s coat.

The team, led by Professor Yu Shuhong, was at first simply curious to know what made the polar bear so comfortable and successful in the unforgiving environment of the Arctic.

In their laboratory in Hefei, in the southeastern province of Anhui, they studied polar bear hair with a high-definition microscope and found a unique difference compared to the hair of human beings and other mammals.





Chinese researchers have wrapped a carbon material around a nanowire, which is then removed, to mimic a polar bear’s unique hollow hair, which could have applications for the aerospace industry. Photo: Handout

It was hollow inside. What’s more, they observed the tubelike hairs intertwined with one another, forming a random network like a bird's nest. Using theoretical models on a powerful computer, the researchers confirmed that the structure was an efficient heat insulator.

The only drawback was its fragility and – according to their research paper in the latest issue of online science journal Chem – the researchers have managed to develop a synthetic version strong enough to withstand being pressed one million times during testing.

The new material was lighter than any heat insulation product in use today, with one cubic metre weighing just 8kg (17.6lbs) and might have applications in many areas, including the hypersonic space plane, under development in China for low-cost transport between space station and Earth, the researchers said.

Liu Jianwei, professor with the chemistry department at the University of Science and Technology of China and a co-author of the paper, said several research institutes and aerospace companies had been in contact to discuss the possibility of mass production.

“It is a super-strong, super-light heat insulator that can be used in hostile environments,” Liu said.

“To find a new material that can be used in critical engineering projects, we needed to make it stronger. We needed to surpass nature.”

The researchers replaced the organic substance of the hair with a carbon material and used it to coat a long, fine thread known as a nanowire which was then removed through a series of physical and chemical processes, leaving a dark-coloured, spongy “fur” about the size of a thumb.

According to their study, the new material outperformed natural polar bear hair in nearly all aspects from physical strength to heat insulation. The next challenge is to develop a process that can produce the material at a scale suitable for industrial use.

At the moment, the thumb-sized sample takes about a week to form and, said Liu, there were still some issues to be resolved before it could be mass produced, including building processing equipment at a much larger scale than what is available in the laboratory. Another challenge will be to simplify and speed up the manufacturing process.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Quantum physics experiment shows Heisenberg was right about uncertainty, in a certain sense*
June 14, 2019 10.19pm BST

*Author*


Howard Wiseman
Director, Centre for Quantum Dynamics, Griffith University


The word uncertainty is used a lot in quantum mechanics. One school of thought is that this means there’s something out there in the world that we are uncertain about. But most physicists believe nature itself is uncertain.

Intrinsic uncertainty was central to the way German physicist Werner Heisenberg, one of the originators of modern quantum mechanics, presented the theory.

He put forward the Uncertainty Principle that showed we can never know all the properties of a particle at the same time.

_*Read more: Explainer: Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle*_

For example, measuring the particle’s position would allow us to know its position. But this measurement would necessarily disturb its velocity, by an amount inversely proportional to the accuracy of the position measurement.

*Was Heisenberg wrong?*
Heisenberg used the Uncertainty Principle to explain how measurement would destroy that classic feature of quantum mechanics, the two-slit interference pattern (more on this below).

But back in the 1990s, some eminent quantum physicists claimed to have proved it is possible to determine which of the two slits a particle goes through, without significantly disturbing its velocity.

Does that mean Heisenberg’s explanation must be wrong? In work just published in Science Advances, my experimental colleagues and I have shown that it would be unwise to jump to that conclusion.

We show a velocity disturbance — of the size expected from the Uncertainty Principle — always exists, in a certain sense.

But before getting into the details we need to explain briefly about the two-slit experiment.

*The two-slit experiment*
In this type of experiment there is a barrier with two holes or slits. We also have a quantum particle with a position uncertainty large enough to cover both slits if it is fired at the barrier.

Since we can’t know which slit the particle goes through, it acts as if it goes through both slits. The signature of this is the so-called “interference pattern”: ripples in the distribution of where the particle is likely to be found at a screen in the far field beyond the slits, meaning a long way (often several metres) past the slits.



​Particles going through two slits at once form an interference pattern on a screen in the far field. There are bands (dark) where they are more likely to show up separated by bands (light) where they are less likely to show up. Wikimedia/NekoJaNekoJa/Johannes Kalliauer, CC BY-SA​
But what if we put a measuring device near the barrier to find out which slit the particle goes through? Will we still see the interference pattern?

We know the answer is no, and Heisenberg’s explanation was that if the position measurement is accurate enough to tell which slit the particle goes through, it will give a random disturbance to its velocity just large enough to affect where it ends up in the far field, and thus wash out the ripples of interference.

What the eminent quantum physicists realised is that finding out which slit the particle goes through doesn’t require a position measurement as such. Any measurement that gives different results depending on which slit the particle goes through will do.

And they came up with a device whose effect on the particle is not that of a random velocity kick as it goes through. Hence, they argued, it is not Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle that explains the loss of interference, but some other mechanism.

*As Heisenberg predicted*
We don’t have to get into what they claimed was the mechanism for destroying interference, because our experiment has shown there is an effect on the velocity of the particle, of just the size Heisenberg predicted.

We saw what others have missed because this velocity disturbance doesn’t happen as the particle goes through the measurement device. Rather it is delayed until the particle is well past the slits, on the way towards the far field.

How is this possible? Well, because quantum particles are not really just particles. They are also waves.

In fact, the theory behind our experiment was one in which both wave and particle nature are manifest — the wave guides the motion of the particle according to the interpretation introduced by theoretical physicist David Bohm, a generation after Heisenberg.

*Let’s experiment*
In our latest experiment, scientists in China followed a technique suggested by me in 2007 to reconstruct the hypothesised motion of the quantum particles, from many different possible starting points across both slits, and for both results of the measurement.

They compared the velocities over time when there was no measurement device present to those when there was, and so determined the change in the velocities as a result of the measurement.

_*Read more: We did a breakthrough 'speed test' in quantum tunnelling, and here's why that's exciting*_

The experiment showed that the effect of the measurement on the velocity of the particles continued long after the particles had cleared the measurement device itself, as far as 5 metres away from it.

By that point, in the far field, the cumulative change in velocity was just large enough, on average, to wash out the ripples in the interference pattern.

So, in the end, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle emerges triumphant.

The take-home message? Don’t make far-reaching claims about what principle can or cannot explain a phenomenon until you have considered all theoretical formulations of the principle.

Yes, that’s a bit of an abstract message, but it’s advice that could apply in fields far from physics.


https://theconversation.com/quantum...t-about-uncertainty-in-a-certain-sense-118456


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *China's Sichuan to offer quake early warning services by year-end*
> Source: Xinhua| 2019-05-10 22:40:31|Editor: yan
> 
> CHENGDU, May 10 (Xinhua) -- Sichuan, a quake-prone province in southwest China, will provide its residents earthquake early warning services by the end of this year, according to the Sichuan Earthquake Administration.
> 
> The early warning services include alerting residents seconds before seismic waves arrive through multiple broadcasting systems, using the theory that radio waves travel faster than seismic waves.
> 
> Earthquake research has found that being aware of an earthquake three seconds beforehand can save 14 percent of casualties, 10 seconds can save 39 percent of casualties, and 20 seconds can save 63 percent of casualties.
> 
> The services will also offer residents brief information about the quake one to two minutes after a quake strikes, its magnitude two to five minutes later, and an assessment of the disaster within two hours.
> 
> China's capacity in earthquake monitoring and disaster relief has improved since 2008, when the Wenchuan Earthquake in Sichuan killed more than 69,000 people and left nearly 18,000 missing, said a report submitted to the country's top legislature last year.
> 
> A new generation of earthquake monitoring and warning systems have been installed along more than 20 high-speed railway lines spanning 6,642 km, said the report.
> 
> +++###+++​
> *China seismic experimental site launches 360 observation stations*
> Source: Xinhua| 2019-05-10 23:21:04|Editor: yan
> 
> BEIJING, May 10 (Xinhua) -- A total of 360 observation stations have been established in the China Seismic Experimental Site (CSES) so far, Zheng Guoguang, head of the China Earthquake Administration, said Friday.
> 
> China announced on May 12, 2018 to build the CSES, a natural laboratory in earthquake science and technology, in Sichuan and Yunnan regions.
> 
> It aims to facilitate investigator-driven research on continental strong earthquake preparation and occurrence, and enhance the disaster resilience of the society, according to Zheng.
> 
> So far, a total of 360 observation stations have been established in the experimental site. Thirteen countries including the United States and Russia have participated in the research.
> 
> China will step up the pace of experimental site construction to obtain more underground observation data, and promote data sharing for further research, Zheng said.


*Sichuan quake death toll rises to 12, early warning prevents heavy casualties*
By Chen Xi and Zhao Yusha Source:Global Times Published: 2019/6/18 14:08:40

As least twelve people were killed and another 135 injured after a 6.0-magnitude earthquake rattled Changning county in Yibin, Southwest China's Sichuan Province late Monday, and an early warning system proved effective to prevent heavy losses, according to local authorities and seismologists.

The epicenter, with a depth of 16 kilometers, was monitored at 28.34 degrees north latitude and 104.90 degrees east longitude, according to the China Earthquake Networks Center.

After the earthquake, the Ministry of Emergency Management activated an emergency response and sent a team to the stricken areas to provide rescue and disaster relief.

The ministry and the National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration have sent 5,000 tents, 10,000 folding beds and 20,000 quilts to the quake-hit areas.

The early warning system played an important role, media reported.

Chengdu, capital city of Sichuan, which is about 300 kilometers from Changning, received the alert 61 seconds before the seismic waves. People from 180 schools and 101 communities were evacuated after receiving the early warning, Wang Tun, head of the Institute of Care-life, a key earthquake early warning laboratory in Chengdu, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

Wang also said the system simultaneously sent a warning to government departments, communities and other places through various platforms, such as cellphones, television and other broadcasts.

Chengdu resident Tang Jiayou told the Global Times that he received the warning while watching television Monday night. "It flashed on the television screen, with a countdown saying how long it would take for the seismic waves to arrive. But it took me a few seconds to realize it, because I haven't seen this before."

The loudspeakers installed for earthquake warnings in 60 communities in Chengdu proved crucial. Many residents in the Chengdu High-tech Industrial Development Zone heard a 60-second countdown warning alert and took prompt measures, Wang said.

The similar system alerted residents in Yibin ten seconds before the quake struck, according to media reports.

Earthquake research has found that being aware of an earthquake three seconds beforehand can save 14 percent of casualties, 10 seconds can save 39 percent of casualties, and 20 seconds can save 63 percent of casualties, according to Wang.

Sichuan experiences frequent earthquakes because it is situated at the edge of a major quake-prone region where active seismicity occurs due to a collision between two tectonic plates.

After the devastating 2008 Wenchuan earthquake which claimed more than 69,000 lives, China has been dedicating itself to developing earthquake warning systems.

China in 2018 began using the world's first cloud image system based on sensory technology to release more timely and reliable earthquake warnings.

Wang's team uses a cloud image system that involves deeply-buried sensors that can detect stress and energy dynamics 8 to 20 kilometers below the surface.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1140868103519080448

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

↑↑↑
*Early warning system effective in Sichuan quake*
China Plus Published: 2019-06-18 20:35:59

An early warning system established in the province of Sichuan is being credited with possibly preventing casualties following a 6.0-magnitude earthquake on Monday night.

As the quake first began, a warning was sent through broadcast signals to radios, televisions and mobile phones to residents near and beyond the epicenter, which was in Changning County, located on the outskirts of the city of Yibin.



Photo taken on June 17, 2019, shows an early quake warning appearing on the screen of a TV in Ya'an, Sichuan Province, alerting residents that seismic waves would arrive in 25 seconds. [Photo: China Daily]

So far 13 people are confirmed dead, with over 200 others injured in the quake.

However, locals are suggesting the quake could have created more casualties.

Local media reports say residents in Yibin were alerted ten seconds before the effects of the quake started to be felt.

In Chengdu, Sichuan's capital, located 300 kilometers from the epicenter, the alert was sent out up to 61 seconds ahead of the arrival of seismic waves.

People from 180 schools and 101 communities were evacuated after receiving the early warning, Wang Tun, head of the Institute of Care-life, a key earthquake early warning laboratory in Chengdu, told the Global Times on Tuesday.



Photo taken on June 18, 2019 shows a damaged store in Changning County, Yibin, Sichuan Province. [Photo: Xinhua/Zhuang Geer]

According to Wang, the early warning system simultaneously sent a warning to government departments, communities and other places through various platforms, such as mobile phones, television and other broadcast mediums.

"Loudspeakers installed for earthquake warnings in 60 different communities in Chengdu were also activated. Residents in the Chengdu High-tech Industrial Development Zone were given a 60-second countdown alert, allowing them to take prompt action," said Wang.

Earthquake research has found that being aware of a sizeable earthquake 3 seconds beforehand can save 14 percent of casualties, while 10 seconds can prevent 39 percent of casualties, and 20 seconds can possibly save 63 percent of the casualties from an earthquake.



A 6.0-magnitude quake hits Changning County, Yibin, Sichuan Province, 10:55 p.m. Monday (Beijing Time), according to the China Earthquake Networks Center (CENC). [Photo: Xinhua/Qin Ying]

Chengdu's warning system covers 2 million square kilometers. China became the third country in the world, after Japan and Mexico, to install an earthquake early warning system.

"China's capacity in earthquake monitoring and disaster relief has improved since 2008, when the Wenchuan Earthquake in Sichuan killed more than 69,000 people and left nearly 18,000 missing," said a report submitted to the country's top legislature last year.

_(Story includes material sourced from Global Times.)_

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Kamil_baku

JSCh said:


> ↑↑↑
> *Early warning system effective in Sichuan quake*
> China Plus Published: 2019-06-18 20:35:59
> 
> An early warning system established in the province of Sichuan is being credited with possibly preventing casualties following a 6.0-magnitude earthquake on Monday night.
> 
> As the quake first began, a warning was sent through broadcast signals to radios, televisions and mobile phones to residents near and beyond the epicenter, which was in Changning County, located on the outskirts of the city of Yibin.
> 
> 
> 
> Photo taken on June 17, 2019, shows an early quake warning appearing on the screen of a TV in Ya'an, Sichuan Province, alerting residents that seismic waves would arrive in 25 seconds. [Photo: China Daily]
> 
> So far 13 people are confirmed dead, with over 200 others injured in the quake.
> 
> However, locals are suggesting the quake could have created more casualties.
> 
> Local media reports say residents in Yibin were alerted ten seconds before the effects of the quake started to be felt.
> 
> In Chengdu, Sichuan's capital, located 300 kilometers from the epicenter, the alert was sent out up to 61 seconds ahead of the arrival of seismic waves.
> 
> People from 180 schools and 101 communities were evacuated after receiving the early warning, Wang Tun, head of the Institute of Care-life, a key earthquake early warning laboratory in Chengdu, told the Global Times on Tuesday.
> 
> 
> 
> Photo taken on June 18, 2019 shows a damaged store in Changning County, Yibin, Sichuan Province. [Photo: Xinhua/Zhuang Geer]
> 
> According to Wang, the early warning system simultaneously sent a warning to government departments, communities and other places through various platforms, such as mobile phones, television and other broadcast mediums.
> 
> "Loudspeakers installed for earthquake warnings in 60 different communities in Chengdu were also activated. Residents in the Chengdu High-tech Industrial Development Zone were given a 60-second countdown alert, allowing them to take prompt action," said Wang.
> 
> Earthquake research has found that being aware of a sizeable earthquake 3 seconds beforehand can save 14 percent of casualties, while 10 seconds can prevent 39 percent of casualties, and 20 seconds can possibly save 63 percent of the casualties from an earthquake.
> 
> 
> 
> A 6.0-magnitude quake hits Changning County, Yibin, Sichuan Province, 10:55 p.m. Monday (Beijing Time), according to the China Earthquake Networks Center (CENC). [Photo: Xinhua/Qin Ying]
> 
> Chengdu's warning system covers 2 million square kilometers. China became the third country in the world, after Japan and Mexico, to install an earthquake early warning system.
> 
> "China's capacity in earthquake monitoring and disaster relief has improved since 2008, when the Wenchuan Earthquake in Sichuan killed more than 69,000 people and left nearly 18,000 missing," said a report submitted to the country's top legislature last year.
> 
> _(Story includes material sourced from Global Times.)_


6 level is not something that will really bring a lot of death with itself.. after 7 its more dangerous..

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Cancer genes help deer antlers grow*
By Elizabeth Pennisi
Jun. 20, 2019 , 2:00 PM

Antlers are some of the fastest-growing bone in the animal kingdom: Deer, moose, elk, and reindeer sprout up to half a meter of new bone growth in a month prior to the mating season. Now, researchers studying their genomes have discovered how. Genes that both promote and suppress cancer are partially responsible, suggesting the bony tissue may reveal new ways to fight cancer.

The study started when scientists in China and their colleagues abroad sequenced the genomes of 44 ruminants, including cows, deer, giraffes, pronghorn sheep, and other mammals that have complex stomachs for digesting plants. Many of these ruminants sprout bony protrusions, including the skin- and hair-covered bony ossicles of giraffes; the horns of cattle, which have an additional hard sheath; pronghorns in which this sheath is shed every year; and the annually shed antlers of deer, elk, and moose.

The scientists then looked for the genes underlying the evolution and development of this headgear. Qiang Qiu, a geneticist from Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi’an, China, and colleagues mapped out which genes were active in 16 live tissues from sheep, goats, and deer, including horns and antlers. They also assessed which genes were active in the developing embryos of some animals.

Horns and antlers evolved once in an ancestor to all these animals, they found. What’s more, these new structures emerged when genes that help build nerve, bone, and skin tissue altered and became active in forming these bony protrusions, Qiu and colleagues report today in _Science_. In particular, changes to genes involved in bone formation and the development of an embryonic tissue called the neural crest likely helped lead to headgear in the first place. As further evidence of a single origin for bony headgear, Chinese water deer and two species of musk deer, both of which lack antlers, have a mutation in one of the genes linked to bone formation.

In regular deer, the researchers found eight active genes that are normally involved in promoting tumor formation and growth. That suggests, Qiu says, that antler growth is more like that of bone cancer than that of typical bones. However, in contrast to bone cancer, where tumors grow unchecked, antler growth is tightly regulated by the activity of tumor-suppressing and tumor-growth-inhibiting genes, the team reports.

“Deer antlers [are] using essentially a controlled form of bone cancer growth,” says Edward Davis, an evolutionary paleobiologist at the University of Oregon in Eugene who was not involved with the work. The involvement of the tumor-promoting genes isn’t surprising, he says; what’s surprising is the involvement of the cancer-controlling genes.

But that surprise may have done more than just turbocharge deer antler growth. The cancer-suppressing genes that keep growth in check also protect against cancer in general, Qiu says. Zoos, for example, have documented cancer rates in deer that are five times lower than rates in other mammals—perhaps, Davis says, a “happy accident” of antler evolution.


Cancer genes help deer antlers grow | Science | AAAS

Yu Wang, Chenzhou Zhang, Nini Wang, Zhipeng Li, Rasmus Heller, Rong Liu, Yue Zhao, Jiangang Han, Xiangyu Pan, Zhuqing Zheng, Xueqin Dai, Ceshi Chen, Mingle Dou, Shujun Peng, Xianqing Chen, Jing Liu, Ming Li, Kun Wang, Chang Liu, Zeshan Lin, Lei Chen, Fei Hao, Wenbo Zhu, Chengchuang Song, Chen Zhao, Chengli Zheng, Jianming Wang, Shengwei Hu, Cunyuan Li, Hui Yang, Lin Jiang, Guangyu Li, Mingjun Liu, Tad S. Sonstegard, Guojie Zhang, Yu Jiang, Wen Wang, Qiang Qiu. *Genetic basis of ruminant headgear and rapid antler regeneration*. _Science _(2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aav6335​


----------



## JSCh

*How reindeer evolved to survive freezing Arctic winters*
By Elizabeth Pennisi
Jun. 20, 2019 , 2:00 PM

Santa’s warm workshop is nothing like the cold, often-dark Arctic where reindeer really live. Above the Arctic Circle, temperatures can drop as low as –67°C and darkness can last nearly the entire day. Now, a new study reveals how reindeer have evolved to cope with these tough conditions.

To look for the genes that let Santa’s helpers survive scarce food and months without daylight, researchers took advantage of a massive effort to sequence the genomes of reindeer and 43 other ruminants, including cows, sheep, and camels. They compared the reindeer’s genes for various traits to the same genes in several other mammals.

One improvement: Compared with other mammals, the reindeer are much more efficient in their use of vitamin D. That isn’t a complete surprise, scientists say, because reindeer need lots of vitamin D—created during sun exposure—to build their bony antlers, which even females shed and regrow every year. To overcome the winter sunlight shortfall, mutations in two of the 68 genes used to synthesize and process vitamin D make the process up to 20 times more efficient, researchers report today in Science. 

Because the amount of sunlight varies so much so far north, reindeer seem to have lost the biological clock that makes humans and other animals active by day and sleepy by night. Compared with other mammals, reindeer have genetic changes that “short-circuit” their clocks, disrupting the ability of one key clock protein to interact with another. This finding could help researchers unravel disorders that involve disrupted biological clocks, such as insomnia, seasonal affective disorder, and perhaps even depression.

Other mutations in the reindeer genome, some of which are present in polar bears and Adélie penguins, improve fat use, fat transport, and the building of fat reserves. This discovery, the scientists say, could improve the understanding of fat accumulation and transport in people. It also goes to show that maybe those reindeer don’t need Santa’s help, after all.



How reindeer evolved to survive freezing Arctic winters | Science | AAAS

Zeshan Lin, Lei Chen, Xianqing Chen, Yingbin Zhong, Yue Yang, Wenhao Xia, Chang Liu, Wenbo Zhu, Han Wang, Biyao Yan, Yifeng Yang, Xing Liu, Kjersti Sternang Kvie, Knut Håkon Røed, Kun Wang, Wuhan Xiao, Haijun Wei, Guangyu Li, Rasmus Heller, M. Thomas P. Gilbert, Qiang Qiu, Wen Wang, Zhipeng Li. *Biological adaptations in the Arctic cervid, the reindeer (Rangifer tarandus)*. _Science _(2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aav6312​


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese researchers map out deer's genomes, lend clues to cure human diseases*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-06-21 04:19:29|Editor: yan

WASHINGTON, June 20 (Xinhua) -- An international team led by Chinese scientists explained why deer are less likely to develop cancer, how reindeer adapt to the harsh environments, and how they produce more Vitamin D. The answers could have far-reaching medical implications.

A trio of reports published on Thursday in the journal Science mapped out the genomes of 44 ruminant species, a group of multi-stomached mammals including deer, cow and goat.

Researchers from more than 20 organizations including Northwestern Polytechnical University, Northwest A&F University and Chinese Academy of Sciences published their initial findings with the Ruminant Genome Project, producing an evolutionary tree of the ruminant group.

They also found significant declines in ruminant populations nearly 100,000 years ago when humans migrated out of Africa, revealing early humans' impact on ruminant species.

In the second paper, the researchers used the genome map and found the growth of antlers -- as much as 2.5 centimeters a day -- was only made possible as those headgear-bearing ruminant animals utilized cancer-linked molecular pathways and highly expressed tumor suppressing genes. The findings lend a clue to a new protective mechanism against cancer.

Reindeer thriving in harsh Arctic conditions like extreme cold and prolonged periods of light and dark have been scrutinized in the third paper. They turned out to acquire a gene mutation that deprives the reindeer of the circadian clocks so that they can live without sleeping disorder through long nights and long days.

It may inspire scientists to design a drug to cure sleeping diseases or help astronauts adjust their biological clocks during space travel.

Also, the researchers revealed how supercharged Vitamin D-using genes in reindeer were evolved to help them absorb more calcium, which made the antler rapid growth possible. This can be a potential molecular mechanism used to treat brittle-bone disease, according to the study.

The findings provide vital insights into genetic adaptations that are responsible for ruminant animals' biological success, said Stanford researcher Yang Yunzhi, who wrote a perspective article in the journal to review the three papers.

"Understanding the evolution of ruminant animals can improve our research in regenerative medicine, tumor biology, sleeping disorder and osteoporosis, and it may also help us breed new livestock in the future," the paper's corresponding author Wang Wen, researcher of Kunming Institute of Zoology under Chinese Academy of Sciences, told Xinhua.


Lei Chen, Qiang Qiu, Yu Jiang, Kun Wang, Zeshan Lin, Zhipeng Li, Faysal Bibi, Yongzhi Yang, Jinhuan Wang, Wenhui Nie, Weiting Su, Guichun Liu, Qiye Li, Weiwei Fu, Xiangyu Pan, Chang Liu, Jie Yang, Chenzhou Zhang, Yuan Yin, Yu Wang, Yue Zhao, Chen Zhang, Zhongkai Wang, Yanli Qin, Wei Liu, Bao Wang, Yandong Ren, Ru Zhang, Yan Zeng, Rute R. da Fonseca, Bin Wei, Ran Li, Wenting Wan, Ruoping Zhao, Wenbo Zhu, Yutao Wang, Shengchang Duan, Yun Gao, Yong E. Zhang, Chunyan Chen, Christina Hvilsom, Clinton W. Epps, Leona G. Chemnick, Yang Dong, Siavash Mirarab, Hans Redlef Siegismund, Oliver A. Ryder, M. Thomas P. Gilbert, Harris A. Lewin, Guojie Zhang, Rasmus Heller, Wen Wang. *Large-scale ruminant genome sequencing provides insights into their evolution and distinct traits*. _Science _(2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aav6202
Zeshan Lin, Lei Chen, Xianqing Chen, Yingbin Zhong, Yue Yang, Wenhao Xia, Chang Liu, Wenbo Zhu, Han Wang, Biyao Yan, Yifeng Yang, Xing Liu, Kjersti Sternang Kvie, Knut Håkon Røed, Kun Wang, Wuhan Xiao, Haijun Wei, Guangyu Li, Rasmus Heller, M. Thomas P. Gilbert, Qiang Qiu, Wen Wang, Zhipeng Li. *Biological adaptations in the Arctic cervid, the reindeer (Rangifer tarandus)*. _Science _(2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aav6312
Yu Wang, Chenzhou Zhang, Nini Wang, Zhipeng Li, Rasmus Heller, Rong Liu, Yue Zhao, Jiangang Han, Xiangyu Pan, Zhuqing Zheng, Xueqin Dai, Ceshi Chen, Mingle Dou, Shujun Peng, Xianqing Chen, Jing Liu, Ming Li, Kun Wang, Chang Liu, Zeshan Lin, Lei Chen, Fei Hao, Wenbo Zhu, Chengchuang Song, Chen Zhao, Chengli Zheng, Jianming Wang, Shengwei Hu, Cunyuan Li, Hui Yang, Lin Jiang, Guangyu Li, Mingjun Liu, Tad S. Sonstegard, Guojie Zhang, Yu Jiang, Wen Wang, Qiang Qiu. *Genetic basis of ruminant headgear and rapid antler regeneration*. _Science _(2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aav6335


​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists bloom in efforts to save rare flowers*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-06-20 16:54:10|Editor: ZX

BEIJING, June 20 (Xinhua) -- At over 4,000 meters above sea level, botanist Xue Jingqi and his colleagues felt their heads throbbing with altitude sickness.

Local Tibetans guided them as they searched carefully in rocks near Shangri-La, southwest China's Yunnan Province.

Then their malaise lifted as they found rare wild peonies they had been looking for.

The team from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) carefully collected the seeds and brought them back to Beijing as part of a conservation program for endangered plants.

But in the lowland climate, almost all the seedlings were dead the following year.

The scientists returned to the plateau to collect new seeds, which they took to the relatively cooler Yanqing District, in the north of Beijing. The seedlings blossomed after careful cultivation, but then a sudden late-spring chill killed most of them.

"It was very frustrating that years of work went for nothing, but we soon improved the program," Xue said.

The team developed an efficient breeding method that greatly shortened the peony breeding cycle.

*GIANT PANDA OF FLOWERS*

The peony is native to China, where it has been cultivated for about 2,000 years. Admired as the "king of flowers" in China, the peony is now cultivated in more than 20 countries, including Japan, France, Britain, the United States, Italy and the Netherlands.

China has more than 1,500 peony varieties, but some of the wild varieties are endangered, and some have only one plant left, said CAAS expert Wang Shunli.

The CAAS has bred more than 20,000 wild peony seedlings and transplanted hundreds back to their native places in southwest China through an endangered plant protection program launched in 2012.

Dubbed the "giant panda of flowers," paphiopedilum is another critically endangered plant rescued by the program. This orchid was discovered in the 1970s on a few mountainsides along the Nujiang River in Yunnan Province.

Orchids are very sensitive to environment changes and human activities, so many species are in danger. Researchers from the CAAS have mastered artificial propagation and cultivation methods of some wild orchids that can effectively protect them in the wild. They have also cross-fertilized wild plants to breed new paphiopedilum varieties with a wider range of colors, said CAAS chief flower expert Ge Hong.

The flowers bred from wild varieties such as peonies and paphiopedilum are blooming at the Beijing International Horticultural Exhibition (Beijing Expo 2019).

They also have the potential to raise living standards in remote areas.

Peonies can live on less productive land so they don't compete with other crops. Their seeds can produce oil and the stamens can be made into tea. The CAAS is working with the government of Linxia, Gansu Province, to increase local farmers' incomes by planting peonies.

*PLANT FACTORY*

China is one of the few countries in the world to have mastered the plant factory technology, which is on display at the Beijing Expo 2019.

Vegetables growing in nutrient solutions line the shelves under red and blue lights. A computer automatically controls the temperature, humidity, light, carbon dioxide concentration and nutrient solution.

According to Yang Qichang, director of the CAAS Facility Agricultural Environmental Engineering Research Center, his team has made breakthroughs in developing light sources, light regulation, multi-layer hydroponic cultivation, intelligent environmental management and control, nutrient solution regulation, and energy-saving technologies.

CAAS studies show the vitamin C content of vegetables grown in their plant factories is significantly above average while nitrite content is lower.

Researchers are trying to further reduce the energy consumption and improve its automation, said Li Kun, a member of the team.

Plant factories are developing rapidly in China. In addition to application in polar regions and on islands, mini plant factories have come into play in daily life. The technology is expected to be used in space exploration in the future.


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese academy takes step to bolster agriculture in Zambia*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-06-21 16:52:15|Editor: ZX

LUSAKA, June 21 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) handed over a high-definition cropland distribution dataset to Zambia on Thursday, aiming to help the southern African nation develop its agriculture sector.

The Zambia National Fine Resolution Cropland Data Layer provides nationwide close to real-time cropland data and up to a 10-meter resolution ratio, according to CAS.

With its improved measuring resolution, the dataset will make a significant improvement in cropland mapping for the country, said Yan Qing, head of the academy's Bureau of Science and Technology for Development.

Such time-series cropland data will be valuable for analyzing driving mechanisms of cropland distribution, as well as the cropland's impact on water resources and food security, said Yan on the handover ceremony to Zambia's Ministry of Agriculture.

"Recent advances and trends in geospatial technologies are making it easier and more cost-effective to monitor food and agriculture resources in a timely manner," said Peter Kalunga, Director of Agriculture in the ministry.

The dataset, built upon the CAS' Big Earth Data Program launched in 2018, is one of the projects promoting earth observation in the Belt and Road region for sustainable development.

Kalunga said that earth observation was the key to addressing the information gap in food production, food security and nutrition in Zambia.

CAS expected the new dataset to help Zambian authorities make science-based policies and to promote cooperation between the Chinese academy and Zambian research institutes.


----------



## JSCh

*Viewpoint: Cooling with a Squeeze*

Jaka Tušek, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Nini Pryds, Department of Energy Conversion and Storage, Technical University of Denmark, Roskilde, Denmark
June 26, 2019• _Physics_ 12, 72

A newly designed alloy exhibits a “colossal” elastocaloric effect—a temperature change under strain—making it a good candidate for an environmentally friendly type of cooling.

Today’s society thrives on cooling. In Europe, for example, 70% of the food is chilled or frozen, while in the US, air conditioners in people’s homes consume more electricity than all of Africa. The demand for cooling is only expected to rise [1], along with its exacerbating effects on global warming, creating a push to find alternatives to the century-old and relatively inefficient vapor compression cooling technology in use today [2]. A promising option is to employ elastocaloric solids. These materials change their temperature in response to a mechanical stress, a property that can be used to pull heat from an object in thermal contact. Daoyong Cong of the University of Science and Technology Beijing and colleagues now report that they have designed and synthesized an alloy whose temperature rises and falls more than 30 K when strained and then released—the largest reversible elastocaloric effect observed so far.

...

Physics - Viewpoint: Cooling with a Squeeze

*Colossal Elastocaloric Effect in Ferroelastic Ni-Mn-Ti Alloys*
Daoyong Cong, Wenxin Xiong, Antoni Planes, Yang Ren, Lluís Mañosa, Peiyu Cao, Zhihua Nie, Xiaoming Sun, Zhi Yang, Xiufeng Hong, and Yandong Wang
Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 255703 (2019)
Published June 26, 2019​


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 26-JUN-2019
*Uridine diphosphate glucose found to dampen lung cancer metastasis*
CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HEADQUARTERS



Schematic model of the mechanism of UGDH-promoted tumor cell migration. 
*CREDIT: *Image by the research groups

In a study published online in _Nature_ on June 26, research teams led by Dr. YANG Weiwei at the Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Dr. LI Guohui from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of CAS reported a new function of uridine diphosphate glucose (UDP-glucose), a metabolic intermediate in the uronic acid pathway: It impairs lung cancer metastasis by accelerating SNAI1 mRNA decay.

This discovery is important because lung cancer is the leading cancer killer in both China and the world, and cancer metastasis is estimated to be responsible for 95% of cancer deaths. Lung cancer alone kills more than 600,000 people each year in China.

Primary malignant tumors can often be effectively treated by traditional therapies such as surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. However, in most cases, traditional therapies have limited effect on metastatic tumors. Therefore, understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying tumor metastasis helps to provide a biomarker for the early detection of tumor metastasis and a new strategy for intervening in metastasis, thus offering patients a better prognosis.

Deregulated metabolism is the hallmark of cancer. Mutations in oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes cause alterations to multiple intracellular signaling pathways that affect tumor cell metabolism and re-engineer it to allow enhanced survival and growth. The unique biochemical microenvironment further influences the metabolic phenotype of tumor cells, and thus affects tumor progression, response to therapy and patient outcome.

This study reveals a unique function of UDP-glucose in impairing tumor metastasis, presents a new model of metabolite-regulated protein function, and establishes a new connection between metabolism and RNA stability.

Specifically, the researchers demonstrated that upon epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) activation, UDP-glucose dehydrogenase (UGDH) is phosphorylated at tyrosine (Y) 473. UGDH is the rate-limiting enzyme in the uronic acid pathway. It catalyzes UDP-glucose to produce UDP-glucuronic acid and participates in the biosynthesis of glycosaminoglycan.

Phosphorylated UGDH binds to HuR and converts UDP-glucose into UDP-glucuronic acid, which attenuates UDP-glucose-mediated inhibition on HuR association with SNAI1 mRNA, thereby enhancing SNAI1 mRNA stability. Increased Snail (encoded by SNAI1) expression in turn initiates the epithelial-mesenchymal transition of tumor cells, thus promoting tumor cell migration and lung cancer metastasis.

In addition, the scientists found that lower UDP-glucose levels are closely related to the metastasis and recurrence of lung cancer. They observed that UDP-glucose levels in metastatic tumors were much lower than in primary tumors. Patients with distant metastasis had much lower UDP-glucose levels than those without distant metastasis, and patients with high UGDH Y473 phosphorylation in tumor tissues had a higher rate of metastasis and worse prognosis.



Uridine diphosphate glucose found to dampen lung cancer metastasis | EurekAlert! Science News

Xiongjun Wang, Ruilong Liu, Wencheng Zhu, Huiying Chu, Hua Yu, Ping Wei, Xueyuan Wu, Hongwen Zhu, Hong Gao, Ji Liang, Guohui Li & Weiwei Yang. *UDP-glucose accelerates SNAI1 mRNA decay and impairs lung cancer metastasis*. _Nature _(2019); DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1340-y​


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *'World's brightest light' project expected to start mid 2019*
> 2019-02-01 16:14:04Ecns.cnEditor : Mo Hong'e
> 
> 
> 
> A video demonstration shows how the world's brightest synchrotron radiation light takes place. (Photo/Screenshot of CNS Video)
> 
> (ECNS) -- A project to build the world's brightest synchrotron radiation light source has passed review by national authorities, said the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) of Chinese Academy of Sciences on Thursday.
> 
> Construction of the facility will start in middle of this year at Science and Technology Town located in Beijing's suburban Huairou District, and will be finished in six and a half years.
> 
> With an investment of 320 million yuan ($48 million), the Test Facility of High Energy Photon Source (HEPS-TF), the first R&D phase before construction of the facility, is expected to produce X-rays up to 300 keV in photon energy.
> 
> A synchrotron radiation light source uses electron-magnetic radiation usually produced by a storage ring.
> 
> The first phase will consist of accelerator chains, 14 beamlines and other auxiliary facilities.
> 
> To generate light of extreme brilliance, electrons will be accelerated nearly to the speed of light in several stages and forced to travel in a closed path.


Photo from China Institute of High Energy Physics, ceremony laying symbolic foundation to mark start of construction.








​


----------



## JSCh

*High Energy Photon Source Starts Construction in Beijing*
Jun 29, 2019 

China' s High Energy Photon Source (HEPS), the country' s first high-energy synchrotron radiation light source and soon one of the world' s brightest fourth-generation synchrotron radiation facilities, began construction in Beijing' s Huairou District on June 29, 2019.

As one of the China' s key scientific and technological infrastructure projects under the 13th Five-year Plan, HEPS will be an important platform for original and innovative research in basic science and engineering.

HEPS is being built in Huairou' s Science City, located in northern Beijing, and will comprise accelerators, beamlines and auxiliary facilities. Prof. WANG Yifang, director of the Institute of High Energy Physics, said the overall shape of HEPS looked like a gigantic magnifier. “It means HEPS is a powerful tool for characterizing micro-structures.”

The storage ring of HEPS will be 1360.4m in circumference, with the electron energy of 6 GeV and the brightness of higher than 1×1022 phs/s/mm2/mrad2/0.1%BW.

"By using the 7BA (7-Bending achromat) lattice structure, the horizontal emittance of the electron beam could be smaller than 60 pm·rad, which is the main feature of fourth-generation diffraction limited light sources," said Prof. QIN Qing, HEPS project manager.

HEPS can accommodate more than 90 high-performance beamlines and stations. In the first phase, 14 public beamlines and stations will be available for researchers in the fields of engineering materials, energy and environment, medicine and food industry, petrochemistry and chemical industry, etc.

HEPS will provide high-brightness and high-coherence photon beam with a high energy up to 300 keV, while offering a nm level spatial resolution, ps level time resolution, and meV level energy resolution research platform.

In addition to providing conventional technical support for general users, HEPS will also offer an advanced technology support for research related to national development and key industrial needs.

HEPS will serve as a multi-dimensional, real-time, in-situ characterization platform for analyzing engineering materials and their structures. It can be used to observe the whole process of their evolution and provide information for the design and regulation of functional materials. HEPS will also become an important platform for international cooperation and basic science research.

Proposed in early 2016, HEPS was officially approved by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China's top economic planner, on Dec. 15, 2017. The estimated construction period is six and a half years.


High Energy Photon Source Starts Construction in Beijing---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*China sees supersonic civil aircraft prototype launch in 2035: senior engineer*
Source:Global Times Published: 2019/7/1 17:03:40




Pictured is concept graph of a supersonic civil aircraft. Photo: screenshot from China Central Television

China is looking to develop a green supersonic civil aircraft and an independently developed prototype is expected to be launched around 2035, a senior aircraft engineer said. 

The designing techniques of the green supersonic civil aircraft are listed among the 20 key technical problems China is working on, the China Association for Science and Technology announced on Sunday at its annual meeting held in Harbin, Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, China Central Television (CCTV) reported on Monday.

Making a supersonic civil aircraft is of great significance because it usually takes more than 10 hours for the subsonic civil aircraft currently in use for a long distance flight across continents and oceans. A supersonic aircraft can fly more than twice as fast, which would solve the problem of long travel times, the CCTV report said. 
"Green supersonic civil aircraft is currently a hot research topic internationally, as well as the direction of future aerospace development," Xu Yue, a senior engineer at the Chinese Aeronautical Establishment under the state-owned Aviation Industry of China, told CCTV.

Other countries including the US, Japan and some European countries have also announced their concepts for supersonic civil planes, CCTV said.

China has already made breakthroughs in some of the key technologies like reducing air resistance and sonic boom, the report said.

"We hope that, through our own technological development and continued scientific investment, we can launch our own supersonic civil aircraft prototype in around 2035," Xu said.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*

*This polymer octopus reacts to heat by extending its tentacles, some of which turn from purple to pink. Credit: Jilin Univ./Univ. Manchester
*
MATERIALS SCIENCE * *28 JUNE 2019
*Shape-shifting, colour-switching ‘octopus’ emerges from a 3D printer*
Recipe includes specialized polymer and pigments that change colour when temperature rises or falls.

Just as an octopus can change colours and contort its body, so materials built by a 3D printer can alter their hues and morph into new forms.

Qingping Liu at Jilin University in Changchun, China, Lei Ren at the University of Manchester, UK, and their team used 4D printing — the 3D printing of objects that change shape over time — to make soft robots that can remodel themselves.

To do so, the researchers relied on a type of shape-memory polymer, a material that can be ‘programmed’ to change from one shape to another when heated past a certain temperature. The team mixed the polymer with pigments that change colour when heated and return to their original colour when cooled. By controlling factors such as the material’s thickness, the researchers could determine the pace of shape and colour changes.

The authors created a green-and-orange flower bud that opened into a yellow blossom, as well as an octopus with tentacles that changed colour as they unfurled.

_Adv. Mater. Technol._ (2019)​

Shape-shifting, colour-switching ‘octopus’ emerges from a 3D printer : Research Highlights | Nature

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*China's Lianovation Develops Superconducting Magnet to Slash Metal Processing Costs*
TANG SHIHUA
DATE : JUL 02 2019/SOURCE : YICAI




China's Lianovation Develops Superconducting Magnet to Slash Metal Processing Costs​
(Yicai Global) July 2 -- Chinese light-emitting diode maker Lianovation has built the world's most powerful induction heater with a newly developed superconducting magnet that could significantly cut the cost of heating and processing metals.

The new technology passed review by experts at the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association, including renowned superconductivity specialist and Chinese Academy of Sciences member Zhao Zhongxian, the Jiangxi-based firm said in a statement yesterday.

The panel that assessed the magnet, which boasts a megawatt of heating power, believe that it could halve the cost of heating aluminium ingots to CNY130 (USD19) a ton if used in the aluminium extrusion processing industry.

Lianovation, officially Lianchuang Opto-electronic Science & Technology, did not disclose how much researching and producing the magnet cost nor reveal any commercialization plans. The heater boasts one megawatt of power.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Grandy

*Scientists in China invent new material to clean up oil spills*





Oil is seen on sand as cleaning operation continues at Ao Prao Beach on Koh Samet, Thailand © Reuters / Athit Perawongmetha 

Chinese scientists have invented a honeycomb-style polypropylene material that can soak up oil from water more cheaply and efficiently than some popular established methods.
The material according to a press release, is essentially foam with a rough surface and a tubular structure modeled on honeycombs. This structure allows water to flow freely through the tubes while oil gets caught and absorbed in seconds, the researchers from Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology said.

While we don’t see many oil spills of Deepwater Horizon proportions on a regular basis, luckily, the problem of oil-contaminated water is a serious one simply because, as the Chinese scientists note in their research, oil and oil derivatives are used in so many industrial activities that also involve water at some point. The result is oily water that cannot be cleaned by setting it on fire (a common method for waterborne oil cleanup if not very environmentally friendly) or filtering it in another way.

The news from the Chinese institute come soon after another invention in this field: a sorbent material that can absorb oil without also absorbing a lot of water. Called a plasma-polymerized carbonaceous nanosponge and developed by Argentine scientists, the material is a powder that _“can be used to selectively and efficiently adsorb hydrocarbons from water, with negligible water uptake.”_ The material can work on its own or be used as coating for textiles or metal meshes as a barrier between oil and water.

Oil water separation research certainly looks like an exciting field. Some more news in it came from Texas earlier this month. Two young entrepreneurs there developed what they’ve called Towelie: a cheap fabric that can hold up to 15 times its weight in oil. The towel-like unwoven material is cheap and it floats without leaving any microplastic residue in the water. What’s more, it’s made from natural cotton fibers. Things don’t get any eco-friendlier than this.
Of course, for all their benefits, these different materials certainly have drawbacks since they were made in an imperfect world.

The Chinese invention, for example, is made from polypropylene, which is an oil—or gas—derivative. This probably contributes significantly to its affordability but does not, strictly speaking, make it completely environmentally friendly in terms of production. Also, plastic-based sorbents leave microplastic residue in the water.

The nanosponge invented by the Argentine scientists can absorb oil for half an hour under UV radiation but then it begins to soak up water as well, which compromises its effectiveness.

The cotton-based Towelie is already used in the Permian for minor leaks at wellheads and as a replacement for synthetic towels widely used in the oil production industry. Yet it doesn’t seem like the best idea for a major offshore spill: a major spill would require thousands of Towelies that would then have to be collected and the oil disposed of.

All in all, however, it’s good to know there is an ongoing effort to make potential oil spills and leaks less devastating and clean them up more quickly with less water getting wasted in the process.

*This article was originally published on Oilprice.com*

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *China's first heavy-ion medical accelerator ready for clinical trials*
> By Shan Juan (chinadaily.com.cn) Updated: 2016-04-26 11:12
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The heavy-ion medical accelerator in Gansu. [Photo/IC]​
> An advanced piece of medical equipment that is used in cutting-edge cancer treatments has been developed in China, making it the fourth country in the world to possess such technology.
> 
> The heavy-ion medical accelerator generates particles for a type of radiotherapy that aims to cure malignant tumors by bombarding them with high-energy charged heavy-ion beams.
> 
> Currently, only Japan, Germany and the United States have the capacity to produce such medical accelerators.
> 
> Developed by the Modern Physics Institute of the Chinese Academy of Science and a subsidiary company in northwest Gansu province, the new accelerator is now undergoing quality assessment tests and will have to pass a clinical trial before it is approved by the drug authority, according to Xiao Guoqing, the institute director.
> 
> "It's a great milestone as it marks an end of China's long term dependence on imported large-scale radiotherapy equipment," he said.
> 
> According to Xiao, the accelerator is the result of six decades of related research, with development on the technology itself starting in 2012.
> 
> About 30 patients will be recruited in Gansu for the clinical trials and "if everything runs smoothly it's expected to formally receive patients by the end of the year," said Ye Yancheng, head of the Wuwei Cancer Hospital, which is one of three hospitals conducting the trials.
> 
> The public hospital in Wuwei, a small city about three hours' drive from Lanzhou, bought the first machine under a joint development and technology transfer contract with the developer for a price of 550 million yuan ($84 million). Local governments and several other private companies have also contributed to the investment.
> 
> A 1,600-bed subsidiary hospital called Gansu Heavy Ion Cancer Center is now under construction, where the accelerator will be placed and receive at least 2,000 patients each year, Ye said.
> 
> "Cancer patients from abroad are welcome as well," he said.


*China-developed heavy ion cancer treatment system to be operational*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-07-06 00:14:04|Editor: Wu Qin

LANZHOU, July 5 (Xinhua) -- A heavy ion cancer treatment system developed by Chinese researchers will soon be put into operation in northwest China's Gansu Province, researchers said.

The system will be used in a hospital in Lanzhou, capital of Gansu, which is mainly dedicated to treating cancer patients with the technology of heavy-ion accelerators.

Cancer radiation treatments employing heavy-ion accelerators can bombard a target with high-energy electrons to kill cancer cells.

Compared to traditional therapy such as radiation, heavy ion treatment is considered to have more balanced properties with less radiation on healthy cells. The treatment period is shorter and the therapy could more effectively control cancer cells, according to Wang Xiaohu, deputy director of the Gansu Provincial Cancer Hospital.

Researchers with the Institute of Modern Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences started basic research into the technology in 1993 and developed the accelerators in 2015.

A report published by the National Cancer Center in 2017 showed that China has nearly 25 percent of the world's new cancer cases, with 10,000 cancer patients added per day. Every year, there are two million cancer-induced deaths. Lung, breast and stomach cancers are the most common types.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *China to build world's most powerful hyper-gravity centrifuges*
> Source: Xinhua| 2018-01-31 18:46:18|Editor: Mengjie
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> HANGZHOU, Jan. 31 (Xinhua) -- China plans to build two centrifuges for hyper-gravity experiments that, when completed, will become the world's largest by capacity, scientists said Wednesday.
> 
> The centrifuges are designed to each have a capacity of at least 1,500 gravity tons (gt), compared with the 1,200-gt centrifuge developed by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the world's most powerful to date.
> 
> The project is expected to be completed in five years, with funding of more than 2 billion yuan (about 303 million U.S. dollars).
> 
> The project, planned to be located in China's eastern city of Hangzhou, will be spearheaded by Chen Yunmin, an engineering professor with Zhejiang University. He is also an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, one of China's top think tanks.
> 
> One of the planned centrifuges will give researchers access to a range of hyper-gravity up to 1,500 times of Earth gravity and the other up to 600 times.
> 
> The development of the new machines will be based on a two-arm, 9-meter-diameter centrifuge that has been in operation at Zhejiang University.
> 
> Along with the two hyper-gravity centrifuges, Chen's team will also develop six hyper-gravity labs and other supporting equipment.
> 
> Chen said he aims to develop the facility into a multifunctional platform for interdisciplinary hyper-gravity experiments.
> 
> "The centrifuges will provide strong support to research in areas such as underground and deep-sea exploration, disaster control, waste disposal, and new material manufacturing," said Chen.
> 
> Hyper-gravity will enable scientists to simulate a deep-sea environment thousands of meters below the sea level, in which they can easily test the mining of natural gas hydrate, or combustible ice, Chen said.


*Preliminary design of CHIEF approved*
2019-07-05 Global Communications

Recently, the preliminary design of Centrifugal Hyper-gravity and Interdisciplinary Experiment Facility (CHIEF) obtained the approval of the Ministry of Education and Zhejiang Provincial Government.






Architectural rendering of CHIEF


Zhejiang University is responsible for the construction of CHIEF, the first national key sci-tech infrastructure in Zhejiang Province. Its proposal and its feasibility report received the seal of approval from the National Development and Reform Commission on Jan. 15 and Nov. 27 of 2018 respectively.

With a total investment of more than two billion yuan, CHIEF will be located in Hangzhou Future Sci-tech City, and its construction is expected to be completed within five years. Its main body is comprised of two centrifuges and six hyper-gravity experimental capsules. It will be applied to six different fields, including slopes and high dams, geotechnical and earthquake engineering, deep-sea engineering, deep underground engineering and environment, geological processes and new material manufacturing.

Upon completion, CHIEF will become a comprehensive hyper-gravity and interdisciplinary experiment facility with the largest capacity and the most extensive application worldwide. As an indispensable experiment device, it will provide an advanced experiment platform and offer immense support for the development and verification of major engineering technologies as well as research into cutting-edge matter-related sciences.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

JULY 9, 2019 REPORT
*A closer look a magnesium shows very small samples are much more ductile than thought*
by Bob Yirka , Phys.org



In situ TEM compression test showing that dislocation slip is responsible for the plastic deformation of an Mg single-crystal pillar under c-axis compression. (A) Hexagonal unit cell showing the loading orientation. (B) Stress-strain curve. (C) Snapshots showing an increase in dislocation density during compression. The dark-field TEM observation is conducted under a two-beam condition. Credit: _Science_ (2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aaw2843

A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in China and the U.S. has found that very small samples of magnesium are much more ductile than thought. In their paper published in the journal _Science_, the group describes their study of the metal using an electron microscope and what they found. Gwénaëlle Proust, with the University of Sydney, has published a Perspective piece on the work done by the team in the same journal issue.

As engineers around the world look for ways to make more efficient cars, planes and other vehicles, they are studying new, lighter materials. One such material, magnesium, is interesting because it is just as strong as aluminum, but 35 percent lighter. Up until now, the metal has rarely been used because it is too difficult to process into parts. It is also much less resistant to corrosion. Still, interest in the metal persists—many in the field believe it is only a matter of finding the right elements to mix with it. In this new effort, the researchers report that they have found very small samples of magnesium are more ductile than previously thought.

The reason that magnesium is less amenable to conformity than other bendable metals is because of the way its atoms arrange themselves. Atoms such as aluminum are arranged in a cubic structure, which makes it relatively easy to make desired deformities. Magnesium atoms, in sharp contrast, are arranged in a hexagonal pattern. Prior research has shown that when a metal such as aluminum is deformed at room temperature, atoms are displaced along a line in the crystal allowing for dislocations in multiple ways. With magnesium, the possibilities are more limited. To better understand those limitations, the researchers used electron microscopy mechanical testing techniques on a micron-sized sample of magnesium. The technique allowed them to see exactly what happened while applying sheer forces at the atomic level and at room temperature.

The researchers report that the crystal showed surprising ductility—they were able to force dislocations along two planes, something not seen in larger samples. They plan to keep working with the metal to see if they can find a way to force similar dislocations in larger samples—possibly paving their way for use in real-world applications.


https://phys.org/news/2019-07-closer-magnesium-small-samples-ductile.html

Bo-Yu Liu, Fei Liu, Nan Yang, Xiao-Bo Zhai, Lei Zhang, Yang, Bin Li, Ju Li, Evan Ma, Jian-Feng Nie, Zhi-Wei Shan. *Large plasticity in magnesium mediated by pyramidal dislocations*. _Science _(2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aaw2843​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *China-developed heavy ion cancer treatment system to be operational*
> Source: Xinhua| 2019-07-06 00:14:04|Editor: Wu Qin
> 
> LANZHOU, July 5 (Xinhua) -- A heavy ion cancer treatment system developed by Chinese researchers will soon be put into operation in northwest China's Gansu Province, researchers said.
> 
> The system will be used in a hospital in Lanzhou, capital of Gansu, which is mainly dedicated to treating cancer patients with the technology of heavy-ion accelerators.
> 
> Cancer radiation treatments employing heavy-ion accelerators can bombard a target with high-energy electrons to kill cancer cells.
> 
> Compared to traditional therapy such as radiation, heavy ion treatment is considered to have more balanced properties with less radiation on healthy cells. The treatment period is shorter and the therapy could more effectively control cancer cells, according to Wang Xiaohu, deputy director of the Gansu Provincial Cancer Hospital.
> 
> Researchers with the Institute of Modern Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences started basic research into the technology in 1993 and developed the accelerators in 2015.
> 
> A report published by the National Cancer Center in 2017 showed that China has nearly 25 percent of the world's new cancer cases, with 10,000 cancer patients added per day. Every year, there are two million cancer-induced deaths. Lung, breast and stomach cancers are the most common types.


A China-developed heavy ion cancer treatment system has run into the debugging phase in the Lanzhou Heavy Ion Hospital in northwest China's Gansu Province. (Xinhua)

















​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*'Super microscope' access in high demand*
By Zhang Zhihao | China Daily | Updated: 2019-07-11 09:49
















The linear accelerator of CSNS in Dongguan, Guangdong province. [Photo/Xinhua]

Facility has attracted dozens of research institutes from mainland, HK and UK

The China Spallation Neutron Source, a "super microscope" facility for studying the structure and movement of materials at the atomic scale, has conducted more than 100 experiments since opening in September.

The results will help scientists in fields ranging from creating better lithium batteries to making stronger steels, said Liang Tianjiao, deputy director of the Dongguan branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of High Energy Physics.

The 2.3 billion yuan ($335 million), 26.67-hectare facility in Dongguan, Guangdong province, has attracted users from dozens of research institutions from the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom. Scientists have published nine papers based on the results of experiments at CSNS, with more under review and being prepared for publication, Liang said.

The facility first accelerates protons down a linear accelerator and into a rapid cycling synchrotron - a circular particle accelerator - which further speeds up the particles to close to 93 percent of the speed of light while compressing them into "bullet-like" pulses.

The pulses then collide with a tungsten target, creating chips, or "spalls", of neutrons that can be channeled into instruments where scientists can measure their interactions with materials at atomic scale.

Since neutrons carry no charge, they can easily penetrate test samples and only interact with their nucleus. Neutrons are also more sensitive to light elements such as hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, making them ideal for use in studying intricate materials such as proteins or polymers.

"Thanks to its safety, stability and efficiency, the demand to use CSNS is very high. We can barely keep up with the applications," Liang said.

He said engineers will increase the power of CSNS's proton beam from 50 kilowatts to 80 kW this year and possibly reach the designed power level of 100 kW next year. More power allows researchers to conduct scientific research more quickly on a wider range of materials.



The linear accelerator of CSNS in Dongguan, Guangdong province. [Photo/Xinhua]

CSNS has three neutron instruments in operation, which are used to measure the interactions between neutrons and test samples. Liang said the institute plans to design and build at least 16 new neutron instruments in the future, allowing more users to run more complex experiments.

"The results from the experiments will be invaluable in improving industrial capabilities in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area," he said. "They will also help solve many key scientific challenges that are limiting our industrial and socioeconomic development."

One example of a major application is improving the efficiency of lithium cell batteries.

"We can use the facility to examine how lithium ions move and change during charge and discharge, thus finding new ways to optimize and improve battery design at the atomic level," Liang said.

The ultraprecise results delivered by CSNS are also useful in making stronger steels, new superconducting materials, thin-film solar cells and new medicines.

China is the fourth country - following the UK, the United States and Japan - to master such technology. Switzerland has a different type of spallation neutron source, and European countries are teaming up to build a new facility in Denmark.

In late February, the institute and City University of Hong Kong launched a joint laboratory dedicated to expanding scientific cooperation in fields related to neutron scattering technologies.

They also agreed to build more neutron instruments for applications, train more talent and jointly improve research capabilities, Chen Hesheng, CSNS chief engineering director, said at the launch ceremony.

Liang said CSNS will continue to serve as a platform for global collaboration and allow scientists and companies from around the world to jointly make breakthroughs in basic sciences and industrial applications.

"The community of advanced neutron sources has a historical tradition of cooperation," he said. "If we can put aside our differences and work together, the opportunities for discovery are endless."

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 11-JUL-2019
*Scientists discover a novel perception mechanism regulating important plant processes*
UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE

An international research team has revealed a novel mechanism for the perception of endogenous peptides by a plant receptor. The discovery of this activation mechanism sets a new paradigm for how plants react to internal and external cues. The study 'Mechanisms of RALF peptide perception by a heterotypic receptor complex' was published today in the journal _Nature_.

Similar to insulin in humans, plants also produce peptide hormones that orchestrate internal processes and responses, including growth, development, and immunity. One of them is RALF23, which belongs to the large family of RALF plant peptides. Notably, the study revealed a novel recognition mechanism for the RALF23 peptide signals by plant receptors. Since RALF peptides play major roles in multiple important plant processes, these findings will impact our understanding of how several additional important receptors control fundamental plant processes.

Previous work by the group of Professor Dr Cyril Zipfel at The Sainsbury Laboratory (Norwich, UK) and now at the University of Zürich (Zürich, Switzerland) had identified that RALF23 regulates plant innate immunity. Using a combination of genetics, biochemistry and structural biology, a close collaboration between this group and the group of Professor Dr Jijie Chai at the Innovation Center for Structural Biology and the Joint Center for Life Sciences of Tsinghua and Peking Universities (Beijing, China) and at the University of Cologne (Cologne, Germany) has now identified the molecular basis for RALF23 perception. This work further involved collaborators from the Gregor Mendel Institute (Vienna, Austria).

Professor Jijie Chai said: 'We were excited about the results, when we saw that RALF23 needs two distinct types of proteins - a receptor kinase (FERONIA) and an unrelated membrane-associated protein - to be recognized. The way these three proteins form an impressive perception complex might apply to other plant receptors that recognize peptide hormones.'

Professor Cyril Zipfel added: 'FERONIA is a plant receptor that was actually identified at the University of Zürich over a decade ago by my colleague Professor Ueli Grossniklaus for its important role in reproduction, but has since been shown to play key roles in multiple plant processes. Now that we understand the molecular basis of how FERONIA can perceive RALF peptides, it will help characterize how this unique receptor controls several aspects of plants' life.'


Scientists discover a novel perception mechanism regulating important plant processes | EurekAlert! Science News

Yu Xiao, Martin Stegmann, Zhifu Han, Thomas A. DeFalco, Katarzyna Parys, Li Xu, Youssef Belkhadir, Cyril Zipfel, Jijie Chai. *Mechanisms of RALF peptide perception by a heterotypic receptor complex*. _Nature_, 2019; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1409-7​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists help villagers fight poverty*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-07-16 22:47:32|Editor: yan

BEIJING, July 16 (Xinhua) -- Experts with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) are helping poverty-stricken areas with targeted and precise relief solutions.

A total of 103 experts with the CAS conducted a three-month survey in four counties before giving tailored suggestions for them to fight poverty with a view to local conditions and demands, according to a CAS Press conference Tuesday.

"Only when we find the right prescription can we cure the grinding poverty," said Yan Qing, an official with the CAS.

Kiwi fruit is on the prescription for Shuicheng, a county of Guizhou Province in southwest China.

"Kiwi fruit can adapt to a variety of environmental conditions, covering more than half of China's poor areas," said Zhong Caihong, a researcher of Wuhan Botanical Garden, CAS. "Seedless kiwis with edible peels will go from poor villages to the world. "

With the help of scientists and experts, fruits, herbs, grains and other local resources have become the weapon to fight poverty.

China aims to eradicate poverty by 2020, the target year to finish building a moderately prosperous society in all respects.

By the end of June 2019, more than 101,000 people had been lifted out of poverty in the counties assisted by the CAS.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese researchers create safe gene-editing tech that avoids ethical concerns*
By Leng Shumei Source:Global Times Published: 2019/7/17 20:48:40



Monkeys cloned from a gene-edited macaque with circadian rhythm disorders are seen at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai in this handout picture provided by the Institute of Neuroscience of the Chinese Academy of Sciences on January 24, 2019. Photo: VCG

Chinese researchers created a safe and efficient technology to edit RNA, which could largely avoid side effects and ethical concerns from previous gene-editing technologies. 

The achievement was released on _Nature Biotechnology_ magazine on Monday, more than half a year after Chinese scientist He Jiankui claimed that he had created the world's first gene-edited twins immune to HIV, causing a global ethics whirlwind of condemnation and scorn. 

The technology He applied is called CRISPR-Cas9, which was adapted from a naturally occurring genome editing system in bacteria. Cas9 enzyme - a protein which plays a vital role in the immunological defense of certain bacteria against DNA viruses - would be introduced into the human body to cut the viruses' DNA. 

Such technology relies on the delivery of exogenous proteins or chemically modified guide RNAs, which may lead to aberrant effector activity, delivery barrier or immunogenicity, Wei Wensheng, a Peking University biologist and leading researcher of the latest technology, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

On the contrary, the latest technology, called leveraging endogenous ADAR for programmable editing of RNA (LEAPER), makes uses of native proteins and does not change DNA directly, thus would not bring about heritable changes and is precise and safe, Zhou Zhuo, another member of the research team, told the Global Times. 

LEAPER employs engineered RNAs to recruit native enzymes to change a specific adenosine to inosine, according to the website of Nature Biotechnology. 

Cellular-level experiments in the past two years had showed that LEAPER achieved editing efficiencies of up to 80 percent, according to Zhou. He said that the team is now testing LEAPER in rats. 

The LEAPER is active in a broad spectrum of cell types, including multiple human primary cell types, and can restore the deficient cells of patients with Hurler syndrome without evoking innate immune responses, the Nature Biotechnology website said. 

As a single-molecule system, LEAPER enables precise, efficient RNA editing with broad applicability for therapy and basic research, the website said.

Liang Qu, Zongyi Yi, Shiyou Zhu, Chunhui Wang, Zhongzheng Cao, Zhuo Zhou, Pengfei Yuan, Ying Yu, Feng Tian, Zhiheng Liu, Ying Bao, Yanxia Zhao, Wensheng Wei. *Programmable RNA editing by recruiting endogenous ADAR using engineered RNAs*. _Nature Biotechnology_ (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41587-019-0178-z​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

NEWS * 17 JULY 2019
*World’s most invasive mosquito nearly eradicated from two islands in China*
Researchers combined sterilization with a bacterium in an attempt to stamp out the Asian tiger mosquito.

Giorgia Guglielmi

Researchers have all but obliterated populations of the world’s most invasive mosquito species — the Asian tiger mosquito (_Aedes albopictus_) — on two islands in the Chinese city of Guangzhou.

They reduced _A. albopictus_ populations by up to 94% using a combination of two promising control techniques in a field trial for the first time. The two-pronged approach1, published in _Nature_ on 17 July, integrates the sterilization of female Asian tiger mosquitoes with the infection of males using _Wolbachia pipientis_, a bacterium that hinders the insects’ ability to reproduce and transmit disease-causing viruses such as dengue and Zika.

This resulted in one of the most successful eradication trials of _A. albopictus _to date, says Peter Armbruster, a mosquito ecologist at Georgetown University in Washington DC, who wrote a commentary to accompany the study. Used in tandem with other control methods such as pesticides, the dual approach could be a very powerful tool, he says.

*Problems with control*
Previous studies have shown that X-ray sterilization of large numbers of male pests like screw worms (_Cochliomyia hominivorax_), followed by their release into target areas, can reduce the size of wild pest populations. But this is an inefficient way to control mosquitoes because even though irradiated males can still mate, they are less successful than their unaltered counterparts.

In an alternative approach, workers infect laboratory mosquitoes with strains of _Wolbachia_, which is found naturally in several insect species, including _A. albopictus_. When male mosquitoes infected with a certain combination of _Wolbachia_ strains mate with wild females carrying a different combination, the insects can’t produce offspring.

But it’s crucial that only male mosquitoes infected with that particular combination are released into the wild, says Zhiyong Xi, a medical entomologist at Michigan State University in East Lansing, who led the study. If females with those strains are also released, they could mate and produce offspring with males carrying the same _Wolbachia_cocktail. Their offspring could eventually replace the local mosquito population, making future control attempts that rely on _Wolbachia_ infection more difficult.

To prevent this from happening, facilities that rear large numbers of mosquitoes for control purposes usually separate males from females mechanically, based on size differences. But this process isn’t perfect, Xi says, so workers have to do a second, manual screening to remove female mosquitoes. It’s a tedious and time-consuming task that limits the total number of mosquitoes that can be released. So Xi and his team set out to eliminate the need for this process.

*An issue of scale*
Wild populations of _A. albopictus_ are naturally infected with two strains of _Wolbachia_. The researchers infected wild mosquitoes with a third strain of _Wolbachia_ to produce a laboratory colony of the insects with three bacterial variants. Then, the team exposed the colony to low levels of radiation that sterilized the females but only slightly reduced the males’ ability to mate.

During the mosquitoes’ peak breeding seasons in 2016 and 2017, the researchers released more than 160,000 of these mosquitoes per hectare each week in residential areas on two islands situated in a river in Guangzhou — the city with the highest rate of dengue transmission in China.

Their hope was that this would vastly reduce the mosquito population because wild females that mated with the altered males — and wild males that mated with sterile lab females — wouldn’t produce offspring. The team tracked population declines in adult female mosquitoes, since they’re the ones that bite people and transmit diseases. And as expected, the average numbers of wild adult females fell by 83% in 2016 and by 94% in 2017.



Male Asian tiger mosquitoes carrying three strains of _Wolbachia_ await release into a test site.Credit: Yajun Wang

“That’s very impressive,” says Stephen Dobson, a medical entomologist at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, and the founder of MosquitoMate, a company that commercializes _Wolbachia_ as a tool to control the Asian tiger mosquito.

Current strategies for controlling _A. albopictus_ — including spraying pesticides and removing water-filled containers where the insects lay their eggs — are ineffective, Dobson says. This species lays its eggs in hidden places that can be difficult to monitor and tends to develop resistance to common insecticides, he adds. “A new tool like what’s being described in this paper is very much needed,” he says.

But scaling up the technique into an effective public-health strategy for large regions is the challenge, says Gordana Rašić, a molecular ecologist at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Brisbane, Australia.

Rašić says that _Wolbachia_-based approaches are promising strategies, and she’s hopeful that developing and testing such tools will help to reduce the incidence of mosquito-borne diseases. “We’re living in very exciting times for mosquito control,” she says.

doi: 10.1038/d41586-019-02160-z
See the related News & Views ‘A trial to tackle tiger mosquitoes’.


World’s most invasive mosquito nearly eradicated from two islands in China | Nature

Xiaoying Zheng, Dongjing Zhang, Yongjun Li, Cui Yang, Yu Wu, Xiao Liang, Yongkang Liang, Xiaoling Pan, Linchao Hu, Qiang Sun, Xiaohua Wang, Yingyang Wei, Jian Zhu, Wei Qian, Ziqiang Yan, Andrew G. Parker, Jeremie R. L. Gilles, Kostas Bourtzis, Jérémy Bouyer, Moxun Tang, Bo Zheng, Jianshe Yu, Julian Liu, Jiajia Zhuang, Zhigang Hu, Meichun Zhang, Jun-Tao Gong, Xiao-Yue Hong, Zhoubing Zhang, Lifeng Lin, Qiyong Liu, Zhiyong Hu, Zhongdao Wu, Luke Anthony Baton, Ary A. Hoffmann & Zhiyong Xi. *Incompatible and sterile insect techniques combined eliminate mosquitoes*. _Nature_, July 2019. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1407-9​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*New Laws of Attraction: Scientists Print Magnetic Liquid Droplets | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory*
Revolutionary material could lead to 3D-printable magnetic liquid devices for the fabrication of flexible electronics, or artificial cells that deliver targeted drug therapies to diseased cells

News Release Theresa Duque 510-495-2418 • July 18, 2019





​Scientists at Berkeley Lab have made a new material that is both liquid and magnetic, opening the door to a new area of science in magnetic soft matter. Their findings could lead to a revolutionary class of printable liquid devices for a variety of applications from artificial cells that deliver targeted cancer therapies to flexible liquid robots that can change their shape to adapt to their surroundings. (Video credit: Marilyn Chung/Berkeley Lab; footage of droplets courtesy of Xubo Liu and Tom Russell/Berkeley Lab)

*Inventors of centuries past and scientists of today* have found ingenious ways to make our lives better with magnets – from the magnetic needle on a compass to magnetic data storage devices and even MRI body scan machines.

All of these technologies rely on magnets made from solid materials. But what if you could make a magnetic device out of liquids? Using a modified 3D printer, a team of scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have done just that. Their findings, to be published July 19 in the journal Science, could lead to a revolutionary class of printable liquid devices for a variety of applications – from artificial cells that deliver targeted cancer therapies to flexible liquid robots that can change their shape to adapt to their surroundings.

“We’ve made a new material that is both liquid and magnetic. No one has ever observed this before,” said Tom Russell, a visiting faculty scientist at Berkeley Lab and professor of polymer science and engineering at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who led the study. “This opens the door to a new area of science in magnetic soft matter.”

For the past seven years, Russell, who leads a program called Adaptive Interfacial Assemblies Towards Structuring Liquids in Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division and also led the current study, has focused on developing a new class of materials – 3D-printable all-liquid structures.



Array of 1 millimeter magnetic droplets: Fluorescent green droplets are paramagnetic without any jammed nanoparticles at the liquid interface; red are paramagnetic with nonmagnetic nanoparticles jammed at the interface; brown droplets are ferromagnetic with magnetic nanoparticles jammed at the interface. (Credit: Xubo Liu et al./Berkeley Lab)

Russell and Xubo Liu, the study’s lead author, came up with the idea of forming liquid structures from ferrofluids, which are solutions of iron-oxide particles that become strongly magnetic in the presence of another magnet. “We wondered, ‘If a ferrofluid can become temporarily magnetic, what could we do to make it permanently magnetic, and behave like a solid magnet but still look and feel like a liquid?’” said Russell.

*Jam sessions: making magnets out of liquids*
To find out, Russell and Liu used a 3D-printing technique they had developed with former postdoctoral researcher Joe Forth in Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division to print 1 millimeter droplets from a ferrofluid solution containing iron-oxide nanoparticles just 20 nanometers in diameter (the average size of an antibody protein).

Using surface chemistry and sophisticated atomic force microscopy techniques, staff scientists Paul Ashby and Brett Helms of Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry revealed that the nanoparticles formed a solid-like shell at the interface between the two liquids through a phenomenon called “interfacial jamming.” This causes the nanoparticles to crowd at the droplet’s surface, “like the walls coming together in a small room jampacked with people,” said Russell.

To make them magnetic, the scientists placed the droplets by a magnetic coil in solution. As expected, the magnetic coil pulled the iron-oxide nanoparticles toward it.

But when they removed the magnetic coil, something quite unexpected happened.



Permanently magnetized iron-oxide nanoparticles gravitate toward each other in perfect unison. (Credit: Xubo Liu et al./Berkeley Lab)

Like synchronized swimmers, the droplets gravitated toward each other in perfect unison, forming an elegant swirl “like little dancing droplets,” said Liu, who is a graduate student researcher in Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division and a doctoral student at the Beijing University of Chemical Technology.

Somehow, these droplets had become permanently magnetic. “We almost couldn’t believe it,” said Russell. “Before our study, people always assumed that permanent magnets could only be made from solids.”

*Measure by measure, it’s still a magnet*
All magnets, no matter how big or small, have a north pole and a south pole. Opposite poles are attracted to each other, while the same poles repel each other.

Through magnetometry measurements, the scientists found that when they placed a magnetic field by a droplet, all of the nanoparticles’ north-south poles, from the 70 billion iron-oxide nanoparticles floating around in the droplet to the 1 billion nanoparticles on the droplet’s surface, responded in unison, just like a solid magnet.

Key to this finding were the iron-oxide nanoparticles jamming tightly together at the droplet’s surface. With just 8 nanometers between each of the billion nanoparticles, together they created a solid surface around each liquid droplet.

Somehow, when the jammed nanoparticles on the surface are magnetized, they transfer this magnetic orientation to the particles swimming around in the core, and the entire droplet becomes permanently magnetic – just like a solid, Russell and Liu explained.

The researchers also found that the droplet’s magnetic properties were preserved even if they divided a droplet into smaller, thinner droplets about the size of a human hair, added Russell.



To make the iron-oxide nanoparticles permanently magnetic, the scientists placed the droplets by a magnetic coil in solution. As expected, the magnetic coil pulled the iron-oxide nanoparticles toward it. (Credit: Xubo Liu et al./Berkeley Lab

Among the magnetic droplets’ many amazing qualities, what stands out even more, Russell noted, is that they change shape to adapt to their surroundings. They morph from a sphere to a cylinder to a pancake, or a tube as thin as a strand of hair, or even to the shape of an octopus – all without losing their magnetic properties.

The droplets can also be tuned to switch between a magnetic mode and a nonmagnetic mode. And when their magnetic mode is switched on, their movements can be remotely controlled as directed by an external magnet, Russell added.

Liu and Russell plan to continue research at Berkeley Lab and other national labs to develop even more complex 3D-printed magnetic liquid structures, such as a liquid-printed artificial cell, or miniature robotics that move like a tiny propeller for noninvasive yet targeted delivery of drug therapies to diseased cells.

“What began as a curious observation ended up opening a new area of science,” said Liu. “It’s something all young researchers dream of, and I was lucky to have the chance to work with a great group of scientists supported by Berkeley Lab’s world-class user facilities to make it a reality,” said Liu.

Also contributing to the study were researchers from UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley, the WPI–Advanced Institute for Materials Research (WPI-AIMR) at Tohoku University, and Beijing University of Chemical Technology.

The magnetometry measurements were taken with assistance from Berkeley Lab Materials Sciences Division co-authors Peter Fischer, senior staff scientist; Frances Hellman, senior faculty scientist and professor of physics at UC Berkeley; Robert Streubel, postdoctoral fellow; Noah Kent, graduate student researcher and doctoral student at UC Santa Cruz; and Alejandro Ceballos, Berkeley Lab graduate student researcher and doctoral student at UC Berkeley.

Other co-authors are staff scientists Paul Ashby and Brett Helms, and postdoctoral researchers Yu Chai and Paul Kim, with Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry; Yufeng Jiang, graduate student researcher in Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division; and Shaowei Shi and Dong Wang of Beijing University of Chemical Technology.

This work was supported by the DOE Office of Science and included research at the Molecular Foundry, a DOE Office of Science User Facility that specializes in nanoscale science.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*China Launches Major Physics Experiment Facility in Worlds' Deepest Underground Lab*
CCTV Video News Agency
Published on Jul 21, 2019

China launched the construction of a major physics experiment facility in the world's best-shielded underground lab in southwest China's Sichuan Province on Saturday.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Researchers develop low-cost, hand-powered water disinfection system*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-07-22 18:45:30|Editor: Xiang Bo

BEIJING, July 22 (Xinhua) -- An international team of researchers have developed a low-cost and hand-powered water disinfection system based on triboelectric nanogenerator technology.

In recent years, water disinfection at the point of use (POU) has become a focus of both academia and industry. Compared with traditional centralized water disinfection approaches, POU devices treat water at the point of consumption. Researchers have been trying to lessen their cost and dependence on electricity.

In 2012, the triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) was developed as a new power-generation technology to convert various mechanical energy from the living environment into electricity, based on the coupling between the triboelectric effect and electrostatic induction.

In the new study, researchers from Tsinghua University, Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Georgia Institute of Technology in the United States proposed the concept of TriboPump, including a water pump, a disinfection device and a disk triboelectric nanogenerator (D-TENG) as the power source.

According to the research paper published in the journal Advanced Energy Materials, a design incorporating a coaxial mechanical structure integrated into a 3D-printed support with a well-matched gear ratio enables the D-TENG and water pump to be driven by the same rotating mechanical stimuli, such as hand power, while achieving different rotating speeds.

Meanwhile, the D-TENG can adapt to different water qualities without additional power management circuits.

The researchers said the TriboPump water disinfection system can be effectively operated by hand power and cost as low as 10 U.S. dollars for a two-year service for a single family.

It provides a feasible one-stop and cost-efficient solution for POU water pumping and disinfection, and is especially suitable for rural areas or locations hit by unexpected disasters without direct access to a power supply, they said.

According to the World Health Organization's report in 2017, one out of nine people in the world have no direct access to clean water due to pathogen contamination. Access is further limited by factors including secondary contamination during water distribution, natural disasters, war and poverty.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Grandy

Science 
*Could a Chinese supercharged bacterium spark a superhuman revolution?*

Researchers say they created E coli strain that can draw on electrons in the environment
Scientists’ next task is to see if technique can be applied to complex life forms



Stephen Chen 
Published: 3:00am, 25 Jul, 2019






Scientists in Tianjin modified E coli to enable the germ to convert electrons into energy. Photo: Alamy

Scientists at a government laboratory in northern China say they have edited the DNA of a germ, creating a super bacterium that can use electrons as an energy source, perhaps opening the door to superpowers in humans.

The gene-edited germ uses electricity as “food”, increasing its physical performance by as much as 70 per cent, according to a team at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology. In theory, that would be like a human athlete running 100 metres (330ft) in three seconds or jumping over a bar more than four metres off the ground.

The researchers engineered the bacterium by adding an “alien” gene to the DNA of _E coli_, a germ common in animal intestines. The gene helped generate a protein – a compound that behaves like a worker bee or an information carrier within a cell – that can harvest free-roaming electrons from the environment and turn them into energy.

The Tianjin study was inspired by one of the biggest discoveries in biology over the last two decades, where researchers from around the world discovered a bacterium – _Shewanella oneidensis_ – that generates small but regular electric currents using a protein that moves electrons in and out of cells.



> *In the future, [this technology] may even give rise to a superhuman race Professor Bi Changhao*



Scientists could “cut and paste” electrically activated _Shewanella oneidensis_ DNA into almost any living cell to give it the ability to absorb free-roaming electrons, the Tianjin researchers said in findings published in the _Biochemical Engineering Journal_ this year.
“If the technology works on _E coli_, it should work on the cells of animals or human beings,” Professor Bi Changhao, lead scientist on the Tianjin project, said on Tuesday. “This will be one direction of our studies.”
Bi said human and animal cells did not use electricity – energy in the form of charged particles called electrons – directly. That is why electric shocks cause pain and, if they are strong enough, can kill.

*Revolutionary implant helps paralysed patients walk again*

But the ability to electrically charge a muscle might give humans great strength, or revive tired, overworked muscles, he said.
Other possible applications of the technology included biofuel production and treatment for cell-related diseases and conditions such as cancer and age-related infirmity.

“In the future, it may even give rise to a superhuman race,” Bi said.
He also said that an ability to convert electricity meant humans would need less food for energy, possibly reducing health problems such as obesity.





Scientists says the relationship between electricity and cells must be explored if humans are to benefit from their findings. Pictured is a scene from The Matrix in which humans are likened to batteries. Photo: Handou.

Professor Guo Weixiang, researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Genetics and Development Biology in Beijing, said the Tianjin findings needed to be reviewed and thoroughly tested under laboratory conditions.
“The relationship between electricity and cells is not very well understood,” said Guo, who was not involved in the study.
He said that some patients with Parkinson’s disease had been given brain implants that used electrical charges to reduce symptoms such as tremors, but implants could not reverse cell degeneration.
“What works on a single-cell life form may not work on a complex organism,” Guo said.

*Deep brain stimulation can aid Parkinson's sufferers*

Bi said there was much more work to be done and scientists needed to study whether electrically energised cells died quicker than cells that were not stimulated.
For _E coli_, which spawns a new generation every half an hour, that was not a big problem, but a shortened lifespan for animal cells after every electric charge was.
“That will be unacceptable,” Bi said. “We are working on it.”

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese researchers develop a new way to regenerate retina*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-07-25 17:24:09|Editor: Shi Yinglun

BEIJING, July 25 (Xinhua) - Chinese researchers have used iPS cells to regenerate retina, which holds the potential to develop new therapies for some blinding diseases such as retinal degeneration.

The iPS cells are a type of pluripotent stem cell artificially derived from a non-pluripotent cell. It can be induced to have the same genetic information as early embryonic cells.

Researchers from China's Central South University made iPS cells from somatic cells in the patients' urine or blood and induced the iPS cells to differentiate into RPE cells, a layer of cells in the back of the eye.

According to the research published in the journal _Acta Biomaterialia_, the RPE cells can form an ultra-thin layer of structure similar to the retina.

In future studies, the researchers plan to transplant the structure behind the patient's retina to see if it can fix the patient's vision.

Since the iPS cells are derived from the patient's cells, immune rejection of cell transplantation is avoided.

The retinal degeneration, which may lead to permanent blindness, is one of the most common eye diseases among people over the age of 50.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists develop new high-safety microbattery*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-07-24 18:25:56|Editor: Li Xia

SHENYANG, July 23 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have developed a new technique to make high-safety and scalable planar microbatteries.

The scientists of the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences developed a low-cost and highly efficient scalable screen printing technique that can help make the high-safety and scalable planar Zn//MnO2 microbatteries.

More and more electronic devices are becoming more lightweight, flexible and wearable, thus greatly boosting the demand for miniature energy storage devices.

Scientists have focused on the research of the safe flat microbattery for a period of time. In order to improve safety, the researchers developed high-safety aqueous electrolytes to replace flammable organic electrolytes to produce high-safety microbatteries.

Prof. Wu Zhongshuai, the chief scientist leading the research, found that the new batteries are not only more environmentally friendly and safe but more durable.

The microbattery has corrected the shortcomings of traditional batteries such as bulkiness, poor mechanical flexibility and easy separation of the interface under the bending state, said Wu.

The research result was published in the latest issue of the _National Science Review_.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 24-JUL-2019
*Artificial throat could someday help mute people 'speak'*
AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY



​A wearable artificial graphene throat, abbreviated here as 'WAGT,' can transform human throat movements into different sounds with training of the wearer.
*CREDIT: *Adapted from _ACS Nano_ 2019, 10.1021/acsnano.9b03218

Most people take speech for granted, but it's actually a complex process that involves both motions of the mouth and vibrations of folded tissues, called vocal cords, within the throat. If the vocal cords sustain injuries or other lesions, a person can lose the ability to speak. Now, researchers reporting in _ACS Nano_ have developed a wearable artificial throat that, when attached to the neck like a temporary tattoo, can transform throat movements into sounds.

Scientists have developed detectors that measure movements on human skin, such as pulse or heartbeat. However, the devices typically can't convert these motions into sounds. Recently, He Tian, Yi Yang, Tian-Ling Ren and colleagues developed a prototype artificial throat with both capabilities, but because the device needed to be taped to the skin, it wasn't comfortable enough to wear for long periods of time. So the researchers wanted to develop a thinner, skin-like artificial throat that would adhere to the neck like a temporary tattoo.

To make their artificial throat, the researchers laser-scribed graphene on a thin sheet of polyvinyl alcohol film. The flexible device measured 0.6 by 1.2 inches, or about double the size of a person's thumbnail. The researchers used water to attach the film to the skin over a volunteer's throat and connected it with electrodes to a small armband that contained a circuit board, microcomputer, power amplifier and decoder. When the volunteer noiselessly imitated the throat motions of speech, the instrument converted these movements into emitted sounds, such as the words "OK" and "No." The researchers say that, in the future, mute people could be trained to generate signals with their throats that the device would translate into speech.


Artificial throat could someday help mute people 'speak' | EurekAlert! Science News

Yuhong Wei, Yancong Qiao, Guangya Jiang, Yunfan Wang, Fangwei Wang, Mingrui Li, Yunfei Zhao, Ye Tian, Guangyang Gou, Songyao Tan, He Tian, Yi Yang, Tian-Ling Ren. *A Wearable Skinlike Ultra-Sensitive Artificial Graphene Throat*. _ACS Nano_ (2019). DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.9b03218​

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

SHANK3 (green) is expressed along with a neural marker (NeuN) in the mouse anterior cingulate cortex.
Image: Guoping Feng

*Neuroscientists identify brain region linked to altered social interactions in autism model | MIT News*
In a mouse model, restoring activity of a specific forebrain region reverses social traits associated with autism.

by Sabbi Lall | McGovern Institute for Brain Research
July 26, 2019

Although psychiatric disorders can be linked to particular genes, the brain regions and mechanisms underlying particular disorders are not well-understood. Mutations or deletions of the SHANK3 gene are strongly associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and a related rare disorder called Phelan-McDermid syndrome. Mice with SHANK3 mutations also display some of the traits associated with autism, including avoidance of social interactions, but the brain regions responsible for this behavior have not been identified.

A new study by neuroscientists at MIT and colleagues in China provides clues to the neural circuits underlying social deficits associated with ASD. The paper, published in _Nature Neuroscience_, found that structural and functional impairments in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) of SHANK3 mutant mice are linked to altered social interactions.

“Neurobiological mechanisms of social deficits are very complex and involve many brain regions, even in a mouse model,” explains Guoping Feng, the James W. and Patricia T. Poitras Professor at MIT and one of the senior authors of the study. “These findings add another piece of the puzzle to mapping the neural circuits responsible for this social deficit in ASD models.”

The _Nature Neuroscience_ paper is the result of a collaboration between Feng, who is also an investigator at MIT’s McGovern Institute and a senior scientist in the Broad Institute’s Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, and Wenting Wang and Shengxi Wu at the Fourth Military Medical University, Xi’an, China.

A number of brain regions have been implicated in social interactions, including the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and its projections to brain regions including the nucleus accumbens and habenula, but these studies failed to definitively link the PFC to altered social interactions seen in SHANK3 knockout mice.

In the new study, the authors instead focused on the ACC, a brain region noted for its role in social functions in humans and animal models. The ACC is also known to play a role in fundamental cognitive processes, including cost-benefit calculation, motivation, and decision making.

In mice lacking SHANK3, the researchers found structural and functional disruptions at the synapses, or connections, between excitatory neurons in the ACC. The researchers went on to show that the loss of SHANK3 in excitatory ACC neurons alone was enough to disrupt communication between these neurons and led to unusually reduced activity of these neurons during behavioral tasks reflecting social interaction.

Having implicated these ACC neurons in social preferences and interactions in SHANK3 knockout mice, the authors then tested whether activating these same neurons could rescue these behaviors. Using optogenetics and specfic drugs, the researchers activated the ACC neurons and found improved social behavior in the SHANK3 mutant mice.

“Next, we are planning to explore brain regions downstream of the ACC that modulate social behavior in normal mice and models of autism,” explains Wenting Wang, co-corresponding author on the study. “This will help us to better understand the neural mechanisms of social behavior, as well as social deficits in neurodevelopmental disorders.”

Previous clinical studies reported that anatomical structures in the ACC were altered and/or dysfunctional in people with ASD, an initial indication that the findings from SHANK3 mice may also hold true in these individuals.

The research was funded, in part, by the Natural Science Foundation of China. Guoping Feng was supported by NIMH grant no. MH097104, the  Poitras Center for Psychiatric Disorders Research at the McGovern Institute at MIT, and the Hock E. Tan and K. Lisa Yang Center for Autism Research at the McGovern Institute at MIT.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

Four water droplets acting as wheels on a cargo carrier whiz along a negatively charged surface. Credit: Xu Deng/Zuankai Wang/Hans-Jürgen Butt

MATERIALS SCIENCE * 24 JULY 2019
*How to make water flow uphill*
Water droplets skitter across a surface ‘printed’ with patterns of negative charge.

Droplets of water can propel themselves up a vertical surface against the pull of gravity.

Water droplets will travel in a desired direction if placed on a surface with an uneven coating of water-repellent material: the most thickly-coated areas repel the droplets. But the droplets usually move slowly, and stop where the coating ends.

Xu Deng at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, and his colleagues have designed a system in which water drips from a pump onto a highly water-repellent surface. Upon impact, some of the water droplets’ negatively charged electrons are transferred to the surface.

The team varied certain factors, such as pump position, to layer an uneven distribution of electrons on the surface. Areas that were thus ‘printed’ with an extra helping of negative charge tugged on the water droplets, which whisked the droplets quickly along the surface. The technique allowed water droplets to flow uphill and climb walls.

This approach could control the flow of water, blood and other fluids in medical devices, the authors write.

_Nature Mater._ (2019)
​How to make water flow uphill : Research Highlights | Nature

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*To feed its 1.4 billion, China bets big on genome editing of crops*
By Jon Cohen
Jul. 29, 2019 , 8:00 AM

_This story, the first in a series on CRISPR in China, was supported by the Pulitzer Center._

IN BEIJING AND DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA—If Gao Caixia were a farmer, she might be spread a little thin. Down the hall from her office at a branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) here in Beijing, seeds from a strain of unusually soft rice and a variety of wheat with especially fat grains and resistance to a common fungus sprout in a tissue culture room. A short stroll away, wild tomato plants far hardier than domestic varieties but bearing the same sweet fruit crowd a greenhouse, along with herbicide-resistant corn and potatoes that are slow to brown when cut. In other lab rooms Gao grows new varieties of lettuce, bananas, ryegrass, and strawberries.

But Gao isn’t a farmer, and that cornucopia isn’t meant for the table—not yet, anyway. She is a plant scientist working at the leading edge of crop improvement. Every one of those diverse crops has been a target for conventional plant breeders, who have slowly and painstakingly worked to endow them with traits to make them more productive, nutritious, or hardy. But Gao is improving them at startling speeds by using the genome editor CRISPR.


....
To feed its 1.4 billion, China bets big on genome editing of crops | Science | AAAS


----------



## Galactic Penguin SST

*Asia’s 1st Tyrannosauripus found in China*

30 July 2019 - 19:10






http://web.archive.org/web/20190730230112if_/https://img9.irna.ir/d/r2/2019/07/30/4/156513038.jpg ; https://archive.is/5rHnS/7c05a4bc219068bf5eeb8b0cddf6ea3579048851/scr.png ; https://en.irna.ir/news/83417923/Asia-s-1st-Tyrannosauripus-found-in-China
▲ 1. Tehran, July 30, IRNA/ Global Times - A tyrannosaurid footprint was found by paleontologists in East China's Jiangxi Province, the first of its kind to be found in Asia, it was announced on Tuesday. 



The discovery is of great significance to the research of fauna distribution and Late Cretaceous evolution.

The track, found in Ganzhou, Jiangxi, is 58 centimeters long and 47 centimeters wide, and is one of the largest theropod tracks from China, said Xing Lida, a dinosaur footprint expert at Beijing-based China University of Geosciences.

The footprint shows sharp claw marks and steady feet; its toes are well developed, especially the second one with a slight marked inward curvature. Based on the above characteristics, it can be identified as a right footprint cast, the expert said.

Xing said the Ganzhou track is different from other large theropod tracks from China, but similar to the well-preserved Tyrannosauripus tracks from New Mexico and to Bellatoripes from British Columbia. The similarity has led Xing to tentatively label the track with Tyrannosauripus.

Xing noted that most dinosaur footprints found in China date back to the Jurassic Period or early-Cretaceous.

"A dinosaur footprint from the late-Cretaceous is very rare, not to mention a Tyrannosauripus, which is at the top of the food chain."

Xing said theropods are at least 7.5 meters long. This is similar to the estimated length of the Qianzhousaurus skeleton which was approximately 7.5 to 9 meters long.

Qianzhousaurus is a type of Tyrannosauripus previously found in Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province.

The footprint was located less than 33 kilometers from where the Qianzhousaurus was found, Xing said, noting that because it belongs to the top-level predator, it increases the possibility the track was left by a Qianzhousaurus.

Construction workers accidentally found the footprint. After realizing the track looked similar to dinosaur footprints, they gave the information to Niu Kecheng of the Yingliang Stone Nature History Museum in Nan'an, Southeast China's Fujian Province.

But Niu lost contact with the construction workers.

Two months later, Xing was informed by another person that the fossil was collected by people in Ganzhou.

"I was ecstatic when I heard the news. After seeing the picture, I knew that the goddess of luck had come to visit me," said Xing.

The findings were published by Xing, Niu, Martin G. Lockley of the University of Colorado and other researchers in Science Bulletin, a multidisciplinary academic journal supervised by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and co-sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

In June, a joint China-US research team announced in Beijing that they had discovered four nearly 100-million-year old fossilized dinosaur footprints in East China's Jiangsu Province.

https://en.irna.ir/news/83417923/Asia-s-1st-Tyrannosauripus-found-in-China

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*China’s CRISPR push in animals promises better meat, novel therapies, and pig organs for people*
By Jon Cohen
Jul. 31, 2019 , 8:00 AM

_This story, one in a series, was supported by the Pulitzer Center._

BEIJING, GUANGZHOU, JIANGMEN, KUNMING, AND SHANGHAI—Early one February morning, researchers harvest six eggs from a female rhesus macaque—one of 4000 monkeys chirping and clucking in a massive outdoor complex of metal cages here at the Yunnan Key Laboratory of Primate Biomedical Research. On today’s agenda at the busy facility, outside Kunming in southwest China: making monkey embryos with a gene mutated so that when the animals are born 5 months later, they will age unusually fast. The researchers first move the eggs to a laboratory bathed in red light to protect the fragile cells. Using high-powered microscopes, they examine the freshly gathered eggs and prepare to inject a single rhesus sperm into each one. If all goes well, the team will introduce the genome editor CRISPR before the resulting embryo begins to grow—early enough for the mutation for aging to show up in all cells of any offspring.


....

China’s CRISPR push in animals promises better meat, novel therapies, and pig organs for people | Science | AAAS


----------



## JSCh

*New approach could make HVAC heat exchangers five times better*
Turbulent heat exchangers are widely used in HVAC systems around the world, and a new study demonstrates a simple modification that can improve their capability by 500%.






PROVIDENCE, RI [Brown University] — Researchers from Tsinghua University and Brown University have discovered a simple way to give a major boost to turbulent heat exchange, a method of heat transport widely used in heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems.

In a paper published in Nature Communications, the researchers show that adding a readily available organic solvent to common water-based turbulent heat exchange systems can boost their capacity to move heat by 500%. That’s far better than other methods aimed at increasing heat transfer, the researchers say.

“Other methods for increasing heat flux — nanoparticle additives or other techniques — have achieved at best about 50% improvement,” said Varghese Mathai, a postdoctoral researcher at Brown and co-first author of the study, who worked with Chao Sun, a professor at Tsinghua who conceived of the idea. “What we achieve here is 10 times more improvement than other methods, which is really quite exciting.”

Turbulent heat exchangers are fairly simple devices that use the natural movements of liquid to move heat. They consist of a hot surface, a cold surface and tank of liquid in between. Near the hot surface, the liquid heats up, becomes less dense and forms warm plumes that rise toward the cold side. There, the liquid loses its heat, becomes denser and forms cold plumes that sink back down toward the hot side. The cycling of water serves to regulate the temperatures of each surface. This type of heat exchange is a staple of modern HVAC systems widely used in home heaters and air conditioning units, the researchers say.

In 2015, Sun had the idea to use an organic component known as hydrofluoroether or HFE to speed the cycling of heat inside this kind of exchanger. HFE is sometimes used as the sole fluid in heat exchangers, but Sun suspected that it might have more interesting properties as an additive in water-based systems. Working with the study’s co-first author Ziqi Wang, Mathai and Sun experimented with adding small amounts of HFE and, after three years of work, were able to maximize its effectiveness in speeding heat exchange. The team showed that concentrations of around 1% HFE created dramatic heat flux enhancements up to 500%.

Using high-speed imaging and laser diagnostic techniques, the researchers were able to show how the HFE enhancement works. When near the hot side of the exchanger, the globules of HFE quickly boil, forming biphasic bubbles of vapor and liquid that rise rapidly toward the cold plate above. At the cold plate, the bubbles lose their heat and descend as liquid. The bubbles affect the overall heat flux in two ways, the researchers showed. The bubbles themselves carry a significant amount of heat away from the hot side, but they also increase the speed of the surrounding water plumes rising and falling.

“This basically stirs up the system and makes the plumes move faster,” Sun said. “Combined with the heat that the bubbles themselves carry, we get a dramatic improvement in heat transfer.”

That stirring action could have other applications as well, the researchers say. It could be useful in systems designed to mix two or more liquids. The extra stir makes for faster and more complete mixing.

The researchers pointed out that the specific additive they used — HFE7000 — is non-corrosive, non-flammable and ozone friendly. One limitation is that the approach only works on vertical heat exchange systems — ones that move heat from a lower plate to an upper one. It doesn’t currently work on side-to-side systems, though the researchers are considering ways to adapt the technique. Still, vertical exchangers are widely used, and this study has shown a simple way to improve them dramatically.

“This biphasic approach generates a very large increase in heat flux with minimal modifications to existing heating and cooling systems,” Mathai said. “We think this has great promise to revolutionize heat exchange in HVAC and other large-scale applications.”


New approach could make HVAC heat exchangers five times better | Brown University

Ziqi Wang, Varghese Mathai, Chao Sun. *Self-sustained biphasic catalytic particle turbulence*. _Nature Communications_ (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-11221-w​


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *China’s CRISPR push in animals promises better meat, novel therapies, and pig organs for people*
> By Jon Cohen
> Jul. 31, 2019 , 8:00 AM
> 
> _This story, one in a series, was supported by the Pulitzer Center._
> 
> BEIJING, GUANGZHOU, JIANGMEN, KUNMING, AND SHANGHAI—Early one February morning, researchers harvest six eggs from a female rhesus macaque—one of 4000 monkeys chirping and clucking in a massive outdoor complex of metal cages here at the Yunnan Key Laboratory of Primate Biomedical Research. On today’s agenda at the busy facility, outside Kunming in southwest China: making monkey embryos with a gene mutated so that when the animals are born 5 months later, they will age unusually fast. The researchers first move the eggs to a laboratory bathed in red light to protect the fragile cells. Using high-powered microscopes, they examine the freshly gathered eggs and prepare to inject a single rhesus sperm into each one. If all goes well, the team will introduce the genome editor CRISPR before the resulting embryo begins to grow—early enough for the mutation for aging to show up in all cells of any offspring.
> 
> 
> ....
> 
> China’s CRISPR push in animals promises better meat, novel therapies, and pig organs for people | Science | AAAS


*China's CRISPR revolution | Science*
Jon Cohen

Science 02 Aug 2019:
Vol. 365, Issue 6452, pp. 420-421
DOI: 10.1126/science.365.6452.420

Editing of plant, animal, and human genomes has never been easier, as this country's scientists are rapidly demonstrating.

*FOR MANY PEOPLE*, CRISPR plus China equals the biophysicist He Jiankui, who infamously used the genome editor last year to alter the DNA of two human embryos that would become twin girls. Before his announcement, He was little-known within the country's CRISPR community, which has grown rapidly and is now challenging—and by some measures surpassing—the United States in its use of the powerful tool (see graphics, below).

A better representative of CRISPR in China is plant biologist Li Jiayang of the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology in Beijing. Li left the country in 1985 for his graduate education, as have many of China's best and brightest young scientists over the past few decades, and then returned home in 1995 to focus on manipulating plant DNA. Li, who recently ended a stint as head of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, says he struggled for years to make pinpoint genome edits. CRISPR gave him a simple, fast way to do just that, turbocharging his efforts to modify rice. “Now, suddenly, the dreams come true,” says Li, whose lab is humming at 9 p.m. on a Wednesday with two dozen members of his team running experiments.



A technician in Gao Caixia's lab selects immature wheat embryos for CRISPR editing.
PHOTO: STEFEN CHOW

The lights are burning late at CRISPR labs around the world. In 2012, the year researchers transformed a bacterial immune system into the fast and versatile tool for genome engineering, scientific publications mentioning CRISPR totaled 127. Since then there have been more than 14,000. Although the United States has had the most CRISPR publications—and continues to have the most cited papers—China is now a close second and is pouring money into CRISPR's uses.

With support from the Pulitzer Center, _Science_ visited scientists in five Chinese cities who are harnessing CRISPR in a wide range of disciplines. China's biggest push is in agriculture (see p. 422) but researchers there are also applying the editor on a large scale in animals (see p. 426), with pig organs for human transplants the most provocative goal. And China is aggressively exploring genome editing in medicine, having launched far more clinical trials using CRISPR, mainly for cancer, than any country (_Science_, 6 October 2017, p. 20).



CREDITS: (GRAPHICS) N. DESAI/_SCIENCE_; (DATA) GEOFFREY SIWO/UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME; J. MARTIN-LAFFON _ET AL., NATURE BIOTECHNOLOGY_, VOL. 37, JUNE 2019, 601–621; A. RICROCH _ET AL., EMERGING TOPICS IN LIFE SCIENCES_ (2017) 1 169–182

Although He's work lies far outside the mainstream, his actions haunt China (see p. 436). So does another, largely untold aspect of his rise and fall: the role that others, in China and abroad, played in the runup to his experiment. He shared his plans widely, and although several confidants tried to dissuade him, some were more encouraging (see p. 430).

Geneticist Wei Wensheng of Peking University in Beijing says the Chinese scientific culture has to look hard at how it creates researchers like He by overemphasizing firsts. “What I don't understand is why do you want to be named the first of something horrible or bad. What's the point?” Wei asks.

Yang Hui of the Institute of Neuroscience in Shanghai, one of the most successful young CRISPR researchers in the country, hopes China can move past He and up its game. Yes, Chinese researchers publish many CRISPR studies, he says, but “very few” do respected work that breaks new ground. “Our generation should publish more innovative papers,” Yang says.

But Yang stresses that he has seen the quality increase “very fast” over the past 2 years or so. As China plants its flag at this scientific frontier, overseas sojourns like Li's and his own may soon be the exception. “Now, many good students will choose to stay here because of the good opportunities,” Yang says. “And we have many good students working hard.”


----------



## JSCh

*Structure of a Photosystem II Supercomplex from Diatom Unravels the Energy-harvesting, Transfer and Dissipation Mechanisms*

Diatoms stem from red algae and account up to 40% of the net primary production in the ocean. The high photosynthesis capacity of diatoms are contributed largely by their light-harvesting antenna proteins, which are fucoxanthin (Fx) chlorophyll (Chl) a/c-binding proteins (FCPs) that can efficiently absorb blue-green light available underwater and also have strong nonphotochemical quenching (NPQ) abilities important for the highly fluctuating light environment in the surface of the ocean.

A large number of FCP subunits are associated with the PSII (Photosystem II) core, forming a PSII-FCPII supercomplex. However, the exact composition and organization of FCPs associated with the PSII core are still unknown, which restricts our understanding of the light-harvesting, energy transfer and dissipation processes in the PSII-FCPII supercomplex of diatoms.
Researchers from Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tsinghua University cooperated to determine the structure of the PSII-FCP supercomplex from a centric diatom _Chaetoceros gracilis_ by cryo-electron microscopy at a novel resolution. 

The research entitled "The pigment-protein network of a diatom photosystem II–light harvesting antenna supercomplex" is published in _Science_. 

A large quantity of pigments is assigned in the supercomplex, which include 230 Chls a, 58 Chls c, 124 Fxs, and 2 Diadoxanthins (Ddx). Among these pigments, Chl c and Fxs are important for their ability to harvest blue-green light under water. One Ddx is confirmed in a monomeric FCP mediating the energy transfer towards the core, which render this Ddx as an ideal site for possible energy dissipation. 

"The results provide a structural basis for the efficient excitation energy transfer and quenching mechanisms in the PSII-FCPII supercomplex and also the evolutionary changes of the extrinsic proteins involved in the OEC", said Prof. SHEN Jianren, one of the corresponding authors of this study. 

The paper was accompanied by a perspective written by Professor Claudia Büchel, one of the pioneers in the studies of diatom photosynthesis: "How diatoms harvest light". In this perspective, Prof. Claudia Büchel said: "The FCP structures solved by SHEN's group are milestones on the way to understanding the high flexibility of LHC/FCP proteins, where the same purpose is served by similar proteins in a very different manner." 



Fig.1. Model of a diatom PSII-FCPII supercomplex embedded in the thylakoid membrane (Image by IBCAS)



Structure of a Photosystem II Supercomplex from Diatom Unravels the Energy-harvesting, Transfer and Dissipation Mechanisms---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Xiong Pi, Songhao Zhao, Wenda Wang, Desheng Liu, Caizhe Xu, Guangye Han, Tingyun Kuang, Sen-Fang Sui, Jian-Ren Shen. *The pigment-protein network of a diatom photosystem II–light-harvesting antenna supercomplex*. _Science_ (2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aax4406​


----------



## JSCh

*Shanghai scientists make new discovery*
By ZHOU WENTING in Shanghai | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2019-08-08 18:43
​Shanghai scientists have made new discoveries regarding the spatial and temporal developmental trajectory of cells in early embryos, paving ways for more efficient methods to obtain stem cells for certain human organs. This may in turn promote the development of stem cell-related regenerative medicine.

Stem cell-related therapies, which are mainly targeted at diseases, including those in the immune and nervous systems of which no drugs are available so far, have been publicly recognized to bring prospective medical breakthroughs in the next one or two decades.

However, several factors, including low efficiency in cell differentiation, a shortage of functional cells, immaturity of differentiated cells and low purity of cells hinder the application of stem cells. The unsolved mysteries underlying the lineage regarding stem cells in the early stage of life may be the root cause, experts said.

A research group consisting of scientists from the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, CAS-MPG Partner Institute for Computational Biology and Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, all of which are affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, conducted a comprehensive analysis with high-resolution spatial and temporal information retained on the developmental stages of early mouse embryo. The study established a three-dimensional molecular map for the expressed genes in the early embryos, providing a paradigm for the elucidation of lineage trajectory in primary germ layers and hence enabling the tracking of the "ancestors" of cells in different location.

Within one week, a fertilized egg will develop into a blastula – a hollow sphere of cells – before forming three layers: ectoderm, mesoderm, and entoderm. The ectoderm eventually develops into the body's nerve system and skin tissues; the mesoderm develops into tissues including heart, blood, muscles and bones; the endoderm develops into organs, such as lung, liver, pancreas and intestines.

"On the basis of our results, we revealed the fine developmental trajectory of progenitor cells that have not been observed by traditional approach. For example, some cells in mesoderm and ectoderm that used to be believed to derive separately may have common progenitors," said Jing Naihe, a leading researcher on the team.

"Such findings may help scientists develop new methods to obtain stem cells for livers, pancreas and spinal cord, and contribute to related disease researches and stem cell-related regenerative medicine," he said.

A paper about the study was published on the website of the United Kingdom-based journal _Nature _on Thursday.

Guangdun Peng, Shengbao Suo, Guizhong Cui, Fang Yu, Ran Wang, Jun Chen, Shirui Chen, Zhiwen Liu, Guoyu Chen, Yun Qian, Patrick P. L. Tam, Jing-Dong J. Han & Naihe Jing. *Molecular architecture of lineage allocation and tissue organization in early mouse embryo*. _Nature _(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1469-8​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *First performance test of a 30 mm iron-based superconductor single pancake coil under a 24 T background field*
> Dongliang Wang1,2,5, Zhan Zhang3,5, Xianping Zhang1,2, Donghui Jiang4, Chiheng Dong1, He Huang1,2, Wenge Chen4, Qingjin Xu3,6 and Yanwei Ma1,2,6
> 
> Published 8 March 2019 • © 2019 IOP Publishing Ltd
> Superconductor Science and Technology, Volume 32, Number 4
> 
> *Abstract*
> A 30 mm inner diameter iron-based superconductor (IBS) single pancake coil (SPC) was firstly fabricated and tested under a 24 T background field. This SPC was successfully made using the seven-filamentary Ba1−xKxFe2As2 (Ba122) tape by the wind-and-react method. This IBS coil shows the highest _I_ c value at a magnetic field reported so far. For example, the transport critical current of this Ba122 SPC achieved 35 A at 4.2 K and 10 T, which is about half of that of a short sample. This indicates that the non-insulation winding process together with the stainless steel tape is suitable for an IBS. Even more encouraging is the fact that the _I_ c of this SPC is still as high as 26 A under a 24 T background field, which is still about 40% of that at zero external magnetic field. These results clearly demonstrate that IBSs are very promising for high-field magnet applications.
> 
> 
> First performance test of a 30 mm iron-based superconductor single pancake coil under a 24 T background field - IOPscience


*2019 ESAS Award for Excellence in Applied Superconductivity*




Prof. Yanwei Ma
Institute of Electrical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Beijing, China​
The 2019 ESAS Award for Excellence in Applied Superconductivity will be bestowed to Prof. Dr. Yanwei Ma from the Institute of Electrical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing to acknowledge his outstanding contributions to the development of superconductive wires with potentially very high impact for applications. Based on key fundamental insight and understanding of superconducting properties of materials and envisioning their potential, he designed the required, often novel, technologies for their processing. Outstanding in recent years are the innovative concepts developed for the processing and manufacture of Fe-based superconductors, with their robustness to high magnetic fields and their small electromagnetic anisotropy. Upon tailoring appropriate powder-in-tube processing technologies, wires could be processed with in-field critical currents exceeding the widely accepted threshold for practical application, reaching new milestones.


2019 ESAS Award for Excellence in Applied Superconductivity – The European Society of Applied Superconductivity

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

AUGUST 8, 2019
*New perovskite material shows early promise as an alternative to silicon*
by Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology




To minimize the loss of electrons from CsPbI3 (red, central layer) into adjacent layers, it is important that the energy levels (eV, on the graph) of all layers are similar. Credit: OIST

Silicon dominates solar energy products—it is stable, cheap and efficient at turning sunlight into electricity. Any new material taking on silicon must compete and win on those grounds. As a result of an international research collaboration, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) have found a stable material that efficiently creates electricity—which could challenge silicon hegemony.

Writing in _Science_, the collaborating teams show how the material CsPbI3 has been stabilized in a new configuration capable of reaching high conversion efficiencies. CsPbI3 is an inorganic perovskite, a group of materials gaining popularity in the solar world due to their high efficiency and low cost. This configuration is noteworthy as stabilizing these materials has historically been a challenge.

"We are pleased with results suggesting that CsPbI3 can compete with industry-leading materials," says Professor Yabing Qi, head of OIST's Energy Materials and Surface Sciences Unit, who led on the surface science aspect of the study.

"From this preliminary result we will now work on boosting the material's stability—and commercial prospects."

*Energy level alignment*
CsPbI3 is often studied in its alpha phase, a well-known configuration of the crystal structure appropriately known as the dark phase because of its black color. This phase is particularly good at absorbing sunlight. Unfortunately, it is also unstable—and the structure rapidly degrades into a yellowish form, less able to absorb sunlight.

This study instead explored the crystal in its beta phase, a less well-known arrangement of the structure that is more stable than its alpha phase. While this structure is more stable, it shows relatively low power conversion efficiency.

This low efficiency partly results from the cracks that often emerge in thin-film solar cells. These cracks induce the loss of electrons into adjacent layers in the solar cell—electrons that can no longer flow as electricity. The team treated the material with a choline iodide solution to heal these cracks, and this solution also optimized the interface between layers in the solar cell, known as energy level alignment.

"Electrons naturally flow to materials with lower potential energy for electrons, so it is important that the adjacent layers' energy levels are similar to CsPbI3," says Dr. Luis K. Ono, a co-author from Professor Qi's lab. "This synergy between layers results in fewer electrons being lost—and more electricity being generated."

The OIST team, supported by the OIST Technology Development and Innovation Center, used ultraviolet photoemission spectroscopy to investigate the energy level alignment between CsPbI3 and the adjacent layers. These data showed how electrons can then move freely through the different layers, generating electricity.

The results showed a low loss of electrons to adjacent layers following treatment with choline iodide —due to better energy level alignments between the layers. By repairing the cracks that naturally emerge, this treatment led to an increase in conversion efficiency from 15 percent to 18 percent.

While that leap may seem small, it brings CsPbI3 into the realm of certified efficiency, the competitive values offered by rival solar materials. Although this early result is promising, inorganic perovskite is still lagging. For CsPbI3 to truly compete with silicon, the team will next work on the trinity of factors allowing silicon's reign to continue—stability, cost, and efficiency.


New perovskite material shows early promise as an alternative to silicon | TechXplore

Yong Wang, M. Ibrahim Dar, Luis K. Ono, Taiyang Zhang, Miao Kan, Yawen Li, Lijun Zhang, Xingtao Wang, Yingguo Yang, Xingyu Gao, Yabing Qi, Michael Grätzel, Yixin Zhao. *Thermodynamically stabilized β-CsPbI3–based perovskite solar cells with efficiencies >18%*. _Science _(2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aav8680​

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Physics - Synopsis: Hydrodynamic Cloaks*
August 13, 2019

Two separate groups have designed structures that can hide objects from fluid flows and surface waves so that no wake is visible.



J. Park _et al_., Phys. Rev. Lett. (2019)

What do you get when you cross Harry Potter with Aquaman? An invisibility cloak that works in water, of course. Physicists have taken steps towards this sci-fi mashup with two structural systems that direct fluid flow around an object. The first cloak is a ring of small pillars that deflects incoming fluid in such a way that there is zero drag in the middle of the ring. The second cloak is a pair of thin platforms that funnels waves around objects inside a water channel.

Electromagnetic cloaks—which appeared more than a decade ago—rely on complex structures called metamaterials that bend light waves in ways that traditional materials cannot. Metamaterials can also be designed to work with other wave phenomena, such as sound and heat. As far as fluids are concerned, previous attempts at a hydrodynamical cloak have required active elements, such as micropumps (see 11 August 2011 Synopsis).

Juhyuk Park from Seoul National University in South Korea and colleagues have devised a passive cloak that doesn’t require any input energy. The team first calculated the type of metamaterial needed to cancel the drag on a small obstacle sitting in a sheet of slow-moving fluid. The resulting design is a circular “maze” consisting of 523 pillars that direct flow away from the central region—where the obstacle is located. In experiments, the researchers placed a cylinder inside the cloak and observed how flowing water detoured around the object without generating any downstream wake. With further improvement, such a device could reduce the drag on ships or submarines.

For their passive hydrodynamic cloak, a team of researchers from Zhejiang University and Xiamen University in China had a different aim: reduce the amplitude of water waves inside a channel. The team took inspiration from waveguide cloaks, which use gradient index metamaterials (GIMs) to convert light waves into narrow “trapped modes” that can avoid obstacles in optical waveguides. The researchers installed two thin platforms along the sidewalls of a 60-m-long wave tank. The platforms acted like GIMs by creating shallow regions where waves travel more slowly. In tests with a broad range of wave frequencies, the team found that incoming plane waves converted to trapped modes above the platforms, leaving the middle of the tank nearly wave-free. The team imagines installing such a system in a port or wharf to protect ships.

This research is published in _Physical Review Letters_.

–Michael Schirber
Michael Schirber is a Corresponding Editor for _Physics _based in Lyon, France.

*Broadband Waveguide Cloak for Water Waves*
Siyuan Zou, Yadong Xu, Razafizana Zatianina, Chunyang Li, Xu Liang, Lili Zhu, Yongqiang Zhang, Guohua Liu, Qing Huo Liu, Huanyang Chen, and Zhenyu Wang

Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 074501 (2019)
Published August 13, 2019

*Hydrodynamic Metamaterial Cloak for Drag-Free Flow*
Juhyuk Park, Jae Ryoun Youn, and Young Seok Song

Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 074502 (2019)
Published August 13, 2019​

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> NEWS * 17 JULY 2019
> *World’s most invasive mosquito nearly eradicated from two islands in China*
> Researchers combined sterilization with a bacterium in an attempt to stamp out the Asian tiger mosquito.
> 
> Giorgia Guglielmi
> 
> Researchers have all but obliterated populations of the world’s most invasive mosquito species — the Asian tiger mosquito (_Aedes albopictus_) — on two islands in the Chinese city of Guangzhou.
> 
> They reduced _A. albopictus_ populations by up to 94% using a combination of two promising control techniques in a field trial for the first time. The two-pronged approach1, published in _Nature_ on 17 July, integrates the sterilization of female Asian tiger mosquitoes with the infection of males using _Wolbachia pipientis_, a bacterium that hinders the insects’ ability to reproduce and transmit disease-causing viruses such as dengue and Zika.
> 
> This resulted in one of the most successful eradication trials of _A. albopictus _to date, says Peter Armbruster, a mosquito ecologist at Georgetown University in Washington DC, who wrote a commentary to accompany the study. Used in tandem with other control methods such as pesticides, the dual approach could be a very powerful tool, he says.
> 
> *Problems with control*
> Previous studies have shown that X-ray sterilization of large numbers of male pests like screw worms (_Cochliomyia hominivorax_), followed by their release into target areas, can reduce the size of wild pest populations. But this is an inefficient way to control mosquitoes because even though irradiated males can still mate, they are less successful than their unaltered counterparts.
> 
> In an alternative approach, workers infect laboratory mosquitoes with strains of _Wolbachia_, which is found naturally in several insect species, including _A. albopictus_. When male mosquitoes infected with a certain combination of _Wolbachia_ strains mate with wild females carrying a different combination, the insects can’t produce offspring.
> 
> But it’s crucial that only male mosquitoes infected with that particular combination are released into the wild, says Zhiyong Xi, a medical entomologist at Michigan State University in East Lansing, who led the study. If females with those strains are also released, they could mate and produce offspring with males carrying the same _Wolbachia_cocktail. Their offspring could eventually replace the local mosquito population, making future control attempts that rely on _Wolbachia_ infection more difficult.
> 
> To prevent this from happening, facilities that rear large numbers of mosquitoes for control purposes usually separate males from females mechanically, based on size differences. But this process isn’t perfect, Xi says, so workers have to do a second, manual screening to remove female mosquitoes. It’s a tedious and time-consuming task that limits the total number of mosquitoes that can be released. So Xi and his team set out to eliminate the need for this process.
> 
> *An issue of scale*
> Wild populations of _A. albopictus_ are naturally infected with two strains of _Wolbachia_. The researchers infected wild mosquitoes with a third strain of _Wolbachia_ to produce a laboratory colony of the insects with three bacterial variants. Then, the team exposed the colony to low levels of radiation that sterilized the females but only slightly reduced the males’ ability to mate.
> 
> During the mosquitoes’ peak breeding seasons in 2016 and 2017, the researchers released more than 160,000 of these mosquitoes per hectare each week in residential areas on two islands situated in a river in Guangzhou — the city with the highest rate of dengue transmission in China.
> 
> Their hope was that this would vastly reduce the mosquito population because wild females that mated with the altered males — and wild males that mated with sterile lab females — wouldn’t produce offspring. The team tracked population declines in adult female mosquitoes, since they’re the ones that bite people and transmit diseases. And as expected, the average numbers of wild adult females fell by 83% in 2016 and by 94% in 2017.
> 
> 
> 
> Male Asian tiger mosquitoes carrying three strains of _Wolbachia_ await release into a test site.Credit: Yajun Wang
> 
> “That’s very impressive,” says Stephen Dobson, a medical entomologist at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, and the founder of MosquitoMate, a company that commercializes _Wolbachia_ as a tool to control the Asian tiger mosquito.
> 
> Current strategies for controlling _A. albopictus_ — including spraying pesticides and removing water-filled containers where the insects lay their eggs — are ineffective, Dobson says. This species lays its eggs in hidden places that can be difficult to monitor and tends to develop resistance to common insecticides, he adds. “A new tool like what’s being described in this paper is very much needed,” he says.
> 
> But scaling up the technique into an effective public-health strategy for large regions is the challenge, says Gordana Rašić, a molecular ecologist at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Brisbane, Australia.
> 
> Rašić says that _Wolbachia_-based approaches are promising strategies, and she’s hopeful that developing and testing such tools will help to reduce the incidence of mosquito-borne diseases. “We’re living in very exciting times for mosquito control,” she says.
> 
> doi: 10.1038/d41586-019-02160-z
> See the related News & Views ‘A trial to tackle tiger mosquitoes’.
> 
> 
> World’s most invasive mosquito nearly eradicated from two islands in China | Nature
> 
> Xiaoying Zheng, Dongjing Zhang, Yongjun Li, Cui Yang, Yu Wu, Xiao Liang, Yongkang Liang, Xiaoling Pan, Linchao Hu, Qiang Sun, Xiaohua Wang, Yingyang Wei, Jian Zhu, Wei Qian, Ziqiang Yan, Andrew G. Parker, Jeremie R. L. Gilles, Kostas Bourtzis, Jérémy Bouyer, Moxun Tang, Bo Zheng, Jianshe Yu, Julian Liu, Jiajia Zhuang, Zhigang Hu, Meichun Zhang, Jun-Tao Gong, Xiao-Yue Hong, Zhoubing Zhang, Lifeng Lin, Qiyong Liu, Zhiyong Hu, Zhongdao Wu, Luke Anthony Baton, Ary A. Hoffmann & Zhiyong Xi. *Incompatible and sterile insect techniques combined eliminate mosquitoes*. _Nature_, July 2019. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1407-9​


*Mosquito control company gets contracts in Xinjiang, Hunan*
By Li Wenfang in Guangzhou | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2019-08-14 14:34

A Guangzhou-based company that runs the world's largest factory of mosquitoes used to control the species signed agreements Tuesday to control mosquitoes in Beitun, Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, and rice planthoppers in Central China's Hunan province.

Guangzhou Wolbaki Biotech Co will work with the Hunan Academy of Agricultural Sciences in the study of controlling rice planthoppers, which pose a threat to rice crops. Hunan is the largest rice-growing province in the country.

The company also will help Beitun city in Xinjiang's Altay prefecture fight mosquitoes. The Altay region is one of the world's four places with the largest mosquito population, said Xu Longquan, deputy mayor of Beitun.

In spring and summer, when the snow on the Altay Mountains melts, water from reservoirs runs into forests and meadows and forms swarms and pools that become breeding grounds for mosquitoes, Xu said.

Between May and August, which is a local tourism peak season, the number of mosquitoes soars, annoying local residents and tourists, he said.

Although efforts are made every year to control mosquitoes, it is hard to tackle the problem at the root.

Guangzhou Wolbaki chairman Xi Zhiyong, who is also director of the Laboratory of Tropical Disease Control and Prevention at Guangzhou-based Sun Yat-sen University, has led the research on using mosquitoes to eliminate mosquitoes.

In the research, male mosquitoes are infected with Wolbachia, a bacterium that exists widely in many insects, including mosquitoes.

The eggs produced by female mosquitoes that mate with Wolbachia-infected male counterparts are infertile and that helps lead to reduced mosquito numbers.

The article on the study appeared in the academic journal _Nature _last month.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Removable floodwalls protect Chinese cities*
By Zhang Han Source:Global Times Published: 2019/8/14 23:33:40



Before Typhoon Lekima made landfall, removable aluminum alloy floodwalls were installed along a river bank in Yuyao, East China's Zhejiang Province. Photo: Courtesy of Lei Dong

Domestically-made metal floodwalls have helped Chinese cities resist floods caused by super Typhoon Lekima at half the price of foreign products.

The walls have been set up at key places for flood control, including river banks, bridge heads and intersections in Shouguang, East China's Shandong Province since May as the city's latest improvement in flood control, after half a million Shouguang residents suffered and 60,000 were relocated for flooded areas last year, according to a report of the Science and Technology Daily on Wednesday.

As Lekima brought torrential rain and floods which overflowed concrete dykes and submerged bridges in Shouguang over the weekend, the walls kept floodwaters in a hanging river and protected city centers and low-lying places from being submerged. 

Lei Dong, the floodwall's developer, told the Global Times on Wednesday that the walls are made of aluminum alloy plates that can hold back large amounts of floodwater. 

"They are easy to assemble to a desired height," said Lei, who is also a professor at Hohai University in Nanjing, East China's Jiangsu Province. 

Two people can assemble a 100-meter-long, two meter-high floodwall in an hour, while higher walls require a small hoist, Li said. 

If it was not for the walls, the city center of Shouguang would have been destroyed by the floods, residents and property would have been threatened, a local resident named Wang Tinglin was quoted as saying by the Science and Technology Daily. 

Removable floodwalls were first adopted by Germany in 1984, and are now widely used in countries like France and Austria. 

Lei said China is a latecomer due to the wall's high cost and maintenance. But the domestic ones only cost between 3,000 ($427) and 4,000 yuan a square meter, which is roughly half the price of their foreign counterparts. 

Besides Shouguang, Yuyao in Zhejiang Province, Changzhou and Wuxi in East China's Jiangsu Province also installed removable floodwalls to defend against Lekima. 

While many Chinese cities still use sandbags to hold back floodwaters, which are time- and labor-consuming, more of them are preparing to use such floodwalls, and the market is huge, Lei said. 

Lekima, which is estimated to be the strongest since 1961, has claimed 56 lives with 14 still missing in more than ten provinces as of Wednesday, China's National Climate Center announced on its website.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *China building world's largest earthquake warning system*
> By Gong Zhe
> 2018-12-31 22:55 GMT+8
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Earthquake can be destructive. Unfortunately, we don't have a reliable way to predict.
> 
> But technologies can still help us under such a desperate situation. For example, sending a message after the earthquake happens, yet before it travels from underground where we live.
> 
> China is building the world's largest earthquake alert system and it's possibly the most advanced.
> 
> Engineers are setting up more than 15,000 sensors all over the country and wiring them into a web.
> 
> When an earthquake happens, the sensors can send electrical pulses to the control center and then ordinary people's smartphones.
> 
> The signal travels at (almost) light speed and is much faster than the devastating earthquake shaking, giving local people a little bit time to prepare.
> 
> According to an internal document CGTN got from the project managers, the system can send messages to people less than two seconds after the earthquake happens.
> 
> So the time between the warning and the actual impact might only be seconds or a minute. But it's proved to be life-saving because every second matter in this situation.
> 
> Similar systems can be found in other earthquake-prone places including Japan and U.S. west coast.
> 
> But China's system can be more advanced in many ways.
> 
> "It will be the largest earthquake observation network in the world," said Li Shanyou, deputy chief engineer of the system.
> 
> "It's more integrated than the Japanese and the U.S. ones," he added.
> 
> The system can not only detect the movement of the continents but also calculate the possible impact of an earthquake.
> 
> So it will automatically warn local people, making it much faster than human observation.
> 
> "It can make experts from other countries envy," Li told CGTN.
> 
> The system, overseen by China's Ministry of Emergency Management, is set to be completed in 2022.


*China, Indonesia cooperate in earthquake early warning system*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-08-16 01:37:25|Editor: ZX



Representatives from Indonesia and China sign an agreement at the launching ceremony of a joint construction project of Earthquake Early Warning System (EEWS) in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Aug. 15, 2019. China's Institute of Care-Life (ICL) and Indonesia's Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysical Agency (BMKG) announced a joint construction project on Thursday to install EEWS in several locations, aiming at completing Indonesia's system which only serves for tsunami warning system at present. (Xinhua/Du Yu)

JAKARTA, Aug. 15 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese researcher and developer institution and an Indonesian agency announced a joint construction project on Thursday to install Earthquake Early Warning System (EEWS) in several locations, aiming at completing Indonesia's system which only serves for tsunami warning system at present.

Under the joint project carried out by China's Institute of Care-Life (ICL) and Indonesia's Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysical Agency (BMKG), EEWS equipment were installed in Sunda Strait, West Java, Banten and some provinces on Sumatra island, identified as earthquake-prone areas.

Hailing the joint construction of EEWS project in Indonesia, Cultural Chancellor at the Chinese Embassy Zhou Bin said the joint project would deepen the cooperation between China and Indonesia in disaster mitigation.

"I hope Institute of Care-Life of China can closely work together with BMKG to successfully complete the installation of earthquake early warning system, assuring that the system can provide greater benefit in Indonesia's earthquake warning," he addressed the event held in the BMKG premises.

ICL Director Wang Tun said Indonesia sits in world's most active seismic zone called the Circum-Pacific seismic belt.

It is a typical earthquake-prone area. Like China, Indonesia is a country that is deeply plagued by earthquake disasters, he added.

BMKG Chief Dwikorita Karnawati said construction of the EEWS in Indonesia is an urgent projects as threats from earthquakes have been escalating significantly in the last few months.

The EEWS would complete Indonesia's early warning system for tsunami that usually follows an earthquake striking in the sea, she said. Indonesia's tsunami warning system has been in operation since 2008.

"The EEWS is expected to provide warning from 15 to 10 seconds before an earthquake occurs. It will give more golden time for people to safety," she said in her remarks.

The EEWS system would eventually be installed in Indonesia's public transport system, industries, office buildings to avoid secondary accidents that could be generated by the earthquake, Karnawati said.

She added that the existing tsunami early warning system is only capable of identifying earthquake after it takes place and analyze possible tsunami that could be triggered by the earthquake.

Reactions: Like Like:
5


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *China’s Self-Developed Medical Imaging Device PET/CT Enters Final Clinical Trial*
> DOU SHICONG
> DATE: FRI, 05/04/2018 - 14:28 / SOURCE:YICAI
> 
> 
> 
> China’s Self-Developed Medical Imaging Device PET/CT Enters Final Clinical Trial
> 
> (Yicai Global) May 4 -- The world’s first fully-digital PET/CT has entered the final phase of clinical tests. PET/CT is a new type of medical imaging device that combines positron emission tomography with computed tomography, two diagnosis and treatment technologies.
> 
> A team led by Prof. Xie Qingguo of Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, china's central Hubei province developed the device.
> 
> The First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University and Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center are soliciting volunteers from the public to clinically test the equipment’s safety and efficacy during imaging diagnosis, Chinese Science News reported yesterday. After 120 cases of clinical trials conclude, registration documents will be submitted to relevant authorities.
> 
> The new PET/CT device is fully digital and able to precisely sample. It can detect tumors earlier and more accurately than conventional PET/CT devices. It also finds wide use in early detection of senile dementia and Alzheimer's.
> 
> The five-year survival rate of Chinese cancer patients is a mere 31 percent, less than half of that in the US. This low ratio is in part to blame on delayed detection and treatment, and the PET/CT device can significantly improve the capability of early cancer detection through its advantages in imaging performance, noted Zhang Xiangsong, director of nuclear medicine department of the First Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University.
> 
> Xie’s team started research into fully-digital PET/CT in 2001 and developed the new device in 2016, which solved the technical problem of the inability of traditional PET devices to digitize scintillating pulse signals, and thus it significantly reduces detection time and costs.


*China self-developed full-digital PET completes multiple brain imaging*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-08-16 16:06:06|Editor: Li Xia

WUHAN, Aug. 16 (Xinhua) -- China's first home-developed full-digital positron emission tomography (PET) scanner has completed multiple clinical cases of brain imaging.

It was recently installed in the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, Guangdong Province.

Mainly used for early diagnosis and accurate treatment of neurological diseases such as brain tumors and Parkinson's disease, the equipment is believed to be the world's first full-digital PET exclusively developed for cerebral imaging.

It was developed after 19 years of efforts by a team led by Xie Qingguo, a biomedical engineering professor at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei Province.

"Multiple clinical trials have provided clear images of brain sulci and gyri and legible pictures of ventricles of the brain," said Zhang Xiangsong, chief physician of the Department of Nuclear Medicine at the hospital.

The brain imaging results reflected an ultra-high biochemical sensitivity of the PET system, which has great potential for exploring brain science and studying brain diseases, he added.

A 30-year-old female patient of the hospital was recently diagnosed with Parkinson's disease by the equipment. "With early detection and proper therapy and medication, she can still expect to live as long as a healthy person," Zhang said.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Physics - Synopsis: Quantum Interference Across an Astronomical Distance*
August 21, 2019

Researchers witness quantum interference and entanglement between photons from sources 150 million km apart—the Sun and a quantum dot in their lab.



C.-Y. Lu and L.-C. Peng/HFNL

In 1987, a landmark experiment demonstrated a striking quantum optical effect: When two identical photons simultaneously enter a beam splitter, quantum interference forces both of them to bunch together and always exit from the same beam splitter port. Subsequent variations of the experiment have tested a variety of settings to show that photons from distant sources can show quantum interference. Now, a team of researchers has harnessed sunlight to demonstrate quantum interference between photons generated 150 million km apart, setting the stage for quantum optics experiments on astronomical scales.

These so-called Hong-Ou-Mandel experiments rely on devices that generate single, identical photons on command. The Sun, however, emits photons across a range of frequencies and polarizations and with uncontrollable arrival times. To turn it into a single-photon source, Chao-Yang Lu, at the University of Science and Technology of China, Shanghai, and colleagues hooked up a solar telescope to a series of fibers, filters, and gratings designed to spit out photons that match those generated by a semiconductor quantum dot in their lab. When they combined the two photon streams in a beam splitter, they found that when photons arrived simultaneously, they exited the same port 90% of the time.

This observation indicates interference above and beyond that expected from classical physics—showing that thermal light from a natural source can be used in quantum optical experiments. The team went on to generate entangled states between photons from the two disparate sources and demonstrated that such states clearly violated a Bell inequality, a test that unambiguously reveals nonlocal correlation between particles. The results suggest that sunlight could be used as an independent light source in certain quantum encryption schemes, the team says.

This research is published in _Physical Review Letters_.

–Christopher Crockett
Christopher Crockett is a freelance writer based in Arlington, Virginia.

*Quantum Interference between Light Sources Separated by 150 Million Kilometers*
Yu-Hao Deng, Hui Wang, Xing Ding, Z.-C. Duan, Jian Qin, M.-C. Chen, Yu He, Yu-Ming He, Jin-Peng Li, Yu-Huai Li, Li-Chao Peng, E. S. Matekole, Tim Byrnes, C. Schneider, M. Kamp, Da-Wei Wang, Jonathan P. Dowling, Sven Höfling, Chao-Yang Lu, Marlan O. Scully, and Jian-Wei Pan

Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 080401 (2019)
Published August 21, 2019​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Viewpoint: A Prediction for “Hot” Superconductivity*

José A. Flores-Livas, Department of Physics, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy
Ryotaro Arita, Department of Applied Physics, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
August 26, 2019• _Physics_ 12, 96

A proposed hydrogen-rich solid would superconduct above the boiling point of water—though the material would need to be subjected to a colossal pressure.



....

Physics - Viewpoint: A Prediction for “Hot” Superconductivity

*Route to a Superconducting Phase above Room Temperature in Electron-Doped Hydride Compounds under High Pressure*
Ying Sun, Jian Lv, Yu Xie, Hanyu Liu, and Yanming Ma

Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 097001 (2019)

Published August 26, 2019​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

↑↑↑
AUGUST 27, 2019 REPORT
*Prediction: Hydride compound should be superconductive at high temperature and pressure*
by Bob Yirka , Phys.org



Ma and colleagues predict that, under a pressure of 250 GPa, the compound Li2MgH16 will superconduct with a transition temperature of around 200C. According to their calculations, the lithium atoms (green) help prevent the hydrogen atoms (small red spheres) from forming H2, which would block superconductivity. Credit: Y. Sun et al. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.097001

A team of researchers at Jilin University has calculated that a certain hydride compound should be superconductive at high temperature and under very high pressure. In their paper published in the journal _Physical Review Letters_, the group describes the work they did that led to their theory.

For over 100 years, scientists have been intrigued by the possibility of using superconductive materials in real-world products. Such materials would solve heat problems with electronic devices and would also make them far more efficient than those available today. Unfortunately, scientists have not been able to find a material that superconducts at room temperature and ambient pressure. Most materials tested thus far become superconductive at extremely low temperatures, limiting their use in a commercial product.

In recent years, researchers have found materials that become superconductive at high temperatures. Most are hydrides, which, as their name suggests, are materials rich in hydrogen—mostly binary compounds. In this new effort, the researchers bucked the trend of finding superconducting hydrides via experimentation in the lab—instead, they have developed a theory that suggests a ternary hydride Li2MgH16 should become superconducting at a temperature of approximately 473 K and pressure of 250 GPa. The researchers note that in their theory, Li2MgH16can actually be considered as a binary hydride (MgH16) that has been doped with lithium to serve as an electron donor. Without the lithium, the hydride would simply break down into H2 when exposed to high pressure.

Notably, the work by the team in China is purely theoretical—they have made no effort to create and test their ideas. This is because the pressure required to make the material transition to superconducting would be difficult to achieve—it is close to that found at the Earth's core. But the work does represent a change in approach to finding a material that superconducts at room temperature and ambient pressure—using theory and math. They suggest their work shows that conventional physics tools such as density-functional theory calculations can be used in the search, speeding up the process and perhaps the eventual discovery of truly usable superconducting materials.


https://phys.org/news/2019-08-hydride-compound-superconductive-high-temperature.html

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Study reveals possible mechanism behind human embryo implantation*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-08-27 16:41:11|Editor: Li Xia

BEIJING, Aug. 27 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers have revealed how the gene regulatory network and epigenetic mechanisms potentially control the human embryo implantation process.

After a sperm fertilizes an egg, they become a totipotent embryo which is capable of differentiating into an unlimited number of specialized cell types. It travels and attaches itself into the wall of the uterus at about the seventh day, which is called implantation. Then, it is possible for the embryo to initiate a successful pregnancy.

Implantation failure is a major cause of early pregnancy loss in humans. Due to the difficulty of obtaining human embryos early after implantation, rodent and monkey embryos were usually used in previous studies, which cannot accurately show regulatory mechanisms of implantation in humans.

In the study published in the journal _Nature_, researchers from Peking University and Peking University Third Hospital observed and analyzed human peri-implantation embryos in vitro culture system for the embryo development after implantation.

The researchers reconstructed the process of human embryo implantation, generating a map of gene regulatory network and DNA methylation at whole genome-scale.

DNA methylation is a chemical alteration to DNA in mammals that controls how active a gene is within a cell. During peri-implantation development, embryonic cells are directed toward their future lineages, and DNA methylation poses a fundamental epigenetic barrier that guides and restricts differentiation.

The researchers said that a mother-to-offspring connection is prepared to be established during implantation. The first three cell lineages produced by the embryo presented different increasing paces of DNA methylation.

For instance, some hormone-related genes are expressed in trophoblasts, cells forming the outer layer of the cellular mass of the embryo.

The researchers said this study provides insights into the complex molecular mechanisms that regulate the implantation of human embryos in the hope of inspiring the reproductive medicine.

"With the black box of this unique embryonic developmental stage being gradually uncovered, we are about to provide the possibility of early diagnosis and screening of defective embryos before the embryo transplantation," said Tang Fuchou from Peking University, corresponding author of the study.

The researchers terminated the in vitro culture of embryos before day 14 in accordance to the international ethical guideline.

Fan Zhou, Rui Wang, Peng Yuan, Yixin Ren, Yunuo Mao, Rong Li, Ying Lian, Junsheng Li, Lu Wen, Liying Yan, Jie Qiao, Fuchou Tang. *Reconstituting the transcriptome and DNA methylome landscapes of human implantation*. _Nature _(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1500-0​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*China develops superconducting hybrid power line that could span the country | South China Morning Post*

Prototype tested last month transports high-voltage power and liquefied natural gas side by side
It could cut the high cost and waste involved in sending energy from the far west to the east coast
Stephen Chen
Published: 5:45am, 29 Aug, 2019
Updated: 9:45am, 29 Aug, 2019



The 10-metre prototype line, combining high-voltage electricity and liquefied natural gas. Photo: Chinese Academy of Sciences

Chinese scientists have developed the world’s first prototype of a superconducting hybrid power line, paving the way for construction of a 2,000km (1,243-mile) line from energy-rich Xinjiang in the country’s far west to its eastern provinces.

The 10-metre, proof-of-concept wire and liquid natural gas hybrid transmission line was up and running at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Electrical Engineering in Beijing last month to show the feasibility of the technology.

The line contains a superconducting wire which can transmit nearly 1,000 amps of electric current at more than 18,000 volts with zero resistance.

In a further difference from a traditional power line, the gap between the superconducting wire and the power line’s outer shell is filled by a flow of slowly moving natural gas liquefied at low temperatures – between minus 183 and minus 173 degrees Celsius (minus 279 to minus 297 Fahrenheit). This allows the line to transfer electricity and fossil fuel at the same time.

Professor Zhang Guomin, the government research project’s lead scientist, told the _South China Morning Post_ that the voltage and current could be much higher in its real-world applications.

“This technology can take the overall efficiency of long-distance energy transport to new heights,” he said.

Existing infrastructure to transfer energy from Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region to the developed eastern areas such as Shanghai has high operational costs because almost 10 per cent of the energy is lost in transmission, according to some studies.

That infrastructure includes the world’s most advanced high-voltage power line and four natural gas pipes, each thousands of kilometres long. One of the natural gas pipelines, from Xinjiang to Shanghai, cost 300 billion yuan (US$42 billion).

The superconductor and natural gas hybrid line offered a possible solution, Zhang said. Loss of electricity over the superconducting wire would be almost zero because of the elimination of resistance to the movement of electrons, he said.

The transport of liquefied natural gas would also be efficient, because one cubic metre (1,000 litres) of it would be equivalent to 600 cubic metres of the same fuel in gas form.

The temperature needed for liquefaction of natural gas is almost identical to that required for occurrence of superconductivity, at about minus 163 degrees.

Wang Gengchao, professor of physics at East China University of Science and Technology in Shanghai, said the combination was a “smart idea”.

Superconducting materials are not new but their applications have been limited by the difficulty and cost of creating and maintaining the low-temperature environment.

“They are trying to kill two birds with one stone,” Wang, who was not involved in the study, said.

“But whether the technology can find a use in large-scale infrastructure depends on other things, such as safety. Not everyone will feel comfortable with the idea of putting a high-voltage electric line and flammable natural gas side by side.”

Zhang said another new prototype line, about 30 metres long, was being developed and the 2,000km project was awaiting government approval.

He said the team had solved some major technical obstacles, including reducing the risk of accidents from electrical sparks and gas leakage.

“Many problems remain to be solved, but we are confident this technology will work,” he said. “It will protect the environment. It will save a lot of land from being used for power and gas lines.”

Xinjiang has more energy resources than any other Chinese province or region. It has nearly half of the nation’s coal reserves, a third of its oil and gas, and some of the largest wind and solar farms, according to government statistics.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*This protein is how creatures sense cold, researchers discover—and it’s found in organisms ranging from tiny worms to humans | University of Michigan News*
August 29, 2019
Emily Kagey ekagey@umich.edu



​
ANN ARBOR—Researchers have identified a receptor protein that can detect when winter is coming.

The findings, published Aug. 29 in the journal Cell, reveal the first known cold-sensing protein to respond to extreme cold.

“Clearly, nerves in the skin can sense cold. But no one has been able to pinpoint exactly how they sense it,” said Shawn Xu, a faculty member at the University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute and senior author of the study. “Now, I think we have an answer.”

When environmental temperatures drop to uncomfortable, and even dangerous levels, receptor proteins within the sensory nerves in the skin perceive the change, and they relay that information to the brain. This is true for organisms from humans all the way down to the tiny, millimeter-long worms that researchers study in Xu’s lab at the Life Sciences Institute: the model system Caenorhabditis elegans.




Shawn Xu​
“When you step outside and you sense it’s too cold, you’re going to take action to get back to a warmer environment as soon as you can,” said Xu, who is also a professor in the U-M Medical School’s Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology. “When the worms sense cold, they also engage in avoidance behavior—moving away from cold temperatures, just like humans.”

But unlike humans or other complex organisms, C. elegans have a simple, well-mapped genome and a short lifespan, making them a valuable model system for studying sensory responses.

Previous searches for a cold receptor have been unsuccessful because researchers were focusing on specific groups of genes that are related to sensation, which is a biased approach, Xu said. Capitalizing on the simplicity of C. elegans, he and his colleagues instead took an unbiased approach. They looked across thousands of random genetic variations to determine which affected the worms’ responses to cold.

The researchers found that worms missing the glutamate receptor gene glr-3 no longer responded when temperatures dipped below 18 degrees Celsius (64 F). This gene is responsible for making the GLR-3 receptor protein. Without this protein, the worms became insensitive to cold temperatures, indicating that the protein is required for the worms to sense cold.

What’s more, the glr-3 gene is evolutionarily conserved across species, including humans. And it turns out the vertebrate versions of the gene can also function as a cold-sensing receptor.

“It’s really exciting. This was one of the few remaining sensory receptors that had not yet been identified in nature.”
Shawn Xu

When the researchers added the mammalian version of the gene to mutant worms lacking glr-3—and were thus insensitive to cold—they found that it rescued the worms’ cold sensitivity. They also added the worm, zebrafish, mouse and human versions of the genes to cold-insensitive mammalian cells. With all versions of the gene, the cells became sensitive to cold temperatures.

The mouse version of the gene, GluK2 (for glutamate ionotropic receptor kainate type subunit 2), is well known for its role in transmitting chemical signals within the brain. The researchers discovered, however, that this gene is also active in a group of mouse sensory neurons that detect environmental stimuli, such as temperature, through sensory endings in the animals’ skin.

Reducing the expression of GluK2 in mouse sensory neurons suppressed their ability to sense cold, but not cool, temperatures. The findings provide additional evidence that the GluK2 protein serves as a cold receptor in mammals.

“For all these years, attention has been focused on this gene’s function in the brain. Now, we’ve found that it has a role in the peripheral sensory system, as well,” Xu said. “It’s really exciting. This was one of the few remaining sensory receptors that had not yet been identified in nature.”

In addition to Xu, study authors are: Elizabeth Ronan, Wei Cai, Mahar Fatima, Hankyu Lee, Zhaoyu Li, Kevin Pipe and Bo Duan of U-M; Jianke Gong, Jinzhi Liu, Feiteng He and Wenyuan Zhang of Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China and U-M; Jianfeng Liu of Huazhong University of Science and Technology; and Gun-Ho Kim of the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea.

More information:

Study: A Cold-Sensing Receptor Encoded by a Glutamate Receptor Gene
X.Z. Shawn Xu Lab

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*A novel way to repair tooth enamel | Zhejiang University*
2019-09-03 Global Communications

Professor TANG Ruikang with the Zhejiang University Department of Chemistry will experience “tooth growth”. The research team led by him developed a biomimetic regenerative solution which could be applied to the tooth cavity and establish a biomimetic crystalline-amorphous mineralization frontier to induce the growth of enamel with a precise maintenance of the original structural complexity within 48 hours.

This study is published online in an article entitled “Repair of tooth enamel by a biomimetic mineralization frontier ensuring epitaxial growth” in the journal of _Science Advances_. To the best of my knowledge, this has been the best tooth enamel regenerative substance so far and it has the potential to repair tooth enamel clinically in a real sense, observed Helmut Cölfen, a German professor of physical chemistry with the University of Konstanz. 




Enamel is the hardest tissue in the human body and contains the highest percentage of minerals (at 96%). This translucent substance is approximately 2 millimeters thick. “Enamel resembles a layer of natural inorganic crystalline mineral and is primarily composed of nonstoichiometric fluoridated carbonate apatite crystals that are tightly packed with well-defined orientations to ensure striking hardness,” said Dr. SHAO Changyu, the lead author of the study.

As a highly mineralized biological tissue, enamel is perceived as a purely inorganic substance and cannot self-repair for lack of a bioorganic matrix including cells. Despite being the hardest tissue in the body, enamel becomes susceptible to degradation, especially by acids from food and drink. Once enamel is damaged, people will have cavities in teeth, which will lead to nightmarish pain. 

Enamel remineralization is currently deemed as the most formidable challenge in the field of bionics. Previous endeavors to regrow enamel by using a range of materials such as composite resins, ceramics and amalgam failed to achieve permanent repair because of the imperfect compatibility between these foreign materials and the native enamel. 

“Optimally, scientists should achieve the unity of material, structure and mechanics and repair enamel _in situ_,” said Dr. LIU Zhaoming, a co-author of the study.

TANG et al. proposed a novel approach to tooth enamel regrowth. They found that mixing calcium and phosphate ions—two minerals which are found in enamel—with the chemical trimethylamine in an alcohol solution causes enamel to grow with the same structure as teeth.



Digital image of a whole tooth, in which the left area was covered with acid-resistant varnish (displayed as dark) and the right area was repaired with CPICs containing calcein (displayed as yellow).

When the mixture was applied to human teeth, it repaired the enamel layer to around 2.5 micrometres of thickness. It also achieved the same structure of natural enamel within 48 hours.

“The materials we used in experiments were identical to the human tissue, thereby achieving complete structural regrowth,” LIU said in an assertive way.

The discovery has not yet been proven to work in the “hostile environment” of the mouth, but experts say regrown tooth enamel may be tested in people in the near future. Coincidentally, there is a hidden crack on one of TANG’s teeth. His dentist told him that nothing could be done to repair the tooth because of a too-thin crevice. “After this scientific breakthrough, I am bold enough to be a “guinea pig” for a trial,” said TANG.

“Although we have achieved a precise duplication of the hierarchical and complicated structure in natural enamel, there are a wide spectrum of dental cavities. We need to develop our regenerative model for different circumstances so as to ensure controllability and effectiveness,” said SHAO. 

This biomimetic tactic for enamel regeneration can be extended as a general strategy for the construction of structurally complex materials by establishing a biomimetic mineralization frontier for continuous and epitaxial construction, in which the ion clusters act as basic building blocks. This achievement will not only deepen the understanding of biomineralization but also provide a new pathway for bioinspired design and production.


----------



## JSCh

Nature Photonics
Kai Wang, Qian Xu, Shining Zhu, Xiao-song Ma
National Laboratory of Solid-State Microstructures, School of Physics and Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures of Nanjing University​
*Wave and particle states of light in controllable quantum superposition | SciGlow*

Light can behave both as a particle and as a wave. Researchers at Nanjing University have now created controllable quantum superpositions of these two complementary states. In doing so, they extended the experimental capabilities of quantum optics and possibly of future quantum technologies.

15 hours ago

The question whether light consists of particles or instead propagates as a wave through a medium has been the subject of scientific debate throughout most of the history of science. In the 20th century it finally has been established that light can be indeed both, particle and wave, but not at the same time. Still, the nature of light keeps challenging both our understanding and intuition. A case in point are results that researchers from the National Laboratory of Solid-State Microstructures, the School of Physics and the Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures of Nanjing University (China) report today online in the journal _Nature Photonics_.

In an experiment that involved optical equipment in two laboratories that are 141 metres apart from each other, the team led by Dr. Xiao-Song Ma demonstrated conclusively that light can not only be in wave or particle states, but also in a quantum superposition of the two. Moreover, they showed that the properties of this quantum wave–particle superposition can be tuned, opening up the prospect of ultimately exploiting the new experimental capability in quantum technologies.



Artistic impression of an experiment that achieved genuine quantum wave–particle superposition in a delayed-choice experiment. A pair of entangled photons (blue spheres) enable the non-local quantum control of the output beam splitter of an interferometer (top). The interference pattern on the bottom shows quantum superposition of the wave and particle states of single photons (red spheres). This work realizes quantum control of single-photon quantum states by entanglement and implements a full quantum delayed-choice experiment under strict Einstein locality conditions. Provided by Xiao-Song Ma
*
Light surprises*
The debate on the nature of light has kept many great scientists busy over the centuries. Euclid and Ptolemy have made contributions, as did Descartes, Newton, and many other protagonists of the history of science. To explain how shadows form, for instance, light is best considered to consist of particles. By contrast, interference effects—most notably in the double-slit experiments of Thomas Young at the beginning of the 19th century—bring the wave nature of light to full display. The advent of quantum physics in the 20th century finally provided a framework to understand particles and waves as dual states of light.

But even a century on, surprising phenomena emerge from the wave–particle duality. A famed example is the delayed-choice thought experiment, originally proposed by John Archibald Wheeler and further developed by other physicists. In that thought experiment, an external observer can choose (by changing one component of the experiment) whether single quanta of light, so-called photons, behave as particles or as waves. Intriguingly, the choice between particle and wave states can be delayed to until after the photon enters the experimental setup.

“The experiment dramatically underscores the different conceptions of space and time in classical and quantum physics, which is one of the most intriguing effects in quantum mechanics”, says Ma.

*Thought-provoking experiments*
In recent years, Wheeler’s thought experiment and variants of it have been implemented in practice. And there is more to come. Ma: “Thanks to the rapid development of optical technology, it has not only become possible to realize such thought experiments, but also to design new ones.” And designing a new experiment is what Ma and his team did. Building on earlier work, they developed a quantum version of the delayed-choice experiment, where wave and particle states of single photons are placed in coherent superposition.

The key to achieve such a mixture of particle and wave states is to use quantum states of additional photons to control the component that allows switching between wave and particle. But that ‘quantum-controlled choice’ can only be considered truly independent if the control unit is placed so far away from the main experiment that it could not possibly interfere with the rest of the experiment. Physicists speak of ‘Einstein locality conditions’ being ensured.

*Particle–wave duality on the next level*
The experiment of the Nanjing group is the first quantum delayed-choice experiment under strict Einstein locality conditions. Achieving that required connecting equipment located in two separate labs, 141 metres away from one another.

“By carefully arranging the location and timing of the experimental setup, we achieved the required relativistic separations between relevant events,” says Kai Wang, a PhD student in Ma’s group and first author of the Nature Photonics paper.

With this experiment the team directly and unambiguously established the quantum nature of superpositions between wave and particle states of light, and also showed how key properties of that superposition can be tuned. Their demonstration therefore is of fundamental importance to quantum optics and at the same time paves the way for realizing non-local control of quantum systems in the context of future quantum technologies.


----------



## JSCh

*Could these crystals be the next leap forward in China’s laser technology? | South China Morning Post*

Researchers say they have developed a substance that is 13 times better in tests than widely used alternative
Experiments could help solve a power source problem that has plagued commercial and military devices
Stephen Chen
Published: 3:29pm, 4 Sep, 2019




Scientists at the Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter think they have found a super efficient crystal to make high-energy beams from low-energy lasers. Photo: Alamy

Scientists in southeast China say they have synthesised a crystal with the potential to significantly improve the performance of lasers used in consumer and military equipment.

Crystals of caesium bismuth germanate (CBGO) can turn low-energy beams into high-energy emissions with unparalleled efficiency, according to Professor Mao Jianggao, team leader at the Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Fuzhou.

The team looked at several candidate crystals in their experiments. Compared with widely used potassium dihydrogen phosphate crystals, the CBGO crystal was 13 times more efficient at turning infrared lasers into more energised green beams.

“This is a record performance,” Mao said on Tuesday. “This is why we think the crystal may have potential.”



China’s prototype Guanlan anti-submarine warfare satellite uses a high-energy laser to sweep beneath the sea to a depth of 500 metres. Illustration: SCMP

Their findings were published in the German weekly scientific peer-reviewed journal _Angewandte Chemie_, or Applied Chemistry, last month.

The researchers said CBGO crystals could be a way around a problem that has limited the performance of lasers – the huge amount of electricity needed to power them.

The demand on power is great because existing technology is not efficient at converting low-energy beams to high-energy ones – one reason that laser weapons are not yet as common as scientists predicted in the 1960s.

CBGO belongs to a family known as non-linear crystals, which cause abrupt changes to energy that passes through them. The scientists found that CBGO crystals could double the frequency of a laser beam.

As high-energy lasers can be created by merging two low-energy photons, or particles of light, a process known as frequency doubling, CBGO crystals are an ideal medium, and the higher frequency of the laser, the more energy it carries.

Many military and civilian applications required high-energy beams, they said. These included directed energy weapons designed to destroy drones or missiles, or China’s prototype Guanlan anti-submarine warfare satellite, which will use a green laser to penetrate water to a depth of 500 metres (1,640 feet) to detect a target.

Mao said his team’s research was at an early stage and that years of testing would be needed before the CBGO crystals found their way to market.

The CBGO crystal grown in the Fuzhou laboratory was the size of a grain of sand, he said. For industrial use, crystals would need to be at least the size of a dice.

Growing them was a very slow and challenging job, and there was no certainty that CBGO crystals could be grown on an industrial scale, Mao said.

China is a world leader in crystal research, and some of those most commonly used in laser devices were developed by Chinese scientists thanks to heavy investment from central government.

Professor Li Qiang, deputy director with the Institute of Laser Engineering at Beijing University of Technology, said the discovery of CBGO was encouraging, but its success should be evaluated not only on its efficiency, but also on attributes such as mechanical strength, tolerance to laser damage, and stability in extreme environments such as high humidity.

“Lots of crystals have been proposed over the decades, but only a handful are useful. It’s a high-risk business,” Li said. “China has achieved a leading position in this field not because of luck, but by continuous effort by several generations of researchers through countless failures.”

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*NEWS * *04 SEPTEMBER 2019
*Ancient worm fossil rolls back origins of animal life*
Half-a-billion-year-old creature challenges theory that animals burst onto the scene in an abrupt event known as the Cambrian explosion.

Colin Barras



A fossil of _Yilingia spiciformis_ and the track it left as it moved.Credit: Z. Chen _et al_./_Nature_

More than half a billion years ago, a strange, worm-like creature died as it crawled across the muddy sea floor. Both the organism and the trail it left lay undisturbed for so long that they fossilized. Now, they are helping to revise our understanding of when and how animals evolved.

The fossil, which formed some time between 551 million and 539 million years ago, in the Ediacaran period, joins a growing body of evidence that challenges the idea that animal life on Earth burst onto the scene in an event known as the Cambrian explosion, which began about 539 million years ago.

“It is just pushing things further and further back into the Ediacaran,” says Rachel Wood, a geoscientist at the University of Edinburgh, UK. The Cambrian explosion no longer appears to be such an abrupt event in the history of life on Earth, she says. An analysis of the fossil, along with a few dozen similar specimens found in the same rock sequence in southern China, is published in _Nature_1.

“What’s extraordinary about this paper is it’s three home runs in the same five-page manuscript,” says Simon Darroch, a palaeontologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. First, it’s exceptionally rare to find a dead animal preserved at the end of a trail it made when alive, he says. Second, the fossil dates to a crucial moment in the evolution of animal life.

And third: “It’s such a bizarre-looking organism,” says Darroch. The creature, which has been named _Yilingia spiciformis _and was up to 27 centimetres long, seems to be a biologically complex animal with a distinct front and rear end. “We don’t really have many of those from the Ediacaran,” he says.

*Ancient organisms*
The rock record has already revealed that the Ediacaran seas were rich in life, but many Ediacaran fossils have strange anatomical features that are unlike those seen in modern animals. Because of this, palaeontologists have struggled to relate the Ediacaran organisms to the creatures of the Cambrian period. This bolstered the idea that the Cambrian explosion represented the dramatic first appearance of familiar animals.

But opinions have begun to shift in the past few years. Some Ediacaran organisms have been recognized as animals despite their peculiar anatomy, which suggests that animal life began millions of years before the Cambrian explosion.

_Yilingia_ _spiciformis_ fits into that picture and pushes the idea further. With a segmented body that is symmetrical down its length, it has an anatomy that is more obviously similar to that of Cambrian animals, says Shuhai Xiao, a palaeontologist at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg and a co-author of the study.



Like modern animals, _Y. spiciformis_ had a distinct front and back end: the fossil tapers towards the rear.Credit: Z. Chen _et al_./_Nature_

What’s more, the trail demonstrates that _Y. spiciformis_ could crawl over the sea floor like a modern animal. Palaeontologists have found only few pieces of evidence that the strange organisms of the Ediacaran were similarly mobile. Collectively, Xiao’s team’s findings mean that _Y. spiciformis_ looked and behaved like a Cambrian animal — despite living up to 12 million years before what is usually considered the start of the Cambrian explosion.

“In the past, palaeontologists emphasized the differences between the Ediacaran and Cambrian,” says Xiao. “But when you think about it, life had to continue through the boundary. Some lineages had to survive.”

*Seeking descendants*
Exactly which animal lineage _Y. spiciformis_ belonged to is unclear. The researchers suggest it might be a relative of insects and crustaceans such as shrimp and lobsters, because it seems to have leg-like structures. If further analysis shows that those structures are actually an artefact of the fossilization process, the animal might instead be some sort of primitive segmented worm.

“There’s a third possibility,” says Xiao: it could be an ancestor to both groups. The idea that segmented worms and shrimp-like creatures all evolved from a single group of segmented animals dates back to the nineteenth century, but it’s controversial because most researchers now think that shrimp-like animals are more closely related to nematode worms and other creatures that grow by shedding an exoskeleton.

Xiao thinks the evolution of segments could have been a key event in the history of animal life. Segmented animals might be able to evolve more or fewer segments without fatally disrupting their biology. So, he reasons, once a single group of segmented animals evolved, it might have had great potential to diversify into a whole range of lineages adapted to new niches, explaining why animal life flourished a few million years after _Y. spiciformis_ appeared.

But Doug Erwin, a palaeobiologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, isn’t convinced by the idea: he thinks segmentation probably arose several times in animal evolution. Partly as a consequence, he thinks _Y. spiciformis_ could even belong to a completely different branch of the animal evolutionary tree, which has since gone extinct.


Ancient worm fossil rolls back origins of animal life | Nature

Zhe Chen, Chuanming Zhou, Xunlai Yuan, Shuhai Xiao. *Death march of a segmented and trilobate bilaterian elucidates early animal evolution*. _Nature_ (2019); DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1522-7​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## 055_destroyer

JSCh said:


> *Could these crystals be the next leap forward in China’s laser technology? | South China Morning Post*
> 
> Researchers say they have developed a substance that is 13 times better in tests than widely used alternative
> Experiments could help solve a power source problem that has plagued commercial and military devices
> Stephen Chen
> Published: 3:29pm, 4 Sep, 2019
> 
> 
> 
> Scientists at the Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter think they have found a super efficient crystal to make high-energy beams from low-energy lasers. Photo: Alamy
> 
> Scientists in southeast China say they have synthesised a crystal with the potential to significantly improve the performance of lasers used in consumer and military equipment.
> 
> Crystals of caesium bismuth germanate (CBGO) can turn low-energy beams into high-energy emissions with unparalleled efficiency, according to Professor Mao Jianggao, team leader at the Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Fuzhou.
> 
> The team looked at several candidate crystals in their experiments. Compared with widely used potassium dihydrogen phosphate crystals, the CBGO crystal was 13 times more efficient at turning infrared lasers into more energised green beams.
> 
> “This is a record performance,” Mao said on Tuesday. “This is why we think the crystal may have potential.”
> 
> 
> 
> China’s prototype Guanlan anti-submarine warfare satellite uses a high-energy laser to sweep beneath the sea to a depth of 500 metres. Illustration: SCMP
> 
> Their findings were published in the German weekly scientific peer-reviewed journal _Angewandte Chemie_, or Applied Chemistry, last month.
> 
> The researchers said CBGO crystals could be a way around a problem that has limited the performance of lasers – the huge amount of electricity needed to power them.
> 
> The demand on power is great because existing technology is not efficient at converting low-energy beams to high-energy ones – one reason that laser weapons are not yet as common as scientists predicted in the 1960s.
> 
> CBGO belongs to a family known as non-linear crystals, which cause abrupt changes to energy that passes through them. The scientists found that CBGO crystals could double the frequency of a laser beam.
> 
> As high-energy lasers can be created by merging two low-energy photons, or particles of light, a process known as frequency doubling, CBGO crystals are an ideal medium, and the higher frequency of the laser, the more energy it carries.
> 
> Many military and civilian applications required high-energy beams, they said. These included directed energy weapons designed to destroy drones or missiles, or China’s prototype Guanlan anti-submarine warfare satellite, which will use a green laser to penetrate water to a depth of 500 metres (1,640 feet) to detect a target.
> 
> Mao said his team’s research was at an early stage and that years of testing would be needed before the CBGO crystals found their way to market.
> 
> The CBGO crystal grown in the Fuzhou laboratory was the size of a grain of sand, he said. For industrial use, crystals would need to be at least the size of a dice.
> 
> Growing them was a very slow and challenging job, and there was no certainty that CBGO crystals could be grown on an industrial scale, Mao said.
> 
> China is a world leader in crystal research, and some of those most commonly used in laser devices were developed by Chinese scientists thanks to heavy investment from central government.
> 
> Professor Li Qiang, deputy director with the Institute of Laser Engineering at Beijing University of Technology, said the discovery of CBGO was encouraging, but its success should be evaluated not only on its efficiency, but also on attributes such as mechanical strength, tolerance to laser damage, and stability in extreme environments such as high humidity.
> 
> “Lots of crystals have been proposed over the decades, but only a handful are useful. It’s a high-risk business,” Li said. “China has achieved a leading position in this field not because of luck, but by continuous effort by several generations of researchers through countless failures.”


Future laser gun is not far off.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*NEWS AND VIEWS * *04 SEPTEMBER 2019
*A key to unlocking chromatin revealed by complex structures*
Histone proteins pack DNA into a condensed form called chromatin. Detailed structures of the MLL family of histone-modifying protein complexes have been defined, shedding light on how they operate.

Steven J. Gamblin & Jon R. Wilson

Each human cell contains so much DNA — about 2 metres if extended — that it must be tightly wrapped around specialized histone proteins to form spool-like structures called nucleosomes. Nucleosomes can then be packed together into dense strands called chromatin, in which the DNA is inaccessible, and must be unpacked for DNA to be accessible for transcription or replication. The dynamic conversion between inaccessible and accessible chromatin states is directed by protein complexes that write and read chemical marks on the chromatin called epigenetic modifications. Writing in _Nature_, Xue _et al._1 describe the nucleosome-bound structure of members of the MLL family of proteins: complexes that add methyl groups to histone proteins. The new structures show how these protein complexes both write and read epigenetic modifications.


....

A key to unlocking chromatin revealed by complex structures | Nature

Han Xue, Tonghui Yao, Mi Cao, Guanjun Zhu, Yan Li, Guiyong Yuan, Yong Chen, Ming Lei & Jing Huang. *Structural basis of nucleosome recognition and modification by MLL methyltransferase*s. _Nature _(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1528-1​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese Scientists Create the Smallest, Atomically-precise and Custom-design Graphene Origami*
Sep 06, 2019

The discovery of fullerenes (Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1996), carbon nanotubes (CNT), and, more recently, the isolation of monolayer graphene (Nobel Prize in Physics, 2010) sparked a revolution in the fabrication of a variety of carbon allotropes. Graphene can be viewed as the building block of several allotropes, e.g., carbon nanotubes, three-dimensional (3D) graphene-based nanostructures (GNSs) and devices that have been either fabricated or predicted theoretically for potential applications, even machines.

Origami, the ancient art of paper folding, has been widely used in diverse areas, from architecture to battery design and DNA nanofabrication. It has also inspired the fabrication or simulation of macroscale origami graphene structures and devices, even machines. However, due to technical difficulties, atomically precise and controllable graphene origami for the creation of custom-design GNSs with quantum features has remained an open challenge.

Recently, Professor GAO Hongjun's group from the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Science, demonstrated that origami is an efficient way to convert graphene nano-fragments into complex nanostructures with atomic-scale precision. By scanning-tunneling-microscope manipulation at low temperatures, they repeatedly fold and unfold graphene nanoislands (GNIs) along an arbitrarily chosen direction.

A bilayer graphene stack featuring a tunable twist angle and a tubular edge connection between the layers is formed. Folding single-crystal GNIs creates tubular edges with specified chirality, while folding bicrystal GNIs creates well-defined intramolecular junctions (IMJs).

These tubular edges are structurally similar to carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and corresponding IMJs. Measurements of electronic properties combined with quantum calculations, based on atomic models of the structures, determine and explain these properties.

The present paper reports the first experimental construction of the smallest-ever, atomically-precise origami graphene nanostructures together with property measurements and corresponding quantum calculations, establishing a platform for the construction of custom carbon nanostructures with engineered quantum properties and, ultimately, quantum machines.

Furthermore, the results reported in this paper set the stage for the discovery of new and unusual phenomena, as the folded GNIs are composite structures comprising a CNT-like fold and a twisted bilayer graphene. For example, it may be worth exploring the superconductivity of the twisted bilayer graphene part with a magic twist angle attached to either a semiconducting or metallic tube or an IMJ.

This study entitled "Atomically precise, custom-design origami graphene Nanostructures" was published on _Science_.

This work was performed in collaboration with Professor Sokrates T. Pantelides from Vanderbilt University and Professor Min Ouyang from the University of Maryland in the U.S.A.

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Key Research and Development Projects of China, and Chinese Academy of Sciences.



Fig. 1 Construction of atomically well-defined folded GNSs by STM origami. (Image by Institute of Physics)





​Fig.2 Precisely controlled folding of a GNI along preselected directions. (Image by Institute of Physics)





​Fig.3 Tunable 1D tubular carbon structures with different chirality and electronic properties. (Image by Institute of Physics)





​Fig. 4 Creation of 1D carbon intramolecular junctions. (Image by Institute of Physics)



Chinese Scientists Create the Smallest, Atomically-precise and Custom-design Graphene Origami---Chinese Academy of Sciences

Hui Chen, Xian-Li Zhang, Yu-Yang Zhang, Dongfei Wang, De-Liang Bao, Yande Que, Wende Xiao, Shixuan Du, Min Ouyang, Sokrates T. Pantelides, Hong-Jun Gao. *Atomically precise, custom-design origami graphene nanostructures*. _Nature _(2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aax7864​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Four scientists win China's 2019 Future Science Prize*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-09-09 15:35:12|Editor: huaxia



BEIJING, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Four scientists won the 2019 Future Science Prize, the first Chinese non-governmental science award jointly initiated by groups of scientists and entrepreneurs, the China Science Daily reported Monday.

Shao Feng, a senior researcher from Beijing's National Institute of Biological Sciences, was awarded the prize in life sciences for his discoveries about immune defense against bacterial pathogens.

The research results "not only shed new light on our understanding of innate immune mechanisms but also paved the way for designing potential new therapeutic strategies or vaccines for hard-to-treat bacterial infections and related diseases," according to an announcement by the prize committee last Saturday.

The winners of the prize in physical sciences were Wang Yifang, director of the Institute for High-Energy Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Kam-Biu Luk, a professor at University of California, Berkeley. They discovered a new type of neutrino oscillations, which could be the key to understanding the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the Universe.

Wang Xiaoyun, with the Institute for Advanced Study of Tsinghua University, is the first female winner since the prize was established in 2016. She won the prize in mathematics and computer science for her contributions to cryptography by innovating methods to reveal weaknesses of widely used hash functions and make a new generation of hash function standards.

The prize is given in the three categories with 1 million U.S. dollars for each award. Each category has four selected donors, the newspaper said.

Winners of the prize will be selected regardless of their nationalities, as long as their achievements are original and innovative, have long-term significance or have passed the tests of time. In addition, it only awards scientists who have made research achievements in the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.

The famous agricultural scientist Yuan Longping, physicist Xue Qikun and biologist Shi Yigong have been awarded the prize before.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Using Nature to Produce a Revolutionary Optical Material*
Nanocomposite Protects Against Intense Light, Holds Promise for Expanding High-Speed Optical Networking Capacity

By Jeannie Kever 713-743-0778

September 5, 2019

An international team of researchers has reported a new way to safeguard drones, surveillance cameras and other equipment against laser attacks, which can disable or destroy the equipment. The capability is known as optical limiting.



An international team of researchers has reported a new way to safeguard drones, surveillance cameras and other equipment against laser attacks, which can disable or destroy the equipment. Credit: Pexels

The work, published in the journal Nature Communication, also describes a superior manner of telecom switching without the use of electronics; instead, they use an all-optical method that could improve the speed and capacity of internet communications. That could remove a roadblock in moving from 4GLTE to 5G networks.

The team reported that a material created using tellurium nanorods – produced by naturally occurring bacteria – is an effective nonlinear optical material, capable of protecting electronic devices against high-intensity bursts of light, including those emitted by inexpensive household lasers targeted at aircraft, drones or other critical systems. The researchers describe the material and its performance as a material of choice for next-generation optoelectronic and photonic devices.



Bacillus beveridgei strain MLTeJB, composed of aggregated Te(0) shards; The bacteria are readily evident as are the surrounding rods. Credit: USGS

Seamus Curran, a physics professor at the University of Houston and one of the paper’s authors, said while most optical materials are chemically synthesized, using a biologically-based nanomaterial proved less expensive and less toxic. “We found a cheaper, easier, simpler way to manufacture the material,” he said. “We let Mother Nature do it.”

The new findings grew out of earlier work by Curran and his team, working in collaboration with Werner J. Blau of Trinity College Dublin and Ron Oremland with the U.S. Geological Survey. Curran initially synthesized the nanocomposites to examine their potential in the photonics world. He holds a U.S. and international series of patents for that work.

The researchers noted that using bacteria to create the nanocrystals suggests an environmentally friendly route of synthesis, while generating impressive results. “Nonlinear optical measurements of this material reveal the strong saturable absorption and nonlinear optical extinctions induced by Mie scattering overbroad temporal and wavelength ranges,” they wrote. “In both cases, Te [tellurium] particles exhibit superior optical nonlinearity compared to graphene.”

Light at very high intensity, such as that emitted by a laser, can have unpredictable polarizing effects on certain materials, Curran said, and physicists have been searching for suitable nonlinear materials that can withstand the effects. One goal, he said, is a material that can effectively reduce the light intensity, allowing for a device to be developed that could prevent damage by that light.

The researchers used the nanocomposite, made up of biologically generated elemental tellurium nanocrystals and a polymer to build an electro-optic switch – an electrical device used to modulate beams of light – that is immune to damage from a laser, he said.

Oremland noted that the current work grew out of 30 years of basic research, stemming from their initial discovery of selenite-respiring bacteria and the fact that the bacteria form discrete packets of elemental selenium. “From there, it was a step down the Periodic Table to learn that the same could be done with tellurium oxyanions,” he said. “The fact that tellurium had potential application in the realm of nanophotonics came as a serendipitous surprise.”

Blau said the biologically generated tellurium nanorods are especially suitable for photonic device applications in the mid-infrared range. “This wavelength region is becoming a hot technological topic as it is useful for biomedical, environmental and security-related sensing, as well as laser processing and for opening up new windows for fiber optical and free-space communications.”

Work will continue to expand the material’s potential for use in all-optical telecom switches, which Curran said is critical in expanding broadband capacity. “We need a massive investment in optical fiber,” he said. “We need greater bandwidth and switching speeds. We need all-optical switches to do that.”

In addition to Curran, Oremland and Blau, researchers involved with the project include Kang-Shyang Liao and Surendra Maharjan, both of UH; Kangpeng Wang, Xiaoyan Zhang, Ivan M. Kislyakov, Ningning Dong, Saifeng Zhang, Gaozhong Wang, Jintai Fan, Long Zhang, Jun Wang, Xiao Zou, Hongzhou Zhang, Juan Du, Yuxin Leng and Quanzhong Zhao, all with the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Kan Wu and Jianping Chen, both with Shanghai Jiao Tong University; and Shaun M. Baesman with the U.S. Geological Survey. 

Kangpeng Wang has an additional affiliation with the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and Gaozhong Wang is also affiliated with Trinity College.


Using Nature to Produce a Revolutionary Optical Material - University of Houston

Kangpeng Wang, Xiaoyan Zhang, Ivan M. Kislyakov, Ningning Dong, Saifeng Zhang, Gaozhong Wang, Jintai Fan, Xiao Zou, Juan Du, Yuxin Leng, Quanzhong Zhao, Kan Wu, Jianping Chen, Shaun M. Baesman, Kang-Shyang Liao, Surendra Maharjan, Hongzhou Zhang, Long Zhang, Seamus A. Curran, Ronald S. Oremland, Werner J. Blau, Jun Wang. *Bacterially synthesized tellurium nanostructures for broadband ultrafast nonlinear optical applications*. _Nature Communications_, 2019; 10 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-11898-z​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

NEWS AND VIEWS * 09 SEPTEMBER 2019
*The structure of a T-cell mechanosensor*
T-cell receptors orchestrate immune-system responses against infection and cancer. A structure of an entire T-cell receptor complex clarifies its assembly and signalling, and sheds light on its dynamic ligand recognition.

Ellis L. Reinherz

Immune cells called T cells have T-cell receptors (TCRs) on their cell membrane that recognize dysfunctional cells expressing abnormal protein fragments. Such abnormalities can arise in cells if, for example, cancer develops or infection occurs. When TCRs recognize these unusual peptides, the receptors become activated and stimulate T cells to destroy or inhibit the abnormal cells. Such T-cell responses are being harnessed for anti-cancer clinical therapies. TCRs are also of interest because their dysfunction can lead to autoimmunity or immunodeficiency diseases.

Writing in _Nature_, Dong _et al_.1 present the structure of a human TCR, at a resolution of 3.7 ångströms, obtained using an imaging technique called single-particle cryogenic electron microscopy (cryoEM). Such a high-resolution structure of the entire TCR was previously lacking, and it provides a wealth of detail about this receptor.


....

The structure of a T-cell mechanosensor | Nature

De Dong, Lvqin Zheng, Jianquan Lin, Bailing Zhang, Yuwei Zhu, Ningning Li, Shuangyu Xie, Yuhang Wang, Ning Gao, Zhiwei Huang. *Structural basis of assembly of the human TCR–CD3 complex*, _Nature_ (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1537-0​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

NEWS * 11 SEPTEMBER 2019
*Scientists use gene-edited stem cells to treat HIV — with mixed success*
Modified cells survived 19 months after transplant into an HIV-positive man in China, but the dose was not enough to reduce his viral load.

Jonathan Lambert



HIV destroys the body's defences by attacking immune cells. Credit: Steve Gschmeissner/Science Photo Library

For the first time, researchers have used CRISPR gene-editing technology to try to treat a person infected with HIV.

Scientists in China engineered human stem cells to mimic a rare form of natural immunity to the virus and transplanted them into a man with HIV and blood cancer. The gene-edited cells survived in the man’s body for more than a year without causing detectable side effects, but the number of cells was not high enough to significantly reduce the amount of HIV in his blood.

“This is an important step towards using gene editing to treat human disease,” says Fyodor Urnov, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley. “Because of this study, we now know that these edited cells can survive in a patient, and they will stay there.”

The study1 was published on 11 September in the _New England Journal of Medicine_. Lead author Hongkui Deng, a biologist at Peking University in Beijing, says that the research was inspired by a remarkable bone-marrow transplant that seemingly cured a man of HIV more than a decade ago.

*Mutant power*
In 2007, Timothy Ray Brown ― initially known as ‘the Berlin patient’ ― underwent a bone-marrow transplant to treat his leukaemia. The bone-marrow donor was special, however, in that he had a version of the _CCR5_ gene that confers immunity to HIV.

Normally, the gene encodes a receptor on the surface of white blood cells that the HIV virus uses to infiltrate cells. But in people with two copies of the _CCR5_ mutation, this receptor is warped and blocks certain strains of HIV from entering cells. The HIV-resistant version of the gene is exceptionally rare: it’s found in just 1% of people of European descent, and is virtually nonexistent in other ethnic groups.

Doctors hoped that the bone-marrow transplant would replace Brown’s HIV-susceptible blood cells with immune ones — and it did. After nearly 13 years, there is no sign of HIV in his blood, and his leukaemia is in remission. In March, researchers reported that a second person underwent a similar procedure in Britain and was cured2.

Deng wanted to use CRISPR gene editing to engineer HIV-resistant blood stem cells from normal donors, making this potential cure more widely accessible. He and his colleagues tested this approach on a 27-year-old man in China who had been diagnosed with HIV and leukaemia, and who needed a bone-marrow transplant. The scientists extracted bone-marrow stem cells from a donor and used CRISPR–Cas9 to transform them into CCR5 mutants.

At first, the researchers couldn’t get CRISPR to knock out _CCR5_ in the stem cells. “I thought, wow, these cells are really tough,” says Deng. Eventually, the were able to edit 17.8% of the donor’s stem cells.

*Safety first*
To maximize the chance that the transplant would treat the patient’s cancer, the researchers mixed the edited stem cells with unedited ones. The team monitored the man after the transplant to see whether the edited cells would survive and replicate, whether they treated the HIV infection and, most importantly, whether the treatment was safe.

“This was the first trial, so the most important thing was to test safety,” says Deng.

CRISPR gene editing in people remains controversial, in part because many researchers worry about its side effects. Studies have shown that CRISPR sometimes creates unwanted mutations in the lab3 — and the consequences of that happening in a person could be disastrous.

After 19 months, the CRISPR-edited stem cells did persist, though they comprised only 5–8% of the recipient’s total stem cells. This means that a little over one-half of the edited cells died after they were transplanted. And although the man’s leukaemia is in remission, he is still infected with HIV.

“I’m not surprised that 5% was not enough to lower the viral load,” says Urnov, “but now we know that CRISPR-edited cells can persist, and that we need to do better than 5%.”

To Deng, the most important thing is that the man did not suffer any side effects caused by the gene-edited cells. And when the researchers sequenced the genomes of those cells, they didn’t find evidence of unintended genetic changes.

*Pushing forward*
“This is really good news for the field,” says Carl June, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. “We now know that, in principle, we can use CRISPR to edit human stem cells, that they can persist in a patient and that it can be safe.”

June says that this proof of concept opens the door for research into testing this technology for treatment of other blood diseases, such as sickle-cell anaemia. He also notes that this study complied with standard ethical protocols, including obtaining informed consent from the participant.

Improvements in gene-editing technology mean researchers can now edit stem cells with efficiency greater than the 17.8% success rate in the latest study. But that comes with risks. Each time CRISPR cuts in the genome, there's a chance something could go wrong. Gene-editing cells more efficiently means making more cuts, and creates more opportunity for mistakes.

“This paper is an incomplete success, but it will only motivate the field to push onwards,” says Urnov. Had the experiment proved to be unsafe, regulatory agencies might have stopped future research. Now, he says, researchers can point to this study as proof of concept that this line of research can be safe and potentially fruitful.

“I’m going to have an extra scoop of ice cream tonight, knowing that the ship of human genome editing for treating disease is still on course,” says Urnov.

doi: 10.1038/d41586-019-02719-w



Scientists use gene-edited stem cells to treat HIV — with mixed success | Nature

Lei Xu, M.D., Ph.D., Jun Wang, M.D., Ph.D., Yulin Liu, B.S., Liangfu Xie, B.S., Bin Su, Ph.D., Danlei Mou, M.D., Ph.D., Longteng Wang, B.S., Tingting Liu, M.D., Xiaobao Wang, B.S., Bin Zhang, M.D., Ph.D., Long Zhao, Ph.D., Liangding Hu, M.D., Hongmei Ning, M.D., Ph.D., Yufeng Zhang, B.S., Kai Deng, Ph.D., Lifeng Liu, Ph.D., Xiaofan Lu, Ph.D., Tong Zhang, M.D., Ph.D., Jun Xu, Ph.D., Cheng Li, Ph.D., Hao Wu, M.D., Hongkui Deng, Ph.D., and Hu Chen, M.D., Ph.D. *CRISPR-Edited Stem Cells in a Patient with HIV and Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia*._ N Engl J Med_ (2019); DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1817426.​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Welcome indoors, solar cells - Linköping University*
16 September 2019
Monica Westman Svenselius

Swedish and Chinese scientists have developed organic solar cells optimised to convert ambient indoor light to electricity. The power they produce is low, but is probably enough to feed the millions of products that the internet of things will bring online.





Wuming Wang, PhD Student, and Jonas Bergqvist, Principal Research Engineer in the solar cell laboratory Thor Balkhed​
As the internet of things expands, it is expected that we will need to have millions of products online, both in public spaces and in homes. Many of these will be the multitude of sensors to detect and measure moisture, particle concentrations, temperature and other parameters. For this reason, the demand for small and cheap sources of renewable energy is increasing rapidly, in order to reduce the need for frequent and expensive battery replacements.

This is where organic solar cells come in. Not only are they flexible, cheap to manufacture and suitable for manufacture as large surfaces in a printing press, they have one further advantage: the light-absorbing layer consists of a mixture of donor and acceptor materials, which gives considerable flexibility in tuning the solar cells such that they are optimised for different spectra – for light of different wavelengths.

*New combination of materials*
Researchers in Beijing, China, led by Jianhui Hou, and Linköping, Sweden, led by Feng Gao, have now together developed a new combination of donor and acceptor materials, with a carefully determined composition, to be used as the active layer in an organic solar cell. The combination absorbs exactly the wavelengths of light that surround us in our living rooms, at the library and in the supermarket.

The researchers describe two variants of an organic solar cell in an article in Nature Energy, where one variant has an area of 1 cm2 and the other 4 cm2. The smaller solar cell was exposed to ambient light at an intensity of 1000 lux, and the researchers observed that as much as 26.1% of the energy of the light was converted to electricity. The organic solar cell delivered a high voltage of above 1 V for more than 1000 hours in ambient light that varied between 200 and 1000 lux. The larger solar cell still maintained an energy efficiency of 23%.

“This work indicates great promise for organic solar cells to be widely used in our daily life for powering the internet of things”, says Feng Gao, senior lecturer in the Division of Biomolecular and Organic Electronics at Linköping University.

*Design rules*
”We are confident that the efficiency of organic solar cells will be further improved for ambient light applications in coming years, because there is still a large room for optimization of the materials used in this work”, Jianhui Hou, professor at the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, underlines.

The result is a further advance in research within the field of organic solar cells. In the summer of 2018, for example, the scientists, together with colleagues from a number of other universities, published rules for the construction of efficient organic solar cells (see the link given below). The article collected 25 researchers from seven universities, and was published in Nature Materials. The research was led by Feng Gao. These rules have proven to be useful along the complete pathway to efficient solar cell for indoor use.

*Spin off company*
The Biomolecular and Organic Electronics research group at Linköping University, under the leadership of Olle Inganäs (now professor emeritus), has been for many years a world-leader in the field of organic solar cells. A few years ago, Olle Inganäs and his colleague Jonas Bergqvist, who is co-author of the articles in Nature Materials and Nature Energy, founded, and are now co-owners of a company, which focusses on commercialising solar cells for indoor use.


Wide-gap non-fullerene acceptor enabling high-performance organic photovoltaic cells for indoor applications, Yong Cui, Yuming Wang, Jonas Bergqvist, Huifeng Yao, Ye Xu, Bowei Gao, Chenyi Yang, Shaoqing Zhang, Olle Inganäs, Feng Gao and Jianhui Hou, _Nature Energy_ 2019. DOI: 10.1038/s41560-019-0448-5

Translated by George Farrants


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 18-SEP-2019
*Brain-computer interfaces without the mess*
AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY



A cap containing a new type of EEG electrode can be used to control a toy car with brain waves. *CREDIT: *Adapted from _Nano Letters_ 2019, DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.9b02019

It sounds like science fiction: controlling electronic devices with brain waves. But researchers have developed a new type of electroencephalogram (EEG) electrode that can do just that, without the sticky gel required for conventional electrodes. Even better, the devices work through a full head of hair. The researchers report the flexible electrodes, which could someday be used in brain-computer interfaces to drive cars or move artificial limbs, in the ACS journal _Nano Letters_.

Often used to diagnose seizure disorders and other neurological conditions, EEGs are machines that track and record brain wave patterns. To conduct an EEG, technicians typically use a very sticky gel to attach electrodes to different regions of the patient's scalp. However, this gel is difficult to wash out of hair and sometimes irritates the skin. In addition, hair interferes with the electrical signals. Ming Lei, Bo Hong, Hui Wu and colleagues wanted to develop an EEG electrode that is flexible, robust and gel-free. Such an electrode could help patients, but also might allow people to someday control devices with their brains.

To make the electrodes, the researchers placed silver nanowires in a commercially available melamine sponge. The electrodes cost only about 12 cents each to make and could be mass-produced. The team assembled 10 electrodes into a flexible silicon cap and measured their performance when worn by people with shaved or hairy heads. On hairless skin, the new electrodes recorded brain waves as well as conventional ones. What's more, the flexibility of the electrodes allowed them to perform similarly on hairy and hairless skin, unlike the conventional devices. A volunteer wearing the cap could control a toy car with her mind, making it go forward, backward, left or right. The electrodes are mechanically stable through different cycles and movements and are also resistant to heat and sweat, the researchers say. 


Brain-computer interfaces without the mess | EurekAlert! Science News


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> NEWS * 11 SEPTEMBER 2019
> *Scientists use gene-edited stem cells to treat HIV — with mixed success*
> Modified cells survived 19 months after transplant into an HIV-positive man in China, but the dose was not enough to reduce his viral load.
> 
> Jonathan Lambert
> 
> 
> 
> HIV destroys the body's defences by attacking immune cells. Credit: Steve Gschmeissner/Science Photo Library
> 
> For the first time, researchers have used CRISPR gene-editing technology to try to treat a person infected with HIV.
> 
> Scientists in China engineered human stem cells to mimic a rare form of natural immunity to the virus and transplanted them into a man with HIV and blood cancer. The gene-edited cells survived in the man’s body for more than a year without causing detectable side effects, but the number of cells was not high enough to significantly reduce the amount of HIV in his blood.
> 
> “This is an important step towards using gene editing to treat human disease,” says Fyodor Urnov, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley. “Because of this study, we now know that these edited cells can survive in a patient, and they will stay there.”
> 
> The study1 was published on 11 September in the _New England Journal of Medicine_. Lead author Hongkui Deng, a biologist at Peking University in Beijing, says that the research was inspired by a remarkable bone-marrow transplant that seemingly cured a man of HIV more than a decade ago.
> 
> *Mutant power*
> In 2007, Timothy Ray Brown ― initially known as ‘the Berlin patient’ ― underwent a bone-marrow transplant to treat his leukaemia. The bone-marrow donor was special, however, in that he had a version of the _CCR5_ gene that confers immunity to HIV.
> 
> Normally, the gene encodes a receptor on the surface of white blood cells that the HIV virus uses to infiltrate cells. But in people with two copies of the _CCR5_ mutation, this receptor is warped and blocks certain strains of HIV from entering cells. The HIV-resistant version of the gene is exceptionally rare: it’s found in just 1% of people of European descent, and is virtually nonexistent in other ethnic groups.
> 
> Doctors hoped that the bone-marrow transplant would replace Brown’s HIV-susceptible blood cells with immune ones — and it did. After nearly 13 years, there is no sign of HIV in his blood, and his leukaemia is in remission. In March, researchers reported that a second person underwent a similar procedure in Britain and was cured2.
> 
> Deng wanted to use CRISPR gene editing to engineer HIV-resistant blood stem cells from normal donors, making this potential cure more widely accessible. He and his colleagues tested this approach on a 27-year-old man in China who had been diagnosed with HIV and leukaemia, and who needed a bone-marrow transplant. The scientists extracted bone-marrow stem cells from a donor and used CRISPR–Cas9 to transform them into CCR5 mutants.
> 
> At first, the researchers couldn’t get CRISPR to knock out _CCR5_ in the stem cells. “I thought, wow, these cells are really tough,” says Deng. Eventually, the were able to edit 17.8% of the donor’s stem cells.
> 
> *Safety first*
> To maximize the chance that the transplant would treat the patient’s cancer, the researchers mixed the edited stem cells with unedited ones. The team monitored the man after the transplant to see whether the edited cells would survive and replicate, whether they treated the HIV infection and, most importantly, whether the treatment was safe.
> 
> “This was the first trial, so the most important thing was to test safety,” says Deng.
> 
> CRISPR gene editing in people remains controversial, in part because many researchers worry about its side effects. Studies have shown that CRISPR sometimes creates unwanted mutations in the lab3 — and the consequences of that happening in a person could be disastrous.
> 
> After 19 months, the CRISPR-edited stem cells did persist, though they comprised only 5–8% of the recipient’s total stem cells. This means that a little over one-half of the edited cells died after they were transplanted. And although the man’s leukaemia is in remission, he is still infected with HIV.
> 
> “I’m not surprised that 5% was not enough to lower the viral load,” says Urnov, “but now we know that CRISPR-edited cells can persist, and that we need to do better than 5%.”
> 
> To Deng, the most important thing is that the man did not suffer any side effects caused by the gene-edited cells. And when the researchers sequenced the genomes of those cells, they didn’t find evidence of unintended genetic changes.
> 
> *Pushing forward*
> “This is really good news for the field,” says Carl June, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. “We now know that, in principle, we can use CRISPR to edit human stem cells, that they can persist in a patient and that it can be safe.”
> 
> June says that this proof of concept opens the door for research into testing this technology for treatment of other blood diseases, such as sickle-cell anaemia. He also notes that this study complied with standard ethical protocols, including obtaining informed consent from the participant.
> 
> Improvements in gene-editing technology mean researchers can now edit stem cells with efficiency greater than the 17.8% success rate in the latest study. But that comes with risks. Each time CRISPR cuts in the genome, there's a chance something could go wrong. Gene-editing cells more efficiently means making more cuts, and creates more opportunity for mistakes.
> 
> “This paper is an incomplete success, but it will only motivate the field to push onwards,” says Urnov. Had the experiment proved to be unsafe, regulatory agencies might have stopped future research. Now, he says, researchers can point to this study as proof of concept that this line of research can be safe and potentially fruitful.
> 
> “I’m going to have an extra scoop of ice cream tonight, knowing that the ship of human genome editing for treating disease is still on course,” says Urnov.
> 
> doi: 10.1038/d41586-019-02719-w
> 
> 
> 
> Scientists use gene-edited stem cells to treat HIV — with mixed success | Nature
> 
> Lei Xu, M.D., Ph.D., Jun Wang, M.D., Ph.D., Yulin Liu, B.S., Liangfu Xie, B.S., Bin Su, Ph.D., Danlei Mou, M.D., Ph.D., Longteng Wang, B.S., Tingting Liu, M.D., Xiaobao Wang, B.S., Bin Zhang, M.D., Ph.D., Long Zhao, Ph.D., Liangding Hu, M.D., Hongmei Ning, M.D., Ph.D., Yufeng Zhang, B.S., Kai Deng, Ph.D., Lifeng Liu, Ph.D., Xiaofan Lu, Ph.D., Tong Zhang, M.D., Ph.D., Jun Xu, Ph.D., Cheng Li, Ph.D., Hao Wu, M.D., Hongkui Deng, Ph.D., and Hu Chen, M.D., Ph.D. *CRISPR-Edited Stem Cells in a Patient with HIV and Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia*._ N Engl J Med_ (2019); DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1817426.​


*Gene-edited stem cells may help cure AIDS*
By Wang Xiaodong | China Daily | Updated: 2019-09-19 07:11
















[Photo/IC]

Gene-edited stem cells that are the precursors of blood cells may help cure AIDS patients, a new discovery by Chinese scientists shows, providing new insights into treatment of the serious infectious disease.

In the study, researchers used the stem cells and other progenitor cells that had been gene edited to reduce a protein called CCR5, which serves as a doorway for HIV infection of human cells. The gene-edited cells were transplanted into a patient infected with HIV and with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a common type of leukemia.

The patient, a 27-year-old Chinese, improved greatly during a 19-month follow-up period and showed almost no symptoms of acute leukemia. In addition, the transplanted gene-edited cells showed resistance to HIV infection during a brief period when the patient stopped taking antiviral drugs, according to the study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Sept 11.

Deng Hongkui, a professor in life sciences at Peking University, and a chief researcher involved in the study, said researchers overseas have been trying to use gene-edited stem cells to treat AIDS patients, but the study is the first to have gained initial success in clinical trials of the new methods.

The study started in May 2017 and is continuing, he said.

"The study indicates great potential for gene-editing technologies in the treatment of serious diseases, including AIDS, hemophilia and thalassemia," he said. Thalassemia is an inherited disease in which people have an overload of iron in their bodies.

Previously, scientists from abroad succeeded in treating AIDS patients with transplanted bone marrow cells with a natural genetic mutation in the CCR5 protein that made it immune to HIV infection in the few reported cases. A major reason that such treatment is uncommon is that the genetic mutation is rare among humans, which makes finding the right donor extremely difficult.

A new report involving research led by the University of Cambridge was published in March in Nature. A patient with HIV showed immunity to the virus after receiving bone marrow stem cells from such a donor.

Although researchers achieved successful transplantation and long-term grafts of stem and progenitor cells using the CRISPR gene-editing technique, the efficiency of gene editing using the CCR5 protein is not high, indicating the need for further research into this approach, Deng said.

"The research explored the feasibility and safety of the method," he said. "We need to further improve the efficiency of gene editing and optimize transplantation procedures in our future study, and it is expected that application of the gene-editing technology to clinical use to treat diseases will be accelerated," he said.

Although no adverse results related to the gene editing have been seen in the research, long-term, intensified research is still needed to evaluate the safety of the technology, he said.

The number of people living with HIV worldwide is estimated at 37 million, according to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS.


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 19-SEP-2019
*Bridge between quantum mechanics and general relativity still possible*
UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY OF CHINA



​Experimental diagram of testing gravitaty induced decoherence of entanglement. *CREDIT: *provided by University of Science and Technology of China

Quantum mechanics and the general theory of relativity form the bedrock of the current understanding of physics - yet the two theories don't seem to work together. Physical phenomena rely on relationship of motion between the observed and the observer. Certain rules hold true across types of observed objects and those observing, but those rules tend to break down at the quantum level, where subatomic particles behave in strange ways.

An international team of researchers developed a unified framework that would account for this apparent break down between classical and quantum physics, and they put it to the test using a quantum satellite called Micius. They published their results ruling out one version of their theory on Sept 19th in _Science_.

Micius is part of a Chinese research project called Quantum Experiments at Space Scale (QUESS), in which researchers can examine the relationship with quantum and classical physics using light experiments. In this study, the researchers used the satellite to produce and measure two entangled particles.

"Thanks to the advanced technologies made available by Micius, for the first time in human history, we managed to perform a meaningful quantum optical experiment testing the fundamental physics between quantum theory and gravity," said Jian-Wei Pan, paper author and director of the CAS center for Excellence in Quantum Information and Quantum Physics at the University of Science and Technology of China

The theory Pan and the team tested was that the particles would decorrelate from one another as they passed through separate gravitational regions of Earth. The different gravitational pulls would force a quantum interaction that behaved as classical relativism would - the particle in less gravity would move with less constraint than the one in stronger gravity.

According to Pan, this "event formalism" attempts to present a coherent description of quantum fields as they exist in exotic spacetime, which contains closed time-like curves, and ordinary space time. Event formalism standardized behavior across quantum and classical physics.

"If we did observe the deviation, it would mean that event formalism is correct, and we must substantially revise our understanding of the interplay between quantum theory and gravity theory," Pan said. "However, in our experiment, we ruled out the strong version of event formalism, but there are other versions to test."

The researchers did not see the particles deviate from the expected interactions predicted by the quantum understanding of gravity, but they plan to test a version of their theory that allows for a little more flexibility.

"We ruled out the strong version of event formalism, but a modified model remains an open question," Pan said.

To test this version, Pan and the team will launch a new satellite that will orbit 20 to 60 times higher than Micius to test a wider field of gravity strength.



Bridge between quantum mechanics and general relativity still possible | EurekAlert! Science News

Ping Xu, Yiqiu Ma, Ji-Gang Ren, Hai-Lin Yong, Timothy C. Ralph, Sheng-Kai Liao, Juan Yin, Wei-Yue Liu, Wen-Qi Cai, Xuan Han, Hui-Nan Wu, Wei-Yang Wang, Feng-Zhi Li, Meng Yang, Feng-Li Lin, Li Li, Nai-Le Liu, Yu-Ao Chen, Chao-Yang Lu, Yanbei Chen, Jingyun Fan, Cheng-Zhi Peng, Jian-Wei Pan. *Satellite testing of a gravitationally induced quantum decoherence model*. _Science_ (2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aay5820​


----------



## Galactic Penguin SST

*Aquaculture in China Dating Back 8,000 Years*

Thu Sep 19, 2019 11:34

TEHRAN (FNA)- Researchers analyzed fish bones excavated from the Early Neolithic Jiahu site in Henan Province, China. By comparing the body-length distributions and species-composition ratios of the bones with findings from East Asian sites with present aquaculture, the researchers provide evidence of managed carp aquaculture at Jiahu dating back to 6200-5700 BC.

In a recent study, an international team of researchers analyzed fish bones excavated from the Early Neolithic Jiahu site in Henan Province, China. By comparing the body-length distributions and species-composition ratios of the bones with findings from East Asian sites with present aquaculture, the researchers provide evidence of managed carp aquaculture at Jiahu dating back to 6200-5700 BC.

Despite the growing importance of farmed fish for economies and diets around the world, the origins of aquaculture remain unknown. The Shijing, the oldest surviving collection of ancient Chinese poetry, mentions carp being reared in a pond circa 1140 BC, and historical records describe carp being raised in artificial ponds and paddy fields in East Asia by the first millennium BC. But considering rice paddy fields in China date all the way back to the fifth millennium BC, researchers from Lake Biwa Museum in Kusatu, Japan, the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures in Norwich, U.K., and an international team of colleagues set out to discover whether carp aquaculture in China was practiced earlier than previously thought.

Carp farming goes way back in Early Neolithic Jiahu

Jiahu, located in Henan, China, is known for the early domestication of rice and pigs, as well the early development of fermented beverages, bone flutes, and possibly writing. This history of early development, combined with archaeological findings suggesting the presence of large expanses of water, made Jiahu an ideal location for the present study.

Researchers measured 588 pharyngeal carp teeth extracted from fish remains in Jiahu corresponding with three separate Neolithic periods, and compared the body-length distributions with findings from other sites and a modern sample of carp raised in Matsukawa Village, Japan. While the remains from the first two periods revealed unimodal patterns of body-length distribution peaking at or near carp maturity, the remains of Period III (6200-5700 BC) displayed bimodal distribution, with one peak at 350-400 mm corresponding with sexual maturity, and another at 150-200 mm.

This bimodal distribution identified by researchers was similar to that documented at the Iron Age Asahi site in Japan (circa 400 BC -- AD 100), and is indicative of a managed system of carp aquaculture that until now was unidentified in Neolithic China. "In such fisheries," the study notes, "a large number of cyprinids were caught during the spawning season and processed as preserved food. At the same time, some carp were kept alive and released into confined, human regulated waters where they spawned naturally and their offspring grew by feeding on available resources. In autumn, water was drained from the ponds and the fish harvested, with body-length distributions showing two peaks due to the presence of both immature and mature individuals."

Species-composition ratios support findings, indicate cultural preferences

The size of the fish wasn't the only piece of evidence researchers found supporting carp management at Jiahu. In East Asian lakes and rivers, crucian carp are typically more abundant than common carp, but common carp comprised roughly 75% of cyprinid remains found at Jiahu. This high proportion of less-prevalent fish indicates a cultural preference for common carp and the presence of aquaculture sophisticated enough to provide it.

Based on the analysis of carp remains from Jiahu and data from previous studies, researchers hypothesize three stages of aquaculture development in prehistoric East Asia. In Stage 1, humans fished the marshy areas where carp gather during spawning season. In Stage 2, these marshy ecotones were managed by digging channels and controlling water levels and circulation so the carp could spawn and the juveniles later harvested. Stage 3 involved constant human management, including using spawning beds to control reproduction and fish ponds or paddy fields to manage adolescents.

Although rice paddy fields have not yet been identified at Jiahu, the evolution of carp aquaculture with wet rice agriculture seems to be connected, and the coevolution of the two is an important topic for future research.





http://web.archive.org/web/20190920...s/Images/1398/06/28/13980628000138_PhotoI.jpg 
▲ 1. Carp aquaculture at Jiahu dating back to 6200-5700 BC.

http://web.archive.org/web/20190920033153/https://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13980628000109
http://archive.fo/MmmvQ


----------



## JSCh

*Spotlight: China's achievements in technology innovation draw attention from U.S. tech world*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-09-20 04:27:49|Editor: Mu Xuequan

by Xinhua Writer Tan Jingjing

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 19 (Xinhua) -- China's achievements in technology innovation have drawn increasing attention from U.S. media and the high-tech world, and won affirmations from renowned U.S. technology experts.

High-tech China is inventing the next, new thing in frontier technologies: artificial intelligence, biotech, green energy, robotics and superfast and highly functional mobile communications, according to a recent report published by Forbes.

"China is no longer copying from the U.S. Now the reverse is true. Facebook has copied WeChat in private group messaging and followed 15-second video app TikTok. Amazon has imitated Alibaba in e-retailing. Lime has followed China's original Mobike and Ofo brands in bike-sharing," said the report.

In an interview with Xinhua, Eric Topol, a scientist at the renowned Scripps Institute in California, called a ground-breaking electronic chip developed by Chinese scientist a "breakthrough."

The Tianjic chip, which was incorporated into a riderless autonomous bicycle, can detect and track targets, avoid obstacles, self-balance, understand voice commands and even make independent decisions as a result of the chip's simultaneous processing of versatile algorithms and models.

"It's not the first self-driving bike. But equipped with an AI chip, it may be the nearest to thinking for itself," said an article published on The New York Times, titled "And Now, a Bicycle Built for None."

Topol said China is also forging new ground in applying AI to clinical practice.

"The Chinese government has made an extensive commitment to support health AI, reflected by billions of dollars of investment and the designation of one of its five national AI labs specifically for clinical applications," he said.

To take full advantage of deep-learning solutions in healthcare, the United States and China should collaborate, not compete, Topol stressed.

The cooperation between the United States and China could not only drive AI momentum across the globe, but also accelerate the creation of a global research and health infrastructure in which harmonized ethical and regulatory standards facilitate sharing of health data and potentiate deep learning, he said.

An increasing number of U.S. high-tech companies and academic institutions have partnered with Chinese enterprises and institutions along with China's tech advancement.

U.S. tech giant Qualcomm announced strategic cooperation with China's Tencent Games in July this year in the field of digital entertainment. By utilizing Qualcomm Technologies key products and technologies based on Snapdragon platforms, and Tencent's game development expertise and resources, both parties aim to develop popular, high quality games that can be experienced by consumers across a variety of Snapdragon platforms and devices.

Frank Meng, chairman of Qualcomm China, told Xinhua that Qualcomm values the Chinese market and maintains very close cooperation with Chinese partners.

Mobile gaming, an important 5G use case, will soon take advantage of the next generation of connectivity, he said, adding that faster speeds, more bandwidth, and cutting edge ultra-low latency will support real-time, multi-player and immersive gaming experience.

"We look forward to this new cooperation with Tencent Games to enrich lives and transform gaming behaviors on a global scale," he said in an interview with Xinhua.

The Research Methods and Data Science (RMDS) Lab, a U.S. leading community-centered data science research organization headquartered in Pasadena, California, has signed strategic cooperation agreement with China's National Engineering Laboratory of Industrial Big Data Application Technology and the Innovation Center of Industrial Big Data, on joint scientific research, personnel training, resources sharing and other technology solutions.

"China has the world's largest application market for industrial manufacturing. We are confident and optimistic about the great potential of our cooperation with Chinese partners," Alex Liu, founder of RMDS Lab and Chief Data Scientist of IBM, told Xinhua.

Liu said China leads the world in technologies in such areas as face recognition, smart city management, mobile payment and tagging data.

He attributed China's rapid science and technology progress to the government's input and support, innovation of high-tech companies, the reference of foreign experience, and the sound environment of the public to accept new technologies.

Patent applications from China have risen to 22 percent of the world's total, compared to 23 percent for the United States. Chinese research and development spending is quickly catching up to the U.S. level. China already has the world lead on academic scientific papers and the speediest supercomputers, according to U.S. media reports.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Beast

*How did China spark its electricity miracle?*






I am surprised China has supplied so much electricity to neighboring countries. Espeically Vietnam, if Vietnam is too hostile to China. We can teach them a lesson by shutting off electricity supply.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Kucing itu imut

Beast said:


> *How did China spark its electricity miracle?*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I am surprised China has supplied so much electricity to neighboring countries. Espeically Vietnam, if Vietnam is too hostile to China. We can teach them a lesson by shutting off electricity supply.


Well, I saw on wiki the amount of Vietnam's energy imports is small. Won't affect them that much.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Vietnam


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists invent super camera*
By Xu Keyue Source:Global Times Published: 2019/9/22 21:58:40

Technology useful in military, security applications




Zeng Xiaoyang pose for a picture with the artificial intelligence (AI)-enabling 500 megapixel cloud camera device. Photo: China News Service

Chinese scientists have developed an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabling 500 megapixel cloud camera system able to capture thousands of faces at a stadium in perfect detail and generate their facial data for the cloud while locating a particular target in an instant.

Most Chinese experts welcomed the camera system's military, national defense and public security applications, although some expressed data safety and privacy concerns.

The camera was developed by Shanghai-based Fudan University and Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Changchun, capital of Northeast China's Jilin Province, the China News Service reported on Saturday.

The 500-magapixel resolution camera system, five times the 120 million pixel resolution of the human eye, can capture extremely detailed images, the report said.

For example, in a stadium with tens of thousands of people, the camera can shoot a panoramic photo with a clear image of every single human face, the report said. 

When integrated with AI, facial recognition, real-time monitoring and cloud computing technology, the camera can detect and identify human faces or other objects based on massive data and instantly find specific targets, according to the report.

The report said that the camera system was capable of creating videos of the same ultra-high resolution as the pictures, thanks to two special chips developed by the same team. 

The massive videos and images captured by the camera can also be uploaded to a cloud data center. 

People around the world could log in to obtain the data, Zeng Xiaoyang, one of the scientists in the research team, was quoted as saying by the report.

In public security, Zeng said, for example, if the police arranged the camera system in the center of Shanghai, they could monitor the distribution of crowds in real time at a management center so as to prevent accidents.

Li Daguang, a professor at the National Defense University of the People's Liberation Army in Beijing, told the Global Times on Sunday that the system could be applied to national defense, military and public security.

It could serve as a watchdog at military bases, satellite launch bases and national borders to prevent suspicious people and objects from entering or exiting, Li said.

The report did not mention which government department or agency was buying the cloud camera system.

Wang Peiji, a doctor at school of astronautics of Harbin Institute of Technology, told the Global Times that the normal surveillance public security system is already enough, noting that to establish a new system must be costly with little gains. 

The camera could also violate personal privacy, Wang warned. 

Due to the "ultra-long distance" and "high-definition imaging" characteristics, the camera aroused personal privacy concerns, Zeng said. 

Zeng called for laws and regulations to standardize the application of the camera.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*NEWS AND VIEWS * *25 SEPTEMBER 2019
*X-rays glimpse solid hydrogen’s structure*
Little was known about the properties of hydrogen under extreme pressure. Experiments now reveal key details about the arrangement of molecules in several of the element’s high-pressure phases.
*
Bartomeu onserrat & Chris J. Pickard*

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the Universe. Our knowledge of celestial bodies such as the Sun, which is about 75% hydrogen1, relies on understanding the properties of this element at extreme temperature and pressure. Replicating these conditions in the laboratory is exceptionally challenging, and even the structure of high-pressure phases of hydrogen at low temperatures has been an open question. Writing in _Nature_, Ji _et al._2 report experiments that probe this structure at unprecedented pressures, revealing a hexagonal close-packed arrangement of molecules.

The simplicity of the hydrogen atom, which comprises a single proton and a single electron, does not prevent the high-pressure phases of the element from being rich and complex. Hydrogen is an electrical insulator at ambient conditions, but becomes a metal under extreme compression3 — a state that could, for example, help to generate Jupiter’s magnetic field. Additionally, theoretical work suggests that metallic hydrogen might exhibit many exotic phenomena, such as high-temperature superconductivity4 (electrical conduction without resistance) or superfluidity5 (fluid flow without friction).

Over the past few decades, multiple solid phases of hydrogen have been identified by increasing the pressure to well above that at the centre of Earth. These experiments make use of devices called diamond anvil cells, in which a hydrogen sample is placed in a thin-foil gasket, which is in turn screwed between two diamonds to achieve extreme pressures in the centre of the sample.

The main approaches for analysing the compressed samples involve studying how the constituent molecules absorb infrared light (infrared spectroscopy), or observing how they scatter light (Raman spectroscopy). Such methods provide insights into the molecular structure. They have revealed that, as pressure increases, hydrogen transitions from a crystalline solid in which all of the molecules have similar bond lengths, to a mixed phase in which molecules of different bond lengths coexist6,7. The results are consistent with theoretical models8.

The predominant technique for examining long-range order in materials is X-ray diffraction, in which X-rays scattered by the electrons in a crystal interfere with each other. The resulting diffraction pattern contains bright spots, corresponding to waves that interfere constructively; and dark spots, coming from waves that interfere destructively. X-ray diffraction has been used to make many important scientific discoveries, including the double-helix structure of DNA.

Unfortunately, using this technique to study high-pressure hydrogen has, up to now, proved extremely challenging. A major difficulty is that the ability of X-rays to scatter off electrons decreases as the mass of the atoms that make up the material decreases. Hydrogen, being the lightest element, therefore gives rise to particularly weak signals. As a result, it is hard to distinguish between the X-rays scattered by the electrons in the hydrogen sample and those scattered by the surrounding gasket, which is typically made from heavy elements (such as tungsten or rhenium). A further challenge is that the diamonds that are used to pressurize the sample break easily when exposed to X-rays, leading to loss of pressure.

Because of these difficulties, X-ray diffraction studies of hydrogen had so far reached pressures of up to only 190 gigapascals9 (about 1.9 million times standard atmospheric pressure). This is about half the pressure that hydrogen can be subjected to in diamond anvil cells, and is not high enough to study some of the element’s most exotic phases, such as the mixed phase.

Ji and co-workers have addressed these challenges in a tour de force, carrying out more than a hundred experiments over a period of five years at pressures of up to 254 GPa. To increase the signal arising from hydrogen compared with that from its surroundings, the gaskets used were made of elements lighter than tungsten and rhenium. The authors also designed the experiments to yield useful data in the short time available before the inevitable diamond failure.

The results provide evidence of the long-range structure of molecular hydrogen across three high-pressure solid phases, including the mixed phase. In all three, the molecules adopt a hexagonal close-packed structure (Fig. 1) in which they are symmetrically arranged in the shape of a hexagonal prism. Furthermore, increasing the pressure squeezes the prism, causing it to become flatter and fatter.



Figure 1 | Structure of hydrogen under extreme pressure. Ji _et al._2 demonstrate that the molecules in three high-pressure solid phases of hydrogen adopt a hexagonal close-packed structure. The drawing is a snapshot of where the two constantly moving protons in each molecule might be located. It also shows the charge density of the two electrons in each molecule, averaged over many snapshots.

Some questions remain. Unlike all of the elements heavier than helium, hydrogen has no electrons tightly bound to its nucleus, and the electrons in a hydrogen molecule are situated in the molecular bond. As a result, the scattering of X-rays by these electrons cannot be used to directly probe the location of the nuclei in the molecule or the molecule’s orientation, but instead the location of the bond.

Consequently, Ji and colleagues’ X-ray results will need to be combined with those from other experimental techniques, such as infrared and Raman spectroscopy, and possibly also nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, which has only in the past year become available at the extreme pressures being studied here10. Combining these experimental insights with theoretical models will make the full characterization of high-pressure hydrogen phases a reality.

The pressures reached in this X-ray study correspond to electrically insulating molecular hydrogen. In the next few years, experiments will probably focus on even higher pressures. However, it will prove a challenge for X-ray techniques to study the pressures at which the element becomes atomic and metallic. In this phase, the electrons are no longer in the molecular bond; instead, they are shared by all of the atoms in the structure, so it is unknown what the corresponding X-ray diffraction pattern would look like. Exciting times lie ahead for the study of the lightest and most abundant element in the Universe.

Nature 573, 504-505 (2019)


X-rays glimpse solid hydrogen’s structure | Nature

Cheng Ji, Bing Li, Wenjun Liu, Jesse S. Smith, Arnab Majumdar, Wei Luo, Rajeev Ahuja, Jinfu Shu, Junyue Wang, Stanislav Sinogeikin, Yue Meng, Vitali B. Prakapenka, Eran Greenberg, Ruqing Xu, Xianrong Huang, Wenge Yang, Guoyin Shen, Wendy L. Mao & Ho-Kwang Mao. *Ultrahigh-pressure isostructural electronic transitions in hydrogen*. _Nature _(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1565-9​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*China Focus: China's "Super Microscope" starts new experiments to explore microworld secrets*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-09-26 23:04:53|Editor: yan

by Xinhua writers Liu Yiwei, Quan Xiaoshu, Wang Pan, Jing Huaiqiao

GUANGZHOU, Sept. 26 (Xinhua) -- The China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS), located in Dongguan City, south China's Guangdong Province, began a new round of user operation Thursday, with 57 experiments on new materials to be conducted in the next four months.

These experiment proposals, including one applied by a foreign user and five from Hong Kong and Macao users, mainly involve magnetic materials, quantum materials, lithium battery materials, shale, catalytic materials, high-strength steel and high-performance alloys, said Prof. Zhang Junrong of the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

Construction of the CSNS project started in 2011 under the direction of the IHEP, with a total investment of 2.3 billion yuan (323 million U.S. dollars).

It was put into use in August 2018, consisting of a linear accelerator, a rapid cycling synchrotron, a target station, three neutron instruments and other auxiliary facilities.

*PROBING INTO THE MICROWORLD*

Dubbed as a "super microscope," a spallation neutron source can produce and accelerate protons before smashing them into the target to produce neutrons, and the neutron beams will be directed to hit material samples. Researchers can thus accurately infer the atomic structure of the materials by measuring the distribution of scattered neutrons and their changes in energy and momentum.

But unlike an X-ray from a synchrotron radiation facility, which is also used to explore the microstructure of materials, neutrons are not sensitive to the number of electrons and are a better "probe" when studying materials containing light elements with fewer electrons, such as carbon, hydrogen and oxygen.

Jin Dapeng, deputy director of the IHEP Dongguan Branch, gave an example in the field of energy materials. Hydrogen-powered vehicles are more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly than gasoline-fueled alternatives. Scientists hope to store hydrogen in a denser solid form, but pressurizing hydrogen can easily trigger explosions. So researchers are trying to develop a metal-organic framework that can intake hydrogen for storage and release it when it is needed. Neutron scattering can help scientists study where and under what conditions hydrogen is better stored and released in this material.

Benefiting from the advantages of neutrons in examining light elements, the CSNS's first batch of three neutron instruments for scientific experiments have achieved fruitful research results during the first two rounds of user operation.

From September 2018 to June 2019, the CSNS completed 101 experiments for domestic and overseas users, according to Zhang.

Huang Mingxin, a material researcher from the University of Hong Kong, conducted detailed experiments on one of the CSNS's neutron instruments to test the high-strength steel developed by his team.

He was satisfied with both the precise results and convenient service. He once applied to use Japan's spallation neutron source (J-PARC), but he had to first design the experiment steps, then send the material samples to Japan, and keep waiting for the data to be sent back.

Now, it takes him only an hour and a half driving from Hong Kong to the CSNS, "just like at my doorstep," said Huang.

Focusing on international sci-tech frontiers and serving the country's major development demands, the CSNS has made progress in many research fields, including new lithium-ion battery material, spin Hall magnetic film, high-strength alloy and neutron-induced single event effect in chip. Twelve articles about these experimental results have been published or accepted by academic journals.

The CSNS can provide neutron beams for more than 20 neutron instruments. "We hope to build five to seven new instruments for various demands in the next three to four years," said Jin Dapeng.

*DEBUGGING WITH INCREDIBLE EFFICIENCY*

The CSNS is the fourth pulse spallation neutron source in the world after the UK, the United States and Japan, with the debugging efficiency of its researchers surprising their foreign peers.

Proton beam power is one of the key performance of a spallation neutron source. The higher the power, the more neutrons will be produced, the more signals of scattered neutrons will be detected, and thus the less time an experiment will consume and the better the data an experiment will obtain, Jin explained.

Last September, the CSNS ran with a power of 20 KW. "Its operating power had reached 50 KW at the end of 2018," Jin said. They plan to increase the power to 80 KW by the end of this year, which means the original goal of reaching 100 KW in three years can be achieved ahead of schedule.

While gradually increasing the beam power, the accelerator physics group responsible for the commissioning of the accelerators repeatedly tested and examined the parameters of thousands of devices at each power level to find the optimal combination.

"The time jitter of the timing system for the particle beams must be controlled at the nanosecond level," said Xu Shouyan, the group leader of the accelerator physics.

"We have hundreds of instruments installed on the accelerators to measure the states of the particle beams. But the parameters are combined in such a complicated way that even a small deviation could be the result of a mixture of errors from hundreds or thousands of devices," Xu said.

"The CSNS is expected to reach its design beam power of 100 KW in three years or less after it passed the national acceptance because we have taken fewer detours thanks to the experience of our foreign peers. Moreover, we Chinese always work hard," Xu explained.

To Xu and his colleagues, working overtime is quite normal. Xu once worked for about 37 hours straight without a break. "I didn't feel sleepy at all. I used to work on the computer, but when I saw the devices running as expected step by step, I was really excited and couldn't wait to carry out the next test," Xu said.

Scientists hope to eventually increase the beam power of the CSNS from 100 KW to 500 KW. To meet the goal, they have reserved room for further modifications and upgrading in the initial design. Now the researchers have started to work on the plan to upgrade the accelerators for the CSNS phase II project.

"One of the great joys of studying physics is being able to explore and get closer to the essence of the world, and the spallation neutron source is helping us to realize it," Xu said.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Nature publishes breakthrough in electrocatalysts from PKU's Guo Shaojun and collaborators*
SEP . 26 2019

Peking University, Sept. 26, 2019: Recently, the group of Professor Guo Shaojun in College of Engineering, Peking University developed a novel type of sub-nanometer, highly curved PdMo nanosheets – due to its structural analogy with graphene, it was denoted as ‘PdMo bimetallene’– which showed extraordinary electrocatalytic performance towards the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in alkaline environment. When used as the cathode electrocatalysts, the PdMo nanosheets enables much enhanced changing/discharging performance in Zn-air and Li-air batteries. This work was published in _Nature_ magazine on September 26th, 2019.

Fossil fuels has caused severe challenges in energy shortage, environmental pollution and climate change, thus urgently calling for the development of renewable clean energy technologies that enable a sustainable energy system. The storage and subsequent usage of the renewable yet intermittent energy sources, _e.g._ solar, wind _etc._, however, requires an electrochemical device that enables the interconversion of electricity and chemicals in an efficient manner. Of key importance to the operational efficiency of the device lies on the electrode-electrolyte interface, in which the desired electrochemical reactions occur as driven by a suitable electrocatalyst. Currently, the lack of high-performing electrocatalyst bottlenecks the penetration of renewable energy.

One of the biggest challenges in this field is the unfavorable kinetics of the ORR, and platinum group metals (PGMs)-based electrocatalysts are often required to improve the activity and durability. In the past decade, the ORR activities in acidic environment on platinum-based catalysts have been drastically improved via the tuning of alloying, surface strain and optimized coordination environment. Nevertheless, improving the activity of this reaction in alkaline media remains challenging due to the difficulty in achieving optimized oxygen binding strength on PGMs in the presence of hydroxide. In this study, PdMo bimetallene has been demonstrated to be an efficient and stable electrocatalyst for the ORR and the OER in alkaline electrolytes, and promising cathodic electrodes in Zn–air and Li–air batteries. The ultrathin feature of PdMo bimetallene enables an impressive electrochemically active surface area (138.7 m2/gPd) and a mass activity towards the ORR of 16.37 A/mgPd at 0.9 volts versus RHE in alkaline electrolytes. This mass activity is 78 times and 327 times higher than that of commercial Pt/C and Pd/C catalysts, respectively, along with negligible decay after 30,000 accelerated cycling. Density functional theory calculations show that an optimized oxygen binding energy was achieved on PdMo bimetallene due to a combination of alloying effect, strain effect and the quantum size effect. It is envisioned that the ‘metallene’ materials will show great promise in energy electrocatalysis.

Professor Guo Shaojun is the corresponding author of this paper. Collaborators include Professor Lu Gang from California State University and Dr. Su Dong from Brookhaven National Laboratory. This work was financially supported by the National Key R&D Program of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Beijing Natural Science Foundation, the BIC-ESAT project, the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation and others. The work at California State University Northridge was supported by the National Science Foundation PREM. The electron microscopy work used resources of the Center for Functional Nanomaterials, which is a US Department of Energy Office of Science Facility, at Brookhaven National Laboratory.



Fig. 1. Structural characterizations of PdMo bimetallene. a–c, Low-magnification HAADF-STEM (a), high-magnification HAADF-STEM (b) and TEM (c) images of PdMo bimetallene. The _inset_ of c shows an HRTEM image of PdMo bimetallene. d, e, AFM image (d) and corresponding height profiles (e) of PdMo bimetallene. f, High-resolution HAADF-STEM image taken from a single bimetallene nanosheet. _Inset_, the corresponding fast Fourier transform patterns.






​Fig. 2. Electrocatalytic performance and mechanism study. a, b, ORR polarization curves (a) and a comparison of the mass- and specific activities (b) of the stated catalysts in 0.1 M KOH at 0.9 V _versus _RHE. c, _Left_, side view of the atomic model of the four-layer PdMo bimetallene. _Right_, top view of the atomic model showing layers 2 and 3. In layers 2 and 3, each molybdenum atom is surrounded by six palladium atoms, indicated by the red (layer 2) and blue (layer 3) hexagons. d, Oxygen binding energy (ΔEO) of PdMo bimetallene as a function of compressive (negative) and tensile (positive) strains. The horizontal red line indicates the optimal ΔEO value. e, The projected electronic density of states of the d-band for the surface palladium atoms in bulk Pd, a four-layer Pd sheet (Pd 4L) and PdMo. The horizontal dashed lines indicate the calculated d-band centre.


Edited by: Huang Weijian
Source: College of Engineering



Nature publishes breakthrough in electrocatalysts from PKU's Guo Shaojun and collaborators_Peking University

Mingchuan Luo, Zhonglong Zhao, Yelong Zhang, Yingjun Sun, Yi Xing, Fan Lv, Yong Yang, Xu Zhang, Sooyeon Hwang, Yingnan Qin, Jing-Yuan Ma, Fei Lin, Dong Su, Gang Lu & Shaojun Guo. *PdMo bimetallene for oxygen reduction catalysis*. _Nature _(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1603-7​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 30-SEP-2019
*Quantum material goes where none have gone before*
Alloy behaves strangely while traversing potential 'spin liquid' state

RICE UNIVERSITY



Qimiao Si is the Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor in Rice University's Department of Physics and Astronomy and director of RCQM, the Rice Center for Quantum Materials. *CREDIT: *Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Rice University

HOUSTON -- (Sept. 30, 2019) -- Rice University physicist Qimiao Si began mapping quantum criticality more than a decade ago, and he's finally found a traveler that can traverse the final frontier.

The traveler is an alloy of cerium palladium and aluminum, and its journey is described in a study published online this week in _Nature Physics_ by Si, a theoretical physicist and director of the Rice Center for Quantum Materials (RCQM), and colleagues in China, Germany and Japan.

Si's map is a graph called a phase diagram, a tool that condensed-matter physicists often use to interpret what happens when a material changes phase, as when a solid block of ice melts into liquid water.

The regions on Si's map are areas where electrons follow different sets of rules, and the paper describes how the researchers used the geometric arrangement of atoms in the alloy in combination with various pressures and magnetic fields to alter the alloy's path and bring it into a region where physicists have only been able to speculate about the rules that govern electron behavior.

"That's the corner, or portion, of this road map that everybody really wants to access," Si said, pointing to the upper left side of the phase diagram, high up the vertical axis marked G. "It has taken the community a huge amount of effort to look through candidate materials that have the feature of geometrical frustration, which is one way to realize this large G."

The frustration stems from the arrangement of cerium atoms in the alloy in a series of equilateral triangles. The kagome lattice arrangement is so named because of its similarity to patterns in traditional Japanese kagome baskets, and the triangular arrangement ensures that spins, the magnetic states of electrons, cannot arrange themselves as they normally would under certain conditions. This frustration provided an experimental lever that Si and his collaborators could use to explore a new region of the phase diagram where the boundary between two well-studied and well-understood states -- one marked by an orderly arrangement of electron spins and the other by disorder -- diverged.

"If you start with an ordered, antiferromagnetic pattern of spins in an up-down, up-down arrangement, there are several ways of softening this hard pattern of the spins," said Si, the Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor in Rice's Department of Physics and Astronomy. "One way is through coupling to a background of conduction electrons, and as you change conditions to enhance this coupling, the spins get more and more scrambled. When the scrambling is strong enough, the ordered pattern is destroyed, and you end up with a non-ordered phase, a paramagnetic phase."

Physicists can plot this journey from order to disorder as a line on a phase diagram. In the example above, the line would begin in a region marked "AF" for antiferromagnetic phase, and continue across one border into a neighboring region marked "P" for paramagnetic. The border crossing is the "quantum critical point" where billions upon trillions of electrons act in unison, adjusting their stances to conform to the rules of the regime they have just entered.

Si is a leading proponent of quantum criticality, a theoretical framework that seeks to describe and predict the behavior of quantum materials in relation to these critical points and phase changes.

"What the geometrical frustration does is to extend the process where the spin order becomes more and more fragile so that it's no longer just a point that the system passes through on the way to being disordered," he said. "In fact, that point sort of splits out into a separate region, with distinct borders on either side."

Si said the team, which included co-corresponding authors and RCQM partners Frank Steglich of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids in Dresden, Germany and Peijie Sun of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, performed experiments that provided evidence that the cerium palladium aluminum alloy undergoes two border crossings.

Physicists have conducted numerous experiments to see how various materials behave in the ordered phase where the alloy began its journey and in the disordered phase where it ended, but Si said these are the first experiments to trace a path through the intervening phase that is enabled by a high degree of geometrical frustration.

He said measurements of the alloy's electronic properties as it passed through the region couldn't be explained by traditional theories that describe the behavior of metals, which means the alloy behaved as a "strange" metal in the mystery territory.

"The system acted as a kind of spin liquid, albeit a metallic one," he said.

Si said the results demonstrate that geometrical frustration can be used as a design principle to create strange metals.

"That is significant because the unusual electronic excitations in strange metals are also the underlying exotic properties of other strongly correlated quantum materials, including most high-temperature superconductors," he said.


Quantum material goes where none have gone before | EurekAlert! Science News

Hengcan Zhao, Jiahao Zhang, Meng Lyu, Sebastian Bachus, Yoshifumi Tokiwa, Philipp Gegenwart, Shuai Zhang, Jinguang Cheng, Yi-feng Yang, Genfu Chen, Yosikazu Isikawa, Qimiao Si, Frank Steglich & Peijie Sun. *Quantum-critical phase from frustrated magnetism in a strongly correlated metal*. _Nature Physics_ (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41567-019-0666-6​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*NEWS AND VIEWS * 02 OCTOBER 2019*

*Double-click enables synthesis of chemical libraries for drug discovery*
Operationally simple chemical reactions, termed click reactions, are widely used in many scientific fields. A streamlined synthesis of compounds called azides looks set to expand the role of click chemistry still further.

*Joseph J. Topczewski & **En-Chih Liu*

Generating molecules and materials that have desirable functional properties is arguably the central goal of synthetic chemistry. For example, drugs are developed to have a set of physical and pharmacological properties that can treat a specific disease safely. Writing in _Nature_, Meng _et al._1 report a reagent that greatly simplifies the synthesis of compounds known as azides, and thereby opens up a remarkably straightforward route to making libraries of compounds that might have useful biological functions.

Altering the structures of molecules to tune their properties is much more complicated than modifying objects in the everyday world. In carpentry, for instance, the same starting materials (timber, nails and screws) and tools (saws, hammers and screwdrivers) can be used to construct objects that have diverse shapes and functions, such as chairs, doors and crates. By contrast, building structural analogues of molecules often requires very different starting materials (reagents) and tools (reactions). The need to develop a range of synthetic routes to such analogues can be a bottleneck when optimizing functional molecular properties2, given that optimization can involve the laborious, resource-intensive synthesis of hundreds, or even thousands, of structural analogues.

A way of streamlining the optimization of desired functional properties was formalized in 2001, in a concept known as click chemistry3. A reaction is defined as click chemistry if it is operationally simple, is ‘spring-loaded’ (thermodynamically driven to produce a single product quickly), and generates new chemical bonds between two molecules. Ideally, the reactants should be used in a one-to-one ratio, rather than with an excess of one or more components (which is a common requirement for many reactions). Click reactions must be high-yielding, applicable to a broad range of compounds, and yet exceptionally selective, meaning that the chemical groups that undergo the reaction must react only with each other, and not with any other groups in the reactants. The product should also be easy to isolate or use without extensive purification. Although many synthetic reactions meet some of these criteria, surprisingly few meet all of them.


...

Double-click enables synthesis of chemical libraries for drug discovery | Nature

Genyi Meng, Taijie Guo, Tiancheng Ma, Jiong Zhang, Yucheng Shen, Karl Barry Sharpless & Jiajia Dong. *Modular click chemistry libraries for functional screens using a diazotizing reagent*. _Nature _(2019); DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1589-1​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Cells from the most common type of liver cancer. Analysis of such cells’ proteins and genes has revealed metabolic peculiarities. Credit: Steve Gschmeissner/SPL

03 OCTOBER 2019
*Liver tumours’ odd metabolisms might be their weak spot*
People with a certain type of liver cancer die sooner if they have higher levels of some metabolic proteins.

The way to beat liver tumours caused by a common virus might be to target their peculiar metabolisms, according to a detailed analysis of the genes and proteins in such tumours.

Liver cancer kills 788,000 people worldwide each year. More than 40% of those deaths are attributed to liver tumours caused by hepatitis B virus (HBV).

Jia Fan at Fudan University in Shanghai, China, and his colleagues studied tumour tissue and non-cancerous liver tissue from 159 people with HBV-related liver cancer. The team found signs that tumour metabolism differs from that of normal tissue. Tumours contained chemical modifications to some sugar-processing enzymes, and the scientists could promote tumour growth in mice by seeding the animals with human cells that produce one of those modified enzymes.

High levels of two proteins involved in metabolism were associated with poorer survival in the original 159 study participants and in another 243 participants with liver cancer. The authors say that therapies that target tumour metabolism — one of the most important predictors of disease course — hold promise.

_Cell_ (2019)​

Liver tumours’ odd metabolisms might be their weak spot : Research Highlights | Nature

Zhijian Song; Chen Huang; Junqiang Li; Xiaowei Dong; Yanting Zhou; Qian Liu; Lijie Ma; Xiaoying Wang; Jian Zhou; Yansheng Liu; Emily Boja; Ana I. Robles; Weiping Ma; Pei Wang; Yize Li; Li Ding; Bo Wen; Bing Zhang; Henry Rodriguez; Daming Gao; Hu Zhou; Jia Fan. *Integrated Proteogenomic Characterization of HBV-Related Hepatocellular Carcinoma*. _Cell _(2019). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2019.08.052​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

OCTOBER 8, 2019 
*All-perovskite tandem solar cells with 24.8% efficiency*
by Ingrid Fadelli , Tech Xplore



A photograph of an all-perovskite tandem solar cell fabricated by the researchers. Credit: Lin et al.

A team of researchers at Nanjing University in China and the University of Toronto in Canada have recently fabricated all-perovskite tandem solar cells (PSCs), a type of solar cell with a key perovskite structured component. These new solar cells, presented in a paper featured in _Nature Energy_, were achieve remarkable efficiency, outperforming other existing solutions.

"The initial idea for this research work was to make all-perovskite tandem solar cells which could be more efficient than single-junction perovskite solar cells," Hairen Tan, the lead researcher for the study, told TechXplore.

Perovskites are a group of minerals that have the same crystal structure as perovskite, a yellow, brown or black mineral consisting largely of calcium titanate. Over the past few years, several research teams worldwide have been trying to develop solar cells using this material, typically utilizing either wide-bandgap (~1.8 eV) or narrow-bandgap (~1.2 eV) perovskites.

Fabricating all-perovskite tandem solar cells, thus combining wide-bandgap and narrow-bandgap perovskites together, could lead to a higher power conversion efficiency (PCEs) than that attained by single-junction cells without increasing fabrication costs. In order to build this new type of solar cell, however, researchers need to find a way to enhance the performance of each subcell, while also integrating the wide-bandgap and narrow-bandgap cells synergistically.

"Unfortunately, previously reported mixed Pb-Sn narrow-bandgap perovskite solar cells have exhibited low efficiencies (PCE~18-20 percent) and low short-circuit current densities (Jsc_~_28-30 mA/cm2)," Tan said. "These lie well below their potential, and below the performance of the best Pb-based single-junction perovskite cells."

The key reason for the poor performance observed in previously developed narrow-bandgap perovskite solar cells is that one of their key components, known as Sn2+, readily oxidizes into Sn4+. As a result, the resultant cell film exhibits high trap densities and short carrier diffusion lengths. In their study, Tan and his colleagues wanted to identify solutions that could help to overcome this limitation.

"Our main objective in this work is initiating a strategy to enlarge the diffusion of narrow-bandgap perovskite solar cells and thus to achieve better performed tandem solar cells," Tan said. "Sn vacancies are typically caused by the incorporation of Sn4+ (a product of Sn2+ oxidation) in the mixed Pb-Sn perovskites. We took the view that a new strategy to prevent the oxidization of Sn2+ in the precursor solution could dramatically improve charge carrier diffusion length."


Tan and his colleagues introduced a new chemical approach that could ultimately enhance the performance of PSCs. This approach is based on a comproportionation reaction that leads to substantial advancements in the charge carrier diffusion lengths of mixed Pb-Sn narrow-bandgap perovskites.

Previously proposed approaches are all characterized by sub-micrometer diffusion lengths, which can impair the cell's overall efficiency. In their work, on the other hand, Tan and his colleagues achieved a 3 μm diffusion length; a remarkable result that enables performance-record-breaking Pb-Sn cells and all-perovskite tandem cells.

"We achieved this by developing a tin-reduced precursor solution strategy that returns the Sn4+ (an oxidization product of Sn2+) back to Sn2+ via a comproportionation reaction in the precursor solution," Tan explained.

The oxidation of tin-containing perovskites has been a crucial problem for the development of solar cells with a perovskite component, as it can negatively affect their performance and thus hinder their application in a variety of settings. The new chemical approach introduced by Tan and his colleagues provides an alternative route for fabricating tandem solar cells using tin-containing narrow-bandgap perovskite, which leads to more stable and efficient cells.

"Our work also highlights that the electronic quality of tin-containing perovskites can be comparable to that of lead halide perovskites that has demonstrated efficiency similar to crystalline silicon cells," Tan added. "We have no doubt that our tandem approach will finally offer us an avenue to very cheap, yet highly efficient solar devices."

In their study, Tan and his colleagues used their chemical approach to fabricate monolithic all-perovskite tandem cells and then tested their performance. They found that their tandem cells obtained impressive independently certified PCEs of 24.8 percent for small-area devices (0.049 cm2) and 22.1 percent for large-area devices (1.05 cm2).

Moreover, the cells retained 90 percent of their performance after operating for over 400 hours at their maximum power point under full one sun illumination. In the future, the approach introduced by this team of researchers could inform the development of more efficient and cost-effective solar-powered devices.

"We now plan to further improve the power conversion efficiency of all-perovskite tandem solar cells beyond 28 percent," Tan said. "The first possible way to achieve this will be to reduce the photovoltage loss in the wide-bandgap perovskite solar cell. Another possibility is to reduce the optical losses in the tunneling recombination junction."


*More information:* Renxing Lin et al. Monolithic all-perovskite tandem solar cells with 24.8% efficiency exploiting comproportionation to suppress Sn(ii) oxidation in precursor ink, _Nature Energy_ (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41560-019-0466-3


https://techxplore.com/news/2019-10-all-perovskite-tandem-solar-cells-efficiency.html

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Researchers try "one-two punch" method to treat liver cancer*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-10-09 16:31:29|Editor: ZX

SHANGHAI, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) -- An international team of researchers have found a "one-two punch" method to treat liver cancer by inducing weakness in liver cancer cells and exploiting the vulnerability to reduce tumor growth.

Researchers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University's School of Medicine and the Netherlands Cancer Institute found they can selectively induce senescence in liver cancer cells with mutations in a gene named TP53.

Senescence means the loss of a cell's power of division and growth, similar to putting the cell into a sleep mode.

The researchers said that the cells in the sleep mode have an "acquired vulnerability" and a follow-up screening will select a suitable chemical agent to target the vulnerability and kill cancer cells.

They said the two-step treatment is like the classic "one-two punch" from boxing. A combination of two blows is delivered in rapid succession: a left jab to expose the cancer cell's weak points quickly followed by a right cross to knock them out.

Meanwhile, the treatment has minimal side effects on other cells in normal proliferation, they added.

According to the research published in the journal Nature early this month, the treatment resulted in a marked reduction of tumor growth in mouse models of liver cancer.

The researchers said their study indicates that exploiting an induced vulnerability could be an effective treatment for liver cancer.

Liver cancer is a common malignant tumor with poor prognosis. Surgery and liver transplants so far are the most effective treatments. However, due to the difficulty of early diagnosis and rapid progression of the disease, most patients are unable to undergo surgery when they are diagnosed.

Cun Wang, Serena Vegna, Haojie Jin, Bente Benedict, Cor Lieftink, Christel Ramirez, Rodrigo Leite de Oliveira, Ben Morris, Jules Gadiot, Wei Wang, Aimée du Chatinier, Liqin Wang, Dongmei Gao, Bastiaan Evers, Guangzhi Jin, Zheng Xue, Arnout Schepers, Fleur Jochems, Antonio Mulero Sanchez, Sara Mainardi, Hein te Riele, Roderick L. Beijersbergen, Wenxin Qin, Leila Akkari, René Bernards. *Inducing and exploiting vulnerabilities for the treatment of liver cancer*. _Nature _(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1607-3​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 9-OCT-2019
*Atomic-level imaging could offer roadmap to metals with new properties*
GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY



This schematic illustration of the new palladium-containing high entropy allow shows how new alloy contains large palladium clusters (blue atoms). CREDIT: Ting Zhu

High-entropy alloys, which are made from nearly equal parts of several primary metals, could hold great potential for creating materials with superior mechanical properties.

But with a practically unlimited number of possible combinations, one challenge for metallurgists is figuring out where to focus their research efforts in a vast, unexplored world of metallic mixtures.

A team of researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology has developed a new process that could help guide such efforts. Their approach involves building an atomic resolution chemical map to help gain new insights into individual high-entropy alloys and help characterize their properties.

In a study published Oct. 9 in the journal _Nature_, the researchers described using energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy to create maps of individual metals in two high-entropy alloys. This spectroscopy technique, used in conjunction with transmission electron microscopy, detects X-rays emitted from a sample during bombardment by an electron beam to characterize the elemental composition of an analyzed sample. The maps show how individual atoms arrange themselves within the alloy, allowing researchers to look for patterns that could help them design alloys emphasizing individual properties.

For example, the maps could give researchers clues to understand why substituting one metal for another could make an alloy stronger or weaker, or why one metal outperforms others in extremely cold environments.

"Most alloys used in engineering applications have only one primary metal, such as iron in steel or nickel in nickel-based super alloys, with relatively small amounts of other metals," said Ting Zhu, a professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech. "These new alloys that have relatively high concentrations of five or more metals open up the possibility of unconventional alloys that may have unprecedented properties. But this is a new compositional space that has not been explored, and we still have a very limited understanding of this class of materials."

The name "high entropy" refers to the lack of uniformity in the mixture of metals as well as how many different and somewhat random ways the atoms from the metals can be arranged as they are combined.

The new maps could help researchers determine whether there are any unconventional atomic structures that such alloys take that could be leveraged for engineering applications, and how much control researchers could have over the mixtures in order to "tune" them for specific traits, Zhu said.

To test the new imaging approach, the research team compared two high-entropy alloys containing five metals. One was a mixture of chromium, iron, cobalt, nickel, and manganese, a combination commonly referred to as a "Cantor" alloy. The other was similar but substituted palladium for the manganese. That one substitution resulted in much different behavior in how the atoms arranged themselves in the mixture.

"In the Cantor alloy, the distribution of all five elements is consistently random," Zhu said. "But with the new alloy containing palladium, the elements show significant aggregations due to the much different atomic size of palladium atoms as well as their difference in electronegativity compared to the other elements."

In the new alloy with palladium, the mapping showed that palladium tended to form large clusters while cobalt seemed to collect in places where iron was in low concentrations.

Those aggregations, with their sizes and spacings in the range of a few nanometers, provide strong deformation resistance and could explain the differences in mechanical properties from one high-entropy alloy to another. In straining tests, the alloy with palladium showed higher yield strength while keeping similar strain hardening and tensile ductility as the Cantor alloy.

"The atomic scale modulation of element distribution produces the fluctuation of lattice resistance, which strongly tunes dislocation behaviors," said Qian Yu, a coauthor of the paper and a professor in Zhejiang University. "Such modulation occurs at a scale that is finer than precipitation hardening and is larger than that of traditional solid solution strengthening. And it provides understanding for the intrinsic character of high-entropy alloys."

The findings could enable researchers to custom design alloys in the future, leveraging one property or another.

"We believe that this work is really important, as local chemical ordering in these extremely high profile, high-entropy alloys is critical to dictating their properties." said Robert Ritchie, another coauthor and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. "Indeed, this presents a way to tailor these materials to attain optimal properties by atomic design."

The team also included researchers from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville; Tsinghua University; and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.


Atomic-level imaging could offer roadmap to metals with new properties | EurekAlert! Science News

Qingqing Ding, Yin Zhang, Xiao Chen, Xiaoqian Fu, Dengke Chen, Sijing Chen, Lin Gu, Fei Wei, Hongbin Bei, Yanfei Gao, Minru Wen, Jixue Li, Ze Zhang, Ting Zhu, Robert Ritchie, and Qian Yu. *Tuning Element Distribution, Structure and Properties by Composition in High-Entropy Alloys*. _Nature_ (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1617-1​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*A fridge made from a rubber band? Twisted elastic fibers could cool your food*
By George Musser
Oct. 10, 2019 , 2:00 PM

It sounds crazy: a refrigerator made from a rubber band. But if you stretch one and hold it against your lips, it will be noticeably warmer. Release it, and it cools. This simple “elastocaloric” effect can transfer heat in much the same way as compressing and expanding a fluid refrigerant in a fridge or air conditioner. Now, scientists have created a version that not only stretches the rubber band, but also twists it. It may one day lead to greener cooling technology.

To find out how twisting might enable a new kind of fridge, engineering graduate student Run Wang at Nankai University in Tianjin, China, and colleagues compared the cooling power of rubber fibers, nylon and polyethylene fishing lines, and nickel-titanium wires. For each material, they pulled a 3-centimeter length taut in a vise and began to wind it with a rotary tool. The fibers not only twisted, but also began to coil around themselves—and coil around the coils (a process known as “supercoiling”). The different fibers warmed up by as much as 15°C. When allowed to unwind, the fibers cooled by the same amount.

To understand why the materials warmed when twisted, researchers peered into the molecular structure of each fiber using bright x-ray beams. The mechanical stresses of twisting rearranged molecules into a more ordered state. The total order in the system does not change, so the trade-off is an increase in the molecular vibrations, which means a higher temperature.

By twisting and untwisting the fibers in a water bath, the researchers could measure their performance as coolants. For the rubber fiber, they measured a heat exchange of about 20 joules of heat energy per gram—up to eight times more energy than the rotary tool expended. The other fibers performed about as well. That level of efficiency is comparable to that of standard refrigerants and twice as high as stretching the same materials without twisting, the researchers report today in Science. “That would definitely be a high-performance system,” says Kurt Engelbrecht, an elastocaloric cooling expert at the Technical University of Denmark in Roskilde who was not involved in the study.

The setup would avoid the need for fluid refrigerants that can leak and contribute to global warming. Although manufacturers have phased out ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons, the replacement chemicals used in most systems today are still greenhouse gases, many times more powerful than carbon dioxide.

A twisty cooling system would also be physically more compact than a pure-stretch system. To get a high degree of cooling in rubber without twisting, for example, it typically has to be stretched to seven times its length, says Ray Baughman, a physicist at the University of Texas in Dallas, and an author on the paper.

As a demonstration, the researchers built a tiny fridge about the size of a ballpoint pen cartridge powered by twisted nickel titanium wires. Using this “twistocaloric” method, they cooled a small volume of water by 8°C in a few seconds. Next, the team plans to run the device on a repeating cycle, alternately heating the water (and moving that heat to the outside world) and cooling it (so that it can absorb heat from the interior volume). Coated with temperature-sensitive dyes, the fibers could also serve as strain gauges or mood rings.

If researchers can scale up the technology, it may give new meaning to unwinding with a cold beer.

doi:10.1126/science.aaz8133



A fridge made from a rubber band? Twisted elastic fibers could cool your food | Science | AAAS

Run Wang, Shaoli Fang, Yicheng Xiao, Enlai Gao, Nan Jiang, Yaowang Li, Linlin Mou, Yanan Shen, Wubin Zhao, Sitong Li, Alexandre F. Fonseca, Douglas S. Galvão, Mengmeng Chen, Wenqian He, Kaiqing Yu, Hongbing Lu, Xuemin Wang, Dong Qian, Ali E. Aliev, Na Li, Carter S. Haines, Zhongsheng Liu, Jiuke Mu, Zhong Wang, Shougen Yin, Márcio D. Lima, Baigang An, Xiang Zhou, Zunfeng Liu, Ray H. Baughman. *Torsional refrigeration by twisted, coiled, and supercoiled fibers*. _Science_ (2019); DOI: 10.1126/science.aax6182​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## polanski

China's Domestic Engine Development 
https://www.globaldefensecorp.com/2...taihang-doesnt-solve-chinas-engine-nightmare/


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese study unlocks clues to fight African swine fever*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-10-18 13:01:36|Editor: Wang Yamei

BEIJING, Oct. 18 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have unraveled the three dimensional structure of the African swine fever virus, laying a solid foundation for developing effective and safe vaccines against the disease.

The research, jointly conducted by scientists at the Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, was published in the latest issue of the academic journal _Science_.

Scientists successfully isolated the epidemic strain of the African swine fever virus, which is spreading in China. It took the research team four months to collect over 100 TB of high-quality data.

The research showed the virus has a unique structure of five layers: the outer membrane, capsid, double-layer inner membrane, core shell and genome.

It contains more than 30,000 protein sub-units, forming a spherical particle with a diameter of about 260 nanometers.

The study identified structural proteins of the virus, revealing potential protective antigens and key information on the epitope, the part of an antigen molecule to which an antibody attaches itself.

The research also showed the complex arrangement and interaction mode of the structural proteins, and proposed the possible assembly mechanism of the virus, providing an important clue as to how it invades host cells and evades and antagonizes the host antiviral immunity.




​Nan Wang, Dongming Zhao, Jialing Wang, Yangling Zhang, Ming Wang, Yan Gao, Fang Li, Jingfei Wang, Zhigao Bu, Zihe Rao, Xiangxi Wang. *Architecture of African swine fever virus and implications for viral assembly*. _Science _(2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aaz1439​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists turn black coal by-product into white paper | South China Morning Post*

After nearly a decade of research, fly ash could reduce amount of wood pulp used in paper production
Stephen Chen 
Published: 2:00am, 22 Oct, 2019




In 2010, Professor Zhang Meiyun, from the Shaanxi University of Science and Technology, and collaborators proposed to the government that coal fly ash could be used as a filler in paper. Photo: Handout

More than 2,000 years after the invention of paper in China, the country’s scientists are claiming another first – a breakthrough that replaces its key ingredient with the dirty waste from coal-fired power plants.

The result – which is almost indistinguishable from paper made from wood pulp – achieves a more than 90 per cent match to pure whiteness, despite being made with the black fly ash produced from burning coal.

The process has passed stringent tests in real production lines and is ready for mass application, with some Chinese paper mills now able to replace nearly half the wood fibres in their products with the chimney waste, according to scientists involved in the government-funded research programme.

The breakthrough has come nearly 10 years after Professor Zhang Meiyun, from the Shaanxi University of Science and Technology, and her colleagues first proposed that fly ash could be used as a filler in paper.



Professor Zhang Meiyun in 2010 when the proposal to research the use of fly ash in paper making was presented to the Chinese central government. Photo: Shaanxi University of Science and Technology.

The new product addresses two problems – the environmental impact of the global industrial demand for timber and how to dispose of millions of tonnes of fly ash each year.

Paper mills are responsible for more than 40 per cent of the timber felled globally for industrial use which “has devastating impacts on some of the world’s most ecologically important places and species”, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

Because most forests in China are protected, the country’s paper mills source wood pulp mainly from Canada, Russia, the United States and other countries endowed with vast forests. China has the world's largest paper industry, with paper and pulp production reaching nearly 100 million tonnes annually – more than all European countries combined.

*The first sheets produced in our lab looked grey. We had a Cinderella but the paper industry wanted a Snow White.*

Dr Song Shunxi, Shaanxi University of Science and Technology​
China is also the world's largest electricity producer, collecting about 700 million tonnes of fly ash each year, according to government statistics. About 70 per cent of this waste – a by-product of coal combustion composed of fine particles containing various minerals such as calcium and silicon – is used by the construction industry but the remainder has had nowhere to go, until now.

To Zhang and her colleagues, the fly ash was a promising candidate as a wood pulp substitute because its chemical and physical properties were similar to industrial additives – such as talcum powder and kaolin – already used in paper production.



Professor Zhang Meiyun (centre, seated) and her team inspect samples of paper made using fly ash, a waste product from coal-fired power stations. Photo: Shaanxi University of Science and Technology

They soon realised it was easier said than done. “The first sheets that came out in our lab looked grey,” Dr Song Shunxi, another scientist in the programme, said. “We had a Cinderella but the paper industry wanted a Snow White. It didn’t work out very well.”



China has the world's largest paper industry, with paper and pulp production reaching nearly 100 million tonnes annually – more than all European countries combined. Photo: Xinhua

The problem was the presence in the fly ash of unburnt carbon particles which reduced the paper’s brightness. Without a cost-effective method to remove these particles, the project was stuck. Datang Power, one of the largest state-owned electricity producers in China, joined the programme with a potential solution.

Many coal beds in China contain aluminium, and the chemical process to extract aluminium from fly ash was known to have a whitening effect. At an aluminium factory next to a Datang power plant in Inner Mongolia, the scientists found a suitable fly ash and brought the sample back to their lab in Xian.

The sheet turned bright, just as they had predicted, but it was too brittle and inflexible for use. According to Song, this latest problem was caused in part by the size and shape of the fly ash particles, and it took the scientists and engineers several years to fine-tune the processing of raw fly ash to achieve the perfect grains.

“Plant fibre is organic, fly ash is not. Blending them together is difficult, and there are lots of gaps to fill between the fibres,” Song said. “Nobody wants to use paper on which the ink spreads or which has dust coming off.”

There was no simple solution to this problem, the scientists found, because improving one property of the material could easily lead to the degradation of another.

It was not until 2014 that the team found an effective formula that addressed all elements in the papermaking process – from the atomic structure of the different materials, to the amount of water added to the pulp, to the brand of adhesive chemicals added to bind the different components.

The technology worked perfectly in the laboratory but no factory wanted to try it. To use it, production lines required modification and workers and engineers needed time to learn and become familiar with the process. There was also concern that if the technology failed, a plant could miss its annual production target.

“Thankfully we had the government behind us,” Song said. With financial support and liaison from the authorities at numerous levels, the scientists were able to test and improve the technology over several years at paper mills in Shaanxi, Zhejiang, Henan and Shandong provinces.

The researchers did not give details of their support from the authorities, except to say most of the funding came from the central government in Beijing, with additional help from provincial and city-level governments. Feedback was positive, with production cost savings ranging from eight to 15 per cent, according to Song.

There were still some factors limiting the application of the process across the country, including the location of some paper mills far from coal-fired power plants. The greater the distance, the higher the costs of transporting the fly ash.

The quality of the coal also varied from one location to another, so the whitening and blending formula would need to be adjusted on a case-by-case basis.

“We will continue to improve the technology until one day it can be used in every paper mill,” Song said.

A senior researcher at the State Key Laboratory of Pulp and Paper Engineering in Guangzhou, in the southern province of Guangdong, said that China had solved all the major technical problems in making paper with fly ash.

Several research teams had come up with innovative solutions using different strategies, said the researcher, who asked not to be named because of his role on a national committee which reviews these technologies.

“The cost of using fly ash is only about one tenth of importing pulp,” the scientist said.

The main competitor of fly ash, however, is not wood but other inorganic fillers such as the kaolin clay from ceramic industry.

“The technology must prove itself profitable and sustainable. It must be competitive even without the support of the government,” he said.


----------



## JSCh

*The future of continuous inorganic materials*
2019-10-18 Global Communications

When a cup of dense saltwater is continuously heated, there will appear small crystalized particles. The research team led by Prof. TANG Ruikang of the Zhejiang University Department of Chemistry “intercepted” a special precursor—ionic oligomers in their endeavor to “suspend” this crystallization process. Amazingly, oligomers can be cross-linked like polymer materials, thereby forming continuous and bulky inorganic materials. This means that inorganic materials are expected to be manufactured monolithically like plastic products, and that various complicated shapes can be produced.





Prof. Tang （left）with his team​
The relevant finding is published in a research article titled “Crosslinking ionic oligomers as conformable precursors to calcium carbonate” in the October 17 issue of Nature. The lead author is Dr. LIU Zhaoming. The research team also tried to repair such inorganic materials as single crystal calcite, sea-urchin spines and teeth. This method is believed to create a novel reaction system, namely “inorganic ionic polymerization”, which crosses the boundary between inorganic chemistry and polymer chemistry and presages that inorganic materials will enter human life with new structures and properties.

*The “pause key” in the process of crystallization*

Crystallization is ubiquitous, ranging from limestone caves to kidney stones. However, it remains enigmatic as regards the transition of a solution from the ionic state to the crystal state. Many scientists have put forward some hypotheses and theories about the intermediate state in the past few years, but no direct observational evidence has been obtained.

The research team discovered a “pause key”—a small molecule called triethylamine (TEA). It can act as a capping agent to stabilize oligomers by forming a hydrogen bond with a protonated carbonate through its tertiary amine group. More importantly, it can be easily removed.

*The discovery of “inorganic ionic oligomers”*

With the addition of TEA, the crystallization process has become a “race”: carbonate ions in the solution can combine with both calcium and TEA. Which is faster? The moment carbonate ions form a “short chain” with calcium ions, TEA will come up to “seal” one end of the carbonate ion so that it can no longer react with the next calcium ion. As a result, the solution is teeming with “short chains” of calcium carbonate capped by TEA, which scientists call “oligomers”.





Gel-like (CaCO3)n oligomers​
Analysis using DAMMIF，a program that enables the shape of a substrate to be determined from SAXS data, shows that oligomers ((CaCO3)n, in which n represents the number of Ca2+:CO32− units) are rod-like with a length of 1.2 nm. It is the first time that inorganic ionic oligomers have been discovered. 





_Top left: CaCO3 made by traditional methods; Top right: (CaCO3)n oligomers made by current method;Bottom: Another four different kinds of inorganic materials made by the same approach._​
What can these oligomers do? What novel properties do they have? In what way are they scientifically significant? These questions need to be explored.

*The manufacturing of inorganic materials*

Oligomers are low molecular weight polymers comprising a small number of repeat units whose physical properties are significantly dependent on the length of the chain. Oligomers are essentially intermediates of the polymerization reaction that find wide, direct applications in material science. Plastics and rubber are polymers cross-linked by monomers or oligomers. “They have a continuous structure. For example, a plastic basin can be perceived as a large molecule”, says TANG Kuangrui. Plastics and rubber have played an essential role thanks to their exceptional properties.

However, the manufacturing of inorganic materials is circumscribed by classical crystallization, which often produces a colossal quantity of chaotic powders rather than monoliths with continuous structures. 

The discovery of inorganic ionic oligomers betokens a hope of “transforming” inorganic materials. Once TEA is removed from a solution, the (CaCO3)n oligomers can be cross-linked into a continuous structure. The fluid-like behavior of the oligomer precursor enables it to be readily processed or molded into shapes, even for materials with structural complexity and variable morphologies. The material construction strategy that we introduce here arises from a fusion of classic inorganic and polymer chemistry, and uses the same cross-linking process for the manufacturing of the materials.

By using humidity- or water-induced crystallization under mild conditions, this method can be extended to the repair of biological hard tissues (biominerals) such as sea-urchin spines and teeth, demonstrating its potential in biological and biomedical applications. The capabilities and advantages of this method result from the properties of the oligomers and their crosslinking, and could enable the production of inorganic materials by a route analogous to that for organic polymers.




​“We offer a novel method and see rays of hope,” says TANG Kangrui.


The future of continuous inorganic materials | Zhejiang University

Zhaoming Liu, Changyu Shao, Biao Jin, Zhisen Zhang, Yueqi Zhao, Xurong Xu, Ruikang Tang. *Crosslinking ionic oligomers as conformable precursors to calcium carbonate*. _Nature _(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1645-x​


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 24-OCT-2019
*Scientists uncover the process behind protein mutations that impact gut health*
Study examines why a protein mutation that causes inflammatory bowel diseases is dysfunctional

ST. MICHAEL'S HOSPITAL



"Though we have discovered a lot regarding the impact of mutations of NOD 1 and NOD 2 on IBD, there hasn't been a satisfying reason as to why some variants cause inflammatory disease," said Dr. Greg Fairn, a scientist at the Keenan Research Centre for Biomedical Science of St. Michael's Hospital. *CREDIT: *Unity Health Toronto

A new study led by researchers at St. Michael's Hospital and the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Canada and Zhejiang University School of Medicine in China has uncovered why a protein mutation that causes inflammatory bowel diseases is dysfunctional.

Published today in _Science_, the research focused on nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain-containing protein 1 and 2. Known as NOD 1 and NOD 2, these are protein receptors encoded by the NOD genes. They recognize bacterial products and prompt the immune system to act quickly to fight infection. Some variants of NOD 1 and NOD 2 cause a lack of immune response, while others overstimulate the immune system. Differences in the NOD 2 gene are associated with many diseases, including inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

IBD causes sections of the gastrointestinal tract to become irritated and ulcerated, causing pain and discomfort to patients. Every year, more than 10,000 Canadians are diagnosed with these types of disorders.

"Though we have discovered a lot regarding the impact of mutations of NOD 1 and NOD 2 on IBD, there hasn't been a satisfying reason as to why some variants cause inflammatory disease," said Dr. Greg Fairn, a scientist at the Keenan Research Centre for Biomedical Science of St. Michael's.

The team set out to understand the molecular process that determines how NOD 1 and NOD 2 recognize bacteria and how this impacts their ability to signal an appropriate immune response. The scientists collaborated over four years to uncover this function, and Dr. Fairn credits their success to a multidisciplinary and multinational effort that resulted in rigorous science.

They found that palmitoylation, the process by which fatty acids attach to proteins to alter the protein's location within cells, is essential to elicit immune signaling of NOD 1 and NOD 2. In particular, they identified one enzyme that helps in the attachment of fatty acids to proteins - known as ZDHHC5 - as the key to unlocking this process that alters NOD 1 and NOD 2 function.

"Our findings point to the potential importance of palmitoylation - too much or too little of this process can impact inflammation," Dr. Fairn said. "Now, the question is whether there is potential to fine tune this process to one day lead to treatment for a variety of inflammatory disorders."

The multinational research team hopes this work is a stepping stone to uncovering more about the molecular reasons behind why variants of these proteins impact gut health.

"There is more to the story - targeting NOD-based signaling is only one potential intervention of many that would be needed for a person with chronic inflammation and altered microbiome" said Dr. Fairn.

"Our striking observations bring us one step closer to a deeper understanding of the science behind diseases like Crohn's."


Scientists uncover the process behind protein mutations that impact gut health | EurekAlert! Science News

Yan Lu, Yuping Zheng, Étienne Coyaud, Chao Zhang, Apiraam Selvabaskaran, Yuyun Yu, Zizhen Xu, Xialian Weng, Ji Shun Chen, Ying Meng, Neil Warner, Xiawei Cheng, Yangyang Liu, Bingpeng Yao, Hu Hu, Zonping Xia, Aleixo M. Muise, Amira Klip, John H. Brumell, Stephen E. Girardin, Songmin Ying, Gregory D. Fairn, Brian Raught, Qiming Sun, Dante Neculai. *Palmitoylation of NOD1 and NOD2 is required for bacterial sensing*. _Science _(2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aau6391​


----------



## JSCh

*First structure of human cotransporter protein family member solved*
October 28, 2019| Media Contact Deborah Wormser
​DALLAS – Oct. 28, 2019 – In work that could someday improve treatments for epilepsy, UT Southwestern scientists have published the first three-dimensional structure of a member of a large family of human proteins that carry charged particles – ions – across the cell membrane.






Human KCC1 structure​
The potassium chloride cotransporter 1 (KCC1) structure solved in this study carries positively charged potassium ions (K+) and negatively charged chloride (Cl-) ions across cell membranes to help regulate the volume of the cell. The protein is one of a large family of cotransporters found in many of the body’s tissues, particularly in the kidneys and the brain.

Despite extensive study of cotransporters, the lack of high-resolution structures has hindered a deeper understanding of their actions. The scientists solved the structure using cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) – an advanced technology in which samples are frozen at extremely low temperatures at speeds that prevent the formation of ice crystals.

Mutations in this family of cotransporters can lead to diseases such as hereditary epilepsy, including one form that starts in infancy, said Dr. Xiao-chen Bai, corresponding author of the _Science_ study. Drugs that target cotransporters are currently used as diuretics to treat high blood pressure.

“Cryo-EM was the only way to determine the structure of an integral membrane protein such as this one. We hope this structure will facilitate the design of drugs that target this protein,” said Dr. Bai, Assistant Professor of Biophysics and Cell Biology and a Virginia Murchison Linthicum Scholar in Medical Research as well as a Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) Scholar.

Proteins on the cellular membrane have been particularly resistant to X-ray crystallography, formerly considered the gold standard in structural biology technology before cryo-EM.

In cryo-EM, samples are viewed using robot-assisted microscopes that can be twice as tall as a person. These microscopes containing high-tech electron detectors work with powerful computers to record multiple images and apply advanced algorithms to interpret the data. UT Southwestern’s Cryo-EM Facility operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

This work at UT Southwestern using cryo-EM also required advanced specimen preparation techniques that Dr. Bai is known for internationally.

Other study participants included researchers at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and from China’s Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Tianjin University, and Wuxi Biortus Biosciences Co. Ltd. One of the corresponding authors is Dr. Jingtao Guo of Zhejiang University School of Medicine, who began the project while a postdoctoral researcher in the UTSW laboratory of Dr. Youxing Jiang, Professor of Physiology and Biophysics. Dr. Jiang holds the Rosewood Corporation Chair in Biomedical Science and is a W.W. Caruth, Jr. Scholar in Biomedical Research at UT Southwestern and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

The study received funding from China’s Ministry of Science and Technology, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation, the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, and Zhejiang University, and from CPRIT, The Welch Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Leducq Foundation.

The authors report no competing financial interests.



First structure of human cotransporter protein family member solved: Newsroom - UT Southwestern, Dallas, TX

Si Liu, Shenghai Chang, Binming Han, Lingyi Xu, Mingfeng Zhang, Cheng Zhao, Wei Yang, Feng Wang, Jingyuan Li, Eric Delpire, Sheng Ye, Xiao-chen Bai, Jiangtao Guo. *Cryo-EM structures of the human cation-chloride cotransporter KCC1*. _Science _(2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aay3129​


----------



## Galactic Penguin SST

*Tiny raptor living 100m years ago discovered in Myanmar*

October 30, 2019

An international team led by Chinese scientists has discovered a new specimen of a tiny raptor in a 100-million-year-old amber from north Myanmar.

The discovery shows the diversity of birds in the dinosaur age and has revealed the evolution of feathers.

The team led by Xing Lida, a paleontologist from China University of Geosciences in Beijing, has discovered a series of ambers that preserve enantiornithine fossils and have enriched people's knowledge of the evolution of ancient birds and enantiornithine, according to a press release Xing sent to the Global Times.

Fossils remains discovered this time preserved some skeletons and skin of a bird's foot. Its overall shape and the curvature of the preserved ungual sheath strongly suggest it was an arboreal bird, Xing told the Global Times.

The prominent plantar pads and papillose plantar surface are related to gripping substrates and prey. The combination of strongly padded, robust digits with elongated claws was most commonly found in extant raptorial birds, which may suggest the bird was a small aerial insectivore.

The ambers came from Hukawng Valley, a mountainous region of Myanmar with high rainfall and many rivers. Local language refers to it as "the place where demons live." Ambers discovered in the region, which date back 100 million years, record its unique ecosystem in ancient times.

The team had earlier discovered strange-shaped feathers that have an open central shaft. The cross-section of the shaft is in the shape of the letter C, not the letter O as extant birds. C-shaped feathers were not as good for flying as O-shaped ones because they were less sturdy, but they were lighter than O-shaped feathers and more energy-efficient.

The newly discovered fossils connect such feathers with enantiornithine as a previous discovery contained only feathers without skeletons.

Xing's team discovered the world's first raptor fossils in ambers and wings of ancient birds in 2016. They have also discovered snakes and frogs in ambers.





https://archive.is/a8il9/5fc6a8ee695df2c67a5b37d2b12646d71fc8091f.jpg ; https://archive.is/a8il9/50fd43586bea52f2c0535799718ce54afb3064f2/scr.png ; http://web.archive.org/web/20191030...e/pic/BIG/20191030/0/16563737996719262284.jpg 
▲ 1. Restitute picture of the tiny raptor living 100 million years ago drawn by Han Zhixin.





https://archive.ph/5Cgek/a2e0c6225ee2e52c15b33ccbdf0423bd61ca6df1.jpg ; https://archive.ph/5Cgek/381bd65fae204826628a514a0c51847eb34f8549/scr.png ; http://web.archive.org/web/20191030...e/pic/BIG/20191030/3/14080166679519934923.jpg 
▲ 2. The 100-million-year-old amber, in which a new specimen of a tiny raptor has been discovered Photo: Xing Lida





https://archive.ph/VCQZn/fcd91e23e0810610d1a9528f53ab129df2fe4dad.jpg ; https://archive.ph/VCQZn/b4e05d98f12399dd55de53ed0014f89ef5693b8b/scr.png ; http://web.archive.org/web/20191030...e/pic/BIG/20191030/81/8035343050008476705.jpg 
▲ 3. Strange-shaped feathers that have an open central shaft discovered by the international team led by Chinese scientists Photo: Xing Lida





https://archive.ph/53s6j/f91cf5b9a01df542967569e49a8dc1d33698efb9.jpg ; https://archive.ph/53s6j/c78a2d7aea7c1a22c20d608158edfa4cd38a6f86/scr.png ; http://web.archive.org/web/20191030.../pic/BIG/20191030/10/16837602028000995742.jpg 
▲ 4. Scanned image of the tiny raptor's foot sample Photo: Xing Lida

http://web.archive.org/web/20191030230936/http://en.people.cn/n3/2019/1030/c90000-9627701.html
http://archive.ph/0xqYu


----------



## JSCh

*Atomically thin high-temperature superconductor*
31 OCT 2019

Copper oxide high-temperature superconductors were first discovered in 1986 by physicists J. Georg Bednorz and K. Alex Müller. The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to this important breakthrough in the following year. Since then, dozens of other copper oxide superconductors have been discovered; the highest superconducting transition temperature (Tc) of this family of materials could be as high as 134 Kelven, or -139 ̊C, under ambient pressure. Although different in composition and Tc, various copper oxide superconductors share a similar layered atomic structure, i.e., the crystals can be viewed as two-dimensional, atomically thin planes that are stacked together. The two-dimensional nature of these high temperature superconductors, however, ostensibly contradicts with a conventional wisdom: long-range order such superconductivity is suppressed in two dimensions. This apparent dichotomy may be the key to understand high temperature superconductivity.

A direct way to unravel such a mystery is to thin down these superconductors to their smallest structural unit—one monolayer—and see whether superconductivity changes. The result may provide important insight into the high temperature superconductivity in copper oxides. Experimentally obtaining atomically thin films of copper oxides, however, is challenging: the material is extremely unstable in air, making it difficult to handle.

A team led by Prof. Yuanbo Zhang from the Department of Physics at Fudan University now overcomes these challenges, and successfully obtained, for the first time, monolayer copper oxide superconductors with their intrinsic properties intact. They found that the high temperature superconductivity—and various other correlated phenomena associated with high temperature superconductivity—in monolayer remains exactly the same as that in bulk crystal. High temperature superconductivity in copper oxide is, therefore, essentially a 2D phenomenon.

The team focused their study on a representative copper oxide superconductor, Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ (referred to as Bi-2212). They overcame the instability of the monolayers with a low temperature device fabrication technique that they have developed. In addition, they were able to tune the doping level of the monolayer over a wide range, and mapped out a large portion of the phase diagram. Surprisingly, the maximum value of Tc in these monolayers was similar to that in bulk—a direct evidence that the high temperature superconductivity of Bi-2212 in the 2D limit is the same as in the bulk.



Fig. The electronic structure of monolayer Bi-2212 on the atomic scale with scanning tunnelling microscopy

The team also probed the electronic structure of monolayer Bi-2212 on the atomic scale with scanning tunnelling microscopy. They discovered that apart from the superconductivity, various other phenomena that are closely-related to high temperature superconductivity phases persists in the monolayer Bi-2212. These phenomena include pseudo-gap, charge order and Mott state that are believed to be precursors to high temperature superconductivity. 

The results from transport and scanning tunnelling microscopy experiments allow the team to conclude that all essential physics in Bi-2212 is contained in its monolayer. The discovery paved the way for further study of high temperature superconductivity with new techniques emerging from the field of two-dimensional materials.


Atomically thin high-temperature superconductor | Fudan University

Yijun Yu, Liguo Ma, Peng Cai, Ruidan Zhong, Cun Ye, Jian Shen, G. D. Gu, Xian Hui Chen & Yuanbo Zhang. *High-temperature superconductivity in monolayer Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ*. _Nature _(2019); DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1718-x​


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 31-OCT-2019
*Unlocking the black box of embryonic development*
International collaboration improves method for culturing primate embryos to learn more about human development

SALK INSTITUTE


​Pictured is Day 17 of a cultured primate embryo; the various colors indicate markers of cellular differentiation (specialization). *CREDIT: *Weizhi Ji/Kunming University of Science and Technology

LA JOLLA--(October 31, 2019) Little is known about the molecular and cellular events that occur during early embryonic development in primate species. Now, an internationally renowned team of scientists in China and the United States has created a method to allow primate embryos to grow in the laboratory longer than ever before, enabling the researchers to obtain molecular details of key developmental processes for the first time. This research, while done in nonhuman primate cells, can have direct implications for early human development.

The findings, published in _Science_ on October 31, 2019, provide valuable insight into early embryonic development and potentially can help inform approaches to advance regenerative medicine in humans.

"Our study provides a first look into this black box of early development," says Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, co-corresponding author and a professor in Salk's Gene Expression Laboratory. "We can now observe how cells progress through each embryonic stage and what factors they need to develop, which will aid in creating better options for the generation of a variety of cells and tissues."

"To understand cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying primate gastrulation, we began monkey embryo culture experiments in China three years ago. Because of the team's long-standing expertise on the systematic study of nonhuman primates and well-established reproductive research systems, such as an in vitro fertilization platform, we succeeded in achieving our goals. This can help to shed light on previously unknown aspects of human post-implantation development." says Weizhi Ji, co-corresponding author, professor and dean of the Institute of Primate Translational Medicine of Kunming University of Science and Technology, in China.

The scientists wanted to study an early developmental milestone called gastrulation, which occurs when a developing embryo transforms into a multilayered structure, called the gastrula, from which all future tissues and organs will be derived. One layer will become the lungs, gastrointestinal tract and liver; another will become the heart, muscles and reproductive organs; and a third will become the skin and nervous system. Yet, scientists did not know the molecular and cellular drivers of this process in primates, largely due to limited access to early embryos.

"Our goal was to culture a primate embryo from an early timepoint in order to study the process of development," says Jun Wu, a co-author of the paper and assistant professor at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. "We wanted to monitor the embryos every day to observe their shape, size and migration patterns as well as how they generate different types of cells during early primate development."

To better study this critical transformation, the scientists modified a previously established embryo culture protocol to allow an early primate embryo to develop in laboratory conditions for up to twenty days; previously researchers had only been able to maintain cultured primate embryos prior to the second week of gestation. Using the new protocol, the team found that the cells within cultured embryos exhibited clear developmental trajectories towards each layer of the gastrula, and the results revealed some of the molecular details required for this growth. The data could also be used as a resource to aid in extending the cultured embryo duration past twenty days in order to better study stem- cell differentiation (specialization).

"These results illuminate some of the regulation networks and signaling pathways that are crucial to development in primates," says Izpisua Belmonte. "This system provides a foundation and resource for developing better strategies to examine early primate development in both health and disease, in the laboratory."


Unlocking the black box of embryonic development | EurekAlert! Science News

Yuyu Niu, Nianqin Sun, Chang Li, Ying Lei, Zhihao Huang, Jun Wu, Chenyang Si, Xi Dai, Chuanyu Liu, Jingkuan Wei, Longqi Liu, Su Feng, Yu Kang, Wei Si, Hong Wang, E. Zhang, Lu Zhao, Ziwei Li, Xi Luo, Guizhong Cui, Guangdun Peng, Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte, Weizhi Ji, Tao Tan. *Dissecting primate early post-implantation development using long-term in vitro embryo culture*. _Science _(2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aaw5754​


----------



## JSCh

*Complex cellular machine visualized to yield new insights in cancer*
October 31, 2019
Huntsman Cancer Institute

Cellular machines that control chromosome structure, such as the RSC complex, are mutated in about one-fifth of all human cancers. Now, for the first time, scientists have developed a high-resolution visual map of this multi-protein machine, elucidating how the RSC complex works and what role it has in healthy and cancer cells. The study was co-led by Bradley Cairns, PhD, cancer researcher at Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) and professor and chair of oncological sciences at the University of Utah, along with Ning Gao, PhD, at Peking University and Zhucheng Chen, PhD, at Tsinghua University in China. The study was published today in the journal _Science_.

A process known as gene expression underlies the behavior of every cell in all living organisms. Gene expression provides cells with a blueprint that orchestrates their behavior, including growth, death, and responses to changes in the cellular environment. Gene expression is necessary for living healthy and cancer cells; however, cancer cells express genes that carry a defective set of instructions that often lead to uncontrolled growth. The RSC and related complexes are crucial regulators of chromosome structure and gene expression. Once the RSC complex binds to the genome, it executes machine-like movements that expose segments of DNA in chromosomes, leading to the initiation of gene expression.

Nearly 20 years ago, Cairns discovered the RSC complex and later added to his findings by identifying many of its protein components and revealing its machine-like behavior. Now, Cairns and his colleagues have established how this complex works in conjunction with the cellular machinery. He believes these findings will yield highly significant insights into how certain cancers develop. "The RSC complex plays an important role in both healthy and cancer cells," says Cairns. "Now, we can accurately visualize a high-resolution map of the RSC complex, including all of its components. We can see how the complex interacts with, and moves, chromosomes and DNA. This provides crucial information that helps us understand how RSC-like complexes are involved in cancer."

Previous studies led to lower resolution models of the RSC complex, but many questions remained unanswered, including how the subunits of this complex assemble and interact with the chromosomal genome. Cairns and his colleagues, including lab members Cedric Clapier, PhD, and Naveen Verma built on existing knowledge using yeast cells, a classic model system to study chromosomes and gene expression. They utilized new and sophisticated microscopic techniques that allowed them to visualize chromosomal structures in high detail. Cairns and his colleagues were able to study the RSC complex in depth by developing numerous cell lines that contained both normal and mutated versions of the RSC complex. Next, their team studied yeast RSC using cryo-electron microscopy -- a technology that has only become available in recent years. This tool allows scientists to view the architecture of large, sophisticated cell components at a high-resolution molecular level.

The scientists are now using this information to understand the RSC complex and its role in cancer further. "This study has crucial implications for our ability to understand how chromosomal genes in healthy and cancer cells are exposed and expressed," said Cairns. "This type of information is a critical step in the processes that scientists use to develop new drugs and understand the genomic characteristics of a tumor."

This research was supported by the National Cancer Institute grants P30CA042014, R01CA201396, and U54 CA231652; Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Huntsman Cancer Foundation, the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
*
Story Source:*
Materials provided by *Huntsman Cancer Institute*. _Note: Content may be edited for style and length._​
*Journal Reference*:

Youpi Ye, Hao Wu, Kangjing Chen, Cedric R. Clapier, Naveen Verma, Wenhao Zhang, Haiteng Deng, Bradley R. Cairns, Ning Gao, Zhucheng Chen. *Structure of the RSC complex bound to the nucleosome*. _Science_, 2019 DOI: 10.1126/science.aay0033


Complex cellular machine visualized to yield new insights in cancer -- ScienceDaily


----------



## JSCh

*NEWS *| 31 OCTOBER 2019
*Primate embryos grown in the lab for longer than ever before | Nature*
The 20-day-old monkey embryos could reopen the debate about how long the human variety should be allowed to grow in a dish.

*



*​Two groups have grown cynomolgus monkey embryos for 20 days in the lab.Credit: Mark MacEwen/Nature Picture Library

They are the longest lived primate embryos to thrive outside the body. Two groups working in China have succeeded in growing monkey embryos in a dish for 20 days. The work sheds light on a crucial but little-understood phase of early development, and will probably reignite the debate about how long human embryos should be permitted to develop in the lab.

Researchers grow embryos to understand the earliest stages of development. In 2016, biologists in the United States successfully grew human embryos in the lab for 13 days, but then stopped the experiments because of an internationally accepted rule that restricts scientists from growing human embryos past 14 days for ethical reasons. As a closely related species, monkey embryos are a window into early human development, but scientists have previously grown them for only nine days.

The two teams in China report in _Science_1_,_2 today that lab-grown embryos from cynomolgus monkeys (_Macaca fascicularis_) underwent several crucial processes. This includes the process of gastrulation, which is when the basic cell types that give rise to different organs and tissues begin to emerge, around day 14.

“The best part is that there is a system to study gastrulation _in vitro_ in a model very similar to the human,” says Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, a developmental biologist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “This is very exciting.”

Although the studies show that early monkey development mirrors many aspects of the first two weeks of the human process, the teams report subtle differences between that species and ours. This suggests that monkey embryos might not be an adequate model for studying some advanced stages of human development, says Pierre Savatier, a stem-cell biologist at the Stem-cell and Brain Research Institute in Bron, France. He predicts that the papers will reinvigorate a push to extend the 14-day policy.

The ability to grow monkey embryos for longer than ever before could also boost research in another hot and controversial field — the generation of hybrid human–monkey embryos, known as chimaeras, with the goal of investigating how human cells differentiate into organs. This research has been held back because researchers haven’t been able to grow monkey embryos for long enough to see how the injected human cells behave. Savatier says he will use the culture technique to grow monkey embryos that will be injected with human stem cells. “This culture system is hugely important for chimaera experiments,” he says.

*Embryo bonanza*
Both teams grew monkey embryos on a gel matrix that supplied higher levels of oxygen than do cells in the womb. This culture technique was developed by Zernicka-Goetz’s team, which was one of two groups in the United States that succeeded in growing human embryos for 13 days, in 20163,4.

In one of the latest two papers, a team led by Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a developmental biologist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, and Ji Weizhi at the Yunnan Key Laboratory of Primate Biomedical Research in Kunming, China, reports that 46 of 200 monkey embryos survived to 20 days. The authors of the other paper, led by Li Lei, a developmental biologist at the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Beijing, say they grew three embryos that long.



A 17-day-old embryo.Credit: Y. Niu _et al_./Science

The teams tracked the progress of the embryos, which were created using _in vitro_ fertilization, to check whether they grew as they would have in the womb. They examined the timing and shape of structures in the embryos and the structures that support embryonic growth, the types of protein that are expressed by cells at different stages and the primordial germ cells that go on to become eggs or sperm. Then they compared these observations with what is known about development of this species from past experiments, in which embryos were removed from pregnant monkeys at different stages up to 17 days5.

Both groups report that embryos in a dish develop in the same way as those in the womb. “It’s ok to assume that the observations made are a representation of what happens _in vivo_,” says Izpisua Belmonte.

The teams stopped their experiments on day 20, when the embryos turned dark and some cells detached from them — signs that the structures were collapsing. Li says it’s not clear why that happened. He and Izpisua Belmonte say that culturing the cells in an extracellular matrix that better mimics the womb might help them to survive longer. Next, Ji hopes to grow embryos to the point when the primitive nervous system starts to form, around day 20.

*Subtle differences*
Data presented in both studies suggest there are subtle but crucial differences in the early development of monkeys and humans, so non-human primate embryos won’t replace the need for studies in human cells, says Fu Jianping, a bioengineer at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who has been trying to grow synthetic human embryos. “_In vitro_ cultured human embryos remain the irreplaceable system for us to study and understand human development,” he says.

Savatier says one difference, described in the Ji and Ispizua Belmonte paper, is the genes that are expressed in monkey cells that form the placenta are different from those in humans. But to study these processes in later stages in human embryos, regulators would need to lift the ban on growing them beyond 14 days.

In the wake of the US teams growing human embryos to 13 days in 2016, some scientists and ethicists pushed for a revision of the 14-day policy, and a poll conducted in the United Kingdom in 2017 reported strong public support for extending the limit. Savatier and others think the latest results showing the unique features of human embryonic development will strengthen arguments to change the policy. “No doubt that this work will force the ethical committees and regulatory bodies to reopen the debate over the 14-day rule,” he says.

Researchers are optimistic that the gel matrix could be used to grow human embryos to a more advanced stage if the rules change. Ji says that another group at his institute has developed a protocol specifically for human embryos that will soon be published. “This system could be suitable for human embryos to be cultured to 20 days, but we are not planning to do it,” he says.


----------



## JSCh

OCTOBER 31, 2019
*Potential entry points for Huntington's disease drug discovery*
by Fudan University



Prof. Yu Ding(R) and his student. Credit: Fudan University

Huntington's disease (HD) is one of the four major neurodegenerative diseases that have been most extensively studied. The clinical symptoms include uncontrolled dancing-mimicking behavior (chorea), as well as cognitive deficiency and psychiatric abnormalities. Since the biochemical activity of the mutant huntingtin protein (mHTT) that causes the disease is uncharacterized, the conventional drug discovery approach, which relied on inhibitors that block the bioactivity of the pathogenic proteins, is not applicable.

Recently, researchers at Fudan University, including Profs. Boxun Lu (School of Life Sciences), Yiyan Fei (School of Informatics Science and Engineering), and Yu Ding (School of Life Sciences), formed a multidisciplinary team to work on this problem. With joint efforts, they have worked out an innovative method of drug discovery: using the autophagosome-tethering compounds (ATTEC) to degrade pathogenic proteins and treat the disease. The team carried out a smartly designed screening featuring a small-molecule microarray and front-edge optical technologies, and managed to identify four small molecule compounds that specifically reduced the protein that causes Huntington's disease.

On October 31, the study was published online under the title "Allele-selective Lowering of Mutant HTT Protein by HTT-LC3 Linker Compounds" in _Nature_.

"Small molecule glue" helps autophagosomes "engulf" the disease-causing protein

Since the conventional approach is infeasible for mHTT, the team came up with a fundamentally new idea, which was to degrade mHTT by harnessing autophagy, an intracellular protein degradation process. During autophagy, the key protein LC3 is lipidated and expanded to form a double-membrane structure, which then engulfs proteins, lipids, organelles and other degradation cargoes and forms a complete autophagosome. The autophagosomes are then fused with lysosomes and the material engulfed therein is degraded.

However, if enhanced non-specifically, autophagy degrades all proteins engulfed into autophagosomes, including the normal wild-type huntingtin protein that plays a role in neuroprotection. This would be possibly self-defeating.

To identify compounds that only degrade mHTT but not wild-type HTT, the team envisioned a "small molecule glue" functioning as an "autophagosome tethering compound" (ATTEC), which could tether LC3 and mHTT together so that mHTT is engulfed into autophagosomes for degradation. Meanwhile, the ATTEC does not interact with the wild-type HTT protein, leaving it unaffected. Through screening, validation and preliminary search for structurally similar compounds, the team identified four compounds with the desired properties.

At this point, the identified compounds have the potential of tethering mHTT to autophagosomes without influencing the wild-type HTT, but whether they do function in degrading mHTT as expected needs further validation. The team found that these four compounds significantly reduced mHTT levels in HD mouse neurons, HD patient cells, and HD drosophila models at ~10 to 100 nanomolar concentrations, with little effect on wild-type HTT levels. Excitingly, at least two out of these four compounds are able to cross the blood-brain barrier, and a small dose of intraperitoneal injection would significantly reduce mHTT levels in the cortex and striatum of HD mice, without affecting wild-type HTT levels. They also significantly improved disease-related phenotypes, providing an entry point for the development of oral or injectable drugs for HD.

Such ATTECs were highly challenging to identify. Only one out of about 2000 compounds has the desired properties. Thus, finding it was a major obstacle of this project for a long time. The participation of the Professor Yiyan Fei's group made this possible. Dr. Fei's group developed a new high-throughput compound screening platform based on small molecule microarray (SMM) and oblique-incidence reflectivity difference (OI-RD) technology, which was fast, sensitive, label-free and high-throughput. It could identify the target protein-interacting compounds from a library of thousands of small molecule compounds.

The research team stamped nearly 4000 small-molecule compounds onto a chip and had the target protein flow through the chip. If a sample binds to a specific compound immobilized onto the chip, the molecular layer at the position will thicken, generating a tiny change that can be detected by a sensitive optical method (oblique incident light reflection difference). Using this cutting-edge screening approach, the team found two small molecules that could bind to both LC3 and mHTT proteins, but not to wild-type HTT. After studying a panel of small molecule compounds with similar structures, a total of four ATTECs that bind LC3 and mutant HTT were identified and validated.

Autophagosome tethering compounds may open new windows for drug discovery

The team further explored the intrinsic mechanisms by which these small molecule compounds could distinguish between mutant and wild-type HTT proteins, which were almost identical except in the glutamine repeat (polyQ) length. It turned out that these compounds were bound to excessively long polyQ stretches that only appeared in mHTT.

Based on this, the team realized that the application of these small molecule compounds may reach far beyond the potential treatment of Huntington's disease. Nine human diseases are so called polyQ diseases, because they are caused by specific mutant proteins containing excessively long polyQ. Among them, spinocerebellar ataxia type III (SCA3) is the most common in the Chinese population.

The clinical symptoms include motion discoordination, inability to maintain body posture and balance, accompanied by possible exophthalmos, hyperreflexia, facial muscle twitching, tendon and other symptoms. With SCA3 patient cells provided by Dr. Yimin Sun from Prof. Jian Wang's group at Huashan Hospital affiliated to Fudan University, the team found that these compounds could effectively reduce the level of the mutant ATXN3 protein (with a polyQ length of 74) that causes the disease, without affecting the wild-type ATXN3 (with a polyQ length of 27).

When it came to the future development and applications of this study, Boxun Lu says, "These compounds may not only be effective in the treatment of Huntington's disease, but also applicable to other polyQ diseases. The new concept of drug development using autophagosome-binding compounds (ATTEC) may also be applied to other pathogenic proteins that are undruggable, or even to pathogenic substances that are not proteins, such as organelles or lipids."

*More information:* Zhaoyang Li et al. Allele-selective lowering of mutant HTT protein by HTT–LC3 linker compounds, _Nature_ (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1722-1​


https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-10-potential-entry-huntington-disease-drug.html


----------



## JSCh

23 October 2019
*Building blocks of all life gain new understanding*

New research on an enzyme that is essential for photosynthesis and all life on earth has uncovered a key finding in its structure which reveals how light can interact with matter to make an essential pigment for life.

The work gives a structural understanding of how a light activated enzyme involved in chlorophyll synthesis works. Light activated enzymes are rare in nature, with only three known. This enzyme in particular, called protochlorophyllide oxidoreductase or ‘POR’, is responsible for making the pigment vital for chlorophyll in plants. Without chlorophyll, there is no photosynthesis and no plant life.

Understanding the structure of the POR enzyme gives a rare glimpse of how a natural light-activated enzyme works. Chemists and bio-scientists alike have been fascinated by light activation of biological catalysis for many years and understanding how light can drive enzyme reactions has been a major challenge.

The revealed structure shows how the architecture of the enzyme allows one of the reactants to capture light and channel it to drive a crucial biological reaction involved in chlorophyll synthesis. Understanding these fundamental concepts should have major implications for the design of new light-activated chemical and biochemical catalysts which are increasingly important in the use of enzymes in chemical manufacture.

“The crystal structure of this important light-activated enzyme has proven to be elusive for many years. Our current work provides the crucial missing link between protein structure and reaction chemistry and paves the way for detailed computational studies of the reaction in the future.„
*Dr Derren Heyes*​
The research led by The University of Manchester, together with colleagues in China (Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Zhejiang University of Technology and Qi Institute), is published today in the journal _Nature._ Professor Nigel Scrutton said of the new discovery: “These studies reveal how the POR enzyme brings about light-driven reduction of the pigment Pchlide. Our studies provide a structural basis for harnessing light energy to drive catalysis in this important chlorophyll biosynthetic enzyme, which is crucial for light-to-chemical energy conversion and energy flow in the biosphere.”

Dr Derren Heyes ran several of the experiments for the new research, he said: “The crystal structure of this important light-activated enzyme has proven to be elusive for many years. Our current work provides the crucial missing link between protein structure and reaction chemistry and paves the way for detailed computational studies of the reaction in the future.”

Demonstrating such a fundamental aspect of biological life for the first time tells us how the process within the cells is carried out in order to allow photosynthesis to occur. The team discovered that light energy activates one of its substrates, protochlorophyllide, a precursor of chlorophyll, within the enzyme to drive ‘downstream’ bond breaking and making reactions.

This new discovery shows we are still unravelling the core building blocks of life which pre-date humans by billions of years. This major scientific breakthrough provides a unique structural and physical insight into a fundamental reaction in nature. This could open the door to the possibility of bioengineering artificial light-activated enzymes in the future.



Building blocks of all life gain new understanding | The University of Manchester

Shaowei Zhang, Derren J. Heyes, Lingling Feng, Wenli Sun, Linus O. Johannissen, Huanting Liu, Colin W. Levy, Xuemei Li, Ji Yang, Xiaolan Yu, Min Lin, Samantha J. O. Hardman, Robin Hoeven, Michiyo Sakuma, Sam Hay, David Leys, Zihe Rao, Aiwu Zhou, Qi Cheng, Nigel S. Scrutton. *Structural basis for enzymatic photocatalysis in chlorophyll biosynthesis*. _Nature _(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1685-2​


----------



## JSCh

*NEWS AND VIEWS | 06 NOVEMBER 2019*
*A rule from bacteria to balance growth and expansion*
Bacteria move along gradients of chemical attractants. Two studies find that, in nutrient-rich environments, bacteria can grow rapidly by following a non-nutritious attractant — but expanding too fast leaves them vulnerable.

Bacteria can sense chemical attractants and use that information to navigate towards resources or away from harm — a process called chemotaxis. But why bacteria chase signals that often do not have much nutritional value has been a long-standing puzzle. Writing in _Nature_, Cremer _et al._1 show that bacterial populations can use non-nutritious attractants as cues for rapidly expanding through nutrient-rich areas, ensuring that plentiful nutrients are available for their future growth. In a second paper, Liu _et al._2 build on this work to reveal an unanticipated rule of bacterial evolution: the safest way for a bacterial population to colonize a habitat is not necessarily to expand as fast as possible, because rapid expansion can leave the population vulnerable to invasion by competitors.


...

A rule from bacteria to balance growth and expansion | Nature


----------



## JSCh

*Study reveals how Tibetan people adapt to high altitude*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-11-06 17:30:53|Editor: huaxia



Residents attend a spring plowing ceremony in Shannan City, southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, March 16, 2019. (Xinhua/Li Xin)

*Chinese researchers have released the first high-quality genome of Tibetan people, revealing the genetic mechanism that may play an important role in human adaption to extreme environments such as high altitude.*

BEIJING, Nov. 6 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers have released the first high-quality genome of Tibetan people, revealing the genetic mechanism that may play an important role in human adaption to extreme environments such as high altitude.

Researchers from the Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tibet University and other Chinese research institutions assembled Tibetan genome ZF1 with new approaches like long-reading sequencing.

Genome sequencing involves cutting DNA into pieces, reading the fragments and then using a computer to patch the sequence together.



Villager Dainzin Quzhen (front) holds a traditional rite with family members before moving into her new house in Lhozhag Town of Lhozhag County, Shannan City, southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, Sept. 21, 2019. (Xinhua/Jigme Dorje)

Short-read sequencing technologies cut DNA into "words" that are about 100 base-pairs long. Long-read sequencing, by comparison, cuts DNA into words that are thousands of letters long, revealing parts of the genome like never before.

Structure variants (SVs) refer to the variation in the structure of an orgasm's chromosome. The researchers reported in the journal National Science Review that in the genome, they detected 17,900 SVs in ZF1, among which 6,505 are different from other East Asian SVs. The analysis found these SVs are related to the activation of molecular pathways in low-oxygen environments.



Artists from Lhozhag County perform Tibetan Opera during a cultural festival in Shannan, southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, Aug. 17, 2019. (Xinhua/Zhang Rufeng)

They also found that a gene named MKL1 shows large divergence between highland Tibetans and lowland Han Chinese. The difference is associated with lower systolic pulmonary arterial pressure, one of the key adaptive physiological traits in Tibetans.

Compared to other East Asian genomes, the researchers found that the Tibetan genome has more shared gene sequences with archaic humans like Neanderthal and Denisovan, noting that the unique genomic composition is associated with better lung function in Tibetans.

The researchers said that the ZF1 Tibetan genome and the identified SVs may provide valuable resources for future evolutionary and medical studies.


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists retrieve genetic materials from 1.9-mln-yr-old giant ape fossil*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-11-14 14:19:08|Editor: huaxia

NANNING, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Chinese and Danish scientists have successfully retrieved genetic materials from a 1.9-million-year-old fossil of Gigantopithecus blacki, a species of great ape.

The finding, published in a paper on the journal _Nature _on Wednesday, marks the first time that such ancient protein evidence from fossils in the subtropics was retrieved. Scientists said it sheds new light on the origins and evolution of the long-extinct great ape species.

With the evidence, scientists are able to demonstrate that Gigantopithecus is a sister clade to orangutans with a common ancestor about 12 million to 10 million years ago, implying that the divergence of Gigantopithecus from Pongo forms part of the Miocene radiation of great apes, according to the paper.

Presumed to be more than two meters tall and weigh over 300 kg, giant apes are the largest primates known to have lived on earth. Their fossils date from two million to 300,000 years ago.

The genetic materials -- dental enamel proteome sequences -- were retrieved in 2018 from a 1.9-million-year-old Gigantopithecus blacki molar found in a cave in southern China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, said Liao Wei, a researcher with the Anthropology Museum of Guangxi and a co-author of the paper.

Wang Wei, a professor at Shandong University, said the thick and hard enamel of the great ape and the fact that the fossil was found in a cave with a relatively stable temperature and humidity were both favorable factors for the preservation of the fossil.

"The two factors combined have helped researchers retrieve genetic materials from the enamel of the great ape fossil and make a breakthrough in the research," said Wang, whose team unearthed the fossil in 2008.

It was the first time such ancient genetic materials had been found in a warm and humid environment, said Frido Welker of the University of Copenhagen, the paper's lead author, adding that the finding is groundbreaking in the field of evolutionary biology.


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 14-NOV-2019
*Storing energy in hydrogen 20 times more effective using platinum-nickel catalyst*
EINDHOVEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

Catalysts accelerate chemical reactions, but the widely used metal platinum is scarce and expensive. Researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), together with Chinese, Singaporean and Japanese researchers, have now developed an alternative with a 20x higher activity: a catalyst with hollow nanocages of an alloy of nickel and platinum. TU/e researcher Emiel Hensen wants to use this new catalyst to develop a refrigerator-size electrolyzer of about 10 megawatts in the future. The results will be published on November 15th in the journal _Science_.

By 2050, the national government aims to get almost all of the Netherlands' energy requirements from sustainable sources, such as the sun or the wind. Because these energy sources are not available at all times, it is important to be able to store the generated energy. Given their low energy density, batteries are not suitable for storing very large amounts of energy. A better solution is chemical bonds, with hydrogen as the most obvious choice of gas. Using water, an electrolyzer converts (an excess of) electrical energy into hydrogen, which can be stored. At a later stage, a fuel cell does the opposite, converting the stored hydrogen back into electrical energy. Both technologies require a catalyst to drive the process.

The catalyst that helps with these conversions is - due to its high activity - mostly made of platinum. But platinum is very expensive and relatively scarce; a problem if we want to use electrolyzers and fuel cells on a large scale. TU/e catalysis professor, Emiel Hensen: "Fellow researchers from China therefore developed an alloy of platinum and nickel, which reduces costs and increases activity." An effective catalyst has a high activity; it converts more water molecules into hydrogen every second. Hensen continues: "At TU/e, we investigated the influence of nickel on the key reaction steps and to this end we developed a computer model based on images from an electron microscope. With quantum chemical calculations we were able to predict the activity of the new alloy, and we could understand why this new catalyst is so effective."

*Successfully tested in a fuel cell*

In addition to the other choice of metal, the researchers were also able to make significant changes to the morphology. The atoms in the catalyst have to bond with the water and/or oxygen molecules to be able to convert them. More binding sites will therefore lead to a higher activity. Hensen: "You want to make as much metal surface available as possible. The developed hollow nanocages can be accessed from the outside as well as from the inside. This creates a large surface area, allowing more material to react at the same time." In addition, Hensen has demonstrated with quantum chemical calculations that the specific surface structures of the nanocages increase the activity even further.

After calculations in Hensen's model, it turns out that the activity of both solutions combined is 20 times higher than that of the current platinum catalysts. The researchers have also found this result in experimental tests in a fuel cell. "An important criticism of a lot of fundamental work is that it does its thing in the lab, but when someone puts it in a real device, it often doesn't work. We have shown that this new catalysts works in a real application." The stability of a catalyst must be such that it can continue to work in a hydrogen car or house for years to come. The researchers therefore tested the catalyst for 50,000 'laps' in the fuel cell, and saw a negligible decrease in activity.

*Electrolyzer in every district*

The possibilities for this new catalyst are manifold. Both in the form of the fuel cell and the reverse reaction in an electrolyzer. For example, fuel cells are used in hydrogen-powered cars while some hospitals already have emergency generators with hydrogen-powered fuel cells. An electrolyzer can be used, for example, on wind farms at sea or perhaps even next to every single wind turbine. Transporting hydrogen is much cheaper than transporting electricity.

Hensen's dream goes further: "I hope that we will soon be able to install an electrolyzer in every neighborhood. This refrigerator-sized device stores all the energy from the solar panels on the roofs in the neighborhood during the daytime as hydrogen. The underground gas pipelines will transport hydrogen in future, and the domestic central heating boiler will be replaced by a fuel cell, the latter converting the stored hydrogen back into electricity. That's how we can make the most of the sun."

But for this to happen, the electrolyzer still needs to undergo considerable development. Together with other TU/e researchers and industrial partners from the Brabant region, Hensen is therefore involved in the start-up of the energy institute of TU Eindhoven. The aim is to scale up the current commercial electrolyzers to a refrigerator-size electrolyzer of about 10 megawatts.



Storing energy in hydrogen 20 times more effective using platinum-nickel catalyst | EurekAlert! Science News

Xinlong Tian, Xiao Zhao, Ya-Qiong Su, Lijuan Wang, Hongming Wang, Dai Dang, Bin Chi, Hongfang Liu, Emiel J.M. Hensen, Xiong Wen (David) Lou, Bao Yu Xia. *Engineering bunched Pt-Ni alloy nanocages for efficient oxygen reduction in practical fuel cells*. _Science _(2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aaw7493​


----------



## JSCh

*Research reveals new state of matter: a Cooper pair metal*

In a finding that reveals an entirely new state of matter, research published in the journal _Science _shows that Cooper pairs, electron duos that enable superconductivity, can also conduct electricity like normal metals do.




Tiny holes punched into a high-temperature superconducting material revealed that Cooper pairs, electron duos that enable superconductivity, can also conduct electricity the way metals do.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — For years, physicists have assumed that Cooper pairs, the electron duos that enable superconductors to conduct electricity without resistance, were two-trick ponies. The pairs either glide freely, creating a superconducting state, or create an insulating state by jamming up within a material, unable to move at all.

But in a new paper published in Science, a team of researchers has shown that Cooper pairs can also conduct electricity with some amount of resistance, like regular metals do. The findings describe an entirely new state of matter, the researchers say, that will require a new theoretical explanation.

“There had been evidence that this metallic state would arise in thin film superconductors as they were cooled down toward their superconducting temperature, but whether or not that state involved Cooper pairs was an open question,” said Jim Valles, a professor of physics at Brown University and the study’s corresponding author. “We’ve developed a technique that enables us to test that question and we showed that, indeed, Cooper pairs are responsible for transporting charge in this metallic state. What’s interesting is that no one is quite sure at a fundamental level how they do that, so this finding will require some more theoretical and experimental work to understand exactly what’s happening.”

Cooper pairs are named for Leon Cooper, a physics professor at Brown who won the Nobel Prize in 1972 for describing their role in enabling superconductivity. Resistance is created when electrons rattle around in the atomic lattice of a material as they move. But when electrons join together to become Cooper pairs, they undergo a remarkable transformation. Electrons by themselves are fermions, particles that obey the Pauli exclusion principle, which means each electron tends to keep its own quantum state. Cooper pairs, however, act like bosons, which can happily share the same state. That bosonic behavior allows Cooper pairs to coordinate their movements with other sets of Cooper pairs in a way the reduces resistance to zero.

In 2007, Valles, working with Brown engineering and physics professor Jimmy Xu, showed that Cooper pairs could also produce insulating states as well as superconductivity. In very thin materials, rather than moving in concert, the pairs conspire to stay in place, stranded on tiny islands within a material and unable to jump to the next island.

For this new study, Valles, Xu and colleagues in China looked for Cooper pairs in the non-superconducting metallic state using a technique similar to the one that revealed Cooper pair insulators. The technique involves patterning a thin-film superconductor — in this case a high-temperature superconductor yttrium barium copper oxide (YBCO) — with arrays of tiny holes. When the material has a current running through it and is exposed to a magnetic field, charge carriers in the material will orbit the holes like water circling a drain.

“We can measure the frequency at which these charges circle,” Valles said. “In this case, we found that the frequency is consistent with there being two electrons going around at a time instead of just one. So we can conclude that the charge carriers in this state are Cooper pairs and not single electrons.”

The idea that boson-like Cooper pairs are responsible for this metallic state is something of a surprise, the researchers say, because there are elements of quantum theory that suggest this shouldn’t be possible. So understanding just what is happening in this state could lead to some exciting new physics, but more research will be required.

Luckily, the researchers say, the fact that this phenomenon was detected in a high-temperature superconductor will make future research more practical. YBCO starts superconducting at around -181 degrees Celsius, and the metallic phase starts at temperatures just above that. That’s pretty cold, but it’s much warmer than other superconductors, which are active at just above absolute zero. That higher temperature makes it easier to use spectroscopy and other techniques aimed at better understand what’s happening in this metallic phase.

Down the road, the researchers say, it might be possible to harness this bosonic metal state for new types of electronic devices.

“The thing about the bosons is that they tend to be in more of a wavelike state than electrons, so we talk about them having a phase and creating interference in much the same way light does,” Valles said. “So there might be new modalities for moving charge around in devices by playing with interference between bosons.”

But for now, the researchers are happy to have discovered a new state of matter.

“Science is built on discoveries,” Xu said, “and it’s great to have discovered something completely new.”


Research reveals new state of matter: a Cooper pair metal | Brown University

Chao Yang, Yi Liu, Yang Wang, Liu Feng, Qianmei He, Jian Sun, Yue Tang, Chunchun Wu, Jie Xiong, Wanli Zhang, Xi Lin, Hong Yao, Haiwen Liu, Gustavo Fernandes, Jimmy Xu, James M. Valles Jr., Jian Wang, Yanrong Li. *Intermediate bosonic metallic state in the superconductor-insulator transition*. _Science _(2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aax5798​


----------



## JSCh

*Genes borrowed from bacteria allowed plants to move to land*
New study shows that gene transfer from bacteria to algae allowed early life to move from water to land

By Katie Willis on November 14, 2019



A new species of algae called Spirogloea muscicola was also discovered in the course of conducting this research. Image courtesy of Barbara and Michael Melkonian.

Natural genetic engineering allowed plants to move from water to land, according to a new study by an international group of scientists from Canada, China, France, Germany, and Russia.

“This is one of the most important events in the evolution of life on this planet—without which we as a species would not exist,” said Gane Ka-Shu Wong, co-investigator and professor in the Faculty of Science and Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry at the University of Alberta. “The movement of life from water to land—called terrestrialization—began with plants and was followed by animals and then, of course, humans. This study establishes how that first step took place.”

The movement of plants from water to land was made possible when genes from soil bacteria were transferred to algae through a process called horizontal gene transfer. Unlike vertical gene transfer, such as the transfer of DNA from parent to child, horizontal gene transfer occurs between different species.

*Life on land*
“For hundreds of millions of years, green algae lived in freshwater environments that periodically fell dry, such as small puddles, river beds, and trickling rocks,” explained Michael Melkonian, professor in the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany. “These algae mingled with and received key genes from soil bacteria that helped them and their descendants to cope with the harsh terrestrial environment and eventually evolve into the land plant flora that we see today.”

The study is part of an international project focused on sequencing the genomes of more than 10,000 plant species. The discovery was made in the process of sequencing two particular algae, one of them a new species (_Spirogloea muscicola_) being introduced to the community through this publication.

“The approach that we used, phylogenomics, is a powerful method to pinpoint the underlying molecular mechanism of evolutionary novelty,” said Shifeng Cheng, first author and principal investigator from Agricultural Genome Institute at Shenzhen, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

The paper, “Genomes of subaerial Zygnematophyceae provide insights into land plant evolution,” was published in _Cell_ (doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2019.10.019.).



Genes borrowed from bacteria allowed plants to move to land | Faculty of Science | University of Alberta

Shifeng Cheng, Wenfei Xian, Yuan Fu, Birger Marin, Jean Keller, Tian Wu, Wenjing Sun, Xiuli Li, Yan Xu, Yu Zhang, Sebastian Wittek, Tanja Reder, Gerd Günther, Andrey Gontcharov, Sibo Wang, Linzhou Li, Xin Liu, Jian Wang, Huanming Yang, Xun Xu, Pierre-Marc Delaux, Barbara Melkonian, Gane Ka-Shu Wong, Michael Melkonian. *Genomes of Subaerial Zygnematophyceae Provide Insights into Land Plant Evolution*. _Cell _(2019). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2019.10.019​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*China builds vertical climate observation system in Tibet*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-11-18 16:56:11|Editor: Yurou

LHASA, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have built a vertical climate observation system in a remote region in southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, according to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau research institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

Located in Medog County of Tibet, the system is capable of recording climate data with a total altitude span of about 3,400 meters (from about 800 to 4,300 meters above sea level) and an average altitude interval of about 300 meters.

The observation system is made up of 17 automated weather stations, which include nine comprehensive stations, four weather stations and four others for observing microclimate in forests.

Zhang Lin, deputy director of the Medog Center of the CAS, said the establishment of the system will lay a solid foundation for understanding the processes and mechanisms of climate, ecology, hydrology, glacier and geological hazards in the eastern Himalayas under the influence of the Indian monsoon.

Medog and its surrounding areas boast the most complete vertical natural zonation spectrum in China. They are also the main channel for water vapor incurred by the Indian monsoon to enter the plateau.

However, due to frequent occurrences of geological disasters, there has been a lack of a complete vertical climatic observation system in the region, which hinders in-depth studies on major frontier scientific issues such as atmosphere, hydrology, biodiversity and glacier changes.


----------



## JSCh

*NEWS AND VIEWS | *23 OCTOBER 2019
*Light trapping gets a boost*
The ability of structures called optical resonators to trap light is often limited by scattering of light off fabrication defects. A physical mechanism that suppresses this scattering has been reported that could lead to improved optical devices.

*Kirill Koshelev & **Yuri Kivshar*

Devices called optical resonators confine light, but for only a limited time because of unavoidable light emission. Writing in _Nature_, Jin _et al._1 report that such emission can be greatly reduced by using the interference of light waves known as bound states in the continuum. Such waves are akin to exotic electron waves that were introduced in the theory of quantum mechanics almost a century ago2. The authors’ finding could have many technological implications for nanophotonics, quantum optics and nonlinear optics — the study of how intense light interacts with matter.
*

*
...

Light trapping gets a boost | Nature

Jicheng Jin, Xuefan Yin, Liangfu Ni, Marin Soljačić, Bo Zhen, Chao Peng. *Topologically enabled ultrahigh-Q guided resonances robust to out-of-plane scattering*. _Nature _(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1664-7​


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *Preliminary design of CHIEF approved*
> 2019-07-05 Global Communications
> 
> Recently, the preliminary design of Centrifugal Hyper-gravity and Interdisciplinary Experiment Facility (CHIEF) obtained the approval of the Ministry of Education and Zhejiang Provincial Government.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Architectural rendering of CHIEF
> 
> 
> Zhejiang University is responsible for the construction of CHIEF, the first national key sci-tech infrastructure in Zhejiang Province. Its proposal and its feasibility report received the seal of approval from the National Development and Reform Commission on Jan. 15 and Nov. 27 of 2018 respectively.
> 
> With a total investment of more than two billion yuan, CHIEF will be located in Hangzhou Future Sci-tech City, and its construction is expected to be completed within five years. Its main body is comprised of two centrifuges and six hyper-gravity experimental capsules. It will be applied to six different fields, including slopes and high dams, geotechnical and earthquake engineering, deep-sea engineering, deep underground engineering and environment, geological processes and new material manufacturing.
> 
> Upon completion, CHIEF will become a comprehensive hyper-gravity and interdisciplinary experiment facility with the largest capacity and the most extensive application worldwide. As an indispensable experiment device, it will provide an advanced experiment platform and offer immense support for the development and verification of major engineering technologies as well as research into cutting-edge matter-related sciences.


CHIEF has begin construction on 18 Nov. The completion time is expected to be 5 years.


----------



## JSCh

*World’s first pre-installed earthquake warning system released in Chengdu*
(People's Daily Online) 16:38, November 20, 2019



_An earth alert shown on a Xiaomi phone. (Photo/Chinanews.com）_

An earthquake warning system co-developed by Chengdu High-tech Disaster Reduction Institute and Chinese tech giant Xiaomi was launched on Xiaomi MIUI 11 and Xiaomi TV, Chinanews.com reported on Nov.19.

This makes Xiaomi the world’s first mobile phone that connects its operation system with earthquake warning functions.

The earthquake alert function introduces pop-ups to warn users of an impending earthquake several seconds before the earthquake strike.

It will identify the location of seismic waves, epicenter area, and the magnitude of the earthquake. Furthermore, it will locate a nearest earthquake shelter around users.

Devices running MIUI 11 have already successfully delivered alerts ahead of a 4.1-magnitude earthquake that hit Yibin, Sichuan, on Nov. 10.

The pre-installed system is more efficient than apps because the latter needs to be downloaded and could be closed by the cell phone system mistakenly, according to Wang Tun, director of the Institute of Care-life.


----------



## Nilgiri

He is from my hometown btw @GeraltofRivia @rott @viva_zhao @serenity @JSCh  :

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com...ami-paulraj/articleshow/71638502.cms?from=mdr

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Han Patriot

Nilgiri said:


> He is from my hometown btw @GeraltofRivia @rott @viva_zhao @serenity @JSCh  :
> 
> https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com...ami-paulraj/articleshow/71638502.cms?from=mdr


It's overblown, we are still learning and developing, i would say another 20-25 yearz, then we can be on par.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Nilgiri

Han Patriot said:


> It's overblown, we are still learning and developing, i would say another 20-25 yearz, then we can be on par.



True but still there is lot of merit to lot of the reactions going on in certain places now.

Anyway I welcome multi-polar world...this will benefit long term multi-polar environment even more.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

NOVEMBER 22, 2019 REPORT
*Using a two-step approach to convert aliphatic amines into unnatural amino acids*
by Bob Yirka , Phys.org



Strategy for enantiocontrol of N–H insertion reactions of aliphatic amines with carbenes. (A) Representative drugs demonstrating the ubiquity of chiral aliphatic amines in bioactive molecules. (B) Amine sources reported for enantioselective N–H insertion reactions. (C) Enantioselective transition-metal–catalyzed N–H insertion reactions with aliphatic amines: challenges and solutions. Optimal reaction conditions: The reaction of 1 (0.2 mmol), 2 (0.22 mmol), Tp*Cu (5 mole %), and CAT (6 mol %) was carried out in 3 ml of methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) at 25°C for 20 hours. BnNH2, benzylamine; BocNH2, tert-butyl carbamate; CbzNH2, benzyl carbamate; Me, methyl; Et, ethyl; Ph, phenyl; M, metal; ref., reference. Credit: _Science_ (2019). doi: 10.1126/science.aaw9939

A team of chemists at Nankai University has developed a two-step approach to converting aliphatic amines into unnatural amino acids. In their paper published in the journal _Science_, the group describes their approach, how well it worked, and applications that might benefit from its use. John Ovian and Eric Jacobsen with Harvard University have published a companion piece in the same journal issue outlining some of the obstacles to forging bonds with rich nitrogen reactants; it also describes the approach used by the team in China.

The researchers began by noting that chiral amines are used in a wide variety of natural products, and point out that they are also just as widely used in agrochemicals and pharmaceuticals. They note that 43 percent of the 200 most prescribed prescription medications in 2016 had at least one analiphatic amine moiety. They further note that because of this, developing enantioselective transition-metal-catalyzed reactions that form C–N bonds are of great interest in chemistry circles.

As Ovian and Jacobsen note, chemists use a variety of compounds that have carbon-nitrogen bonds in one of two possible mirror-image orientations. But as they also point out, doing so can present difficulties due to the nitrogen interacting with a given catalyst. In this new effort, the researchers have found a way around this problem by developing a two-step approach to converting aliphatic amines into unnatural amino acids. In their approach, they applied a copper catalyst to serve as a means for activating a carbon reactant—then added a thiourea catalyst that was hydrogen bonding to produce high-selectivity products. They note that the success of the transformation was reliant on the unique properties of both catalysts. They further report that the reaction that resulted should work equally well with a wide range of diazo derivatives of an ester/amine coupling partners.

Ovian and Jacobsen further note that pairing an amine with a carbenoid allowed for stabilizing by a carboxyl group and provided a good way to create unnatural α–amino acid derivatives. The method also plots a path for extending metal-catalyzed carbenoid insertions into N-H bonds to aliphatic amines and represents the potential of developing new asymmetric transformations.

*More information:* "Highly enantioselective carbene insertion into N–H bonds of aliphatic amines" _Science_ (2019). science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi … 1126/science.aaw9939​


https://phys.org/news/2019-11-two-step-approach-aliphatic-amines-unnatural.html


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 26-NOV-2019
*New catalyst method promises better use of syngas, coal*
CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HEADQUARTERS

The world's first project to industrially synthesize 25 kt/a of higher alcohols from syngas passed a continuous 72-hour catalyst performance test on 3rd November, 2019 in Yulin, Shaanxi province, china.

The project, developed by researchers from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, offers a new method for directly synthesizing high value-added fine chemicals from syngas and suggests new ways to cleanly convert and utilize coal resources.

Results of the catalyst test showed that at 30% of catalyst loading, total conversion of syngas exceeded 84%; selectivity of methane was less than 6%; and selectivity of alcohols/aldehydes/olefins exceeded 60%.

Higher alcohols - the key products of this process - are often used as intermediates in the synthesis of plasticizers, detergents and lubricants, and are generally produced through the Ziegler and Oxo processes. However, these processes involve drawbacks, such as cumbersome steps as well as the use of dangerous catalysts in the Ziegler process.

DICP scientists and their collaborators have been conducting basic research and industrial testing on high-selectivity production of higher alcohols from syngas over Co-based catalysts since 2004. As part of their research, they designed a series of novel Co-based catalysts, namely, activated carbon supported Co-Co2C catalysts. The active site of these catalysts is supposed to be the interfacial sites between metallic Co and cobalt carbide (Co2C).

The researchers also proposed the mechanism by which alcohols are formed on the interfacial sites between Co and the Co2C sites. That is, CO molecules are associatively adsorbed on the surface of the Co2C sites and then inserted into the alkyl chain formed on the adjacent metallic Co sites.

The new catalytic method may make Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (FTS) more practical. FTS is one of the most versatile processes for converting syngas (CO+H2) derived from coal, natural gas, and biomass into various chemical products. FTS is notable for producing high-quality paraffins. In addition, using FTS to directly synthesize olefins and oxygenates (mainly linear α- alcohols) from syngas is a promising "one-pot-one-step" method due to the high added-value and large potential demand for these olefin and oxygenate products. However, no catalytic system has performed sufficiently well for industrial implementation to date.

The results of the current catalyst test suggest that the direct conversion of syngas into high value-added fine chemicals can now be accomplished at industrial scale, thus suggesting many more opportunities for cleanly and efficiently utilizing coal resources.


New catalyst method promises better use of syngas, coal | EurekAlert! Science News


----------



## smooth manifold

https://phys.org/news/2019-11-scientists-unpredicted-stellar-black-hole.html

An international team headed by Professor LIU Jifeng of the National Astronomical Observatory of China of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) spotted a stellar black hole with a mass 70 times greater than the sun. The monster black hole is located 15,000 light-years from Earth and has been named LB-1 by the researchers.

The Milky Way galaxy is estimated to contain 100 million stellar black holes—cosmic bodies formed by the collapse of massive stars and so dense even light can't escape. Until now, scientists had estimated the mass of an individual stellar black hole in our galaxy at no more than 20 times that of the sun. But the discovery of a huge black hole by a Chinese-led team of international scientists has toppled that assumption.

The team, headed by Prof. LIU Jifeng of the National Astronomical Observatory of China of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC), spotted a stellar black hole with a mass 70 times greater than the sun. The monster black hole is located 15 thousand light-years from Earth and has been named LB-1 by the researchers. The discovery is reported in the latest issue of _Nature_.

The discovery came as a big surprise. "Black holes of such mass should not even exist in our galaxy, according to most of the current models of stellar evolution," said Prof. LIU. "We thought that very massive stars with the chemical composition typical of our galaxy must shed most of their gas in powerful stellar winds, as they approach the end of their life. Therefore, they should not leave behind such a massive remnant. LB-1 is twice as massive as what we thought possible. Now theorists will have to take up the challenge of explaining its formation."

Until just a few years ago, stellar black holes could only be discovered when they gobbled up gas from a companion star. This process creates powerful X-ray emissions, detectable from Earth, that reveal the presence of the collapsed object.

The vast majority of stellar black holes in our galaxy are not engaged in a cosmic banquet, though, and thus don't emit revealing X-rays. As a result, only about two dozen galactic stellar black holes have been well identified and measured.

To counter this limitation, Prof. LIU and collaborators surveyed the sky with China's Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST), looking for stars that orbit an invisible object, pulled by its gravity.

This observational technique was first proposed by the visionary English scientist John Michell in 1783, but it has only become feasible with recent technological improvements in telescopes and detectors. Still, such a search is like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack: only one star in a thousand may be circling a black hole.

After the initial discovery, the world's largest optical telescopes—Spain's 10.4-m Gran Telescopio Canarias and the 10-m Keck I telescope in the United States—were used to determine the system's physical parameters. The results were nothing short of fantastic: A star eight times heavier than the sun was orbiting a 70-solar-mass black hole every 79 days.

The discovery of LB-1 fits nicely with another breakthrough in astrophysics. Recently, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and Virgo gravitational wave detectors have begun to catch ripples in spacetime caused by collisions of black holes in distant galaxies. Intriguingly, the black holes involved in such collisions are also much bigger than what was previously considered typical.

The direct sighting of LB-1 proves that this population of over-massive stellar black holes exists even in our own backyard. "This discovery forces us to re-examine our models of how stellar-mass black holes form," said LIGO Director Prof. David Reitze from the University of Florida in the U.S.

"This remarkable result along with the LIGO-Virgo detections of binary black hole collisions during the past four years really points towards a renaissance in our understanding of black hole astrophysics," said Reitze.


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese Cretaceous fossil sheds new light on evolution of mammalian middle ear*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-11-28 17:39:47|Editor: Lu Hui

BEIJING, Nov. 28 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have found the fossil of a new Cretaceous mammal species in northeast China's Liaoning Province, shedding new light on the evolution of the mammalian middle ear.

The research was jointly conducted by paleontologists from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the American Museum of Natural History. Their findings were published Wednesday in the journal _Nature_.

Attached to the dentary, the middle ear of early mammals moved when the animal chewed, which was inefficient. In modern mammals, the middle ear is detached from the dentary and is only responsible for hearing, making their hearing sharper and feeding more efficient, said Wang Haibing, one of the researchers.

The fossil, with its middle ear bones well preserved and detached from the dentary, has revealed a transitional stage in the evolution of the mammalian middle ear, offering direct evidence to scientific studies.

Based on morphological and phylogenetic analyses, the researchers have proposed a new pattern for the middle ear evolution in early mammals.

The peculiar jaw joint structure of the species allowed a more distinct jaw movement when chewing, which means more pressure on the species to detach the middle year from its dentary in order to increase its feeding efficiency, Wang said.

The feeding pressure may have accelerated the evolution of the species' middle ear. As such, this group is believed to have developed the typical mammalian middle ear at least 160 million years ago before all other mammal groups, according to the research.


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 28-NOV-2019
*Growing nano-tailored surfaces using micellar brushes*
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE

Growing nanoscale polymer brushes on materials' surfaces overcomes a key challenge in surface chemistry, researchers report, creating a new way to fabricate a diverse array of materials that could hold advanced uses in catalysis or chemical separation applications, for example. Their approach represents a crucial step forward in the search for simple and general techniques to create functional surfaces with tailor-made chemical properties, writes Alejandro Presa Soto in a related Perspective; "Pandora's box is now open, and the limits of this approach are only restricted by the imagination and skills of the scientific community." As technology advances, the ability to create advanced materials with specific surface properties and functionalities is becoming critically significant in a wide variety of areas including chemical engineering and biomedicine. One recently developed approach for creating functionalized surfaces makes use of polymer chains, grafted to surfaces in brush-like patches. However limited, the method allows for tailoring of the surface chemistry at the molecular level. Similar approaches using nano- or micron-scale structures hold great promise for greatly expanded functionality and applications; however, the precise fabrication of these surfaces remains a prohibitive challenge. Jiandon Cai and colleagues address this by growing nanoscale micellar brushes directly on a material's surface. Cai et al. attached small crystalline micelle-seeds on a variety of surfaces, including silicon wafers, graphene oxide nanosheets and gold nanoparticles. Unimers are used to initiate the crystallization-driven growth of well-defined cylindrical nanostructures over the seed-coated surface. The approach allows for the precise control over the density, length and chemistry of the micellar brushes, which can further be outfitted with other functional molecules and nanoparticles to enable a variety of catalysis and antibacterial and chemical separation applications.



Growing nano-tailored surfaces using micellar brushes | EurekAlert! Science News

Jiandong Cai, Chen Li, Na Kong, Yi Lu, Geyu Lin, Xinyan Wang, Yuan Yao, Ian Manners, Huibin Qiu. *Tailored multifunctional micellar brushes via crystallization-driven growth from a surface*. _Science _(2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aax9075​


----------



## JSCh

*New self-cleaning concrete developed for tall buildings*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-12-06 17:16:01|Editor: Shi Yinglun

BEIJING, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers have developed a new type of concrete with self-cleaning ability, according to a recent study paper published in the journal of American Chemical Society Applied Materials and Interfaces.

The outer wall surfaces of modern buildings are commonly washed by people suspended in air using ropes. The researchers from the School of Chemistry and Materials Science of the University of Science and Technology of China hoped to find new materials that can conduct self-cleaning as well as provide excellent heat and sound insulation.

The concrete exhibited remarkable hydrophobicity with a water contact angle of 166 degrees both on the surface and inside of the sample, signifying remarkable stain repellency and long-term stability, said the paper.

The water contact angle remained unchanged under continuous mechanical grinding and harsh environments, such as high temperature and chemical erosion.

A controllable porosity from 56.3 to 77.4 percent and homogeneous small pore size give the concrete high compressive strength and low thermal conductivity.


----------



## JSCh

*Hybrid macrofiber with spider silk-like supertoughness | Zhejiang University*
2019-12-04 

Nature provides an infinite amount of inspiration for human beings and biomimicry is one of the most extensively used methods among scientists. Natural SSF are characterized by their superhigh tensile strength (1150 ± 200 MPa) and remarkable fracture toughness (165 ± 30 J g−1) as well as their salient breaking strain (>50%). These features are attributable to the well-organized supramolecular networks in SSF: proteins self-assemble to form rigid nano-confined crystalline β-sheets and a flexible amorphous matrix. However, SSF cannot be obtained in large quantities from spiders owing to the fact that spiders cannot be farmed due to their cannibalistic behavior. Collecting SSF from webs is also extremely time-consuming and is therefore not profitable. Another typical biomaterial that combines a rigid crystalline phase and a flexible amorphous phase is biological bone. During biomineralization, the inorganic building blocks, hydroxyapatite (HAP), orderly assemble into collagen bundles to generate hard tissues. In contrast with the tensile strength of SSF, biological bone is marked by its toughness.

Against this backdrop, Prof. TANG Ruikang and Dr. LIU Zhaoming from the Zhejiang University Department of Chemistry fabricated biomimetic mineralized organic-inorganic hybrid macrofiber by using HAP and organic polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) to simulate the rigid crystalline and flexible amorphous protein blocks of SSF, respectively. This fiber is featured by a hierarchical ordered structure, a superhigh tensile strength of 949 ± 38 MPa, a specific toughness of 296 ± 12 J g−1, and a stretch ability of 80.6%. It consists of microfibers, and its outstanding performance (e.g., extreme tolerance to temperatures ranging from −196 to 80 °C and superior ability to inhibit the transverse growth of cracks) is attributed to the hierarchical arrangement as well as the organic-inorganic integrated structure within the oriented mineralized polymer chains.





_Schematic illustration of the preparation process and network microstructure of the PVA/Alg/HAP hybrid macrofiber_

The biomineralization-inspired technique is of great significance due to its simplicity and efficiency, achieved by utilizing the sophisticated biomimetic mineralization tactic. The resulting fibrous material has promise for applications such as flexible ballistic fabrics owing to its excellent mechanical properties. More importantly, the composite materials PVA, Alg and HAP are inexpensive and highly available in markets. In addition, this fabrication process is simple, scalable, and cost-effective, and thus represents an alternative pathway for the development of the fiber industry.


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese, US scientists identify ancient mammals with separate hearing, chewing bones*
Xinhua | Updated: 2019-12-06 09:24
















The fossil of a new Cretaceous mammal species found in Northeast China's Liaoning province. [Photo/cas.cn]

WASHINGTON -- Scientists in China and the United States reported a mammal living more than 120 million years ago, which provides evidence for separation of hearing and chewing modules in the evolution of therian mammals to which all extant mammals, including human beings, belong to.

The study published on Thursday in the journal _Science _showed that the mammal living in dinosaur's age in Northeast China did not have the bone link between the auditory bones and Meckel's cartilage.

Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the American Museum of Natural History reconstructed 3D skeletal morphologies of the new species called Origolestes lii using high-resolution microtomography.

Skull morphologies, dentitions, jaws, and tooth wear from individuals of the same species show evidence of opening and closing movements during the biting and chewing process as well as jaw yawing and rolling. The multi-directional movements of the lower jaw during chewing are likely to be one of the selection pressures that caused the detachment of the auditory ossicles from the dental bone and the Meckel's cartilage, according to the study.

It signals a more advanced stage in the evolution of the mammalian middle ear, since the decoupled hearing and chewing modules eliminated physical constraints that interfered with each other and possibly increased the capacity of the two modules to evolve.

After the separation, the animal's hearing module may have had greater potential to develop sensitive hearing of high frequency sounds, and the chewing module may have been able to evolve diverse tooth morphologies and occlusal patterns that facilitated consuming different foods, according to the study.


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists Uncover Mysteries of Chromosome Structures in Human Sperm and Embryos*
By LIU Jia | Dec 05, 2019

In a study published in _Nature_, the research groups led by Dr. LIU Jiang’s lab from Beijing Institute of Genomics (BIG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Dr. CHEN Zijiang’s lab from Shandong University uncovered the mysteries of chromosome structures in human sperm and embryos.

There are 23 pairs of chromosomes within a human cell and DNA is compressed and properly packed into a three-dimensional (3D) structure within the crowded nucleus. Human individual development starts from a fertilized egg, experiences the embryonic stage and gradually develops into a complex organism containing hundreds of distinct cell types and organs. Rich epigenetic information is coded in 3D chromatin structure in human embryos.

However, what happens to the 3D chromatin structure after the fertilization in human embryos and which key factors can affect chromosome structure dynamics remain unknown. Moreover, sperm is so special with distinct morphology and functions from other cells, it is unclear how chromosomes are compressed and folded in human sperm.

In this study, the scientists applied the optimized Hi-C method in human sperm and early embryos by using as few as 50-100 cells to map 3D chromosome structures. They revealed the key role of CTCF protein in establishing chromatin structure in human embryos.

The topologically associating domain (TAD) is the basic unit of 3D chromosome structures. Unlike mouse sperm, human sperm cells do not express the chromatin regulator protein CTCF and their chromatin does not contain TADs. After fertilization, both the TAD structures and A/B compartmentalization undergo gradual establishment during embryonic development.

In the first two days following the fertilization in human, the embryo genome almost expresses no genes until 8-cell stage at which zygotic genome activation (ZGA) occurs and embryo genome starts expressing new genes.

Remarkably, different from that in mouse or Drosophila embryos, blocking zygotic genome activation (ZGA) can inhibit TAD establishment in human embryos. Besides, the expression of CTCF has a booming increase from a limited expression level during ZGA and TAD organization is significantly reduced in CTCF knock-down embryos, suggesting that CTCF expression is required for TAD establishment during ZGA in human embryos.

The scientists uncovered that CTCF play a key role in the establishment of 3D chromatin structure during human embryogenesis. This study made a further step towards the comprehensive understanding of human embryonic development.



The dynamics of 3D chromosome structures in human sperm and embryos (Image by LIU Jiang's group) 


Scientists Uncover Mysteries of Chromosome Structures in Human Sperm and Embryos----Chinese Academy of Sciences

Xuepeng Chen, Yuwen Ke, Keliang Wu, Han Zhao, Yaoyu Sun, Lei Gao, Zhenbo Liu, Jingye Zhang, Wenrong Tao, Zhenzhen Hou, Hui Liu, Jiang Liu, Zi-Jiang Chen. *Key role for CTCF in establishing chromatin structure in human embryos*. _Nature _(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1812-0​


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists Observe Nearly Quantized Majorana Conductance Plateau in An Iron-based Superconductor----Chinese Academy of Sciences*
By ZHANG Nannan | Dec 13, 2019

Recently, Prof. GAO Hongjun Gao's and Prof. DING Hong's joint research group took a step further in the research of Majorana physics using the home-upgraded ultra-low-temperature and strong-magnetic-field scanning tunneling microscope/spectroscopy (STM/STS) system.

They observed conductance plateaus as a function of tunnel coupling for the zero-energy vortex bound states (Majorana zero modes) with values close to or even reaching the 2e2/h quantum conductance by continuously tuning the tunnel-coupling between STM tip and Fe(Te,Se) single crystal.

In contrast, no plateaus were observed on neither finite energy vortex bound states nor in the continuum of electronic states outside the superconducting gap (Fig. 2). The statistical analysis of 31 Majorana zero modes show the value of Majorana plateau concentrated near the quantized conductance 2e2/h.

In 1937, Ettore Majorana, an Italian physicist, predicted an elementary particle called the Majorana Fermion, for which the particle is its own anti-particle. The Majorana Fermion in condensed matter physics is also known as Majorana zero mode. Because Majorana zero modes obey non-Abel statistics, it holds a great promise for the realization of topological quantum computing, which has caused widespread concern.

Since 2014, the study of non-trivial topological band structures in iron-based superconductors was triggered by the researchers in Institute of Physics/University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (IOP/UCAS), Chinese Academy of Sciences, from both experimental perspective and theoretical efforts.

Starting from 2017, the joint group led by Prof. GAO Hongjun and Prof. DING Hong investigated the vortices in an iron-based superconductor using STM/STS. For the first time, they reported the observation of the evidence of Majorana zero modes in an iron-based superconductor Fe(Te,Se).

These results have been then verified by independent research groups from Fudan University, the Japan Institute of Physics and Chemistry (RIKEN), and other institutions. Moreover, the joint research group further performed a detailed study of Majorana zero modes in iron-based superconductors and found that there are two distinct types of vortices on the surface of Fe(Te,Se) single crystal when applying a magnetic field. These results provide a deep understanding of vortex bound states and the topological nature of the Majorana zero mode.

Although there is already a lot of experimental evidence for the existence of Majorana zero mode in iron-based superconductors, there still needs more efforts to exclude other possibilities contributing to zero-energy conductance signals. For example, in nanowire systems, the zero-bias peaks have been observed since 2012, but many topological trivial explanations have not been excluded until Kouwenhoven's research group observed the quantized conductance plateau.

In the latest experiment, scientists also investigated how the instrumental broadening and the quasiparticle poisoning effect affect the conductance plateau value from the theoretical quantized value 2e2/h (Fig. 3).

The observation of a zero-bias conductance plateau in the two-dimensional vortex case, which approaches the quantized conductance of 2e2/h, provides spatially-resolved spectroscopic evidence for Majorana-induced resonant electron transmission into a bulk superconductor, moving one step further towards the braiding operation applicable to topological quantum computation.

This study entitled "Nearly quantized conductance plateau of vortex zero mode in an iron-based superconductor" was published on _Science_ on December 12, 2019.

The work is supported by grants from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.





​Fig. 1. Zero-bias conductance plateau observed on Fe(Te,Se). (Image by IOP) 





​Fig. 2. Majorana induced resonant Andreev reflection. (Image by IOP) 





​Fig. 3. The conductance variation of Majorana plateau. (Image by IOP)


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists Develop World-record 32.35 Tesla with An All-superconducting Magnet----Chinese Academy of Sciences*
By ZHANG Nannan | Dec 09, 2019

Recently, Prof. WANG Qiuliang's group from the Institute of Electrical Engineering of the Chinese Academy of Sciences developed an all-superconducting magnet with a central magnetic field of up to 32.35 Tesla (T), which is a new record of the highest magnetic field generated by all-superconducting magnets.

The magnet was built with independently developed high-temperature interpolation magnet technology, breaking the world record of the 32.0 T superconducting magnet created by the US National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in December 2017.

The upper limit of the magnetic field strength generated by the low-temperature superconducting magnet is about 23.0T. In order to obtain a higher magnetic field, the combination of high-temperature superconducting magnets and low-temperature superconducting magnets are employed.

The high-temperature superconducting magnet is used as an inserted magnet into the bore of the low-temperature superconducting magnet, utilizing the advantages of high tensile strength and high critical currents of high-temperature superconductors under high magnetic fields. 

The researchers has focused on the research of high-field high-temperature superconducting insert magnet and has developed 24.0T, 25.7T, and 27.2T all-superconducting magnets in the past years. The extremely-high magnetic field superconducting magnet, which constructed recently, produced a central magnetic field of 32.35 T in liquid helium bath, and realized the stable operation of the 32.35T all-superconducting magnet. 

The high-field superconducting magnets will serve the world-class Synergetic Extreme Condition User Facility (SECUF), and will provide the most advanced high magnetic field experimental conditions for basic research and applied research in the exploration of new states of matter, new phenomena, and new laws in material science.






The excitation process of the 32.35 T all-superconducting magnet (Image by LIU Jianhua)


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists confirm existence of critical ice nucleus*
Source: Xinhua| 2019-12-19 19:19:30|Editor: mingmei

BEIJING, Dec. 19 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have provided experimental information on the existence and temperature-dependent size of critical ice nuclei for the first time.

Water freezing is ubiquitous, but the process of how water turns into ice at the micro level is unknown. Ice nucleation is the controlling step in water freezing and has, for nearly a century, been assumed to require the formation of a critical ice nucleus, according to the classical nucleation theory. But there has been no direct experimental evidence for the existence of such a nucleus, owing to its transient and nanoscale nature.

Researchers from the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences creatively probed the existence of a critical ice nucleus and its size for ice formation with graphene oxide nanosheets.

In a paper published in the journal _Nature_, researchers used different-sized graphene oxide nanosheets to detect the critical size of the ice nucleus.

They inferred from the experimental data and theoretical calculations that the critical size of the graphene oxide reflects the size of the critical ice nucleus, which in the case of sufficiently large graphene oxides sits on their surface and gives rise to ice formation behavior consistent with classical nucleation theory.

"This experiment can be understood like this: using nanoparticles with a determined size as rulers to measure the critical ice nucleus and continuously reducing the temperature to make the ice nucleus size reach the required critical size. When the ice nucleus size is exactly the same as the size of the nanoparticles, it is easy to form a critical ice nucleus," Wang said.

The research has deepened the microscopic understanding of water freezing and has also provided important theoretical guidance for the application of artificial ice control. It will play a vital role in the fields of chemical industry, cryobiology and materials science.


----------



## Grandy

*China Is Building an Artificial Sun*





China’s nuclear fusion device. Popular Mechanics’ image
The nuclear fusion reactor will burn as hot as 360 million degrees Fahrenheit.

By Caroline Delbert
Dec 20, 2019
Xinhua/Chinese Academy of Sciences

Fusion researchers in China will bring their artificial sun up to full speed in 2020.
This superpowered tokamak device and the related stellarator device form the bulk of fusion technology research.
Tokamaks are touchy and prone to destabilizing, which these scientists hope to study and ameliorate.
China has announced advancing plans for its nuclear fusion device known colloquially as an “artificial sun.” They say the device, which will reach temperatures of up to 360 million degrees Fahrenheit, is actually more like 12 artificial suns combined. The extremely high temperatures lead to the titular effect: literally, the nucleuses of two or more atoms are fused, and the process generates energy.

The experimental device, the HL-2M Tokamak, is the largest of its kind to date. A tokamak is a specific kind of fusion reactor that’s been theorized about since the 1950s, when Soviet scientists coined the term as a shortening of the Russian for “toroidal magnetic confinement.” The name is perfectly descriptive. A tokamak is a torus—the math term for a donut—in which extremely heated plasma is trapped and pressed into making chemical reactions.

There have been hundreds of small tokamaks in experimental lab settings around the world in the last 40 or more years. The plasma inside a tokamak is held there by magnetic fields, and these are prone to imperfections that can turn into disruptive flaws. Controlling them is really hard. Studying the tokamak has taken so long, and sometimes seemed so impossible to implement at large scale rather than just wildly improbable, that a second related device has threatened to overtake it in the public eye.

The stellarator, a descendent in a way and an even wilder-looking assemblage of ideas, is supposed to be more stable and less likely to spin out. It made the news in 2015 when a breakthrough with the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator led people to wonder if this new energy donut would surpass the old. But the two devices, the stellarator and the tokamak, have been developed almost in parallel by different teams since the very beginning. The 2015 stellarator breakthrough represented a milestone, but an early, experimental one.

China’s HL-2M Tokamak is known by its official name, the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST). Scientists first switched it in on 2006, but achieving milestones with EAST is hard work over many years. In 2018, it reached 180 million degrees Fahrenheit—halfway to the optimal operating temperature the team says it will reach in 2020.

In a way, EAST is proof of concept for a larger plasma fusion reactor. In a safe lab context, scientists can observe how the tokamak behaves. Because of the way they’re designed, tokamaks tend to throw the hottest, most energetic particles outside of their cores. They can instantly destabilize and fall out of the plasma-reactive zone, and most must be heated externally up to the 180 million Fahrenheit mark.

EAST is supposed to maintain that heat by itself, and its researchers have reached plasma states for tiny intervals of time during the last 13 years. Their goal now is to have a more stable, constant plasma reaction to show that such a thing can be done. After that, they hope to bring tokamaks out of research labs and into the world of commercial energy.

Source: Popular Mechanics “China Is Building an Artificial Sun”

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Shanghai team in diffusion breakthrough*
Yang Meiping 22:25 UTC+8, 2019-12-19 

A team from Shanghai Jiao Tong University said on Thursday that it had developed a way to make materials that can localize light waves and prevent diffusion during transmission.

Researchers said it can ensure quality of information such as images in transmission as no loss happens in the process.

The findings have been published in international science journal _Nature_.

Ye Fangwei, a professor at the university’s School of Physics and Astronomy and leader of the team, explained: “When I speak, everyone hears me, because the wave of the sound diffuses; when you throw a stone into a still lake, the ripple expands, because the wave of the water diffuses; when a laser is propagating in space, the laser spot becomes larger and larger with distance, because the wave of the light diffuses or diffracts. In fact, every type of wave diffuses, and diffusion is a common nature for all waves. That is why the fact that kills the diffusion and localizes waves is a fundamental, long-standing problem in science.

They used moiré lattices, which consist of two superimposed identical periodic structures with a relative rotation angle and are widely seen in life, such as the light and dark stripes seen when two combs are put together with a relative rotation angle.



The light and dark stripes seen when two combs are put together with a relative rotation angle are moiré lattices.

The team found that when it imprinted two moiré lattices in the same crystal material with some rotation angles, they can make light travel in one direction without diffusion.

It means that we might be able to transmit images or information using the moiré-lattice materials, which, in sharp contrast to the existing ones, does not need special designs.

“Our findings provide a new way to localize waves, not only light waves, but also other waves like matter waves,” Ye said.

He said the new findings had a potential application in information transportation, image processing and light manipulations, and inspire other research in several areas of science, including optics, acoustics, condensed matter and atomic physics.



The light does not diffuse when the material is imprinted with two moiré lattices with a rotation angle (right), but diffuses when the lattices are imprinted with another angle.

Source: SHINE Editor: Shen Ke


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists Reveal Function of Histone Variant H2A.Z in DNA Replication Selection----Chinese Academy of Sciences*
By LIU Jia | Dec 26, 2019

The research published in _Nature_ on Dec. 25th, 2019, led by Dr. LI Guohong and Dr. ZHU Mingzhao from the Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has demonstrated that the histone variant H2A.Z facilitates the licensing and activation of early DNA replication origins. 

DNA replication is a tightly regulated process that ensures the precise duplication of the genome during cell proliferation. Replication origins determine where replication starts on the genome and regulate the whole genome replication program. The human genome contains tens of thousands of origins; however, only about 10% of them are used in each cell cycle. So how are origins selected? 

In eukaryotes, DNA wraps around histone octamers to form chromatin in the nucleus. The licensing and activation of replication origins are regulated by both the DNA sequence and chromatin features. However, chromatin-based regulatory mechanisms remain largely uncharacterized. 

In this study, the scientists first found that knocking down _H2AFZ_ genes in HeLa cells results in cell growth defects. Through mass spectrometry, many subunits of prereplication complex were enriched on H2A.Z mono-nucleosomes, indicating that H2A.Z may be involved in the licensing of DNA replication origins. 

To find the mechanism of interaction between H2A.Z and the prereplication complex, the scientists then performed in vitro biochemical analysis and found that H2A.Z-containing nucleosomes bind directly to the histone lysine methyltransferase enzyme SUV420H1. This process promotes H4K20me2 deposition, which further recruits origins recognition complex 1 (ORC1) to help accomplish the licensing of DNA replication origins. 

In addition, through genome-wide studies in HeLa cells, the scientists confirmed the role of H2A.Z in DNA replication. The results showed that signals from H4K20me2, ORC1 and nascent DNA strands (indicating active DNA replication origins) co-localize with H2A.Z, and the depletion of H2A.Z results in decreased H4K20me2, ORC1 and nascent-strand signals. H2A.Z-regulated replication origins have a higher firing efficiency and earlier replication timing compared with other origins. 

Furthermore, the scientists generated CD4CreH2A.Zf/f mice to study the function of H2A.Z-regulated replication in a more physiological context. Using these mice, they conditionally knocked out (CKO) _H2az1/H2az2_ in T cells. They then found that in H2A.Z CKO mic the activated T cells have defects in cell proliferation and DNA replication. 

This study describes a novel epigenetic regulation mechanism for DNA replication origin selection and offers a new way of understanding DNA replication regulation in eukaryotes. Importantly, this regulatory pathway can potentially serve as a target for cancer treatment and regulation of T cell function during immunotherapy.




Working model: Origin selection: H2A.Z nucleosomes bind Suv420H1 directly to establish H4K20me2 on chromatin, which then recruits ORC1 to bind to replication origins; Origin firing: H2A.Z-Suv420H1-H4K20me2-ORC1 axis selectively license and activate early replication origins. (Image by Dr. LI Guohong’s lab)


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists launch genome project for protists*
Xinhua | Updated: 2020-01-03 14:37

BEIJING - Chinese scientists recently launched a program to map the genomes of about 10,000 representative species of protists and establish a large-scale database of protist genetic resources.

The program was jointly launched by the Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Tibet University, Henan Agricultural University, the Lanzhou Veterinary Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, the CAS Beijing Institute of Genomics and Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

A protist is a single-celled organism of the kingdom Protista, such as a protozoan or simple alga. More than 60,000 protist species have been described, and the number of unknown species is hard to estimate.

Protists are not only an important component of water ecosystems, but also an excellent source of food and nutrition for aquatic animals and humans. However, some toxic algal blooms in rivers and oceans may bring serious environmental problems, said the scientists.

At the same time, some protists are major pathogenic parasites of humans, livestock and aquatic animals, such as Plasmodium.

However, there had previously been no large-scale genome program for protists in the world. So far, genome data of only about 400 protist species have been published, said Miao Wei, deputy director of the CAS Institute of Hydrobiology.

The genome project will be based on the more than 3,000 species of eukaryotic algae and protozoa kept by the research institutes participating in the program, and more samples will be collected.

The scientists aim to complete the genome sequencing and analysis of about 10,000 protist species in three years.

The project is expected to help scientists better understand the mechanism of biodiversity, the origin and evolution of multicellular organisms and sexual reproduction, and to push forward the research on environmental protection, nutrition and disease control.


----------



## JSCh

*Water lily genome expands picture of the early evolution of flowering plants*
Sam Sholtis
2 January 2020




The newly reported genome sequence of a water lily sheds light on the early evolution of angiosperms, the group of all flowering plants. An international team of researchers, including scientists at Penn State, used high-throughput next-generation sequencing technology to read out the water lily’s (_Nymphaea colorata_) genome and transcriptome—the set of all genes expressed as RNAs.

The unusual high quality and depth of coverage of the sequence allowed the researchers to assemble the vast majority of the genome into 14 chromosomes and identify more than 31 thousand protein-coding genes. A paper describing the sequence and subsequent analysis appears December 18, 2019 in the journal Nature.

“Water lilies have been an inspiration to artists like Claude Monet because of their beauty and important to scientists because of their position near the base of the evolutionary tree of all flowering plants,” said Hong Ma, associate dean for research and innovation, Huck Distinguished Research Professor of Plant Molecular Biology, and professor of biology at Penn State, one of the leaders of the research team. “I previously contributed to the sequencing and analysis of the genome of Amborella, which represents the earliest branch to separate from other flowering plants, but Amborella lacks big showy colorful flowers and attractive floral scent, both of which serve to attract pollinators in most groups of flowering plants. We were interested in the water lily genome to help us understand how these traits evolved.”

Evolutionary comparison of the water lily genome to the genomes of Amborella, other angiosperms, and several gymnosperms—the group of seed-bearing plants that do not produce flowers—confirmed the position of Amborella, which shares some characteristics with the gymnosperms, as the earliest of currently living angiosperms to separate from other flowering plants. Water lilies were the next branch to diverge from a third branch (Austrobaileyales, which includes star anise) and a fourth very large group called the mesangiosperms, which contains over 99% of living flowering plants.

“If we make an analogy to mammalian evolution, Amborella has a similar position to that of the platypus and other egg-laying mammals,” said Ma. “The platypus is a mammal because it feeds its young with milk, but it lays eggs like birds or reptiles. Amborella, like gymnosperms, has separate male and female plants, but the water lily has male and female reproductive parts within a single flower. This makes the water lily more similar to the vast majority of other flowering plants, so having the genomes of both Amborella and water lily can help us to better analyze the evolutionary transition from gymnosperms to angiosperms.”

The researchers used molecular dating to estimate the separation of the family of water lilies (Nymphaeaceae) from other families of related aquatic plants at somewhere between 147 and 185 million years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, with a whole-genome duplication (WGD)/polyploidy event at about the same time. Many of the key genes for flower development retained in this WGD.

The research team also analyzed genes in the water lily genome that are likely important for the generation of molecules for attractive floral scent and color, traits shared with most other angiosperms, but not found in Amborella. They identified a massive expansion in the number of genes involved in the biosynthesis of floral scent in water lilies; these genes seem to have evolved in parallel with the other angiosperms. They also analyzed the expression of genes involved in flower color between two species of water lily, identifying the key proteins responsible for blue petals.

“Having the water lily genome allows us to explore these important traits in flowering plants and especially among horticultural plants,” said Ma. “It’s likely that brightly colored flowers and floral scent evolved through an interaction with pollinators and such flowers are ultimately extremely important for the success of flowering plants. Identification of the key synthetic genes of blue petals has important reference value for breeding blue petal varieties.”

In addition to Ma, the research team was led by Liangsheng Zhang and Haibao Tang of the Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University in Fuzhou, China; Fei Chen and Feng Chen of Nanjing Agricultural University in Nanjing, China and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville; and Yves Van de Peer of Ghent University in Belgium, and includes 47 authors from 23 institutions.


*Water lily genome expands picture of the early evolution of flowering plants | Eberly College of Science | The Pennsylvania State University *

Liangsheng Zhang, Fei Chen, Xingtan Zhang, Zhen Li, Yiyong Zhao, Rolf Lohaus, Xiaojun Chang, Wei Dong, Simon Y. W. Ho, Xing Liu, Aixia Song, Junhao Chen, Wenlei Guo, Zhengjia Wang, Yingyu Zhuang, Haifeng Wang, Xuequn Chen, Juan Hu, Yanhui Liu, Yuan Qin, Kai Wang, Shanshan Dong, Yang Liu, Shouzhou Zhang, Xianxian Yu, Qian Wu, Liangsheng Wang, Xueqing Yan, Yuannian Jiao, Hongzhi Kong, Xiaofan Zhou, Cuiwei Yu, Yuchu Chen, Fan Li, Jihua Wang, Wei Chen, Xinlu Chen, Qidong Jia, Chi Zhang, Yifan Jiang, Wanbo Zhang, Guanhua Liu, Jianyu Fu, Feng Chen, Hong Ma, Yves Van de Peer, Haibao Tang. *The water lily genome and the early evolution of flowering plants*. _Nature _(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1852-5​


----------



## JSCh

*A close look at thin ice*
Marrying theoretical work with experiments and high-tech imaging techniques, atmospheric chemists Chongqin Zhu and Joseph S. Francisco of the School of Arts and Sciences and colleagues have identified a new way that ice grows in two dimensions.

On frigid days, water vapor in the air can transform directly into solid ice, depositing a thin layer on surfaces such as a windowpane or car windshield. Though commonplace, this process is one that has kept physicists and chemists busy figuring out the details for decades.



An international team of scientists, including atmospheric chemists from Penn, describe the first-ever visualization of the atomic structure of two-dimensional ice as it formed. (Image: Courtesy of Joseph Francisco)

In a new _Nature _paper, an international team of scientists describe the first-ever visualization of the atomic structure of two-dimensional ice as it formed. Insights from the findings, which were driven by computer simulations that inspired experimental work, may one day inform the design of materials that make ice removal a simpler and less costly process.

“One of the things that I find very exciting is that this challenges the traditional view of how ice grows,” says Joseph S. Francisco, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Pennsylvania and an author on the paper. 

“Knowing the structure is very important,” adds coauthor Chongqin Zhu, a postdoctoral fellow in Francisco’s group who led much of the computational work for the study. “Low-dimensional water is ubiquitous in nature and plays a critical role in an incredibly broad spectrum of sciences, including materials science, chemistry, biology, and atmospheric science.

“It also has practical significance. For example, removing ice is critical when it comes to things like wind turbines, which cannot function when they are covered in ice. If we understand the interaction between water and surfaces, then we might be able to develop new materials to make this ice removal easier.”

In recent years, Francisco’s lab has devoted considerable attention to studying the behavior of water, and specifically ice, at the interface of solid surfaces. What they’ve learned about ice’s growth mechanisms and structures in this context helps them understand how ice behaves in more complex scenarios, like when interacting with other chemicals and water vapor in the atmosphere.

“We’re interested in the chemistry of ice at the transition with the gas phase, as that’s relevant to the reactions that are happening in our atmosphere,” Francisco explains.

To understand basic principles of ice growth, researchers have entered this area of study by investigating two-dimensional structures: layers of ice that are only several water molecules thick.

In previous studies of two-dimensional ice, using computational methods and simulations, Francisco, Zhu, and colleagues showed that ice grows differently depending on whether a surface repels or attracts water, and the structure of that surface.

In the current work, they sought real-world verification of their simulations, reaching out to a team at Peking University to see if they could obtain images of two-dimensional ice.

The Peking team employed super-powerful atomic force microscopy, which uses a mechanical probe to “feel” the material being studied, translating the feedback into nanoscale-resolution images. Atomic force microscopy is capable of capturing structural information with a minimum of disruption to the material itself, allowing the scientists to identify even unstable intermediate structures that arise during the process of ice formation.

Virtually all naturally occurring ice on Earth is known as hexagonal ice for its six-sided structure. This is why snowflakes all have six-fold symmetry. One plane of hexagonal ice has a similar structure to that of two-dimensional ice and can terminate in two types of edges—“zigzag” or “armchair.” Usually this plane of natural ice terminates with a zigzag edge.

However, when ice is grown in two dimensions, researchers find that the pattern of growth is different. The current work, for the first time, shows that the armchair edges can be stabilized and that their growth follows a novel reaction pathway.

“This is a totally different mechanism from what was known,” Zhu says.

Although the zigzag growth patterns were previously believed to only have six-membered rings of water molecules, both Zhu’s calculations and the atomic force microscopy revealed an intermediate stage where five-membered rings were present.

This result, the researchers say, may help explain the experimental observations reported in their 2017 _PNAS_ paper, which found that ice could grow in two different ways on a surface, depending on the properties of that surface.

In addition to lending insight into future design of materials conducive to ice removal, the techniques used in the work are also applicable to probe the growth of a large family of two-dimensional materials beyond two-dimensional ices, thus opening a new avenue of visualizing the structure and dynamics of low-dimensional matter.

For chemist Jeffrey Saven, a professor in Penn Arts & Sciences who was not directly involved in the current work, the collaboration between the theorists in Francisco’s group and their colleagues in China called to mind a parable he learned from a mentor during his training.

“An experimentalist is talking with theorists about data collected in the lab. The mediocre theorist says, ‘I can’t really explain your data.’ The good theorist says, ‘I have a theory that fits your data.’ The great theorist says, ‘That’s interesting, but here is the experiment you should be doing and why.’”

To build on this successful partnership, Zhu, Francisco, and their colleagues are embarking on theoretical and experimental work to begin to fill in the gaps related to how two-dimensional ice builds into three dimensions.

“The two-dimensional work is fundamental to laying the background,” says Francisco. “And having the calculations verified by experiments is so good, because that allows us to go back to the calculations and take the next bold step toward three dimensions.”

“Looking for features of three-dimensional ice will be the next step,” Zhu says, “and should be very important in looking for applications of this work.”


A close look at thin ice | Penn Today | University of Pennsylvania

Runze Ma, Duanyun Cao, Chongqin Zhu, Ye Tian, Jinbo Peng, Jing Guo, Ji Chen, Xin-Zheng Li, Joseph S. Francisco, Xiao Cheng Zeng, Li-Mei Xu, En-Ge Wang & Ying Jiang. *Atomic imaging of the edge structure and growth of a two-dimensional hexagonal ice*. _Nature _(2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1853-4​


----------



## JSCh

*Top 10 Technology Trends in 2020 Predicted by Alibaba DAMO Academy*
2020/01/02 From *Alibaba DAMO Academy*

Today, Alibaba DAMO Academy published The Top 10 Technology Trends in 2020. We hope that by grasping the pace of revolution of technologies, we can make better use of these “magics” and be in charge of our own future.

*Trend No 1. Artificial intelligence evolves from perceptual intelligence to cognitive intelligence*




Artificial intelligence has reached or surpassed humans in the areas of perceptual intelligence such as speech to text, natural language processing, video understanding etc; but in the field of cognitive intelligence that requires external knowledge, logical reasoning, or domain migration, it is still in its infancy. Cognitive intelligence will draw inspiration from cognitive psychology, brain science, and human social history, combined with techniques such as cross domain knowledge graph, causality inference, and continuous learning to establish effective mechanisms for stable acquisition and expression of knowledge. These make machines to understand and utilize knowledge, achieving key breakthroughs from perceptual intelligence to cognitive intelligence.

*Trend No 2. In-Memory-Computing addresses the "memory wall" challenges in AI computing*




In Von Neumann architecture, memory and processor are separate and the computation requires data to be moved back and forth. With the rapid development of data-driven AI algorithms in recent years, it has come to a point where the hardware becomes the bottleneck in the explorations of more advanced algorithms. In Processing-in-Memory (PIM) architecture, in contrast to the Von Neumann architecture, memory and processor are fused together and computations are performed where data is stored with minimal data movement. As such, computation parallelism and power efficiency can be significantly improved. We believe the innovations on PIM architecture are the tickets to next generation AI.

*Trend No 3. Industrial IoT power the digital transformation*




In 2020, 5G, rapid development of IoT devices, cloud computing and edge computing will accelerate the fusion of information system, communication system, and industrial control system. Through advanced Industrial IoT, manufacturing companies can achieve automation of machines, in-factory logistics, and production scheduling, as a way to realize C2B smart manufacturing. In addition, interconnected industrial system can adjust and coordinate the production capability of both upstream and downstream vendors. Ultimately it will significantly increase the manufacturers’ productivity and profitability. For manufacturers with production goods that value hundreds of trillion RMB, If the productivity increases 5-10%, it means additional trillions of RMB.

*Trend No 4. Large-scale collaboration between machines become possible*




Traditional single intelligence cannot meet the real-time perception and decision of large-scale intelligent devices. The development of collaborative sensing technology of Internet of things and 5G communication technology will realize the collaboration among multiple agents -- machines cooperate with each other and compete with each other to complete the target tasks. The group intelligence brought by the cooperation of multiple intelligent bodies will further amplify the value of the intelligent system: large-scale intelligent traffic light dispatching will realize dynamic and real-time adjustment, warehouse robots will cooperate to complete efficient cooperation of cargo sorting, driverless cars can cooperate to make the best tradeoff between efficiency and safety, and group uav collaboration will efficiently get through the last kilometer of distribution.

*Trend No 5. Modular design makes chips easier and faster by stacking chiplets together*




Traditional model of chip design cannot efficiently respond to the fast evolving, fragmented and customized needs of chip production. The open source SoC chip design based on RISC-V, high-level hardware description language, and IP-based modular chip design methods have accelerated the rapid development of agile design methods and the ecosystem of open source chips. In addition, the modular design method based on chiplets uses advanced packaging methods to package the chiplets with different functions together, which can quickly customize and deliver chips that meet specific requirements of different applications.

*Trend No. 6 Large-Scale Production-Grade Blockchain Applications will Gain Mass Adoption*




BaaS (Blockchain-as-a-Service) will further reduce the barriers of entry for enterprise blockchain applications. A variety of hardware chips embedded with core algorithms used in terminals, cloud and designed specifically for blockchain will also emerge, allowing assets in the physical world to be mapped to assets on blockchain, further expanding the boundaries of the Internet of Value and realizing "multi-chain interconnection". In the future, a large number of innovative blockchain application scenarios with multi-dimensional collaboration across different industries and ecosystems will emerge, and large-scale production-grade blockchain applications with more than 10 million DAI (Daily Active Items) will gain mass adoption.

*Trend No. 7 A critical period before large-scale quantum computing*




In 2019, the race in reaching “Quantum Supremacy” brought the focus back to quantum computing. The demonstration, using superconducting circuits, boosts the overall confidence on superconducting quantum computing for the realization of a large-scale quantum computer. In 2020, the field of quantum computing will receive increasing investment, which comes with increasing competitions. The field is also expected to experience a speed-up in industrialization and the gradual formation of an eco-system. In the coming years, the next milestones will be the realization of fault-tolerant quantum computing and the demonstration of quantum advantages in real-world problems. Either is of a great challenge given the present knowledge. Quantum computing is entering a critical period.

*Trend No.8 New Materials Will Revolutionize the Semiconductor Devices*




Under the pressure of both Moore's Law and the explosive demand of computing power and storage, it is difficult for classic Si based transistors to maintain sustainable development of the semiconductor industry. Until now, major semiconductor manufacturers still have no clear answer and option to chips beyond 3nm. New materials will make new logic, storage, and interconnection devices through new physical mechanisms, driving continuous innovation in the semiconductor industry. For example, topological insulators, two-dimensional superconducting materials, etc. that can achieve lossless transport of electron and spin can become the basis for new high-performance logic and interconnect devices; new magnetic materials and new resistive switching materials can realize high-performance magnetics Memory such as SOT-MRAM and resistive memory.

*Trend No.9 Growing Adoption of AI Technologies that Protect Data Privacy*




The compliance costs demanded by the recent data protection laws and regulations related to the processing of personal data are getting increasingly higher than ever before. In light of this, there have been growing interests in using AI technologies to protect data privacy. The essence is to enable the data consumer to compute a function over input data from different data providers while keeping those data private. Such AI technologies promise to solve the problems of data silos and lack of trust in today's data sharing practices, and will truly unleash the value of data in the foreseeable future.

*Trend No.10 Cloud becomes the center of IT technology innovation*




With the in-depth development of cloud computing technology, the cloud has grown far beyond the scope of IT infrastructure, and gradually evolved into the center of all IT technology innovations. The cloud has tight relationship with almost all IT technologies, including new chips, new databases, self-driving adaptive networks, big data, AI, IoT, blockchain, quantum computing and so forth. Meanwhile, it creates new technologies, such as serverless computing, cloud-native software architecture, software-hardware integrated design, intelligent automated operation. In summary, cloud computing is redefining every aspect of IT. The cloud computing is continuously turning new IT technologies into accessible services and becoming the backbone of the entire digital economy.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 9-JAN-2020
*Preparing for the hydrogen economy*
Key step taken for hydrogen fuelled future

UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY


​Illustration highlighting the association of hydrogen (red) with dislocations in the crystal structure of steel. *CREDIT: *University of Sydney

In a world first, University of Sydney researchers have found evidence of how hydrogen causes embrittlement of steels. When hydrogen moves into steel, it makes the metal become brittle, leading to catastrophic failures. This has been one of the major challenges in moving towards a greener, hydrogen-fuelled future, where steel tanks and pipelines are essential components that must be able to survive in pure hydrogen environments.

Published in _Science_, the researchers found hydrogen accumulates at microstructures called dislocations and at the boundaries between the individual crystals that make up the steel.

This accumulation weakens the steel along these features, leading to embrittlement.

The researchers also found the first direct evidence that clusters of niobium carbide within the steel trap hydrogen in such a way that it cannot readily move to the dislocations and crystal boundaries to cause embrittlement. This effect has the potential to be used to design steels that can resist embrittlement.

Lead researcher Dr Yi-Sheng Chen from the Australian Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis and Faculty of Engineering at the University of Sydney said these findings were an important step to finding a safe solution to produce, store and transport hydrogen.

"These findings are vital for designing embrittlement-resistant steel; the carbides offer a solution to ensuring high-strength steels are not prone to early fracture and reduced toughness in the presence of hydrogen," Dr Chen said.

Senior author Professor Julie Cairney from the Australian Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis and Faculty of Engineering at the University of Sydney said these findings were a positive step towards implementing clean fuels.

"Hydrogen is a low carbon fuel source that could potentially replace fossil fuels. But there are challenges with the use of steel, the world's most important engineering material, to safely store and transport it. This research gives us key insights into how we might be able to improve this situation," Professor Cairney said.

Working in partnership with CITIC Metal, the researchers were able to directly observe hydrogen at microstructures in steels thanks to Microscopy Australia's state-of-the-art custom-designed cryogenic atom probe microscope.


Preparing for the hydrogen economy | EurekAlert! Science News

Yi-Sheng Chen, Hongzhou Lu, Jiangtao Liang, Alexander Rosenthal, Hongwei Liu, Glenn Sneddon, Ingrid McCarroll, Zhengzhi Zhao, Wei Li, Aimin Guo, Julie M. Cairney. *Observation of hydrogen trapping at dislocations, grain boundaries, and precipitates*. _Science _(2020). DOI: 10.1126/science.aaz0122​


----------



## JSCh

*Researchers Discover Novel Formation Mechanisms of Five-fold Twinned Nanoparticles*
By LI Yuan | Jan 10, 2020

Recently, two different formation mechanisms of five-fold twinning via repeated oriented attachment of ~3 nm gold, platinum, and palladium nanoparticles were clarified by _in situ_ high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and molecular dynamics simulations. Related research findings were published online in _Science_ on January 3.

The work was jointly done by Dr. ZHOU Gang and Dr. WANG Hao from the Institute of Metal Research (IMR) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and international collaborators from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and University of Michigan.

Five-fold twins have been widely employed in crystal growth, mechanical engineering, optics, and catalysis. For example, the stress of five-fold twins substantially increases the Young’s modulus of nanowires, while multi-twinned Cu nanowires exhibit excellent methane selectivity during reduction of carbon dioxide. The formation mechanism of five-fold twinned nanoparticles is a difficult issue which has puzzled material scientists for a long time.

In this study, the researchers discovered two different mechanisms to form five-fold twinned nanoparticles, both of which are driven by the accumulation and elimination of strain. Mechanism I operated via oriented attachment and atomic surface diffusion, following the nucleation and growth of zero-strain twin. And Mechanism II operated via oriented attachment and partial dislocation slipping.

The occurrence of the two mechanisms depends on the surface structure of the nanoparticles after oriented attachment. With the concave surface angle close to 90° and 150° after oriented attachment, the five-fold twinned nanoparticles are formed by Mechanism I and II, respectively.

Their findings place disparate systems into the context of well-developed theories for multiple twin formation mechanisms, hence providing a guide for interpreting and controlling twinned crystal structures and morphologies, and hopefully will result in the advances in materials design and synthesis for diverse applications.


Researchers Discover Novel Formation Mechanisms of Five-fold Twinned Nanoparticles----Chinese Academy of Sciences


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1216330739765194752
Nature✔@nature

Graphene could be used in many applications but high-quality films are difficult to synthesise as wrinkles tend to form. A study in Nature shows that protons can reduce wrinkle formation, enabling ultra-flat graphene films to be grown. https://go.nature.com/2R7l5Jg

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*China build world's 1st low-frequency electromagnetic wave transmitting station - cnTechPost*
Jan 12, 2020





China has recently built the world's first civilian low-frequency high-power electromagnetic wave launching station, with a detection radius of thousands of kilometers and a detection depth of ten kilometers, which can be used for earthquake prediction, according to Xinhua News Agency.

The project was advanced without similar foreign projects for reference, forming a high-signal-to-noise ultra-low frequency electromagnetic wave signal source that can cover Chinese territory and territorial waters.

In addition to being the world's first civilian low-frequency high-power electromagnetic wave transmitting station, the project also built the first seismic monitoring network that can receive artificial and natural source low-frequency electromagnetic signals at the southern end of the capital circle and the north-south seismic belt.

The extremely low frequency data engineering center established by it has built a high-performance data computing and shared service platform for resource detection, earthquake prediction and other cutting-edge technology research.

In addition, it has also carried out exploratory scientific experimental research on earthquake prediction and underground minerals, oil and gas resources exploration, and continental shelf exploration, and has made many breakthroughs, providing advanced scientific research in related fields such as "deep ground, deep sea, and deep space" New technological means and platforms.

"The acceptance of the project marks the birth of another innovative scientific platform in China," said the relevant person in charge of the Seventh Research Institute of China Shipbuilding Corporation, which is in charge of the project.

He said that extremely low frequency electromagnetic waves can penetrate thicker strata and deeper seawater and can be used for research and application in the fields of stratum structure, detection of underground resources and seabed resources, and earthquake prediction. Therefore, the results obtained by the project have great strategic significance.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

NEWS AND VIEWS * 15 JANUARY 2020
*Transparent crystals with ultrahigh piezoelectricity*
It has been difficult to make transparent materials that have extremely high piezoelectricity — a useful property related to the coupling of electric fields and mechanical strain. This hurdle has now been overcome.

Jurij Koruza

Piezoelectric materials show high electromechanical coupling, which means that they can generate large strains if an electric field is applied to them, and can transform external mechanical stimuli into electric charge or voltage1. They are widely used in electronic applications, including sensors, small motors and actuators — devices that convert electrical energy into movement. In addition, their high energy efficiency and ease of miniaturization are driving the development of new technologies, such as energy harvesters for the growing network of Internet-connected devices known as the Internet of Things, actuators for touch screens and microrobots. Writing in _Nature_, Qiu _et al._2 report the preparation of high-performance piezoelectrics that have the long-desired property of near-perfect transparency to light. This breakthrough could lead to devices that combine excellent piezo-electricity with tunable optical properties.


....

Transparent crystals with ultrahigh piezoelectricity | Nature

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Han Patriot

JSCh said:


> *China build world's 1st low-frequency electromagnetic wave transmitting station - cnTechPost*
> Jan 12, 2020
> 
> 
> 
> 
> China has recently built the world's first civilian low-frequency high-power electromagnetic wave launching station, with a detection radius of thousands of kilometers and a detection depth of ten kilometers, which can be used for earthquake prediction, according to Xinhua News Agency.
> 
> The project was advanced without similar foreign projects for reference, forming a high-signal-to-noise ultra-low frequency electromagnetic wave signal source that can cover Chinese territory and territorial waters.
> 
> In addition to being the world's first civilian low-frequency high-power electromagnetic wave transmitting station, the project also built the first seismic monitoring network that can receive artificial and natural source low-frequency electromagnetic signals at the southern end of the capital circle and the north-south seismic belt.
> 
> The extremely low frequency data engineering center established by it has built a high-performance data computing and shared service platform for resource detection, earthquake prediction and other cutting-edge technology research.
> 
> In addition, it has also carried out exploratory scientific experimental research on earthquake prediction and underground minerals, oil and gas resources exploration, and continental shelf exploration, and has made many breakthroughs, providing advanced scientific research in related fields such as "deep ground, deep sea, and deep space" New technological means and platforms.
> 
> "The acceptance of the project marks the birth of another innovative scientific platform in China," said the relevant person in charge of the Seventh Research Institute of China Shipbuilding Corporation, which is in charge of the project.
> 
> He said that extremely low frequency electromagnetic waves can penetrate thicker strata and deeper seawater and can be used for research and application in the fields of stratum structure, detection of underground resources and seabed resources, and earthquake prediction. Therefore, the results obtained by the project have great strategic significance.


This can be used for submarine detection

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

NEWS * 16 JANUARY 2020
*Supercomputer scours fossil record for Earth’s hidden extinctions*
Palaeontologists have charted 300 million years of Earth’s history in breathtaking detail.

*



*​Trilobites disappeared from the fossil record during the mass extinction at the end of the Permian period, 252 million years ago.Credit: Shutterstock

Palaeontologists have a fuzzy view of Earth’s history. An incomplete fossil record and imprecise dating techniques make it hard to pinpoint events that happened within geological eras spanning millions of years. Now, a period that saw a boom in animal complexity and one of Earth’s greatest mass extinctions is coming into sharp focus.

Using the world’s fourth most powerful supercomputer, Tianhe II, a team of scientists based mostly in China mined a database of more than 11,000 fossil species that lived from around 540 million to 250 million years ago. The result is a history of life during this period, the early Palaeozoic era, that can pinpoint the rise and fall of species during diversifications and mass extinctions to within about 26,000 years. It is published on 16 January in _Science_1.

“It is kind of amazing,” says Peter Wagner, a palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, who was not involved in the work. Being able to look at species diversity on this scale is like going from a system where “people who lived in the same century are considered to be contemporaries, to one in which only people who lived during the same 6-month period are deemed to be contemporaries”, he writes in an essay accompanying the study2.

Such a view, Wagner adds, will help scientists to identify the causes of mass extinctions — such as the event at the end of the Permian period, some 252 million years ago, that wiped out more than 95% of marine species — as well as understand less dramatic species die-offs and rebounds that have been hard to uncover because of gaps in the fossil record. Understanding these processes could reveal parallels to the planet’s current loss of biodiversity.

*Patchy record*
Most organisms in Earth’s history didn’t leave fossils, and scientists have identified only a tiny fraction of those that did. As a result, it can be hard to tell whether changes in the fossil record mark real shifts, such as mass extinctions, or are simply caused by a lack of fossil finds.

In the 1960s, palaeontologists began analysing the fossil record systematically, revealing multiple mass extinctions and periods during which life flourished. But these and later efforts could usually pinpoint biodiversity changes only to within about ten million years, because fossils were lumped into relatively long geological periods and analysed en masse.

To improve on this, a team led by palaeontologist Jun-xuan Fan at Nanjing University in China created and analysed a database of fossil marine invertebrate species that were found in more than 3,000 layers of rock, mostly from China but representing geology across the planet during the early Palaeozoic. The group then used software to measure when individual species had emerged and gone extinct.

The program took advantage of the fact that species were usually found in multiple rock formations — each spanning hundreds of thousands to millions of years — and used this information to place upper and lower limits on the period in which the species actually existed. The effort revealed for how long, and in what order, all 11,000 species had existed. It took the supercomputer around seven million processor hours.

*Extinctions elucidated*
Using this approach, the team was able to learn extra details about well-documented events, such as the end-Permian extinction and the Cambrian explosion in animal diversity around 540 million years ago. The analysis showed, for instance, that species diversity declined in the 80,000 years leading up to the end-Permian mass extinction, which itself occurred over around 60,000 years.

The findings also cast doubt on the existence of a smaller-scale die-off known as the end-Guadalupian extinction, which is thought to have wiped out many marine species around 260 million years ago. That was the biggest surprise, says Mike Benton, a palaeontologist at the University of Bristol, UK, who has documented changes in vertebrate diversity during that period. The study, he adds, “represents a pretty amazing big-data endeavour”.

Benton hopes to see the effort extended to later periods — particularly the past 100 million years. Palaeontologists disagree over whether an apparent increase in animal diversity in this period is the result of sampling bias. “This last 100 million years has been at the heart of a long-running debate about ‘pull of the recent’ and discriminating between real signal and bias,” Benton says.

Norman MacLeod, a palaeontologist at the University of Nanjing and a co-author of the study, says the team’s work might help to reveal the underlying causes of changes in biodiversity, by charting its ups and downs on a timescale that can be matched with environmental and climatic shifts.

Wagner adds that the team’s approach will be most valuable in uncovering — and explaining — smaller-scale extinctions, not dissimilar to those occurring today. Such extinctions could turn out to be “a bad 100,000 years, or a bad week” for some groups of organisms but not others, he says. “When you get this resolution, it starts opening the doors to actually testing what the smaller-turnover events might be like.”
*
*
Supercomputer scours fossil record for Earth’s hidden extinctions | Nature

Jun-xuan Fan, Shu-zhong Shen, Douglas H. Erwin, Peter M. Sadler, Norman MacLeod, Qiu-ming Cheng, Xu-dong Hou, Jiao Yang, Xiang-dong Wang, Yue Wang, Hua Zhang, Xu Chen, Guo-xiang Li, Yi-chun Zhang, Yu-kun Shi, Dong-xun Yuan, Qing Chen, Lin-na Zhang, Chao Li, Ying-ying Zhao. *A high-resolution summary of Cambrian to Early Triassic marine invertebrate biodiversity*. _Science _(2020). DOI: 10.1126/science.aax4953​

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Shanghai scientists detail protein responsible for TB*
By Wang Ying in Shanghai | China Daily | Updated: 2020-01-17 08:45



[Photo/IC]

Scientists in Shanghai have discovered a smart protein secreted by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB), which is responsible for the development of tuberculosis, an infectious disease that has been back on the rise globally partly due to a stagnation in medical research for its cure.

The discovery, published on the website of the UK-based journal _Nature _on Thursday, was led by a research team headed by Ge Baoxue, a professor from the School of Medicine at Tongji University, and Rao Zihe, an academician from Shanghai Tech University.

After nearly a decade of research, the team found that the protein secreted by MTB can mislead the signal of the human body to attack its own immune system and eventually lead to the development of TB.

The discovery not only offers a new perspective for understanding the infection of the disease, but also paves the way for the accurate development of targeted drugs as it provides a more precise target for follow-up drug development, said Ai Kaixing, head of the Shanghai Pulmonary Hospital affiliated to Tongji University.

TB is an infectious disease usually caused by MTB bacteria.

Traditionally, its treatment requires the use of multiple antibiotics over a long period of time, but antibiotic resistance is a growing problem with increasing rates of drug-resistant TB.

According to Ge, contrary to the general notion that TB has been eliminated, the disease is alive and thriving due to a lack of new drugs to cure it.

"Our research discovered that TB infection has been on the rise worldwide over the past few years," Ge said. "The World Health Organization reported the number of newly diagnosed patients amounted to 10.4 million in 2018, and 1.4 million people died of the disease that year."

In China alone, 550 million people are infected, including 5 million active infections, according to Ge.

"The widely applied TB drugs are seeing a rise in multi-drug resistances, making the treatment of the disease increasingly difficult," Ge said.

There were 480,000 people globally-including 120,000 in China-who reported multi-drug resistance in 2018. Multi-drug resistance has significantly pushed up the cost for treatment worldwide from $1,000 per person to $20,000 per person, Ge added.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1219152620339769345Science Magazine✔@sciencemagazine

A new Science study details a system that concentrates hydrogen peroxide and methane in close proximity for efficient methanol synthesis, which represents a step toward the application of direct activation of methane to produce valuable products. ($) https://fcld.ly/dsnxcmw 





13
3:00 PM - Jan 20, 2020


----------



## JSCh

*Academy supports more labs for frontier science*
By Zhang Zhihao | China Daily | Updated: 2020-01-21 09:14



A file photo shows the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SSRF) project that was put into service on Jan 19, 2010. [Photo/shb.cas.cn]

The Chinese Academy of Sciences will support more labs and major projects in frontier sciences, expand international collaboration with other countries and share its data and solutions via more robust and open cloud-based platforms this year, senior scientists said on Friday.

CAS will spend more than 7.7 billion yuan ($1.1 billion) to build four new major scientific instruments, including the world's largest high-energy synchrotron radiation light source, in Beijing's Huairou district, CAS President Bai Chunli said during an annual working meeting on Friday.

Moreover, it will spend another 2.7 billion yuan to build 11 scientific and educational facilities in the districts. All of these projects had been launched by the end of last year, Bai said. The academy will also build new labs in Shanghai, Hefei in Anhui province, the Xiongan New Area in Hebei province and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

"This year is a momentous year for China in eliminating poverty to build a moderately prosperous society," Bai said. "For CAS, this year marks the end of the first phase of the Pioneering Initiative, so it is a year to review the past and prepare for the future."

In 2013, President Xi Jinping asked the academy to be a pioneer in four major areas-making great scientific and technological progress, producing more innovative talent and becoming an influential scientific think tank for China as well as a world-class research institution. The Pioneering Initiative was launched a year later consisting of plans and reforms to meet Xi's four expectations by 2030.

"Our priorities this year will focus on further improving our research capabilities and producing original breakthroughs in basic research," Bai said, adding that more capable State laboratories, advanced research projects and open sharing platforms will be instrumental in fulfilling these goals.

By the end of last year, the academy had launched 58 pilot projects in fields such as space technology, green industry and regenerative medicine, said Xiang Libin, the academy's vice-president responsible for managing these projects. "These projects not only are crucial for producing globally influential breakthroughs, they are also closely related to our societal well-being," he said.

In terms of international collaboration, the academy has signed institutional-level cooperation agreements with 174 foreign institutions from 61 countries. Around 4,000 foreign scientists, as well as 1,600 graduate students, are currently visiting, working or studying at the academy, said Zhang Yaping, the academy's vice-president responsible for global cooperation.

The Alliance of International Science Organizations, a global scientific organization launched by the academy in 2018 to promote research collaboration and sustainable development, gained 15 new members last year, reaching a total of 52 research institutions and organizations, Zhang said.

Zhang said the Chinese academy has made considerable breakthroughs with scientifically developed countries last year. For example, the Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in Germany signed a declaration with CAS, its first supporting basic scientific research with a foreign academy since its founding in 1652.

China-US scientific cooperation on the government level has stagnated due to friction between the countries, but on the academic and civilian levels, such collaboration is alive and well, Zhang added.

"More and more American scientists are beginning to realize that sustained dialogue and cooperation with Chinese peers will benefit both countries in the long run," he said. "I believe the two scientific communities from both countries have the wisdom and capability to address current challenges and continue to contribute to the betterment of mankind."

Chinese scientists have also offered their expertise and equipment to provide safe drinking water to around 4,000 villagers and 1,300 students in Sri Lanka. Disaster mitigation, environmental protection, food safety and public health are some of the top fields for international cooperation, Zhang said.

Li Shushen, CAS's vice-president, said the academy has launched a new version of its scientific cloud database and it is open for researchers around the world to use its plethora of features, including cloud calculation, data search and storage, analytical software and community networking.

The network includes scientific data on energy, oceanography, biosciences, health and other frontier and interdisciplinary fields, according to Li.

"It is a cloud service by the scientists, so they can promote open and global cooperation," Li said.


----------



## JSCh

EWS RELEASE 5-FEB-2020
*New droplet-based electricity generator: A drop of water generates 140V power, lighting up 100 LED bulbs*
CITY UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG

Generating electricity from raindrops efficiently has gone one step further. A research team led by scientists from the City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has recently developed a droplet-based electricity generator (DEG), featured with a field-effect transistor (FET)-like structure that allows for high energy-conversion efficiency and instantaneous power density increased by thousands times compared to its counterparts without FET-like structure. This would help to advance scientific research of water energy generation and tackle the energy crisis.

The research was led together by Professor Wang Zuankai from CityU's Department of Mechanical Engineering, Professor Zeng Xiao Cheng from University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Professor Wang Zhong Lin, Founding Director and Chief Scientist from Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems of Chinese Academy of Sciences. Their findings were published in the latest issue of the highly prestigious scientific journal _Nature_, titled "A droplet-based electricity generator with high instantaneous power density".


....

New droplet-based electricity generator: A drop of water generates 140V power, lighting up 100 LED bulbs | EurekAlert! Science News


----------



## JSCh

*Branching out for a new green revolution*
7 February 2020

*Researchers at the University of Oxford and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have discovered a new gene that improves the yield and fertilizer use efficiency of rice.*

The worldwide late-20th century ‘Green Revolution’ saw dramatic year-by-year increases in global grain yields of rice and other cereals. The Green Revolution was fueled by new high-yielding dwarfed Green Revolution Varieties (GRVs) that are still in widespread use today, and by increased fertilizer use.

The numbers of grain-bearing branches (‘tillers’) per plant are increased in GRVs, and further enhanced by increased nitrogen fertilizer use, thus boosting grain yield. However, fertilizers are costly to farmers and cause extensive environmental damage. Developing new GRVs combining increased tiller number and grain yield with reduced nitrogen use is thus an urgent global sustainable agriculture goal.



Soil Nitrogen Promotes Rice Branching (Photo credit: Kun Wu/Xiangdong Fu, Chinese Academy of Sciences)

A major new study, *published today as the cover story of journal Science*, led by Professor Xiangdong Fu from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, and Professor Nicholas Harberd from the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Oxford, part-funded by the BBSRC-Newton Rice Initiative, has for the first time discovered a gene that can help reach that goal.

The study identified a rice gene that responds to nitrogen, and hence increases the accumulation in plant cells of a protein called NGR5. Nitrogen-stimulated NGR5 accumulation then alters the structure of genes that inhibit tiller growth, switching them off and thus increasing the numbers of yield-enhancing tillers. 

Professor Harberd said: ‘Discovering how nitrogen stimulates tiller growth was exciting in itself. But our discovery was particularly exciting because NGR5 controls the activity (via a mechanism known as chromatin modulation) of multiple genes in the rice genome, genes likely responsible for many different rice responses to soil nitrogen in addition to tiller growth.’​
The increased tiller number of GRVs is also caused by accumulation of another branching-promoting protein called DELLA, an accumulation that is reduced by the plant hormone gibberellin (GA). The study found that GA also reduces NGR5 accumulation, and that tiller growth is the product of complex interactions between the NGR5 and DELLA proteins.

Professor Harberd said: ‘We next reasoned that further increase in the accumulation of NGR5 might increase tiller number and yield with reduced fertilizer use. To our delight, we found that increasing NGR5 accumulation caused an increase in both tiller number and grain yield of a current elite rice GRV, especially at low fertilizer levels.’

The researchers say NGR5 should now become a major target for plant breeders in enhancing crop yield and fertilizer use efficiency, with the aim of achieving the global grain yield increases necessary to feed a growing world population at reduced environmental cost.

Professor Harberd added: ‘This study is a prime example of how pursuing fundamental plant science objectives can lead rapidly to potential solutions to global challenges. It discovers how plants coordinate their growth in response to soil nitrogen availability, then shows how that discovery can enable breeding strategies for sustainable food security and future new green revolutions.’


Branching out for a new green revolution | Department of Plant Sciences | University of Oxford

*



*​


----------



## JSCh

*Brain cells called microglia eat away mice’s memories*
A new study offers clues on how we forget



In a mouse’s hippocampus, brain cells known as microglia (red) can eliminate connections between nerve cells (blue) that are thought to store some types of memories.

CHAO WANG

By Laura Sanders
FEBRUARY 6, 2020 AT 2:00 PM

Immune cells in the brain chew up memories, a new study in mice shows.

The finding, published in the Feb. 7 _Science_, points to a completely new way that the brain forgets, says neuroscientist Paul Frankland of the Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute in Toronto, who wasn’t involved in the study.

That may sound like a bad thing, but forgetting is just as important as remembering. “The world constantly changes,” Frankland says, and getting rid of unimportant memories — such as a breakfast menu from two months ago — allows the brain to collect newer, more useful information.

Exactly how the brain stores memories is still debated, but many scientists suspect that connections between large groups of nerve cells are important (_SN: 1/24/18_). Forgetting likely involves destroying or changing these large webs of precise connections, called synapses, other lines of research have suggested. The new result shows that microglia, immune cells that can clear debris from the brain, “do exactly that,” Frankland says.

Microglia are master brain gardeners that trim extra synapses away early in life, says Yan Gu, a neuroscientist at Zhejiang University School of Medicine in Hangzhou, China. Because synapses have a big role in memory storage, “we started to wonder whether microglia may induce forgetting by eliminating synapses,” Gu says.

Gu’s team first gave mice an unpleasant memory: mild foot shocks, delivered in a particular cage. Five days after the shocks, the mice would still freeze in fear when they were placed in the cage. But 35 days later, they had begun to forget and froze less often in the room.

Next, the researchers used a drug to get rid of microglial cells in some mice’s brains. Mice with fewer microglia froze more in the cage than mice with normal numbers of microglia, indicating that those rodents held on to the scary memory. The same was true of mice with microglia that, thanks to a drug, were unable to gobble up synapses. Those mice also seemed to hold on to the memory, the researchers found.

The study also hints at which memories are particularly vulnerable. Scientists marked the nerve cells that stored the fearful memory with a glowing dye and gave the mice a drug that kept these memory-holding cells silent, unable to fire off signals. These unused, silent memories seemed to be more susceptible to microglia. That finding suggests that “less-revisited memories are easier to remove,” Gu says.

The results come from one particular type of memory: a fearful one, and one that’s stored in the hippocampus. That brain structure is thought to be an early, temporary stop before memories move to longer-term storage. Researchers don’t yet know whether microglia would have a similar effect on memory-related synapses elsewhere in the brain. Microglial synapse-culling has been tied to the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease (_SN: 3/31/16_).

Also unclear is why some old memories — ones not recalled for years — survive. The related synapses may be extra durable, or maybe those memories are stored where microglia are less active, Gu says. Or perhaps people do revisit these memories and keep them strong, even if they’re not aware of it.

Other overlapping explanations for forgetting exist, such as the behavior of certain proteins and the creation of new nerve cells, as Frankland’s work has suggested (_SN: 5/8/14_). These ideas involve synapses changing with time. “All of these could conceivably be natural forgetting mechanisms,” Frankland says.

Questions or comments on this article? E-mail us at feedback@sciencenews.org

*CITATIONS*
C. Wang et al. Microglia mediate forgetting via complement-dependent synaptic elimination. _Science_. Vol. 367, February 7, 2020, p. 688. doi:10.1126/science.aaz2288.​


Brain cells called microglia eat away mice’s memories | Science News


----------



## Beast




----------



## JSCh

*Fast-charging, long-running, bendy energy storage breakthrough | University College London*
17 February 2020

A new bendable supercapacitor made from graphene, which charges quickly and safely stores a record-high level of energy for use over a long period, has been developed and demonstrated by UCL and Chinese Academy of Sciences researchers.




While at the proof-of-concept stage, it shows enormous potential as a portable power supply in several practical applications including electric vehicles, phones and wearable technology.

The discovery, published today in _Nature Energy_, overcomes the issue faced by high-powered, fast-charging supercapacitors – that they usually cannot hold a large amount of energy in a small space.

First author of the study, Dr Zhuangnan Li (UCL Chemistry), said: “Our new supercapacitor is extremely promising for next-generation energy storage technology as either a replacement for current battery technology, or for use alongside it, to provide the user with more power.

“We designed materials which would give our supercapacitor a high power density – that is how fast it can charge or discharge – and a high energy density – which will determine how long it can run for. Normally, you can only have one of these characteristics but our supercapacitor provides both, which is a critical breakthrough.

“Moreover, the supercapacitor can bend to 180 degrees without affecting performance and doesn’t use a liquid electrolyte, which minimises any risk of explosion and makes it perfect for integrating into bendy phones or wearable electronics.”

A team of chemists, engineers and physicists worked on the new design, which uses an innovative graphene electrode material with pores that can be changed in size to store the charge more efficiently. This tuning maximises the energy density of the supercapacitor to a record 88.1 Wh/L (Watt-hour per litre), which is the highest ever reported energy density for carbon-based supercapacitors.

Similar fast-charging commercial technology has a relatively poor energy density of 5-8 Wh/L and traditional slow-charging but long-running lead-acid batteries used in electric vehicles typically have 50-90 Wh/L.

While the supercapacitor developed by the team has a comparable energy density to state-of-the-art value of lead-acid batteries, its power density is two orders of magnitude higher at over 10,000 Watt per litre.

Senior author and Dean of UCL Mathematical & Physical Sciences, Professor Ivan Parkin (UCL Chemistry), said: “Successfully storing a huge amount of energy safely in a compact system is a significant step towards improved energy storage technology. We have shown it charges quickly, we can control its output and it has excellent durability and flexibility, making it ideal for development for use in miniaturised electronics and electric vehicles. Imagine needing only ten minutes to fully-charge your electric car or a couple of minutes for your phone and it lasting all day.”

The researchers made electrodes from multiple layers of graphene, creating a dense, but porous material capable of trapping charged ions of different sizes. They characterised it using a range of techniques and found it performed best when the pore sizes matched the diameter of the ions in the electrolyte.

The optimised material, which forms a thin film, was used to build a proof-of-concept device with both a high power and high energy density.

The 6cm x 6cm supercapacitor was made from two identical electrodes layered either side of a gel-like substance which acted as a chemical medium for the transfer of electrical charge. This was used to power dozens of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and was found to be highly robust, flexible and stable.

Even when bent at 180 degrees, it performed almost same as when it was flat, and after 5,000 cycles, it retained 97.8% of its capacity.



Senior author, Professor Feng Li (Chinese Academy of Sciences), said: “Over the next thirty years, the world of intelligent technology will accelerate, which will greatly change communication, transportation and our daily lives. By making energy storage smarter, devices will become invisible to us by working automatically and interactively with appliances. Our smart cells are a great example of how the user experience might be improved and they show enormous potential as portable power supply in future applications.”

The study was funded by the National Science Foundation of China, the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, the Chinese Academy of Science and the EPSRC.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 20-FEB-2020
*Scientists use light to convert fatty acids into alkanes*
CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HEADQUARTERS



​Schematic representation of photocatalytic decarboxylation strategy for alkane production from biomass-derived fatty acids. *CREDIT: *HUANG Zhipeng

Researchers led by Prof. WANG Feng at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have reported that photocatalytic decarboxylation is an efficient alternate pathway for converting biomass-derived fatty acids into alkanes under mild conditions of ambient temperature and pressure. This finding was published in _Nature Catalysis_ on Feb. 19.

Long-chain alkanes are the major component of diesel and jet fuel. Therefore, production of these alkanes from renewable biomass, such as biomass-derived fatty acids instead of fossil resources, is important for developing a sustainable energy supply. However, most established catalytic systems require harsh operating conditions (i.e., high temperature and pressure) and excessive H2 consumption.

The researchers found that under illumination, the decarboxylation of fatty acids could be easily induced by photo-generated holes on the semiconductor TiO2, subsequently generating alkyl radical intermediates.

However, due to the uncontrollable reactivity of alkyl radicals, the production of desired alkanes was characterized by low selectivity. "Rationally controlling the conversion of radical intermediates for preferential hydrogen termination is the key to high selectivity in obtaining alkane products," said Prof. WANG.

The scientists discovered that when exposing the catalyst Pt/TiO2 to H2 atmosphere with light, the interaction between the catalyst and H2 generated a hydrogen-rich surface, so photo-generated radicals could be rapidly terminated by surface hydrogen species, thus greatly inhibiting oligomerization.

These results show that Cn-1 alkanes can be obtained from biomass-derived C12-C18 fatty acids in high yields (greater than or equal to 90%) under mild conditions (30 °C, H2 pressure less than or equal to 0.2 MPa) with 365 nm LED irradiation. Moreover, the average production rates are comparable to those of thermocatalytic systems operating under harsh reaction conditions.

Tall oil and soybean fatty acids are the low-value byproducts of the pulp and soybean oil refining industries, respectively. The researchers conducted conversion of these two industrial fatty acid mixtures, obtaining alkane products in high yields (up to 95%).

"Such a green and environmentally friendly process is promising. It bridges photosynthetic chemistry and industrial catalysis, and extends the photoenergy utilization chain. It is particularly promising considering the abundant available low-quality fatty acids in China," said WANG.



Scientists use light to convert fatty acids into alkanes | EurekAlert! Science News


----------



## Pepsi Cola

What a time to stay at home or in the labs to do experiments!


----------



## JSCh

FEBRUARY 21, 2020 REPORT
*Adding an adjuvant boosts vaccines ability to fight multiple flu strains*
by Bob Yirka , Medical Xpress




Transmission electron micrograph of influenza A virus, late passage. Credit: CDC

A team of researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital, The First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University and Fudan University has found that adding a certain adjuvant to a vaccine increased its ability to fight multiple strains of influenza. In their paper published in the journal _Science_, the group describes using lipid components of a pulmonary surfactant to encapsulate the adjuvant to allow lung-resident alveolar macrophages to recognize it. Susanne Herold and Leif-Erik Sander with the Universities of Giessen and Marburg Lung Center and the Berlin Institute of Health, respectively, have published a Perspective piece describing the work by the team in the same journal edition.

In the current strategy for creating flu vaccines, health officials in several countries study outbreak patterns of various strains and then create vaccines against those that seem most likely to develop into an outbreak in a given country. The process is repeated on a seasonal cycle, with new vaccines created every year. What would be better, of course, would be a single vaccine to prevent outbreaks of all of the strains that might pose a threat. Such a vaccine is not yet available, but scientists are working hard to develop one. In this new effort, the researchers have come a step closer with a new approach to using an inactivated virus to trick the immune system into activating a stronger immune response than it normally would when any strain of flu is detected. Thus far, it has worked as planned in mice and ferrets.

The new approach involved combining an inactivated virus with 2′,3′-cyclic guanosine monophosphate–adenosine monophosphate (cGAMP)—a known immune response activator. But to keep the body from overreacting, the researchers covered it in a lipid from a pulmonary surfactant. The two components were then mixed into a nasal spray. Using this approach, the researchers found that the PS-GAMP nanoparticles were pulled into alveolar macrophages, which then transferred them to an innate immune sensor stimulator of interferon genes, activating them. That allowed the immune system to better defend against all five of the flu strains tested.

*More information:* Ji Wang et al. Pulmonary surfactant–biomimetic nanoparticles potentiate heterosubtypic influenza immunity, _Science_ (2020). DOI: 10.1126/science.aau0810​


Adding an adjuvant boosts vaccines ability to fight multiple flu strains | Medical Xpress

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 24-FEB-2020
*Going super small to get super strong metals*
UNIVERSITY OF UTAH



​A simulation of 3-nm-grain-sized nickel under strain. Colored lines indicate partial or full grain dislocation. *CREDIT: *Zhou et al

You can't see them, but most of the metals around you--coins, silverware, even the steel beams holding up buildings and overpasses--are made up of tiny metal grains. Under a powerful enough microscope, you can see interlocking crystals that look like a granite countertop.

It's long been known by materials scientists that metals get stronger as the size of the grains making up the metal get smaller - up to a point. If the grains are smaller than 10 nanometers in diameter the materials are weaker because, it was thought, they slide past each other like sand sliding down a dune. The strength of metals had a limit.

But experiments led by former University of Utah postdoctoral scholar Xiaoling Zhou, now at Princeton University, associate professor of geology Lowell Miyagi, and Bin Chen at the Center for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research in Shanghai, China, show that that's not always the case - in samples of nickel with grain diameters as small as 3 nanometers, and under high pressures, the strength of the samples continued to increase with smaller grain sizes.

The result, Zhou and Miyagi say, is a new understanding of how individual atoms of metal grains interact with each other, as well as a way to use those physics to achieve super-strong metals. Their study, carried out with colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley and at universities in China, is published in _Nature_.

"Our results suggest a possible strategy for making ultrastrong metals," Zhou says. "In the past, researchers believed the strongest grain size was around 10-15 nanometers. But now we found that we could make stronger metals at below 10 nanometers."

*Pushing past Hall-Petch*

For most metallic objects, Miyagi says, the sizes of the metal grains are on the order of a few to a few hundred micrometers - about the diameter of a human hair. "High end cutlery often will have a finer, and more homogeneous, grain structure which can allow you to get a better edge," he says.

The previously-understood relationship between metal strength and grain size was called the Hall-Petch relationship. Metal strength increased as grain size decreased, according to Hall-Petch, down to a limit of 10-15 nanometers. That's a diameter of only about four to six strands of DNA. Grain sizes below that limit just weren't as strong. So to maximize strength, metallurgists would aim for the smallest effective grain sizes.

"Grain size refinement is a good approach to improve strength," Zhou says. "So it was quite frustrating, in the past, to find this grain size refinement approach no longer works below a critical grain size."

The explanation for the weakening below 10 nanometers had to do with the way grain surfaces interacted. The surfaces of grains have a different atomic structure than the interiors, Miyagi says. As long as the grains are held together by the power of friction, the metal would retain strength. But at small grain sizes, it was thought, the grains would simply slide past each other under strain, leading to a weak metal.

Technical limitations previously prevented direct experiments on nanograins, though, limiting understanding of how nanoscale grains behaved and whether there may yet be untapped strength below the Hall-Petch limit. "So we designed our study to measure the strength of nanometals," Zhou says.

*Under pressure*

The researchers tested samples of nickel, a material that's available in a wide range of nanograin sizes, down to three nanometers. Their experiments involved placing samples of various grain sizes under intense pressures in a diamond anvil cell and using x-ray diffraction to watch what was happening at the nanoscale in each sample.

"If you've ever played around with a spring, you've probably pulled on it hard enough to ruin it so that it doesn't do what it's supposed to do," Miyagi says. "That's basically what we're measuring here; how hard we can push on this nickel until we would deform it past the point of it being able to recover."

Strength continued to increase all the way down to the smallest grain size available. The 3 nm sample withstood a force of 4.2 gigapascals (about the same force as ten 10,000 lbs. elephants balanced on a single high heel) before deforming irreversibly. That's ten times stronger than nickel with a commercial-grade grain size.

It's not that the Hall-Petch relationship broke down, Miyagi says, but that the way the grains interacted was different under the experimental conditions. The high pressure likely overcame the grain sliding effects.

"If you push two grains together really hard," he says, "it's hard for them to slide past each other because the friction between grains becomes large, and you can suppress these grain boundary sliding mechanisms that turns out are responsible for this weakening."

When grain boundary sliding was suppressed at grain sizes below 20nm, the researchers observed a new atomic-scale deformation mechanism which resulted in extreme strengthening in the finest grained samples.

*Ultrastrong possibilities*

Zhou says that one of the advances of this study is in their method to measure the strength of materials at the nanoscale in a way that hasn't been done before.

Miyagi says another advance is a new way to think about strengthening metals--by engineering their grain surfaces to suppress grain sliding.

"We don't have many applications, industrially, of things where the pressures are as high as in these experiments, but by showing pressure is one way of suppressing grain boundary deformation we can think about other strategies to suppress it, maybe using complicated microstructures where you have grain shapes that inhibit sliding of grains past each other."


Going super small to get super strong metals | EurekAlert! Science News

Xiaoling Zhou, Zongqiang Feng, Linli Zhu, Jianing Xu, Lowell Miyagi, Hongliang Dong, Hongwei Sheng, Yanju Wang, Quan Li, Yanming Ma, Hengzhong Zhang, Jinyuan Yan, Nobumichi Tamura, Martin Kunz, Katie Lutker, Tianlin Huang, Darcy A. Hughes, Xiaoxu Huang & Bin Chen . *High-pressure strengthening in ultrafine-grained metals*. _Nature_ (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2036-z​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists Develop Ionogel-based Sodium Ion Micro-batteries with 3D Na-ion Diffusion Mechanism*
By LI Yuan | Feb 24, 2020

A research team led by Prof. WU Zhongshuai and Prof. BAO Xinhe from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with Prof. YU Yan from University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), developed high-performance ionogel-based sodium ion micro-batteries with 3D Na-ion diffusion mechanism.

The newly developed batteries, featured with ultrahigh rate capability, high areal energy density, remarkable mechanical flexibility and high-temperature stability, are promising in the development of microelectronics and microsystems.

Planar lithium ion micro-batteries (LIMBs) with interdigital microelectrodes can be seamlessly integrated into microelectronic devices mounted on a planar integrated circuit, facilitating the miniaturization of the entire microelectronic system. However, its development is limited by the scarcity, uneven distribution and increasing cost of metal lithium.

Since sodium is naturally abundant, low cost, and shows similarly low potential (-2.7 V vs SHE) as lithium, sodium ion micro-batteries (NIMBs) have been exploited after LIMBs. However, it faces challenges of lacking of effective electron-ion diffusion network and suitable electrolyte.



Schematic diagram of sodium ion micro-batteries. (Image by ZHENG Shuanghao)

To address this issue, the researchers reported one prototype quasi-solid-state planar ionogel-based NIMBs constructed by separator-free interdigital microelectrodes of sodium titanate anode and sodium vanadate phosphate cathode, both of which were embedded into three-dimensional interconnected graphene scaffold.
Meanwhile, a novel NaBF4-based ionogel electrolyte with robust ionic conductivity of 8.1 mS/cm was developed. The fabricated NIMBs revealed 3D multi-directional pathways for sodium ion diffusions, which can provide universal guidance to improve the performance of other planar micro-batteries.

Benefiting from the synergetic merits of the planar architecture, dominated pseudocapacitance contribution, and 3D multi-directional Na-ion diffusion mechanism, the assembled NIMBs exhibited high volumetric capacity of 30.7 mAh/cm3 at 1 C, and high rate performance with 15.7 mAh/cm3 at 30 C at room temperature and 13.5 mAh/cm3 at 100 C at high temperature of 100 oC.

Moreover, the quasi-solid-state NIMBs presented outstanding flexibility, tunable voltage and capacity output, and remarkable areal energy density of 145 μWh/cm2 (55.6 mWh/cm3).

The results were published in _Energy & Environmental Science_.



Scientists Develop Ionogel-based Sodium Ion Micro-batteries with 3D Na-ion Diffusion Mechanism----Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 25-FEB-2020
*From China to the South Pole: Joining forces to solve the neutrino mass puzzle*
Study by Mainz physicists indicates that the next generation of neutrino experiments may well find the answer to one of the most pressing issues in neutrino physics

JOHANNES GUTENBERG UNIVERSITAET MAINZ

Among the most exciting challenges in modern physics is the identification of the neutrino mass ordering. Physicists from the Cluster of Excellence PRISMA+ at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) play a leading role in a new study that indicates that the puzzle of neutrino mass ordering may finally be solved in the next few years. This will be thanks to the combined performance of two new neutrino experiments that are in the pipeline - the Upgrade of the IceCube experiment at the South Pole and the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) in China. They will soon give the physicists access to much more sensitive and complementary data on the neutrino mass ordering.

*Neutrinos are the chameleons among elementary particles*
Neutrinos are produced by natural sources - in the interior of the sun or other astronomical objects, for example - but also in vast quantities by nuclear power plants. However, they can pass through normal matter - such as the human body - practically unhindered without leaving a trace of their presence. This means that extremely complex methods requiring the use of massive detectors are needed to observe the occasional rare reactions in which these 'ghost particles' are involved.

Neutrinos come in three different types: electron, muon and tau neutrinos. They can change from one type to another, a phenomenon that scientists call 'neutrino oscillation'. It is possible to determine the mass of the particles from observations of the oscillation patterns. For years now, physicists have been trying to establish which of the three neutrinos is the lightest and which is the heaviest. Prof. Michael Wurm, a physicist at the PRISMA+ Cluster of Excellence and the Institute of Physics at JGU, who is playing an instrumental role in setting up the JUNO experiment in China, explains: "We believe that answering this question will contribute significantly towards enabling us to gather long-term data on the violation of matter-antimatter symmetry in the neutrino sector. Then, using this data, we hope to find out once and for all why matter and anti-matter did not completely annihilate each other after the Big Bang."

*Global cooperation pays off*
Both large-scale experiments use very different and complementary methods in order to solve the puzzle of the neutrino mass ordering. "An obvious approach is to combine the expected results of both experiments," points out Prof. Sebastian Böser, also from the PRISMA+ Cluster of Excellence and the Institute of Physics at JGU, who researches neutrinos and is a major contributor to the IceCube experiment.

No sooner said than done. In the current issue of the journal Physical Review D, researchers from the IceCube and the JUNO collaboration have published a combined analysis of their experiments. For this, the authors simulated the predicted experimental data as a function of the measuring time for each experiment. The results vary depending on whether the neutrino masses are in their normal or reversed (inverted) order. Next, the physicists carried out a statistical test, in which they applied a combined analysis to the simulated results of both experiments. This revealed the degree of sensitivity with which both experiments combined could predict the correct order, or rather rule out the wrong order. As the observed oscillation patterns in JUNO and IceCube depend on the actual neutrino mass ordering in a way specific to each experiment, the combined test has a discriminating power significantly higher than the individual experimental results. The combination will thus permit to definitively rule out the incorrect neutrino mass ordering within a measuring period of three to seven years.

"In this case, the whole really is more than the sum of its parts," concludes Sebastian Böser. "Here we have clear evidence of the effectiveness of a complementary experimental approach when it comes to solving the remaining neutrino puzzles." "No experiment could achieve this by itself, whether it's the IceCube Upgrade, JUNO or any of the others currently running," adds Michael Wurm. "Moreover it just shows what neutrino physicists here in Mainz can achieve by working together."



From China to the South Pole: Joining forces to solve the neutrino mass puzzle | EurekAlert! Science News

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*China develops first AI earthquake monitoring system*
2020-02-26 16:09:53 Ecns.cn



This combo photo shows the artificial intelligence earthquake monitoring system, with the red triangles in the right representing the seismic stations in Yunnan Province, the blue triangles the seismic stations in Sichuan Province, and circles being the earthquake location automatically announced by the system. (Photo provided to China News Service)

(ECNS) -- The University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) has invented the world's first artificial intelligence earthquake monitoring system after six years of research.

It can report all seismic source parameters within two seconds.

The fruit of USTC professors and a team led by Zhao Cuiping at the Earthquake Prediction Institute of China Seismological Administration, the system underwent testing at earthquake test sites in Sichuan and Yunnan provinces for a year.

The AI earthquake monitoring system can operate in real-time to timely process massive seismic network big data, greatly alleviating labor pressure while reducing false and missed alarms.

Research and development teams are seeking cooperation oppurtunities with international earthquake monitoring agencies in Japan, Turkey, Mexico and other countries where earthquakes occur frequently.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Researchers Identify Novel Anti-aging Targets*
By LIU Jia | Feb 27, 2020

A recent study published in _Nature_ has reported two conserved epigenetic regulators as novel anti-aging targets. The research, by scientists from Dr. CAI Shiqing’s Lab at the Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, Institute of Neuroscience of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and Dr. JIANG Lubing’s team at Institut Pasteur of Shanghai of CAS, identified conserved negative regulators of healthy aging by using multiple modalities and systems, thus providing insights into how to achieve healthy aging.

Aging is associated with progressive decline in physiological functions over time and is a major risk factor for a number of chronic diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, cancer, and diabetes. Over the past decades, the understanding of longevity regulation has progressed greatly, and a number of longevity pathways conserved from yeast to mammals have been delineated.

However, increasing longevity is not often accompanied by an extended healthspan, despite global increases in life expectancy. Thus, how to achieve healthy aging (i.e., an extension of healthspan) is one of the most important and challenging heath issues nowadays. Despite its extreme importance, the biological mechanisms underlying healthy aging, as defined by the preservation of normal behavioral capabilities, remains to be elucidated.

Previous studies from Dr. CAI’s lab have revealed that behavioral performance in aged animals can be improved by increasing neurotransmitters. They also showed that variation in levels of neurotransmitters may contribute to different rates of age-related decline among individuals. 

In the current study, the researchers used the animal models _C. _elegans and mouse, along with human datasets to identify novel anti-aging targets and unravel a mechanism for regulating cognitive aging. _C. elegans_ is a tiny free-living nematode, about 1 mm in length. Due to its short lifespan and clear genetic background, _C. elegans_ has been widely used in aging research.

To identify aging modulators, the researchers performed a genome-wide RNAi screen for genes that regulate behavioral deterioration in aging _C. elegans_. They identified 59 genes that potentially regulate the rate of age-related behavioral deterioration. By constructing a co-expression network of these screening hits, they found that a neuronal epigenetic reader BAZ-2 and a neuronal histone 3 lysine 9 (H3K9) methyltransferase SET-6 appeared as a key node in the network. Deletion of _baz-2_ and_ set-6_ prevented age-related deterioration in the worm’s food-induced behavior, food intake, and male virility.

By analyzing published databases, the researchers found that the expression levels of their human homologues _BAZ2B_ and _EHMT1_ increase with age in human brains, and positively correlate with Alzheimer's disease (AD) progression. Strikingly, ablation of _Baz2b_, the mouse ortholog of _baz-2_, attenuated age-dependent body weight gain and prevented cognitive decline in aging mice. Their findings suggest that BAZ2B and EHMT1 are key aging modulators and appear to be novel anti-aging targets.

In addition, the researchers demonstrated that these epigenetic modulators repressed the expression of nuclear genes encoding mitochondrial proteins by occupying the promoter regions and hence reduced mitochondrial function, a mechanism conserved in mouse brain tissues. Deletion of _baz-2/BAZ2B_ and _set-6/EHMT1_ delayed the aging process by improving mitochondrial function.

Mitochondrial dysfunction has been implicated in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). By analyzing gene expression in the brains of AD patients, they found that the expression levels of BAZ2B and EHMT1 negatively correlate with the expression of key mitochondrial function-related genes, suggesting that BAZ2B and EHMT1 can regulate mitochondrial function in aging human brains.

The researchers in this study performed a genome-wide RNAi screen and provided the first view of genes that modulate behavioral aging. They showed that two conserved epigenetic factors modulate the aging of the nervous system by regulating mitochondrial function. This newly discovered epigenetic regulation of mitochondrial function is critical for achieving healthy aging of the brain. Given the reversible nature of epigenetic regulation, BAZ2B and EHMT1 emerge as promising drug targets for combating behavioral and cognitive aging.



Researchers Identify Novel Anti-aging Targets----Chinese Academy of Sciences

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

NEWS AND VIEWS * 26 FEBRUARY 2020
*Metallic glasses rejuvenated to harden under strain*
Metallic glasses are much stronger than conventional metals, but form certain instabilities under stress that lead to fracture. A process known as rejuvenation has been shown to solve this problem.

*Frans Spaepen*

Metallic glasses are formed by cooling melted alloys under conditions that prevent the melt from crystallizing1. They have remarkable mechanical properties — in particular, they can be subjected to high forces and undergo a large amount of deformation before they stop behaving elastically and start to deform permanently (plastically). However, they have one key weakness: they are prone to catastrophic failure under stress because they soften during plastic deformation, rather than hardening, as crystalline metals do. Writing in _Nature_, Pan _et al_.2 report a method for preparing metallic glasses that causes them to harden during plastic deformation, thereby avoiding the instabilities that lead to failure.

If you take a paper clip and bend it, you’ll find that more force is needed as you bend it to an increasingly sharp angle. This is an example of work, or strain, hardening — the strengthening of a material through plastic deformation. At the atomic scale, the plastic deformation of metallic crystals in the wire is caused by the motion of ‘dislocations’. These linear defects in the crystal structure multiply, intersect and entangle as deformation proceeds, thereby getting in each other’s way and strengthening the material3. This makes work hardening one of the most complex problems in science: it needs to be understood at many length scales, from the atomic-scale lengths of the dislocation cores, through the nano- and micrometre scales involved in dislocation interactions and structures, to the macroscale lengths associated with crack propagation and the structural stability of bulk materials.


....

Metallic glasses rejuvenated to harden under strain | Nature

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

FEBRUARY 28, 2020
*Innovative switching mechanism improves ultrafast control of microlasers*
by Harbin Institute of Technology



Ultrafast control of the quasi-BIC microlasers. (A) Schematic of two-beam pumping experiments. Two beams are spatially detuned with a distance d < 2R, being shifted temporally with a delay time τ. The insets show the far-field emission patterns from the perovskite metasurface under both symmetric and asymmetric excitations. (B) Transition from a BIC microlaser to a linearly-polarized laser. I1,2 are the intensities at the marked regions in the insert to (A). Insets show the corresponding beam profiles. (C) Reverse process of (B). (D) Transition from a donut beam to two-lobe beam and back within a few picoseconds. Red curves are guiding lines for the calculation of the transition time. Credit: _Science_ (2020). DOI: 10.1126/science.aba4597

The all-optical switch is a kind of device that controls light with light, which is the fundamental building block of modern optical communications and information processing. Creating an efficient, ultrafast, and compact all-optical switch has been recognized as the key step for the developments of next-generation optical and quantum computing. In principle, photons don't interact with one another directly in the low power linear regime, and a cavity is usually needed to resonantly enhance the field of control light and increase the interaction. In early work, the performance of all-optical switches has been improved rapidly by optimizing resonators such as microrings or photonic crystals. For further improvements, the research area reaches the limit—the trade-off between ultralow energy consumption and ultrashort switching time.

"Low energy consumption usually requires a high Q factor of the resonator, whereas the longer lifetime high-Q mode imposes an obstacle for improving switching speed," said Qinghai Song from Harbin Institute of Technology, China. "An alternative approach with plasmonic nanostructure has been recently exploited to break the trade-off. The inserting and propagating loss is as large as 19 dB and additional power consumption is required to amplify the signals."

The lasing actions at the topologically protected bounded states in the continuum has the potential to eventually solve this long-standing challenge. In _Science_, researchers from Harbin Institute of Technology, Australian National University and City University of New York detail their innovation of the switching mechanism at the topologically protected bounded states in the continuum (BICs), which offers an ultrafast transition of microlaser emission from a radially polarized donut beam to linearly polarized lobes and vice versa. The extremely high Q factor of the BICs can dramatically reduce the laser threshold and eventually break the above trade-off in conventional all-optical switches.

The next step of this research is to integrate cascade-wise several such switchable microlasers with an integrated photonic chip and to perform optical logic operations. This is the prerequisite for the ultimate goal—optical or quantum computing.


...

https://phys.org/news/2020-02-mechanism-ultrafast-microlasers.html

*More information:* Can Huang et al. Ultrafast control of vortex microlasers, _Science_ (2020). DOI: 10.1126/science.aba4597

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Novel Pulse Duration Achieved by 1 PW/0.1 Hz Laser Beamline in SULF Facility----Chinese Academy of Sciences*
By ZHANG Nannan | Mar 04, 2020

Significant advances on ultra-intense and ultra-short laser technology have led numerous laboratories to develop table-top PW-class laser systems as a means of investigating laser-matter interactions in relativistic regime. The repetition rate of PW-class femtosecond lasers is an important issue for their practical applications. And the development of repetitive PW-class lasers has attracted a great attention in recent years.

Shanghai superintense ultrafast laser facility (SULF) is a large-scale scientific project located in Shanghai, China. The project was formally launched and funded in 2016. The SULF facility mainly consists of two laser beamlines, SULF-10PW beamline operating at one shot per minute and SULF-1PW beamline operating at 0.1Hz repetition rate. This facility can provide repetitive PW-level and 10PW-level laser pulses for scientific researches on dynamic of materials under extreme conditions (DMEC), ultrafast sub-atomic physics (USAP), and big molecule dynamics and extreme-fast chemistry (MODEC).

The recent progress on the 1PW/0.1Hz laser beamline of SULF was reported on _High Power Laser Science and Engineering_. The SULF-1PW beamline is a typical double-CPA system equipped with a novel temporal filter combining the techniques of cross-polarized wave generation (XPWG) and femtosecond optical parametric amplication (OPA).

In the study, the SULF-1PW beamline could generate laser pulses of 50.8J at 0.1Hz after the final amplifier, and the shot-to-shot energy fluctuation of the amplified pulse was as low as 1.2% (std). After compression, pulse duration of 29.6fs was achieved, which could support a maximal peak power of 1PW.

Benefited from the large-energy and high-contrast seed pulses generated by the novel temporal filter, the contrast ratio at -80ps before the main pulse was measured to be 2.5×10-11 in the SULF-1PW beamline. After optimization of the angular dispersion in the grating compressor, the maximal focused peak intensity might reach 2.7×1019W/cm2 even with an f/26.5 off-axis parabolic mirror.

Moreover, the horizontal and vertical angular pointing fluctuations in one hour were measured to be 1.89 μrad (std) and 2.45 μrad (std) respectively. The moderate repetition rate, the good stability and the high temporal contrast make the SULF-1PW beamline a desirable driving laser for laser-matter interactions in relativistic regime.

The SULF-1PW laser beamline is now in the phase of commissioning, while preliminary experiments of particle acceleration and secondary radiation have been implemented. 300MeV quasi-monoenergetic electrons was repetitively produced under ~300 TW/0.1Hz laser condition. Moreover, the maximum proton energy of 14 MeV was also obtained under ~ 400 TW/0.1Hz laser condition.

The SULF research group from Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, comments that the progress on the preliminary experiments and the stable daily operation of the laser have demonstrated the availability of SULF-1PW beamline. The following works would be focused on the further improvement of pulse spatial-temporal quality. By utilization of acousto-optic programmable dispersive filter and deformable mirror, a higher focused peak intensity can be expected in the near future.



The layout of SULF facility. (Image by SIOM)

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*How a Magnet Could Help Boost Understanding of Superconductivity*
March 4, 2020

Todd Bates
848-932-0550
todd.bates@rutgers.edu



Entangled electrons in quantum mechanics can be visualized as connected by an invisible thread, so an "up-spin" on the left electron (red) forces the other electron to be "spin-down" (red) & vice-versa (green). Image: Yashar Komijani

Physicists have unraveled a mystery behind the strange behavior of electrons in a ferromagnet, a finding that could eventually help develop high temperature superconductivity.

A Rutgers co-authored study of the unusual ferromagnetic material appears in the journal _Nature_.

The Rutgers Center for Materials Theory, a world leader in the field, studies “quantum phase transitions.” Phase transitions, such as when ice melts, usually require heat to jiggle atoms and melt ice crystals. Quantum phase transitions are driven by the jiggling of atoms and electrons that result from fluctuations that never cease even at low temperatures.

A quantum phase transition can be achieved by tuning a material to enhance quantum fluctuations, either by applying a magnetic field or exposing it to intense pressure when the temperature is near absolute zero. In certain quantum phase transitions, the quantum fluctuations become infinitely intense, forming a “quantum critical point.” These unusual states of matter are of great interest because of their propensity to form superconductors. Think of it as like an electronic stem cell, a form of matter that can transform itself in many ways.

Meanwhile, in the weird world of quantum mechanics, “entanglement” allows something to be in two different states or places at the same time. The Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment, which features a cat that is simultaneously dead and alive, is an example of entanglement.

Inside materials with electrons moving through them, entanglement often involves the spin of electrons, which can be simultaneously up and down. Typically, only electrons near each other are entangled in quantum materials, but at a quantum critical point, the entanglement patterns can change abruptly, spreading out across the material and transforming it. Electrons, even distant ones, become entangled.

Ferromagnets are an unlikely setting for studying quantum entanglement because the electrons moving through them align in one direction instead of spinning up and down. But physicists found that the ferromagnetism in “Cerge,” (CeRh6Ge4) a ferromagnet, must have a large amount of entanglement with electrons that spin up and down and are connected with each other. That had never been seen in ferromagnets.

“We believe our work, connecting entanglement with the strange metal and ferromagnets, provides important clues for our efforts to understand superconductors that work at room temperature,” said co-author Piers Coleman, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University–New Brunswick. “As we learn to understand how nature controls entanglement in matter, we hope we’ll develop the skills to control quantum entanglement inside quantum computers and to design and develop new kinds of quantum matter useful for technology.”

Rutgers scientists have used some of their findings to propose a new theory for a family of iron-based superconductors that were discovered about 10 years ago. “If we are right, these systems, like ferromagnets, are driven by forces that like to align electrons,” Coleman said.

Yashar Komijani, a Rutgers post-doctoral associate, is one of three co-lead authors. Scientists at Zhejiang University in China, Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids in Germany and Nanjing University in China contributed to the study.


https://www.rutgers.edu/news/how-magnet-could-help-boost-understanding-superconductivity

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> "The CSNS is expected to reach its design beam power of 100 KW in three years or less after it passed the national acceptance because we have taken fewer detours thanks to the experience of our foreign peers. Moreover, we Chinese always work hard," Xu explained.
> 
> To Xu and his colleagues, working overtime is quite normal. Xu once worked for about 37 hours straight without a break. "I didn't feel sleepy at all. I used to work on the computer, but when I saw the devices running as expected step by step, I was really excited and couldn't wait to carry out the next test," Xu said.
> 
> Scientists hope to eventually increase the beam power of the CSNS from 100 KW to 500 KW. To meet the goal, they have reserved room for further modifications and upgrading in the initial design. Now the researchers have started to work on the plan to upgrade the accelerators for the CSNS phase II project.
> 
> "One of the great joys of studying physics is being able to explore and get closer to the essence of the world, and the spallation neutron source is helping us to realize it," Xu said.


*CSNS Beam Power Reaches Design Goal Ahead of Schedule----Chinese Academy of Sciences*
By LIU Jia | Mar 05, 2020

The China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS) conducted on-schedule beam commissioning from Feb. 3 to Feb. 28, thus achieving its design goal of 100kW 18 months ahead of schedule. Since then it has conducted stable operations at 100 kW.

CSNS project passed the national acceptance and was officially opened to users on Aug. 23, 2018. Based on the commissioning and operating experience of other facilities around the world, scientists had planned for CSNS beam power to reach its design goal three years after acceptance. Since then, plans were made to gradually increasing the beam power and much efforts were paid by the CSNS team to achieve its design goal faster. In September 2018, the operating beam power was 20kW. In January 2019, the beam power was increased to 50kW. In October 2019, the beam power was increased to 80kW, and now it has achieved the design goal of 100kW.

The hardest part of high power accelerator beam commissioning is to control the beam loss. CSNS has performed well, since the uncontrollable beam loss at 100kW is even less than when operated at 80kW.

Besides the machine development, CSNS has also achieved a successful operation for user experiments in 2019. CSNS originally planned to provide 3600 hours of beam time to users. In fact, it provided a total of 4576 hours, for an beam availability of accelerator operation of 92.6%.

The efficiency of CSNS's recent beam commissioning offers valuable design-related experience for the upcoming CSNS Phase II project.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*NEWS AND VIEWS * 11 MARCH 2020*
*Tiny bird fossil might be the world’s smallest dinosaur*
A tiny skull trapped in 99-million-year-old amber suggests that some of the earliest birds evolved to become miniature. The fossil illustrates how ancient amber can act as a window into the distant past.

*Roger B. J. Benson*

Dinosaurs were big, whereas birds — which evolved from dinosaurs — are small. This variation is of great importance, because body size affects lifespan, food requirements, sensory capabilities and many other fundamental aspects of biology. The smallest dinosaurs1 weighed hundreds of grams, but the smallest living bird, the bee hummingbird (_Mellisuga helenae_)2, weighs only 2 grams. How did this difference come about, and why? In a paper in _Nature_, Xing _et al_.3 describe the tiny, fossilized, bird-like skull of a previously unknown species, which they name _Oculudentavis khaungraae_. The discovery suggests that miniature body sizes in birds evolved earlier than previously recognized, and might provide insights into the evolutionary process of miniaturization.


....

Tiny bird fossil might be the world’s smallest dinosaur | Nature





​*The bird in amber: A tiny skull from the age of dinosaurs*
Mar 11, 2020


nature video

A tiny new species of bird-like dinosaur has been discovered, preserved in a lump of 99-million-year-old amber. The tooth-filled skull is only 7.1mm long, suggesting that this ancient creature would have been the size of a hummingbird - far smaller than other dinosaurs known from that time. Unusual features include large, side-facing eyes and a large number of sharp teeth suggesting a predatory lifestyle. The species has been named Oculudentavis khaungraae and is evidence of previously unimagined biodiversity in the Mesozoic era.

​

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1239838887750422528

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 19-MAR-2020
*Glucagon receptor structures reveal G protein specificity mechanism*
CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HEADQUARTERS

G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) play essential roles in cell signal transduction and serve as important therapeutic targets for a large number of diseases. Upon binding to extracellular agonists, GPCRs stimulate various signaling pathways by recruiting different G proteins (Gs, Gi, Gq, etc.) to mediate a wide variety of physiological functions. The selective coupling between a GPCR and specific G proteins is critical for the biological action of the receptor.

However, the molecular details that define how an individual GPCR recognizes different G protein subtypes remain elusive, thus limiting the understanding of mechanisms of GPCR signal transduction.

In a study published in _Science_ on Mar. 20, a group led by WU Beili and ZHAO Qiang at the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica (SIMM) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), a group led by SUN Fei at the Institute of Biophysics of CAS, and a group led by Denise Wootten from Monash University, determined two cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) structures of the human glucagon receptor (GCGR) in complex with its cognate agonist glucagon and distinct classes of G proteins, Gs or Gi.

These structures, for the first time, provide a detailed molecular map of interaction patterns between a GPCR and different G protein subtypes, and unexpectedly disclose many molecular features that govern G protein specificity, thereby greatly deepening the understanding of GPCR signaling mechanisms.

GCGR, a member of the class B GPCR family, is critical to glucose homeostasis by triggering the release of glucose from the liver, making it a potential drug target for type 2 diabetes and obesity.

Although GCGR canonically exerts its physiological action through Gs signaling, it can also couple to other G proteins such as Gi and Gq, leading to diverse cellular responses. In 2017 and 2018, the scientists at SIMM determined the crystal structures of the full-length GCGR bound to a negative allosteric modulator or a partial peptide agonist, providing insights into signal recognition and modulation of class B GPCRs.

This time, the scientists made further progress by solving the complex structures of GCGR bound to two transducer proteins with opposing biological activities. This study offers valuable insights into pleiotropic GPCR-G protein coupling and G protein specificity. Notably, it revealed that the sixth transmembrane helix (helix VI) of GCGR adopts a similar outward shift in the two G protein-bound GCGR structures, forming a common binding cavity to accommodate Gs and Gi. This is contrary to the hypothesis based on the previously determined GPCR-G protein complex structures, which proposed that the positional difference of helix VI is a major discriminator in the coupling specificity of Gs and Gi.

The common G protein binding pocket observed in the GCGR-G protein complex structures is consistent with the signaling pleiotropy of GCGR and allows for maximal efficiency in activating various pathways. Although GCGR couples to both G proteins through the common pocket, it does so with different interaction patterns, which account for G protein specificity. The measured interaction interface between GCGR and Gs is much larger than for Gi, resulting in higher binding affinity of Gs to the receptor. This offers a structural basis for the preferential coupling of GCGR to Gs.

Based on the structures of GCGR-Gs and GCGR-Gi complexes, the scientists performed extensive functional studies using techniques such as mutagenesis, G protein activation and cell signaling to investigate the roles of key residues in the receptor-G protein binding interface in Gs and Gi activation.

The results show that conformational differences of intracellular loops and residue side chains in the receptor are sufficient to guide G protein selectivity. The interactions contributed by the second intracellular loop (ICL2) and helix VII/VIII junction of the receptor play a crucial role in Gs coupling, while the other two intracellular loops, ICL1 and ICL3, and the receptor hydrophobic intracellular binding cavity are more important for Gi recognition.

These findings extend knowledge about GPCR activation, pleiotropic coupling, and G protein specificity. They also present new opportunities for drug discovery by designing biased ligands to selectively block one specific signaling pathway, thus resulting in reduced side effects.


Glucagon receptor structures reveal G protein specificity mechanism | EurekAlert! Science News

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*China Focus: Chinese researchers grow organoids from mouse stem cells*
Xinhua, March 23, 2020

SHANGHAI, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Using stem cells from mice, Chinese researchers have grown tiny functioning segments of insulin-producing organs, called islet organoids, in a laboratory, in a bid to find ways to treat diabetes.

In a recent study published in the scientific journal _Cell_, a research team, led by the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, identified the stem cells in adult mouse pancreatic islets and established an in vitro culture system for the long-term growth of the islet organoids.

According to the study, with the help of single-cell sequencing technologies, the researchers found a new group of cell types called "Procr+cells" in mice. Experiments then showed that the Procr+cells are stem cells in mouse islets that can differentiate all islet cell types.

They cultured the Procr+cells in vitro and established an in vitro system that can derive functional islet organoids for the long term.

The artificial islet organoids are very similar to the mouse islets in function and morphology. When the researchers transplanted these organoids into diabetic mice, the blood sugar levels of these mice became normal and their symptoms of diabetes went away.

Diabetes is one of the major chronic diseases that threaten human health. Many patients need to use insulin for lifelong treatment due to insufficient insulin secretion caused by abnormal functions of islet cells.

Islet transplantation has been considered an approach for diabetic patients, but it is limited due to the shortage of donors. Scientists have been investigating better ways to treat diabetes.

Zeng Yi, the lead researcher, said the study is a major breakthrough in basic stem cell research. It has for the first time identified stem cells in mouse islets, answering a long-standing controversial question of whether there are stem cells in islets.

But Zeng also emphasized that the current research results have only been proved in mice.

"Answering questions such as can stem cells also exist in human islets and can they also be cultured into islets in vitro still needs further exploration and study," Zeng said.


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists Make Breakthrough Toward Mapping All Cells in the Human Body*
Ryan F. Mandelbaum
Yesterday 12:08PM

Researchers around the world are working to construct an atlas of all the different cells in the human body. A team in China has just released the results of a huge step toward that goal.

The Human Cell Atlas is an international initiative to map all of the body’s 30-trillion-plus cells, their types, and how they relate to one another. Researchers hope that this atlas will prove to be a useful resource for curing and preventing diseases. In a new study, published today in Nature, a team led by Guoji Guo at the Zhejiang University School of Medicine in Hangzhou, China determined the types of cells that comprise all of the major human organs, creating what could be the most comprehensive cell-type atlas yet.

....

Scientists Make Breakthrough Toward Mapping All Cells in the Human Body | Gizmodo

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## Stranagor

*Chinese scientists discover natural supercritical carbon dioxide*

2020-05-11 08:19 Source：Xinhua

QINGDAO, May 10 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists identified bubbles from some hydrothermal vents in the western Pacific Ocean as supercritical carbon dioxide, and this is the first time that natural supercritical carbon dioxide has been discovered on Earth.

A team from the Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Center for Ocean Mega-Science of CAS discovered the natural supercritical carbon dioxide at the depth of 1,400 meters in seawater during an investigation conducted in 2016 through a homegrown deep-sea in situ Raman detection instrument.

"Supercritical carbon dioxide is widely used in our daily life and industries, like dry cleaning and petroleum solvents, but this is the first time that the natural presence of the supercritical carbon dioxide was discovered," said Zhang Xin, a researcher of the institute.

The fluids of supercritical carbon dioxide contain much larger amounts of nitrogen than those in surrounding seawater and vent fluids, indicating that supercritical carbon dioxide enriches nitrogen from the surrounding environment, Zhang said.

Scientists also found unknown organic materials in the fluids. They suggested that supercritical carbon dioxide with high nitrogen could play a significant role in promoting the synthesis, pre-enrichment and preservation of amino acids and other organic matters that are essential to the origin of life.

A paper on the findings has been published on the online version of the journal Science Bulletin.


----------



## JSCh

*China to develop high-power klystrons for big science projects*
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-12 20:14:39|Editor: huaxia

BEIJING, May 12 (Xinhua) -- A platform to develop high-power klystrons for big science projects has started construction in Beijing.

High-power klystrons can produce high-energy microwaves, which is key for big science projects such as high-energy collider, controlled thermonuclear fusion facility, synchrotron radiation device, X-ray free electron laser facility, the China Spallation Neutron Source and the "Meridian Project."

Aiming to meet the country's demands for klystrons and promote the development of big science projects, the platform was designed as the largest base for klystron research and development in China.

The platform is constructed by the Aerospace Information Research Institution of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 14-MAY-2020
*Ancient DNA unveils important missing piece of human history*
New ancient genomic research reveals information about human history in China

CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HEADQUARTERS



​IMAGE: SAMPLING A TOOTH IN THE IVPP CLEANROOM CREDIT: IVPP

Newly released genomes from Neolithic East Asia have unveiled a missing piece of human prehistory, according to a study conducted by Prof. FU Qiaomei's team from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The study, published in _Science_ on May 14, reveals that population movement played a profound role in the early genetic history of East Asians.

The researchers used advanced ancient DNA capture techniques to retrieve ancient DNA from 25 individuals dating back 9,500-4,200 years and one individual dating back 300 years from northern and southern East Asia.

The newly sequenced DNA casts a spotlight on an important period in East Asia's early history: the transition from hunter-gathering to agricultural economies.

One hypothesis for population movement in East Asia is that during the Neolithic, a "second layer" of agriculturalists replaced a "first layer" of hunter-gatherers in East and Southeast Asia.

While the genetics of ancient humans in Southeast Asia, Siberia, and the Japanese archipelago have been well-studied, little has been known until now about the genetics of ancient humans in northern and southern China.

Prof. FU and her team found that these Neolithic humans share the closest genetic relationship to present-day East Asians who belong to this "second layer." This suggests that by 9,500 years ago, the primary ancestries composing the genetic makeup of East Asians today could already be found in mainland East Asia.

While more divergent ancestries can be found in Southeast Asia and the Japanese archipelago, in the Chinese mainland, Neolithic populations already displayed genetic features belonging to present-day East Asians.

Notably, this includes the Early Neolithic southern East Asians dating to ~8,000 years from this study that should have been "first layer" early Asians, according to the earlier hypothesis. In fact, Prof. FU and her team showed that they shared a closer relationship to present-day "second layer" East Asians. Thus, the results of the current study fail to support a "two layer" dispersal model in Neolithic East Asia in this area.

The scientists also found that Early Neolithic East Asians were more genetically differentiated from each other than present-day East Asians are. In early Neolithic East Asia since 9,500 BP, a northern ancestry existed along the Yellow River and up into the eastern steppes of Siberia, distinct from a southern ancestry that existed along the coast of the southern Chinese mainland and islands in the Taiwan Strait since 8,400 BP.

Population movement may have already started impacting East Asians by the Late Neolithic. For example, the Late Neolithic southern East Asians may have shared a connection to coastal northern East Asians and the former's ancestry may have extended north as well.

Today, most East Asian populations are not clearly separated into two distinct groups. Present-day mainland East Asians from both the north and south share a closer genetic relationship to northern Neolithic East Asians along the Yellow River than to southern Neolithic East Asians on the southern coast of China.

Further analyses show that they are almost all a mixture of northern and southern ancestry from Neolithic East Asia, with northern ancestry playing a larger role. Population movement, particularly from the north along the Yellow River southward was a prominent part of East Asian prehistory after the Neolithic.

Interestingly, present-day Han Chinese in all provinces, north and south, show a similar amount of northern and southern influences.

Southern ancestry, while less represented in mainland East Asia today, had extensive influence on other regions. Present-day Austronesian speakers, who share a close genetic relationship to present-day mainland East Asians but live across a wide swath of islands in Southeast Asia and the Southwest Pacific, show a remarkably close genetic relationship to Neolithic populations from the southern coast of China.

Archaeological materials dating back to the Middle Neolithic have long hinted at the connection between Austronesian islanders and populations in mainland East Asia. Now, the genetic relationships uncovered by Prof. FU and her team show unambiguous evidence that Austronesian speakers today originated from a proto-Austronesian population that derived from southern China at least 8,400 year ago.

The history revealed by these 26 ancient humans highlights the profound impact that population movement and mixture had on human history, but they also reveal continuity that extends back 9,500 years. Unlike in Europe, influences from Central Asia had no role in the formation of East Asian ancestry, with mixing largely occurring regionally between northern and southern populations in East Asia.

The whole slate of ancestries present across East Asia during the Neolithic is still unknown, as genome-wide data have not been retrieved from many inland regions of mainland East Asia.

But coastal connections between ancient populations in Siberia, Japan, China, and Southeast Asia suggest that as more ancient DNA is retrieved and studied, a complex history of population contact and admixture in East Asian human prehistory will be revealed.


Ancient DNA unveils important missing piece of human history | EurekAlert! Science News

Also article about the same study, 
Ancient human genomes shed new light on East Asia's history | Nature​

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Love Love:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Harvesting vegetables with 'sand-to-earth' tech on S. China Sea island beach*
By Shan Jie Source:Globaltimes.cn Published: 2020/5/19 23:54:20



Photo: Chongqing Jiaotong University

Chinese navy garrisoned on an island in the Xisha Islands of the South China Sea recently harvested 750 kilogram of vegetables on sandy beaches for the first time, using technology which experts said could support communities on islands.

Seven kinds of vegetables, including Pakchoi cabbage, lettuce and baby Chinese cabbage, were harvested on a "sand to earth" experimental field on Yongxing Island in Sansha city, South China's Hainan Province, on May 12, according to a report from the Chinese navy on Tuesday.

"The technology will be promoted on a large scale, which could solve the problem of military forces and civilians on islands lacking enough green vegetables," a navy officer said, according to the report.

The navy's garrisoned force in Xisha worked with the "sand to earth" research team from the Chongqing Jiaotong University in Southwest China for four months to achieve the "miracle."

According to the navy's report, naval officers and scientists mixed a botanical fiber adhesive powder material into the sand. After watering, the sand became soil. Seeds planted in a 0.5-mu field on April 4 grew into more than 750 kilograms of harvests after one month, which means vegetables could be harvested five or six times a year.

The team from Chongqing Jiaotong University had changed 4,000 mu of desert into farming land in North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in 2017.

The breakthrough also counters international theories, including those in a 2016 arbitration, that islands in the South China Sea could not support communities of their own, Chen Xiangmiao, an assistant research fellow at the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

"Now China's capability of being able to support civilians on these islands would allow more people to live on the islands," Chen noted.

The high temperatures, high humidity and high salt content had made farming extremely difficult on the South China Sea islands, Chen said.

"Being able to grow vegetables makes it possible to take the next step, such as raising pigs or chickens. An ecological cycle would make the islands more suitable for humans to live there for a longer time," Chen said. "In the future, each island could form a small independent community."

Since the 1970s, forces stationed in the islands have relied on green-leaf vegetables to be shipped to them. But sometimes boats could not reach the islands due to bad weather, and officers could only eat seaweed, pumpkins or beancurd sticks, causing nutritional issues, according to the navy report.

Navy officers tried bringing soil from the mainland, but they could only grow a small amount of vegetables. In 2007, the Ministry of Science and Technology built a vegetable demonstrative base on Yongxing island. Vegetable greenhouses were also built on some islands.

Sansha city was founded in 2012. With more and more navy officers and civilians moving onto the islands, the need for green-leaf vegetables has been increasing.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Beast

The soldier shall not need to grow their own food. Huge cargo ship sending in food shall solve the problem. Since the land is reclaim. Shall have enough land to build a giant warehouse.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

​NEWS RELEASE 10-APR-2020
*USDA-ARS scientists find new tool to combat major wheat disease*
_Will help global efforts to produce wheat_

US DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE - AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH SERVICE

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 10 - Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists and their colleagues have discovered a gene that can be used to develop varieties of wheat that will be more resistant to Fusarium Head Blight (FHB), a disease that is a major threat both overseas and to the nation's $10 billion annual wheat crop.

A paper reporting the discovery and the cloning of the gene, known as Fhb7, was published today in the journal _Science_. The study was led by scientists at the Shandong Agricultural University in Shandong, China and co-authors include ARS researchers Guihua Bai and Lanfei Zhao in Manhattan, Kansas, and Steven Xu in Fargo, North Dakota.

The discovery is a major advance in addressing a significant threat to the world's wheat supply. FHB, also known as "scab," is caused by a fungal pathogen, Fusarium graminearum, and results in significant losses in the United States, China, Canada, Europe, and many other countries. It also attacks barley and oats.

When the pathogen grows unchecked in infected grains, it releases mycotoxins that can induce vomiting in humans, as well as weight loss in livestock when they refuse to eat the grains.

The prevalence and severity of FHB outbreaks also could potentially be exacerbated by climate change and varying weather conditions, and by an increasing trend toward more corn production and no-till farming, which both may be increasing the prevalence of the pathogen in fields. Growers often must use fungicides to reduce FHB damage.

The researchers found that the gene effectively reduces FHB by detoxifying the mycotoxins secreted by the pathogen. The gene also confers resistance to crown rot, a wheat disease caused by a related pathogen.

The researchers originally identified the gene in Thinopyrum wheatgrass, a wild relative of wheat that has been previously used to develop varieties of wheat with beneficial traits, such as rust resistance and drought tolerance. They cloned the gene and introduced it into seven wheat cultivars with different genetic profiles to study its effects on plants grown under field conditions.

The results showed that the gene not only conferred resistance to scab in the new plants, but it also had no negative effects on yield or other significant traits.

The study sheds new light on the molecular mechanisms that can make wheat, as well as barley and oats, resistant to the pathogen that causes FHB. New varieties of wheat with better FHB resistance using Fhb7 are expected to be available in a few years, the researchers say.



USDA-ARS scientists find new tool to combat major wheat disease | EurekAlert! Science News

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Nilgiri

Thank you for continually updating this thread @JSCh

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*China making good progress in building world's largest supercollider: scientist*
By Deng Xiaoci Source:Global Times Published: 2020/5/25 11:28:24



A sketch of the future Circular Electron Positron Collider. Photo: Courtesy of Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of High Energy Physics

Research and development for the first batch of key equipment for the world's most powerful electron collider, the Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC), in China, has made solid progress, according to a leading scientist on the project Sunday.

Wang Yifang, director of the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP), under the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, who is also a deputy to the National People's Congress, made the comments to the Global Times on the sidelines of the ongoing national two sessions in Beijing. The overall development of the CEPC project is moving forward smoothly, with some of the first batch of equipment reaching design standards.

Klystron is among the first batch of key equipment for the super-sized collider, which scored a 60 percent efficiency in the prototype test earlier this year, reaching world advanced levels, up from below 50 percent, according to Wang.

Wang's team aims to produce an even better version of the klystron with 80 percent efficiency this year.

The location for the CEPC has yet to be determined, Wang noted.

The CEPC project will reportedly cost 35 billion yuan ($5.05 billion) and will have a circumference of 100 kilometers, with center-mass energy of up to 240 giga electron-volts, both setting a world record.

Chinese scientists are eyeing the completion for CEPC construction by 2030, Global Times previously learned from IHEP.

The conceptual design for the CEPC passed international inspections in September 2019. Scientists from the US, Europe and Japan have participated in designing the project, and will work on the building process and conduct research with the collider.

The Large Hadron Collider, the Swiss project near Geneva, is currently the world's largest and most powerful particle collider and reportedly the largest machine in the world.

In a bid to maximize the project's service life, scientists are mulling upgrading the electron positron collider in around 2040 into a proton collider, Wang noted. 

By then, the center-mass energy for the CEPC will have reached about 100 tera electron-volts, seven times as powerful as the Switzerland's project, Wang said.

The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic has brought risks of suspension and delay in implementing procurement contracts for some equipment for large-scale projects due to adjustments in budgeting plans. Wang suggested that legal entities engaged in major project construction should be allowed to raise funds through multiple channels or borrow other funds to ensure that construction tasks are completed on schedule.

After fund advance plans are reviewed, reported and filed with financial regulators, they should be allowed to handle the funds in accordance with relevant procedures in the next fiscal year, he noted.

According to Wang, some large-scale science and technology projects have seen budget cuts in the fiscal year of 2020, some suffering cuts of nearly 50 percent.

A delay of the project would not only prolong the construction time, but also adds to the total costs and lead to loss of opportunities in international competition, he said.

Wang revealed that another IHEP project, the cosmic ray observation station on an area equivalent to 200 soccer fields in the wilderness of Daocheng, Southwest China's Sichuan Province, 4,400 meters above sea level, has been affected by budget cuts.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*China's giant wind tunnel to accelerate development of warplanes*
By Liu Xuanzun Source:Global Times Published: 2020/5/27 19:09:03



China's most advanced fighter jet, J-20, performs at the Chinese Air Force's "open day" event in Changchun, Northeast China's Jilin Province on Thursday. This is the second time the stealth warplane opened its side missile bays and showcased its short-range combat missiles. They were first revealed at Airshow China 2018. Photo: IC

Under development for more than eight years, China's latest, world-leading wind tunnel is now ready to help develop new warplanes after reaching a milestone on Tuesday by successfully testing and receiving data for an in-development aircraft. With its help, China will be able to develop new warplanes faster and perform better, experts said on Wednesday.

The wind tunnel, called FL-62, conducted its first operation on Tuesday by running a test for an undisclosed new aircraft. The operation went smoothly as the flow field generated by the wind tunnel was stable and test data for the aircraft was gathered for the first time, the Aerodynamics Research Institute, under the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), announced in a statement on Tuesday.

This successful test showed the FL-62 wind tunnel was ready to test all types of aircraft and contribute to their development, the statement said.

Approved for construction in 2012 and based in Shenyang, Northeast China's Liaoning Province, the 6,620-ton, 17,000-cubic meter machine is China's first large continuous transonic wind tunnel. It is a fundamental and strategic facility crucial to China's aviation industry, as it will decide the shape of China's future warplanes, according to information AVIC released previously.

Compared to previous Chinese wind tunnels, the FL-62 can provide more stable and consistent airflow, resulting in more realistic data gathered from aircraft models tested in the tunnel, a military expert who asked not to be named told the Global Times.

With the data, aircraft developers could optimize the aircraft's aerodynamic design, giving it better performance in speed, range, maneuverability and stealth, the expert said, noting that a more advanced wind tunnel will also likely reduce the development time because the data it generates will be more accurate.

An optimized aircraft model would eventually be made into a prototype for test flights.

Before its first operation on Tuesday, the FL-62 ran a final test on itself on Sunday, in which data showed it had reached a world-leading standard, the institute's statement on Tuesday said.

China is eyeing to develop a next-generation fighter jet by 2035 or earlier, reports in early 2019 quoted Wang Haifeng, a chief architect at AVIC's Chengdu Aircraft Research and Design Institute who also participated in the development of the J-20 and J-10 fighter jets, as saying.

The generational standards for fighter jets have been defined mainly by Western countries but not future standards, said J-20's chief designer Yang Wei in a China Central Television program, noting that China will design very different aircraft in the future through true innovation.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 3-JUN-2020
*Super water-repellent materials are now durable enough for the real world*
A new armour-plated superhydrophobic material has been developed for potential uses in medical equipment, solar panels and more

AALTO UNIVERSITY



​A schematic representation of how the surface looks, and how the structure repels water. *CREDIT: *Aalto University

Superhydrophobic surfaces repel water like nothing else. This makes them extremely useful for antimicrobial coatings - as bacteria, viruses and other pathogens cannot cling to their surfaces. However, superhydrophobic surfaces have one major flaw - they are extremely susceptible to cuts, scratches or dents. If a superhydrophobic surface gets damaged, the damaged area can trap liquids and the benefits of the coating are lost. Now, however, a collaboration between researchers in China and Finland has developed an armour-plated superhydrophobic surface which can take repeated battering from sharp and blunt objects, and still repel liquids with world-record effectiveness.

The research - which is the cover feature of this week's issue of _Nature_ - has designed superhydrophobic surfaces that can be made out of metal, glass, or ceramic. The superhydrophobic properties of the surface come from nano-sized structures spread all over it. The trick is to pattern the surface of the material with a honeycomb-like structure of tiny inverted pyramids. The fragile water-repellent chemical is then coated on the inside the honeycomb. This prevents any liquid from sticking to the surface, and the fragile chemical coating is protected from damage by the pyramid's walls.

"The armour can be made from almost any material, it's the interconnection of the surface frame that makes it strong and rigid," says Professor Robin Ras, a physicist at Aalto University whose research group was part of the project. "We made the armour with honeycombs of different sizes, shapes and materials. The beauty of this result is that it is a generic concept that fits for many different materials, giving us the flexibility to design a wide range of durable waterproof surfaces."

As well as their useful antimicrobial properties for biomedical technology, superhydrophobic surfaces can also be used more generally in any application requiring a liquid-repellent surface. One example is photovoltaics, where the build-up of moisture and dirt over time blocks the amount of light they can absorb, which reduces electricity production. Making a solar panel out of a superhydrophobic glass surface would maintain their efficiencies over long periods of time. Furthermore, as solar cells are often on roof tops and other difficult to reach locations, the repellent coatings would cut down the amount of cleaning that is needed.

"By using the decoupled design, we introduce a new approach for designing a robust superhydrophobic surface. Our future work would be to push this method further, and to transfer robust superhydrophobic surfaces to different materials and its commercialization" said Professor Xu Deng, the leader of the group at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in Chengdu who took part in this research.

Other desirable applications for superhydrophobic surfaces include in machines and on vehicles, where conditions can be very tough for brittle materials for long periods of time. To simulate these working environments, the researchers subjected their new surfaces to extreme conditions, including baking them at 100 °C nonstop for weeks, immersing them in highly corrosive liquids for hours, blasting them with high-pressure water jets, and subjecting them to physical exertion in extreme humidity. The surfaces were still able to repel liquid as effectively as before.

Now that the strengths of this new material design have been demonstrated, future research will explore its broad potential in real-world applications.


Super water-repellent materials are now durable enough for the real world | EurekAlert! Science News


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1268207601361321984

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 12-MAY-2020
*HKU super steel project attains major breakthrough*
HKU super steel project attains major breakthrough with collaborators at Berkeley Lab in producing high strength steel at unprecedented levels of fracture resistance

THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG

The Super Steel project led by Professor Huang Mingxin at the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the University of Hong Kong (HKU), with collaborators at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL), has made important breakthrough in its new super D&P steel (produced using a new deformed and partitioned method) to greatly enhance its fracture resistance while maintaining super strong in strength for advanced industrial applications.

The findings were published in _Science _on 8 May 2020 in the paper titled "Making Ultrastrong Steel Tough by Grain-Boundary Delamination".

...

HKU super steel project attains major breakthrough | EurekAlert! Science News


----------



## JSCh

JULY 10, 2020 REPORT
*Reducing the operating temperature of ceramic fuel cells with a high proton conductivity electrolyte*
by Bob Yirka , Phys.org



Design of the NCO/CeO2 heterostructure functionalities for fast proton migration. Credit: _Science_ (2020). DOI: 10.1126/science.aaz9139

A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in China has developed a way to reduce the operating temperature of ceramic fuel cells by using a high proton conductivity electrolyte. In their paper published in the journal _Science_, the group describes their electrolyte and how well it worked when tested in a hydrogen fuel cell. Meng Ni and Zongping Shao, with Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Nanjing Tech University, respectively, have published a Perspective piece in the same journal issue outlining the need for cooler-running ceramic fuel cells and further explaining the work done by the team in China.


....

https://phys.org/news/2020-07-temperature-ceramic-fuel-cells-high.html


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese university builds world's longest 3D-printed bridge*
Source: Xinhua| 2020-07-22 19:12:29|Editor: huaxia



Photo taken on July 22, 2020 shows the 3D-printed bridge in the Hebei University of Technology. (Photo provided to Xinhua)

SHIJIAZHUANG, July 22 (Xinhua) -- A university in north China set a new world record for the longest 3D-printed bridge on Tuesday.

With a length of 28.1 meters, the concrete bridge is modeled on Zhaozhou Bridge, a 1,400-year-old stone arch structure in China's Hebei Province.

The longest 3D-printed bridge was certified by Guinness World Records on Tuesday.

About half the size of the Zhaozhou Bridge, the 3D-printed structure was created by a research team led by Professor Ma Guowei of the Hebei University of Technology.

It has been installed on one of the university's campuses.



Tourists view the Zhaozhou Bridge, the oldest standing stone-arched bridge in China, across the Xiaohe River in Zhaoxian County, north China's Hebei Province, April 5, 2019. (Xinhua/Liang Zidong)

The Zhaozhou Bridge, also known as Anji Bridge, stands over the Xiaohe River in Zhaoxian County, Hebei Province. It was built during the Sui Dynasty (581-618).


----------



## antonius123

*[BEWARE] China's 'Robot Worms' Can Penetrate Brain; Are They Capable of Controlling Humans?*
22 July 2020, 8:50 am EDT By _Giuliano J. de Leon_ Tech Times
China created tiny robot worms that could crawl inside the human body. South China Morning Post (SCMP) previously reported that scientists in Shenzhen successfully developed a machine that could penetrate the human brain.





(Photo : Screenshot from Youtube)
CHINA'S BLACK MAGIC: Chinese Robot Worms Can Crawl Inside Your Brain; Will This Lead to an Apocalypse?
*Also Read: Elon Musk-Backed AI Company Launches New Tool that Writes Naturally Like Humans*

Today World's report compared China's technology to an ancient southern Chinese form of black magic called "Gu." This black magic can summon a poisonous worm-like creature that could grow in a pot and control people's minds.


*Also Read: **LOOK: Robot With Artificial Skin Could Sense Touches 10 Times Faster Than the Blink of An Eye*

The tiny robots could enter the human body by moving along blood vessels and attaching itself to the neurons until it arrives in your brain.

"In a way, it is similar to Gu," said a lead scientist for the project at the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xu Tiantian.

"But our purpose is not developing a biological weapon. It's the opposite," she clarified. Developing this type of technology is not common since many science labs across the globe were able to produce "micro-bots." However, most of them can only do simple tasks.

China's "iRobots" was revealed in a series of videos released by the Chinese researchers together with a study published by Advanced Functional Materials. The tiny robot worms can be seen swimming and hurdling through a tube, as well as squeezing through a gap half their body width.

*How do "iRobot" worms work?*
The report explained that the robot worms are powered by an external magnetic field generator, instead of batteries or computer chips. This allows scientists to manipulate the robot worm's body by twisting out in many different ways, achieving a wide range of movements such as rolling, crawling, and swimming.





(Photo : Screenshot from Twitter post of @skinnygdance)
CHINA'S BLACK MAGIC: Chinese Robot Worms Can Crawl Inside Your Brain; Will This Lead to an Apocalypse?
@angelwomble18 The Robot Worms! pic.twitter.com/VqXv8k0qCM — Gil Marom (@skinnygdance) June 29, 2013
The tiny robots are integrated with infrared radiation allowing them to contract their bodies by more than a third so that they can squeeze through tight gaps. It can change its color because of its transparent, temperature-responsive hydrogel structure, giving it invisibility in room-temperature water.

Scientists used a neodymium-iron-boron magnet to create its head, while its tail is constructed from a special composite material. Xi Tiantian said that it will be used for medical purposes. She explained that doctors can inject into the human body to deliver drugs or medicines to a targeted location, such as a tumor.

This can provide patients with fast recovery since the drugs it will deliver will only focus on the body part that needs it, reducing the risk of side effects. It was also explained that the robots can exit the body once it successfully delivered the medicines. 
https://www.techtimes.com/articles/...etrate-your-brain-can-they-control-humans.htm

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1288466934099521540Science Magazine @ScienceMagazine

A novel approach to alloy design is capable of producing superlattice materials with mechanical & thermal properties that exceed traditional limits, which could be crucial in a variety of applications, including aerospace and automotive engineering. ($)




Ultrahigh-strength and ductile superlattice alloys with nanoscale disordered interfaces
Jet turbine blades and other objects with ultrahigh strength at high temperatures are made of special alloys that are often grown as costly single crystals to help avoid failure. Yang et al. discov...
science.sciencemag.org

9:30 PM · Jul 29, 2020

https://twitter.com/intent/like?ref...8466934099521540&tweet_id=1288466934099521540

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese institute to develop two big science projects*
Source: Xinhua| 2020-07-30 17:55:12|Editor: huaxia

BEIJING, July 30 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has started pre-development of two big science projects related to the atmosphere and magnetism.

A big science project is an important symbol of a country's sci-tech strength, which needs large-scale investment for building and long-term stable operations, said a report by the Science and Technology Daily.

Developed by the Hefei Institute of Physical Science under the CAS, one of the projects is used for stereoscopic detection from the atmosphere, aimed at supporting decision-making for regional air pollution control and related issues.

The pre-development for stereoscopic detection is under way. It includes the construction of meteorological gradient observation tower for the atmosphere and key technology development for atmospheric composition stereoscopic detection system, said the report.

The other big science project involves construction of steady-state magnetic devices with the highest magnetic field strength in the world. It aims to serve major national needs such as new electronic materials, as well as the energy and chemical industry, by constructing high temperature superconducting magnet system, and strong magnetic field and laser integrated system.

Currently, the institute has three big science project installations. The construction of the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak, also called the "Chinese artificial sun," and the Steady High Magnetic Field Facility has been completed.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1290595375661772802China Xinhua News @XHNews

Chinese air taxi maker EHang launches its first large-payload intelligent aerial firefighting vehicle, capable of extinguishing high-rise fires

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Love Love:
1


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1292656919358746624
China Science @ChinaScience
https://help.twitter.com/rules-and-policies/state-affiliated-china
A medical tech firm in E China’s Jiangsu independently developed China’s first portable ECMO system which has entered the registration process for mass production. The OASSIST ECMO system successfully completed world’s 1st ECMO portable mode test on awake experimental animals.










11:00 AM · Aug 10, 2020

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## bolo

JSCh said:


> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1292656919358746624
> China Science @ChinaScience
> A medical tech firm in E China’s Jiangsu independently developed China’s first portable ECMO system which has entered the registration process for mass production. The OASSIST ECMO system successfully completed world’s 1st ECMO portable mode test on awake experimental animals.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 11:00 AM · Aug 10, 2020


What is this machine's function?


----------



## JSCh

bolo said:


> What is this machine's function?


*Lung bypass machines can keep covid patients alive. But when should we use them?*
Saving the sickest patients will take enormous amounts of scarce hospital resources.

By Chethan Sathya
Chethan Sathya is a pediatric surgeon and journalist based in New York City.
April 14, 2020 at 6:00 p.m. GMT+8​

When covid-19 patients get so sick that ventilators can no longer keep them alive, doctors have one last-ditch “Hail Mary” option. It’s called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, and it’s a form of lung, and sometimes heart, bypass that my colleagues and I are increasingly turning to during the pandemic.

....

....I thought to myself, why don’t we do this for every patient struggling to live on a ventilator?

But as I learned over time and after many ECMOs, the procedure is a resource-intensive, costly and risky treatment with many complications. And it may only improve survival for a small number of covid-19 patients — though the data is limited. So this raises the question: Should we be adopting widespread use of ECMO for covid-19 patients when our health-care system is struggling with a lack of simpler resources?

Right now, some hospitals across the country are discussing rationing ventilators and considering “do not resuscitate” orders for covid-19 patients because treating some of them may be futile and because we can’t protect health-care workers. On the other hand, many patients and families understandably want to try everything possible, including ECMO, even if the chances of survival are slim.

Just last week, ECMO was used to save a covid-19 patient’s life in Chicago. There are a handful of reports of ECMO being used for covid-19 patients across the country as well. Some projections have suggested that as many as 12,000 to 32,000 covid-19 patients across the United States may need ECMO, depending on how quickly the virus spreads. That would far exceed the number of ECMO for respiratory illnesses that we do yearly in this country. In response to this potential need, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently issued guidance to help expand the availability of devices that could be used for ECMO.

....



ECMO machines can save covid-19 patients. But when should we use them? - The Washington Post

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *High Energy Photon Source Starts Construction in Beijing*
> Jun 29, 2019
> 
> China' s High Energy Photon Source (HEPS), the country' s first high-energy synchrotron radiation light source and soon one of the world' s brightest fourth-generation synchrotron radiation facilities, began construction in Beijing' s Huairou District on June 29, 2019.
> 
> As one of the China' s key scientific and technological infrastructure projects under the 13th Five-year Plan, HEPS will be an important platform for original and innovative research in basic science and engineering.
> 
> HEPS is being built in Huairou' s Science City, located in northern Beijing, and will comprise accelerators, beamlines and auxiliary facilities. Prof. WANG Yifang, director of the Institute of High Energy Physics, said the overall shape of HEPS looked like a gigantic magnifier. “It means HEPS is a powerful tool for characterizing micro-structures.”
> 
> The storage ring of HEPS will be 1360.4m in circumference, with the electron energy of 6 GeV and the brightness of higher than 1×1022 phs/s/mm2/mrad2/0.1%BW.
> 
> "By using the 7BA (7-Bending achromat) lattice structure, the horizontal emittance of the electron beam could be smaller than 60 pm·rad, which is the main feature of fourth-generation diffraction limited light sources," said Prof. QIN Qing, HEPS project manager.
> 
> HEPS can accommodate more than 90 high-performance beamlines and stations. In the first phase, 14 public beamlines and stations will be available for researchers in the fields of engineering materials, energy and environment, medicine and food industry, petrochemistry and chemical industry, etc.
> 
> HEPS will provide high-brightness and high-coherence photon beam with a high energy up to 300 keV, while offering a nm level spatial resolution, ps level time resolution, and meV level energy resolution research platform.
> 
> In addition to providing conventional technical support for general users, HEPS will also offer an advanced technology support for research related to national development and key industrial needs.
> 
> HEPS will serve as a multi-dimensional, real-time, in-situ characterization platform for analyzing engineering materials and their structures. It can be used to observe the whole process of their evolution and provide information for the design and regulation of functional materials. HEPS will also become an important platform for international cooperation and basic science research.
> 
> Proposed in early 2016, HEPS was officially approved by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China's top economic planner, on Dec. 15, 2017. The estimated construction period is six and a half years.
> 
> 
> High Energy Photon Source Starts Construction in Beijing---Chinese Academy of Sciences


中科院高能所
18分钟前 来自 微博 weibo.com
#高性能WR1800波导定向耦合器自主研制成功#近日，高能同步辐射光源（HEPS）加速器部高频系统对自主研制的国产WR1800波导（Rectangular Waveguide，长边18英寸的矩形波导）定向耦合器进行了测试，所有测试结果均优于同型号的进口产品，研制取得成功。这标志着我国在加速器设备的自主研制方面又攻克了一道“卡脖子”难关，且定向耦合器的关键指标——方向性，在冷测和高功率测试下，结果均优于国外进口产品。










此前，我国在大尺寸波导器件上基本依赖进口，国产的定向耦合器方向性仅20dB左右，无法满足高功率下对于高精度功率采样的要求。为了摆脱进口依赖并节约成本，HEPS高频系统于2019年启动了WR1800波导器件的自主研制。​*Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences*
18 minutes ago from Weibo

#High-performance WR1800 waveguide directional coupler successfully developed independently#

Recently, the high-frequency system of the High Energy Photon Source (HEPS) accelerator department tested the domestically developed WR1800 waveguide (Rectangular Waveguide, 18-inch long side rectangular waveguide) directional coupler independently developed, and all the test results are better than the imported models of the same type. This indicates that China has overcome another difficulty in the independent development of accelerator component, and the key indicator of directional couplers—directivity, is better than imported products under cold and high-power tests.

Previously, China basically relied on imports for large-size waveguide devices, and the directivity of domestically produced directional couplers was only about 20dB, which could not meet the requirements for high-precision power sampling at high power. In order to get rid of import dependence and save costs, the HEPS high-frequency system launched the independent development of WR1800 waveguide devices in 2019.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese scientists develop first storage medium using silk proteins, implantable in human body*
Source: Global Times Published: 2020/8/11 12:33:48



Future technology Illustration: VCG

Chinese scientists have developed the world's first hard drive memory using natural bioproteins, media reported on Tuesday. 

The silk fibroin hard drive not only stores information, but also things such as blood samples, DNA and vaccines, and can even be implanted into living organisms, including the human body. It marks the first time a high capacity biological storage technology based on silk protein has been realized.

"Silk drives can store both digital and life information. Its biological compatibility is good and can be implanted into living organisms, such as human body, which can be preserved for a long time or even forever," said Tao Hu, one of the main authors of the study and a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology of Chinese Academy of Science. 

The paper outlining the breakthrough, A Rewritable Optical Storage Medium of Silk Proteins Using Near-Field Nano-Optics, was published on Monday in renowned international journal Nature Nanotechnology. 

As an optical storage medium, the silk drive can store digital and biological information with a capacity of 64 GB per square inch and exhibits long-term stability under various harsh conditions. The silk fibroin storage medium is also resistant to bacterial infection and heat-triggered, enzyme-assisted decomposition, according to the paper.

The information in the silk hard drive remained "safe and sound" even after 30 minutes on high heat in the microwave, according to Tao, thepaper.cn reported.

"Just like the metal dogtags worn by soldiers in movies, the silk memory drive can be made into a nameplate that will never be lost. It can be made into a time capsule with a predefined life span, with controllable degradation. It even promises to hold information under extreme conditions such as outer space," said Tao.

As for the commercial prospects of the technology, Liu Mengkun, a professor at Stony Brook University of New York and co-corresponding author of the paper, said that the team had modified silk proteins to achieve information storage for reading purposes.

"In the future, through continuous optimization and improvement of silk protein memory storage capacity and its read-write rate, this technology is expected to become the next generation of high-capacity and high-reliability information storage technology," biotech.com reported on Tuesday, citing Liu.

The technology has been patented and will be commercialized in the future, Liu added.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1292869579023298564Physical Review Lett @PhysRevLett
The Daya Bay and MINOS collaborations combine data to rule out, at the 99% confidence level, signals of sterile neutrinos that were seen by the LSND and MiniBooNE collaborations. Letter: https://go.aps.org/2XMCifq 
Viewpoint:



Sterile Neutrino Down but Not Completely Out
Neutrino experiments place the most stringent limits to date on a hypothetical fourth neutrino, but the possibility that such a particle exists remains open.
physics.aps.org

1:05 AM · Aug 11, 2020


----------



## JSCh

*Animal behaviour: Pheromone turns locusts into a swarm enemy*
Nature
August 13, 2020

The pheromone that causes locusts to swarm is revealed in a study published in this week’s _Nature_. The discovery might aid the development of new methods to control locust outbreaks.

As the most widely distributed and one of the most dangerous locust species, the migratory locust (Locustia migratoria) represents a serious threat to agriculture worldwide. In this study, Le Kang and colleagues identify a small organic compound called 4-vinylanisole (4VA) that is released by gregarious migratory locusts. The molecule acts as a powerful attractant to migratory locusts of all ages and both sexes, and if four or five solitary locusts are housed together, they too begin to produce and emit the pheromone. It also attracts locusts in the field.

The pheromone is detected by specific sensory cells, called basiconic sensilla, which are found in the locusts’ antennae. Here, the molecule binds to a specific olfactory receptor, called OR35. Locusts engineered to lack this receptor are less attracted to 4VA, the authors report.

Based on their findings, the authors highlight several possible scenarios worthy of future exploration. If a synthetic version of 4VA was deployed in the wild, for example, it could potentially be used to lure locusts into traps where they could be killed. Alternatively, if a chemical that blocks the activity of the molecule was released, it might prevent the locusts from aggregating and migrating. Further research is needed to the test the feasibility of these and other related strategies.


Animal behaviour: Pheromone turns locusts into a swarm enemy | Nature | Nature Research


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1293767269458223105

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *First Successful Operation of CSNS Cryogenic System*
> Sep 18, 2017
> 
> The cryogenic system for the China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS) cryogenic system has been successfully operated over the past four weeks since August 16th.
> 
> Cooling of the CSNS cryogenic system was started on August 16th. After 25 hours, the temperature of the whole system had decreased smoothly to 18K. The heater of the hydrogen circulation cold box was loaded to 700 W, then the cryogenic system was switched to a stable state and send out the ‘Ready’ signal.
> 
> On August 28th, a neutron beam was successfully obtained at CSNS for the first time. The cryogenic system worked steadily, and satisfied the requirements for neutron physics. After targeting, the cryogenic system kept running and the two hydrogen pumps were tested separately and proved stable.
> 
> First operation results showed that the performance of the cryogenic system met the technical specifications and requirements.
> 
> The cryogenic system was warmed up again on September 13th, completing the first round of testing. The stability and reliability of the CSNS cryogenic system were tested and proven.
> 
> Experience gained during this operation period will lay a solid foundation for long-term stable operation in the future. For the next step, the CSNS cryogenic system will run in conjunction with beam tuning for the target station and spectrometer.
> 
> 
> First Successful Operation of CSNS Cryogenic System---Chinese Academy of Sciences
> 
> 
> #####
> ​* Breakthrough technology puts China in elite science club *
> Source:Global Times Published: 2017/9/18 19:43:39
> 
> 
> 
> The pictured is part of the 'super microscope' in Dongguan, South China's Guangdong Province. Photo: VCG
> 
> China celebrated a major scientific breakthrough on August 28, 2017, when the China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS) produced its first neutron beam.
> 
> The CSNS will provide powerful support to high-value scientific projects and seeks to make great contributions to China's sustainable development and national security.
> 
> Hailed as a "super microscope", the CSNS offers an excellent resource for scientists looking to probe the micro-cosmos.
> 
> *Going local*
> 
> The discovery and application of neutrons were one of the most significant scientific achievements of the 20th century, said Chen Hesheng, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
> 
> As well as being non-destructive, neutrons are electrically neutral and have high penetrativity, and are thus able to differentiate between light elements, isotopes and neighboring elements. As a result, neutron scattering is one of the best approaches to studying material structures and dynamic properties.
> 
> "When projected onto samples, the neutrons react with the nucleus and magnetic moments and then produce scattering," said Chen, adding that scientists study the microstructures and law of motion of each material by measuring the energy and momentum changes in the scattering.
> 
> Though neutrons are tiny particles, a spallation neutron source is a bulky device that integrates the most advanced technologies. China is the fourth country in the world to have developed its own spallation neutron source after the UK, the US, and Japan.
> 
> Because of the high costs of some key components offered by foreign companies, Chinese researchers of the CSNS decided to develop their own technologies to manufacture the parts. Through cooperation with a number of institutions, they finally succeeded after years of endeavor, said Fu Shinian, vice general manager of the CSNS.
> 
> "By breaking down a series of technical barriers, we have localized over 96% of the parts, and the development of some of the devices is taking the lead in the international community," Chen introduced.
> 
> *Wide application
> *
> After 10 years of construction, the CSNS will be soon completed and make its first step toward industrialization.
> 
> The technology is expected to usher in a new era of oncotherapy in the next five years. "Boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) is a technology used to treat tumors through neutron beams," said Zhang Zhongneng, chairman of the pharmaceutical manufacturing company HEC Group.
> 
> "It is able to kill cancer cells without damaging peripheral tissues, featuring a high level of safety, high precision and low cost," he added.
> 
> HEC Group has signed a cooperative agreement with the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences to carry out a BNCT treatment project by exploiting the spallation neutron source. A commercial BNCT treatment center is scheduled to be established, said Wang Yifang, president of the IHEP.
> 
> However, life sciences are not the only field in which the CSNS can be applied. As a new platform of interdisciplinary studies, it can be broadly used in a number of sectors including materials science, chemical engineering, resource and environment and new energy.
> 
> The spallation neutron source can also be used for the study of the formation mechanism and stability condition of methane clathrate, offering a scientific basis to promote a more secure and effective exploitation of combustible ice, Chen explained.
> 
> *Innovation hub*
> 
> China has a unique advantage over the three other spallation neutron sources in that it enjoys close integration with the manufacturing industry.
> 
> Dongguan, southern China's Guangdong province, where the CSNS is located, is home to 2,028 high-tech companies. The city is planning to build a 45.7-square kilometer industrial park for neutron technology, said Huang Qinghui, deputy mayor of Dongguan.
> 
> Currently, the industrial park is bringing together a batch of internationally influential companies. Huawei, a Chinese multinational networking and telecommunications equipment and services company, will send a total of 30,000 researchers to the park. The industrial park will attract more personnel upon completion, becoming a hub for 600 scientists to carry out their research simultaneously.
> 
> According to Huang, the CSNS project contributed to China's rapid development of the technology and industrial application of neutron scattering, particularly in the Greater Pearl River Delta region.


*China Builds First Accelerator-based Facility for Boron Neutron Capture Therapy Experiments----Chinese Academy of Sciences*
Editor: LIU Jia | Aug 13, 2020

The successful development of China's first accelerator-based facility for boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) experiments was announced on Aug. 13 by the Dongguan Campus of the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

IHEP also announced that it has started its first round of cell and small animal experiments using the facility. This project, which has received support from the Guangdong Province and city of Dongguan will lay a solid technical foundation for clinical trials, thus benefiting the domestic industrialization of BNCT facility and technical innovation in cancer treatment in China.

*When Neutron Meets Boron*
BNCT is regarded as one of the most cutting-edge techniques for cancer treatment in the world. It starts with injection of a tumor-localizing drug containing boron that accumulates in cancer cells. The patient is then irradiated with a neutron beam for less than an hour. When the boron in the cancer cells is hit by the neutron beam, a nuclear reaction occurs that creates alpha particles and lithium nuclei that destroy cancer cells precisely, without destroying surrounding healthy tissue.

"Alpha particles and lithium nuclei both have a very short range of impact, only one cell long, so they only kill the targeted cancer cells without damaging surrounding tissue." said Prof. LIANG Tianjiao, deputy director of the Dongguan Campus. LIANG noted that BNCT is an effective treatment for gliomas, melanomas and recurrent head and neck tumors, and is also a potential treatment for liver, lung, and pancreatic cancers.

"Patients can maintain a high quality of life after a short and flexible treatment course, without a huge economic burden," said LIANG, also pointing out that the development of a new generation of drugs will enable more types of cancer to be treated by BNCT.

The world's first accelerator-based BNCT facility and boron-containing drug were approved by Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare in March. A hospital in Japan has since begun accepting patients, thus representing the first clinical application of BNCT in the world.

*China Spallation Neutron Source Contributes Accelerator Technology*
Accelerator technology from the China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS), also housed on IHEP's Dongguan Campus, has been key to the development of the new BNCT facility. In past decades, the source of neutron beams for BNCT was often a nuclear reactor, thus slowing the development of this therapy.

Prof. FU Shinian, deputy manager of CSNS, said the development of BNCT was constrained for decades because most high-power neutron sources are installed in large-scale scientific laboratories, and only around 1,400 clinical trials using reactor-based BNCT have been conducted worldwide.

In contrast, the accelerator-based BNCT facility, being radiographic, can be installed more broadly, thus enabling a wider range of applications, such as customized BNCT treatments.

"If you can use accelerators to produce neutrons, it's easier to apply the technique in hospitals," said FU.

FU pointed out that the accelerators used in BNCT have much lower energy and use different target materials than the accelerator used in the CSNS project, which was completed in 2018 on the Dongguan Campus. He said the BNCT experimental facility successfully obtained its first neutron beam last year. FU noted that this milestone showed the "high quality and reliability of the processing, manufacturing, installation and commissioning of our equipment."

The BNCT project is the first industrial project to use accelerator technology from CSNS, showing how the large-scale scientific facility can contribute not only to basic research but also industrial development and technological innovation.

*Clinical Trials Expected Soon*
Researchers continue to optimize the BNCT facility to achieve the best performance. Plans have also been made to conduct more cell and animal experiments. The BNCT facility offers an experimental environment for the research and development of a new generation of boron-containing drugs. It will also contribute to subsequent clinical trials, especially in safety verification.

Based on its experience in developing the first BNCT facility, IHEP has cooperated with Dongguan People's Hospital in the R&D of a second facility. It is scheduled to begin a clinical trial soon and eventually carry out clinical treatments.

CHEN Yanwei, deputy director of IHEP, said the accelerator-based BNCT system will not only enhance China's role in developing large-scale medical systems, but also "benefit the whole society." "I am expecting a brand new era of cancer treatment to come soon," said CHEN.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1297478689626771459Science News @ScienceNews
This ichthyosaur might have eaten the meal of its life. Specifically, it may have died after downing a reptile nearly the size of itself.



An ichthyosaur died after eating a creature nearly as long as itself
Ichthyosaurs, marine reptiles generally thought to munch on soft prey like cephalopods, may have chowed down on fellow big marine reptiles, too.
sciencenews.org
6:20 PM · Aug 23, 2020


----------



## JSCh

AUGUST 31, 2020 FEATURE
*A new strategy for the electrochemical reduction of nitrate to ammonia*
by Ingrid Fadelli , Phys.org



Proposed structure of Cu-incorporated PTCDA and schematic diagram illustrating its advantage of selectively reducing NO3− into NH3 via direct 8-eletron transfer. Red, white, gray, brilliant-blue, and green spheres represent the O, H, C, Cu, and N atoms, respectively. Credit: Chen et al.

Ammonia (NH3) is a colorless, gaseous and water-soluble compound used in several sectors, including agriculture, the energy sector, and a variety of industries. For over a century, the main way of producing large quantities of ammonia has been via the Haber-Bosch process, which entails the use of high pressure to produce a chemical reaction that enables the direct synthesis of ammonia from hydrogen and nitrogen.

While the Haber-Bosch process enables the mass production of ammonia, it is known to be harmful for both humans and the environment, as it involves the consumption of fossil fuels and thus aggravates the greenhouse effect. Due to these undesirable effects, researchers have sought alternative methods for producing ammonia via N2−H2O chemical reactions under ambient conditions, some of which utilize renewable energy sources.

Some of these new techniques for the production of ammonia have been found to be effective and relatively inexpensive. Nonetheless, they typically only allowed researchers to produce limited quantities of ammonia and exhibited a poor selectivity, due to the inert N≡N bond and the ultralow solubility of N2 in water.

Researchers at South China University of Technology and Argonne National Laboratory have recently devised a new electrochemical strategy to produce ammonia through the reduction of nitrate. Their method, introduced in a paper published in _Nature Energy_, is based on the use of a copper-molecular solid catalyst.

....


https://phys.org/news/2020-08-strategy-electrochemical-reduction-nitrate-ammonia.html

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 2-SEP-2020
*Continuous and stable lasing achieved from low-cost perovskites at room temperature*
Suppression of long-lived energetic states called triplet excitons shown to be key for preventing the "lasing death" that has been limiting long operation

KYUSHU UNIVERSITY



​A layer of perovskite is shown lasing green under continuous operation at room temperature. Research from Kyushu University and Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, indicates that suppressing triplet excitons is important for overcoming the lasing death phenomenon that has so far prevented long operation from the low-cost materials.
*CREDIT*
Chuanjiang Qin, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences


An international team of researchers led by Kyushu University and Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has demonstrated stable, continuous lasing at room temperature for over an hour from a class of low-cost materials called perovskites by finally overcoming a phenomenon that has so far prevented such long operation.

Used in everything from manufacturing and research to communications and entertainment because of their highly uniform light emission, lasers are often classified by the material in them that converts input energy--usually either light or electricity--into light, with common materials including inorganic and organic semiconductors, gases, and crystals.

Recent developments in a class of materials known as perovskites have made them attractive for lasers because they can be fabricated from solution at low cost to have tunable colors and excellent stability, but a phenomenon termed lasing death causes lasing under constant operation at room temperature to stop after a few minutes for reasons that have been unclear.

Now, researchers from Kyushu University and Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry report in the journal _Nature_ that they have managed to overcome lasing death in quasi-2D perovskites by taking into consideration energetic states called triplet excitons.

"The realization of lasers based on organic semiconductors has primarily been impeded by losses caused by the buildup of triplets. However, the situation for triplets in quasi-2D perovskites had yet to be fully considered," says Chuanjiang Qin, professor of Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and lead researcher on the study.

While energy in optoelectronic devices is often considered in terms of positive and negative charges, opposite charges can also come together and temporarily form an energetic state called an exciton before releasing their energy. Excitons are frequently observed in organic semiconductors and, because of quantum mechanics considerations, most often fall into two types termed singlets and triplets, with light emission being nearly impossible for triplets.

The quasi-2D perovskites the researchers studied are a combination of inorganics and organics, with regions of perovskite crystals consisting of the same components repeated in every direction sandwiched between organic sheets. The team recently found evidence of triplet excitons with long lifetimes of nearly one microsecond in the materials, so they focused on triplets as the possible cause of the lasing death.

"Triplets do not emit light and have a tendency to interact with light-emitting singlets in a way that causes both to lose their energy without producing light," explains Qin. "Thus, if triplets are present in perovskites, we likely need to get them out of the way so they do not interfere with lasing."

To do this, the researchers incorporated into the perovskites an organic layer that holds triplets in a low energy state. Because the excitons want to move to lower energies, the long-lived triplet excitons transfer from the light-emitting portion of the perovskite to the organic layers, thereby reducing losses and allowing lasing under constant optical excitation to continue without interruption. Alternatively, the researchers found they could also obtain continuous lasing by simply putting the perovskite layer in air since oxygen can destroy triplets, further confirming that losses caused by triplets are one possible cause of lasing death.

In their best optically powered devices, intensity of lasing under continuous operation was almost unchanged after one hour at room temperature in air with a relative humidity of 55%, and the lasing spectra maintained its narrowness without shifting.

"We have demonstrated the key role of triplets in the lasing process of these types of perovskites and the importance of managing triplets to achieve continuous lasing," says Chihaya Adachi, director of Kyushu University's Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics Research and leader of the Kyushu University team. "These new findings will pave the way for the future development of a new class of electrically operated lasers based on perovskites that are low cost and easily fabricated."

Continuous and stable lasing achieved from low-cost perovskites at room temperature | EurekAlert! Science News

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Grandy

*China claims quantum leap with machine declared a million times greater than Google’s Sycamore * 

*Physicist Pan Jianwei says his team achieved quantum supremacy but ‘further verification’ is necessary*
*Pan’s team has received generous and consistent financial support from the Chinese government*
A Chinese physicist claimed to have built a quantum computer that would leave Western competitors in the dust, but he and his team said they needed to “further verify” the claim.
Pan Jianwei, a physicist from the University of Science and Technology of China, announced at a lecture at Westlake University, Hangzhou, on September 5 that a new machine had recently achieved “quantum supremacy” one million times greater than the record currently held by Sycamore, a quantum computer built by Google.
Sycamore completed in about 200 seconds a calculation that would keep the fastest computer on Earth busy for 10,000 years, according to a paper published by Google researchers last year. *Read more ...*

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## samsara

JSCh said:


> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1288466934099521540Science Magazine @ScienceMagazine
> 
> A novel approach to alloy design is capable of producing superlattice materials with mechanical & thermal properties that exceed traditional limits, which could be crucial in a variety of applications, including aerospace and automotive engineering. ($)
> 
> 
> 
> Ultrahigh-strength and ductile superlattice alloys with nanoscale disordered interfaces
> Jet turbine blades and other objects with ultrahigh strength at high temperatures are made of special alloys that are often grown as costly single crystals to help avoid failure. Yang et al. discov...
> science.sciencemag.org
> 
> 9:30 PM · Jul 29, 2020
> 
> https://twitter.com/intent/like?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1288466934099521540|twgr^&ref_url=https://s9e.github.io/iframe/twitter.min.html1288466934099521540&tweet_id=1288466934099521540


*Ultrahigh-strength and ductile superlattice alloys with nanoscale disordered interfaces*

By *T. Yang* _1,2_; *Y. L. Zhao* _1,3_; *W. P. Li* _3_; *C. Y. Yu* _4_; *J. H. Luan* _3_; *D. Y. Lin* _5_; *L. Fan* _6;_ *Z. B. Jiao* _6_; *W. H. Liu* _7_; *X. J. Liu* _7,8_; *J. J. Kai* _1,3_; *J. C. Huang* _2,3_; *C. T. Liu* _1,2,3_

1 = Department of Mechanical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
2 = Hong Kong Institute for Advanced Study, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
3 = Department of Materials Science and Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
4 = College of Physics and Optoelectronic Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China.
5 = Software Center for High Performance Numerical Simulation and Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics, Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics, Beijing, China.

6 = Department of Mechanical Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China.
7 = School of Materials Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, China.
8 = Institute of Materials Genome and Big Data, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, China.

* These authors contributed equally to this work.


*Science 24 Jul 2020:*
Vol. 369, Issue 6502, pp. 427-432
DOI: 10.1126/science.abb6830


*Strength through disorder*

_Jet turbine blades and other objects with ultrahigh strength at high temperatures are made of special alloys that are often grown as costly single crystals to help avoid failure. Yang et al. discovered that adding a small amount of boron in a nickel-cobalt-iron-aluminum-titanium alloy creates an ultrahigh-strength material. Critically, the alloy has a nanoscale-disordered interface in between crystal grains that substantially improves the ductility while preventing high-temperature grain coarsening. This alloy design creates attractive high-temperature properties for various applications._

Science, this issue p. 427


*Abstract

Alloys that have high strengths at high temperatures* are crucial for a variety of important industries *including aerospace*. Alloys with ordered superlattice structures are attractive for this purpose but generally suffer from poor ductility and rapid grain coarsening. We discovered that _nanoscale disordered interfaces_ can effectively overcome these problems. Interfacial disordering is driven by multielement cosegregation that creates a distinctive _nanolayer_ between adjacent micrometer-scale superlattice grains. This nanolayer acts as a _sustainable ductilizing source_, which _prevents brittle intergranular fractures_ by enhancing dislocation mobilities. Our superlattice materials have _ultrahigh strengths of 1.6 gigapascals with tensile ductilities of 25% at ambient temperature_. Simultaneously, we achieved negligible grain coarsening with exceptional softening resistance at elevated temperatures. Designing similar nanolayers may open a pathway for further optimization of alloy properties.






Science | AAAS







science.sciencemag.org


----------



## Grandy

*China’s novel flying robot able to take scientific research to Qinghai-Tibet Plateau *

Global Times Published: 2020/9/14 11:13:33






Flying robot "Yunque" developed by Chinese researchers at the Shenyang Institute of Automation Photo: Chinanews.com

A novel flying robot independently developed by Chinese researchers at the Shenyang Institute of Automation is now able to carry out scientific investigation in a high altitude area - the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in Southwest China, making it the first ever Chinese robot with such capability.

Named "Yunque" (Skylark), the flying robot can fly and land autonomously, fly along the scheduled path, adjust flight altitude automatically according to the landform, and avoid both dynamic and static obstacles in hostile environment, such as the thin air and strong winds on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is known for its high altitude, thin air and changeable weather, which have posed great difficulties and dangers to scientific investigators. The robot can help reveal the mechanism of the environmental change of the plateau and promote the ecological and environmental protection.

Breaking through the bottleneck of some key technologies, "Yunque" is capable of loading equipment of five kilograms, withstanding moderate gale as well as flying for nearly 30 minutes at an altitude of 6,000 meters above sea level.

In recent examinations, the robot has finished the thermal infrared image monitoring of ice temperature, three-dimensional topographic surveying and modeling, as well as upper atmosphere temperature and humidity pressure monitoring in a glacier area 6,000 meters above sea level.

In another investigation at the Nam Co Lake in Southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, "Yunque" has collected deep water samples automatically and monitored the real-time lake water temperature through vertical profile.

Local newspaper Shenyang Daily said the robot can fly to all field stations on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and most of the glacier areas on the plateau.

The Shenyang Institute of Automation under the Chinese Academy of Sciences is a cradle of China's robotic technology, focusing on robotics, intelligent manufacturing and opto-electronic information technology.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1304016786677997569


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1313954401321725953


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1314203899188797440

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

↑↑↑
*Chinese researchers develop new hazardous compounds screening method*
_Source: Xinhua_|_ 2020-10-08 18:22:54_|_Editor: huaxia_

BEIJING, Oct. 8 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers have developed a new method to improve the screening of hazardous compounds in agricultural products, providing a new strategy for ensuring food safety, according to the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS).

Conventional food safety detection methods can only detect one or several types of agricultural and veterinary drugs, and the same sample needs to be analyzed by many different detection methods, which is time-consuming.

Researchers from the Institute of Apicultural Research under the CAAS developed a new integrated data acquisition method based on a high-resolution mass spectrometry platform, which is suitable for high throughput screening of mixed pollutants such as veterinary drugs, pesticides, and mycotoxins in agricultural products.

This method was successfully applied to analyze 180 veterinary drugs in milk, 220 pesticides in tomatoes, and 50 mycotoxins in maize, respectively. Results showed that it achieves a higher rate of identification and lower false results for targeted compounds compared with previous methods.

The method improves the utilization rate of the equipment, avoids repeated data collection, and helps save the screening cost.

The research was published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 8-OCT-2020
*Mystery solved: How do tips of plants stay virus-free? | EurekAlert! Science News*
UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY OF CHINA

Plants are able to keep growing indefinitely because they have tissues made of meristems--plant stem cells--which have the unique ability to transform themselves into the various specialized cells that make up the plant, dividing whenever appropriate and producing new cells of whatever type as needed. Meristems exist at the tips of all plants, allowing them to grow new stems or new roots, and, in trees, also in the trunk, where they add extra girth.

It has been known since the 1950s that the meristems at the tips of plants, or shoot apical meristems (SAM), have the remarkable ability to remain virus-free as they give birth to their specialized daughter cells, even if the rest of the plant is thoroughly infected by a virus. This happens not just for one or even a few viruses, but a very wide range of them.

This virus-beating ability in perhaps the most important part of a plant has been exploited by scientists and farmers since then in order to cultivate new plants from donor plants that are infected, but without passing on the virus. They simply snip a tiny part of the tip, raise it for a time in a test tube or petri dish, and repeat it several times, the plant cutting typically grows pathogen-free.

Researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) have offered new insights into this incredible ability in a new study published on Oct 8th in _Science_.

The research team inoculated a thale cress plant (Arabidopsis thaliana, related to cabbage and mustard, often used in botanical research as a model organism) with Cucumber Mosaic Virus and watched what happened.

As the virus spread towards the SAM, they noticed that it halted just before it got to a region called the WUSCHEL-expression domain. Taking a very close look at the distribution of the WUSCHEL regulator proteins here, they noticed more had appeared where the virus had tried to establish itself upon inoculation. WUSCHEL is an extremely important protein that plays a key, regulating role in determining stem cell fate, at the early stages of the development of a plant embryo, and also oversees the meristems, maintaining them in an undifferentiated state and specifying what sort of daughter cells they will produce.

Then they inoculated virus directly into the cress's stem cell and just below it, and found that the virus only spread in the latter region. "There's a chemical called dexamethasone that can induce production of these WUSCHEL proteins in our tested plants," said Zhong Zhao, paper author and a professor from the School of Life Science at USTC, "so next, we inoculated more cress with the virus and then gave some of the plants dexamethasone treatment, and some we just left alone." Some 89 percent of the plants without the treatment were infected with the virus, but 90 percent of those with the treatment were free from virus invasion.

How WUSCHEL beat virus? They found surprisingly that the WUSCHEL proteins worked to inhibit production of viral proteins.

Viruses can't make their own proteins, but rather hijack the protein assembly line of an organism and make it produce copies of the virus. The WUSCHEL proteins, which do so much to regulate the SAM, had in essence frozen all protein production--whether by the plant for itself or when hijacked by the virus--thus preventing the viruses from replicating.

Genes similar to those that direct production of WUSCHEL proteins in the thale cress are very widespread across the plant kingdom, so the researchers are interested in seeing "whether this strategy can be applied in breeding to obtain broad-spectrum antiviral crop varieties in the future" says Zhao.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 8-OCT-2020
*Engineered electrode material moves battery research closer to 'holy grail' | EurekAlert! Science News*
UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY OF CHINA

Electric vehicles are gaining in popularity, but their long charging time is a significant detraction for potential customers. While a typical SUV with a combustion engine could travel 300 miles with a five-minute refuel, a state-of-the-art electric vehicle takes about one hour to store enough energy to travel the same distance. The technology for a high-capacity Lithium-ion battery that charges quickly and operates efficiently is still an unrealized goal -- but researchers are now closer than ever.

An international team of researchers published details of an engineered electrode material that allows for such advanced batteries on Oct 8th in _Science__._

"The combination of high energy, high rate, and long cycle life is the holy grail of battery research, which is determined by one of the key components of the battery: the electrode materials," said Hengxing Ji, professor at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). "We aim to search for an electrode material that can make a dent in performance metrics from laboratory research and can hold the promise to stand with the industrial production techniques and requirements."

Energy enters and leaves the battery by electrochemical reactions in electrodes, so efficient and effective Lithium-ion transfer is of the utmost importance, according to first author Hongchang Jin of USTC, especially in transferring the energy from the battery to the device via the anode.

The researchers turned to black phosphorus, a material that has been considered for use in electrodes before but is usually abandoned due to its tendency to deform along its layered edges, making the transfer of Lithium-ions deeply inefficient and rendering a lower quality material. By combining black phosphorus with graphite, the chemical bonds between these two materials stabilize and prevent the problematic edge changes.

The team also tackled another issue hindering the material: Electrolytes can break down into less conductive pieces and build up on the surface of the electrode, inhibiting Lithium-ion transfer into the electrode material, like dust obscuring light through glass. The team applied a thin polymer gel coating to the electrode materials and reinforced the Lithium-ion transport path, effectively preventing the issue.

"The composite anode material restored 80% of its full capacity in less than 10 minutes and shows a 2000-cycle operation life at room temperature, which was measured at conditions compatible with the industrial fabrication processes," said co-first author Sen Xin, professor of the Institute of Chemistry Chinese Academy of Sciences. "If scalable production can be achieved, this material may provide an alternative, updated graphite anode, and move us toward a Lithium-ion battery with energy density of more than 350 watts-hour per kilogram and fast-charging capability. Successful projection of the above parameters onto the electric vehicle will significantly raise its competitiveness against the fuel cars."

The 350 watts-hour per kilogram describes the energy capacity of the battery -- an electric vehicle with such a battery could travel 600 miles on a single charge. For comparison, the on-market Tesla Model S can travel 400 miles on one charge.

With this novel technology, Ji said the researchers plan to pursue both fundamental scientific questions of the Lithium-ion charging-discharging process and industry-related questions on ways to scale composite material production in more mild conditions.

"We will investigate engineering materials of rationally selected structure, but with consideration for price and practicality to achieve an attractive performance," Ji said.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1316700346228469761China Economy @CE_ChinaEconomy
China state-affiliated media

China has stepped up its efforts to establish a nationwide project for earthquake alerts and plans to build over 15000 monitoring stations in 5 years, which could report even distant earthquakes in 5-10 seconds, experts from the China Earthquake Administration revealed.




7:20 PM · Oct 15, 2020

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Love Love:
1


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1316906709663842307
China Science @ChinaScience
China state-affiliated media

Chinese scientists for the 1st time proposed ‘neuromorphic completeness’, which offers a corresponding system hierarchy for neuromorphic computing, providing a promising platform for artificial general intelligence development. https://bit.ly/2H6yyQC




9:00 AM · Oct 16, 2020









Brain-inspired computing boosted by new concept of completeness


Hierarchy that could speed research into neuromorphic computers.




www.nature.com

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Love Love:
1


----------



## JSCh

科技日报​60分钟前 来自 微博 weibo.com​【#中国科学家把微波测量灵敏度提高1000倍#



】山西大学激光光谱研究所贾锁堂教授和肖连团教授带领团队，在国际上首次实现里德堡原子微波超外差接收机样机，极大提升了微波电场场强的探测灵敏度，微波测量灵敏度达55nV/(cm·Hz1/2)，优于之前国际最好水平1000倍，最小可探测微波场强约400pV/cm，优于之前国际最好水平10000倍。​肖连团教授表示，该项研究成果极大地推动了微波电场精密测量领域的发展，在国防安全、微波通信、量子计量、电子信息等领域具有重要的应用价值。（科技日报记者 王海滨）_O_我科学家把微波测量灵敏度提高1000倍​
*Science and Technology Daily
60 minutes ago from Weibo*

[Chinese scientists increase the sensitivity of microwave measurement by 1,000 times]

Professor Jia Suotang and Professor Xiao Liantuan from the Institute of Laser Spectroscopy of Shanxi University led the team to realize the Rydberg Atomic Microwave Superheterodyne Receiver prototype for the first time in the world. Which greatly improved the detection sensitivity of microwave electric field strength, and the microwave measurement sensitivity reached 55nV /(cm·Hz1/2), 1000 times better than the previous best international level, and the smallest detectable microwave field strength is about 400pV/cm, which is 10000 times better than the previous best international level.

Professor Xiao Liantuan said that the research results have greatly promoted the development of the field of precision measurement of microwave electric fields and have important application values in the fields of national security, microwave communications, quantum metrology, and electronic information. (Science and Technology Daily reporter Wang Haibin)


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1267500109564203010

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1325843184933597190Medical Xpress @medical_xpress
Scientists snap together molecular building blocks of brain computing @NatureNeuro

Scientists snap together molecular building blocks of brain computing​Synapses are specialized brain structures where learning and memory occur. The efficient transmission of synaptic signals relies on the delicate structure and complex molecular composition of the...​medicalxpress.com​12:50 AM · Nov 10, 2020


====================+++++++====================​

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1325855145608044545Physics Magazine @APSPhysicsEd

How do you get the quantum Hall effect out of flatland? As theorists explain, you need a charge-density wave driven by electron-phonon interactions. See Viewpoint by @foatorres.




Digging into the 3D Quantum Hall Effect
Theorists invoke electron-phonon interactions to explain the recent observation of the quantum Hall effect in a 3D electronic system.
physics.aps.org

1:37 AM · Nov 10, 2020


----------



## JSCh

中国航天科技集团​今天 10:33 来自 360安全浏览器​【原地起飞！我国首个单人飞行滑板车来了！】这款由我航一院14所系统研发部研制的飞行滑板车，可用于个人快速低空飞行，还能用在高空作业、消防救灾、复杂地形人员搜寻与急救等方面，同时也可以作为无人投送平台，在应急支援、货物自动投送等方面发挥作用。它可载重160斤，航程达20公里，最高飞到1000米，主要在100米以下低空飞行，由动力系统、控制系统和结构系统三大部分组成。（来源：航天科技集团一院）​
*China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation
Today at 10:33 from 360 Safe Browser*

[Take off in place! The first single flying hoverboard of China is here!]

This flying hoverboard developed by the 14th System R&D Department of the First Academy of CASC, can be used for personal rapid low-altitude flight, and can also be used in high-altitude operations, firefighting and disaster relief, complex terrain personnel search and first aid etc. It can also be used as an unmanned delivery platform plays a role in emergency support and automatic delivery of goods. It can load 160 kg, range up to 20 kilometers, and fly up to 1,000 meters. It mainly flies at low altitudes below 100 meters. It consists of three parts: power system, control system and system structure. (Source: First Academy of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp.)

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Wow Wow:
1


----------



## Beast

JSCh said:


> 中国航天科技集团​今天 10:33 来自 360安全浏览器​【原地起飞！我国首个单人飞行滑板车来了！】这款由我航一院14所系统研发部研制的飞行滑板车，可用于个人快速低空飞行，还能用在高空作业、消防救灾、复杂地形人员搜寻与急救等方面，同时也可以作为无人投送平台，在应急支援、货物自动投送等方面发挥作用。它可载重160斤，航程达20公里，最高飞到1000米，主要在100米以下低空飞行，由动力系统、控制系统和结构系统三大部分组成。（来源：航天科技集团一院）​
> *China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation
> Today at 10:33 from 360 Safe Browser*
> 
> [Take off in place! The first single flying hoverboard of China is here!]
> 
> This flying hoverboard developed by the 14th System R&D Department of the First Academy of CASC, can be used for personal rapid low-altitude flight, and can also be used in high-altitude operations, firefighting and disaster relief, complex terrain personnel search and first aid etc. It can also be used as an unmanned delivery platform plays a role in emergency support and automatic delivery of goods. It can load 160 kg, range up to 20 kilometers, and fly up to 1,000 meters. It mainly flies at low altitudes below 100 meters. It consists of three parts: power system, control system and system structure. (Source: First Academy of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp.)
> 
> View attachment 687173
> 
> View attachment 687174
> 
> View attachment 687175
> 
> View attachment 687176​


Carry the fuel as backpack? That is sucidal.


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> 中国航天科技集团​今天 10:33 来自 360安全浏览器​【原地起飞！我国首个单人飞行滑板车来了！】这款由我航一院14所系统研发部研制的飞行滑板车，可用于个人快速低空飞行，还能用在高空作业、消防救灾、复杂地形人员搜寻与急救等方面，同时也可以作为无人投送平台，在应急支援、货物自动投送等方面发挥作用。它可载重160斤，航程达20公里，最高飞到1000米，主要在100米以下低空飞行，由动力系统、控制系统和结构系统三大部分组成。（来源：航天科技集团一院）​
> *China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation
> Today at 10:33 from 360 Safe Browser*
> 
> [Take off in place! The first single flying hoverboard of China is here!]
> 
> This flying hoverboard developed by the 14th System R&D Department of the First Academy of CASC, can be used for personal rapid low-altitude flight, and can also be used in high-altitude operations, firefighting and disaster relief, complex terrain personnel search and first aid etc. It can also be used as an unmanned delivery platform plays a role in emergency support and automatic delivery of goods. It can load 160 kg, range up to 20 kilometers, and fly up to 1,000 meters. It mainly flies at low altitudes below 100 meters. It consists of three parts: power system, control system and system structure. (Source: First Academy of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp.)
> 
> View attachment 687173
> 
> View attachment 687174
> 
> View attachment 687175
> 
> View attachment 687176​



*China's first flying scooter demonstrates high performance*
Source: Global Times Published: 2020/11/11 9:57:47





Flying scooter Photo: Courtesy of the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology

A team of Chinese rocket experts has developed China's first flying scooter that will be used in situations including high-altitude operations, firefighting and relief, search and rescue by complex terrain personnel and first aid.

The China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, the organization that develops the famous Long March rocket for satellites, said on Monday that their self-developed portable one-man flying scooter is better in performance than the world standard, filling the gap of the technology and performance of flying scooters in the world.

At present, the single-person flying scooter is at the development stage in foreign countries, and only France has mastered the pedal-type flying skateboard technology, while most of the single-person flying equipment developed in other countries is based on piggyback, which is not good for flight maneuvers, and the pilot's aerial activities are restricted, according to the academy.

On the other hand, the portable one-man flying scooter of the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology has higher safety performance, stronger maneuverability and more operational flexibility.

The scooter can travel up to 20 kilometers with the load of 80 kilograms. Although it is mostly operated below 100 meters, its highest flying altitude can reach up to 1,000 meters, the academy said.

To operate the scooter, the pilot just needs to stand upright on the device and use the center of gravity to control the stability of the skateboard and maintain the flight status.

The key part of the flying scooter that determine its high performance is its advanced design in micro-turbine engine and fuel pack.

The power system consists of five micro-turbine engines and fuel packs. The skateboard is powered by five tiny turbojet engines, which rotate and vector-swing, and not all are required for normal flight, but can be used in the event of a single engine failure.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

↑↑↑ 
Video link -> _L_小央视频的秒拍视频

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## samsara

*China's deep-sea manned submersible dives 10,909 meters in Mariana Trench*

CGTN - Updated 15:46, 10-Nov-2020







China's deep-sea manned submersible "Fendouzhe," which means "striver" in Chinese, *descended 10,909 meters in the Mariana Trench* on Tuesday.

Three divers sent back a group photo with each person carrying a food plate in hand after four hours of the mission. 

According to the exploration team, the crew will work for 6 hours in data collection and actual exploration when the vessel reaches the deepest spot.

*That spot, known as the Challenger Deep, is roughly 10,900 meters deep. The water pressure is 110 kPa, equivalent to 2,000 African elephants. *

*The cabin shell uses titanium*, a perfect material with low density and high strength that allows the submersible not only to bear water pressure at 10,000 meters, but also to reduce self mass and expand interior space.

Powered by a lithium battery, the Striver can unload the equipment onboard and pick up samples from the surrounding environment with its *flexible robotic arms*. The arms *can operate at an accuracy of one centimeter*, the research team said.

It is *more capable than its predecessor* Shenhai Yongshi (Deep Sea Warrior), as it can carry three researchers to more than 10,000 meters (more than 32,800 feet) deep, according to the China Ship Scientific Research Center.

*China's submersible family

In June 2012, China's first deep-sea manned submersible, Jiaolong*, named after the mythical sea dragon, set China's previous diving record by plunging 7,062 meters down the Mariana Trench. Previously, Jiaolong was based on Xiangyanghong 09, a survey vessel in service since 1978.

"Deep sea warrior" is the second manned sub that can reach a depth of 4,500 meters. Ninety-five technology components applied on the second generation subs are domestically made, according to the design team. 

It has made 43 dives, and conducted geological, geophysical, geo-chemical and biological investigations and sampling of hydrothermal systems on the seabed since it has put into service.









China's deep-sea manned submersible dives 10,909 meters in Mariana Trench


China's deep-sea manned submersible "Fendouzhe," which means "striver" in Chinese, descended 10,909 meters in the Mariana Trench on Tuesday.




news.cgtn.com





~~~~~~~~~~~~

*China's manned sub dives over 10,000 meters in Mariana Trench*

_*China's deep-sea manned submersible, Fendouzhe (Striver), successfully landed on the bottom of the *_*Mariana Trench*_* at a depth of 10,909 meters on Tuesday.*_ 

_*The Fendouzhe project was launched in 2016 with some of the best submersible engineers in China. The vessel is China's latest self-developed submersible.*_

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1326561431249149952

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1327129541693812737Energy China @EnergyChinaNews

Have you ever seen a power distribution room built with 3D printing technology? Recently, contracted by #EnergyChina, the construction of the Baiyun Power Distribution Room was completed in Guangzhou, China. Click on the video to watch the whole construction process!

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Wow Wow:
1


----------



## samsara

samsara said:


> *China's deep-sea manned submersible dives 10,909 meters in Mariana Trench*
> 
> CGTN - Updated 15:46, 10-Nov-2020
> 
> View attachment 687555
> 
> 
> China's deep-sea manned submersible "Fendouzhe," which means "striver" in Chinese, *descended 10,909 meters in the Mariana Trench* on Tuesday.
> 
> Three divers sent back a group photo with each person carrying a food plate in hand after four hours of the mission.
> 
> According to the exploration team, the crew will work for 6 hours in data collection and actual exploration when the vessel reaches the deepest spot.
> 
> *That spot, known as the Challenger Deep, is roughly 10,900 meters deep. The water pressure is 110 kPa, equivalent to 2,000 African elephants. *
> 
> *The cabin shell uses titanium*, a perfect material with low density and high strength that allows the submersible not only to bear water pressure at 10,000 meters, but also to reduce self mass and expand interior space.
> 
> Powered by a lithium battery, the Striver can unload the equipment onboard and pick up samples from the surrounding environment with its *flexible robotic arms*. The arms *can operate at an accuracy of one centimeter*, the research team said.
> 
> It is *more capable than its predecessor* Shenhai Yongshi (Deep Sea Warrior), as it can carry three researchers to more than 10,000 meters (more than 32,800 feet) deep, according to the China Ship Scientific Research Center.
> 
> *China's submersible family
> 
> In June 2012, China's first deep-sea manned submersible, Jiaolong*, named after the mythical sea dragon, set China's previous diving record by plunging 7,062 meters down the Mariana Trench. Previously, Jiaolong was based on Xiangyanghong 09, a survey vessel in service since 1978.
> 
> "Deep sea warrior" is the second manned sub that can reach a depth of 4,500 meters. Ninety-five technology components applied on the second generation subs are domestically made, according to the design team.
> 
> It has made 43 dives, and conducted geological, geophysical, geo-chemical and biological investigations and sampling of hydrothermal systems on the seabed since it has put into service.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> China's deep-sea manned submersible dives 10,909 meters in Mariana Trench
> 
> 
> China's deep-sea manned submersible "Fendouzhe," which means "striver" in Chinese, descended 10,909 meters in the Mariana Trench on Tuesday.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> news.cgtn.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~
> 
> *China's manned sub dives over 10,000 meters in Mariana Trench*
> 
> _*China's deep-sea manned submersible, Fendouzhe (Striver), successfully landed on the bottom of the *_*Mariana Trench*_* at a depth of 10,909 meters on Tuesday.*_
> 
> _*The Fendouzhe project was launched in 2016 with some of the best submersible engineers in China. The vessel is China's latest self-developed submersible.*_


重大突破！刚刚，中国载人潜水器，成功下沉海底10909米，打破世界纪录





_Great breakthrough! Just now, the Chinese manned submersible, Fendouzhe 奋斗者 means Striver, *successfully landed at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, world's deepest seabed at the depth of 10909 meters*, breaking the *60-year-old world record* on Tuesday, November 10th, 2020._

_Unfortunately, that Chinese footage has no Engsub._

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*TU Delft formula brings green new battery closer to reality*
NEWS - 09 NOVEMBER 2020 - COMMUNICATION TNW

*Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) have developed a method to predict the atomic structure of sodium-ion batteries. Until now, this was impossible even with the best supercomputers. The findings can significantly speed up research into sodium-ion batteries. As a result, this type of battery can become a serious technology next to the popular Li-ion batteries found in our smartphones, laptops and electric cars. The researchers have published their findings in the prestigious scientific journal Science.*

....








TU Delft formula brings green new battery closer to reality







www.tudelft.nl

Reactions: Like Like:
4


----------



## antonius123

*Huawei pushes the envelope with liquid lens technology*

Report claims Huawei's upcoming P50 series camera lens will have a focusing time of just milliseconds
by Dave Makichuk November 30, 2020 

View attachment 692179

Sources say that the new liquid lens technology will be mass produced and commercialized in the next year. Credit: Droid News.

Contrary to all the controversies surrounding Huawei, it has never stopped them from continuing to innovate — a factor that has clearly driven their worldwide success.

Case in point, Huawei is apparently pushing for innovation again with its upcoming flagship series.

A new report has suggested that the company’s Huawei P50 series will feature liquid lens camera technology, which have a focusing time of just milliseconds, tech website Gizmo China reported.

According to a MyDrivers report, sources say that the new liquid lens technology could very well be mass produced and commercialized in the next year.

Furthermore, the new lenses will primarily be used for telephoto lenses, and the Chinese tech giant might also launch related products as well, Gizmo China reported.

The company has been known to be working with liquid lens technology for a while — it applied for a patent back on December 25, 2019.






It was approved on April 7, 2020, Gizmo China reported.

Notably, this new lens offers certain advantages such as extremely fast focusing speeds, which can level in just milliseconds, similar to a human eye and with an accuracy rate of almost 100%.

The concept of liquid lenses has been around for quite some time.

Edmundoptics explains the technology as following: “Liquid lenses are small, mechanically or electrically controlled cells containing optical-grade liquid. When a current or voltage is applied to a liquid lens cell, the shape of the cell changes. This change occurs within milliseconds and causes the optical power, and therefore focal length and working distance, to shift.”

This, in turn, would improve the time it takes to focus on a particular subject and could even help with image stabilization as well.

If the Chinese tech giant manages to make the liquid lens technology more durable, then its reliability would also be improved after impacts or accidental drops, Gizmo China reported.

According to the Hindustan Times, Huawei’s P50, which is expected to launch in the *first quarter of 2021, will come with latest Kirin 9000 processor. *









Huawei pushes the envelope with liquid lens technology


Contrary to all the controversies surrounding Huawei, it has never stopped them from continuing to innovate — a factor that has clearly driven their worldwide success. Case in point, Huawei is appa…




asiatimes.com

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Love Love:
2


----------



## JSCh

bobsm said:


> *AIAA awards Chinese scientist its top prize*
> 
> *Updated: 2016-05-26 11:42*
> *By Jin Dan(chinadaily.com.cn)*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Jiang Zonglin introduces the R&D of shockwave hypersonic wind tunnel to the media press in 2012. [Photo/Chinanews.com]
> 
> A world-leading aerospace society has awarded its top prize on ground testing to a Chinese scientist for the first time, demonstrating China's great strides in the field, academic journal Acta Aerodynamica Sinica reported recently.
> 
> The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) presented the Ground Testing Award 2016 to Jiang Zonglin, a scientist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who led China's R&D in the JF12 shockwave hypersonic wind tunnel.
> 
> Jiang was the first Asian scholar to get the Ground Testing Award, first established in 1975.
> 
> The Award is presented to the individual with outstanding achievements in flight simulation, space simulation, propulsion testing, aerodynamic testing, or other ground testing associated with aeronautics and astronautics, according to AIAA’s website.
> 
> Jiang was awarded for "skillful leadership in conceiving, developing and successful commissioning of the world's largest shock tunnel capable of true hypersonic flight simulation".
> 
> In May 2012, China opened the JF12 shockwave hypersonic wind tunnel. Known internationally as the "Hyper Dragon", JF12 is the largest of its kind in the world that can replicate flying conditions between Mach 5 and Mach 9.
> 
> The wind tunnel overcame the scientific hurdle that has thwarted global scientists and engineers for about six decades. According to Chinese Academy of Sciences, JF12 is a 265-metre long tunnel that can replicate flying conditions at an altitude of 25 to 50 km.
> 
> As wind tunnel is the basic research that decides how advanced aircraft may be developed, Jiang's achievement is a new scientific breakthrough in China's aeronautics and astronautics industry, the academic journal said.
> 
> Created in 1963 by the merger of the two great aerospace societies of the day, the American Rocket Society and the Institute of the Aerospace Sciences(AIAA) is the world's largest technical society dedicated to the global aerospace profession.
> 
> The Ground Testing Award is presented annually at the AIAA Aviation and Aeronautics Forum with the nomination deadline by October 1 of the previous year.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Panorama of JF12 shockwave hypersonic wind tunnel at Chinese national key laboratory Qian Xuesen Engineering Science Experiment Base in Huairou district, Beijing, July 26, 2013. [Photo/Chinanews.com]
> 
> http://europe.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-05/26/content_25476137.htm


*Chinese team test jet engine ‘able to reach anywhere on Earth within 2 hours’*

Prototype flown in hypersonic wind tunnel simulating flight conditions at nine times the speed of sound
The ‘sodramjet’ engine could offer the biggest hope so far of commercial flight reaching hypersonic speed, the scientists say
Stephen Chen in Beijing
Published: 6:00am, 1 Dec, 2020

.....









China tests jet engine prototype that could shatter speed records


Prototype of ‘sodramjet’, flown in wind tunnel simulating conditions at nine times the speed of sound, may enable hypersonic commercial flight, scientists say.




www.scmp.com

Reactions: Like Like:
3 | Love Love:
1


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1334753780701814785Yicai Global 第一财经 @yicaichina
China state-affiliated media

China will begin a phase-3 trial of its first #HIV vaccine in 2021, expected to take about two and a half years, Shao Yiming, chief #AIDS expert at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told CGTN. A year after that, the results will be published, he added.




2:57 PM · Dec 4, 2020

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Love Love:
1


----------



## JSCh

Scientists Say Farewell to Daya Bay Site, Proceed with Final Data Analysis


The Daya Bay experiment, which made a high-precision neutrino measurement and had other contributions to neutrino science, is shutting down.




newscenter.lbl.gov

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1342772392226029568Global Times @globaltimesnews
China state-affiliated media

The world's strongest nuclear astrophysical accelerator was initiated in the deepest underground laboratory in the world, 2,400 meters underground, in Jinping, China on Saturday.








6:01 PM · Dec 26, 2020

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*New laser facility takes biomolecules videos*
20:59 UTC+8, 2020-12-28 

A new laser facility capable of taking videos of biomolecules has passed national evaluation, becoming a new member of a cluster of major scientific facilities in the Pudong New Area’s Zhangjiang.

The X-Ray Free-Electron Laser Test Facility, next to the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility, is shaped like a sword and features a free electron laser amplifier and high-performance electron linear accelerator that is able to produce energy of 840 million electron volts.

The facility, built by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Education, together with others including the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility, the National Center for Protein Science Shanghai and the Shanghai Superintense Ultrafast Laser Facility, will form the core of a cluster of scientific facilities in the Zhangjiang Comprehensive National Science Center.

The state evaluation committee said the new facility, through domestic inventions and cross-border cooperation, had achieved a number of innovations and significantly improved China’s research ability in free electron lasers. It also provides technological support and a talent pool for the construction of other laser projects.

There are now just eight X-ray free-electron laser facilities in the world. Germany has two, and the US, Japan, South Korea, Italy and Switzerland have one each.

While the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility, the third-generation of its kind, takes pictures of biomolecules, the X-Ray Free-Electron Laser Test Facility, the fourth-generation, can take videos of them.

The radiation facility allows researchers to only discern the structure of a virus, a protein and even an atom. The new facility allows researchers to see the dynamic micro-world, providing a strong tool for frontier research in biology, energy and materials.

Reactions: Love Love:
1


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1343580695097188355Cell @CellCellPress

New Article now online: Structural basis of γ-secretase inhibition and modulation by small molecule drugs


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 31-DEC-2020
*Stretching diamond for next-generation microelectronics*
CITY UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG



Stretching of microfabricated diamonds pave ways for applications in next-generation microelectronics.
*CREDIT: *Dang Chaoqun / City University of Hong Kong

Diamond is the hardest material in nature. But out of many expectations, it also has great potential as an excellent electronic material. A joint research team led by *City University of Hong Kong (CityU)* has demonstrated for the first time the large, uniform tensile elastic straining of microfabricated diamond arrays through the nanomechanical approach. Their findings have shown the potential of strained diamonds as prime candidates for advanced functional devices in microelectronics, photonics, and quantum information technologies.

The research was co-led by *Dr Lu Yang*, Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering (MNE) at CityU and researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT). Their findings have been recently published in the prestigious scientific journal *Science*, titled "*Achieving large uniform tensile elasticity in microfabricated diamond*".

"This is the first time showing the extremely large, uniform elasticity of diamond by tensile experiments. Our findings demonstrate the possibility of developing electronic devices through 'deep elastic strain engineering' of microfabricated diamond structures," said Dr Lu.

*Diamond: "Mount Everest" of electronic materials*

Well known for its hardness, industrial applications of diamonds are usually cutting, drilling, or grinding. But diamond is also considered as a high-performance electronic and photonic material due to its ultra-high thermal conductivity, exceptional electric charge carrier mobility, high breakdown strength and ultra-wide bandgap. Bandgap is a key property in semi-conductor, and wide bandgap allows operation of high-power or high-frequency devices. "That's why diamond can be considered as 'Mount Everest' of electronic materials, possessing all these excellent properties," Dr Lu said.

However, the large bandgap and tight crystal structure of diamond make it difficult to "dope", a common way to modulate the semi-conductors' electronic properties during production, hence hampering the diamond's industrial application in electronic and optoelectronic devices. A potential alternative is by "strain engineering", that is to apply very large lattice strain, to change the electronic band structure and associated functional properties. But it was considered as "impossible" for diamond due to its extremely high hardness.

Then in 2018, Dr Lu and his collaborators discovered that, surprisingly, nanoscale diamond can be elastically bent with unexpected large local strain. This discovery suggests the change of physical properties in diamond through elastic strain engineering can be possible. Based on this, the latest study showed how this phenomenon can be utilized for developing functional diamond devices.

*Uniform tensile straining across the sample*

The team firstly microfabricated single-crystalline diamond samples from a solid diamond single crystals. The samples were in bridge-like shape - about one micrometre long and 300 nanometres wide, with both ends wider for gripping (See image: Tensile straining of diamond bridges). The diamond bridges were then uniaxially stretched in a well-controlled manner within an electron microscope. Under cycles of continuous and controllable loading-unloading of quantitative tensile tests, the diamond bridges demonstrated a highly uniform, large elastic deformation of about 7.5% strain across the whole gauge section of the specimen, rather than deforming at a localized area in bending. And they recovered their original shape after unloading.

By further optimizing the sample geometry using the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) standard, they achieved a maximum uniform tensile strain of up to 9.7%, which even surpassed the maximum local value in the 2018 study, and was close to the theoretical elastic limit of diamond. More importantly, to demonstrate the strained diamond device concept, the team also realized elastic straining of microfabricated diamond arrays.

*Tuning the bandgap by elastic strains*

The team then performed density functional theory (DFT) calculations to estimate the impact of elastic straining from 0 to 12% on the diamond's electronic properties. The simulation results indicated that the bandgap of diamond generally decreased as the tensile strain increased, with the largest bandgap reduction rate down from about 5 eV to 3 eV at around 9% strain along a specific crystalline orientation. The team performed an electron energy-loss spectroscopy analysis on a pre-strained diamond sample and verified this bandgap decreasing trend.

Their calculation results also showed that, interestingly, the bandgap could change from indirect to direct with the tensile strains larger than 9% along another crystalline orientation. Direct bandgap in semi-conductor means an electron can directly emit a photon, allowing many optoelectronic applications with higher efficiency.

These findings are an early step in achieving deep elastic strain engineering of microfabricated diamonds. By nanomechanical approach, the team demonstrated that the diamond's band structure can be changed, and more importantly, these changes can be continuous and reversible, allowing different applications, from micro/nanoelectromechanical systems (MEMS/NEMS), strain-engineered transistors, to novel optoelectronic and quantum technologies. "I believe a new era for diamond is ahead of us," said Dr Lu.


Stretching diamond for next-generation microelectronics | EurekAlert! Science News


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1345059763017699329


----------



## JSCh

*Sinopec Unit Starts USD535.7 Million Carbon Fiber Project to Wean China Off Imports*
TANG SHIHUA
DATE: 5 HOURS AGO / SOURCE: YICAI





Sinopec Unit Starts USD535.7 Million Carbon Fiber Project to Wean China Off Imports​
(Yicai Global) Jan. 4 -- The Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical unit of state oil and gas giant Sinopec broke ground today on a plant for larger bundles of carbon fiber [48,000 filaments per tow] whose investment is CNY3.5 billion (USD535.7 million), and which will change the current setup in which China’s supply of such new materials depends on imports.

The project with annual capacity of 12,000 tons is set to complete construction and start operation by 2024, Shanghai Observer reported.

Only a handful of developed nations, including the US and Japan, have mastered the manufacturing technologies for these carbon fiber products. China will thus only be able to produce small-bundle carbon fiber with filaments in each tow ranging from 1,000 to 12,000 until the project gets up and running.

This project will apply polyacrylonitrile carbon-based fiber technology Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical independently developed to manufacture the fibers via multiple procedures, including polymerization, spinning, oxidation, carbonization and post-processing. The plant will be fitted with six production lines with respective annual production of 2,000 tons.

The Shanghai-based petrochemical company, which also produces ethylene, fiber, resin and other plastics, set up an innovation research institute for emerging materials to research and develop new substances, with its main aim being attaining engineering technologies for carbon fiber production.

The 48K carbon fiber in larger bundles refers to that with more than 48,000 filaments in each tow, which weighs less than one-quarter as much as steel, but is seven to nine times stronger. This widely-applied material is also anti-corrosive and has a high modulus, which is the measure of a material’s resistance to elastic deformation under stress.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Top 10 Tech Trends in 2021 - ALIBABA DAMO ACADEMY*
Jan 6, 2021
AlibabaTech

Despite the global pandemic, technological and scientific advancements have not experienced any slowing down, with a series of major technological breakthroughs in quantum computing, core materials, and biomedicine being discovered one after the other in 2020. Alibaba's Damo Academy may be hinting at how tech development could be changing our lives sooner than we know through their latest "Top 10 Technology Trends Prediction for 2021". Watch the video now!


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1347119116683943936

BGI Group @TheBgiGroup

A paper presented the genomes of egg-laying mammals, #platypus and #echidna, was published in the #Naturejournal. This large project involved over 40 researchers from institutes including #BGIResearch. Read more: https://nature.com/articles/s41586-020-03039-0…










5:53 PM · Jan 7, 2021


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1346900593458237442


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 6-JAN-2021
*Chinese scientists uncover gene for rice adaption to low soil nitrogen*
CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HEADQUARTERS

​
a. OsTCP19-H is significant correlated with soil nitrogen content. b-f. OsTCP19-H significantly increases grain yield and NUE under LN and MN conditions.
*CREDIT: IGDB*

Chinese scientists from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have found a gene that plays an important role in helping rice adapt to low soil nitrogen.

Nitrogen fertilizer application is a strategic challenge for sustainable agriculture: On the one hand, it plays an indispensable role in increasing crop yields, thus ensuring global food security. On the other hand, it creates a severe threat to ecosystems. For this reason, breeding new crop varieties with high nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) is a high priority for both agricultural production and environmental protection.

....









OsTCP19 has great potential in improving rice NUE


a. OsTCP19-H is significant correlated with soil nitrogen content. b-f. OsTCP19-H significantly increases grain yield and NUE under LN and MN conditions.



www.eurekalert.org






__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1346909487945244678


----------



## CAPRICORN-88

_Self sufficiency is now an import goal for China. By 2025 most of its objectives will be fulfilled ans USA can now longer call the shots. And who do they blame then? 
China is the convenient bogeyman.

Trump has open the Pondora Box and soon many US companies will have to pay for his and Mike Pompeo follies. No genie has appear to wave its magic wand and solve his delusional problem. 

It is a matter of national security for China today after all it was Trump in a retaliatory mood that target ZTE and Huawei and now even SMIC.  _


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1346770007531741185GIZMOCHINA @gizmochina

This Hot Water Mug is a portable power bank & charges your phone wirelessly via heat energy


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese researchers discover new anti-aging gene therapy*
_Source: Xinhua_|_ 2021-01-08 21:24:01_|_Editor: huaxia_

BEIJING, Jan. 8 (Xinhua) -- For the first time, a genome-wide CRISPR-based screening technology has identified a new driver of cellular senescence. It can form part of new strategies to delay aging and prevent aging-associated diseases, Chinese researchers said.

By screening and identifying more than 100 genes responsible for the aging of human cells, the research team demonstrated that knocking out, or disabling, some genes by CRISPR can discourage the aging of human mesenchymal precursor cells (hMPCs). Among the genes that lead to senility, and KAT7 (a histone acetyltransferase), is one of the catalysts for aging.

Knocking out KAT7 has been proven effective in alleviating cellular senescence in the team's experiments, said Zhang Weiqi, a researcher at the Beijing Institute of Genomics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The scientists managed to reduce the proportion of the senescent cells in the livers of aged mice and prolonged the lifespan of physiologically aged mice and those with progeria.

The novel gene therapy, based on disabling a single gene or using KAT7 inhibitors, could extend mammal life. It could also slow down the aging of human liver cells. It suggests a massive potential for its application in translational medicine against human aging.

The study was published on Thursday in Science Translational Medicine online. 



__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1347518283671605250


----------



## JSCh

*Local researchers develop cure for keratitis*
Cai Wenjun
14:46 UTC+8, 2021-01-12 

Local researchers have developed a gene-editing technology to cure keratitis — inflammation of the cornea — and eliminate the virus following successful experiments on mice.

Herpes simplex virus, or HSV, is the most prevalent pathogen, and humans are its only host in the natural world. About 97 percent of the population carries the virus, which can hide inside the nervous system. There is no vaccine or medications that cure it.

HSV is divided into HSV-1 and HSV-2. Herpetic stromal keratitis is caused by HSV type 1, which can lead to numerous diseases. Once infecting the cornea, people can contract herpetic stromal keratitis, the most prevalent infectious keratitis, which blinds 85 percent of carriers. It accounts for half of the blindness in China, according to Dr Hong Jiaxu of the Shanghai Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital, a leading expert in the research.

“Current medication only helps control symptoms, which can’t be eliminated because the virus hides inside the nervous system," Hong said. "Even when people receive a cornea transplant, the disease can relapse. The only cure is to degrade the virus’ genome.”

To help patients with the disease, Hong partnered with researcher Cai Yujia from Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Shanghai Center for Systems Biomedicine to develop a gene-editing method that kills the virus.

Cai’s team invented a new delivery technology that carries the gene therapy to the target.

“Compared with the quick development of gene-editing technology, delivering the technology to the target was a bottleneck," Cai said. "Previous delivery technologies were developed in the West, but we developed our own in the form of the world’s first innovative carrier — a virus-like particle mRNA — to infect the target and deliver the therapy.”

Through its innovative delivery technology, researchers used gene-editing technology to develop a therapy called HSV-1-Erasing Lentiviral Particles, which blocks replication and cures HSV-1 infections.

“The therapy, which is dripped into patients' eyes, can find and 'cut' the virus hidden in the nervous system, which then degrades by itself," Cai said. "With this technology, we can cure keratitis and terminate the virus."

Trials on donated human corneas have shown the therapy's positive results.

“Clinical trials on two patients have also been carried out and the results are being evaluated,” said Hong.

The therapy's research was published on Tuesday by the world-renowned publication "Nature Biotechnology." Research on the therapy's delivery technology was published in "Nature Biomedical Engineering" last week.






The two leading researchers introduce the new gene-editing technology on Tuesday.




Dr Hong Jiaxu of the Shanghai Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital​




Researcher Cai Yujia of Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Shanghai Center for Systems Biomedicine









Local researchers develop cure for keratitis


Local researchers have developed a gene-editing technology to cure keratitis – inflammation of the c




www.shine.cn






__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1348697734103105536


----------



## JSCh

*China's first underwater data center unveiled in Zhuhai*
2021-01-13 09:59:40 Ecns.cn Editor : Luo Pan






(ECNS) -- China's first undersea data center (UDC) was unveiled in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province on Sunday.

The UDC project involves installing Internet facilities like servers in airtight pressure vessels with excellent cooling performance under the ocean surface.

These facilities are powered by subsea composite cables and then transmit data to the Internet.

UDC has the advantage of energy and resources saving by cooling off Internet facilities with a huge amount of circulating seawater.

The biggest bottleneck to data center development is energy consumption. It consumes too much power and cannot be halted for a second. Seawater can be used to reduce energy consumption by about 30 percent, said Xu Tan, vice president of Highlander.

A big data center, with an annual economic volume exceeding 300 billion yuan, is vital to new infrastructure, Xu added.

Currently, most big data centers are built on land, occupying a large amount of space and consuming excessive power and cooling water.

Therefore, it is scientifically most effective to further utilize marine space and deploy China's coastal data centers in offshore waters, Xu said.

UDC is primarily powered by urban industrial power, supplemented by renewable energies like offshore wind, solar and tidal energy, and features low cost, short latency, high reliability and safety.

It is calculated that servers contained within the data center could prove up to eight times more reliable than their dry-land counterparts.


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1350336988981850114People's Daily, China @PDChina
China state-affiliated media

Embark on this vehicle and let’s start our wonderful sightseeing tour! An amphibious vehicle made its debut in Juzizhou Islet scenic spot and sailed on Changsha section of Xiangjiang River in Changsha, central China's Hunan Province on Friday.








3:00 PM · Jan 16, 2021

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*CAS releases top 12 achievements of 2020*
_Source: Xinhua_|_ 2021-01-15 22:43:52_|_Editor: huaxia_

BEIJING, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) on Friday released the top 12 achievements of 2020.

-- FIGHTING COVID-19
Innovative achievements have been made in genome sequencing, information sharing, molecular mechanism study, quick detection, and vaccine development during the battle against COVID-19.

-- LUNAR EXPLORATION
China's Chang'e-5 probe was launched on Nov. 24 and retrieved about 1,731 grams of samples from the moon on Dec. 17.
The Chang'e-4 probe, still working on the far side of the moon, has made a series of scientific discoveries.

-- MANNED DEEP-DIVING
Fendouzhe, China's deep-sea manned submersible, successfully reached the Mariana Trench, going to a depth of 10,909 meters and setting a new record for China's manned deep-diving.

-- BDS-3
China declared the official commissioning of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) on July 31, marking the formal launch of the newly- completed BDS-3 system for global users.
CAS researchers participated in the development and construction of all aspects of the BDS-3 system.

-- SCIENTIFIC EXPEDITION TO THIRD POLE
CAS researchers launched the second scientific expedition to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau to assess the changes due to climate change and human activities in the past decades. The results have supported the construction of China's ecological civilization.

-- FAST STARTS FORMAL OPERATIONS
China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) started formal operations on Jan. 11, 2020 after a three-year trial. FAST, as the world's largest single-dish radio telescope, will gradually open to astronomers around the world.

-- QUANTUM COMMUNICATION, COMPUTING
The "Micius" quantum satellite was used to achieve the first international entanglement-based quantum key distribution at the 1,000-km level.
A quantum computing prototype "Jiuzhang" was built, via which up to 76 photons were detected. The achievement marks China's first milestone on the path to full-scale quantum computing.

-- MYSTERY OF LOCUST SWARMS
Scientists have identified a chemical compound -- 4-vinylanisole -- released by locusts that causes them to form a swarm, offering a new possible way to prevent these insects from devouring crops vital to human survival, as they have done for thousands of years.
-- ANCIENT DNA

Genome-wide data from 26 ancient individuals from northern and southern East Asia dating back 9,500 to 300 years indicate human population shifts and admixture in northern and southern China.

-- MAGNETIC FIELD IN UNIVERSE
Using China's Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (HXMT), scientists discovered the strongest magnetic field ever observed in the universe, on the surface of a neutron star named GRO J1008-57.

BIG EARTH DATA REPORT
The 2020 Report on Big Earth Data in Support of the Sustainable Development Goals, drafted by CAS, showcases China's use of innovation-driven technologies to implement the 2030 Agenda, and in particular, the prospect of utilizing Big Earth Data for monitoring and evaluating the implementation of SDGs.

-- LOCALIZED SPIN-ORBIT POLARON
Scientists first studied localized excitations from single vacancies of a type of magnetic Weyl semimetal, using ultra-low temperature scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy with spin-polarized tip and low temperature atomic force microscopy.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1354510761373134851C&EN @cenmag

A record-breaking platinum-molybdenum catalyst might be just what fuel-cell electric vehicles need. It clears away the carbon monoxide byproduct, making it more feasible to get hydrogen from liquid fuels like methanol.




Catalyst boosts prospects for fuel-cell vehicles​cen.acs.org​
3:25 AM · Jan 28, 2021

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1348667284496261123Phys.org @physorg_com

A charge-#density-wave topological semimetal
@NaturePhysics




A charge-density-wave topological semimetal​Topological materials are characterized by unique electronic and physical properties that are determined by the underlying topology of their electronic systems. Scientists from the Max Planck...​phys.org​
12:25 AM · Jan 12, 2021


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1354530193105367043Carnegie Museum of Natural History @CarnegieMNH

Published today in Nature, researchers from Carnegiemnh, @IUPedu, & the Inner Mongolia Museum of Natural History in China announce a surprising clue in the puzzling evolution of the mammalian middle ear (illustration by Sarah Shelley). Read more @ the AP: https://fal.cn/3d0Jn




4:42 AM · Jan 28, 2021


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1354963517539979270Westlake University @Westlake_Uni

On January 28, Professor Shi Yigong's group of Westlake University published a scientific research paper entitled "Structure of the activated human minor splice" in SCIENCE. This is another major breakthrough in the structural and mechanistic investigations of the spliceosome.


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1354866855773614083Phys.org @physorg_com

Researchers reveal in-situ manipulation of active gold-titanium dioxide #interface @sciencemagazine

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Earth’s mountains may have mysteriously stopped growing for a billion years*
Starting about 1.8 billion years ago, the planet's continental crust thinned, slowing the flow of nutrients into the sea and possibly stalling the evolution of life.

BY *MAYA WEI-HAAS*
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 11, 2021

IF YOU COULD explore Earth’s surface a billion years ago, the most remarkable sight might be the world’s un-remarkability. There would be no trees or bugs, nor birds overhead. The only life is simple and small, a slimy oceanic soup.

And a new study published in _Science_ points to yet another feature that may be missing: towering mountains.

....








Earth’s mountains may have mysteriously stopped growing for a billion years


Starting about 1.8 billion years ago, the planet's continental crust thinned, slowing the flow of nutrients into the sea and possibly stalling the evolution of life.




www.nationalgeographic.com

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

Backpack Makes Loads Feel Lighter and Powers Electronics by Harvesting Energy From Walking


Hikers, soldiers and school children all know the burden of a heavy backpack. But now, researchers have developed a prototype that not only makes loads feel about 20% lighter, but also harvests energy from human movements to power small electronics. The new backpack, reported in ACS Nano, could be e



scitechdaily.com

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1362080571229372417Francis Villatoro@emulenews
Feb 18, 2021

High-resolution X-ray imaging of 3D objects remains a daunting challenge. New paper reports a potential solution to this problem, using nanocrystals that can trap the energy of X-rays for several weeks with a resolution of about 25 micrometres.

#Nature High-resolution X-ray luminescence extension imaging https://nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03251-6… X-ray luminescence extension imaging with resolution greater than 20 line pairs per millimetre and optical memory longer than 15 days. For radiography and mammography, and radiology.









Glowing nanocrystals enable 3D X-ray imaging


Flexible X-ray detectors based on luminescent nanocrystals.




www.nature.com

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Genomic Insights into the Formation of Human Populations in East Asia*

Chuan-Chao Wang, 
Hui-Yuan Yeh, 
[…]
David Reich 
_Nature_ (2021)

*Abstract*
The deep population history of East Asia remains poorly understood due to a lack of ancient DNA data and sparse sampling of present-day people1,2. We report genome-wide data from 166 East Asians dating to 6000 BCE – 1000 CE and 46 present-day groups. Hunter-gatherers from Japan, the Amur River Basin, and people of Neolithic and Iron Age Taiwan and the Tibetan plateau are linked by a deeply-splitting lineage likely reflecting a Late Pleistocene coastal migration. We follow Holocene expansions from four regions. First, hunter-gatherers of Mongolia and the Amur River Basin have ancestry shared by Mongolic and Tungusic language speakers but do not carry West Liao River farmer ancestry contradicting theories that their expansion spread these proto-languages. Second, Yellow River Basin farmers at ~3000 BCE likely spread Sino-Tibetan languages as their ancestry dispersed both to Tibet where it forms up ~84% to some groups and to the Central Plain where it contributed ~59-84% to Han Chinese. Third, people from Taiwan ~1300 BCE to 800 CE derived ~75% ancestry from a lineage also common in modern Austronesian, Tai-Kadai and Austroasiatic speakers likely deriving from Yangtze River Valley farmers; ancient Taiwan people also derived ~25% ancestry from a northern lineage related to but different from Yellow River farmers implying an additional north-to-south expansion. Fourth, Yamnaya Steppe pastoralist ancestry arrived in western Mongolia after ~3000 BCE but was displaced by previously established lineages even while it persisted in western China as expected if it spread the ancestor of Tocharian Indo-European languages. Two later gene flows affected western Mongolia: after ~2000 BCE migrants with Yamnaya and European farmer ancestry, and episodic impacts of later groups with ancestry from Turan.









Genomic insights into the formation of human populations in East Asia - Nature


Genome-wide data from 166 East Asian individuals dating to between 6000 bc and ad 1000 and from 46 present-day groups provide insights into the histories of mixture and migration of human populations in East Asia.




www.nature.com





__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1363909642275946501

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 24-FEB-2021
*Accelerator physics: Experiment reveals new options for synchrotron light sources | EurekAlert! Science News*
An international team has shown through a sensational experiment how diverse the possibilities for employing synchrotron light sources are.

HELMHOLTZ-ZENTRUM BERLIN FÜR MATERIALIEN UND ENERGIE




The illustration visualizes how modulation of electron bunches via laser is used to produce microbunches which emit laserlight.
*CREDIT: *Tsinghua University

The most modern light sources for research are based on particle accelerators. These are large facilities in which electrons are accelerated to almost the speed of light, and then emit light pulses of a special character. In storage-ring-based synchrotron radiation sources, the electron bunches travel in the ring for billions of revolutions, then generate a rapid succession of very bright light pulses in the deflecting magnets. In contrast, the electron bunches in free-electron lasers (FELs) are accelerated linearly and then emit a single super-bright flash of laser-like light. Storage ring sources as well as FEL sources have facilitated advances in many fields in recent years, from deep insights into biological and medical questions to materials research, technology development, and quantum physics.

Now a Sino-German team has shown that a pattern of pulses can be generated in a synchrotron radiation source that combines the advantages of both systems. The synchrotron source delivers short, intense microbunches of electrons that produce radiation pulses having a laser-like character (as with FELs), but which can also follow each other closely in sequence (as with synchrotron light sources).

The idea was developed about ten years ago under the catchphrase "Steady-State Microbunching" (SSMB) by leading accelerator theorist Alexander Chao and his PhD student Daniel Ratner at Stanford University. The mechanism should also make it possible for storage rings to generate light pulses not only at a high repetition rate, but also as coherent radiation like a laser. The young physicist Xiujie Deng from Tsinghua University, Beijing, took up these ideas in his doctoral work and investigated them further theoretically. Chao established contact with the accelerator physicists at HZB in 2017 who operate the Metrology Light Source (MLS) at PTB in addition to the soft X-ray source BESSY II at HZB. The MLS is the first light source in the world to be optimised by design for operation in what is known as "low alpha mode". The electron bunches can be greatly shortened in this mode. The researchers there have been constantly developing this special mode of operation for more than 10 years. "As a result of this development work, we were now able to meet the challenging physical requirements for empirically confirming the SSMB principle at the MLS", explains Markus Ries, accelerator expert at HZB.

"The theory group within the SSMB team had defined the physical boundary conditions for achieving optimal performance of the machine during the preparatory phase. This allowed us to generate the novel machine states with the MLS and adjust them enough together with Deng until we were able to detect the pulse patterns we were looking for", reports Jörg Feikes, accelerator physicist at HZB. The HZB and PTB experts used an optical laser whose light wave was coupled in precise spatial and temporal synchronisation with the electron bunches in the MLS. This modulated the energies of the electrons in the bunches. "That causes the electron bunches, which are a few millimetres long, to split into microbunches (only 1 μm long) after exactly one revolution in the storage ring, and then to emit light pulses that coherently amplify each other like in a laser", explains Jörg Feikes. "The empirical detection of the coherent radiation was anything but easy, but our PTB colleagues developed an innovative optical detection unit with which the detection was successful."

"The highlight future SSMB sources is that they generate laser-like radiation also beyond the visible spectrum of "light", in the EUV range, for example", comments Prof. Mathias Richter, head of department at PTB. And Ries emphasises: "In the final stage, an SSMB source could provide radiation of a new character. The pulses are intense, focused, and narrow-band. They combine the advantages of synchrotron light with the advantages of FEL pulses, so to speak." Feikes adds: "This radiation is potentially suitable for industrial applications. The first light source based on SSMB specifically for application in EUV lithography is already in the planning stage near Beijing."

The work was published on 24 February 2021 in the leading scientific publication _Nature_. 









Experimental demonstration of the mechanism of steady-state microbunching - Nature


The mechanism of steady-state electron microbunching is demonstrated, providing a basis that will enable its full implementation in electron storage rings to generate high-repetition, high-power coherent radiation.




www.nature.com

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Love Love:
1


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 25-FEB-2021
*Scientists probe electronic angular momentum to a chemical reaction for the first time*

DALIAN INSTITUTE OF CHEMICAL PHYSICS, CHINESE ACADEMY SCIENCES



​The left circles are the experimental measurement of the product state-resolved differential cross sections of the F+HD reaction, the right image is the related partial-wave resonance wavefunction of the reaction.
*CREDIT: *DICP

A chemical reaction can be understood in detail at the quantum state-resolved level, through a combined study of molecular crossed beam experiments and theoretical quantum molecular reaction dynamics simulations.

At a single collision condition, the molecular crossed beam apparatus is able to detect the scattering angle-resolved product with rotational state-resolution. Whereas, with accurate global potential energy surface, quantum reactive scattering theory is able to predict the corresponding reactive scattering information.

In previous studies, the chemical reaction dynamics was revealed only with the product rotational state-resolution. And the investigation of a reaction at a finer level would be an inspiring break through.

Recently, Professor YANG Xueming from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Professor WANG Xing'an from the University of Science and Technology of China developed molecular crossed beam apparatus with threshold ionization velocity map imaging technique, enabling to probe the scattering product with high angular resolution with quantum rotational-state recognition.

With this powerful apparatus, in combined with new quantum reactive scattering theory developed by Professor SUN Zhigang from the DICP, which included the electronic angular momentum effect, the electronic angular momentum effect to a chemical reaction was revealed for the first time.

This finding was published online in _Science_ on Feb. 25, 2021.

There is distinguished reactive scattering quantum resonance in the F + HD (the Fluorine atom with the HD isotope of the H2 molecule) reaction. It has been taken as the prototype to resolve partial wave resonance structures in a chemical reaction.

With this feature, the scientists thought that the role of the electronic angular momentum of the F atom in this chemical reaction would be recognized. The F atom was characterized by p electronic orbit with l=1, which could influence the partial wave resonance structures.

It was found that, by including the electronic angular momentum, the single partial wave structure would split into four-fold partial wave resonance structure, which was capable of varying the angular distributions of the chemical product.

The energy of the electronic angular momentum is much smaller than the rotational energy of a diatomic molecule (~ several tens wave number). Its influence to a chemical reaction is subtle and difficult to detect.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

China's top 10 scientific advances in 2020


China's Ministry of Science and Technology unveiled the country's top 10 scientific advances of 2020 on Saturday.




www.chinadaily.com.cn

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

NEWS RELEASE 3-MAR-2021
*Scientists find strongest evidence yet of 'migration gene'*
Researchers combined satellite tracking and genome sequencing to pinpoint specific gene

CARDIFF UNIVERSITY



Tagged peregrine falcon Must credit Andrew Dixon. *CREDIT: Andrew Dixon*

A team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Cardiff University say they have found the strongest evidence yet of a "migration gene" in birds.

The team identified a single gene associated with migration in peregrine falcons by tracking them via satellite technology and combining this with genome sequencing.









Scientists find strongest evidence yet of 'migration gene'


A team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Cardiff University say they have found the strongest evidence yet of a "migration gene" in birds.



www.eurekalert.org













Climate-driven flyway changes and memory-based long-distance migration - Nature


The routes and lengths of migrations of Eurasian Arctic peregrine falcons have probably been shaped by climate change across the Last Glacial Maximumâ€“Holocene transition and by selection for long-term memory acting on ADCY8, respectively.




www.nature.com

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1367847177016537092Nanotechnology News @Nanowerk

Holographic nanostructures on CMOS sensors for energy-efficient AI security schemes

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Large-area display textiles integrated with functional systems*
_Source: Xinhua_|_ 2021-03-11 15:43:24_|_Editor: huaxia_



A researcher of Fudan University shows the electronic textiles in Shanghai, east China, March 10, 2021. (Xinhua/Liu Ying)

SHANGHAI, March 11 (Xinhua) -- Displays are basic building blocks of modern electronics. Integrating displays into textiles offers exciting opportunities for smart electronic textiles, the ultimate goal of wearable technology, poised to change the way in which people interact with electronic devices.

The study, made by a research team led by macromolecular science professor Peng Huisheng of Shanghai-based Fudan University, was published online in the journal _Nature _on March 11 in Beijing time.

Display textiles serve to bridge human-machine interactions, offering, for instance, a real-time communication tool for individuals with voice or speech difficulties, according to the research team.



Combo photo shows the electronic textiles before and after being charged with electricity in Shanghai, east China, March 10, 2021. (Xinhua/Liu Ying)

Electronic textiles capable of communicating, sensing and supplying electricity have been reported previously. However, textiles with functional, large-area displays have not yet been achieved, because it is challenging to obtain small illuminating units that are both durable and easy to assemble over a wide area.

The display textile is flexible and breathable and withstands repeated machine-washing, making it suitable for practical applications. The study also shows that an integrated textile system consisting of display, keyboard and power supply can serve as a communication tool, demonstrating the system's potential within the "internet of things" in various areas, including healthcare.

The approach unifies the fabrication and function of electronic devices with textiles, and scientists expect that woven-fibre materials will shape the next generation of electronics, according to the study.



A researcher of Fudan University shows a school symble made with electronic textiles in Shanghai, east China, March 10, 2021. (Xinhua/Liu Ying)


Macromolecular science professor Peng Huisheng of Fudan University introduces the study on electronic textiles in Shanghai, east China, March 10, 2021. (Xinhua/Liu Ying)


Photo shows the electronic textiles in Shanghai, east China, March 10, 2021. (Xinhua/Liu Ying)




​Macromolecular science professor Peng Huisheng (2nd L) of Fudan University poses for photos with his research team in Shanghai, east China, March 10, 2021. (Xinhua/Liu Ying)


Photo shows the electronic textiles in Shanghai, east China, March 10, 2021. (Xinhua/Liu Ying)









Large-area display textiles integrated with functional systems - Nature


A large electronic display textile that is flexible, breathable and withstands repeated machine-washing is integrated with a keyboard and power supply to create a wearable, durable communication tool.




www.nature.com

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1375054651976978435








Structural insights into the lipid and ligand regulation of serotonin receptors - Nature


Cryo-electron microscopy structures of three different serotonin receptors in complex with serotonin and other agonists provide insights into the role of lipids in regulating these receptors and the structural basis of ligand recognition.




www.nature.com

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1375166214603997186








REV-ERB in GABAergic neurons controls diurnal hepatic insulin sensitivity - Nature


REV-ERB in GABAergic neurons orchestrates the rhythmic sensitivity of hepatic glucose production to insulin-mediated suppression that peaks at wakening, with implications in the extended dawn phenomenon.




www.nature.com

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Understanding the structural and chemical heterogeneities of surface species at the single-bond limit


Advances in tip-based microscopy in materials science have allowed imaging at angstrom-scale resolution, although the technique does not provide clear characterization of the structural and chemical heterogeneities of surface species. In a new report now published on Science, Jiayu Xu and a...




phys.org










AAAS







science.sciencemag.org

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

First known gene transfer from plant to insect identified


Discovery that a whitefly uses a stolen plant gene to elude its host’s defences may offer a route to new pest-control strategies.




www.nature.com





__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1375092987177402374


----------



## aziqbal

.....


----------



## Han Patriot

aziqbal said:


> .....


This guy is supposed to be a think tank?

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Haha Haha:
2


----------



## antonius123

Han Patriot said:


> This guy is supposed to be a think tank?



Nope. Typical a troller, provocator, or propagandist, far from a think thank analyst.

Reactions: Like Like:
4 | Haha Haha:
1


----------



## sinait

Han Patriot said:


> This guy is supposed to be a think tank?


Sure, why NOT?
A think tank *SPECIALIZING IN TROLLING*.
.

Reactions: Like Like:
2 | Love Love:
1


----------



## JSCh

Scientists achieve single-photon imaging over 200 kilometers


A research team led by Professor Pan Jianwei and Professor Xu Feihu from University of Science and Technology of China achieved single-photon 3D imaging over 200 km using high-efficiency optical devices and a new noise-suppression technique, which was commented on by the reviewer as an almost...




phys.org


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1382430962743709705Physics Magazine @PhysicsMagazine

Naturally occurring uranium contains between 140 and 146 neutrons. A newly discovered isotope of the element has just 122. The find may help researchers better understand nuclear stability.




A Lightweight Among Heavyweights
physics.aps.org

4:30 AM · Apr 15, 2021


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1381919991528890368CGN Wageningen @CGN_Wageningen

.@BGI_Genomics and CGN’s Rob van Treuren and Theo van Hintum sequenced a total of 445 Lactuca accessions to generate a map of #lettuce genome variations, identifying the #domestication history and traits of lettuce. Read the publication in @NatureGenet.




Whole-genome resequencing of 445 Lactuca accessions reveals the domestication history of cultivated...
Whole-genome resequencing of 445 Lactuca accessions, including major lettuce crop types and wild relative species, provides a comprehensive map of lettuce genome variations and sheds light on the...
nature.com

6:39 PM · Apr 13, 2021


----------



## antonius123

TCL CSOT Intelligent Manufacturing


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> The Chinese Academy of Science announce that recently, the Institute of Physics and Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has successfully developed a 500W@2K cold compressor prototype, with various performance indicators meeting the predetermined requirements. It is used for superfluid helium cooling technology and is the key technology to ensure the stable operation of the next generation of higher energy superconducting accelerators.


*China’s large-scale cryogenic refrigeration technology makes breakthrough*
By Global Times
Published: Apr 18, 2021 01:23 PM



The large-scale cryogenic refrigeration equipment. Photo:Stdaily.com

China's large-scale cryogenic refrigeration technology, which is fundamental for important industrial sectors such as aerospace and hydrogen energy, has made a major breakthrough, with the ability to cool down -271C with hundred-watt level power.

China's major scientific research project for developing the large-scale cryogenic refrigeration system in liquid helium to superfluid helium temperature range has passed experts' appraisal, Xinhua reported on Saturday. This project is supported by the Ministry of Finance and undertaken by the Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (TIPC-CAS).

China can now develop large-scale cryogenic refrigeration equipment with a liquid helium temperature of 4.2K (-269 C) kilowatt level and superfluid helium temperature of 2K (-271C) hundred-watt level, a milestone which has broken technology monopoly by the developed countries, and made China's large-scale cryogenic refrigeration technology reach the global advanced level, according to TPIC-CAS's official website.

Large-scale cryogenic refrigeration equipment from liquid helium to superfluid helium temperature range is an indispensable core foundation for strategic fields, such as aerospace and hydrogen energy.

China's large-scale cryogenic refrigeration equipment has relied on imports for many years, TPIC-CAS's official website reported, noting that foreign countries have prohibited the key core component and refrigeration equipment used in special fields from exporting to China.

The hundred-watt large refrigerating machines have been successfully put into operation in several industries, such as accelerators and nuclear fusion, according to Xinhua, adding that the research project in developing a large-scale cryogenic refrigeration system has also driven the rapid development of relevant industries, including cryogenic heat exchangers and cryogenic valves. The low-temperature industry cluster with complete functions and clear division of labor has been initially formed now.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese physicist hunts for a ghost particle, undeterred by US-China friction*

Li Liang has worked for nearly a decade on the Muon g-2 experiment involving 200 researchers from seven countries at Fermilab in the US
Teams in China are working on the blueprint for a muon collider with sites in Guangdong province among candidates to host the potential project









Physicist hunts for a ghost particle, undeterred by China-US friction


Li Liang has worked for nearly a decade on the Muon g-2 experiment involving 200 researchers from seven countries at Fermilab in the US.




www.scmp.com


----------



## JSCh

Using a new kind of electron microscopy to measure weak van der Waals interactions


A team of researchers from China, the Netherland and Saudi Arabia has used a new kind of electron microscopy to measure weak van der Waals interactions. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes creating what they describe as a molecular compass to measure weak van der...




phys.org












A single-molecule van der Waals compass - Nature


The orientation of a rotating para-xylene molecule in the nanochannel of a zeolite framework can be visualised by electron microscopy to determine the hostâ€“guest van der Waals interaction inside the channel.




www.nature.com


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1387769989118242823








Expanded diversity of Asgard archaea and their relationships with eukaryotes - Nature


Comparative analysis of 162 genomes of Asgard archaea results in six newly proposed phyla, including a deep branch that is provisionally named Wukongarchaeota, and sheds light on the evolutionary history of this clade.




www.nature.com







__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1387491712013119488








Direct observation of chemical short-range order in a medium-entropy alloy - Nature


Direct experimental evidence of chemical short-range atomic-scale ordering (CSRO) in a VCoNi medium-entropy alloy is provided via diffraction and electron microscopy, analysed from specific crystallographic directions.




www.nature.com


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1347119116683943936
> 
> BGI Group @TheBgiGroup
> 
> A paper presented the genomes of egg-laying mammals, #platypus and #echidna, was published in the #Naturejournal. This large project involved over 40 researchers from institutes including #BGIResearch. Read more: https://nature.com/articles/s41586-020-03039-0…
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 5:53 PM · Jan 7, 2021
> 
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1346900593458237442




__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1387480660089221122








Vertebrate Genomes Project


Reference genome assemblies provide a map of a speciesâ€™ DNA sequence and its spatial contextâ€”that is, where along the chromosomes a specific piece of DNA ...




www.nature.com












Evolutionary and biomedical insights from a marmoset diploid genome assembly - Nature


A trio-binning approach is used to produce a fully haplotype-resolved diploid genome assembly for the common marmoset, providing insight into the heterozygosity spectrum and the evolution of the sex-differentiation region.




www.nature.com


----------



## JSCh

The global race for a T cell receptor that zeros in on—and annihilates—solid tumors


Immunobiologists in China have designed a synthetic T cell receptor for anticancer therapy, engineering the protein not only with a capability to seek and destroy solid tumors, but endowing this cancer fighting weapon with potent endurance to get the job done.




medicalxpress.com


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *China's first underwater data center unveiled in Zhuhai*
> 2021-01-13 09:59:40 Ecns.cn Editor : Luo Pan
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> (ECNS) -- China's first undersea data center (UDC) was unveiled in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province on Sunday.
> 
> The UDC project involves installing Internet facilities like servers in airtight pressure vessels with excellent cooling performance under the ocean surface.
> 
> These facilities are powered by subsea composite cables and then transmit data to the Internet.
> 
> UDC has the advantage of energy and resources saving by cooling off Internet facilities with a huge amount of circulating seawater.
> 
> The biggest bottleneck to data center development is energy consumption. It consumes too much power and cannot be halted for a second. Seawater can be used to reduce energy consumption by about 30 percent, said Xu Tan, vice president of Highlander.
> 
> A big data center, with an annual economic volume exceeding 300 billion yuan, is vital to new infrastructure, Xu added.
> 
> Currently, most big data centers are built on land, occupying a large amount of space and consuming excessive power and cooling water.
> 
> Therefore, it is scientifically most effective to further utilize marine space and deploy China's coastal data centers in offshore waters, Xu said.
> 
> UDC is primarily powered by urban industrial power, supplemented by renewable energies like offshore wind, solar and tidal energy, and features low cost, short latency, high reliability and safety.
> 
> It is calculated that servers contained within the data center could prove up to eight times more reliable than their dry-land counterparts.











China starts building world's first commercial undersea data center


China has commenced work on the world's first undersea commercial data center, with completion expected in five years, the state assets regulator in Hainan Province announced on its website on Monday.




news.cgtn.com


----------



## JSCh

__





Science | AAAS







www.sciencemag.org





__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1397605220474105858


----------



## JSCh

*China issues 5-year action plan for seawater desalination*
_Source: Xinhua_|_ 2021-06-04 14:17:33_|_Editor: huaxia_

BEIJING, June 4 (Xinhua) -- China has issued an action plan for seawater desalination utilization development over the next five years, according to China Science Daily on Friday.

The action plan, jointly issued by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the Ministry of Natural Resources, is expected to promote the large-scale utilization of seawater desalination and ensure the safety of water resources in coastal areas.

China's seawater desalination scale will exceed 2.9 million tonnes per day by 2025, an increase of more than 1.25 million tonnes per day, according to the action plan.

Seawater desalination in coastal cities will increase by more than 1.05 million tonnes per day by 2025, while the island areas will see an increase of more than 200,000 tonnes per day.

The action plan also called for improving water supply security for seawater desalination, expanding the scale of seawater desalination in industrial zones, enhancing the water supply capacity for islands and ships, and exploring the application of desalination technology.

China has constructed 123 seawater desalination projects with a desalination capacity exceeding 1.6 million cubic meters per day, according to the NDRC.

The action plan called for strengthening technology development for seawater desalination, ensuring the safety of industrial and supply chains, and enhancing service capacity.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

AAAS







science.sciencemag.org


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1402213188003778562CSSC_global @CSSC_global

The CGT25-D, a 30MW gas turbine independently developed by CSSC with Chinese independent intellectual property right, was delivered after successful 72-hour ultra-low temperature and high-load test in Russian project field, marking the first overseas operation of its kind.

6:37 PM · Jun 8, 2021

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

OPTICS AND PHOTONICS * 11 JUNE 2021
*Not just sorcery: scientists build an invisible portal : Research Highlights | Nature.com*
_‘Superscattering’ material is used to construct a mini-doorway that is invisible in the microwave portion of the spectrum._

Invisible doorways have long been the stuff of fiction: Harry Potter, for example, entered a hidden portal to catch a train at King’s Cross station in London. Now, a team has disguised a gateway in the real world.

The trick is to use a metamaterial — an artificial structure whose components collectively exhibit properties that the individual components do not. Metamaterials can be used to bend light in unusual ways and, with the right design, they can become ‘superscatterers’ that look larger than they really are.

Huanyang Chen of Xiamen University in China, Rui-Xin Wu at Nanjing University, also in China, and their colleagues built a superscattering metamaterial from iron-rich ceramic rods arranged in parallel. They placed their metamaterial on one side of a 5-centimetre-wide gateway. When they shone microwave radiation at the opening, the metamaterial stopped the waves from moving through the gateway, rendering it ‘invisible’ at microwave wavelengths.

The team confirmed that changing patterns of electron density at the surface of the metamaterial are responsible for repelling the light.









Invisible Gateway by Superscattering Effect of Metamaterials


An invisible gateway experiment at microwave frequencies is demonstrated, providing a real observation of the superscattering effects of metamaterials in electromagnetic waves.




journals.aps.org

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1405536426855329813








Structures of Gi-bound metabotropic glutamate receptors mGlu2 and mGlu4 - Nature


Cryo-electron microscopy structures of mGlu2 and mGlu4 bound to heterotrimeric Gi protein shed light on the molecular basis of asymmetric signal transduction by metabotropic glutamate receptors.




www.nature.com












Structures of human mGlu2 and mGlu7 homo- and heterodimers - Nature


Cryo-electron microscopy structures of homo- and heterodimers of mGlu2 and mGlu7 provide insights into their dimerization modes and the subunit conformational changes that characterize the activation of these class C G-protein-coupled receptors.




www.nature.com


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1407598520752754689Global Times @globaltimesnews
China state-affiliated media

#China on Wed launched its first virtual #EarthLab to simulate climate and ecological systems, which can predict climate variability, prevent natural disasters and improve China’s right to speak in intl negotiations.












China launches first facility exploring Earth system interactions, improving the country’s right to speak in climate negotiations - Global Times







www.globaltimes.cn




3:16 PM · Jun 23, 2021

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1408115374546112518

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1408141258053152768


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1408441329999351808Science News @ScienceNews

The fossil may represent a new species in the human genus that lived more than 146,000 years ago.












‘Dragon Man’ skull may help oust Neandertals as our closest ancient relative


A Chinese fossil has been classified as a new Homo species that lived more than 146,000 years ago, but not all scientists are convinced.




www.sciencenews.org





11:05 PM · Jun 25, 2021


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1408436172989337600Medical Xpress @medical_xpress

New mechanism underlying pyroptosis induced by #Yersinia #infection @sciencemagazine












New mechanism underlying pyroptosis induced by Yersinia infection


Multiple strategies have been employed by pathogenic bacteria to sabotage host innate immune signaling to facilitate their infection.




medicalxpress.com




10:45 PM · Jun 25, 2021






Science | AAAS







science.sciencemag.org


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1409088757861548032Global Times @globaltimesnews
China state-affiliated media

China's first X-ray free electron laser device has acquired femtosecond "water window" band X-ray photos for the first time, marking that X-ray FEL research in China advanced from facility R&D phase to user operation phase which can compete globally.












China’s X-ray free electron laser device obtains femtosecond X-ray pictures for first time - Global Times







www.globaltimes.cn




5:58 PM · Jun 27, 2021


----------



## JSCh

↑↑↑
*Local researchers making 'molecular movies' with ultrafast lasers*
Li Qian
19:06 UTC+8, 2021-06-28



Hu Weicheng / Ti Gong
The Shanghai Soft X-ray Free Electron Laser Facility

There's nothing surprising about using lasers to take pictures of molecules. But how about taking films? It's not just talk.

Last Thursday, in the city's innovation highland of Zhangjiang, researchers fired an ultra-intense ray of light at testing samples to take X-ray photos. It took just 100 femtoseconds.

One femtosecond is equal to one quadrillionth of a second. Think of it this way: nothing is faster than light in a vacuum, but even so, in one femtosecond, it can travel only 300 nanometers – about the diameter of a virus.

Sounds like something in a science-fiction movie? The Shanghai-XFEL Beamline Project (SBP) has made it possible.

"Our cameras can usually take a photo in one thousandth of a second. How about SBP? Its 'shutter speed' is one billion times faster. That is to say, it can capture the moments of some of the speediest processes, such as chemical reactions," said Liu Zhi, SBP general manager.

It enables researchers to get their first foot in the door for "molecular movies." Comparing cells as cities and proteins as cars, Liu said: "We want to see how proteins shuttle to and from."



Li Qian / SHINE
The Experimental Hall

The SBP makes up about one half of the 532-meter-long Shanghai Soft X-ray Free Electron Laser Facility (SXEFL), completing the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle. Following the accelerator, undulator and beamline commissioning, it has started data collection and is approaching full operation.

"Next, we will further optimize the facility performance to reach the perfect state, which is expected to open to users all over the world next year," Liu said.



Li Qian / SHINE
Inside the Experimental Hall

As the fourth-generation light source, it eclipses any other by state-of-the-art, free-electron laser technology.

It can generate laser pulses where all photons are identical, and detect tiny changes in material structures. The peak brightness of this X-ray laser is more than one billion times higher than the nearby Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SSRF), a third-generation light source commonly known as the "Shanghai light source."

The facility is one of two in the world where such experiments have been performed in the "water window," the other being in the United States.

According to Liu Bo, vice general manager of SXEFL, more than 90 percent of the equipment in the facility is domestically developed and manufactured.

The so-called "water window" is occupied by soft X-ray radiation, with a wavelength range from 2.2 to 4.4 nanometers. This spectral window owes its name and significance to the fact that at those frequencies, photons are not absorbed by oxygen (and hence by water), but they are by carbon.

"In this range, water is more transparent to X-rays. But other essential life elements, such as carbon, still interact strongly with X-rays. Therefore, the 'water window' soft X-rays provide a unique opportunity for probing biological materials," Liu Zhi said. "Such ultrabright, ultrafast and coherent pulses enable scientists to take X-ray snapshots of atoms and molecules at work, revealing fundamental processes in materials, technology and living organisms."



Li Qian / SHINE
Inside the Experimental Hall

The SBP was jointly constructed by ShanghaiTech University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics and Shanghai Advanced Research Institute.

The SXFEL, together with SSRF, the Shanghai Super Intense Ultrafast Laser Facility and under-construction Shanghai Hard X-ray FEL Facility (SHINE), will form a cluster of photon science facilities, supporting a world-class photon science research center in Zhangjiang.

"They form a perfect combination. SSRF can discern structures of static systems. SXFEL can track the movements of molecules, but it is still limited and can only see things clearly in the nanometer scale. While SHINE can probe atomic structures," Liu Zhi said. "SHINE is expected to be completed by 2025. Once completed, it means that in Zhangjiang we will have all the cutting-edge light source facilities."


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1410104559926714368China Economy @CE_ChinaEconomy
China state-affiliated media

A research team led by Professor Huang Sanwen with the Agricultural Genomics Institute at #Shenzhen, under the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, has devised a #genome design plan for hybrid potatoes and published their findings in the journal Cell.






1:15 PM · Jun 30, 2021


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1408432175142244361


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *High Energy Photon Source Starts Construction in Beijing*
> Jun 29, 2019
> 
> China' s High Energy Photon Source (HEPS), the country' s first high-energy synchrotron radiation light source and soon one of the world' s brightest fourth-generation synchrotron radiation facilities, began construction in Beijing' s Huairou District on June 29, 2019.
> 
> As one of the China' s key scientific and technological infrastructure projects under the 13th Five-year Plan, HEPS will be an important platform for original and innovative research in basic science and engineering.
> 
> HEPS is being built in Huairou' s Science City, located in northern Beijing, and will comprise accelerators, beamlines and auxiliary facilities. Prof. WANG Yifang, director of the Institute of High Energy Physics, said the overall shape of HEPS looked like a gigantic magnifier. “It means HEPS is a powerful tool for characterizing micro-structures.”
> 
> The storage ring of HEPS will be 1360.4m in circumference, with the electron energy of 6 GeV and the brightness of higher than 1×1022 phs/s/mm2/mrad2/0.1%BW.
> 
> "By using the 7BA (7-Bending achromat) lattice structure, the horizontal emittance of the electron beam could be smaller than 60 pm·rad, which is the main feature of fourth-generation diffraction limited light sources," said Prof. QIN Qing, HEPS project manager.
> 
> HEPS can accommodate more than 90 high-performance beamlines and stations. In the first phase, 14 public beamlines and stations will be available for researchers in the fields of engineering materials, energy and environment, medicine and food industry, petrochemistry and chemical industry, etc.
> 
> HEPS will provide high-brightness and high-coherence photon beam with a high energy up to 300 keV, while offering a nm level spatial resolution, ps level time resolution, and meV level energy resolution research platform.
> 
> In addition to providing conventional technical support for general users, HEPS will also offer an advanced technology support for research related to national development and key industrial needs.
> 
> HEPS will serve as a multi-dimensional, real-time, in-situ characterization platform for analyzing engineering materials and their structures. It can be used to observe the whole process of their evolution and provide information for the design and regulation of functional materials. HEPS will also become an important platform for international cooperation and basic science research.
> 
> Proposed in early 2016, HEPS was officially approved by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China's top economic planner, on Dec. 15, 2017. The estimated construction period is six and a half years.
> 
> 
> High Energy Photon Source Starts Construction in Beijing---Chinese Academy of Sciences




__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1410107579884208133China News 中国新闻网 @Echinanews
China state-affiliated media

China's Platform of Advanced Photon Source (PAPS) technology R&D project started trial operation on Monday in Beijing. The PAPS aims to provide strong support for construction, testing and technology R&D for the High Energy Proton Source (HEPS).


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> A laser in Shanghai, China, has set power records yet fits on tabletops.
> KAN ZHAN​*Physicists are planning to build lasers so powerful they could rip apart empty space*
> By Edwin Cartlidge
> Jan. 24, 2018 , 9:00 AM
> 
> Inside a cramped laboratory in Shanghai, China, physicist Ruxin Li and colleagues are breaking records with the most powerful pulses of light the world has ever seen. At the heart of their laser, called the Shanghai Superintense Ultrafast Laser Facility (SULF), is a single cylinder of titanium-doped sapphire about the width of a Frisbee. After kindling light in the crystal and shunting it through a system of lenses and mirrors, the SULF distills it into pulses of mind-boggling power. In 2016, it achieved an unprecedented 5.3 million billion watts, or petawatts (PW). The lights in Shanghai do not dim each time the laser fires, however. Although the pulses are extraordinarily powerful, they are also infinitesimally brief, lasting less than a trillionth of a second. The researchers are now upgrading their laser and hope to beat their own record by the end of this year with a 10-PW shot, which would pack more than 1000 times the power of all the world's electrical grids combined.
> 
> The group's ambitions don't end there. This year, Li and colleagues intend to start building a 100-PW laser known as the Station of Extreme Light (SEL). By 2023, it could be flinging pulses into a chamber 20 meters underground, subjecting targets to extremes of temperature and pressure not normally found on Earth, a boon to astrophysicists and materials scientists alike. The laser could also power demonstrations of a new way to accelerate particles for use in medicine and high-energy physics. But most alluring, Li says, would be showing that light could tear electrons and their antimatter counterparts, positrons, from empty space—a phenomenon known as "breaking the vacuum." It would be a striking illustration that matter and energy are interchangeable, as Albert Einstein's famous E=mc2 equation states. Although nuclear weapons attest to the conversion of matter into immense amounts of heat and light, doing the reverse is not so easy. But Li says the SEL is up to the task. "That would be very exciting," he says. "It would mean you could generate something from nothing."
> 
> The Chinese group is "definitely leading the way" to 100 PW, says Philip Bucksbaum, an atomic physicist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. But there is plenty of competition. In the next few years, 10-PW devices should switch on in Romania and the Czech Republic as part of Europe's Extreme Light Infrastructure, although the project recently put off its goal of building a 100-PW-scale device. Physicists in Russia have drawn up a design for a 180-PW laser known as the Exawatt Center for Extreme Light Studies (XCELS), while Japanese researchers have put forward proposals for a 30-PW device.
> 
> 
> _*Continue -> *_Physicists are planning to build lasers so powerful they could rip apart empty space | Science | AAAS


*Chinese breakthrough allows physicists to build the world’s most powerful laser*

Technological leap would allow the firing of a laser 10,000 times more powerful than all the electricity grids in the world combined
With this development, the Station of Extreme Light could aid research in new materials, drugs and nuclear fusion energy
Stephen Chen in Beijing
Published: 7:00am, 2 Jul, 2021









Physics breakthrough allows Chinese to build the most powerful laser


Technological leap would allow the firing of a laser 10,000 times more powerful than all the electricity grids in the world combined.




www.scmp.com

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

↑↑↑
*Scientists design novel “multistep pulse compressor” for 10s-100s PW lasers: From CPA to MPC*
Update time： 2021-06-07

In a recent study, scientists at Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, designed a new “multistep pulse compressor(MPC)” for 10s-100s PW lasers. This work had been published in _Optics Express_ on 19 May, 2021.

Petawatt (PW) laser pulses have opened up many important research fields in ultrahigh intensity physics, such as particle acceleration and nonlinear QED. One of the most significant bottlenecks in achieving 10s-100s PW lasers is the limited size and damage threshold of compression gratings. In the 100s PW laser designs of ELI and XCELS, about ten pulse compressors together with tiled-aperture beam-combining were used, which made the system complex, high cost, and difficult to achieve.

In 2020, a new in-house beam-splitting compressor based on the property that the damage threshold of gratings depends on the pulse duration was proposed to simultaneously improve the stability, save on expensive gratings, and simplify compressor size [_Optics Express 28(15):22978(2020)_].

Here, Prof. Jun Liu and his cooperators propose a novel MPC design considering both the temporal and the spatial properties. The idea is the same as chirped pulse amplification (CPA) method which obtained the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics, as shown in Fig.1. The CPA method was proposed to solve the damage problem of laser crystal during improving the laser peak power in 1985 [_Opt. Commun., 55(6):447(1985)_].

In the CPA method, the damage problem of laser crystal is transferred to the laser pulse in the temporal domain to achieve the highest input/output laser energy, and then a pulse stretcher and a pulse compressor are designedly added before and after the laser amplifier, respectively, to solve the induced laser pulse duration issues. The proposed MPC method here is to solve the damage problem of compression gratings during enhancing the laser peak power to extremely high 100s PW level. The damage problems of gratings are transferred to the spatiotemporal properties to achieve the highest input/output pulse energy in the main four-grating compressor (FGC).

Then, a designed pre-compressor and a designed post-compressor are added before and after the FGC, respectively, to solve the induced spatiotemporal problems, as shown in Fig. 2. With this novel design, as high as 100 PW laser with single beam or more than 150 PW through combining two beams can be obtained by using currently available optics, which is simple, low cost, and together with improved laser stability in comparison to previous designs of 100s PW lasers.

This MPC design not only can be used in the SEL-100PW laser system, but also in all other PW laser facilities to improve the peak power and reduce the operation damage risk of gratings. Several 100s PW laser beam is expected to be obtained by using this MPC method in the future, which will further extend the ultra-intense laser physics research fields.

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Instrument Developing Project and the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Major Project.




Fig.1 The comparison of CPA and MPC methods. (Image by SIOM)



Fig.2 The principle of MPC. (Image by SIOM)​Article website:








Multistep pulse compressor for 10s to 100s PW lasers


High-energy tens (10s) to hundreds (100s) petawatt (PW) lasers are key tools for exploring frontier fundamental researches such as strong-field quantum electrodynamics (QED), and the generation of positron-electron pair from vacuum. Recently, pulse compressor became the main obstacle on...




www.osapublishing.org


----------



## JSCh

Making bendable ice by growing single-crystal microfibers


A team of researchers working at Zhejiang University in China has developed a way to grow water ice that is elastic and bendable. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes how they grew their single-crystal microfibers and suggest possible uses for them. Erland...




phys.org









Science | AAAS







science.sciencemag.org


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1413218856307417095








Microfiber-based metafabric provides daytime radiative cooling


A team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions in China has developed a micro-fiber based metafabric that provides wearers with daytime radiative cooling. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes making their fabric and their test results.




techxplore.com

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*China achieves breakthroughs in self-developed no liquid helium dilution refrigerators to solve bottleneck problem in quantum computing*
By Global Times
Published: Jul 13, 2021 11:25 AM






Photo: stdaily.com​
China achieves breakthroughs in self-developed no liquid helium dilution refrigerator, targeting the bottleneck problem in quantum computing, as the technology will guard China’s study and development of quantum computing with a steady cryogenic guarantee, according to an announcement from the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in June.

The complete self-developed prototype of no liquid helium dilution refrigerator by the Institute of Physics has achieved a long-term stable and continuous operation of 10.9 mK (-273.14 degrees) on June 24, marking a significant breakthrough in China’s development of high-end cryogenic machines.

China currently completely relies on imports of helium dilution refrigerators, but the country has identified developing a domestic production capacity as a key priority, science media stdaily.com reported on Tuesday, citing Ji Zhongqing, a researcher from the Institute of Physics.

Helium dilution refrigerators are an irreplaceable element for the research and development of quantum computing, providing an extreme cryogenic environment for quantum computers to function normally, according to stdaily.com.

No liquid helium dilution refrigerators are able to achieve an extreme temperature of just 0.01 degree above the absolute zero without the aid of liquid helium, which are also the dilution refrigerators with the lowest temperature that are commercially available on the market, according to media reports.

The newly developed prototype of no liquid helium dilution refrigerator will solve the bottleneck problem in quantum computing, said Ji, adding that mastering the core technology of dilution refrigeration indicates that China has the ability to provide extremely low temperature conditions for cutting-edge research including quantum computing.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Researchers develop transparent power-generating windows*
_Source: Xinhua_|_ 2021-07-15 20:48:56_|_Editor: huaxia_

BEIJING, July 15 (Xinhua) -- Researchers from China, Germany and Britain have developed transparent power-generating windows to convert sunlight into electricity, according to a research article published in the journal _Advanced Energy Materials_.

Transparent photovoltaics have shown great potential, but increased transparency comes at the expense of reduced power-conversion efficiency.

The researchers developed the window by overcoming this limitation by combining solar-thermal-electric conversion with the wavelength-selective absorption of the material used.

The wavelength-selective film facilitates up to 88 percent of visible-light transmittance and outstanding ultraviolet and infrared absorbance, thereby converting absorbed light into heat without sacrificing transparency, according to the researchers.

A prototype that couples the film with thermoelectric power generation modules produces an extraordinary output of four voltages within an area of 0.01 square meters exposed to sunshine.

This technology can operate under ambient temperatures with high reliability and has great application prospects in transparent on-site power generation, thus allowing it to provide thermal comfort for building occupants. It could also complement rooftop solar panels and side windows of trains or automobiles.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

科技日报​7-19 19:05​来自 微博 weibo.com​已编辑​​【#人造万用血即将进入临床研究阶段#】记者19日从西北大学国家微检测工程技术研究中心获悉，由该中心和西安血氧生物技术有限公司血氧液研发团队历时20年研发的“人造万用血”已完成大鼠、犬和猴等全部动物实验，并通过国家权威新药安全性评价机构的评估：无临床意义的副反应，支持进入I期临床研究。（科技日报记者 史俊斌）​​Science and Technology Daily
7-19 19:05 from Weibo

[Universal artificial blood is about to enter the clinical trial stage]

The reporter learned from National Engineering Research Center for Micro-inspection, Northwest University on the 19th July that the center together with HBOCs R&D Team of Xi’an Blood Oxygen Biotechnology Co., Ltd. has completed all animal experiments in rats, dogs and monkeys for the "universal artificial blood" that they had researched for 20 years. Evaluation passed by the national authoritative new drug safety evaluation agency: No side effects with clinical significance support the entry into phase I clinical trial.
(Science and Technology Daily reporter Shi Junbin)

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Love Love:
1


----------



## JSCh

A step closer to compact X-ray lasers


Free-electron lasing in a plasma wave.




www.nature.com












Free-electron lasing at 27 nanometres based on a laser wakefield accelerator - Nature


Lasing in the extreme-ultraviolet range is demonstrated using a laser wakefield accelerator, as a step towards compact X-ray free-electron lasers.




www.nature.com

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Smart combination therapy for liver cancer tackles drug resistance


Liver cancer is one of the most common cancer types worldwide and is especially common in China. A collaborative effort between researchers at the Netherlands Cancer Institute and Shanghai using CRISPR/Cas has led to the discovery that insensitivity to a liver cancer drug can be prevented if it...




medicalxpress.com












EGFR activation limits the response of liver cancer to lenvatinib - Nature


EGFR inhibition and lenvatinib treatment of liver cancer cells in vitro and in in vivo mouse models has potent anti-proliferative effects, and lenvatinib plus gefitinib treatment of 12 patients with advanced liver cancer resulted in meaningful clinical responses.




www.nature.com

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*The world’s first 14-valent HPV vaccine designed by Beijing enterprise enters clinical trials*
By Global TimesPublished: Jul 22, 2021 03:48 PM



Women wait in line to receive HPV vaccines at a hospital in Xi'an, capital of Northwest China's Shaanxi Province in December 2017. Photo: VCG

SinoCellTech, a Beijing-based biotech company, has rolled out the world's first 14-valent human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine which has entered clinical trials, media reported on Thursday.

The 14-valent HPV vaccine developed by SinoCellTech covers all 12 high-risk cancerogenic HPV types and two major types of HPV causing condyloma acuminatum, the Beijing Daily reported on Thursday, emphasizing that the 14-valent vaccine has increased the protection of five virus subtypes compared with the imported 9-valent HPV vaccine and will be used to prevent diseases caused by HPV infection such as cervical cancer.

"According to the current trial data, the 14-valent HPV vaccine has the ability to increase the protection rate of cervical cancer prevention from 90 percent from the 9-valent HPV vaccine to 96 percent," per media reports, citing Tang Liming, Sino's vice president.

China's first domestically produced vaccine against the HPV has been available by appointment since May, 2020, making China the third country in the world to achieve an independent HPV vaccine supply after the US and the UK.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Daniel808

JSCh said:


> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1413218856307417095
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Microfiber-based metafabric provides daytime radiative cooling
> 
> 
> A team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions in China has developed a micro-fiber based metafabric that provides wearers with daytime radiative cooling. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes making their fabric and their test results.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> techxplore.com



😳

This Fabric can be used by Special Forces & Frontline Troops to fool enemy Infrared night vision system

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

China military scientists work on laser to improve hypersonic missile speeds


Device could help aircraft and missiles fly for longer and go faster, says Beijing’s Space Engineering University.




www.scmp.com


----------



## JSCh

Corners Are No Barrier to Imaging Tiny Objects


An update to a technique for imaging around corners allows researchers to capture objects out of the line of sight that have a width of a few human hairs, 100 times tinier than previous demonstrations.




physics.aps.org





__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1420432633432006665


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1420460802163843074








Structural basis of ketamine action on human NMDA receptors - Nature


Structures of ketamine bound to human NMDA receptors show how ketamine inhibits receptor activity.




www.nature.com




SHINE @shanghaidaily
China state-affiliated media

This is expected to pave the way for the development of ketamine-based anti-depressants and more precise therapies for patients.


----------



## JSCh

Chinese scientists develop glass as hard as a diamond


It is hoped the transparent material, tentatively named AM-III, will have wide applications in the hi-tech industry.




www.scmp.com





__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1423534366232252420


----------



## JSCh

A microscopy technique that images single reaction events in total darkness


Electrochemiluminescence enables super-resolution microscopy.




www.nature.com












Direct imaging of single-molecule electrochemical reactions in solution - Nature


Optical imaging of single-molecule electrochemical reactions in aqueous solution enables super-resolution electrochemiluminescence microscopy, which can be used to monitor the adhesion dynamics of live cells with high spatiotemporal resolution.




www.nature.com


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> A China-developed heavy ion cancer treatment system has run into the debugging phase in the Lanzhou Heavy Ion Hospital in northwest China's Gansu Province. (Xinhua)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ​











China’s first domestically built medical heavy ion accelerator is put into operation - Global Times







www.globaltimes.cn


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1429294574162178053Global Times @globaltimesnews
China state-affiliated media

China has achieved an important breakthrough in harvesting rice in controlled conditions only 60 days in a plant factory, halving the rice growth cycle from more than 120 days.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1428696153105838080





Science | AAAS







science.sciencemag.org

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Scientists develop wearable lithium-ion fiber battery*
_Source: Xinhua_|_ 2021-09-04 16:33:29_|_Editor: huaxia_




Photo provided by Fudan University shows the conceptual model of wearable lithium-ion fiber batteries on Sept. 2, 2021. (Xinhua)

SHANGHAI, Sept. 4 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have realized the scalable production of high-performing woven lithium-ion fiber batteries, bringing wirelessly charging electronics via clothes one step closer to reality.

Researchers from Fudan University have recently published their relevant study in Nature journal, suggesting how the internal resistance of such fibers changes with their lengths, theoretical support for developing secure lithium-ion fiber batteries.

The one-meter-long fiber developed by the research team is proven to be capable of powering wearable electronics including smartphones, smart bracelets and heart rate monitors continuously for a long period of time.

Its capacity retention remains about 90.5 percent after 500 charge-discharge cycles and over 80 percent of capacity can be maintained after bending the fiber for 100,000 cycles, according to the paper.

Previously, the length of such batteries remained in the centimeter scale, making weaving the fibers into textiles impossible.

Based on the new discovery, the researchers have managed to make high-performing woven lithium-ion fiber batteries. After being integrated with wireless charging launchers, the textiles can become flexible and stable power solutions for smartphones, said the team.









Scalable production of high-performing woven lithium-ion fibre batteries - Nature


Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries produced in the form of metre-long fibres can be woven into sturdy, washable textiles on an industrial loom and used to power other fabric-based electronic components.




www.nature.com

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## kuge

JSCh said:


> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1428696153105838080
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Science | AAAS
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> science.sciencemag.org


it is reported a chinese inventor(赵显华） invented a revolutionary metal processing(豪克能）to eliminate stress(残余应力) resides in metals after processing. Metals are processed to be like a mirror improving strength reducing metal fatigue by many magnitudes.
If you have an english source please post it.

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese Scientists Report Starch Synthesis from CO2*
Editor: ZHANG Nannan | Sep 24, 2021

Chinese scientists recently reported a _de novo_ route for artificial starch synthesis from carbon dioxide (CO2) for the first time. Relevant results were published in _Science_ on Sept. 24. 

The new route makes it possible to shift the mode of starch production from traditional agricultural planting to industrial manufacturing, and opens up a new technical route for synthesizing complex molecules from CO2. 

Starch is the major component of grain as well as an important industrial raw material. At present, it is mainly produced by crops such as maize by fixing CO2 through photosynthesis. This process involves about 60 biochemical reactions as well as complex physiological regulation. The theoretical energy conversion efficiency of this process is only about 2%. 

Strategies for the sustainable supply of starch and use of CO2 are urgently needed to overcome major challenges of mankind, such as the food crisis and climate change. Designing novel routes other than plant photosynthesis for converting CO2 to starch is an important and innovative S&T mission and will be a significant disruptive technology in today's world. 

To address this issue, scientists at the Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology (TIB) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) designed a chemoenzymatic system as well as an artificial starch anabolic route consisting of only 11 core reactions to convert CO2 into starch. 

This route was established by a "building block" strategy, in which the researchers integrated chemical and biological catalytic modules to utilize high-density energy and high-concentration CO2 in a biotechnologically innovative way. 

The researchers systematically optimized this hybrid system using spatial and temporal segregation by addressing issues such as substrate competition, product inhibition, and thermodynamical adaptation. 

The artificial route can produce starch from CO2 with an efficiency 8.5-fold higher than starch biosynthesis in maize, suggesting a big step towards going beyond nature. It provides a new scientific basis for creating biological systems with unprecedented functions. 

"According to the current technical parameters, the annual production of starch in a one-cubic-meter bioreactor theoretically equates with the starch annual yield from growing 1/3 hectare of maize without considering the energy input," said CAI Tao, lead author of the study. 

This work would open a window for industrial manufacturing of starch from CO2. 

"If the overall cost of the process can be reduced to a level economically comparable with agricultural planting in the future, it is expected to save more than 90% of cultivated land and freshwater resources," said MA Yanhe, corresponding author of the study. 

In addition, it would also help to avoid the negative environmental impact of using pesticides and fertilizers, improve human food security, facilitate a carbon-neutral bioeconomy, and eventually promote the formation of a sustainable bio-based society, 

TIB has focused on artificial starch biosynthesis and CO2 utilization since 2015. To carry out such demand-oriented S&T research, all kinds of resources for innovation have been gathered together and the integration of "discipline, task and platform" has been strengthened to achieve efficient coordination of research efforts. 

This study was supported by the Key Research Program of CAS and the Tianjin Synthetic Biotechnology Innovation Capacity Improvement Project.​




Starch synthesis via artificial starch anabolic pathway (ASAP) from CO2. ( Image by TIBCAS)​


https://english.cas.cn/head/202109/t20210924_284057.shtml

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

The gene-editing engineer working to boost expertise in China


The chief executive of Qihan Biotech aims to enable the first successful pig-to-human organ transplant and foster innovative biomedical research in her home country.




www.nature.com












China’s data-driven dream to overhaul health care


Collaborations between AI researchers and China’s medical workers are helping to combat diseases such as diabetes and COVID-19.




www.nature.com

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1447366338343702533

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1445058717016281103


----------



## JSCh

Researchers unravel mystery of pollination


A research team at East China Normal University uncover a mechanism for pollen-stigma mutual recogni




www.shine.cn





__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1380641255156109314

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## bobsm

*A New Electric Jet Engine Actually Works Inside the Atmosphere*
Editor Team October 20, 2021


While the thrust output remains to be fairly puny when in comparison with typical atmospheric engines, as soon as scaled, this new sort of engine might show revolutionary for the aerospace trade. 
But earlier than we check out this new design, let’s get the down-low on how plasma jet engines work. 

*What is a plasma propulsion engine?*
Plasma-based thrusters are normally regarded as a possible type of spacecraft propulsion. Such engines differ from ion thruster engines, which generate thrust by extracting an ion present from its plasma supply. These ions are then accelerated to excessive velocities utilizing grids or anodes. 

Plasma engines do not usually require excessive voltage grids or anodes/cathodes to speed up charged particles in the plasma supply however use the currents and potentials which might be generated internally, in the type of a high-current electrical arc between the two electrodes, to speed up the ions. This tends to end in a decrease exhaust velocity as there’s a restricted voltage used for acceleration.

However, with little to no air friction in space, the thrust of those engines would not must be that prime. If a continuing acceleration could be pumped out for months or years at a time, it may very well be potential to ultimately attain a really excessive velocity. 
Such engines have numerous benefits over different types of electrical propulsion. For instance, the lack of excessive voltage grids of anodes reduces the threat of grid ion erosion.
Another benefit is that the plasma exhaust is what’s termed “quasi-neutral”. This implies that the optimistic ions and electrons exist in equal numbers, which suggests easy ion-electron recombination in the exhaust can be used to extinguish the exhaust plume, eradicating the want for an electron gun.

Typical examples of those engines are likely to generate the supply plasma utilizing a wide range of strategies, together with radiofrequency or microwave power utilizing an exterior antenna. Because of the nature of the design of those engines a variety of propellants can be utilized in them together with argon, carbon dioxide, and even human urine.
As you’d count on, there are additionally some inherent drawbacks to this technology. Chief amongst them is the excessive power demand required to energy them.

For instance, the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocke (VASIMR) VX-200 engine requires 200 kW electrical energy to supply 1.12 kilos (5 N) of thrust or 40 kW/N. In concept, such an power demand may very well be met utilizing fission reactors on spacecraft, however the added weight may show prohibitive for launching the craft in the first place. 

Another problem is plasma erosion. While in operation, the plasma can thermally ablate the partitions of the thruster cavity and help structure, which might ultimately result in system failure.

Such engines, thus far, are solely actually helpful as soon as the spacecraft is in space. This is due to the comparatively low thrust that prohibits them from realistically getting used to launch the craft into orbit. On common, these rockets present about 2 kilos (4.45 N) of thrust. Plasma thrusters are extremely environment friendly as soon as in space, however do nothing to offset the orbit expense of chemical rockets.

Most space businesses have developed some type of plasma propulsion methods, together with, however not restricted to, the European Space Agency, Iranian Space Agency, and, in fact, NASA.

Various real-life examples have been developed and used on some space missions. For instance, in 2011 NASA partnered with Busek to launch the first Hall-effect thruster onboard the Tacsat-2 satellite tv for pc. They are additionally in use on the NASA Dawn space probe.

Another instance is the aforementioned Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket presently below improvement by the Ad Astra Rocket Company.

VASIMR works through the use of an electrical energy supply to ionize a propellant right into a plasma. Electric fields warmth and speed up the plasma whereas the magnetic fields direct the plasma in the correct route as it’s ejected from the engine, creating thrust for the spacecraft. Theoretically, a 200-megawatt VASIMR engine might scale back the time to journey from Earth to Jupiter or Saturn from six years to 14 months, and from Earth to Mars from 6 months to 39 days.
Not too shabby. 

*What’s so particular about this new Chinese plasma engine?*

A team of Chinese engineers revealed final year a working prototype of a microwave thruster. The engine, the researchers say, ought to have the ability to work in Earth’s ambiance with comparable effectivity and thrust to that of typical jet engines. 

Normally utilizing noble gasoline, like, xenon, plasma engines haven’t been proven to be sensible in Earth’s ambiance as generated ions are likely to lose thrust power due to friction with the air. Another compounding downside is that present examples produce pretty low thrust, which is okay in space however can be pathetically small on Earth. 

The new design, created by researchers at the Institute of Technical Sciences at Wuhan University, makes use of air and electrical energy as a substitute of gases like xenon. Testing has proven that the engine is able to producing a formidable quantity of thrust that will, sooner or later, discover purposes in trendy plane. 

This new plasma engine works a bit of much like a combustion engine, whereby plasma is generated from a supply gasoline which is then, in flip, heated quickly and allowed to develop to generate thrust. In the new engine, the ionized air is used to supply a low-temperature plasma that’s then fed right into a tube utilizing an air compressor. As the air travels up the tube it’s bombarded with microwaves, which violently shake the ions, inflicting them to impression different non-ionized atoms. 
This course of drastically elevated the temperature and strain of the plasma, thereby producing important quantities of thrust additional down the tube. 

This wonderful feat is achieved, partially, by way of the use of a flattened waveguide (an oblong steel tube) by way of which the microwaves are focussed. Generated by a specifically designed 1KW, 2.45-Gh magnetron, the microwaves are despatched down the information that tapers right down to half its preliminary measurement because it approaches the plasma, after which expands once more. This course of boosts the electrical discipline energy and impacts as a lot warmth and strain to the plasma as potential. 

A quartz tube can also be positioned in a gap in the waveguide at its narrowest level. Air is compelled by way of this tube, then passes by way of a small part of the waveguide, after which exits the different finish of the quartz tube. 

As air enters the tube, it passes over electrodes which might be topic to a really excessive discipline. This therapy strips electrons off a few of the air/gasoline atoms (largely nitrogen and oxygen), which creates a low-temperature and low-pressure plasma. Air strain from the gadget’s blower at the entry to the tube then ushes the plasma additional up the tube till it enters the waveguide. 

Once the plasma is in the waveguide, the charged particles begin to oscillate inside the microwave discipline — inflicting speedy heating. In doing so, the soup of atoms, ions, and electrons collide with each other regularly, spreading the power from the ions and electrons to the impartial atoms, heating the plasma quickly.

As a outcome, the researchers declare that the plasma quickly heats to properly over 1,000°C. The exhausted sizzling plasma creates a torch-like flame as the sizzling gasoline exits the waveguide, thus producing thrust.

*How highly effective is the new plasma engine? *

If the airflow in the compressor is saved finely tuned, the flame jet produced in the tube, the researchers seen, appeared to elongate in response to a rise in microwave energy. Based on this commentary, the researchers tried to quantify how a lot thrust was being produced.

While this sounds comparatively easy on the floor, it got here with one severe catch. The thousand-degree plasma jet produced by the engine would destroy a daily barometer. 

To overcome this, the group determined to suppose a bit of outdoors the field. They devised a technique to steadiness a hole metal ball on high of the tube. This ball was stuffed with smaller metal beads to vary its weight as and when required. At a sure weight, the thrust can be such that it might counteract the gravitational forces appearing on the ball downwards on the exhaust finish of the tube, permitting it to be elevated at a sure top above the tube. 




Schematic of the newly designed plasma jet thruster. Source: Dan Ye _et al 2_020. 

You can try the actual footage of the engine in action here. 


more @ https://thehackposts.com/a-new-electric-jet-engine-actually-works-inside-the-atmosphere/

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

*Across China: Chinese medical researchers develop AI hand to aid disabled*
_Source: Xinhua_|_ 2021-10-21 14:05:09_|_Editor: huaxia_

by Xinhua writers Lyu Qiuping and Xia Ke

BEIJING, Oct. 21 (Xinhua) -- An artificial intelligent hand has been developed by a Beijing-based medical team, which can help disabled people in simple jobs like unbuttoning clothes and lifting a cup.

Unlike traditional artificial limbs, the wearable bionic hand, with signal sensors tracking morphological skin changes, can collect signals of finger movement intention transmitted through muscles. These signals are then sent via skin to the bionic fingers, especially the thumb, to realize the movement intention of the fingers, said Yang Yong, a senior surgeon from Beijing Jishuitan Hospital who is the team leader of this project.

To better control the "fingers," the patient wearing the artificial hand needs to undergo a surgery named the muscle redistribution technique (MRT) to redistribute the key muscles of the remaining part of the patient's disabled arm, said Yang.

The key muscles will be sutured into the skin so that the finger movement signals of the muscles can make morphological skin changes, which are then collected by the sensors on the skin surface. The bionic fingers, combined with the electromyographic signals of the forearm, can then make corresponding movements, Yang added.

According to the hospital, two patients have undergone MRT surgery on the distal forearm level.

Zhou Ping (pseudonym), from Xiongxian County in north China's Hebei Province, lost his right forearm two years ago in an accident. Since receiving the MRT operation and being equipped with a bionic hand two weeks ago, he has begun to feel the changes in his life.

"I now can grab a glass of water, unbutton shirts and pick up small things like marbles using the bionic hand," Zhou said, adding that he puts it on every morning, and takes it off before going to bed.

This is not the first time for Chinese doctors and researchers to develop intelligent bionic hands.
In July last year, a Shanghai-based tech firm, OHand, donated 24 self-developed bionic hands to people with disabilities.

Through the aggregate movements of its 280-plus parts, the artificial hand can make more than 20 gestures, such as grabbing and pinching, and even control chopsticks.

There are 85 million disabled people in China, of which nearly 25 million have disabilities related to limbs, showed data released by the China Disabled Persons' Federation.

The country will facilitate scientific and technological innovation and talent development for better care and support for people with disabilities from 2021 to 2025, stated a plan on stepping up the protection of the rights and interests of people with disabilities issued in July by the State Council, China's cabinet.

Yang believes that with further improvement of the MRT as well as the sensors and smart hand functions based on the feedback of patients, the technology will benefit more people with physical disabilities and improve their quality of life.

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

*Chinese researchers develop new approach to lower cost of hydrogen fuel cells*
_Source: Xinhua_|_ 2021-10-22 13:29:37_|_Editor: huaxia_

HEFEI, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Hydrogen energy is an efficient and clean new energy, but the high cost of producing hydrogen fuel makes its wider application difficult. Chinese scientists have recently developed a new approach to produce a series of high-performance platinum alloy catalysts, which is expected to lower the cost of hydrogen fuel cells significantly and promote their industrialization.

With platinum-based catalysts, hydrogen fuel cells can convert chemical energy into electricity through a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen. Platinum, a precious metal that serves as a key element in this chemical reaction, makes hydrogen fuel cells very expensive.

Liang Haiwei, a professor at the University of Science and Technology of China who led the research, has developed a sulfur-anchoring approach for the synthesis of platinum-based alloy catalysts that can reduce the use of platinum to one-tenth of its amount of commercial platinum-carbon catalyst to achieve a similar fuel cell performance. It took Liang and his team members five years of research to obtain this outcome.

"Platinum accounts for about 40 percent of the production cost of hydrogen fuel cells. We aim to reduce the price of hydrogen fuel cells by reducing the use of platinum," said Liang, adding that this new approach has laid a solid foundation for achieving the goal.

The research result was published in the journal _Science _on Friday.

"This work is one of the most comprehensive and systematic studies of intermetallic nanoparticle formation and their resulting catalytic properties. This accomplishment is quite impressive. In that regard, the manuscript will be read and cited broadly," one of the journal's reviewers commented.

Liang said there are still many challenges before putting the approach in real-life application, and his team has forged cooperation with relevant companies for further development of the technology.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1451287235819626505

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1458533929250705412

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1458626880530042880

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1458611685682515975

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## Shotgunner51

mohamedelsheih said:


> Our dedicated app software development team https://mlsdev.com is responsible for helping you realize your vision with a unique selection of Android applications and a variety of unique services. As one of the fastest growing healthcare companies in the world, we are consistently seeking ways to increase productivity while reducing costs so that we can provide our customers with the highest quality and the best value possible. We believe that innovation must come from the leaders of our company, and that our dedicated software development teams are expert at realizing that vision. They work together daily to explore new ideas, develop new techniques, and push the boundaries of mobile development and mobile technology.


Is this an ad or something?

@The Eagle


----------



## bobsm

*Chinese bullet trains take wing to hit speeds of 280mph*

Didi Tang, Beijing
Tuesday November 23 2021, 12.20pm GMT, The Times
Asia
China





Beijing to Shanghai on a bullet train takes about four hours 20 minutes at present; with the next generation the journey time could be cut to about three hours
VISUAL CHINA GROUP/ GETTY IMAGES
Share

Some of the world’s fastest trains may now reach even higher speeds after scientists in China suggested adding “small wings” to the carriages.

Adding five wings, or airfoils, to each carriage would generate enough lift to reduce the weight of the train by nearly a third and increase the top speed to 280mph (450kmh), researchers said.

The study is part of Beijing’s CR450 project which aims to develop a new generation of high-speed trains.

“As the operating speed increases, the wear on the wheels will increase and inevitably shorten the repair cycle and service life of the wheels,” said researchers, led by Zhang Jun, an engineer, at the Chengdu Fluid Dynamics Innovation Centre.

“The high-speed train with lift wings is a breakthrough in the traditional concept of high-speed train aerodynamic design, to reduce overall energy consumption and operating costs,” they wrote in the paper published in peer-reviewed Chinese journal _Acta Aerodynamica Sinica_.

China’s bullet trains currently run at speeds of up to 217mph (350kmh). The new CR450 trains could connect Beijing and Shanghai in about three hours, down from four hours and 20 minutes.
By comparison high-speed trains in the UK can travel at a maximum 124mph.

China already has the world’s largest network of high-speed trains and is keen to cement its position. The authorities see the improvement of the country’s rail network as crucial to economic development.

In July, China rolled out a magnetic levitation train that runs at 372mph (600kmh).

Chen Yu, a research engineer with Tongji University in Shanghai who is not involved in the project, told the_ South China Morning Post_ that the plan would come with some “extremely challenging engineering issues”, including absorbing additional noise without adding too much weight to the train.






The Times & The Sunday Times


News and opinion from The Times & The Sunday Times




www.thetimes.co.uk

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1463592052957097993

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1463640840727941122

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1469224451631947778

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1471404605200564227

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh




----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1472821092188315649


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *China Focus: Chinese scientists eye transforming Mars after successful sand-control*
> Source: Xinhua| 2018-12-10 15:30:39|Editor: Liangyu
> 
> by Xinhua writers: Yu Fei, Hu Zhe, Tan Yuanbin
> 
> WUHAN, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- Herdsmen in Dalad Banner of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, north China, have long suffered from sandstorms. A gust of wind could force people to close their eyes. Sand buried large areas of pasture.
> 
> During the worst desertification in the 1980s, more than 100 families had to leave their homes in Jiefangtan Town at the edge of the desert in Dalad Banner.
> 
> More than a decade ago, scientists came and started spraying a green liquid on the desert step by step every summer. Gradually, the landscape changed. First came a crust-like cover. This grew thicker, and then the sand stopped moving.
> 
> The sand gradually turned into soil, attracting moss, lichens, grass and animals. The soil became thicker, and the vegetation returned.
> 
> The hero of this transformation was algae, one of the earliest plant forms to emerge on earth more than 3 billion years ago.
> 
> Algae can withstand temperatures up to 60 degrees centigrade, and ultraviolet radiation and drought, said Liu Yongding, a researcher at the Wuhan-based Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who has studied algae for over 40 years.
> 
> *SAVING LAND*
> 
> The ability of algae to live in the desert inspired Liu to fix the drifting sand.
> 
> Under natural conditions, it would take more than 10 years for desert algae to form a crust.
> 
> Liu led his team to select the best algae species from samples collected across China, and innovated technologies that could generate a crust in one year.
> 
> Almost 400 million Chinese are affected by desertification, which accounts for 27.3 percent of China's total land area. More than 7.72 million hectares of arable land have been degraded by desertification, and 670,000 hectares of farmland and 235 hectares of grassland have become drift sand or desert.
> 
> "We started this research more than 20 years ago without any financial support, but we persisted because we see the potential and the need of the country," said Liu, 74.
> 
> "We can't turn all deserts into oases, as deserts play a role in keeping the earth's heat balanced. We aim to control desertification and restore the soil," he said.
> 
> *SAND RETREAT*
> 
> Liu's team has collected desert algae samples from Hulunbuir, in Inner Mongolia, to the Taklimakan Desert, in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. They also compared samples from different times over the past six decades. From a small sample of mature algae crust, they found more than 700 types of organism.
> 
> Their desertification control technology has been widely applied in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
> 
> In areas where it was applied, the area of shifting sand fell from 60 percent to 10 percent, and the fixed sandy area rose to 90 percent. The plant coverage area rose from less than 15 percent to more than 80 percent.
> 
> "It takes 100 years to form a centimeter of fertile soil and 2,000 years to form 20 cm. It would take many generations to recover if a piece of arable land was lost. We are happy that we found a way to turn sand into soil several centimeters thick that can grow plants in a few years," Liu said.
> 
> Liu believes his technology can be used in desert areas outside China, including countries participating the Belt and Road initiative. His research has attracted scientists from Europe and the United States.
> 
> *EARTH TO SPACE*
> 
> Liu has also set his sights on the sky.
> 
> Since 1987, his team has studied algae to support astronauts' long stay in space.
> 
> They have carried out experiments on six of China's returnable satellites, and biological experiments on the Shenzhou spacecraft. They have worked with German scientists to research the life support system on the Shenzhou-8 spacecraft. They will also carry out experiments on China's future space station.
> 
> The research can be traced back to the 1970s. "We did an experiment to find out how much algae can keep a person alive in a closed submarine environment," Liu said.
> 
> Wang Gaohong, another researcher at the Institute of Hydrobiology, said algae have significant advantages in building a life support system. The oxygen generated by higher plants of about 15 square meters is equivalent to that produced by just a square meter of algae. It can also provide protein for astronauts.
> 
> "On the other hand, in near space, at an altitude of about 20 to 100 km, the environment is similar to that of Mars. Our space biology research will also help us understand possible life forms on Mars," Wang said.
> 
> *TRANSFORMING MARS*
> 
> Liu has an ambitious goal: letting algae pioneer human migration to Mars.
> 
> He first publicly proposed using algae to transform the environment of Mars about 15 years ago. "The deserts on earth have a similar environment to the Martian environment. We might use our knowledge of desert algae to transform the environment and help construct a human base on the red planet."
> 
> Science fiction writers and scientists put forward the idea of transforming Mars a long time ago, but there was no practical way to realize it. Liu's research made the idea conceivable, said Wang.
> 
> The intense radiation, low air pressure, dramatic temperature changes and bleak environment on Mars are similar to early earth. Algae are primary producers of the earth's biosphere, accounting for 30 percent to 40 percent of the global total, and playing an important role in maintaining biosphere stability, said Wang.
> 
> Algae have changed the environment of earth. Now humans are also changing the earth, but for the worse.
> 
> "If one day we have to leave earth, and build another home on another planet, algae might be our pioneer," Wang said.








Experiments show algae can survive in Mars-like environment


Experiments show algae can survive in Mars-like environment-



www.xinhuanet.com

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1475711960494657538

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1478924284038840323

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

Newly discovered type of ‘strange metal’ could lead to deep insights


A new discovery could help scientists to understand “strange metals,” a class of materials that are related to high-temperature superconductors and share fundamental quantum attributes with black holes.




www.brown.edu





__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1481616439383633934


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1485176307507884036

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Love Love:
1


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> *Neutrino observatory is whole new game*
> Yang Meiping
> 02:22 UTC+8, 2019-01-15
> 
> The excavation and construction of an area 700 meters underground for the Jiangmen neutrino observatory has been completed, and lab equipment will be installed soon. It was announced yesterday at a Shanghai Jiao Tong University conference.
> 
> The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory will be ready for experiments in 2021, and is expected to run for at least 20 years.
> 
> The research team, led by Chinese scientists with participation from 600 scientists from 17 countries and regions, is expected to determine the neutrino mass hierarchy in six years.
> 
> “Neutrinos are one of the fundamental particles which make up the universe,” said Xu Donglian, a scientist from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and a member in the program.
> 
> “The findings of the neutrino mass hierarchy will help us know more about space and the world, such as the evolution of stars and black holes and also the detailed structure of the Earth core.”
> 
> Neutrinos are among the least known particles as they interact only via weak subatomic force and gravity.
> 
> They had been believed to be weightless as photons until scientists found in 1998 that they turned from one type to another when flying, a phenomenon called “neutrino oscillation.”
> 
> Three types of neutrinos are currently known but many more discoveries await, such as the precise values of their masses, their mass hierarchy and whether they are antiparticles of each other.
> 
> In 2014, the Jiangmen neutrino observatory program was launched in Jiangmen City, south China’s Guangdong Province, to examine the remaining problems.
> 
> The huge facility is being built 700m underground to avoid interference from cosmic rays.
> 
> The space has been excavated and the basic structure built. It will host a spheroidal facility, with a diameter of 35 meters and weighing 20,000 tons.
> 
> The “ball” will be assembled with numerous components attached with super acute detectors to catch and analyze neutrinos.
> 
> By studying neutrinos sent from the nearby nuclear plants in Yangjiang and Taishan, researchers hope to not only determine the neutrino mass hierarchy, but also measure neutrino oscillations more accurately.
> 
> The team will also conduct research in other cutting-edge areas, such as supernova neutrinos, atmospheric neutrinos, solar neutrinos, Earth neutrinos, sterile neutrinos, nuclear decay and detection of dark matter.
> 
> “After experiments start in Jiangmen, we will be able to find answers to many key scientific problems, such as the neutrino mass hierarchy and the supernova burst mechanism,” said Wang Yifang.
> 
> He is the director of the Jiangmen program and also director of the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
> 
> “It will make great contributions to the understanding of micro particle physic laws, cosmology, astrophysics and geophysics,” he said.
> 
> Liu Jianglai, another scientist from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and a member in the program, said the United States and Japan were also doing similar research via different approaches, but Jiangmen had the advantage in research of low-energy neutrinos and is set to be the quickest. “We plan to solve the mass hierarchy problem within six years,” he said.
> 
> Source: SHINE Editor: Zhang Liuhao
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ​1:12 model undergoing test in Dec 2018
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ​


Construction of the main detector start.
From:


> 中科院高能所
> 
> 22-1-24 15:28
> 来自 微博 weibo.com
> 
> 【江门中微子实验探测器现场安装工作全面展开】1月21日，#江门中微子实验# 中心探测器的不锈钢网壳主结构第一榀支撑柱成功吊装落位，这也标志着江门中微子实验探测器现场安装工作全面展开。
> 
> 江门中微子实验中心探测器中的不锈钢网壳直径41米，将承载35.4米直径的有机玻璃球、两万吨液体闪烁体、两万只20英寸光电倍增管、两万五千只3英寸光电倍增管、前端电子学、电缆、防磁线圈、隔光板等诸多关键部件，对其结构制造精度要求很高。该不锈钢网壳是国内最大的单体不锈钢主结构，由大约900吨低放射性本底不锈钢材料在工厂焊接成构件后运往实验现场通过12万套高强螺栓拼接而成。自2013年立项以来，项目组与设计、生产企业协同攻关，攻克诸多工艺技术难题，解决了大型复杂结构焊接变形问题，通过特殊工装和工法完成了所有构件在工厂的高精度预拼装；研发并确定了不锈钢表面粗化技术，该技术将不锈钢表面抗滑移系数从普通的0.2提高到0.5以上；同时针对该项目的特殊需求研制了高强不锈钢短尾环槽铆钉。这些技术授权多项发明专利，不仅实现了不锈钢结构高强螺栓连接，同时也解决了不锈钢连接常见的抗咬合问题，该技术下螺栓预紧力一致性显著提高，防松性能更好，安装也更加快速有效。其中不锈钢短尾环槽铆钉技术由中国机械通用零部件工业协会进行了鉴定，首次用于钢结构领域，并据此发布了相关标准，填补了国内空白。
> 
> 因#中微子# 研究的科学意义重大，国际竞争激烈，为争取早日完成探测器安装，春节期间项目不停工，工程技术人员继续在现场进行安装工作。

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Love Love:
2


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1486470485441400836



Why water skitters off sizzling surfaces – and how to stop it​Jan 27, 2022



nature video

Water droplets on very hot surfaces bounce and skitter around on a thin cushion of water vapour. This phenomenon is known as the Leidenfrost Effect and it's something that engineers often want to avoid as it makes water-based cooling systems less efficient.

Now, researchers in Hong Kong have put forward a newly designed surface intended to prevent the bouncing and skittering of the Leidenfrost Effect.

Read the full paper here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s4158... 

For more stories like these sign up for the Nature Briefing: An essential round-up of science news, opinion and analysis, free in your inbox every weekday: https://go.nature.com/371OcVF

Reactions: Like Like:
3


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1487093128511246345

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1487100667340763145

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1491666779302940675

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1491628253664395266

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1491678057115131908

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1491345628110094341

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1491713597147336704

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1491781547933978630

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1491708553840758785

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1491666779302940675




__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1492101693533786138

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Archaeologists Discover Innovative 40,000-Year-Old Culture in China - A well-preserved Palaeolithic site in northern China reveals a new and previously unidentified set of cultural innovations, including pigment production and blade-like stone tools https://buff.ly/3pvYQio

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1499052299406163970

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1499145340511006725

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

A transistor made using two atomically thin materials sets size record 

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1502034318201344002Nature research paper: Vertical MoS2 transistors with sub-1-nm gate lengths

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1501969803686420482

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Han Patriot

JSCh said:


> A transistor made using two atomically thin materials sets size record
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1502034318201344002Nature research paper: Vertical MoS2 transistors with sub-1-nm gate lengths
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1501969803686420482


I think this is a world record for smallest transistor gate.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Across China: Speech recognition software helps Tibetans better communicate​Source: Xinhua Editor: huaxia
2022-03-17 14:24:44

CHENGDU, March 17 (Xinhua) -- When away from home, Gerong, who speaks only Kamba Tibetan, a Tibetan dialect, often found himself in awkward situations where few people could understand him.

This month, however, when the 50-year-old Tibetan from Garze prefecture in Sichuan Province visited a hospital in the provincial capital of Chengdu, he communicated smoothly with a Mandarin-speaking doctor about his illness.

What helped them conquer the language barrier is a speech recognition app on the smartphone that can convert the three main Tibetan dialects -- U-Tsang, Amdo, Kamba -- to texts and translate them into Chinese.

The software, named the Dungkar Tibetan Keyboard, is the brainchild of a group of young engineers from iFLYTEK, an AI and speech-technology giant.

"With its new capability to recognize the Tibetan dialects, the software can now meet the needs of about two-thirds of all Tibetans across China," said Nyima Wangdu, product manager of Dungkar.

The Tibetan-language keyboard was first launched in 2017, but only began to support speech recognition early this month. It took the engineers nearly five years to enable the function after building a sufficient Kamba Tibetan corpus.

"The main obstacles in developing the software were a lack of a corpus and a lack of support from linguists on Tibetan dialects," said Nyima Wangdu.

To solve the problem, the group from iFLYTEK expanded the search for Tibetan dialect speakers. They enlisted nearly 60 Tibetan students from Southwest Minzu University to the project, who helped the team enrich the corpus of Kamba Tibetan.

On the technical side, the group set up a team dedicated to developing a new generation of versatile multilingual speech synthesis systems.

Cao Bin, one of the engineers, majored in linguistics in college. His work focused on tackling the syntactical differences between Tibetan and Chinese. For instance, he said, "March 13" is referred to as "13 March" in Tibetan.

Deng Qi, a user interface designer in the group, had to deal with the aesthetic issue arising from the difference in sentence lengths of the two languages.

"While we tried to make the lengths of the two languages match, we also worry about the accuracy of the translations," said Deng. "We made a great effort to achieve the ideal result."

Now, Dungkar has more than 4.8 million users in Tibetan-speaking regions such as Tibet Autonomous Region, and Sichuan and Qinghai provinces.

"I believe that language is not just a tool to communicate, but also a bridge that brings people in different places closer to each other," said Nyima Wangdu.






Across China: Speech recognition software helps Tibetans better communicate


Across China: Speech recognition software helps Tibetans better communicate-



www.xinhuanet.com

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

East China's #Shandong province is promoting deeper integration of its deterministic network to upgrade the networking and smartening of industrial manufacturing. #networking #surgery

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1504270024357339140

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

A world-first that will change #organregeneration: #BGI’s groundbreaking single-cell genomic tools have uncovered how to turn stem cells into early-stage cellular building blocks with the potential to create different organs & tissues.
https://bit.ly/3tu519a

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1506064703713210368

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1505945677892919297

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## Shotgunner51

"The new analysis of scientific migration data also shows a remarkable turnaround in the fortunes of the US and China. In 2015, the US was the most attractive scientific destination in the world, enticing close to 3,000 net scientists. But by 2020, that dropped to 1,000."

"In the same period, China went from losing scientists, to replacing the US as the world’s most attractive destination. In 2020, a net total nearly 1,800 academics relocated to the country."







Citation: https://sciencebusiness.net/news-by...-china-overtakes-us-most-favoured-destination

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## Daniel808

This is why US so Fvcked up.


2028 Chinese will Finish their Industrial Digital Transformation

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

Using CRISPR to turn off genes in #corn and rice to improve #cropyields 
@sciencemagazine

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1507341337095454721

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1507099983597735946

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

Synthesis of TNTNB represents new energy peak for organic explosives 
@ScienceAdvances

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1508444735886790656

Reactions: Like Like:
1 | Love Love:
1


----------



## Wergeland

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1510391594096103424

Reactions: Like Like:
2


----------



## JSCh

#ScienceMag Ambient-pressure synthesis of ethylene glycol catalyzed by C₆₀-buffered Cu/SiO₂ https://science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm9257… fullerene can act as an electron buffer for a copper-silica catalyst. Hydrogenation of dimethyl oxalate over a C₆₀-Cu/SiO₂ had an ethylene glycol yield 98±1%.

#ScienceMag Fullerenes make copper catalysis better https://science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abo3155… In the bulk production of ethylene glycol from dimethyl oxalate, high pressure of hydrogen gas is usually needed. This can be problematic from an engineering and safety perspective. Fulleneres solve it.

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1515001546962051087

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Chinese scientists create human stem cells by dint of chemicals​Source: Xinhua Editor: huaxia
2022-04-18 16:52:45

BEIJING, April 18 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have translated human somatic cells back into pluripotent stem cells, an "adult" version of early embryonic cells, using chemical molecules.

A group of researchers led by Deng Hongkui from Peking University reported finding the chemical cellular reprogramming technique for the first time ever.

Previously, the cell-intrinsic components, including oocyte cytoplasm and transcription factors, are used to reprogram cells in human tissue or organs into pluripotent stem cells that can propagate to give rise to every other cell type in the body.

Inspired by how lower animals like axolotl regenerate its limb, the researchers demonstrated that the highly differentiated human somatic cells could experience plastic changes, triggered by certain chemical molecules, according to the study published recently in the journal _Nature_.

Then they successfully singled out a group of chemicals that help lead to the dedifferentiation of the cells, finally inducing pluripotent stem cells that exhibit key features of embryonic stem cells.

They identified a molecular pathway called JNK as a major barrier to chemical reprogramming, the inhibition of which was therefore indispensable for creating cell plasticity and a regeneration-like program, according to the study.

The chemical reprogramming is "safer, simpler and easier to be standardized and used clinically" than previously known approaches, said Deng, the paper's co-corresponding author.

The technique can be developed into universal knowhow to efficiently cultivate human cells of various functions, offering new possibilities for treating critical illnesses, the researchers said. 


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1514336224479268866


----------



## JSCh

International Team Led by BGI Completes First Whole-Body Cell Atlas of a Non-Human Primate


/PRNewswire/ -- In a breakthrough that could lead to scientific advancement in the treatment of human diseases, researchers from BGI-Research, together with...




www.prnewswire.com





__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1514590746476691467


----------



## JSCh

Chiral gold #nanoparticles increase #vaccine efficacy by more than 25%, study suggests 
@nature

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1516095485974564875

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1484117565253300225

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Chinese scientists produce glucose, fatty acids with carbon dioxide​Source: Xinhua Editor: huaxia
2022-04-29 14:49:43

BEIJING, April 29 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have developed a new method to translate carbon dioxide and water into glucose and fatty acids.

The technique comes after another group in China successfully synthesized starch from carbon dioxide in 2021, and it has provided fresh potential for artificial or semi-artificial food production.

The researchers from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, the University of Science and Technology of China and the Chinese Academy of Sciences described a hybrid electro-biosystem in a study published in the journal Nature Catalysis on Thursday.

The system couples spatially separate carbon dioxide electrolysis with yeast fermentation, which efficiently converts carbon dioxide into glucose with a high yield.

It employs a nanostructured copper catalyst that can stably catalyze pure acetic acid from carbon dioxide, and then use genetically engineered yeast to produce glucose in vitro from electro-generated acetic acid.

The method is also shown to be capable of producing other products like fatty acids using carbon dioxide, according to the study.

"This process can be understood as converting carbon dioxide into vinegar and feeding the yeast to produce glucose and fatty acids," said Zeng Jie, the paper's co-corresponding author from the University of Science and Technology of China.

The upcycling of carbon dioxide into value-added products represents the tantalizing possibility of a renewable-electricity-driven manufacturing industry and a substantially untapped opportunity to tackle environmental issues and achieve a circular economy, the researchers said.

"With an electrolyte reactor and different microorganisms, we can produce starch, pigment or medicines in the future," said Xia Chuan, the paper's co-corresponding author from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. 


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1519858910114742272

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

China has developed Asia's 1st 9.4T ultrahigh field MRI system for human whole body imaging. Compared to MRI system for routine clinical application, this new system can obtain images with higher resolution in less time and visualize rare components in human bodies.

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1527152066841325568

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## foxhoundbis

In my view, the only war between the West, and Russia-China Axis is the Chip industry, especially semiconductors. China is breaking the West monopoly by producing its own Lithograpy Machine.




At this stage China is producing 28-14 nanometres Lithography machines, the next step could be reached in a few years. After 2025 it is reasonable to think that China will be able to make a Lithography Machine that can produce 1-nanometer chip, ending once for all the Western monopoly in this area. 
China self reliance on the production of semiconductors is good news for the rest of the world, but not for the USA. I think America is on the verge of expelling China's high-tech companies out of the western world. It could trigger a real war.
If someone among you does have other news please bring them.


----------



## JSCh

New type of triterpenes discovered


A remarkable discovery and collaborative effort have revealed a new type of triterpenes, a group of organic compounds which are an important source of many medicines. Until now, all triterpenes were believed to be derived from squalene, itself a type of triterpene. However, for the very first...



www.sciencedaily.com





__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1532306513397702658


----------



## JSCh

New study hails effectiveness of China-made cancer drug​By Zhou Wenting | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2022-06-08 18:21

A clinical study recently published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the official journal of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, has shown that a China-developed pill containing third-generation EGFR-tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI) can offer the longest progression-free survival among Chinese patients suffering from non-small cell lung cancer.

Led by a team of researchers from Shanghai Chest Hospital, the study also found that the drug, almonertinib, can significantly reduce risks of disease progression and death in patients with brain metastases and certain gene mutations.

China's first and the world's second third-general EGFR targeted therapy, almonertinib has been considered a breakthrough in cancer treatment in China as it provides domestic patients with another avenue for advanced lung cancer treatment. Previously, patients could only rely on imported drugs.

The drug received approved for use in China in April 2020.

The clinical study of 429 participants showed that the drug, compared with the first-generation targeted therapy, could increase progression-free survival from 9.9 months to 19.3 months, while reducing the risk of disease progression by 62 percent.

The progression-free survival of participants with brain metastases was also increased by 8.2 months to 15.3 months.

"The results of this study can better represent the benefits of Chinese patients, and have high clinical value for the treatment of the entire Asian population as well," said Jian Hong, a doctor of tumor treatment at Shanghai Chest Hospital.









AENEAS: A Randomized Phase III Trial of Aumolertinib Versus Gefitinib as First-Line Therapy for Locally Advanced or Metastatic Non–Small-Cell Lung Cancer With EGFR Exon 19 Deletion or L858R Mutations | Journal of Clinical Oncology


PURPOSE Aumolertinib (formerly almonertinib; HS-10296) is a novel third-generation epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor approved in China. This double-blind phase III trial evaluated the efficacy and safety of aumolertinib compared with gefitinib as a first-line treatment...



ascopubs.org


----------



## JSCh

China's #first domestic heavy-duty commercial vehicle direct-injection hydrogen engine was successfully ignited and ran stably on June 8, 2022. It marks a major breakthrough in the independent research and development of hydrogen technology in the country.

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1535351095353954305


----------



## JSCh

Gene Interaction That Contributes to Rice Heat Tolerance Identified​Editor: CHEN Na | Jun 17, 2022

_Molecular pinpoint could lead to more heat resistant rice cultivation, researchers say_​ 
_




_
Rice is one of the most important staple crops, on which more than half of the world’s population depends. But as temperatures rise and extreme weather events increase, rice is becoming more vulnerable. Genetically modified strains can withstand some flooding, but few, if any, can survive the heat stress caused by the combination of high temperatures and draught. There may be hardier crops on the horizon, though, with the help of a molecular map that details the specific gene interactions that control how tolerant rice is to heat.​
Published June 17 in _Science_, the map may not lead to pirate treasure, according to the study authors, but it does lay the foundation for something far more valuable to far more people — food security.

"During its lifecycle, rice is easily influenced by heat stress, and it’s even more vulnerable under global warming,” said corresponding author LIN Hongxuan, professor, National Key Laboratory of Plant Molecular Genetics, Chinese Academy of Science Centre for Excellence in Molecular Plant Sciences, Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology. “Improving the thermal tolerance of rice plays a key role in maintaining and increasing the yield of rice crops under high temperatures, ensuring supply for the food demand of the world population.”

The thermal tolerance of rice is a quantitative trait that results from how multiple genes interact, as well as input from the environment. According to Lin, plants have multiple mechanism developed specifically to protect themselves against heat, but how the cells sense high temperatures and communicate that information internally has remained elusive — until now.

In a series of experiments with African and Asian rice varieties, the researchers knocked out various genes and studied how that influenced the genetic make-up and physical manifestation of the resulting plants.

"We found that a genetic module in rice links heat signals from the cell’s plasma membrane to its internal chloroplasts to protect them from heat-stress damage and increase grain yield under heat stress,” Lin said.

Dubbed_ thermotolerance 3_, or _TT3_, the genetic module is the physical location in the cell’s genetic material containing the genes, _TT3.1_ and _TT3.2_, that interact to enhance rice thermotolerance. A piece of TT3.1 appears to serve as a heat sensor, as it moves away from the plasma membrane to the cell’s transport pathway, where it tags its partner, TT3.2, to be degraded and removed by the cell. TT3.2 is involved in jeopardizing chloroplasts, and the cell can better protect against heat stress when the abundance of TT3.2 is decreased in chloroplasts, according to LIN.

In the plant analysis, the researchers found that TT3, whether it occurred naturally or was genetically edited, enhanced heat tolerance and reduce yield loss caused by heat stress.

"After seven years of effort, we successfully finely mapped and cloned a newly identified thermotolerant rice module, comprising two genes, and revealed a new plant thermotolerant mechanism,” Li said. “This study demonstrates that this genetic interaction can enhance the thermotolerance of rice, significantly reduce the yield loss caused by heat stress and maintain the stable yield of rice.”

The researchers plan to continue identifying thermotolerant genes and developing genetic resources to integrate into crop breeding.

"The genes we have already identified are conserved in other major crops, such as maize and wheat,” Lin said. “They are valuable resources for breeding highly heat stress-tolerant crops to address food security concerns caused by global warming.”

The National Natural Science Foundation of China, CAS, Laboratory of Lingnan Modern Agriculture Project, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, CAS-Croucher Funding Scheme for Joint Laboratories and National Key Laboratory of Plant Molecular Genetics supported this work.



_Phenotypes of mature plants and total grains per plant in NIL-TT3, _WYJ_, _overexpression_-TT3.1CG14 (OE-TT3.1CG14) _and_ tt3.2 _mutant plants after 30 days of high temperature treatment (38° and 34°C, day and night) at the heading stage. Scale bars, 5cm (Credit to Science)

_Rice is one of the most important staple crops, on which more than half of the world’s population depends. But as temperatures rise and extreme weather events increase, rice is becoming more vulnerable. Genetically modified strains can withstand some flooding, but few, if any, can survive the heat stress caused by the combination of high temperatures and draught. There may be hardier crops on the horizon, though, with the help of a molecular map that details the specific gene interactions that control how tolerant rice is to heat. Published today (June 17) in Science, the map may not lead to pirate treasure, according to the study authors, but it does lay the foundation for something far more valuable to far more people — food security._



https://english.cas.cn/head/202206/t20220617_306632.shtml


----------



## JSCh

#China dominates in the latest #annualtables from @NatureIndex. In my latest story, researchers speculate whether this is a blip or part of a longterm trend. #researchimpact #STEM








Nature Index Annual Tables 2022: China’s research spending pays off


Experts say the country’s strong scientific performance is likely to be sustained in the coming years.




www.nature.com





__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1537577591099789312

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

New member added to #carbon material family, a two-dimensional #monolayer polymeric fullerene 
@nature

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1537087562841571333

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1537165011948380161


----------



## JSCh

Scientists take the first step to master an all-powerful cell type in the beginning of life​
NEWS PROVIDED BY
*School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Tsinghua University *
Jun 21, 2022, 11:10 ET

BEIJING, June 21, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- From cloning to regeneration, how to find alternative paths to create or rejuvenate life has been one of the big questions for biologists. It is this question that's behind the work of generations of scientists who went on to win Nobel Prizes. It is also this question that drives the recent research led by Sheng Ding at Tsinghua University, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, now published in the top scientific journal _Nature_ magazine. 



​Chemically induced ciTotiSC from mESC (OCT4-green fluorescence-labeled pluripotent stem cells and MERVL-red fluorescence-labeled totipotent stem cells)

In the current study, Ding and colleagues have identified a drug cocktail that induces an all-powerful stem cell type at will, a cell type that can turn into an entire organism on its own. The researchers are also able to maintain the resulting cells' differentiation potential in the lab, allowing a stable system for later researchers to demystify the creation of life. This alternative path – obtaining a clean slate of life's earliest raw materials from more mature cells, instead of new sperms and eggs -- can have a wide range of implications. "Such an alternate to nature's way of creating the beginning of life is a holy grail of biology", Ding says.

The creation of life starts with one cell. Your blood, brain, and liver cells can all be traced back to this one-cell embryo or zygote.

In nature, a zygote is produced as sperm and egg merge together. And the event kicks off an irreversible process where the zygote divides, forms new cells and the new cells continue to divide and become increasingly specialized.

As specialization is gained, something is lost along the way. Once the one-cell embryo divides and hits the two-cell embryo stage, the later cells will quickly lose the differentiation potential to give rise to all cell types for generating an entire organism and its supportive tissues like the yolk sac and placenta, becoming less potent stem cells.

Scientists call these all-powerful cells in the one-cell and two-cell embryo stages totipotent stem cells. And there are pluripotent and multipotent stem cells further down the continuum. "Normally after totipotent cells, none of the other stem cells have the possibility to turn into a life on its own," Ding says.

To better study and control the totipotent stem cells, Ding and his team established a system that achieves the induction and maintenance of these cells, and confirmed their identity with stringent criteria.

With 20 years of work and understanding of cell fate and stem cell regulation by chemical compounds, the team selected and screened thousands of small molecule combinations. Through multiple rounds of analyses, they identified three small molecules that could coax mouse pluripotent stem cells into cells exhibiting totipotent characteristics. The researchers called the molecules TAW cocktail. Each letter in TAW stands for a molecule known to regulate a specific cell fate decision. But their combined effect was not known till the current discovery, Ding explains.

Then the researchers examined cells receiving the TAW cocktail treatment in detail, both their totipotency and none-pluripotency. These cells passed strict molecular testing criteria, at all transcriptome, epigenome, and metabolome levels. For example, the team found that hundreds of critical genes were turned on in the TAW cells. These genes are typically found in totipotent cells and have been indicated by other researchers in the field as the bar to determine totipotency. At the same time, genes associated with pluripotent cells were silenced in the TAW cells.

To further prove that the resulting cells have a true totipotent state, the team tested their differentiation potential _in vitro_, and also injected them into a mouse early embryo to see the differentiation potential _in vivo_. They found that not only did the cells behave like true totipotent ones in a petri dish, but they also differentiated into both embryonic and extraembryonic lineages _in vivo_. This is a typical characteristic of normal totipotent cells, which have the potential to develop into both fetus and the surrounding yolk sac and placenta, whereas pluripotent cells can only develop into a fetus. 

In addition, when the researchers used special culture conditions for the TAW cocktail-induced totipotent cells, the subsequent cells also showed similar totipotency traits. This observation suggests that the totipotency of TAW-induced cells can be maintained in a lab environment, and thus a stable system is established.

Such a system is important, as it will enable many scientific investigations concerning the beginning of life. For example, scientists can use this system to manipulate the totipotent cells to better understand the highly orchestrated process at the beginning of life. "Certain cells will have to appear at the right time and the right location for life to occur," Ding says, and one cannot study this without proper tools. 

In this sense, "this paper is the first step and opens up tremendous opportunities," he says.

Moreover, having a deeper understanding and thus control over totipotent cells will have a wide range of implications, such as earning a second chance at the creation of individual life and even accelerating the evolution of a species.

Many of the possibilities will spur controversies, Ding acknowledges. It's worth noting that while those possibilities lie in the distant future, he mentions, it's hard to predict what society's ethical concerns will be. After all, the science community hasn't seen any lighter restrictions around human embryo research in the past decade. But last year, people started to seriously consider extending how long a human embryo can be kept in a petri dish from the original 14-days rule.

While the team is highly conscious of ethical considerations, Ding believes that as scientists their main job is to focus on making discoveries in the present, and lay the ground for future generations. Then the latter will have the knowledge and tools to make decisions. 

SOURCE School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Tsinghua University


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1539276182893613058


----------



## JSCh

Chinese e-vehicle battery Qilin enables 1,000-km journey on single charge. With the third generation of cell-to-pack technology, the battery has a volume utilization efficiency of 72% and an energy density of up to 255 Wh/kg for ternary battery systems, said battery maker CATL.

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1540130842697076736


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> Construction of the main detector start.
> From:
> 
> 
> View attachment 810808
> 
> View attachment 810809
> 
> View attachment 810810​


China completes main structure of its neutrino detector

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1540953003347156995

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Highly stable aerogel could protect firefighters and spacecraft from extreme heat


Amorphous structure studded with nanocrystals survives stress and strain that would break an ordinary aerogel




www.chemistryworld.com





__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1542566908947570690

Reactions: Wow Wow:
1


----------



## JSCh

China has finished building the world’s largest weather radar monitoring network with 236 new generation S-and C-band radars, according to China Meteorological Administration on Wednesday.

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1545263910491566081

Reactions: Wow Wow:
1


----------



## JSCh

Chinese scientists have developed a multimode amphibious robot with propeller-leg. The SHOALBOT depends on only one type of propulsion device and can work flexibly in the amphibious environment including running on beaches, grasslands, seabed, and swimming in the water.

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1546766317218177026

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Ancient DNA adds to evidence for Native Americans' east Asian ancestry

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1547947280950382593

Reactions: Love Love:
1


----------



## JSCh

test flight of Xiaopeng Huitian X2 crazy..

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1549219977470820355


----------



## JSCh

Chinese scientists have identified a transcriptional regulator, OsDREB1C, which boosts grain yields and shortens the growth duration of rice. Field trials with OsDREB1C-overexpressing rice revealed yield increases of 41.3 to 68.3%. https://bit.ly/3cyIstV

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1550344889010860032


----------



## JSCh

Ultrafast Switch from a Bose-Einstein Condensate


A subpicosecond optical switch demonstrated in a semiconductor material moves researchers a step closer to an all-optical computer.




physics.aps.org


----------



## JSCh

China claims new world record for strongest steady #magneticfield

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1558144335484518400


----------



## JSCh

An incredibly sensitive test to detect a mysterious fifth fundamental force known as the chameleon force hints that it isn’t a valid candidate for dark energy

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1563308880788361216


----------



## khansaheeb

JSCh said:


> test flight of Xiaopeng Huitian X2 crazy..
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1549219977470820355


Why didn't they show the beginning of the flight after the pilot goes in and why didn't they show the pilot coming out after the flight ended? Looks fake.


----------



## JSCh

khansaheeb said:


> Why didn't they show the beginning of the flight after the pilot goes in and why didn't they show the pilot coming out after the flight ended? Looks fake.


You are probably right.

The original video is posted by co-founder of XPeng Motors and UCWeb that u see getting inside in the video. So the video would be real. Just that there is probably no people inside when it is flying.

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

Demonstrating a 1-Pbps orbital angular momentum fiber-optic transmission 
https://doi.org/gqp573

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1563180987051171840


----------



## JSCh

Battery breakthrough: Scientists invent cheap aluminium-sulphur alternative to lithium-ion batteries - Euronews

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1564229827401752576

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1562623188500000768


----------



## JSCh

Can our brain repair itself? This could happen in the future. Intl scientists led by #BGI used its Stereo-seq tech to map the world’s first spatiotemporal cell atlas of axolotl brain devt & regeneration, showing how an injured brain can heal itself. 
https://bit.ly/3Qbokfr

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1565405784317767680


----------



## JSCh

3D nanoprinting using semiconductor #quantumdots to create optoelectrical materials

@sciencemagazine https://doi.org/gqsc45

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1568260450860548097


----------



## JSCh

Chinese scientists say coal power could slash hypersonic flight costs

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1572126694621990912


----------



## JSCh

A new way to make #electricity using #oceanwaves 
@OneEarth_CP https://doi.org/gqt728

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1572241691536400390


----------



## JSCh

A 1 million-year-old human skull fossil was unearthed in Yunxian county, Central China’s Hubei Province. The remain is the most intact found in Eurasian continent to date and it will help the research on human evolution, proving the million-year human history in China.

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1575025013941485568


----------



## JSCh

Out today in @Nature: a quartet of papers that provide a remarkable view of the first chapters of jawed vertebrate history. Collectively, they shift an entire research agenda to the early Silurian--and before.

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1575153660111204353

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1575169779467526144

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1575265435683020801


----------



## The SC




----------



## JSCh

Chemists led by Peking University’s Xin-Shan Ye report an automated solution-phase synthesizer that can hook up sugars to make polysaccharides of record-breaking length and bioactive oligosaccharides that could be used as drugs.

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1576286578204463104

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1575758703957270528


----------



## JSCh

China's first domestic large-tow carbon fiber production line started operations, state broadcaster CCTV reported on Thursday.

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1580486626320400384


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> test flight of Xiaopeng Huitian X2 crazy..
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1549219977470820355


XPeng's flying car makes 1st public flight in Dubai​Global News

XPeng's eVTOL flying car X2 made its first public flight on Monday in Dubai, marking a new era of modern and intelligent transportation.


----------



## JSCh

China has domestically produced a micrometer-class high-performance fiber. A 12 mm-thin rope made of the fiber, a single thread of which measuring only 14 μm in diameter, has a towing capacity of 20+ tonnes. The F-12 aramid fiber also boasts excellent cutting resistance ability.

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1582627610877640705


----------



## JSCh

IT之家​22-10-19 23:06​来自 IT之家​​【中国成功运行世界首个电磁橇，磁悬浮速度突破 1000 公里 / 小时】据央视报道，中国阶段性建成并成功运行世界首个电磁驱动地面超高速试验设施 ——“电磁撬”，它可以将吨级及以上物体最高加速到 1030 公里 / 小时的速度。详情点击：

中国成功运行世界首个电磁橇，磁悬浮速度突破 1000 公里 / 小时​
*IT home*
22-10-19 23:06

[China successfully runs the world's first electromagnetic sled, capable of speed exceeding 1,000 km/h]

According to CCTV reports, China has built and successfully operated the world's first electromagnetically driven super-high-speed test facility - "Electromagnetic Sled", which can accelerate ton-class objects and above to a maximum speed of 1030 km/h. Click for details: China successfully runs the world's first electromagnetic sled, with a magnetic levitation speed exceeding 1000 km/h


----------



## JSCh

Our latest work published with @SpringerNature
in @Nature explores great potentials of digital adaptive optics with scanning light field imaging integrated in a single sensor, which facilitates aberration-corrected 3D photography in universal applications. 
https://rdcu.be/cXUqL

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1582902380659896320

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1582862086912512000


----------



## JSCh

Chinese team syncs clocks over record distance using lasers


Physicist Jian-Wei Pan and his colleagues have achieved an important milestone towards redefining the second.




www.nature.com





__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1578527071361384448


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> 我国研制出4米大口径碳化硅非球面光学反射镜_图片频道_新华网
> 这是8月21日拍摄的4米量级高精度碳化硅非球面反射镜。
> This is a picture of the 4 meter high precision silicon carbide aspheric mirror shot on August 21.
> 
> 当日，探索9年、经18个月加工“打磨”，一块直径4米、重达1.6吨的“大镜子”在中国科学院长春光学精密机械与物理研究所通过项目验收。这是国家重大科研装备研制项目“4米量级高精度碳化硅非球面反射镜集成制造系统”的最新成果，标志着我国大口径碳化硅非球面光学反射镜制造技术水平已经跻身国际先进行列。
> On that same day, after 9 years of exploration and 18 months of processing, the “big mirror” with a diameter of 4 meters and a weight of 1.6 tons was approved by the Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. This is the latest achievement of the national major scientific research equipment development project "4-meter-scale high-precision silicon carbide aspheric mirror integrated manufacturing system", which indicates that China's large-diameter silicon carbide aspheric optical mirror manufacturing technology has now ranked best in the world.
> 
> *China develops large aperture optical mirror with high accuracy*
> Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-22 16:29:32|Editor: ZX
> 
> 
> 
> 
> CHANGCHUN, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- China has developed a high accuracy four-meter-aperture optical mirror, an important tool for deep space and astronomical observation.
> 
> Developed by Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics, and Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the silicon carbide aspheric optical mirror measures 1.6 tonnes.
> 
> The silicon carbide used in production provides more stability to the surface of the mirror, allowing for greater accuracy at 20 nanometers.
> 
> In addition to the mirror, the research group also developed the manufacturing equipment used for the mirror's production and owns the IP rights for the equipment.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 4米量级反应烧结炉
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 4米量级大型磁控溅射镀膜机
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 采用磁流变抛光加工4米反射镜
> 
> 
> 
> ​


#LSA_Highlight: [Original Article] Challenges and strategies in high-accuracy manufacturing of the world’s largest SiC aspheric mirror. 

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1585540527809708033


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> The team that she led would still be in Tsinghua. That Tsinghua team would be continuing research.
> 
> If Nieng Yan could convince Princeton to put up the fund to setup a research team for her, then that is good for her and good for the world.
> 
> Two CryoEm team doing research is better than one.
> 
> Anyway there is also Shi Yigong - the mentor of Nieng Yan.
> 
> He renounced his U.S. citizenship sometime back, and currently doing research in China.


科工力量​​22-11-1 14:54​发布于 上海​来自 360安全浏览器​​著名科学家#颜宁宣布回国任职# 欢迎回来


​11月1日，在2022深圳全球创新人才论坛上，结构生物学家颜宁宣布，即将辞去普林斯顿大学教职，出任深圳医学科学院创始院长。​
*Scientific and technological strength*
22-11-1 14:54
Posted in Shanghai from 360 Safe Browser

Famous scientist Nieng Yan announces her return to China. Welcome back.

On November 1, at the 2022 Shenzhen Global Innovative Talent Forum, structural biologist Nieng Yan announced that she would resign from Princeton University to serve as the founding dean of the Shenzhen Academy of Medical Sciences.


----------



## Wergeland

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1588001340604567552

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1587676953804275712


----------



## JSCh

A car that will lift you right out of traffic: A new two-seater detachable "flying car" prototype was unveiled in Beijing

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1593853713176621057


----------



## JSCh

China's first self-developed 50MW F-class heavy-duty gas turbine was officially completed on Friday in Deyang, SW China's Sichuan. Compared to a thermal power generator of the same power, the turbine can reduce carbon emissions by more than 500,000 tonnes a year.

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1596330400430759936

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

In synthetic biology classes, I ask students what biological function they want to create, and one popular answer is "photosynthesis in mammals". Now, it's achieved! The authors transplanted membrane-coated thylakoids into chondrocytes and mice! Congrats!

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1600582067770769425

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1600558274834825216


----------



## Horse_Rider

cirr said:


> May 2013, page 20
> 
> With its strong economy, the country wants to play a bigger role on the world science stage.
> 
> Sixteen&#65288;since expanded to eighteen&#65289;science and technology projects will receive big infrastructure investments in China, the countrys State Council announced on 23 February. The competitively selected upgrades and new facilities focus on such topics as energy, nuclear waste, materials science, ocean surveys, and astroparticle physics (see the table on page 22).
> 
> The projects are part of Chinas mid- to long-term perspectives for the development of major national infrastructures in science and technology stretching out to 2030. Through the end of the current five-year planning period in 2015, the total investment is expected to be about CNY19 billion (about $3 billion), more than three times the amount in the previous five-year plan. Individual facilities will get up to CNY2 billion. The construction money comes from the National Development and Reform Commission. Ongoing research is covered by other sources, says Lu Yu, a senior scientist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Physics, so the new large projects do not threaten funding for laboratory-scale science.
> 
> Zhen Cao, the chief scientist for a new cosmic-ray observatory that made the cut, says that with the economy strong, people are thinking this is the time for China to take responsibility for the development of basic science and technology. The US and Europe, he notes, are both home to many large scientific experiments. China is making major contributions to science too, he says. That is why China thinks we should have this concrete plan to build and grow as many big facilities as possible.
> 
> Among the 16 selected projects, some are ready to go forward pending various permits, but others will be put up for bid. Thats the case, for example, for a user facility to study materials under extreme conditions. Proposals for such projects are due soon, and decisions are likely before the end of the year, says Yu.
> 
> Pure science
> 
> The Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO), the cosmic-ray observatory that Cao heads, is to be built at 4300 meters in Shangrila, Yunnan Province, in the southwest corner of China. Combining five detector types at high altitude is what makes LHAASO unique, says Cao. For cosmic-ray particles with energies above 1015 eV, the existing data are chaotic, he says. We have to build many types of detectors to collect information about the air showers. The aim, he says, is to identify the violent processes that produce the particles. We want to find the sources of cosmic rays. (See also Physics Today, April 2013, page 14.)
> 
> One of the LHAASO detectors will be a large pool of water, lined with 3600 phototubes to observe the Cherenkov radiation produced by impinging particles from the air showers caused by cosmic rays. We will measure the timing and how many particles there are, Cao says. An array of 6000 scintillators over a circle about 1.2 kilometers in diameter will measure the energy and intensity of incident cosmic rays. The third detector will be an array of bags of pure water with phototubes buried about 3 meters underground to watch for muons. Because the detectors are underground, says Cao, electrons and photons are excluded. In practice, he explains, you are looking for the [gamma-ray] showers without muons. Finally, the LHAASO will have 24 UV telescopes to look for fluorescent light and Cherenkov radiation produced in air showers and 400 burst detectorsscintillators on the surface that are shielded by lead so that they record only the most energetic particles.
> 
> Cao hopes construction can begin in two years. We need to get permission to use the land, and then we face an environmental review, he says. Once ground is broken, it will take about four years to build the facility, which is expected to cost about CNY1 billion. Although a mainly Chinese project, scientists from France and Russia are working on aspects of the detectors.
> 
> The China Antarctic Observatory also got the nod. Two large telescopes will be added to a site on Dome A in Antarctica where China already has a small presence. (For more on Antarctic telescopes, see the Quick Study on page 60.) One is a 2.5-meter optical-IR telescope to study dark matter and dark energy and to search for exoplanets; it will be perched on a 14.5-meter-high tower to lift it above the turbulence layer. The other is a 5-meter submillimeter telescope to study star and galaxy formation (see Physics Today, January 2011, page 22).
> 
> Aside from those two astrophysics projects, most of the megafacilities are a mix of basic and applied science or tend more to applications.
> 
> Pushing extremes
> 
> Hong Ding, chief scientist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, is working to bring the extreme conditions project to the Beijing suburb of Huairou; word has it that another team may submit a competing proposal. Ding envisions the Synergetic Extreme Condition User Facility (SECUF) boasting some 20 different instruments that can operate at low temperatures (below 1 mK), high pressures (approaching 300 gigabar), high magnetic fields (32 tesla), and ultrashort laser pulses (200 attoseconds). We want to push to extremes to achieve world records, to do world-leading research, says Ding. He and his colleagues will submit their proposal for SECUF in the coming weeks.
> 
> Ding notes that China is not strong in building instrumentation. We mostly buy commercial products. But because off-the-shelf products are not available for the proposed extreme conditions, Ding says, we hope to help China develop and commercialize instrumentation. That is one of our goals. The suite of instruments would include systems for large-volume high-pressure materials synthesis, time-resolved transmission electron microscopy, high-field scanning tunneling microscopy, refrigeration by nuclear demagnetization, and a laser-wakefield-driven x-ray source.
> 
> Zuyu Zhao, who heads the ultralow temperature department at the Massachusetts-based Janis Research, sees increasing interest in low-temperature physics and cryogenic technologies among scientists in China. A seminar he gave in 2007 at Tsinghua University in Beijing drew few attendees, he says, and even fewer really understood what I was talking about. Just four years later, in 2011, Zhao gave another seminar on ultralow-temperature physics in Beijing. That time, he says, half the audience was in the corridor. The situation has changed completely. Ding agrees: The driving force behind SECUF, he says, is a growing demand by scientists.
> 
> Ding and others longer-term dream for Huairou is to collocate an array of facilities there. The Beijing Advanced Science and Innovation Center, or BASIC, would bring together SECUF, the future Beijing synchrotron light source, the Earth simulation computing facility, and perhaps other infrastructures. Huairou is also near the new site of the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which would give BASIC researchers access to students and students access to the centers facilities. issues and events&#12290;
> 
> Science and technology infrastructure gets the nod in Chinas 12th five-year plan: Mid- to long-term projects ranked by priority&#65306;
> 
> 1. Ocean-floor scientific survey network
> 2. High-energy synchrotron test facility
> 3. Accelerator-driven subcritical reactor research facility
> 4. Synergetic Extreme Condition User Facility
> 5. High-flux heavy ion accelerator
> 6. High-efficiency, low-carbon gas turbine testing facility
> 7. Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory
> 8. Future network experimental facility
> 9. Outer-space environment simulating facility
> 10. Translational medicine research facility
> 11. China Antarctic Observatory
> 12. Precision gravity measurement research facility
> 13. Large-scale low-speed wind tunnel
> 14. Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility Phase-II Beamline Project
> 15. Model animal phenotype and heredity research facility
> 16. Earth system digital simulator
> 
> Cookies Required
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> .



I don't see specific projects on semi conductor research, tech / super computing? Due to US restrictions and ALL tech being dependent on semi conductor industry, that should be the most critical piece of technology that then is used in building anything scientific these days. Every one of the projects above require some sort of super computing power and associated tech.


----------



## JSCh

Chinese scientists’ quantum study hailed as a ‘breakthrough of the year’


Physics World puts creation of the world’s first ultracold three-atom molecules in top 10 scientific achievements of the year.




www.scmp.com


----------



## JSCh

China has developed 8-meter-diameter main bearing that will be used for China’s first homegrown large tunnel-boring machine. Weighing 41 tons, with many indexes superior to similar foreign products, the breakthrough is expected to break China’s reliance on imports: report

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1603219933235941377


----------



## JSCh

Chinese scientists make ‘impossible’ AI breakthrough in drug research

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1603032070472736770

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1600737207580753920


----------



## JSCh

A new world record !
@Orange and @Huawei have successfully achieved a new world record of 157 Tbit/s transmission prototype testing over a 120 km fiber on the Orange network in South West France
-> https://tinyurl.com/3jac2wtz

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1605956391407321090

Reactions: Like Like:
1


----------



## JSCh

JSCh said:


> China's first self-developed 50MW F-class heavy-duty gas turbine was officially completed on Friday in Deyang, SW China's Sichuan. Compared to a thermal power generator of the same power, the turbine can reduce carbon emissions by more than 500,000 tonnes a year.
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1596330400430759936


#China's first self-developed F-class 50 MW heavy-duty gas turbine was successfully ignited at a distributed energy station in #Qingyuan, #Guangdong province, marking an important step towards its commercial operation, according to its manufacturer @DongfangGlobal. #SmartGD

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1610160689913499648


----------

